Mistress: Taming the Playboy. Sharon Kendrick

so what if you do manage to get on the payroll?’ Sarah demanded. ‘Then what? You’re going to march over to Constantine in your uniform, in the middle of his fancy party, and announce to him in front of the world, not to mention his soon-to-be wife that he has a seven-year-old son?’

      Laura shook her head, trying not to feel daunted by the audacity of her own idea but her fervour refused to be dampened. ‘I’ll try to be a bit more subtle about it than that,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to leave until he’s in full possession of the facts.’

      She reached up and turned over the sign on the shop door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’. Already there was a small cluster of shoppers waiting, shaking off the raindrops from their umbrellas as they filed into the shop.

      Laura pinned a bright smile to her lips as she stood behind the counter and took her first order, but the irony of her plan didn’t escape her. After all, she had been waitressing when she’d first met Constantine Karantinos, and had tumbled into his arms with embarrassing ease.

      Afterwards she had looked back and wondered how she could have behaved in a way which had been so completely out of character. And yet it had been such a golden summer in those carefree months before her mother had died, and she’d felt as if she had the world at her feet as she saved up to go travelling.

      She had been an innocent in every sense of the word—but a few months of waitressing in a busy little harbour town had trained her well in how to deal with the well-heeled customers who regularly sailed in on their yachts.

      Constantine had been one of them, and yet unlike any of them—for he’d seemed to break all the rules. He’d towered over all the other men like a colossus—making everyone else fade into insignificance. The day she had first set eyes on him would be imprinted on her mind for ever; he had looked like a Greek god—his powerful body silhouetted against the dying sun, his dark and golden beauty suggesting both vigour and danger.

      She remembered how broad his shoulders had been, and how silky the olive skin which had sheathed the powerful muscle beneath. And she remembered his eyes, too—as black as ebony yet glittering like the early-morning sunlight on the sea. How could she have resisted a man who had seemed like all her youthful fantasies come to life—a man who had made her feel like a woman for the first and only time in her life?

      She remembered waking up in his arms the next morning to find him watching her, and she had gazed up at him, searching his face eagerly for some little clue about how he might feel. About her. About them. About the future.

      But in the depths of those eyes there had been … nothing.

      Laura swallowed.

      Nothing at all.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘YES, Vlassis,’ Constantine bit out impatiently, as he glanced up at one of his aides, who was hovering around the door in the manner he usually adopted when he was about to impart news which his boss would not like. ‘What is it?’

      ‘It’s about the party, kyrios,’ said Vlassis.

      Constantine’s mouth flattened. Why had he ever agreed to have this wretched party in the first place? he found himself wondering. Though in his heart he knew damned well. Because there had been too many mutterings for much too long about people in London wanting to enjoy some of the legendary Karantinos wealth. People always wanted to get close to him, and they thought that this might give them the opportunity. And it was always interesting to see your friends and your enemies in the same room—united by those twin emotions of love and hate, whose boundaries were so often blurred.

      ‘What about it?’ he snapped. ‘And please don’t bother me with trivia, Vlassis—that’s what I pay other people to deal with.’

      Vlassis looked pained, as if the very suggestion that he should burden his illustrious employer with trivia was highly offensive to him. ‘I realise that, kyrios. But I’ve just received a message from Miss Johansson.’

      At the mention of Ingrid, Constantine leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together in reflective pose. He knew what the press were saying. What they always said if he was pictured with a woman more than once. That he was on the verge of marrying, as most of his contemporaries had now done. His mouth flattened again.

      Perhaps one of the greatest arguments in favour of marriage would be having a wife who could deal with the tiresome social side of his life. Who could fend off the ambitious hostesses and screen his invitations, leaving him to get on with running the family business.

      ‘And?’ he questioned. ‘What did Miss Johansson say?’

      ‘She asked me to tell you that she won’t be arriving until late.’

      ‘Did she say why?’

      ‘Something about her photo-shoot overrunning.’

      ‘Oh, did she?’ said Constantine softly, his black eyes narrowing in an expression instinctively which made Vlassis look wary.

      Unlocking his fingers, Constantine raised his powerful arms above his head and stretched, the rolled-up sleeves of his silk shirt sliding a little further up over the bunched muscle. Slowly he brought his hands down again, lying them flat on the surface of the large desk. The faint drumming of two fingers on the smooth surface was the only outward sign that he was irritated.

      Ingrid’s coolness was one of the very qualities which had first attracted him to her—that and her white-blonde Swedish beauty, of course. She had a degree in politics, spoke five languages with effortless fluency—and, standing at just over six feet in her stockinged feet, she was one of the few women he had ever met who was able to look him in the eye. Constantine’s mouth curved into an odd kind of smile. As well as being one of the few natural blondes he’d known …

      When they’d met, her unwillingness to be pinned down, her elusiveness when it came to arranging dates, had contrived to intrigue him—probably because it had never happened before. Most women pursued him with the ardour of a hunter with prized quarry in their sights.

      But over the months Constantine had realised that Ingrid’s evasiveness was part of a game—a master-plan. Beautiful enough to be pursued by legions of men herself, she had recognised the long-term benefits of playing hard-to-get with a man like him. She must have realised that Constantine never had to try very hard, so she had made him try very hard indeed. And for a while it had worked. She had sparked his interest—rare in a man whose natural attributes and huge wealth meant that his appetite had become jaded at an early age.

      She had been playing the long game, and Constantine had allowed himself to join in; Ingrid knew what she wanted—to marry an exceptionally wealthy man—and deep down he knew it was high time he took himself a wife. And surely the best kind of wife for a man like him was one who made few emotional demands?

      He didn’t want some clingy, needy female who thought that the world revolved around him. No, Ingrid came close to fitting almost all his exacting criteria. Every hoop he had presented her with she had jumped through with flying colours. Why, even his father approved of her. And, although the two men had never been close, Constantine had found himself listening for once.

      ‘Why the hell don’t you marry her?’ he had croaked at his son, where once—before age and ill-health—he would have roared. ‘And provide me with a grandson?’

      Good question—if you discounted his father’s own foolish views on love. Didn’t there come a time when every man needed to settle down and produce a family of his own? A boy to inherit the Karantinos fortune? Constantine frowned. Circumstances seemed to have been urging him on like a rudderless boat—and yet something about the sensible option of marrying Ingrid had made him hold back, and he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

      How long since they had seen one another? Constantine allowed his mind to flick back over the fraught and hectic recent weeks, largely filled with his most recent business acquisition. It had been ages since Ingrid had been in his bed, he realised. Their paths had