Kizzy shot him a dark look. “Technically, I suppose, but I never really knew him or the traveler side of my family. Mum was forced out after the funeral. Nasty rumors about where I came from apparently—they’d never married.”
Andreas nodded silently before digging deeper. “And you said yesterday that both sides of the family rejected you?”
“Mum’s parents were exceedingly middle-class and told her that if she insisted on ‘running away with the fair’ she’d regret it until the day she died. So turning up on their doorstep with me was the last straw. A screaming, little illegitimate Romany child was more than their suburban respectability could tolerate.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember ever meeting them. They knew where we were, but never got in touch, not even when Mum died. I sent a telegram but they didn’t send a card back. So no great loss.”
“It would appear not,” Andreas replied quietly, trying to ignore the sickly fluttering in the region of his heart and the unpleasant ache in his throat.
Kizzy reached out a small hand and rested it briefly on the bronzed curve of his shoulder. “Can I ask you something, Andreas? Something that’s very important to me?”
He noticed that she was trembling; slowly he nodded.
“Theo and Ana—did they know that I’d be out on the street when they sold? Was I just an inconvenient sitting tenant after all?” She swallowed and blinked away the tears that were beginning to well up. “Not that I would have blamed them, after all they’d put up with from me and Mum.”
“No!” Andreas sat upright. “No, they never lied to you. They wanted the best for you; there was no deception on their part. But I had no choice in what had to be done.”
“But none of it makes sense,” Kizzy replied. “All that money for a bankrupt business.”
“It was my mother’s dying wish.”
Kizzy’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “Your mother?”
Andreas sighed deeply. “The terms of her will were crystal clear. I was to buy Timi’s for five million pounds and then sell it to developers on the understanding that it would be demolished and the land used for housing or local community use.”
“They paid you five million pounds for it?”
“Of course not! There was a massive loss but, as was Mama’s plan, Theo and Ana were suddenly very wealthy without realizing that they’d been left a legacy in her will.” He shot her a wry look. “They would have viewed it as charity otherwise and given the whole lot away, but since they believed it to be a legitimate bit of good fortune on the property dealing front, they were delighted to sell to me.”
“You deceived them.”
“I had no choice. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have fulfilled my mother’s last wishes—she wanted to thank them in a practical way, had wanted to for years, but knew their foolish pride too well. Her will insisted the place be demolished so they didn’t get any stupid ideas about returning. She said they needed to spend their last years in the sun but never would if left to their own devices. They were never to know the truth about the transaction. So now they never have to worry about money again.”
“But you have to worry about keeping it all a secret.”
“Do I need to worry, Kizzy?” A sudden weariness washed over him. “It’s only us and her solicitor who know about all this.”
“No need.” She rubbed both hands up and down her arms as if she was cold. “I knew they wouldn’t have abandoned me. I knew it.”
Andreas studied her small, hunched frame and realized that he had restored a little of Kizzy’s faith in the world. The Antonideses were the closest thing she had left to a family and even though they were many miles away, she at least had the comfort of knowing that she was still cared about. But his heart felt colder when he realized how inadequate that was for a woman whose unhappy early life experience had left her confidence in tatters.
“They can’t stop being Good Samaritans. They’ve always been that way—it’s how they met my mother and she could never forget their kindness.”
“What happened?”
“Mum was a very spoiled little rich girl—an heiress to a cosmetics empire with too much money for her own good. She got into a vicious fight over a man and needed a hiding place until all the media attention died down. The Antonideses were related to her parents’ housekeeper. They had a quiet little place in Chalcidice and took her in for a year or two to give her time for the scars on her face to heal. She could never thank them enough for that time—she said it saved her life.”
He shrugged and looked suddenly vacant. “Damn shame she spoiled it all by marrying my father.”
He then shifted his large body quickly to the edge of the bed and grabbed one of the enormous towels that had been hurled from the bed onto the floor in the heat of their passion.
“You must be hungry by now,” he said quickly and wrapped the towel around his hips without turning to look at her. “I’ll leave you to freshen up and see you on the terrace when you’re ready. No rush, take your time.”
Kizzy watched him march out of the room with dismay, a cold wave of confusion crashing over her before the leaden thud of rejection landed in the pit of her stomach.
For a small period of time she had been deluded enough to think there had been a meaningful connection between them. Those few moments of intense emotional revelation had been so heart-rending and difficult to bear, but he had listened and held her as she forced out the words and told him things that no one else alive had ever heard. Talking to him like that, naked and warm in the intimacy of the bed, and then listening to him giving his own secrets back had felt like peeling away layers of tissue paper to uncover something beautiful, a gift, a treasure…
Andreas Lazarides hadn’t been able to get out of her bedroom quickly enough. It was obvious now; the pillow talk was simply his way of being polite before making his escape, no doubt bothered both by her revelations and by her inexperience. He didn’t intend to spend the weekend with an inexperienced virgin from the wrong side of the tracks. This wasn’t what he’d bargained for. She wasn’t what he’d had in mind for his island retreat and now she was a problem.
