The Dimitrakos Proposition. LYNNE GRAHAM

       ‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep her …’

      Acheron frowned, his dark, deep-set eyes narrowing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘What do you think? I’m desperate to keep Amber. If you have any suggestions on how I can be a better parent to her I’m willing to listen,’ Tabby said.

      ‘I thought you were offering me sex,’ Acheron confided bluntly.

      ‘Seriously?’ Tabby gasped in shock at that misconception.

      Acheron nodded cool confirmation.

      Tabby was helplessly aware of the tension in the atmosphere. As she collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze she saw a message even she couldn’t ignore. He attracted her. This filthy rich Greek with his dazzling good-looks and hard-as-granite heart attracted her.

      ‘There is a way you could keep Amber with you,’ Ash drawled. ‘But we would need to be married first,’ he delivered smoothly.

      He would not admit the truth that he would have a great deal riding on the arrangement as well. That acknowledgement would tip the power balance between them, and he refused to take that unnecessary risk. The less she knew, the better.

      LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon^® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

       Recent titles by the same author:

      CHALLENGING DANTE (A Bride for a Billionaire) THE BILLIONAIRE’S TROPHY (A Bride for a Billionaire) THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE (A Bride for a Billionaire) A RICH MAN’S WHIM (A Bride for a Billionaire)

       Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

      The Dimitrakos Proposition

      Lynne Graham

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Contents

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       EXCERPT

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘BEARING IN MIND the history of the company’s expansion and success, it is a most unjust will,’ Stevos Vannou, Ash’s lawyer, declared heavily in the simmering silence, a wary eye locked to the very tall, dark and powerfully built male across the office.

      Acheron Dimitrakos, known as Ash to his inner circle, and Greek billionaire founder of the global giant DT Industries, said nothing. He did not trust himself to speak. Usually his control was absolute. But not today. He had trusted his father, Angelos, as far as he trusted anyone, which was to say not very much, but it had never once crossed his mind that the older man would even consider threatening the company that Ash had single-handedly built with the bombshell that his last will and testament had become. If Ash didn’t marry within the year, he would lose half of the company to his stepmother and her children, who were already most amply provided for by the terms of his father’s will. It was unthinkable; it was a brutally unfair demand, which ran contrary to every honourable scruple and the high standards that Ash had once believed the older man held dear to his heart. It just went to show—as if Ash had ever had any doubt—you couldn’t trust anybody, and your nearest and dearest were the most likely to plunge a knife into your back when you were least expecting it.

      ‘DT is my company,’ Ash asserted between compressed lips.

      ‘But regretfully not on paper,’ Stevos countered gravely. ‘On paper you never had your father transfer his interest to you. Even though it is indisputably the company that you built.’

      Still, Ash said nothing. Cold dark eyes fringed with ridiculously long black lashes locked on the sweeping view of the City of London skyline that his penthouse office enjoyed, his lean, darkly handsome features set in hard, forbidding lines of restraint. ‘A long court case disputing the will would seriously undermine the company’s ability to trade,’ he said eventually.

      ‘Picking a wife would definitely be the lesser evil,’ the lawyer suggested with a cynical chuckle. ‘That’s all you have to do to put everything back to normal.’

      ‘My father knew I had no intention of ever marrying. That is exactly why he did this to me,’ Ash ground out between clenched teeth, his temper momentarily escaping its leash as he thought of the utterly unhinged woman his misguided father had expected him to put in the role. ‘I don’t want a wife. I don’t want children. I don’t want any of that messing up my life!’

      Stevos Vannou cleared his throat and treated his employer to a troubled appraisal. He had never seen Acheron Dimitrakos betray anger before or, indeed, any kind of emotion. The billionaire head of DT Industries was usually as cold as ice, possibly even colder, if his discarded lovers in the many tabloid stories were to be believed. His cool, logical approach, his reserve and lack of human sentiment were the stuff of legend. According to popular repute when one of his PAs had gone into labour at a board summit, he had told her to stay and finish the meeting.

      ‘Forgive me if I’m being obtuse but I would suggest that any number of women would line up to marry you,’ Ash’s companion remarked cautiously, thinking of his own wife, who threatened to swoon if she even saw Acheron’s face in print. ‘Choosing would be more of a challenge than actually finding a wife.’

      Ash clamped his mouth shut on an acid rejoinder, well aware the portly little Greek was out of his depth and only trying to be helpful even if stating the obvious was more than a little simplistic. He knew he could snap his fingers and get a wife as quickly and easily as he could get a woman into his bed. And he understood exactly why it was so easy: the money was the draw. He had a fleet of private jets and homes all over the world, not to mention servants who waited on him and his guests hand and foot. He paid well for good service. He was a generous lover too but every time he saw dollar signs in a woman’s eyes it turned him off hard and fast. And more and more he noticed the dollar signs before he noticed the beautiful body and that was taking sex off the menu more often than he liked. He needed sex as he needed air to breathe, and couldn’t really comprehend why he found the greed and manipulation that went with it so profoundly repellent. Evidently somewhere down inside him, buried so deep he couldn’t root it out, there lurked an oversensitive streak he despised.

      It was worse that Acheron knew exactly what lay behind the will and