Книга - Playboys: The Greek Tycoon’s Disobedient Bride / The Ruthless Magnate’s Virgin Mistress / The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

Playboys: The Greek Tycoon's Disobedient Bride / The Ruthless Magnate's Virgin Mistress / The Spanish Billionaire's Pregnant Wife
LYNNE GRAHAM






Proud, masculine and passionate, these men are used to having it all.

Lysander, the gorgeous, dynamic

Greek tycoon …

Nikolai, the ruthless, charismatic

Russian magnate …

Leandro, the sexy, aristocratic

Spanish billionaire …

Playboys



Fantastic novels from favourite, bestselling author

LynneGRAHAM


Lynne GRAHAM Playboys

The Greek Tycoon’s Disobedient Bride

The Ruthless Magnate’s Virgin Mistress

The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

Lynne Graham






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


The Greek Tycoon’s Disobedient Bride

Lynne Graham




About the Author


LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon


reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Look out for Lynne Graham’s latest exciting new trilogy, available from March to May in Mills & Boon


Modern™.




PROLOGUE


THE Greek billionaire Lysander Metaxis strode into the luxurious salon of his fabulous yacht, where his personal staff awaited him. It was half past seven in the morning. Aware that their hugely wealthy and dynamic employer usually started work at six and rarely slept more than five hours, everyone was striving to look wide awake.

His senior PA, Dmitri, presented him with a folder. ‘I hope you’ll be pleased, sir.’

His lean, dark, handsome face intent, Lysander withdrew the photographs of Madrigal Court. Dense woodland on all sides screened the Elizabethan manor house from curious eyes, but not from the air. His only previous acquaintance with the ancient building was through his mother’s childhood photograph albums. The superb definition of the aerial shots revealed the extensive deterioration that had taken place in recent decades.

His metallic-bronze gaze grew steadily harder and colder, for it was clear that the listed building was in serious need of repair. The roof was in a mess, the brickwork required attention and there was a suspicious bulge in a gable wall. Yet, Gladys Stewart had repeatedly refused to sell the property to his late father, Aristide. However, the old lady was dying nowand he could only assume that her demise would finally make the purchase of the house possible.

Madrigal Court had belonged to his mother’s family for over four hundred years before financial adversity had forced its sale. Over time the reacquisition of Madrigal Court had become a matter of Metaxis family honour. And family honour was an issue that Lysander, who was Greek to his backbone, held in very high regard. His ruthlessness was legendary and he was a dangerous man to cross. But even though he was one of the richest men in the world, he had never forgotten his humble beginnings or the cruel neglect he had endured before fortune had smiled on him and given him Virginia and Aristide Metaxis as adoptive parents.

The acknowledgement of that inestimable debt spawned dark brooding thoughts, which cast disturbing shadows across Lysander’s usual emotional coolness. Recent developments had made buying back Virginia’s ancestral home a burning mission, as opposed to an ambition to be attained at some unspecified future date. Whatever it took he had to get the house back and quickly. All of a sudden time was of the essence, he conceded bleakly.

A stunning brunette, clad in a transparent wrap that concealed nothing of her astonishing figure, strolled in. Her caressing fingertips inscribed a provocative pattern on the back of his hand. ‘Come back to bed,’ she whispered invitingly.

Almost imperceptibly, Lysander stiffened. ‘I’m busy,’ he drawled without expression.

His staff exchanged significant glances. No woman ever held Lysander’s attention for longer than a few weeks. His current lover might not know it yet, but she was already history.

‘Dmitri …’ Lysander lifted his well-shaped dark head‘… who authorised polythene tunnels to be installed inside the walled garden?’

The PA stepped forward and frowned down at the photo in frank bewilderment. ‘Er … isn’t that part of Madrigal Court’s grounds, sir? I’m afraid I have no idea.’

Lysander dealt Dmitri a fulminating appraisal and told him to get the Metaxis legal team on the phone for a conference call. For his UK lawyers, it became a day of unalloyed misery and grovelling apology. The rolling of heads was threatened, sacrifices were made. They promised immediate action, but the Greek tycoon commanded them to do nothing for the present. When he wanted action, he would choose the timing.




CHAPTER ONE


‘THE Metaxis family are waiting for me to die.’ Feverish hatred burned in Gladys Stewart’s embittered gaze. ‘Vultures—that’s what they are!’

‘Well, whoever they are they’ll have to wait a little longer,’ the nurse informed the older woman cheerfully while she checked her blood pressure. ‘You have great vitality.’

‘You’ve got no business interrupting a private conversation!’ her patient hissed in a tone of pure vitriol, her thin hands clenching on the bedclothes. ‘I was addressing my granddaughter. Ophelia … where are you? Ophelia?’

A young woman with unusual pale blue eyes was engaged in piling up discarded bed linen. Directing an apologetic glance at the district nurse, she moved forward. Small in stature, she wore a loose sweater and trousers that only hinted at her hourglass figure. Hair the colour of ripe wheat was tied up with a piece of gardening twine. But nothing could hide her beauty.

‘I’m here,’ she told her grandmother.

As she studied her Gladys Stewart’s narrow mouth compressed with furious resentment. ‘If you made more effort, you’d have had a husband years ago!’ she condemned bitterly. ‘Your mother was a complete fool but at least she knew how to make the most of her looks!’

Ophelia, who was single by choice and inclination, thought wryly of her late parent’s love affair with the mirror and almost shuddered. She liked comfy clothes and fresh air. ‘Unfortunately it didn’t do her much good.’

‘I always swore I’d make the Metaxis family pay and I have and—listen to me—I’m not finished yet!’ The claw-like hand that closed in a painful grip round Ophelia’s slender wrist forced the younger woman to lean down. ‘You just might have Lysander Metaxis himself knocking on this door!’

Ophelia was noticeably unimpressed by the highly unlikely forecast that a womanising billionaire, notorious for carrying the equivalent of a harem on board his giant pleasure-yacht, would ever seek her out. ‘I really don’t think so.’

‘All you need is this house,’ Gladys hissed with wheezing satisfaction in her granddaughter’s ear, ‘and I promise you—it’ll make your every hope and dream come true.’

The fierce conviction of that final startling statement pinned Ophelia’s attention squarely on her grandmother. The confusion in the younger woman’s eyes was replaced by a burgeoning look of hope. ‘Are you talking about … Molly?’ she whispered unevenly.

Well aware that Ophelia was now hanging on her every word, Gladys turned her head away, triumph etched in every line of her bony face. ‘That’s for me to know and you to wonder. But if you do your duty by me and play your cards right, you won’t be disappointed.’

‘Finding out where my sister is would be everything I’ve ever dreamt of,’ Ophelia admitted steadily. ‘It would mean the world to me.’

A harsh laugh escaped the woman in the bed. ‘You always were a sentimental idiot!’

A quiet knock on the door heralded the arrival of the vicar.

‘Try and get some rest while you’ve got the chance,’ the nurse urged Ophelia in an undertone.

Ophelia nodded, bundled up the bedding and gave the vicar a welcoming smile. He was a kind man, who made regular visits and met her grandmother’s barrage of caustic complaints with forbearance.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Gladys told the reverend sourly. ‘I’m not leaving a penny to that church of yours!’

Ophelia marvelled that her grandmother could still talk as though she were rich when, in fact, she was up to her ears in debt. Of course Gladys Stewart would never admit that embarrassing truth; she was obsessed with money, social position and the keeping up of appearances. Yet Madrigal Court, the moated Elizabethan manor that Gladys Stewart had persuaded her late husband to buy, was crumbling into a pitiful state of disrepair. After decades of neglect the roof was leaking, damp was spreading and most of the remaining grounds had returned to nature. Letting the beautiful old house go to rack and ruin while refusing to sell it back to the Metaxis family was part of her revenge.

From the landing window, Ophelia could see beyond the rambling gardens of the Court. Almost all the surrounding area now belonged to Lysander Metaxis, the Greek shipping magnate. His father had been wealthy, but his son and heir had the Midas touch and he had billions to burn. When it came to splashing around cash nobody could do it better than Lysander Metaxis. Every time a local property came on the market it was snapped up at a price no one else could match. Thirty-odd years ago, the only stake the Metaxis family had had in the neighbourhood was the gatehouse at the foot of the drive. Now the Metaxis estate owned most of the local farms and half the cottages in the village.

Madrigal Court was a little island of independence at the heart of a Metaxis-dominated community and very soon—for Gladys Stewart was dying—Lysander Metaxis would own the glorious old house as well. There would be no stopping him, Ophelia reflected ruefully. Even if her grandmother did leave her a share of the Court, which was by no means certain, the sheer burden of unpaid bills and death duties would ensure that the house and gardens had to be sold as soon as possible. Ophelia was hoping and praying that, when that time came, Lysander Metaxis would have no objection to her renting the walled garden for her continued use. After all, it was a good distance from the house and enjoyed a separate entrance onto the road.

Having put the bedding in the washing machine, Ophelia pulled on wellington boots and sped outdoors. She rarely managed to sleep during the day and was convinced that even twenty minutes of work in the fresh air raised her energy levels. In comparison to the rest of the grounds, which she had found impossible to maintain alone, the walled garden was an oasis of beauty and order. There, in carefully designed borders, she grew the rare perennials that she intended to make the mainstay of a small business. Although she already had a steady flow of local customers she wasn’t yet in a position to hire anyone to work with her.

After half an hour of energetic digging, she made a reluctant return indoors. Discarding her boots, she padded into the atmospheric old kitchen. A range stove installed in the nineteen twenties ensured a comforting background level of warmth and remained the most modern appliance in the room.

‘Good afternoon, Ophelia,’ Haddock greeted her in the plummy tones at which he excelled.

‘Afternoon, Haddock,’ Ophelia responded.

‘Time for tea, time for tea!’ Haddock informed her, patrolling his perch.

Ophelia took the hint and fetched a peanut to give the parrot. She was hugely attached to him. He was almost sixty years old.

‘Lovely Haddock! Lovely Haddock!’ the bird opined.

Knowing his need for affection, Ophelia smoothed his feathered head and cuddled him.

Familiar footsteps sounded in the stone corridor. Pamela Arnold, a woman in her late twenties with short red hair and lively brown eyes, strolled in. ‘You definitely need a man to get up close and personal with.’

‘No, thanks. I’m not that desperate yet.’ Ophelia wasn’t joking either for, with the exception of her long-departed grandfather, the men in her life had always been a source of trouble, heartache and disillusionment. Her father had walked out when she was very young. Once he had started a new family with his second wife he had forgotten that Ophelia existed. Her mother had dated men who’d cheated her out of money, beaten her up and betrayed her with other women. And Ophelia’s first love had told lies about her that had led to her being horribly bullied at school.

‘Oh, no … are you feeding us again?’ Ophelia groaned, embarrassed at the sight of the other woman settling a casserole dish on the scrubbed pine table. ‘I can’t let you keep on doing this—’

‘Why not? You’re run off your feet right now,’ Pamela pointed out. ‘You’re also my best friend and, even though I don’t agree with the way you’re sacrificing yourself, I need to help any way I can.’

Ophelia raised a brow in disagreement. ‘I am not sacrificing myself—’

‘Yes, you are, and you’re doing it for a rather unpleasant person. But I’ll button my disrespectful lips and say no more.’

‘My grandmother helped my mother out financially and gave me a home when I needed one. She didn’t have to do either of those things.’ Ophelia said nothing more because Gladys Stewart’s abrasive manner had always alienated people. A strong woman who had battled her passage out of poverty and defied the rigid British class system to marry a man from a superior background, Gladys had never been the type to turn the other cheek. But ultimately it had taken only one severe disappointment to poison Gladys’s grim disposition beyond redemption and virtually destroy Ophelia’s more fragile mother, Cathy.

Although it was more than thirty years since the day it had happened, the echoes of anger, bitterness, pain and humiliation had still contrived to leave an indelible mark on Ophelia’s life. While she had struggled to keep an open mind, the people most hurt by that calamity had been those she’d loved and depended on. Naturally her family’s suffering and bone-deep prejudice had had their effect on her as well. The very name Metaxis had a silent menace that filled Ophelia with a disquiet and antagonism that was foreign to her generous nature.

As Ophelia made coffee she screened a giant yawn.

As if he understood, Haddock whistled a stirring if tuneless rendering of a well-known lullaby.

Momentarily transported back in time, Ophelia tensed. Once, Haddock had sung nursery rhymes to her little sister at bedtime. The memory of Molly’s beaming face below her tangle of dark curls upset Ophelia. Although she’d been only eight years old when Molly had been born, she had looked after her because their mother, Cathy, had not been up to the task. But it was now eight years since Ophelia had seen her sister.

‘Shush, Haddock,’ Pamela scolded, covering her ears from the din.

Offended, the parrot pointedly turned his back on the redhead.

‘Haddock is a very clever parrot,’ Ophelia appeased the bird in a wobbly voice.

‘Haddock is a very clever parrot,’ the bird repeated smugly.

‘The Metaxis estate is putting up the money to repair the village community hall,’ Pamela said. ‘I bet it makes them more popular locally than ever.’

‘Metaxis bounder—good-for-nothing swine!’ Haddock screeched out at the highest decibel level, his beady eyes having fired up the instant he heard that name. ‘There’ll never be a Metaxis at Madrigal Court!’

An anguished groan escaped Pamela. ‘Sorry, I forgot and I’ve set him off now.’

