Название | The Mills & Boon Stars Collection |
---|---|
Автор произведения | Cathy Williams |
Жанр | Короткие любовные романы |
Серия | Mills & Boon e-Book Collections |
Издательство | Короткие любовные романы |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 9781474086752 |
The heat of the Turkish sun was already beating down on Grace’s bare shoulders and she lifted a towel to drape it round her and cover her skin, which never took a tan. They were returning to Marmaris to celebrate her twenty-ninth birthday at the Fever nightclub where they had first met. Anatole and her father’s entire family were on board with them. She got on very well with her two adult half-brothers, who were students, and her little half-sister, who was still at school. From her stepmother, she had received the warm family acceptance that she had tried and failed to win from her uncle’s family.
‘I’ll go and get changed.’
Leo banded an arm round her on the way down the stairs. ‘How much of a hurry are you in?’
‘It’ll take me more than an hour to do my hair and get ready.’
Her husband dropped a kiss on the slope of her shoulder. ‘Do you have an hour for me?’
Heat and anticipation shimmied through her. ‘I’ve always got time for you,’ she declared with an impish smile. ‘You’re a very demanding man.’
‘But you like that about me, agapi mou,’ Leo told her teasingly, closing the door of the master suite behind them.
And Grace had to admit, she did like that about him. They were very well-matched in the bedroom department, she acknowledged as he claimed a lingering blatantly sexual kiss that made her body hum and her heart thump with awareness. Being married to Leo was never bland or boring. He was everything she had ever dreamt of in a husband and she was blissfully happy with him.
‘I was thinking...’ Leo purred, extracting her from her bikini with skill while pausing to worship her full breasts and the sleek curve of her hips. ‘Since we’re on holiday and you’re all mine night and day, do you think we should consider working on extending the family?’
‘Jonas would probably love some company.’
Leo found the most ticklish spot on her entire body and punished her for that crack until she dissolved into laughter. ‘You know very well I wasn’t thinking of the dog!’
‘Well, maybe I don’t like you describing the conception of another child as work,’ Grace countered tartly.
‘Work I love, work I can never get enough of, you maddening woman,’ Leo groaned into the fall of her hair. ‘You know I’m crazy about you, don’t you?’
Grace fingered the flawless diamond pendant at her throat, which he had given her for her birthday, and smiled. ‘The suspicion has crossed my mind once or twice.’
‘Rosie is like a mini you and I’d love another one.’
‘I’ll put my pills away,’ Grace murmured with amusement, linking her arms round his strong brown neck, appreciating his lean, darkly handsome features and his gorgeous eyes. ‘I love you, Leo.’
‘Nowhere near as much as I love you, agapi mou,’ Leo countered.
‘You’re always so competitive,’ she complained without great heat as she arched into the hard strength of his body and let her senses sing to the sensual magic of his demanding mouth.
* * * * *
The Greek Commands His Mistress
Lynne Graham
‘IT’S OVER, REBA,’ Bastien Zikos pronounced with finality.
The stunning blonde he was addressing flashed him a pained look of reproach. ‘But we’ve been great together.’
‘I’ve never pretended that this is anything more than it is...sex,’ Bastien traded impatiently. ‘Now we’re done.’
Reba blinked rapidly, as though she was fighting back tears, but Bastien wasn’t fooled. The only thing that would reduce Reba to tears would be a stingy pay-off. She was as hard as nails...and he was no more yielding. Indeed, when it came to women he was tough and cold. His mother, an eighteen-carat-gold-digging promiscuous shrew, with a polished line in fake tears and emotion, had been the first to teach her son distrust and contempt for her sex.
‘You got bored with me, didn’t you?’ Reba condemned. ‘I was warned that you had a short attention span. I should’ve listened.’
Impatience shivered through Bastien’s very tall, muscular frame. Reba had been his mistress, and terrific entertainment in the bedroom, but it ended now. And he had given her a small fortune in jewellery. He took nothing for free from women—not sex, not anything.
Bastien turned on his heel. ‘My accountant will be in touch,’ he said drily.
‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ the blonde snapped.
‘If there is, it’s none of your business,’ Bastien told her icily, his dark eyes chilling in their detachment as he glanced back at her, his lean, extravagantly handsome features hard as iron.
His driver was waiting outside the building to ferry him to the airport for his scheduled flight north.
A very faint shadow of a smile softened the tough line of Bastien’s mouth as he boarded his private jet. Someone else? Maybe...maybe not.
His finance director, Richard James, was already seated in the opulent cabin. ‘Am I allowed to ask what secret allure—evidently known only to you—exists in this dull northern town we’re heading to, and about the even more dull failed business enterprise you have recently acquired?’
‘You can ask. I don’t promise to answer,’ Bastien traded, flicking lazily through the latest stock figures on his laptop.
‘Then there is something special at Moore Components that I haven’t yet picked up on?’ the stocky blond man prompted ruefully. ‘A patent? A new invention?’
Bastien dealt the other man a wryly amused glance. ‘The factory is built on land worth millions,’ he pointed out drily. ‘A prime site for development close to the town centre.’
‘It’s been years since you played asset-stripper,’ Richard remarked in surprise, while Bastien’s personal staff and his security team boarded at the rear of the cabin.
Bastien had started out buying and selling businesses and breaking them up to attain the maximum possible profit. He had no conscience about such things. Profit and loss was a fact of life in the business world. Trends came and went, as did contracts. Fortunes rose and fell as companies expanded and then contracted again.
Bastien was exceptionally gifted when it came to spotting trends and making millions. He had a mind like a steel trap and the fierce, aggressive drive of a male who had not had a wealthy family to give him his breaks. He was a self-made billionaire, who had started out with nothing, and he took great pride in his independence.
But just at that moment Bastien wasn’t thinking about business. No, indeed. Bastien was thinking about Delilah Moore—the only woman who had ever rejected him, leaving him tormented by lust and outraged by the frustrating new experience. His ego would have withstood the rebuff had she been genuinely uninterested in him, but Bastien knew that had not been the case. He had seen the longing in her eyes, the telling tension of her body when she was close to him, had recognised the breathy intimate note in her voice.
He could forgive much, but unquestionably not her deceitful insistence that she didn’t want him. Fearlessly and foolishly judgemental, she had flung Bastien’s womanising reputation in his face with as much disdain as a fine lady dismissing the clumsy approaches of a street thug. In reaction,