Mistress: Taming the Playboy. Sharon Kendrick

own—but he vetoed the thought instantly. He never wasted time thinking about things which were beyond his own comprehension.

      It was one of the reasons behind his success.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      LAURA was aware of a surprisingly green oval rising up to meet them as the helicopter landed with the agility of a large moth. Ringed with silver-white sand, from the sky the island had looked like a jewel in the middle of a sea so intensely blue that she’d felt quite shaken with the beauty of it all.

      And shaken by her first ever trip in a helicopter, of course.

      She stole a glance at Alex, who also seemed completely rapt by the splendour unfolding before him, and wondered what kind of effect this trip was going to have on him. Because although she’d insisted on travelling out to Greece on a regular airline, since ‘servants don’t arrive in private jets,’ as she had told Constantine firmly, there had been a helicopter waiting at Athens airport to whisk them off to the island of Livinos.

      It had all proved a little distracting—and Laura found herself wondering if experiencing these enormous riches from such an early age had been instrumental in fashioning Constantine’s character? She stared out at the gradually slowing helicopter blades. Of course it had! Your early experiences always shaped your development like nothing else. If he’d been used to snapping his fingers from an early age and getting whatever it was he wanted then no wonder he was so autocratic and demanding.

      She held Alex’s hand tightly as she helped him down from the helicopter, with his beloved blue bear clutched tightly to his chest. He’d been worried that the scruffy old toy was too babyish to bring with him—but Laura had insisted the bear come too. Heaven only knew he wouldn’t go to sleep without him.

      Thinking she heard someone call her name, she looked up, her eyes narrowed against the blinding heat of the hot sun, and there, standing beside a four-wheel drive, was the man who had been dominating her thoughts all week.

      Constantine! Here! Her mouth dried and her heart began to race erratically as he fixed his piercing gaze on them. So much hung on what happened next, and for Alex’s sake she prayed that this first meeting would be a success as they made their way across the scorching tarmac towards the Greek billionaire.

      Constantine felt a sudden lurching of his heart as he watched them approach, unprepared for the powerful feelings which came surging over him as he stared at the boy. The photos he had seen had made him take seriously her claim that the child was his—even though he had done his best to deny it at the time. But seeing him now, in the living and breathing flesh—well, that was something entirely different. Put a hundred—no, a thousand seven-year-old boys in front of him and Constantine would have instantly picked out this particular boy as having sprung from Karantinos loins.

      He sucked in a ragged breath as they grew closer, his heart now pounding with a terrible combination of recognition and regret—that they were strangers to one another, and yet he knew that they were linked in the most primeval way of all.

      With an effort he tore his gaze away from Alex and let it travel instead to Laura, whose eyes were fixed on him with a certain amount of trepidation. As well they might be. Constantine’s lips curved with contempt. Another cheap little dress and a pair of sandals which had seen better days—and her fine hair all mussed up in a cloud around her head. Had she deliberately come here today emphasising her lowly status, after stubbornly insisting that she be employed in the house as a member of staff? Was she perhaps hoping that he might make some kind of generous settlement on her if she insisted on highlighting the differences between them?

      Yet despite the anger he felt towards her there was a fair amount of it directed at himself, for the inexplicable lust he still felt for her. That his groin should instantly ache with an unquenchable desire to make love to her—this pale and insipid little shop-worker who had turned down his offer of marriage!

      But he composed his face into a smile of welcome as they grew closer—because he was clever enough to know that he could never win the boy if he was seen to be openly critical of his mother.

      ‘C-Constantine,’ stumbled Laura. ‘I … well, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find you here to meet us.’

      ‘What an unexpected pleasure it must be,’ he murmured sardonically, but his eyes were fixed on the child and he was aware of a strange beating of his heart. ‘Hello, Alex.’

      Alex turned a confused face up towards Laura ‘Who’s this, Mum?’

      Constantine crouched down so that he was on a level with the boy, wondering if there would be some kind of instant recognition on the part of his son—but of course there was none. Had he perhaps been secretly hoping that Laura might already have told him—that there would be some kind of touching scene outside the airport? But things like that only happened in movies, he told himself grimly. This was real life.

      Usually he did not care what kind of impression he made—people could either take him or leave him. His careless attitude stemmed from the fact that other men were always anxious to be his friend, while women were eager to be his lover. But now he realised that unexpectedly his heart was beating fast with something approaching concern. I want him to like me, he thought fiercely. I need him to like me.

      ‘My name is Constantine Karantinos,’ he said softly. ‘And you are going to be staying in my father’s house.’

      Alex nodded, as if this were nothing untoward, and Laura supposed that after the excitement of the day itself he would have calmly accepted being told he was taking a trip to the moon. ‘Is it a nice house?’

      ‘Oh, it’s a very nice house,’ answered Constantine, with a smile of rare indulgence. ‘With a big swimming pool.’

      Alex blinked. ‘You mean, just for us?’

      ‘Just for us,’ replied Constantine gravely.

      Alex bit his lip in the way he always did when he was worried, and Laura’s heart turned over as she watched him. ‘But I’m not very good at swimming,’ he said.

      Constantine wondered why. ‘Then we shall have to teach you—would you like that?’

      Alex nodded, his dark eyes wide. ‘Yes, please!’

      ‘Let’s get in the car, then.’ And Constantine helped the child into the back seat and strapped him in, before stepping back to allow Laura to pass.

      His eyes narrowed as she moved close enough for him to be able to get the drift of some light scent, and despite its cheapness he swallowed with another unexpected wave of lust.

      ‘You look …’ He allowed his gaze to drift over her pale skin and pinched expression and saw her bite her lip in response to his critical scrutiny. ‘Pretty tired,’ he conceded.

      ‘Yes,’ said Laura, thinking that tired didn’t even come close—she felt physically and mentally exhausted. Truth to tell, she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since she’d met Constantine at the Grapevine that night—plus she’d been working some of Sarah’s shifts, to make up for the time she was going to take off. ‘It’s been a long week,’ she said wearily.

      For a moment—just for a moment—he felt the faintest tug of sympathy. For the first time he noticed that the grey eyes were shadowed, and that her pale skin was almost translucent with fatigue.

      ‘Then for heaven’s sake get in the car and relax,’ he said roughly, climbing into the driver’s seat himself and starting up the engine, while the helicopter pilot put their small and rather battered suitcases in the boot.

      ‘Wow! Get in, Mum!’ Alex enthused. ‘It’s huge.’

      Uncomfortably conscious of trying to keep as much of her pale, bare legs hidden as possible, Laura got in next to her son. She caught sight of a pair of black eyes mocking her as they glanced at her from the rearview mirror, and her reaction to that unmistakably sensual look was instinctive, though completely unwelcome. She felt the weak, thready patter of her heart and the icing