The Greek Demands His Heir
Her cousin clattered busily round the tiny kitchen area. ‘Stuart wants to cool it...thinks we’re moving too far too fast—’
‘Oh...’ Grace made no further comment, knowing how touchy Jenna could be, confiding in you one moment and snapping your nose off the next.
‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea!’ Jenna declared, slamming the fridge door and straightening, blonde hair flying round her angry face. ‘If he comes calling again, he won’t find me waiting for him.’
‘No,’ Grace agreed.
‘Maybe you’ll meet someone tonight,’ her cousin mused. ‘I mean, it’s past time you leapt off the old virgin wagon and got a life!’
‘How do you know I haven’t already?’ Grace enquired.
‘Because you always come home at night and never that late. Know what I think? You’re too fussy.’
‘Possibly,’ Grace conceded, sipping her tea while wondering how soon she could make her excuses, strip off and get into bed to catch up on her sleep.
Jenna’s entire world seemed to revolve around the man in her life and she got terribly insecure if she didn’t have one. Grace’s world, however, revolved round her studies. She had worked incredibly hard to win a place at medical school, was currently at the top of her class and was convinced that men could be a dangerous distraction. Nothing was going to come between Grace and her dream of becoming a really useful person with the medical knowledge and the skills to help others. After all, she had been raised with the warning story of how her mother had screwed up her life by relying on the wrong man.
On the other hand, Grace also knew that sooner or later she would have to find out what sex was all about. How could she possibly advise her future patients if she didn’t have that all-important personal experience? But she had yet to meet anyone she wanted to become intimate with and thought it was very sad that something more than logic was required to fuel attraction between a man and a woman. After all, if only logic had ruled, Grace would have become involved with her best friend and study partner, Matt.
Matt was loyal, kind and thoughtful, exactly the sort of man she respected. But if Matt, in his wire-rimmed spectacles and the sweaters his auntie knitted for him, had threatened to take his shirt off she would have run a mile. There was not even the smallest spark on her side of the fence but she kept on trying to feel that spark because she knew that Matt would make a wonderful partner.
* * *
Leo stood in the rooftop bar admiring a bird’s-eye view of Turunc Bay. By night the busy resort of Marmaris encircled it like a multicoloured jewelled necklace. Flaring scarlet lights in the night sky announced the grand opening of the Fever nightclub. Leo smiled. Rahim, Leo’s partner in Fever, knew how to publicise such events and attract the attention of the tourists.
‘You’ve done an amazing job here,’ Leo commented approvingly, gazing down through the glass and steel barriers at the packed dance floor.
‘Let me give you a proper tour,’ Rahim urged, keen to show off his masterpiece. A renowned architect and interior designer, he had good reason to want to show off the sleek contemporary lines of his creation. Having delivered exactly what he had promised, Rahim was keen to interest Leo in making another, even larger investment.
Almost a week of solitary introspection on board Hellenic Lady had driven Leo to the edge of cabin fever. He was fed up with work, sick of his own company but in no real mood for anyone else’s. He strolled down the illuminated staircase with Rahim, his bodyguards surrounding him. The noise of the music was such that he caught only one word in two spoken to him. Rahim was talking about an exclusive hotel complex he wanted to build further along the coast but Leo was not in the right mood to discuss the project. From the landing he gazed down at the crowded floor and that was when he saw her standing by the corner of the brilliantly lit bar, light shining off hair an eye-catching shade of metallic copper...
Her? Just another woman, his brain labelled while his brooding gaze clung to her triangular face. He tore his attention from the fey quality of her delicately pointed features. Fey? he silently repeated to himself. Where had he got that strange word from? He noted a lush full pink mouth and the curling mass of glorious red hair snaking down her narrow spine. More red than copper, it also looked natural. His attention lingered, positively drinking in the swooping curves lovingly delineated by a pale lace dress. She had the figure of a fertility goddess with high full breasts, a tiny, highly feminine waist and a voluptuous bottom. His long brown fingers curled round the guard rail, a spooked sensation making the hair rise at the nape of his neck even as the throbbing pulse at his groin reacted and swelled with a very male lack of conscience or morality.
