His Contract Christmas Bride. Sharon Kendrick

that I have a vast fortune just waiting for someone to inherit.’

      ‘Why not?’ she asked quietly.

      His black gaze seared into her, as if he was deciding how much to tell her. ‘Because I don’t believe in love. It’s something I’ve never felt nor wanted to feel. To my mind, love is nothing but an invention which seems designed to excuse the most outrageous forms of behaviour.’ His black eyes narrowed. ‘But now I have an heir whether I like it or not and, because I am a twin, this child almost completely carries half my genes. So in a way, I have a ready-made family. I may not have wanted or planned it but now that I have it, I will make the best of it because that is how I operate. Providing Xander with a suitable mother and giving him some sort of grounding is the least I can do to try to compensate for such a horrible start to his young life. And while you may not have much money or be familiar with the world’s high spots, you have something which makes you extra-special, Lucy.’

      ‘Really? And what might that be?’ Lucy’s heart quickened, though afterwards she would be ashamed of her needy desire to have him shower praise on her, because it didn’t happen. Instead, he listed her credentials like an employer telling her why she had surprisingly beaten the other candidates.

      ‘You’re a trained nurse for a start,’ he drawled, his Greek accent deep and velvety. ‘A midwife as I recall, which makes you extra-suitable. And you are both pure and respectable, if what I discovered about you back in the summer was anything to go by. Once I started considering you for the role, I realised that your virginity was actually a great asset.’

      He didn’t seem to notice that his last remark had made her cheeks grow heated. Of course he didn’t. He was talking at her instead of to her, wasn’t he? He didn’t really care about her thoughts and reactions—nor about the fact that he was making her sound like an upmarket brand of soap. To Drakon Konstantinou she was nothing more than a commodity.

      ‘Rather than being a bit of a bore, which was how you seemed to regard it at the time?’ she questioned rather snappily.

      ‘Yes, you could put it like that,’ he said, without missing a beat. ‘Your purity now takes on an entirely different aspect, Lucy, and it has become important to me. It’s an indication of the way you’ve lived your life. You haven’t had a vast number of lovers before me, and such reserve is rare among women.’

      ‘But what difference does my lifestyle make to what you have in mind?’ she questioned. ‘Why does it matter that I was a virgin?’

      His mouth had hardened so that suddenly it resembled a savage slash across the lower part of his face and she could see coldness and calculation enter his black eyes.

      ‘Because you will be able to lead by example. I want an old-fashioned woman with old-fashioned values and you are the perfect fit. This baby carries the genes of two addicts who were willing to put their own pleasure before his welfare,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Not only do I need to ensure that never happens again, I also need to stack the odds in Xander’s favour from now on.’

      Lucy didn’t say anything. Not straight away. Not when he was looking so forbidding and so...angry—though she realised he was angry with his brother and not with her. She rose to her feet from the fireside chair because she felt at a psychological disadvantage having to stare up at him like that and it was making her neck ache. And she needed to put some distance between them. Some very necessary distance to get her thoughts in order. Away from the spell of his proximity and coercive weave of his words.

      She walked over to the opposite side of the small room and stared out of the window at the river. The moon was beginning to rise and was forming a dappled silvery path on the darkening water and she could see that a cottage on the opposite bank must have put up their Christmas tree. She blinked as she stared at the glittering lights—rose and gold and green and blue—but felt none of the prescribed magic as she turned to meet Drakon’s hooded gaze. ‘Isn’t the normal thing in these kind of circumstances to employ a nanny?’ she questioned. ‘Which you already have done, by the sound of it. You can afford to engage a whole battery of staff, Drakon. Why do you need a wife?’

      He shook his head, like a man who had all the answers—but hadn’t he always seemed like a man with all the answers? ‘Obviously the child will need a full-time nanny and Sofia is eager to continue in that role,’ he said, and paused. ‘But that isn’t the point, Lucy.’

      ‘Isn’t it?’ she asked quietly.

      ‘No.’

      He shook his head and Lucy could see the bleakness in his eyes. She thought how empty his face looked. As if he’d been drained of all emotion so that he resembled some dark and forbidding statue. As if his body were composed of cold marble instead of flesh and blood, and a sudden trepidation whispered over her skin as she realised there was no real warmth in this man. ‘I don’t understand,’ she breathed.

      ‘Then let me make it clearer for you. I don’t want this child to grow up in that kind of world—the adopted child of a single billionaire,’ he bit out. ‘I don’t want him looked after by a series of employees with no emotional investment in his future, like I was. I don’t want him sent away to school like I was. Xander needs a family. A real family.’

      Lucy swallowed, wondering which of them was being naïve now. Did anyone truly know what a real family was—or did they all just rely on the slushy default version you saw in films, or read about in books, with people clustered round a fire, throwing their heads back in mutual laughter? Yet having a family was the bedrock of society, wasn’t it? It was the dream which the majority of people aspired to, even if the reality was often so different. Was he really suggesting that the legal union of two people who had briefly been lovers could magically create some sort of fairy-tale household?

      But then her mind began to focus on something else. On a single word the Greek tycoon had just uttered and which now lodged itself deep in her mind.

      Xander.

      Xander, his nephew and innocent little baby.

      A motherless baby.

      Lucy’s heart clenched with a pain she should have anticipated because unwittingly Drakon had stumbled across her Achilles heel. The reason why she always felt as if something inside her was missing and incomplete. The one part of her life which could never be fulfilled, unless...

      Her mouth dried.

      Unless she was brave enough—or crazy enough—to accept the billionaire’s bizarre offer. Because wasn’t he offering her the magic-wand solution she had once yearned for in the form of instant motherhood? Her mind began to race. Could it work? Could she provide what little Xander needed—and in so doing gain for herself what she thought had been lost for ever?

      Take it slowly, she told herself firmly.

       Slowly.

      ‘This sounds like a very long-term plan,’ she suggested carefully.

      ‘It is.’ Some of the coldness had left his face and in its place she could see conviction. And persuasion. ‘I’m talking endurance, Lucy. About putting a child’s needs first and making a promise to each other that neither of us intends to break. About commitment and stability.’

      ‘How can you be so sure you could find that with me?’ She stared at him. ‘When you don’t really know me. At school you were years ahead of me. I was just the school nurse’s daughter who was allowed to take certain classes with the boys. Apart from those times when you were having the wound on your leg attended to, you didn’t even notice me. We were just ships which passed in the night and, apart from that, we’ve only spent a few days together.’

      ‘You think that time we spent on Prasinisos didn’t provide me with the opportunity to discover something of what makes Lucy Phillips tick?’ he enquired softly.

      Lucy wanted to turn away from the mocking look in his eyes but that would be an immature response to a perfectly reasonable question. Because they had been intimate—and it would be