‘Dirty rotten rascal! Makes up to one woman, runs off with another! You can’t trust a Metaxis!’

‘It’s not Haddock’s fault. People will say inappropriate things in front of him,’ Ophelia complained.

‘I know … I taught him sleazebag and creep because his vocabulary is getting very dated.’

‘Metaxis bastard!’

‘Haddock!’ Ophelia gasped.

Haddock hung his head in mock shame and shuffled on his perch. Ophelia was unimpressed because, like all parrots, Haddock craved attention and loved to entertain his audience.

‘Well, I didn’t teach him that one,’ Pamela said defensively.

Although Ophelia knew who had, she said nothing. Her way of getting through a difficult present was to stay focused on the future. She had revelled in the horticultural course she had completed at a further education college but her responsibilities at home had prevented her from pursuing an independent career. She was now twenty-five years old. The plants she grew in the walled garden had become a lifeline while she had to devote the rest of her attention to looking after a giant crumbling house and caring for a sick elderly relative. In recent times those tasks had been carried out against a stressful background of unsettled bills and an ever-dwindling income. What a shame that the billionaire Lysander Metaxis wouldn’t be coming knocking on her door any time soon! She wondered what strange fancies were playing on her grandmother’s mind, as the older woman had never been known for her sense of humour.

‘I don’t like having my time wasted,’ Lysander Metaxis informed his most senior London lawyer.

‘I have established that, surprising though it may seem, you do appear in Mrs Stewart’s will as a beneficiary. I understand that your presence is crucial to the reading of the will and her solicitor has agreed to a date that will be convenient for you.’

Lysander released his breath in a slow soundless hiss. He had no time for mysteries. Why would Gladys Stewart have included him in her will? It made no sense at all.

‘Possibly the lady regretted her behaviour towards your family while she was alive and this may be her way of smoothing matters over now that’s she gone,’ the lawyer proffered, unnerved by his most powerful client’s continuing silence. ‘Deathbed changes of heart are more common than you might think.’

‘I don’t require the woman’s blessing to buy the place.’ Lysander had never met Gladys Stewart. His late father, however, had once described her as a malevolent gold-digging harpy. Certainly, her ongoing hatred had caused his parents, Aristide and Virginia, a certain amount of angst over the years. Lysander had placed that at the door of his adoptive parents’ overactive consciences. After all, what was the big deal? His father had only broken off his engagement to Gladys’s daughter, Cathy, to marry Virginia instead. These things happened and normal people learnt to deal with them.

Forty-eight hours later, Lysander’s helicopter landed at Madrigal Court. As usual, he did not travel alone. With him was a mini-posse of attentive staff and his most recent bed partner, Anichka, a six-foot-tall Russian blonde who featured on the front cover of no less than two exclusive fashion magazines that month.

‘What a beautiful house,’ a female aide pronounced in an unexpectedly dreamy voice.

The huge rambling manor was built of mellow brick and adorned with gracious mullioned window bays and a fantastical roofline that was a riot of tall ornate chimneys, gables and turrets. Lysander was unimpressed. History had never held much attraction for him and a dilapidated building surrounded by unkempt gardens offended his partiality for order and discipline. If so many flaws were visible at first glance, they were probably only the tip of the iceberg, Lysander thought grimly, his sensual mouth hardening. Carrying out repairs quickly would be an enormous challenge.

‘It’s falling apart,’ Anichka remarked with distaste, brushing herself free of the rust particles that adhered to her skin when she was unwise enough to rest a hand on the wrought-iron balustrade that edged the stone bridge over the moat.

The medieval studded oak door stood ajar on a cluttered stone porch. In a critical glance Lysander took in walls in dire need of paint, gloomy, heavily carved dark panelling and shabby Victorian reproduction furniture. It was a dump, a genuine twenty-four-carat dump, on the brink of ruin. But, no matter what the price, he was going to have to buy it. Billionaire that he was, he was also a hard-hitting businessman. The prospect before him was the ultimate challenge for a male who had never before been forced to put sentiment ahead of practicality.

Morton, the solicitor, greeted Lysander in the Great Hall, suggested his party await him there and escorted him into a faded drawing room where most of the furniture was eerily shrouded in dust covers.

‘Unfortunately, Mrs Stewart’s granddaughter, Ophelia, has been delayed, but she should be along soon,’ the older man advanced in a tone of abject apology.

At that same moment, Ophelia was ramming her ancient and battered Land Rover to a shrieking halt in the courtyard. She was running late and furious about it because even though she had told the solicitor that she had a prior arrangement for that afternoon he had ignored the information. Money talked, as the old saying went, and self-evidently a Greek billionaire was a much more important person than she was.

That attitude infuriated Ophelia because it was barely a week since her grandmother’s funeral had taken place and her every free moment had been taken up with the mountain of tasks that followed bereavement. Indeed, so busy had she been that she’d had to offer a personal delivery of plants for her best customer, who had twice called at the walled garden and found her not to be there. Furthermore, the solicitor had sat on the information that Lysander Metaxis would also be attending the will reading and had only given Ophelia twenty-four-hours’ notice of that extraordinary fact.

Ophelia hurried through the kitchen, thinking of what an absolute waste of time it was to have dragged Lysander Metaxis all the way to Madrigal Court. After all, for what possible reason would her grandmother have included a member of the family she had loathed in her last will and testament? Initially incredulous at Donald Morton’s astonishing announcement, Ophelia had reached the uneasy conclusion that the inclusion of a Metaxis in the will could only mean that her grandmother had done something vindictive as a footnote to her departure from the world. But what exactly that might encompass Ophelia could not begin to imagine.

She accepted that Lysander Metaxis would very probably be the buyer and new owner of Madrigal Court. She even accepted that that was probably the kindest fate the ancient property could have, because it definitely did need someone with pots of money to spend. But, regardless of those facts, she would very much have preferred not to meet Lysander, because she could not forget that his father had totally destroyed her mother’s life and, through her, that of her children. Aristide had been a playboy as well. Rich, spoilt and selfish, a womaniser, who’d never stopped to consider the damage he’d caused. And, by all accounts, Lysander Metaxis was much worse than his late father, though society was now less censorious and he could get away with a great deal more in the field of decadent living. He would be the first Metaxis to cross the threshold of Madrigal Court in over thirty years.

A baffling collection of people were waiting in the Great Hall: three men and one woman in business suits. The second woman was an incredibly lovely blonde in a brief lime-green dress. She was engaged in displaying her extremely long legs and basking like a queen in the drooling admiration of the men present.

‘Good afternoon,’ Ophelia said as she walked past.

Outside the drawing room door, Ophelia breathed in deep.

A nervous pulse had started beating horribly fast at the foot of her throat.

Donald Morton, the family solicitor, had a harassed air and he rushed to perform introductions. ‘Mr Metaxis … this is Ophelia Carter.’

‘Mr Metaxis …’ Ophelia’s response was stilted. She froze beneath the onslaught of stunning dark eyes that had the rich shimmer of bronze. Although she had seen photos of him in newspapers she had not realised how tall he would be. He towered over her easily at six feet two inches and bore little resemblance to his short, stockily built father. Her breath caught in her tight throat, as Lysander was an astonishingly handsome man with black cropped hair and lean strong features dominated by the penetrating power of his deep-set dark gaze. The perfection of his sculpted masculine mouth was accentuated by a faint dark blue rough shadow. Even she was immediately aware of his raw sexual appeal and that shook her, for in general men left her pretty much untouched.

‘Miss Carter.’ Lysander had narrowed his intense gaze, for he was ensnared by something he couldn’t quite define. She was tiny with a mass of blonde hair as golden as sunlight anchored to the top of her head. Her eyes were a clear crystalline blue, set in a beautiful heart-shaped face. At first he barely noticed that she was dressed like a tramp in a worn waxed jacket with her jeans tucked into muddy boots because, when she shed that jacket, her shirt revealed surprisingly full curves above and below her small waist. He decided she was hot seriously hot, and his sexual response was instant and painfully strong. The immediacy of that reaction startled him.

Registering that Lysander Metaxis’s gaze was welded to the swell of her full breasts, Ophelia flushed pink and she lifted her chin and whispered angrily, ‘What do you think you’re looking at?’

Lysander could not recall a single incident when a woman had reacted with hostility to his attention, especially not one the tiny size of her, he reflected with rare amusement, reckoning that he could probably pick her up with one hand. He wondered if the impudence was deliberate and designed to enhance his interest. ‘Maybe it’s the boots …’ he murmured, slow and soft.

An indefinable undertone in his rich dark drawl made Ophelia’s entire skin surface prickle with awareness. She connected with heavily lashed bronze eyes that had the seismic effect of an earthquake on her composure. Her mouth ran dry, her heartbeat racing like a trapped bird fluttering within her ribcage.

‘I like boots,’ Lysander purred in lazy addition while the solicitor looked between them in growing bewilderment. ‘With heels. I’m not into mud or rubber though.’

That wicked combination of mockery and suggestiveness outraged and discomfited Ophelia, who didn’t know how to handle it. Her face hot enough to fry eggs on, she finally tore her eyes from him and sank down rigid-backed into an armchair, refusing to look back at him or respond.

‘Let’s get started,’ Lysander urged the solicitor.

Ophelia discovered that she was hoping that whatever was in the will that related to Lysander Metaxis would hammer a huge dent in his boundless self-assurance. How dared he poke fun at her appearance? He was a barefaced womaniser with a notorious reputation. Why was she allowing him to annoy her? Since when had she cared how she looked? She recalled her late mother’s obsession with her appearance! Money needed for food and rent had often been squandered. All Ophelia’s clothes were extremely practical.

‘There are certain points I should make clear in advance,’ Donald Morton said tautly. ‘The will was drawn up four months ago when Mrs Stewart realised that her illness was terminal. She was determined that there should be no grounds for having the terms of the will set aside by a court. To that end she underwent a medical and psychiatric evaluation, which pronounced her fully mentally fit and able.’

Ophelia’s tension grew, as it seemed obvious to her that the will was a peculiar one. She hoped she wasn’t about to be embarrassed although she could imagine no circumstances in which she would apologise to a Metaxis for anything to do with her family.

‘“I leave Madrigal Court and its contents in equal shares to my granddaughter, Ophelia Carter, and to Lysander Metaxis, provided that they marry—”’

‘Marry?’ Lysander Metaxis cut in in an abrasive tone of disbelief.

Shock welded Ophelia’s slim hands to the arms of the seat. Her pale blue eyes had flown wide. ‘But that’s absolutely ridiculous!’

‘I’m afraid that the terms of the will are unusual and challenging. Some effort was made to dissuade Mrs Stewart but the lady knew her own mind. If a marriage takes place certain conditions will have to be met for the bequest to be fulfilled. The marriage must last for a year or more and this property must also be occupied by both of you on a regular basis.’

It was the craziest list of demands that Ophelia had ever heard. Marriage! With their combined family history the very suggestion mortified her pride. But while the rest of the world had long since moved on, Gladys Stewart had remained stuck in the bitterness of the distant past. Evidently the will was her grandmother’s last desperate attempt to gain her revenge thirty-odd years after the day that Aristide Metaxis had jilted Ophelia’s mother, Cathy, at the altar.

The big society wedding of which Gladys Stewart had been so proud had turned into an instrument of family humiliation. When she’d been on the very brink of achieving her snobbish ambition of marrying her daughter off to a rich, well-connected man, it had all blown up in her face. The bridegroom had defected at the eleventh hour with the aristocratic and impoverished Virginia Waveney, who had then lived in the gatehouse at the foot of Madrigal Court’s drive. Unhappily all too many people had gloried in Gladys’s discomfiture, for she had never been popular, and the older woman’s raging resentment had turned inward like a canker.

‘Marriage is naturally not an option.’ The insane suggestion that it could be gave Lysander’s voice a sardonic edge of disdain.

Ophelia bridled at the soft note of silken derision that laced his accented drawl and threw her head high. ‘Not if I was dragged kicking and screaming to the altar—he’s a Metaxis!’ she vented.

The solicitor gaped at her.

‘Try to restrain your taste for melodrama until the legal niceties have been dealt with,’ Lysander advised with lethal scorn.

Ophelia honestly didn’t know how she managed not to stand up and thump him. Her eyes blazing as blue as a flame in the heart of a fire, she looked at him. ‘I didn’t like your tone of voice—’

‘I’m a Metaxis and proud of it.’ Shimmering bronze eyes struck sparks off hers in cold challenge. ‘Keep quiet and let the grown-ups deal with business.’

Ophelia plunged upright like a jack-in-the-box on a spring.

His unapologetic insolence outraged her. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ she launched at him.

Lysander was entertained by the ease with which she rose to the bait.

‘Ophelia … Mr Metaxis … please let me finish,’ Donald Morton interposed in a pained plea.




CHAPTER TWO


WITH colour burnishing her cheeks and silky golden strands of hair descending from her wobbly topknot, Ophelia was trembling with a rage unlike any she had ever experienced. Slowly, grudgingly, she forced herself to sit down again in the seething silence.

‘If no marriage takes place, Madrigal Court will go to Ophelia’s third cousin, Cedric Gilbert,’ Donald Morton hastened to tell them.

‘But my grandmother hated Cedric—she wouldn’t even let him into the house!’ Ophelia gasped.

Cedric was a wealthy property speculator. When Gladys had discovered that her husband’s relative had been making sly enquiries about his chances of gaining planning permission for a housing estate at Madrigal Court, she had been outraged by his greed and calculation.