He couldn’t remember when he had last been with a woman, an acknowledgement that almost shocked Leo back to reality. Of course, when he was working he would never waste time seeking out a woman...and when he wasn’t? The necessity of explaining his engagement and specifying no-strings-attached upfront had unequivocally cooled his libido. But now, without the smallest warning, he was recalling Marina’s married lover and he was angrily asking himself why he had bothered to halt his high sex drive. After all, Marina didn’t care what he did as long as he didn’t interfere with her pleasures. And was that truly what he wanted from his future wife? A woman who would never question where he went or what he did? Or demand that he love her?
Of course it was what he wanted, he reasoned with growing impatience, particularly when the alternative was jealous, debilitating scenes. Marina’s affair had put him on edge but did that affair offend him so much that he intended to break off the engagement and start looking for a more puritanical bride? That would be nonsensical, he decided squarely. He would never know any woman as well as he knew Marina Kouros.
Struggling to suppress his unusually troubled and uneasy thoughts, Leo focused on the redhead’s glorious shape. Hunger filled the hollow inside him and it was the sort of hunger he hadn’t felt in years, gnawing powerfully at him with painful persistence, ignoring his rigorous efforts to pursue a functional conversation with Rahim. In an abrupt movement of rejection, he looked away from the redhead, but every muscle in his big well-built body snapped taut. Nerves he hadn’t known he had jangled like alarm bells until Leo was forced to glance back to the corner of the bar lest he lose sight of the woman. What was it about her? Perhaps he should find out.
* * *
In receipt of a chilling glance from Jenna, who was standing at the bar with Stuart, Grace hurriedly turned her head away, colour sparking high over her cheekbones. Stuart had gatecrashed their night out. Jenna had been overjoyed and within minutes of Stuart’s appearance had made it clear that Grace was a gooseberry. Clutching the drink that Stuart had insisted on buying her, Grace sipped the sickly sweet concoction and wondered what she was going to do with the rest of her evening. Where was she to go? At least in a crowd she was virtually invisible and attracting no particular attention.
Jenna pushed her way through the crush and settled impatient blue eyes on Grace. ‘Why are you still here? I assumed you’d have left by now.’
Grace straightened. ‘I’m coming back to the apartment tonight,’ she warned her cousin. ‘I’ve spent two nights sitting up in Reception and I’m not doing it again.’
‘I can’t believe how selfish you’re being!’ Jenna complained. ‘You wouldn’t even be having a holiday if it wasn’t for me!’
‘Change the tune,’ Grace advised ruefully, weary of the constant battle to restrain her own nature and simply wanting to be herself. ‘The “be grateful, Grace” one is getting old. You asked me on this holiday and I’m afraid you’re stuck with me until we go home.’
As Grace averted her attention from her cousin’s furious face she noticed a man standing on the stairs watching her. He was drop-dead beautiful, Mr Fantasy in the flesh with black hair, gypsy-gold skin and stunning symmetrical features. He was also tall, broad-shouldered and surprisingly formally clad in a business suit, as were his companions. Somehow, though, she couldn’t drag her eyes from him for long enough to scrutinise the other men. His brows were dark and straight, his eyes deep set, glittering in the flickering lights, his nose a classic arch, his mouth a sensual masterpiece.
‘Please don’t come back to the apartment tonight,’ Jenna pleaded. ‘I haven’t got much time left to be with Stuart...’
Stuart lived in London too and Grace marvelled at her cousin’s lack of pride. He’d already spelled out the message that he wanted nothing more than a fling. Jenna flung her a last look of angry appeal before turning on her heel to return to Stuart. As Grace turned away, intending to leave the club and find a quiet café where she could read the book in her bag, she almost tripped over the large man in her path.
‘Mr Zikos would like you to join him in the VIP section for a drink.’
Involuntarily, Grace raised a brow as she glanced back at the stairs. Mr Zikos? He nodded acknowledgement and suddenly he smiled at her and in the space of a second he went from stunning to downright breathtaking, the clear-cut austere lines of his darkly handsome face slashed by an almost boyish grin that was utterly and incredibly appealing. Later, Grace swore her heart, always the most reliable of organs around men, leapt in her chest and bounced with enthusiasm, leaving her feeling seriously short of breath and oddly dizzy.