Sickened and humiliated, Kizzy was hit by a blinding need to fight back, to restore some equilibrium and show she didn’t care.
She didn’t care what Andreas Lazarides thought of her and more importantly she didn’t care about him.
Just who was she kidding?
Acting on a need for self-preservation, she leaped off the bed and violently stripped it of its sullied linens, pulling, twisting, and wrenching them about until she was breathless with the effort. Finally throwing the sheets in the corner, she looked around for a cupboard or drawer; somewhere she would be able to find fresh bedding. If she put everything back in order, in its place, she would feel better. But every piece of furniture was as dark and hollow as Andreas’s heart.
There was no way she was going to crumple into a heap and let Andreas know how much his sudden departure from the bedroom had hurt, or how deeply she had grieved for the comfort of his arms around her or some other gesture of affection as he turned his back and walked away.
Freshen up and take your time.
His last words.
Well, she would do just that. She’d wash every trace of him from her body, keep him waiting, and then stroll coolly back into his orbit like the ice maiden she now had to be. It was abundantly clear that he was keen to keep an emotional distance, and so must she.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the physical pleasures his body had awakened within her, assuming of course that he hadn’t found her so wanting that he wouldn’t want to repeat the experience again.
Could that be a possibility?
She’d make damn sure he found her irresistible. She would even seduce him if necessary and get this physical craving for his body out of her system before he had a chance to tire of her. Then she would simply get on with the rest of her life—do all the things she had dreamed of doing now that she had no ties in En
gland, now that she was free.
There would be other men—lots of them.
She tossed her dark curls defiantly as she strode purposefully toward the room’s private bathroom. She wasn’t going to let him fob her off and move on to the next female conquest that easily. He’d ignited a flame within her that wasn’t about to go out on its own.
No, Andreas Lazarides was not going to dismiss her that easily.
…
What had he done?
Andreas poked a metal tool roughly around in the glowing embers of the woodburning oven on the terrace and flinched as a hiss of fat from the roasting pig dripped and spattered on to his forearm.
“Damn!” he muttered, and then continued with a tirade of profanities in Greek. The burn stung unpleasantly, but that wasn’t the real reason for his outburst.
He was angry. Very angry.
With himself.
He had just about managed to calm down in the half hour since hurriedly leaving the bedroom. Kizzy’s vulnerability and innocence had threatened to render him irrationally emotional. Her revelations had crawled right under his skin, touched a raw spot, the deeply hidden wound within him that would never heal. He’d been just a few moments away from making a complete fool of himself. But now he had the situation in perspective. He was in control.
How on earth had he been supposed to know she was a virgin, anyway?
He shook his head and tapped iron on stone as he ran all possible arguments and defenses at his disposal through his mind, but it wasn’t looking good. Not only had he taken a helpless, vulnerable orphan away from her home, he had also made sure that she had nothing practical to return back to. But at least he intended to give her a job and a roof over her head.
Though he’d already offered her both, he reminded himself—and been soundly rejected.
He emitted a hollow laugh as he realized how ridiculous he must have appeared—he’d offered her the “job” of being his mistress and a home that involved sleeping in his bed. No wonder she’d told him where to go!
His stomach clenched at the thought that Kizzy must have told Angie what had happened back at Villa Madeline and begged for an escape route, hence the surprising offer of Liz’s room rent-free, with no strings attached.
The hormones racing around his body must have rendered him temporarily insane to have behaved in such a way. And then he’d practically kidnapped the woman to bring her to the island. He was certifiable.
A monster!
“Something smells good.”
Andreas twisted his head quickly to see Kizzy standing a few feet away with a broad and mischievous grin dancing on her face, her shiny, chestnut curls floating like bronzed feathers in the breeze.
He swallowed deeply and turned his attention back to the glowing charcoal.
Thee mou, she was so beautiful…
“Orfeas got it started for us before we left this afternoon.”
“Orfeas?”
“An old friend. He lives over the other side of the island and takes care of the place when I’m not here.” He paused. “Which is pretty much most of the time.”
“And he lit all these candles as well?”
“No.” Slowly, Andreas laid the poker down on the hearth. He turned and leaned back against a low wall with his arms folded across his chest. A reluctant smile began to surface; he couldn’t help himself—she looked so mischievous. “I managed that all by myself.”
“It’s beautiful, like a hundred million fireflies dancing around just for us. I love it.” She took up the glass of chilled white wine that Andreas had already poured for her. “I hadn’t pegged you as the romantic type.”
“I’m not,” he replied sharply and straightened up, reaching for his own glass of wine. “It keeps the bloody mosquitoes at bay.”
“Well that’s a relief,” she said, seemingly oblivious to his brusque response. “Can’t have you going soft on me now, can we?”
Andreas’s eyes opened wider at her cheeky innuendo, but he resisted the urge to engage in further sexually charged banter in case he had misinterpreted her remark. This wasn’t the Kizzy Dean he was accustomed to sparring with; something had changed behind those mystic blue eyes. She seemed to be in an unaccountably high-spirited mood. Or maybe this was the prelude to a vicious fight. He could never tell with women—one minute they were sweet as honey and the next hissing and spitting at him like alley cats.