‘I should add that although Mr Gilbert would inherit in those circumstances,’ the solicitor continued, ‘his ownership would be restricted by an agreement neither to sell the house nor try to develop the site for five years.’

The angles of Lysander’s bold bronzed profile hardened. ‘And if he were to break those rules?’

‘The entire estate would then devolve to the government. Mrs Stewart was keen to eradicate any potential loopholes.’

Lysander, who always thought fastest in a tight corner, was engaged in suppressing a lacerating tide of fury. He could not recall when anyone had last got the better of him. That an elderly woman he had never met should have succeeded in boxing him into a corner was a lesson that some might have deemed salutary but which Lysander deemed offensive in the extreme. He wondered if Gladys Stewart had somehow discovered his position and composed her absurd will with a callous awareness of that background pressure in mind. Yet how could she have had access to confidential family information? In the time frame concerned it was impossible, he conceded harshly.

When the solicitor went on to list the substantial debts that had accrued against the estate, Ophelia grew pale since she often lay awake at night worrying about how they would be paid. The utility bills and the council tax were all outstanding and she had no idea how she would contrive to pay off her share of them, for she had nothing valuable to sell. She squirmed at the humiliation of having such personal financial business laid bare in the presence of Lysander Metaxis.

‘Was there any other information … er … left for me?’ Ophelia was dismayed that the will hadn’t even mentioned her sister Molly’s existence.

The older man peered at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘Well, there is a letter to be given to you on the occasion of your wedding.’

As a wedding was most unlikely to arise, frustration and fierce disappointment flared through Ophelia. As quickly she scolded herself for assuming that the letter might contain anything that would help her to track down her sister. After all, if the tenor of her grandmother’s will revealed anything,it was that Gladys Stewart’s overweening desire for revenge had meant infinitely more to her than family ties. How could her grandmother have made such a preposterous demand in her will? Two strangers marrying to inherit a house? As if Lysander Metaxis would be desperate enough to go to those lengths to acquire Madrigal Court!

Lysander brought the meeting to a swift conclusion.

‘I would be grateful if you could both confirm your final intentions with regard to the will within the week,’ the solicitor remarked in an apologetic tone.

Lysander Metaxis rose lithely from his seat. ‘Ophelia? I want a tour of the house.’

Unprepared for that declaration, Ophelia bristled. Where the heck did he get the nerve to demand a tour after the way he had spoken to her? And he was demanding, for that blunt statement was light years away from a polite request. Then maybe he didn’t know how to be polite. Maybe he was just a bone-deep arrogant boor with no concept of good manners. That idea soothed her temper.

‘I’m sorry, no, it’s not convenient,’ Ophelia breathed curtly, blanking the tall powerful Greek while catching sight of the solicitor’s dismay at her refusal. But Lysander Metaxis inspired her with sheer loathing and she saw no reason to pretend otherwise. After all, they lived in different worlds and would never meet again in this lifetime.

‘I never ask for favours. You give me the official tour and I’ll pay your water charges,’ Lysander drawled smooth as glass.

Ophelia could barely believe that he had made such a degrading offer. As if her tolerance and time could be purchased with his wretched money! On the other hand, it was a very generous offer and could she really afford to turn it down? Why shouldn’t he have to pay? It was a real climb-down afterhis rudeness, a victory really, Ophelia’s agile brain reasoned. Letting him pay was like fining him for bad behaviour and it was perfectly possible that he only appreciated what he had to pay for.

‘All of the water charges?’ Ophelia enquired stiffly, angrily rejecting the inner reflection that two wrongs did not make a right.

‘Ophelia … I really don’t think—’ Donald Morton, engaged in tidying up his papers at the table, was aghast at the dialogue.

‘Ophelia and I understand each other very well,’ Lysander interposed silkily. ‘All the water charges.’

‘I want the money now—cash up front,’ Ophelia told him.

A reluctant glitter of appreciation brightened his dark deep-set eyes. ‘I want to see the bill.’

‘It’s not a problem, Mr Metaxis,’ Ophelia declared in a honeyed voice as if his every wish were now her command.

Satisfied that for the right price Ophelia Carter would do as she was told, Lysander repaired to the hall and unfurled his mobile phone to ring his lawyers. He spared a brief thought to the character of the late Gladys Stewart, whose determination to extract revenge from beyond the grave had made her choose to die in poverty rather than sell up. A lady with a gothic taste for retribution, Lysander conceded in harsh acknowledgement. While he was still on the phone, Anichka wandered in and wound her lithe body round him. Irritation slivered through him, since he liked his own space in bed and out of bed.

But the powerful rage was now contained and cooled inside him. Lysander never let his emotions take control. Within seconds of a challenge he was working out how to turn the tables and win. He never accepted defeat and he knew thatsuccess always came at a cost. In short, he could see no way out of marrying Ophelia Carter. It was a preposterous demand, but what other option did he have in the short term? A delay of five years was out of the question. Challenging the will in court would take too long and there would be no guarantee of success. He would also have to own the house to restore it to a presentable level.

As for Ophelia, she was facing a stack of debts and she was clearly as greedy as every other woman he had ever met—and a great deal more open about it than most. She would marry him, all right. Had she known what was in the will? Had she and her grandmother conspired together? Before he was finished with her, he would find out. He wondered what she would be like in bed and accepted without question that he would soon be finding that out too. Would her glowing energy and hair-trigger temper translate into passion? Country weekends, which had always been too slow and sedate for Lysander’s urban spirit, were suddenly beginning to offer the tantalising promise of sexual compensation.

Ophelia took the service stairs down to the basement two at a time. Obviously Cedric was going to inherit Madrigal Court. Her grandmother must have known that that would be the result of such a facetious will, Ophelia acknowledged wryly. But then Gladys had always preferred men to women and had often lamented her lack of a male heir. Ophelia found Pamela waiting for her in the kitchen.

‘Well?’ Pamela gasped in excitement. ‘Is Lysander as fanciable in the flesh as he looks in celebrity magazines?’

‘Lysander has all the winsome charm of a rattlesnake.’ Ophelia avoided using the surname that set off Haddock’s fiercest outbursts.

‘Ly … san … der,’ Haddock mimicked, for he loved new words.

Ophelia was keen to avoid a repetition that would encourage the parrot and she ignored him while she rifled through the old desk in the far corner.

‘What are you looking for?’ Pamela queried in wonderment. ‘What about the will?’

‘I haven’t got time to tell you, but it’s not good. Anyway, I’ve agreed to give Lysander Metaxis a full tour of the house.’

‘Why on earth have you agreed to do that?’

‘Because he’s paying the water charges …’ As her friend regarded her with a literal dropped jaw Ophelia shrugged a defensive shoulder and hauled off her boots. ‘Well, he’s a smart-ass and he offered to pay them just to embarrass me and underline the fact that I’m poor and he’s filthy rich. I was so furious I just said yes. Why not?’

‘Why not …’ Pamela was too taken aback to respond further.

Ophelia pelted back upstairs in her woolly boot socks. In the outer hall she was jolted by the sight of Lysander’s flamboyant blonde girlfriend leaning up against him, her full lips pouting, her expression one of avidity. Her hands were splayed across his chest, her pelvis angled into his big powerful frame with a blatant eroticism that made Ophelia feel grossly uncomfortable. For an awful instant she found it almost impossible to look away because she had never before seen a woman look at a man with open hunger.

But Lysander was impervious to the Russian model, his brilliant gaze winging straight to Ophelia and lingering. Her eyes were vivid flashes of ice blue against the luminous perfection of her skin. Her hair was a mess, her clothes a joke, but somehow she still contrived to look spectacular. Nor could the workmanlike shirt and jeans conceal the voluptuous swell of her high breasts or the extremely feminine curve of her hips. That she was fresh from working in what would be his walled garden added a piquant note to his reaction.

The sudden ferocious tension in the room engulfed Ophelia and she frowned in confusion. She could feel the Greek tycoon’s gaze flaring over her like flames dancing across her unprotected skin. A kernel of heat burned deep down inside her, making her conscious of her body in a way that unnerved her. Her cheeks warmed and she glanced hurriedly at his companion only to register that the other woman was subjecting her to a murderous glare.

Lysander was already setting the blonde back from him. ‘Anichka, run along … I want to speak to Miss Carter in private.’

As the blonde stalked out Ophelia drew in a steadying breath. She was discovering that she didn’t have to like Lysander Metaxis to find being left alone with him exciting.

‘Is that the water bill?’ Lysander indicated the crumpled paper clutched in her hand. ‘I don’t need to see it. I was joking.’

He handed her a thick wad of high-denomination banknotes and, for a split second, Ophelia didn’t know what the money was for until she realised that it was the cash to settle the utility charge. She paled and almost lost her composure, because now that she had calmed down she knew that she shouldn’t be accepting money from him. It was totally wrong but she couldn’t think of any immediate way of giving it back that would not make her look foolish. Shamefaced, she dug the notes hurriedly into her back pocket. She would sort it out later.

Lysander shifted a shapely brown hand in a fluid gesture that invited Ophelia to proceed. Once she had guided private tour groups round the rambling house, but the lack of facilities and safeguards for visitors had soon brought that sidelineto an end. She felt horribly hollow as she realised that she could no longer regard the manor as her home.

Tense as a bowstring, Ophelia came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. ‘The carving on the staircase dates to—’

‘Spare me the tourist commentary,’ Lysander Metaxis urged in immediate interruption. ‘Show me the highlights.’

Ophelia was appalled that he could parade his lack of interest without shame. She shot him a censorious glance and it was a mistake. Her attention welded to his square masculine jaw, shifted inexorably upward to scan his wide passionate mouth and climbed without her conscious volition to take in his high carved cheekbones and the black density of his thick lashes. Disapproval was forgotten while her tummy flipped and her skin prickled. His thick dark lashes lifted: eyes the colour of molten bronze gazed steadily back at her and her throat was so constricted she honestly thought she might choke.

Tearing her attention from him, she mounted the stairs at speed, adrenalin pumping through her. ‘This is the Long Gallery.’

Lysander drew level and stared down the dusty empty length of what had once been Madrigal Court’s crowning glory. The curtains were ragged and the family portraits and stately furniture had long since been sold. The emptiness was not a concern because Lysander had had a team working to trace and buy back those missing heirlooms for some years. He studied the elaborate ceiling and the ancient creaking floor, which were discoloured by damp. Although his expressive mouth compressed he made no comment.

‘Be careful where you walk. The floor’s a little dodgy in places,’ Ophelia warned.

‘You seemed shocked by the will,’ Lysander remarked without inflection.

‘Who wouldn’t have been? I’m afraid my grandmother was a law unto herself and she loved keeping secrets.’ Ophelia saw no point in discussing the will with him. As far as she was concerned he had had no business appearing in it and she was not sorry that his inclusion should have proved a disappointment to him. She didn’t trust herself to look directly at him. It shook her and it shamed her that she could be so powerfully attracted to a man whose lover awaited him downstairs. But then her brain seemed to play no part in the effect he had on her, she conceded guiltily. Indeed her body was alight with a crazy sort of fizzing awareness that kept on interfering with her common sense.

‘As you must already be aware, I’m very keen to acquire this house,’ Lysander imparted levelly.

Ophelia pressed open the door at the foot of the gallery. ‘You’re a rich man. I’m sure Cedric will sell it to you as soon as he’s able.’

His lean, strong face hardened. ‘I’m not prepared to wait five years.’

‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.’ Ophelia thought it would do him no harm whatsoever to have to wait for what he wanted. He would also have to make it worth Cedric’s while to ditch his development plans. Her cousin was an excessively greedy man who would be quick to take advantage of the chance to increase the worth of his unexpected inheritance. But then what possible hope did that give her of renting the walled garden from Cedric? Her heart sank at that obvious truth.

‘But we do have a choice,’ Lysander Metaxis pronounced at the precise moment that he put his foot through a rotten floorboard. With a sibilant Greek curse, he pulled free of the splintering wood and stepped back.

‘I did warn you. I do wish you’d be more careful!’ Opheliagroaned. ‘There are loads of holes on the floor above but until now I’ve been able to keep this floor pretty much intact.’

Recognising criticism rather than concern and apology in those comments, Lysander was torn between anger and astonishment. ‘I could’ve been hurt.’

‘I doubt that you’re that fragile, but below this room is an irreplaceable ceiling that is almost five hundred years old,’ Ophelia told him waspishly.

She showed him a selection of panelled bedrooms and the shabby main reception rooms on the ground floor. Lysander disliked everything he saw: the disrepair and dinginess, the ponderous Victorian furniture and the faded tatters of long-departed grandeur. When she suggested taking him outdoors to show him the grounds, he demurred and directed her back into the drawing room instead.

‘We have to discuss the will.’ Lysander had one goal: to win her immediate agreement to meet the terms and get back to London without any further expenditure of his valuable time and energy. ‘I want this house and, although it is not my way to surrender to virtual blackmail, I’m prepared to marry you to get it.’

Ophelia was stunned by that admission and stared back at him with wide eyes. It had not once occurred to her that a male as wealthy and influential as Lysander Metaxis would be prepared to marry a stranger to get his hands on a property. After all, a simple wait of five years would allow him to acquire it by purchase. ‘You can’t possibly want Madrigal Court that much … you can’t be serious!’

‘Of course I am serious,’ Lysander responded drily.

