Mediterranean Tycoons: Wealthy & Wicked. Jacqueline Baird

arrested gaze followed her as she stepped behind the reception desk and then turned with a smile for an approaching guest. Her smile took his breath away. His attraction was instant, and shockingly physical. He was without a woman at the time, and in that moment he decided the girl was going to be his, not for a second contemplating failure.

      He approached the reception desk and asked if she could recommend a good restaurant. She tilted back her head, the better to look at him, and he realised she was even more beautiful up close. His fascinated gaze took in the delicate lines of her oval-shaped face—the creamy skin, the full mouth, and the brilliant blue eyes that now met his. He smiled and held her gaze, and her eyes widened in instinctive female recognition of his masculine interest. She actually blushed. Later he would learn why she did that.

      Phoebe in the Greek language meant shining, brilliant, and she was all that and more—beautiful with a perfect body and a quick mind.

      He asked her to have dinner with him that night. Amazingly she refused, stating she was not allowed to date guests, but he charmed her into telling him she only worked there at weekends to supplement her income while studying Politics and History at University.

      He duly checked out, returning the next day to ask Phoebe again for a date and she agreed.

      He had never met a woman yet who had turned him down—usually they chased him—and it was a novel experience, having to wait over a month before he got her into bed.

      Mainly because Phoebe shared a house with three other students—two girls Kay and Liz, and the third a guy called John—she had virtually no privacy. But she flatly refused to dine with Jed in the suite he kept in one of the family-owned London hotels. Her excuse was that she would feel uncomfortable, having seen the kind of women who accompanied men to their rooms for only a few hours in the hotel where she worked.

      She was a few weeks short of twenty-one, and her youth worried him a little. He could not decide if her concern was genuine modesty or if, like most women, she was angling for more than he was prepared to offer.

      It was sheer coincidence, when entering the Empire Casino in the heart of London one night after Phoebe had left him frustrated yet again, that he met an old poker buddy of his and found the solution to his problem. The man had just been knocked out of the World Serious Poker Tournament, which was taking place in the casino at the time, and over a drink told him he was going to America and wanted someone to caretake his London apartment and his cat Marty while he was away.

      Casually Jed told Phoebe the story, and asked if she was interested in the job. He introduced her to his friend, and when the cat purred and wrapped itself around her ankles she agreed.

      It was a win-win situation all round, and finally Jed got further than a goodnight kiss. But even then she kept him waiting another few days!

      It was a coincidentally novel solution, and a bit devious, he knew—but Jed was a cynic where the female of the species was concerned, and knew it was well worth the wait.

      Pheobe surprised him—she was actually a virgin, a first for him—but amazingly she was the most eager and most incredibly responsive lover he had ever had…

      That had been twelve months ago, he suddenly realised—another first for him. He had never kept a lover so long in all his thirty years.

      With his experience of women he had long ago realised wealth was his main attraction to any female, and given his father was now married for the fourth time it was hardly surprising.

      Not that it mattered to Jed. By the age of twenty-five he’d become a multi-millionaire in his own right—courtesy of the internet at first, as a student at university having played poker on line, and then he had moved on to trading on the financial markets. Essentially another form of gambling, but one that made better use of his brilliant mind. He’d set up his own company, JS Investments, and never looked back.

      At his father’s request he had agreed to join the family firm while keeping on with his own business, and had soon virtually taken over the running of the Sabbides Corporation, which had for decades specialised in hotels as well as other areas of the leisure industry. The company was now incredibly successful, but Jed’s relationship with his father—always strained—had become increasingly bad.

      If his father had taught Jed anything it was that marriage was not for him, and he kept his sex-life strictly sepa-rate from his business and family. No relationship lasted more than a few months—eight had been the longest until Phoebe. He certainly didn’t believe in marriage, and he had told Phoebe most explicitly at the start. She had laughed at him and told him marriage was the last thing on her mind. She was determined to get a good degree, then start her career and hopefully travel the world.

      On their first date, when she had asked what he did, he had simply said he was a businessman and travelled between offices in London, Athens and New York. But later her friend Liz had told her that mentions in the press referred to him as a ‘Greek Tycoon’—a description he abhorred.

      Yet it did not seem to influence Phoebe at all. In the time they had been together she had never hinted at commitment, never asked him for anything, and he was pretty sure she had no hidden agenda. He had nothing to worry about. One year or two, as long as the passion lasted Phoebe was his.

      Seven weeks ago she had completed her degree, and the graduation ceremony had been last week. She had invited him to attend and told him her aunt was coming as well. He avoided meeting members of his women-friends’ family if possible, and had said he would try to make it. As he’d been in New York at the time he’d had the perfect excuse not to go…

      He had called Phoebe on the morning of the ceremony and wished her luck. She had been fine—especially after he’d mentioned he had a special surprise for her. Maybe she wasn’t so different from the other women he had known, he thought cynically.

      He often bought her gifts, and she was grateful and showed it in bed. This time he had bought her a spectacular diamond necklace—because if he was honest he did feel slightly guilty at missing her graduation. And now he was a day early, which he knew without conceit would please Phoebe.

      The thought made him smile in a way that was all male sensual anticipation…

      The plane landed and Jed stood up, shrugged on his jacket and straightened his tie. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired and strikingly attractive, he was the epitome of the super-rich successful alpha male. He picked up his laptop and, with a goodbye to the smiling flight attendant, exited the aircraft.

      Phoebe turned off the shower and stepped out of the cubicle. It was nine in the evening, and she wanted an early night so she would be totally rested and ready for Jed’s arrival tomorrow night.

      Her stomach fluttered at the thought…

      She glanced at her reflection in the mirrored wall as she reached for a bath sheet from the towel rail to wrap around her slender body. Slender for how much longer? she wondered, with a growing sense of elation tinged with slight concern.

      She had yet to tell her boyfriend Jed she was pregnant…

      Jed Sabbides was a successful financier, and also the power behind the throne of the Sabbides Corporation. Phoebe had suspected from the beginning that he was wealthy, simply by his supremely confident attitude—which was why at first she had been wary of him. He’d seemed so far out of her league, but now she was hopelessly in love for the first time in her life. Her flatmate Liz had told her the full extent of his mind-boggling wealth, at the same time as she’d tried to warn Phoebe—after she’d been offered the job of taking care of this apartment last summer—that Jed was setting her up to be nothing more than his live-in lover in London…

      Liz had been proved wrong…

      True, within days of her moving into this apartment they had become lovers, but they did not live together…

      Jed respected her, and stayed at a permanent suite at a deluxe hotel the Sabbides Corporation owned when working in London, while having an apartment on her own had allowed Phoebe to study hard in her final