A drink? The VIP section? What did she have to lose? A bouncer undid the ceremonial velvet rope cutting off the stairs and Grace unfroze, moving forward with the strangest sense of anticipation.
CHAPTER TWO
LEO EXTENDED A lean tanned hand with unexpected formality. ‘Leos Zikos. My friends call me Leo.’
Grace touched his fingers in a glancing collision that made her teeth grit at her own ineptitude. But up close, he was so tall, so dark, so strikingly handsome that he unnerved her and given the smallest chance to scamper back down the short flight of stairs without making a fool of herself she would have fled. ‘Grace Donovan,’ she supplied a little gruffly, her heart beating very fast in what felt like her throat as she hurriedly sat down on the seat he indicated and nodding belated recognition of the presence of a second, smaller man.
‘Irish?’ Leo quirked a brow.
‘My mother was but I’m from London.’
Leo asked her what she would like to drink.
‘Something plain and simple. This...’ Grace indicated the glass in her hand with its elaborate green concoction and umbrella with a faint wrinkling of her nose ‘...is like a sugar bomb.’
After introducing her to Rahim, Leo informed her that they owned the club. Grace told him that she was a student on holiday with her cousin. A waiter arrived with a tray and champagne was served with a flourish. The first waiter was closely followed by two more, who presented plates of delicate little snacks. Leo asked her what music she would like and within the minute the DJ himself was surging upstairs and standing right in front of her while she told him.
At first Grace was entranced by the heady assault of Leo’s full attention and she sipped and she nibbled, leaning closer to politely listen to the two men discuss the couples-only complex that Rahim wanted to design. By the time the older man had extracted a plan from an inner pocket along with photos of the site and its superb beach, Grace was getting bored and, what was more, by then her favourite song was playing and she scrambled up off her seat to stand at the rail, her feet shifting in time to the throbbing beat of the music.
‘Dance?’ she directed hopefully at Leo, who was welded to the spot by the luscious view of her swaying hips.
He grimaced. ‘I don’t,’ he told her without apology, fighting the swelling at his groin.
‘No problem,’ Grace told him with an easy smile and a glint in her green eyes as she headed back down the stairs to the dance floor. Just for one night, she thought rebelliously, her thoughts still dwelling on Jenna’s humiliating attacks, she was going to be herself, her real self that she never dared to show at home. And that meant that she would do and say what she wanted, rather than maintaining her usual quiet role in which she worked to politely conform and meet other people’s expectations.
Leo was stunned by her departure. There had been no fuss, no drama, just an unobtrusive determination to do as she liked rather than try to please him. She hadn’t flirted or flattered either. His straight brows pleated in frank bewilderment. Women didn’t behave like that around Leo. Even Marina, who liked her own way, tailored herself to a neat fit of his preferences while in his company.
‘I believe you have met a woman with a mind of her own,’ Rahim remarked. ‘And talking about such women, I am married to one and if I am not home soon, I will be unpopular.’
Leo stood at the rail, broad shoulders straight as an axe blade and rigid with tension until he relocated Grace again. He noted that she was dancing just at the edge of the floor and he wondered if she planned to join him again. Or was she expecting him to chase after her? Leo didn’t chase: he had never had to go to that much effort with a woman. Consequently, he should’ve been irritated by her behaviour but he was not and he didn’t understand that.
What was it about her? She had extraordinary eyes, he recalled, as pale and translucent a green as a piece of sea glass he had once picked up off a beach as a boy. And just as the sea fascinated him, she did as well. He was down the stairs before he even knew he was planning to retrieve her.
‘Can’t...’ he informed her with a wry look when she studied him expectantly. ‘No sense of rhythm.’
Leo stood there in front of Grace like a very large statue frozen in place. Her breath hitched in her throat as she looked up into his exotically dark eyes, noting the luxuriance of his black lashes. He was gorgeous. Did he really need to dance? a little voice enquired wryly inside her head.
‘Anyone can dance,’ Grace told him softly.
He bent his arrogant dark head, his big body still infuriatingly rigid in stance. ‘I don’t do anything that I can’t do superlatively well.’