Ophelia shook her head in bewilderment. The movement was too much for her loose topknot and as her hair began to fall down round her in earnest she yanked out the clip andfinger-combed it impatiently back from her smooth brow. ‘But that doesn’t make sense at all.’

Lysander watched with male sensual intensity as the heavy gold strands of her hair tumbled down and slid in silky loops across her narrow shoulders. ‘It makes sense to me.’

Conscious of his appraisal but carefully avoiding it, Ophelia walked over to the window and spun restively round again. Nothing he had so far said made sense to her. ‘But you could wait for Cedric to sell it to you, or maybe work out some compromise with the lawyers. If you’re rich aren’t there always ways and means? Why are you in such a hurry? I know that your mother’s family owned this place for centuries but you’ve shown no real interest in the history of the house. Does the family connection really mean that much to you?’

With hauteur, Lysander elevated a sleek ebony brow. ‘I have my reasons and they are private.’

Royally snubbed, Ophelia reddened. ‘Yes, but to suggest that we marry as if it means nothing—’

‘Essentially, it would mean nothing. All that would be required of us would be a quiet civil ceremony,’ Lysander interposed. ‘It’s the easiest and most practical way for me to obtain Madrigal Court. The building is already in poor condition. Do you think it can wait five years for attention? I would immediately engage a team of architects and craftsmen to restore it.’

Ophelia was struggling to suppress a growing sense of indignation that he could dare to suggest that she marry him so that he could get his hands on the house sooner. Didn’t he have any sensitivity at all? Ophelia had been raised with the sad story of how her mother had felt on the day that Aristide Metaxis stood her up at the altar. When Cathy had had a drinkor two, she had talked endlessly about her broken heart. Ophelia’s mother might have married another man but Aristide Metaxis had been the love of her life. Her parent’s inability to overcome her feelings for Aristide and resist the temptation he offered had ultimately destroyed her and every relationship that had followed.

‘There’s no point talking about this because I’m not prepared to consider any form of marriage, civil or otherwise,’ Ophelia declared in a flat tone of finality.

Lysander looked steadily back at her, lush black lashes semi-screening cool metallic eyes of enquiry. ‘Why not?’

‘It would be inappropriate.’ Ophelia was determined to retain her dignity rather than descend into the kind of emotionalism that she knew would only rouse his contempt. Shame wasn’t fashionable. No doubt he saw no reason why he should feel the slightest bit guilty about his father’s mistreatment of her mother. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

‘I’m sure you could.’ His dark imperious features had a sardonic cast. ‘The financial rewards for doing as I ask will be handsome.’

All Ophelia’s natural colour drained from her complexion. The wad of banknotes in her back pocket felt as if it were burning into her flesh. ‘I suppose it’s my own fault that I’m getting that offer.’ She hauled out the cash he had given her and settled it down with a decisive slap on the table beside her. ‘Take your money back, keep it. If I hadn’t been trying to outface you earlier I wouldn’t have accepted it. I may be broke but I still know the difference between right and wrong.’

Lysander gave her a wolfish smile of dark amusement. ‘You sound like a little girl.’

Crystalline blue eyes flaring, Ophelia lifted her chin. ‘Look, it may sound stupid and simplistic to you but that’show I try to live my life. All right, I don’t always live up to my own ideals, but when I make a mistake I’m not ashamed to admit it!’

‘Ideals are wonderful when you can afford them.’ Striking bronze eyes mocked her stance in a way that only whipped her antagonism higher. ‘But if I walk away, you won’t get a share of the house and you’ll be in debt. Agree to my conditions and money won’t be a problem for you ever again. I am generous towards those who please me.’

Her change of tune from greed to idealism left Lysander cold. He was convinced that her show of reluctance was squarely aimed at driving his price for her compliance higher. After all, she had taken the money for the water charges without hesitation: she had wanted the money and had seen no reason why she should not accept it. That had told Lysander all he needed to know.

His refusal to accept a negative response sent temper roaring up inside Ophelia like a geyser. ‘Unfortunately for you, I haven’t got the smallest desire to please you!’

His veiled gaze gleaming, Lysander vented a husky laugh of disagreement. ‘I think we both know that I could persuade you otherwise with very little effort.’

Although Ophelia was furious with him and mortified that he had noticed her reaction to him, that low-pitched sonorous laugh still made her backbone tingle. Even his insolence had a curious sexual power, but it also stung her ferocious pride like acid and intensified her anger. ‘No, you couldn’t, and the number one reason why not is that I don’t like what you are! In any case marriage is not something I could ever take lightly or use for my own ends—’

‘Whether you like what I am or not should have no bearing on your decision,’ Lysander countered very drily. ‘Use yourintelligence. At its most basic the marriage would be a convenient business arrangement of mutual benefit. You need money and I want this house sooner rather than later.’

‘But I don’t want to play my grandmother’s games, or yours, and I genuinely don’t want your money!’ Ophelia retorted with an angry distaste that she couldn’t hide. ‘You can’t bribe me into doing what you want. All right, so I’ll spend a long time paying off those bills, but at the end of it I’ll still be able to hold my head high because, unlike you, I have principles.’

Lysander had not moved a muscle. His lean bronzed features were unrevealing but the temperature in the atmosphere was steadily dropping to freezing point. ‘I don’t accept insults.’

‘I’m not insulting you. I’m only pointing out that you appear to have no scruples,’ Ophelia argued vehemently. ‘What you want will always come first with you. Then you’re a Metaxis, so I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘I am proud of that heritage. That appears to offend you.’ Granite-hard bronze eyes challenged her.

The chill in the air and the stillness of his stance were intimidating. Her heart gave a heavy thud inside her. He was tough and immovable, not at all like his lightweight charmer of a father. That stray thought roused other dim and unsettling memories and stiffened Ophelia’s backbone. Why should she allow herself to be manipulated by her grandmother’s will, or by Lysander Metaxis? She had been a loyal granddaughter but now it was time to reclaim her life and liberty.

‘We’ve got nothing more to say to each other,’ she pronounced, walking to the door and pulling it open in an invitation for him to leave.

‘I don’t like being messed around,’ Lysander murmured with chilling bite.

‘You just don’t like the word no,’ Ophelia contradicted, for she was pretty much convinced that he didn’t hear that word half as much as he needed to hear it.

‘You are also prejudiced against my family.’

His perception made Ophelia turn pink with chagrin. ‘A

little … sorry, I can’t help it.’

‘How can you allow something that occurred thirty years ago to influence us in the present? What took place then is not our concern.’

Furious that she had allowed him an opening to talk down to her as though he alone were the sane voice of reason, Ophelia sealed her lips on a fiery flood of disagreement. Perhaps he preferred to pretend that his father had had no further contact with her mother after he had jilted her. Or perhaps he genuinely did not know that her mother had been his father’s occasional mistress for more years than Ophelia cared to recall. Whatever, Ophelia had no desire to discuss that shameful reality.

Lysander lifted a lean brown hand and tucked a business card into the breast pocket of her shirt with a sardonic cool that made her tummy muscles clench. ‘My private number. But I warn you now—you’ve wasted my time and I won’t offer you as good a deal.’

‘I’m not going to phone you!’ Ophelia launched up at him. ‘Why can’t you take no for an answer?’

Stunning bronzed eyes glittering, Lysander stared down at her with brooding mesmeric force. ‘You’ll come to me,’ he forecast soft and low.

Ophelia had stopped breathing. Her entire skin surface felt cold and then hot. As he strode down the passageway she folded her arms in a jerky motion. No way, she wanted to scream in his wake, no way will I ever come to you! But thedisturbing unfamiliarity of her suppressed rage shook her so much that she didn’t trust herself to make any response. In the aftermath, listening to the helicopter take off noisily, she discovered that she was so tense that her muscles were literally hurting her. She had never been so angry, hadn’t even known that she could get that angry. Until Lysander Metaxis came along she had always considered herself to be a quite laid-back and tolerant sort of a person.

An hour later, she drove down the long drive to the gatehouse that Pamela rented from the Metaxis estate. Her friend was in the kitchen cooking up a storm as befitted a private caterer, much in demand for her dinner-party prowess. Her nerves still jangling like piano wires that had been brutally yanked, Ophelia told the redhead what had happened.

Pamela hung on Ophelia’s every word, while her brown eyes grew rounder and rounder with amazement. ‘My word, why would a billionaire be that desperate to get his hands on Madrigal Court?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘Maybe he’s had a geological survey done and there’s a vein of gold or oil or something under the grounds. Well, why not?’ Pamela demanded when Ophelia shot her a look of disbelief. ‘I mean, I saw a couple of guys doing some sort of a survey in the field next door to the walled garden last month and I think they went in—’

‘You saw surveyors in the walled garden and you didn’t tell me?’ Ophelia gasped in horror.

‘I assumed they were working for the Metaxis estate and were probably just being nosy—I didn’t think you needed the aggravation just then,’ her friend protested.

‘Sorry.’ Ophelia sighed. ‘I’m all strung up.’

‘Of course, you’re absolutely right about standing up foryour principles,’ Pamela remarked gingerly. ‘A shame, though, because you could have settled the bills from your share of the house sale. The money would have been so useful. You could have hired a private investigator to track down your sister. I bet there’d have been enough to get your business up and running in the walled garden as well.’

Halfway through her friend’s speech, Ophelia had begun deflating like a pricked balloon. Molly! Why on earth hadn’t it occurred to her that her sister was also entitled to a share of Madrigal Court? That any decision she made now would impact on her sister’s prospects as well? Sadly, Gladys Stewart had always had a different attitude to Molly, who had been born illegitimate.

When Ophelia had been sixteen years old, her mother had died in a train crash and Gladys had flown up to the girls’ home in Scotland to take charge. Two days after the older woman had brought her granddaughters home to Madrigal Court, Ophelia had returned from her new school to discover that her little sister and her belongings were gone. Ophelia had been distraught but her grandmother had been unsympathetic.

‘Molly’s father came to collect her. He’ll be looking after her from now on,’ Gladys declared. ‘That’s how it should be.’

Stunned by that announcement, Ophelia gasped. ‘But how did her father find her here? I don’t even know who Molly’s father is! Mum would never talk about him—’

‘Molly doesn’t belong here with us and you’ll have to accept that. She’s not your responsibility any more, she’s her father’s.’

Ophelia would never forget the pain of that sudden cruel separation from the little girl she had adored from birth. At first she had assumed that she would be able to stay in touch with Molly through letters and visits. When there had beenno contact her grandmother had simply shrugged and insisted that she had no further information to offer. Ophelia, however, had long been convinced that there was more to the story than she was being told.

But now Ophelia had to deal with the reality that if she turned her back on her inheritance, Molly would lose out as well. When she finally found her sister, how would Molly feel about that decision? Molly was only seventeen years old. Would Molly forgive Ophelia for putting family pride and principles ahead of the chance of a substantial legacy?

‘Possibly I’ve been a little hasty in turning down Lysander’s offer,’ Ophelia muttered heavily. ‘But that’s his fault—he made me so angry I couldn’t think straight!’

Pride made Ophelia baulk at an immediate climb-down, which she felt would make her seem like the sort of woman who couldn’t make up her mind and keep it for five minutes. The prospect of agreeing to a marriage of convenience with a guy she totally loathed, hated and despised also disturbed her sleep that night. It was frustrating to discover, then, that the phone number he had given her only led to a super-protective aide and not, as she had naively assumed, to the man himself. She learned that Lysander was abroad and was offered an appointment in London the following week.

Left to stew in her own juice, Ophelia became increasingly curious about the contents of the letter her grandmother had set aside for delivery on her wedding day. That mysterious letter seemed as peculiar a piece of work as the will for the unsentimental older woman. What could possibly be in it? Ophelia tried to recall her late grandparent’s cryptic remarks about the house and her sister.

Gladys had brought Lysander Metaxis to Madrigal Court by naming him in her will, knowing how keen he was toregain the house. Her grandmother had also declared that Madrigal Court could make Ophelia’s every hope come true. Could that mean that if Ophelia did as she was told in the will and married Lysander Metaxis, might some information about Molly’s whereabouts be delivered in that letter as a reward? All of a sudden, Ophelia had a much stronger motivation for agreeing to the marriage.

What would it cost her? A meaningless link with a man she despised which would soon be severed again. She refused to think of it in terms of actual marriage, for it would not be a marriage in any real sense. Moreover, she had no doubt that Lysander would continue to exercise his evidently overactive libido below the roof of Madrigal Court. She grimaced at the prospect of a parade of predatory beauties wandering about her home at all hours of the day and night. They would no doubt all cling brainlessly to Lysander like burrs and behave in sexually provocative ways that embarrassed her. She winced in distaste and reminded herself that her bedroom was in the rear wing and she could doubtless stay outdoors or out of sight most of the time that he was around.

That same day Ophelia’s gloomy ruminations were interrupted by an unexpected phone call from the solicitor, Donald Morton, who asked her to come and see him at his office. There he explained that he had received a visit from one of Lysander Metaxis’s lawyers, along with a formal request for her to cease her use of the walled garden.

Ophelia studied the older man in utter bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘It has been brought to my attention that twelve years ago your grandfather sold the walled garden and the three fields beside it to a local farmer. Your grandmother appears not to have appreciated that the walled garden was included in the sale.’

Twelve years earlier, Ophelia hadn’t even been living at Madrigal Court because her mother had still been alive. ‘Of course, I knew that those fields were sold off ages ago … but the walled garden can’t have been sold with them.’