“Listen, about earlier—”
“About us falling into bed together like a couple of sex-starved teenagers, you mean?”
“If you want to put it like that—”
“I forgot to thank you,” Kizzy interrupted him again and took a quick swig of her wine. “I couldn’t have planned losing my virginity any better if I tried. A beautiful Greek island, a powerful and experienced lover—how much better could it have been?”
“Kizzy, about that. If I’d known—”
“You wouldn’t have done it?” Kizzy took a couple of steps closer, looking up at him. “I already know that, I’m not stupid. With all the women you could take your pick from, why on earth would you choose to take a chubby virgin like me to your bed?”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” he replied, with a distinct feeling of unease. “And you’re not chubby, you’re—you’re astonishingly beautiful.”
“Good enough to get the mistress job, then?”
“Ah.” Andreas edged cautiously away as she ran a slender finger up the length of his forearm. “Now, when I came up with that idea I wasn’t thinking things through clearly and—and I can understand perfectly why you turned me down. It was an undignified proposition. I don’t know what came over me, and I apologize.”
“I’d call it lust, Andreas,” she purred, and placed her wine glass carefully on the low wall behind him. “And you did start all this, didn’t you?”
She nudged the flat metal button that fastened his shorts with a knuckle.
“I rather like the idea now, so maybe I can make you a new proposition?”
“I’m listening,” he replied unsteadily and hissed in a breath as her fingers trailed lazily over the sudden bulge between his legs.
“The mistress thing was a bad idea, Andreas, but not because I don’t want to sleep with you—I just don’t want to be paid for doing it. I want a job—a proper one. Independence is very important to me.”
“I understand, of course. I’m sorry—”
“I haven’t finished yet.” She moved close enough to lightly press herself against the thin fabric of his T-shirt. With a shock, he felt her erect nipples and looked down into seductive blue eyes. “I now know how incredible your body makes mine feel, and I want more. Lots more. I’m only talking about sex, Andreas. Hot, steamy, unrelenting sex until we’ve had enough of each other, really worked this thing out of our systems. No strings, no promises, no commitments.”
“No love?”
“No love.” Kizzy smiled up at him. “We don’t believe in that, do we?”
A slow, incredulous, answering smile began to spread across Andreas’s face too as she peppered small, delicate kisses along his jaw, lightly teasing the corner of his mouth with the tip of her tongue.
“Heaven help me, Kizzy, what have I done to you?”
He took her small waist firmly between his hands and looked down into the swirling dark blue of her eyes to see if part of the innocent girl he had first met was still in there. But all he could see was a fire, a burning, amethyst flame of desire that was drawing him closer and closer with its spell.
“You’ve brought the woman out in me, Andreas. For the first time in my life I feel truly alive, as if I could do anything I wanted in the world. It’s a wonderful feeling and I want to enjoy it while it lasts.” Her eyes flickered uncertainly over his face. “So what do you say?”
“I’m speechless,” he replied with a shrug and noticed immediately how her face suddenly dropped, as if believing she had just made a big mistake, as if sensing she was about to be rejecte
d.
He’d seen that look many times before, just before dumping some overattentive lover who had become tedious and emotionally demanding. He’d always tried to do it in a gentle, sympathetic way, but breaking up a relationship was something he seemed incapable of handling delicately. The trouble was, once things had gotten to that stage he was so thoroughly sick of the situation that he became desperate to get it over and done with as quickly and ruthlessly as possible.
Perhaps he should take note and learn from his own experience to nip things in the bud much sooner in the future—to avoid such unpleasantness. He had to be sure, to be quite certain, what was expected of him.
“No strings, no promises, and no commitments—just sex?”
“Yes.”
“It’s as simple and uncomplicated as that?” Andreas rolled his thumbs over the bony part of her hips. “There has to be a catch.”
“Just one.” Kizzy drew herself up by standing on her bare tiptoes and playfully nipped his chin. “I need feeding at least three times a day.”
Chapter Ten
Andreas stroked Kizzy’s dark hair as she slept blissfully in the master bedroom, in his bed, tucked warmly into his body. He thought back to the afternoon before when she had given him her virginity. He was now regretting not having prolonged the experience of their first time together—it was a special moment they could never recapture, but he vowed there and then to make the most of every single second they had together.
He listened to the beating of his own heart for the first time in years as her breath feathered over his chest and a ripple of delirious pleasure zinged through him.
They had spent the previous star-spangled evening eating with their fingers, drinking, and swapping silly jokes into the early hours of the morning. It had been one of the most enjoyable nights he could ever remember and he had laughed, yes laughed, until his belly ached at some of the wild things Kizzy had come out with.
She was irreverent and insubordinate, fresh and intriguing. He’d sat opposite her tiny feet, propped up on the table and grubby from walking around barefoot, and listened as she chattered about nonsense into the night. She had delighted him in a way that he had never thought possible. The still, heady warmth of the night had been fragmented only by the whisper of the ocean and the gasps and cries of their urgent sex.
Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire Page 10