Grace grinned at that Alpha male excuse and planted her hands on his lean hips. ‘Move,’ she urged him, amused against her will by his frozen stance. ‘Feel the beat...’
The only thing Leo felt as she tugged him to her to demonstrate that elusive rhythm was the punch of lust that almost left him light-headed as he looked down into her laughing sea-glass eyes. Women didn’t ever laugh at Leo. They laughed with him. He shifted his lean hips in response to her guidance, but only to take advantage of the opportunity to yank her closer and line up that teasing, tantalising mouth of hers with his own.
In the space of a heartbeat, Grace travelled from amusement to another place entirely and it was a shockingly unfamiliar place. She had no experience of passion and suddenly there it was, shamelessly smashing down her defences and powered solely by the hungry, scorching demand of his mouth. For a split second she stiffened in shock and then she turned boneless, liquid heat rolling through her veins. His tongue plundered the semi-closed seam of her lips and she parted them for him, head falling back on her shoulders as he took immediate advantage. He plundered the moist, tender interior of her mouth with an acute sense of the rhythm he had denied, sending an electrifying shudder of piercing sexual pleasure travelling through her.
Leo lifted his head, closed a hand firmly over hers and urged her back up the stairs. Grace blinked like a sleepwalker suddenly forced awake, astonishment rising inside her that a man could actually make her feel like that...all shaky and molten and needy, her nipples tight and aching, warmth and dampness gathering between her thighs. Her own response was a revelation to her. Yes, he did kiss superlatively well, she acknowledged dizzily, and didn’t that make him the perfect man for her sexual experiment? Presumably if he was that good at kissing he would be reasonably proficient at the rest of it as well.
‘Another drink?’ Leo proffered the glass and extended the snacks, willing to do just about anything to ensure that he was able to keep his hands off her for long enough to get back in control of his unruly body. Leo did not like to lose control but he was still hard and throbbing almost painfully, his libido all too eager to continue what he had begun. But haste wasn’t cool and Leo was never hasty. He didn’t do one-night stands either, at least not since he was a teenager. But Grace drew him like a bee to a hive of honey.
Grace clasped the champagne flute gratefully in one hand, astounded to realise that her hand was trembling slightly. But then it wasn’t really Leo still having that effect on her, she told herself urgently, it was more probably the distinctly daunting knowledge that she had decided that, given the opportunity, she would make love with the man she was with. She glanced uncertainly up at him, her gaze drinking in the height and slant of his cheekbones, the strong angular jut of his classic nose, the mobile expressiveness of his wide, sculpted mouth. He was absolutely beautiful in the way only a very masculine man could be without the smallest hint of prettiness, although the jury was still out when it came to the ridiculous length of the long curling black lashes framing his remarkable eyes.
‘Are you single?’ she checked a tad abruptly.
‘Yes. Will you spend the night with me?’ Leo murmured sibilantly, his accent underscoring the syllables with a rasping edge. ‘I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I wanted you on that floor.’
His directness disconcerted Grace but pleased her as well because she valued candour. She laughed. ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to say stuff like that. I made up my mind to say yes when you kissed me.’
It would be a completely practical sexual experiment, Grace reasoned nervously, striving to reassure herself about a spontaneous decision that was unusual for her. Here she was far from home and she would never see him again, so there would be no lingering embarrassment, no further meetings, and no lasting connection. She had always believed in calling a spade a spade and the two of them were both after the same thing: a complication-free hook-up. He was as close to perfect for her purposes as it was possible to get.
Relief gripping him at her immediate agreement shorn of any prevarication, Leo closed a powerful arm round her narrow waist and gazed down at her with an intense sense of satisfaction and anticipation. Her nose turned up a little at the end and there was a scattering of freckles across the bridge but he discovered that he found those flaws endearing rather than noticeable deficiencies. ‘It wasn’t flattery.’
‘If you say so,’ Grace fielded, unconvinced, utterly challenged by the concept that she had sufficient sex appeal to tax the restraint of so sophisticated and good-looking a male. ‘But outside a serious relationship sex is only a recreational pursuit.’