‘I didn’t handle the sale, but I have copies of the documents here and I can assure you that it was part of the parcel.’ The solicitor explained that the farmer’s son had intended to open a market-gardening business, but when he had died unexpectedly the walled garden had been left undisturbed because his father had had no use for it.

Ophelia listened in mounting consternation. The Metaxis estate had bought out the farmer four years earlier and had somehow overlooked the fact that the walled garden formed part of the acquisition.

She honestly felt as though she had had a giant rock dropped on her from on high. ‘You’re telling me that I’ve been trespassing on someone else’s land for almost five years? That Lysander Metaxis legally owns my garden?’

‘And anything you have built within those walls.’

Pale as milk, Ophelia nodded like a marionette, while the solicitor expressed his sympathy for her position while advising her that there was nothing whatsoever she could do about it.

In a daze Ophelia drove straight to the walled garden, or at least she tried. The Metaxis estate installed swanky green farm gates at all the entrances onto their land. Such a gate was already in the process of being erected at the foot of the lane that led up to the walled garden. She drove past the workmen and leapt out of her vehicle outside the mellow brick walls that surrounded the nursery. She was shocked to see that the tall wrought-iron gates were now padlocked shut, barring her from the garden that was the living result of years of her dreams and her work.

As she boiled with rage Ophelia thought darkly, If I marry Lysander Metaxis, I will surely kill him for doing to this to me! Because not for a moment did she doubt the identity of the culprit responsible for dividing her from her beloved plants …




CHAPTER THREE


THE same day that Ophelia refused to entertain his marriage proposition, Lysander began assembling a line-up of professionals to take charge of the speedy restoration of Madrigal Court.

He had no doubt that, given sufficient incentive and reward, Ophelia would cave in to his demands. Having her advised that she was trespassing on his property in utilising the walled garden was in the nature of a gentle warning shot across her bow. He wanted her to appreciate that, without his support, life could get very difficult and he was fully convinced that once he started picking up her bills she would never dirty her hands in a garden again.

Not a man to stand still or waste time, he instructed his legal team to draw up a pre-nuptial agreement and investigate ways and means of holding the ultimate in discreet weddings. When he was informed that Ophelia had requested an appointment with him, it was not a surprise. But, by then, he was in Athens and he had rather more pressing priorities to deal with.

Even in Greece, however, Lysander devoted every spare moment to business. Work and lots of it had always been his solution to problems or worries. The instant a negative thoughthit him or, indeed, anything threatened to demand an emotional response, Lysander buried himself in even more work and exhausted his staff. When his employees in London had begun falling asleep on him a month earlier, he had drafted in more from Greece and suggested they work shifts to keep up with him. The day he returned to London, he pulled off a mega-million-pound deal that made headlines in all the financial pages of the newspapers, but he chose to party alone and had a diamond necklace delivered to Anichka as a goodbye gift.

The rural life had never been to his taste, but the prospect of weekends in the country with Ophelia was steadily beginning to acquire an aura of darkly erotic, forbidden appeal. Although his intelligence continually pointed out that Ophelia wasn’t his type—she was too argumentative, too little and too scruffy—he had got bored with Anichka in only two weeks and suspected that his turnover rate in the bedroom was becoming excessive. A change in feminine style and tempo would revitalise him, Lysander reasoned with satisfaction. He pictured Ophelia transformed into a radiant beauty, polished to perfection and spread across a four-poster bed wearing only a welcoming smile, and his libido reacted like a Formula One car at the starting line.

When he remembered the decrepit bedstead with the tatty drapes he had seen at Madrigal Court, the fantasy almost crashed. He contacted his household team, who took care of all his properties, and voiced his first ever personal request with regard to furniture. He ordered a four-poster bed complete with hangings. It would make a terrific wedding present.

Ophelia hurried into the lift in the Metaxis building.

Getting to London in time for her appointment had necessitated a pre-dawn departure on the train. She was dressed inher best—a black wool jacket and a neat grey knee-length skirt—a stalwart outfit that she dutifully dragged out for church, funerals and all such serious occasions. She was thinking that she had never been very good at eating humble pie and she knew that Lysander Metaxis would make a three-course meal out of her capitulation. Unhappily her surrender was eating her alive from inside out, because he had dared to do the unthinkable—he had locked her out of her garden! All-out war would have felt much more natural to her.

Only Ophelia knew what her garden meant to her because she had laboured to create it from scratch. Each plant, shrub and tree had been watched over and lovingly nurtured by her. Gladys Stewart had been a cold guardian for a warm-hearted teenage girl grieving over her mother’s death and the loss of her sister. Ophelia had found solace working outdoors and watching the change of the seasons, while she’d reached the conclusion that plants could be more reliable and rewarding than people.

Ophelia felt like a fish out of water in the Metaxis building, which buzzed with rushing staff and big-business energy. The huge office block was full of metal surfaces, towering pillars and glass in unexpected places. The amount of attention she got at the mere mention of Lysander’s name amazed her. She was delivered straight into his large and imposing office like a parcel. He was talking on the phone in French, his bold profile silhouetted against the light. In a charcoal-grey pinstripe suit with the faultless cut of superb tailoring, he looked staggeringly handsome. The instant that thought assailed her she wanted to punish herself for having it.

Lysander tossed down the phone and focused on Ophelia with thickly lashed metallic-bronze eyes that went from an appreciative glow to the steady coolness of ice-water. Thebeauty of her shining golden hair, clear light blue gaze and glowing complexion was exceptional. But the dull, dated outfit she wore was a horror and he was annoyed that she had not made more effort on the grooming front.

‘Your intransigence has cost this venture a week,’ he drawled grimly, his lean, strong face hard.

Still at the far end of the large office, Ophelia strove to be level-headed and practise restraint in the face of that immediate rebuke. ‘It wasn’t intransigence … I needed time to think your proposition over.’

‘Right,’ Lysander retaliated with the kind of stinging disbelief that could only infuriate.

Colour winging an arc across her cheekbones, Ophelia sucked in a steadying gulp of sustaining oxygen. Unfortunately it only made her feel angrier than ever, particularly when he did not immediately offer her a seat. Striving for an air of composure, she approached some sofas that were arranged in a stylish semicircle by the tall windows and sat down without invitation. ‘I’ve decided that I’m willing to go through with the marriage plan,’ she announced with dignity.

‘So we are now in agreement?’

Her blue eyes glinted with the hidden fire of opals. ‘As much in agreement as we’re ever likely to be.’

‘If you’re not prepared to put your whole heart in this venture I won’t go through with it.’

Surprise and dismay attacked Ophelia at that unexpected response.

‘I have to be able to trust you,’ Lysander pointed out. ‘This won’t work otherwise.’

Although Ophelia had promised herself that she would not mention the garden until the very end of the interview, that statement broke through her self-control. ‘Considering thatyou’ve locked me out of my garden, trust would be quite a challenge!’

Level bronze eyes met her angry ones.

A rebellious little frisson of sexual awareness knotted low in her pelvis. Her breasts stirred, the tender pink tips tightening inside a bra that now felt uncomfortably tight. Her heart was beating very fast. She couldn’t credit how he could have that effect on her even when she was annoyed with him! Her colour heightened while she blamed her lack of experience with men on her embarrassing level of susceptibility.

‘I’ve locked you out of my garden,’ Lysander contradicted without a shade of discomfiture. ‘But it’ll be unlocked as soon as we finish hammering out the details of our arrangement.’

Her teeth gritted as she swallowed back a hostile response. It was the truth, even if she didn’t like it. He owned her garden. She tried to be mollified by his assurance that the padlock would be removed once everything was settled between them. But nothing could soothe the demeaning sting of being forced to toe the line against her will and rewarded for her surrender with something she had always considered to be very much her own and which had cost him nothing.

‘What kind of details?’ she questioned tightly.

‘You will have to sign a pre-nuptial contract.’

‘All right.’ Ophelia was unsurprised that his first concern was the protection of his massive wealth. ‘What else?’

‘To minimise the impact on our lives, I want our arrangement to remain a secret. The only people who need to be in on this are our lawyers. Have you discussed this with anyone else?’

Ophelia thought of Pamela and crossed her fingers behind her handbag and decided to fib. ‘No,’ she said.

‘I’m applying for a special licence to speed the process up.

My legal team think that St Mary’s church on the edge of the Madrigal Court estate would be the most suitable location. I understand it’s still in occasional use and very private.’

Ophelia was taken aback by that suggestion. ‘Yes, it is. But I would honestly prefer a civil ceremony.’

‘It would be virtually impossible to stage a discreet wedding in an urban register office. Although I take every possible precaution to protect my privacy, my movements do attract a great deal of publicity. I’m keen to keep the press in the dark as regards our association.’ His rich dark accented drawl carried a pronounced note of finality.

Ophelia linked her slender hands together and studied them with fixed attention. Her ideas and opinions were not required. Everything was to be based on his needs and preferences, not hers, and he had already made up his mind. It wasn’t the details that were being hammered out, it was her place in his scheme and he was determined to keep their future marital status a deep dark secret. Ought she to be offended by that or relieved?

‘Although there won’t be guests as such, we’ll make the wedding as normal an occasion as possible in case the validity of the marriage is questioned at some later stage,’ Lysander continued.

‘Let’s forget the use of that misleading word “we” when I’m not allowed to have any input,’ Ophelia suggested dulcetly. ‘You know you’d be much happier telling it like it is.’

Lysander studied her with hard dark eyes across the divide of the coffee-table. Her crystalline gaze was screened, her full pink mouth at a slight pout. He was not deceived by this modest look, though his attention did linger on the ripe curve of her lips. He was wondering how she could put out such a sexual vibe when she wore neithermake-up nor provocative clothing. ‘As you wish. You will dress like a bride for the ceremony and a photographer will record the occasion.’

‘How will the living arrangements work?’ she prompted tautly.

‘Easily. I’ll spend several days a month at Madrigal Court—generally weekends.’

‘I don’t think you’ll be very comfortable there.’ Ophelia was trying without success to imagine him taking up residence in a house that was full of history and charm but very short on luxury and convenience.

‘My household staff will take whatever measures are necessary to ensure my comfort and yours,’ Lysander declared. ‘Everything will be organised in advance.’

Ophelia dared to look up and, encountering his stunning metallic eyes, felt as if she had been zapped by an electric current that set every nerve and skin cell jangling. In haste she tore her attention from him and got up to wander restively round the room. ‘How long do you think we’ll have to keep up the pretence?’

‘Fourteen months at most,’ he told her, letting her know that the matter had been considered with care and reduced to as short a period as would be deemed acceptable in the circumstances. ‘But I must warn you that if word of the marriage leaks into the public domain, everything will change and we’ll have to pretend that it’s for real. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Ophelia agreed without really thinking about that possibility. ‘But in the meantime I just go on as if I’m still Ophelia Carter, rather than your wife.’

‘I may not want you to behave like a wife,’ Lysander hastened to assure her with sardonic immediacy, ‘but you will have to behave as though you’re in a relationship with me.’

Ophelia shot him a startled glance. ‘In a relationship?’ she echoed in bemusement. ‘I hope you’re joking—’

‘Why would we be going through this whole charade just to blow it by acting like strangers when we’re beneath the same roof?’ Lysander demanded with lancing impatience. ‘That is out of the question—’

‘But you’ll still have your … er … women, won’t you?’ Ophelia cut in thinly, both tone and lips compressed.

‘Not at Madrigal Court. In the light of authenticity, you will be the only woman in that household.’

Ophelia was interested to note that he did have some boundaries and relieved that she was not going to be expected to deal with his womanising activities and carousing on the doorstep, as it were. A split second later, however, she recalled the original argument and angry discomfiture gripped her. ‘But if people don’t appreciate that we’re married … for goodness’ sake, what are they going to think I am?’

‘My housekeeper who sleeps with me, an occasional lover, whatever.’ Lysander shrugged with magnificent disregard on the score of what her feelings might be. ‘Nobody is likely to rate the connection any higher if I never take you out of the house, and the more casual it seems, the less interest it generates. What does it matter?’

Outrage was roaring through Ophelia in an enervating surge. ‘It matters a heck of a lot to me! A housekeeper who sleeps with you, an occasional lover? How on earth can you suggest that I pretend to be either?’

‘I didn’t suggest it. Other people will choose the labels and award them as they see fit. But you’ll have to have some good reason to still be at Madrigal Court when I move in and start spending a fortune on the place.’

Ophelia was so furious that her teeth chattered together. Hermood was not helped by the reality that he had picked yet another angle that she had not foreseen, for of course people would wonder what was going on when he moved in and she stayed on. Furthermore, while the same people would not dare to ask him impertinent questions, the neighbours were likely to be much more nosy and direct where she was concerned.

‘I’m not domesticated enough to be a housekeeper,’ she framed grittily.

‘It would be an excuse, not a vocation.’ Lysander had moved closer without her even being aware of it and she backed a tiny step, her slim hips brushing the arm of the sofa behind her. ‘Forget the label. You will know the truth even if nobody else does. You could be staying on to advise me on the gardens.’

‘The gardens?’ His height and breadth and sheer masculinity had never seemed more pronounced than they did at that moment. Even in heels that gave her a couple of inches she felt overshadowed. Unwarily she collided with eyes that were the rich golden brown and tawny of burnished metal and a pulse at her collarbone flickered out her extreme tension. She couldn’t swallow and her mouth ran dry, even while she came to grips with what she interpreted as a genuine suggestion and one with a great deal of appeal.

