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Loving the Enemy

Page 39

by Connelly, Clare


  He’d spent almost a year here after it had happened – running from his own part in his father’s death. Running from the fact that letting his guard down for the first time in his life, and opening up to someone, had directly led to Stavros’s heart attack.

  Over time, he’d come to realise that Eleanor was some kind of witch – surely. Magical, enchanted, utterly terrifying – because when he was with her, he lost all sense of time, place, duty, responsibility. There was a reason he’d kept his father’s secrets for so long – a reason he’d kept those secrets even from his own sister, pushing her away with everything he had, protecting her from the shame of their father’s truth.

  No one should have known what kind of man Stavros Heranedes was. Hell, if Apollo had had his way, he wouldn’t have known. But Stavros hadn’t only been a despotic, power-hungry billionaire with a twisted and insatiable sexual appetite: he’d been determined to indoctrinate Apollo into his lifestyle.

  A hooker had been Stavros’s idea of the perfect fifteenth birthday present for Apollo – a beautiful, exclusive Manhattan call-girl, flown in for his ‘private use’. Apollo grimaced now, his reaction to the ‘surprise’ only natural given his hormonally-charged state. It had been years before he’d become enough of a man to refuse such gifts, to refuse to be groomed into the second-coming of Stavros Heranedes.

  Oh, in business acumen he had always been pleased to take after the old man. Exceed, in fact, for Stavros had the skills of his father without the emotional ambivalence. He was smart, driven, ruthless, but could make decisions from the cold-place of certainty, rather than the heat of ego.

  At least he could with everything except Eleanor.

  Which brought him back to his first question: what the hell was he doing, bringing her to prâsino nìsi?

  His eyes lifted of their own accord to the doorway that led to the rear of the plane. It was all too easy to imagine her in the bedroom. Lying down, that beautiful tangle of dark hair around her captivating face, eyes swept shut, so that only her long, dark lashes fanned her cheeks – cheeks that had been kissed by the sun often enough to birth a happy brigade of freckles across the bridge of her nose – appreciable only when you were close enough to kiss her.

  Which he’d been often in the time they spent together. To kiss her, to hold her, never to sleep with her.

  He expelled a sigh borne of anger and frustration now.

  Eleanor had seemed the very opposite of everything he was: the fast-paced lifestyle Stavros lived was full of wealth, glamour, beautiful women clamoring to become his mistress, women for whom sex was cheap and life was a rapid succession of parties and men. Eleanor had been the total opposite. So shy and nervous when they’d first met – a meeting which he now understood to have been a brilliant construct.

  She’d studied him, to know where he grabbed a coffee after a jog each morning: she knew that he queued up at the Pret around the corner from his penthouse. She’d bumped into him, spilling both their coffees and he’d looked into those caramel eyes of hers and felt as though he’d been sucker-punched and reborn, all at once. In her eyes he saw the person he should have been, the man he might be, if only he could look into her eyes for long enough.

  It had been a stupid romantic fantasy, but by the time he’d bought her a replacement coffee, he’d known he wouldn’t let her get away. He’d known that whatever fate had brought them together – literally – it was a fate that demanded he follow her to the ends of the earth.

  Or, as it turned out, to his own destruction.

  It wasn’t, after all, fate that had brought them together: it was her ruthless determination to uncover whatever she could about his family, using her face and body as temptations, drawing him close and keeping him there, enchanting him as his own Scheherezade, so that each night he found himself spinning more and more of himself out for her, until he’d been laid bare to her eyes.

  And her notebook.

  He made a sound of impatience and turned his gaze back on the window. The island was in view now – lush and verdant per its name “Green island” – floating in the midst of a pale blue ocean. The plane flew over the village first – not so much a village as a colony for the exclusive use of his staff. There were forty of them on the island, and their families, so roads had been built over time, to allow access to the remote parts of the land, and the airstrip. The plane dipped lower, low enough that he caught sight of his mansion, on the northern tip of the island, built right on the beach, with views that stretched for miles and the kind of privacy that Apollo found essential.

  And now he’d brought a witch to his safe haven, and he had no clue how he was going to avoid being caught by her spells again – only he knew that he had to. One encounter with Eleanor Jones had almost destroyed him. A second would certainly finish the job.

  * * *

  THE GREEK’S VIRGIN CAPTIVE IS AVAILABLE NOW and is free to read in Kindle Unlimited!

  Books By Clare Connelly

  HARLEQUIN TITLES

  Bought for the Billionaire’s Revenge

  Innocent in the Billionaire’s Bed

  Off Limits

  Her Wedding Night Surrender

  Burn Me Once

  Bound by the Billionaire’s Vows

  The Season to Sin

  His Innocent Seduction

  Bound by their Christmas Baby

  Her Guilty Secret

  Shock Heir for the King

  The Greek’s Billion-Dollar Baby

  Spaniard’s Baby of Revenge

  The Bride Behind the Billion-Dollar Veil

  Dare Continuity

  Cross my Hart (Notorious Harts Bk 1)

  * * *

  SINGLE TITLES

  * * *

  Her Guardian’s Christmas Seduction

  Stolen by the Desert King

  In the Hands of the Sheikh

  His Nine Month Seduction

  The Sheikh’s Contract Bride

  Seduced by the Vengeful Tycoon

  The Sheikh’s Stolen Bride

  The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

  The Sheikh’s Million Dollar Bride

  The Tycoon’s Virgin Mistress

  The Sheikh’s Virgin Hostage

  Bartered to the Sheikh

  The Sheikh’s Arranged Marriage

  Marrying for his Royal Heir

  The Greek’s Marriage Revenge

  The Velasco Love Child

  The Sultan’s Virgin Bride

  Bound to the Sheikh

  The Medici Mistress

  His Loving Deception

  The Sheikh’s Convenient Mistress

  The Princess’s Forbidden Lover

  Marrying her Enemy

  Rakanti’s Indecent Proposition

  Seducing the Spaniard

  The Italian’s Innocent Bride

  The Greek Tycoon’s Forbidden Affair

  The Terms of their Affair

  A Second Chance at Love

  The Sheikh’s Christmas Mistress

  At the Sheikh’s Command

  The Billionaire’s Christmas Revenge

  Seduced by the Italian Tycoon

  Raising the Soldier’s Son

  Warming the Sheikh’s Bed

  The Tycoon’s Christmas Captive

  The Brazilian’s Forgotten Lover

  Betrayed by the CEO

  The Billionaire’s Ruthless Revenge

  The Italian Billionaire’s Betrayal

  The Sultan’s Reluctant Princess

  Love in the Fast Lane

  Bought by the Sheikh

  The Tycoon’s Summer Seduction

  All She Wants for Christmas

  One Night with the Sheikh

  A Bed of Broken Promises

  Tempted by the Billionaire

  The Sheikh’s Christmas Wish

  To the Highest Bidder

  The Tycoon’s Secret Baby

  Bedding His Innocent Mistress

  The Sheikh’s Baby Bargain

  The Greek’s Virgin Ca
ptive

  The Sheikh’s Inherited Bride

  Claiming His Secret Baby

  Blackmailed by the Spaniard

  Her Surprise Baby Christmas

  * * *

  COMPENDIUMS

  * * *

  Casacelli Brides

  Mediterranean Tycoons

  Desert Rulers

  Billionaire Bad Boys

  Too Hot to Handle

  Desert Kings

  Happily Ever After

  The Darling Buds of May Café

  Royal Weddings

  The Evermore Series

 

 

 


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