Taken aback by that prosaic comment and struck by an outlook that came remarkably close to his own, Leo elevated an ebony brow. ‘But a most enjoyable one.’
Grace almost hit him with the shocking survey figures on the level of female sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction in society but decided to keep wannabe-Dr-Grace firmly under restraint. ‘I certainly hope so,’ she said, her face heating at the very thought of what she had already agreed to do with him. She fretted that alcohol could be affecting her judgement although she had only had two drinks and hadn’t finished the first.
But no, she wasn’t drunk, not even tipsy because she always got giggly if she drank too much. Yet in retrospect her agreement to spend the night with him seemed so cold-blooded that she agonised over it for a nerve-racked few minutes of insecurity. Yet wasn’t that attitude more sensible than waiting in the naïve hope that someone would eventually offer her both romance and commitment? She was almost twenty-five years old and she had waited long enough for a man to offer her a picture-book perfect solution to the loneliness she worked hard at hiding from the outside world. It wasn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future and she had to be level-headed about her prospects. Matt was a great study mate and friend but sadly not lover material.
In any case she was an intelligent adult woman and free to do as she liked if she found a suitable attractive partner, she reminded herself stubbornly. By tomorrow she would finally know what sex was all about and at least she wouldn’t have to spend another night trying to stay awake in the reception back at the apartment block. In truth, even the offer of a bed for the night was ridiculously welcome.
Leo traced a strong brown forefinger along her slim freckled arm, lingering on the fine skin of her wrist. Her skin was very soft and satin smooth and much paler than his own. ‘I will please you,’ he insisted.
A slight shiver racked Grace as if, after that kiss, her entire body had become super sensitive to his touch. She badly wanted him to kiss her again and the strength of that craving unsettled her. Never until that moment had she appreciated how powerful sexual hunger could be. Oh, she had read about it, heard about it, talked intellectually about it but all of those stories and assumptions were meaningless when set next to the actual experience. Leo Zikos would be like her personal science project, she told herself soothingly, and in the process of her research she would learn much that she needed to know.
She asked Leo when Rahim had left and for a few minutes they discussed the hotel scheme.
‘You were getting bored,’ Leo commented. ‘I should apologise for that.’
‘Is your business based on nightclubs?’
‘No, this is my only investment in that line. I started out as a corporate trader and built a property empire with my investments. Now I have hotels, mobile phone and transport companies...’ Leo shifted a hand to indicate the breadth of his interests with an elegance of movement that was compelling. ‘I believe very strongly in diversification. My father once went bust because he concentrated all his energies in one field. What are you studying at university?’
‘I’m about to go into my final year.’ Grace responded as if she had misheard his question because she was in no hurry to tell him that she was a medical student. More than one male had backtracked from Grace in the past once they had discovered how clever she was. It was surprising how many men were turned off by her high IQ.
She met his riveting dark eyes and discovered that below the lights they weren’t really dark at all. They were tawny gold and vibrant with power and a tiny shiver of naked awareness snaked down her taut spinal cord.
Leo stared down at her, a brooding quality tightening his lean dark features. He had read about pheromones and he was wondering if it was possible that she put out some strange invisible chemical message that turned him on hard and fast in a way that seemed to make no sense. After all, even if he was reacting like one, he wasn’t a teenager at the mercy of his hormones any more.
He bent his head and the coconut scent of her shampoo filtered appealingly into his nostrils but he wasn’t thinking about that when he looked at her ripe pink mouth. He moved nearer, his breath fanning her cheek. Almost imperceptibly she swayed closer. His arms tautened round her and without the smallest forewarning of what he was about to do he devoured the voluptuous promise of her lips with a passionate intensity that sent arousal roaring through him like an out-of-control fire.
The second kiss was even hotter than the first, Grace acknowledged dizzily, and she’d known it was coming, forewarned by the glitter of his eyes, the tensing of his arms round her and the quickened thump of his heartbeat beneath her palm when she was forced to plant a hand against his shirtfront to retain her balance on the edge of the seat. She had no thought of avoiding that kiss. In fact, excitement was zinging through her as an astonishing surge of awareness travelled through every nerve ending in her body, supersizing her every response.