‘Naturally I would pay you for your consulting services.’ A wolfish smile slashed his handsome mouth and just for an instant she was totally spellbound, her attention locked to his lean bronzed face.

‘You wouldn’t have to pay me to get involved in restoring the gardens!’ Ophelia told him breathlessly.

Without an atom of hesitation, Lysander curved lean fingers to her slender waist and pulled her to him. ‘You would be wasted outdoors, glikia mou,’ he murmured huskily, then he observed, ‘Your heart is pounding like a hammer.’

‘Yes.’ Never had Ophelia been more conscious of the fact. A little voice was ranting, No, no, no, in the back of her head. It sounded remarkably like her grandmother. She knew she shouldn’t be that close to him, shouldn’t be allowing any form of contact. But she was already driving a sort of devil’s bargain with her brain, because she was entrapped by the most indescribably powerful anticipation of what he might do next. Just another few seconds … because she was curious to see what it would be like if he touched her, she reasoned dizzily, just plain ordinary curious …

Then he kissed her and the scientific approach of testing him took a hike. That one kiss was ten, a hundred, times more powerful a temptation than any she had withstood before. She trembled as his sensual mouth played with hers. Her temperature rocketed up the scale. She was imprisoned by new sensation. Breath feathering in her lungs, she shifted closer of her own volition. He closed one hand in her hair and held her to his lean, hard body, squashing her breasts, curving her up against his long, hard thighs. Naked excitement whooshed up through her like a firework heading for the heavens. He probed the sensitive interior of her mouth with his tongue and she shuddered with delight. He tasted like the richest and most decadent chocolate, sinful and sexy and forbidden and like any chocoholic she couldn’t get enough of the flavour.

His breathing fractured enough to be audible, Lysander tore himself free. His bronze eyes were molten gold with hunger. He was stunned to register that he was already aroused to the point of pain; his only thought was to alleviate it. ‘Come home with me for lunch,’ he urged in a roughened undertone.

Shame grabbed Ophelia by the throat and tortured her thenand there on the spot. ‘You’re not talking about lunch, are you?’ she mumbled unevenly.

Lysander hauled her back up against him with confident hands, scorching eyes raking her hectically flushed and confused face with masculine satisfaction. ‘Theos. I want you in my bed and under me first.’

The heat inside Ophelia, the wicked pulse of driving, overwhelming desire that had momentarily controlled her, turned colder than yesterday’s dinner. He wanted to bed her as no doubt he had bedded countless women. It was lust, nothing more basic, nothing less complimentary. No, he wasn’t that particular, but she had always believed that she was. Now she had learned differently and the power of what she had felt—the sheer blood-rushing, glorious charge of excitement—had taken her by storm. Her surrender had been terrifyingly immediate.

‘No, I don’t want this … I’m sorry.’ Ophelia forced out that admission in a state of extreme embarrassment.

With the striking animal grace that laced all his movements, Lysander released her. While her sudden rejection astonished him, it also brought a chilling glint of cynical derision to his metallic gaze. He had met many women who calculated that waiting would make him all the more eager for their bodies and all the more generous in the aftermath. Cunning feminine tricks turned him off big time because he had been targeted by innumerable stratagems over the years.

‘It’s not a problem. The timing is bad,’ Lysander murmured. ‘I have just one more point to make.’

Ophelia was disconcerted by the ease with which he dismissed that moment of intimacy and moved on. Still all of a quiver inside, she could not bring herself to meet his gaze. Initially relieved by his casual attitude, she could not help feeling insulted a moment later when she found herselfthinking that her apparent attraction had proved to be very short-lived. Suddenly, and purely thanks to him, she was at war with herself on every level.

‘And that point is?’ she prompted, reaching down to relocate her handbag and move in the general direction of the door.

‘You need an image makeover.’

Bemused by that assurance, Ophelia turned to study him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Dressed like that, you won’t convince anyone that you’re involved with me on any level,’ Lysander spelt out.

Ophelia was affronted. She was clean, tidy and presentable. As far as she was concerned, that should be more than sufficient to satisfy. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my appearance—’

‘You require a new wardrobe and better grooming to take on the role. My staff will organise it—’

‘But I don’t want a new wardrobe—’

‘Of course you do.’ Arrogant conviction was stamped in every angle of Lysander’s lean, darkly handsome face. ‘All women love fashion and designer clothes.’

‘I don’t,’ Ophelia told him flatly, wishing she were in a position to tell him what he could do with his talk of image makeovers. But she was intelligent enough to recognise the problem: she was dealing with a guy accustomed to infinitely more decorative women who were always perfectly groomed and exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion. That kind of absorption in her looks wasn’t her style and never would be. For the first time she was being forced to appreciate how much control she would be relinquishing over her own life. It was the price, she recognised heavily, of having compromised her principles. He expected her to comply with his every demand.

‘Have we a deal?’ Lysander asked as though she hadn’t spoken.

The silence rushed and surged in Ophelia’s ears. Her fingers bit into her palms and she thought about the letter she would receive on her wedding day. Slowly but surely, the almost overwhelming desire to tell Lysander Metaxis where to get off receded. For over eight years Gladys Stewart had stubbornly denied any knowledge of Molly’s whereabouts. But what else could be in that letter but information about Molly? A makeover? No, Ophelia was determined not to let pride come between her and her wits.

‘Yes, we have a deal,’ she said stiffly.




CHAPTER FOUR


COSMETICS had wrought a subtle alteration to Ophelia’s face by adding definition and colouring. But to her frowning gaze her eyes and her lips looked uncomfortably prominent. Nor was there any way to hide her hourglass curves in the clinging fabric of the white silk designer confection that she had to wear for the wedding. Leaving her slim shoulders bare, the gown clung like an unwelcome second skin from bosom to knee before flaring out into a frivolous fishtail hem.

‘It’s so tight I can’t sit down,’ Ophelia complained thinly.

‘Brides aren’t supposed to sit down and please don’t tell me again that you’re not an ordinary bride. Go with the flow,’ Pamela urged. ‘Remember that when you walk out of the church all your financial worries will be at an end.’

Ophelia tried and failed to smile. ‘You should go home now. Thanks for helping out.’

‘Shouldn’t you be leaving for the church?’

‘I’m not in any hurry.’

‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t need me.’ Her friend stood up. ‘You look totally gorgeous. It’s such a shame it’s not for real.’

When Pamela had gone, the minutes ticked slowly past while Ophelia paced the floor of the drawing room. The chauffeur, who was waiting for her to come out, knockedtwice on the door to tell her worriedly that time was moving on, but she still didn’t emerge.

Although only ten days had passed since she had seen Lysander in London, the run-up to the wedding had proved incredibly stressful. Madrigal Court had been awash with strangers who’d conducted surveys, moving furniture and wandering around tapping walls and lifting floorboards. Change had been everywhere she’d looked, but not once had she been asked for her opinion. Two firms had already embarked on emergency repairs and the noisy hum of power tools had put paid to all peace. However, Ophelia had enjoyed the quiet of the walled garden, which she had found unlocked in the evening after she returned from London. Then she had mused rather bitterly that not having slapped his face when he’d kissed her had paid dividends.

Lysander’s staff—and he seemed to have an endless supply of them—had toured the house to select virtually all the principal rooms for their employer’s occasional use. After agonising over the lack of luxury on offer and the wintry indoor temperatures, they had shipped in several lorry-loads of furniture, lighting, rugs, curtains and bedding in compensation and evidently intended to light an awful lot of fires. Cleaners had arrived to turn the manor house inside out, while a snooty foreign chef and his assistant had imported a free-standing kitchen and had taken up residence in what had once been the servants’ hall. Only Haddock was enjoying the fuss and furore of all the new faces and different voices.

In the midst of the domestic upheaval, Ophelia had had to endure the attentions of a squabbling pair of fashion consultants and a team of beauticians, none of whom had appeared to regard her as anything more than an inanimate doll to be painted, polished and repackaged. Lower necklines, shorterskirts, shameless underwear and very high heels were to be the new order of the day. Ophelia had dutifully donned her wedding gown and the frilly underpinnings in a one-day-only act of generosity, but once the ring was on her finger she planned to leave every other item in the wardrobe—though that was not an accurate description for the vast collection of colour-coded new garments currently stored in a separate room.

Lysander had been notable only by his complete absence. They had spoken just once on the phone and only at her instigation, because he had the infuriating habit of passing on reams of instructions to her through his staff. Ophelia had attempted to refuse the vast sum of money offered to her as a reward for signing the pre-nuptial contract in which they’d agreed that, in the event of a divorce, each of them would take out of the marriage only what they brought in. The contract had also specified that she was to receive a whopping great monthly allowance from him. The amount of cash on offer had seemed so ridiculously huge that Ophelia had felt horribly like a gold-digger. After all, Lysander had already settled all the outstanding bills at Madrigal Court. But he had pointed out that the contract had to appear convincing, so he could not reasonably offer her less. Suppressing her misgivings and the niggling suspicion that he didn’t really believe in her altruism, she had signed. She was determined to hand all the money back once their agreement was at an end.

Fresh from an unsettling week in his Greek homeland, Lysander flew in for the wedding. It had not been easy to shelve his natural authority in Athens and take on a supportive role while medical personnel took centre stage. He thought it fortunate that he was not the emotional type. Unlike his adoptive father, he was not given to volatile hand-wringing drama. No, thankfully, he had never beenthat way inclined. There was no weakness in him and if he was currently in an unusually dark frame of mind, he laid that at the door of jet lag and the nuisance value of a stupid secret wedding.

He wondered bleakly how long it would take to turn the ugly duckling house into a convincing swan and even whether there would be enough time. The tenor of that downbeat reflection made him cease that entire train of thought. The helicopter landed in the wooded grounds of the church. There were barely five minutes to spare before the ceremony. His timing was perfect. His legal team would be waiting to act as witnesses and in forty-eight hours he would be on his way again.

But the minutes ticked by in the little country church and the agreed time for the ceremony came and went. The vicar’s store of small talk became strained. When fifteen minutes had crawled past, Lysander strode back down the aisle without hesitation. ‘I’ll fetch her …’

But the bridal limousine was finally drawing up outside. After the chauffeur had sprinted to open the passenger door, Ophelia climbed out slowly, as though she had all the time in the world. A waterfall of heavy golden hair fell round her shoulders and framed her ice-blue eyes and exquisite face in a picture of arresting loveliness. Last time Lysander had seen her she’d had the quality of an uncut diamond; now she was a vision of polished perfection. Perfection on the surface and a grubby little soul of pure avarice underneath, he reminded himself with derision.

‘You’re late,’ Lysander said coldly.

Ophelia shrugged a slight shoulder in defiance and glanced up the steps at him. Sunlight glinted on his black close-cropped hair, accentuating the proud thrust of his high cheekbones and the strong angles of his jaw. A dangerous littlefrisson of response snaked through her pelvis. Pink warmed her cheeks. ‘But at least I’ve turned up.’

Lysander recognised that as a reference to his father having jilted her mother. Not his parent’s finest hour, but Aristide had had his reasons and his son did not appreciate the reminder. ‘Let’s go inside,’ Lysander murmured, extending a scrupulously polite hand to her.

His display of good manners made Ophelia squirm and feel petty. His hand engulfed hers in a firm hold. As the service began she was still remembering her mother’s unhappy experience and it was like a chill wind blowing over her exposed skin. Yet the words of the marriage service had never seemed more beautiful. She froze when a narrow platinum band was put on her finger and felt a dreadful fraud when the vicar beamed happily at her.

When she climbed back into the limo, a prompting that ran stronger than self-discipline made her look at Lysander. He was gorgeous. His metallic gaze telegraphed an indolent bronzed enquiry that made her heart skip a beat. Hurriedly she glanced away again. When she looked once at those lean, breathtakingly handsome features, she just wanted to look and look again. Indeed the potency of that urge unnerved her. It was as if she had caught a virus that was destroying her common sense and self-control. A sort of sexual infatuation, she labelled in strong embarrassment. Was she more vulnerable because she had never had a lover?

That very acknowledgement irritated Ophelia, who had never believed in dwelling on that reality. She had simply never met anyone she wanted to get that intimate with and dating had always seemed to be more hassle than it was worth, particularly when she recalled she had fallen asleep on a couple of guys over dinner. She had long since reached theconclusion that she was a natural singleton and just not that physical in a world that seemed obsessed with sex. But in the space of two encounters and a single kiss, Lysander Metaxis had shown her just how strong and persuasive carnal temptation could be. That new knowledge was still tugging at her senses and threatening to make a fool of her, she thought ruefully. Hadn’t she learned anything from her vulnerable mother’s mistakes with men?

As the limo came to a halt outside the manor house Ophelia scrambled out of the car at speed, dodged the waiting photographer and made to speed across the bridge over the moat. She was fully focused on the happy prospect of opening her grandmother’s mysterious letter.

‘Ophelia …’ Lysander murmured sotto voce.

Ophelia froze on the bridge. She hated the way he said her name. She hated that quiet expectant note of absolute command, which implied that only the most unforgivably rude or stupid person would dare to defy him. Slowly she turned round and retraced her steps.

‘I just don’t see the point of these stupid photos,’ she vented under her breath.

‘Smile,’ Lysander urged, closing an arm round her small rigid figure, which had all the yielding qualities of a steel bar. ‘You can do better than that, Ophelia …’

A few minutes later, he eased her round to face him. She looked up for she could do little else. His eyes were pure glittering gold in the fading light. He leant down and grazed her mouth with the lightest touch of his. With the utmost delicacy he pried apart her full lips to make way for the invasive stroke of his tongue. It was the most erotic experience she had ever had. A second before she had been trying not to shiver from the cooling effects of a brisk April breeze on her bare skin. Asecond later she was in his arms, ensnared by the onslaught of piercingly sweet pleasure. She trembled, her breath mingling with his, her heart racing so fast she was dizzy. Exhilaration leapt and danced through her veins like stardust.

And then Lysander freed her again. Blinking rapidly, Ophelia recognised the photographer’s smiling satisfaction over the shots he had captured before she saw the sardonic amusement that briefly coloured her bridegroom’s stunning dark deep-set eyes. Hot, painful pink flooded up below her fine skin. She had forgotten who she was, where she was and why she was acting the part of a bride. But Lysander had forgotten none of those things and his cold opportunism chilled her to the marrow. She shivered. The late afternoon light was fading fast into dusk as she walked back into Madrigal Court.

‘I really don’t think that was necessary,’ she said flatly.

‘We’ve cut enough corners,’ Lysander fielded drily, annoyed that he had not exercised more restraint. ‘The conventional touches will make us look more convincing.’

A waiter greeted them in the porch with a tray bearing a pair of elegant champagne flutes. Ophelia frowned. ‘I don’t drink.’

Lysander shot her a cool glance and slotted a champagne flute into her hand regardless. ‘Make an effort. This is a special occasion.’

Rigid with anger and an awareness of him that inflamed her even more, Ophelia held the flute so tightly she was afraid it would break between her fingers. In a sudden movement she drank the contents down in an unappreciative gulp and set the glass down again. No doubt it wouldn’t do her any harm this once. She looked around: the Great Hall was full of lawyers enjoying the generous array of drinks and food on offer. Lysander was soon engulfed by his legal team, so Ophelia headed straight for her solicitor.

Haddock announced his presence in the corner by breaking into an off-key rendering of ‘Here Comes the Bride'. Heads turned, supercilious brows lifting. Ophelia almost groaned out loud, for she had brought the parrot upstairs only because he was lonely in the kitchen. Unfortunately that well-known melody sent a chill down Ophelia’s spine because she had grown up with a mother who always burst into tears when she heard it. She continued her journey over to her solicitor.

‘I have the letter here,’ Donald Morton told her cheerfully.

‘Thanks.’ Ophelia clutched the surprisingly fat envelope and hesitated before ripping it open. When she unfolded the document within, a small piece of notepaper that had been attached to it fluttered free and fell to the floor. She bent to scoop it up and frowned when she saw the single handwritten sentence it carried.

Molly had been put up for adoption.

There was nothing else, no opening preamble, no signature, nothing other than that brief bald admission in her grandmother’s spidery scrawl.

Ophelia was shaken by a possibility that she had not previously considered. Her sibling had been adopted? Had the story about Molly’s father taking her only been a convenient piece of fiction? Ophelia stilled while she pondered: unless Molly chose to look into her own past and seek out birth relatives, Ophelia’s sister might well be lost to her for ever. Her eyes stung with sudden tears of regret and frustration. She looked numbly down at the other document in her hand and read the first few lines of it over and over again before she could accept what she was reading. Disbelief attacked her and she re-approached her solicitor, who was being served with food at the buffet.

‘There’s what looks like another will in the envelope,’ she told him shakily.

The older man was astonished and he immediately set down his plate. ‘May I have a look?’

Still bound up in her disappointment, Ophelia passed over the document. She knew she should have known better than to get her hopes up about the letter. While she had finally learned the truth behind her sister’s disappearance, she felt as if Molly was more out of her reach than ever.

‘May I speak to you in the drawing room, Miss Carter … sorry, er, Mrs Metaxis?’ Donald Morton had assumed his more formal manner again. Ophelia and her solicitor were fast becoming the centre of attention and silence was slowly spreading across the Great Hall.

‘Metaxis bounder—good-for-nothing swine!’ Haddock squawked with gleeful abandon. ‘There’ll never be a Metaxis at Madrigal Court!’

Impervious to the shock value of Haddock’s announcement, Ophelia watched dully as Donald Morton approached one of the other lawyers. A look of consternation crossed the man’s face and he quickly went into a huddle with his colleague.

The drawing room was now barely recognisable to Ophelia. Its former shabbiness and clutter had been banished in favour of wonderful paintings and handsome furniture. Beautiful curtains hung at the windows. She pressed clammy hands to her tense face. The implications of the existence of another will were finally sinking in. What new torment had Gladys Stewart planned with the provision of a second will that would invalidate the first, if it post-dated it?

‘Ophelia …’ Lean, strong face hard, Lysander strode into the room and towards her. ‘What is happening? What is this about? A second will?’

‘I don’t know … I really don’t know,’ she said tautly,dragging her attention away from him, hastily burying the memory of that wide sensual mouth playing with hers. Playing was the operative word, she told herself unhappily. She had let her guard down. She hastily buried the reflection that she was now married to Lysander. The very thought embarrassed her, trespassing as it did over the barriers she was determined to erect in her mind. It wasn’t a marriage; it was an ‘arrangement'.

Lysander startled Ophelia by closing a lean hand over hers when she tried to turn away. Flustered and flushed, she collided with his brilliant questioning gaze and snaked her fingers free, turning her head away in angry discomfiture. She suppressed the sense of connection she felt to him, stamping it out like a spark that threatened to cause a conflagration. There might be a ring on her finger but, in essence, it was meaningless.

Donald Morton arrived to confirm, ‘Mrs Stewart appears to have had another will drawn up by a London firm. It’s signed and witnessed and it is of a more recent date.’

‘Which means it takes precedence over the first,’ Lysander said flatly.

‘You’re not mentioned as a beneficiary in this will, Mr Metaxis,’ the older man told him heavily.

Ophelia frowned. ‘Then what does it say?’

A few minutes later, Ophelia sank down on a nearby chair because her knees felt too weak to support her. She was too stunned to know quite what she was feeling—her grandmother had left her Madrigal Court in its entirety.

Cold wrath held Lysander still and silent, his attention shooting straight to his bride. Ophelia didn’t look at him. There she sat, delicate as a tiny porcelain doll with baby-blue eyes, in an attitude of shock. Lysander wasn’t impressed. Ofcourse she must have known about the second will! The very fact that he was forced to operate within time constraints had given Ophelia an advantage, Lysander reflected rawly. He had gone against legal advice in pushing the marriage through so quickly. If background checks on the Stewart family had been made, they might have revealed facts that would have given him pause for thought or picked up on the late Mrs Stewart’s dealings with another legal firm. But, be that as it may, Lysander was quick to regroup under threat; he always had a contingency plan to fall back on.

The Metaxis legal team joined them. The situation was discussed in Greek. When the lawyers began to wrangle in two languages, Ophelia rose and went back out to the Great Hall. Honest and straightforward as she was, she was appalled by the cruel cunning of her grandmother’s trickery.

‘Hello, Ophelia,’ Haddock said chirpily.

Ophelia took the parrot back down to the kitchen. She recalled Gladys Stewart’s triumphant forecast that Madrigal Court would make her granddaughter’s every hope and dream come true. But Ophelia had dreamt only of being able to find her sister and the freedom to get on with her life. And that latter dream she had never shared with anyone, as it had made her feel guilty. That she had unwittingly become the instrument of her grandmother’s revenge appalled her. The older woman had not cared who might suffer when it came to striking a lethal blow against the Metaxis family. She had set up her granddaughter alongside the son of her greatest enemy. The end result was unarguable: Lysander Metaxis had married Ophelia for nothing!

Ophelia pondered the explosive truth that she was now the new and outright owner of Madrigal Court! But before a sense of joy could take hold of her, the most awful guiltassailed her instead. Because of the terms of the previous will, Lysander had been expecting her to sell her share of the house to him and, of course, she could not have afforded to do otherwise. The entire picture had changed, however; now that the whole house was hers, surely she had more options. A heady sense of challenge was already bubbling inside her. Could Madrigal Court be turned into a paying proposition so that she could keep her inheritance? What the heck was she going to do? What was fair? And would she still be fair to Lysander, even if being so meant going against her own inclinations?

The guests had departed and the house seemed eerily silent when Ophelia finally walked back up the basement stairs. Darkness had fallen and elegant new lamps glowed in corners. She almost switched them off to save electric and then winced, recognising how engrained her need to save money had become. Lysander was poised by the giant stone fireplace in the Great Hall. She came to an abrupt halt, apprehension gripping her, for she still had no idea what her ultimate decision would be.

‘Where did you sneak off to?’ Lysander demanded icily.

Ophelia bristled like a cat stroked the wrong way. ‘I didn’t sneak anywhere! I had to have a chance to think things over.’

Bronze eyes dark and hard as granite, Lysander focused on her with punitive force. She had yet to learn that he fought fire with greater fire. She couldn’t win against him. Nobody ever did and many had tried. His attention lingered on the luscious curve of her lips and the ripe swell of her pale breasts above the silk bodice of her wedding gown. He remembered the feel and the taste of her. Sexual heat pooled in his groin and sizzling anticipation burned the edge off his anger.

Ophelia felt horribly uncomfortable and guilty even though she knew that she had done nothing wrong. ‘You have every right to be livid. I’m very sorry about this situation.’

His cold contemptuous gaze cloaked, Lysander studied the brandy swirling in the fine glass between his fingers. Of course she wasn’t sorry. He had no doubt that she planned to hold the house like a gun to his head to achieve the highest possible sale price. He wondered how generous and sweet she would feel when she realised how powerless she really was. She had overlooked a powerful counterbalance: she was his wife. While she might not be behaving like a wife as yet, she would soon learn her boundaries.

The tense silence pounded in Ophelia’s eardrums and played havoc with her nerves. When she could stand it no longer she broke into speech. ‘After my mother was jilted, my grandmother became obsessed with the idea of getting her own back on your family. Perhaps I didn’t take her feelings seriously enough,’ she conceded heavily. ‘But then I didn’t see how she could do any real damage and I had no idea that she was capable of going to these lengths—’

‘It’s too late for lies.’ His rich dark accented drawl roughened the tenor of that warning. ‘You must’ve known there were two wills. You played a starring role in your grandmother’s revenge because she made it financially worth your while to do so.’

Ophelia was shattered that he could suspect her of having been a party to her grandmother’s deception from the outset. ‘That’s not true. For a start, she didn’t confide in me and I—’ ‘You’re wasting your time trying to act innocent—’ ‘For goodness’ sake, it’s not an act! Why should I have known that there was another will? How could I have guessed that?’ Dry-mouthed, Ophelia lifted what she thought was a bottle of water from the bar set up in one corner and filled a glass to drink. But when the liquid hit her throat, her eyes watered and she had to swallow fast and painfully to ward offan embarrassing fit of coughing and spluttering, because what she had mistaken for water was actually alcohol.

His lean, tanned face harsh, Lysander watched his bride knock back a large shot of neat vodka. He recalled her prim insistence that she did not drink and he wondered how he had believed for one second that he could trust her.

‘You’re misjudging me,’ Ophelia told him steadfastly.

‘I don’t think so.’

Lysander had a hauteur that even royalty would have been challenged to equal and he did derision to the manner born as well. Stung raw by his cold look of incredulity, Ophelia wanted to shout, while at the same time wanting to squirm. With taut hands she opened a genuine bottle of water to rinse the acrid taste of alcohol from her mouth. ‘Believe me, I knew nothing about any of this,’ she argued. ‘I was never that close to my grandmother.’

‘You were close enough for her to leave you everything she possessed. All you had to do to win that prize was play along with her warped plans and go through with marrying me.’

Ophelia spun angrily back to him. ‘You’re the one who asked me to marry you! How can you accuse me of having plotted this?’

‘Easily. Even your parrot is obsessed with revenge,’ Lysander derided.

Her crystalline eyes flared. ‘Just you leave Haddock out of this!’

His deep, dark eyes were cold as the depths of a river. ‘Let’s cut to the bottom line—how much will it cost me to buy the house from you?’

Colouring beneath the contempt etched in his lean strong face, Ophelia flung her golden head high. ‘I’m not even sure I’m willing to sell it any more!’

His worst expectations and darkest suspicions confirmed by that statement, Lysander murmured something sibilant in Greek. The tense silence hung like a sheet of glass about to crash.

‘Everything’s changed!’ Ophelia was struggling not to be intimidated by his mood and the daunting force of will he emanated. ‘And it’s not my fault.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Lysander breathed. ‘Even your supposed reluctance to marry me was faked to allay any suspicions I might have had of your motives.’

‘I didn’t fake anything! My grandmother fooled me as well and landed me into this mess with you!’ Ophelia flung back with spirit.

‘But it’s a very lucrative mess from your point of view. You qualified for your inheritance and you’ll profit even more from the pre-nuptial contract you signed with me.’

Eyes bright with anger, Ophelia snatched in a sustaining breath. ‘I wasn’t planning on accepting that cash … actually—‘

Lysander loosed a derisive laugh. ‘I liked you better when you were honest about your love of money.’

‘Oh, did you indeed? So you’re still fully convinced that I’m a thoroughly grasping little gold-digger, are you?’ Her nails biting into her palms, Ophelia shot him a look of seething resentment.

Black-lashed metallic eyes rested on her in cutting consideration. ‘You said it, glikia mou.’

Temper shot through Ophelia’s slender frame like an adrenalin charge, since there was no way that she could prove that she hadn’t known about the two wills. He infuriated her and the urge to outdo him and have the last word ruled supreme. She was fed up with being pushed around and insulted. She had apologised, she had tried to explain and he wasn’t interested. Well, she was done with being humble withthis guy, who had now accused her of being a fraud, a liar and a cheat! If he wanted to believe that she was an evil, greedy schemer, he was welcome to.

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Ophelia fired back full throttle. ‘I’ll rip you off for every penny I can get because that’s exactly what you deserve!’

‘You can try.’ A dark light had kindled in Lysander’s bronze gaze. Her defiance, allied with that overconfident admission, hurled the kind of challenge that no woman had ever dared to give him. He was used to soft words and submission, flattery and feminine coaxing.

‘You’re a bad loser.’ Ophelia was in no mood to take back her angry words. Just then the guise of a gutsy gold-digger seemed infinitely preferable to continuing to whine that she had known nothing about anything. Anyway, what use was the truth with a guy who refused to listen?

‘Naturally. But be warned, I’m superb at turning a losing hand into a winning one,’ Lysander countered smooth as glass.

‘I’m going upstairs to get out of this stupid dress!’ Ophelia flung back at him, out of all patience.

An urgent knock sounded on the door into the outer hall. As it was already lying open, Ophelia wondered who had been outside listening to the bridal couple fight like cat and dog and she reddened. A heavily built older man with a troubled expression appeared on the threshold. He gave her a respectful nod of acknowledgement and then turned to address Lysander in a voluble flood of Greek. Ophelia walked away—while Lysander discovered that the bad news wasn’t over yet.




CHAPTER FIVE


‘OPHELIA!’ Lysander growled just as Ophelia reached the top of the carved staircase. ‘Come down.’

For a split second, Ophelia hesitated. That note of command bit at her resolve. But she was now in full resistance mode to Metaxis authority and so she sped on. She reminded herself that she wasn’t really and truly married to Lysander, except on paper, and every passing minute was giving her another good reason to celebrate that truth.

‘Game over,’ Lysander breathed rawly, striding past her to block her passage down the corridor.

‘Games are fun … being married to you is anything but!’ Ophelia hurled back. ‘Now get out of my way!’

‘I have questions I want answered,’ Lysander imparted.

‘What you want isn’t always what you get—let me past.’

Lysander stayed where he was, his lean muscular frame as large, still and formidable as a cliff face. The atmosphere hummed.

Enraged at his persistence, Ophelia tried to sidestep him, but when he remained in her path she gave him a tiny meaningful push. In answer to that very restrained hint that he remove himself at speed, Lysander closed his hands round her waist and lifted her right off her feet.

‘Put me down!’ Ophelia shouted at the top of her voice, feeling remarkably foolish with her legs dangling.

‘Not until you cool off.’ Arms outstretched as he held her back from him, Lysander studied her with icy self-containment.

‘You’re behaving like a bully!’ Ophelia snapped furiously across the narrow divide that separated them.

‘You assaulted me,’ Lysander drawled, lush ebony lashes low above eyes that were blaze-bronze.

Ophelia was thoroughly disconcerted by that reminder. She collided with his smouldering gaze and it was as if all the air that there was to breathe had suddenly burned up in the atmosphere. Warmth curled through her in an enervating surge that scared her. ‘I’m calm,’ she framed, taken aback by a physical response that even rage couldn’t suppress.

Lysander lowered her to the floor again with exaggerated care. Anger was storming around like a caged animal inside him. He had planned to confine the marriage to one tiny compartment of his life and now that convenient arrangement was no longer possible. Even worse, he would have to maintain the pretence for the benefit of his family. ‘The grounds are crawling with paparazzi,’ he imparted.

‘Papa-what? Oh, those photographers that chase celebrities,’ Ophelia mumbled, her brows having pleated in momentary mystification. ‘What are they doing here? Oh, right, they followed you down from London—’

His scorching eyes were welded to her. ‘No. Try again.’

‘Try what?’

‘Acting dumb. So far you’re not being very convincing.’

‘What are you trying to insinuate?’ Ophelia took the opportunity to snake past him with the agility of an eel. ‘Well, I’m not listening to one more nonsensical word!’

As Ophelia thrust open the door of her bedroom Lysander closed a hand like a steel manacle round her narrow wrist.

‘Tomorrow the newspapers will be full of the story of our marriage,’ he breathed in a wrathful undertone.

Wide-eyed, Ophelia turned back to look at him, his imprisoning hold forgotten. ‘Did they find out about the two wills as well?’

‘No. Only that we got married today, which is more than sufficient.’

‘But how did it get out? I mean, we’ve taken such care—’

Lysander studied her with sizzling force. ‘Stamitos, my head of security, already has a suspect and it isn’t anyone in my employ. The story was leaked by someone who knew the score. The woman who lives in the gatehouse—your friend …’

‘Pamela Arnold? What’s she got to do with this?’

‘She has a brother who works on a tabloid newspaper.’

‘Yes, but she hardly ever sees him.’ But dismay at that reminder had frozen Ophelia to the spot and she had paled. Although she had sworn her friend to secrecy, she was painfully aware that Pamela had found the entire wedding scenario, not to mention Lysander’s wealth, hugely exciting. Nobody loved to talk more than Pamela. Could her friend have accidentally let information slip in the wrong quarter?

‘By tomorrow morning the whole world will know that I have taken a wife.’

‘I really don’t think the whole world is likely to be that interested.’ An uneasy conscience, however, ensured that Ophelia’s comeback was less feisty than usual. Then her thoughts were sidetracked by the startling discovery that her bedroom looked unfamiliar—the bed had been stripped andher possessions were no longer in view. ‘Where have my things gone?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Half my stuff has vanished from my room!’

‘Wives don’t sleep on the other side of the house.’

Her hackles came up, since nobody had consulted her on what she assumed to be a move to another bedroom. ‘I’m not a wife.’

‘You are now and it’s obvious that the status of being my wife is what you wanted all along.’ His lean, tanned face granite hard, Lysander turned her back to him. ‘Clearly you planned the maximum possible exposure for our marriage in the media.’

Ophelia discovered that she was fighting a very irrational urge to giggle. Just at that instant she didn’t feel she could have planned her way out of an open space. The alcohol she had imbibed had gone straight to her head, for she had had nothing to eat since breakfast. ‘You’re so distrustful—of course I didn’t plan it! Why would I have wanted people to know about this crazy arrangement?’

‘So that you could become my wife in reality.’

‘In reality? Meaning?’ Ophelia queried as he strode down the passage, trailing her willy-nilly in his wake.

Lysander swung into the Long Gallery. ‘Plan B is about to go into operation.’

‘Plan B? Where on earth are you taking me?’

Lysander thrust wide the door of Madrigal Court’s principal bedroom. The huge room had not been used by Ophelia’s family, who had found the Victorian wing at the back of the house easier to heat. Now a fire leapt and glowed in the giant grate below the stone chimneypiece, sending shadows snaking and flickering over the oak-panelled walls.

A fabulous four-poster bed, wholly in keeping with the feudal splendour of the new décor, sat centre stage.

Ophelia had never been the slightest bit domesticated. She was untouched by any desire to rearrange the furniture or shop for new curtains, but she had occasionally been conscious of a wistful yearning for her surroundings to be warmer, more comfortable and inviting. Now she stared in astonishment at the imposing bed, draped in flamboyant golden fabric.

‘Your employees have contrived the most amazing transformation. I’ve been so busy in the garden I haven’t had the chance to keep up with all the improvements.’ Her smooth brow indented. ‘Why did you bring me in here?’

‘This is our room.’

‘Our … room?’

Lysander shot Ophelia a long, lingering appraisal that made her skin prickle. ‘The marital bedroom.’

‘We don’t have a marital bedroom because, well … what would we do with one?’ An uneasy laugh was wrenched from Ophelia, who was recalling his crack about the sort of boots he liked a woman to wear. She really didn’t like his sense of humour.

‘All the usual things, glikia mou,’ Lysander murmured lazily. ‘Not much else to do at this season in the country and at least it would keep us warm.’

‘Let me get this straight … you are expecting me to share a room with you?’ Ophelia gasped.

Grim amusement gripped Lysander. She was amazingly good at acting the naïve country girl while simultaneously contriving to look quite extraordinarily beautiful. ‘Even if our marriage had remained our secret we would still have had to share a room when I was here. How else could we ever have pretended that it was a normal marriage?’

Ophelia was bemused. ‘But I had no idea you were expecting me to share a room with you!’

‘We have an agreement.’

‘Yes, but everything has changed now—’

‘Only the will. You are still my wife and, since that is no longer a secret, we are much more married than I ever expected to be,’ Lysander delineated with cold emphasis.

Discomfited pink winged across her cheeks. ‘Yes, I appreciate that.’

Lifting a lean, elegant hand, Lysander skimmed the troubled pout of her upper lip with a careless fingertip. ‘Do you?’

Her colour fluctuated and her tummy turned a somersault. The deeper note in his rich dark drawl reverberated down her taut spine. It took conscious effort not to lean closer and invite further contact. ‘Other people knowing about us will make a difference.’

‘More than a difference. Marriage has never been on my to-do list. I enjoy my freedom,’ Lysander continued, ‘but for the foreseeable future I have no choice other than to behave like a newly married man.’

Now Ophelia sensed the inner tempest of the emotions that he had previously kept hidden; neither Gladys’s second will nor the paparazzi had provoked him into a loss of temper. Firelight gilded his eyes to pure gold and threw his strong bone structure into prominence. He was a natural born predator, she reflected helplessly, and as dazzling and dangerous as a glossy jungle cat in his prime. Even when every inner alarm bell was urging her to back off she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

‘I’m surprised you have so much respect for the conventions.’

‘Only in that one field, glikia mou.’ Lysander slid longbrown fingers into her hair and eased her up against him with a calm belied by the heat of his gaze. He was already fiercely aroused: he wanted her. The angrier she made him, the more he wanted her and the more determined he became to stamp her as his. He didn’t understand the connection but he didn’t waste any time thinking about it either. Any thought and any desire that had a sexual angle was self-explanatory and absolutely natural in Lysander’s opinion.

Her heart was pounding, her breath fluttering in her throat. As her slim body connected with his hard muscular frame a dozen pulse points of desire were ignited. She was so tense her lower limbs felt numb and she had to dig her fingers into his shoulder to stay upright. A battle was being fought inside her. She knew she should retreat but the bold challenge of his bronze eyes and the sweet taunting heaviness low in her pelvis kept her where she was.

He brought his sensual mouth slowly down to hers. Impatience grabbed her and she strained up to him on tiptoe without even thinking about it. A husky laugh sounded low in his throat. In a total change of approach, he plundered her mouth with a passion that left her dizzy. The erotic thrust of his tongue made her tremble and cling, response leaping through her with firecracker energy.

Between driving kisses, Lysander shed his tie and shrugged out of his jacket. He closed his hands over hers and tugged her towards the bed.

Doubtful, Ophelia said anxiously, ‘This can’t be right—’

‘Theos—what could be more right?’ Lysander reasoned. ‘This is our wedding night.’

That truth silenced her for an instant. ‘But I don’t feel married.’

‘You soon will.’ His arrogant dark head bent and hepried her lips apart for another heady taste that made her senses swim.

‘But you think I’m a liar and a ch-cheat,’ she stammered.

Lysander angled a wolfish smile down at her. ‘Nothing’s perfect in this world.’

His smile had a charisma that welded her gaze to his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Be serious. I don’t even like you!’

Lysander laughed out loud. ‘But you want me the same way I want you. From the first look the first day you saw me, yineka mou.’

The awesome truth of that instant contradiction cut through Ophelia’s protests like a knife. The hunger had started in the same second she had first laid eyes on him. An unsettling, embarrassing, maddening hunger that bore no resemblance to anything she had ever felt before. It was a visceral reaction that had nothing to do with conscious consideration. In any case, she registered in belated acknowledgement, he was never absent from her thoughts for longer than a few minutes. Just when had she become so obsessed with him?

Lysander bent down and lifted her and settled her down on the bed. ‘You think too much,’ he told her.

‘Possibly …’ Ophelia watched him remove her dainty bridal shoes. She couldn’t quite believe that she was allowing him to do that. Exhilaration bubbled through her while her mind continued to race. She was wondering if she could allow herself to succumb, if it would be so very wrong to sleep with him. Was it wicked to be curious? In terms of pure physical attraction, he was definitely the one. She wasn’t a romantic like her late mother. She wasn’t going to go falling in love with him or anything stupid like that, she told herself. She knew his limitations and accepted them. He was only suitableas a one-night stand. A week of fidelity would be a long-term commitment for him.

‘Do you mind me asking …?’ Ophelia hesitated.

‘Asking what?’

‘If you’re currently involved with someone else?’ Ophelia almost winced as she spoke.

Engaged in unbuttoning his shirt and casting it aside, Lysander suppressed a groan of disbelief. ‘Theos … you make everything so complicated! No, there is no one else at present.’

Ophelia noticed how careful he was to qualify that declaration with the words ‘at present'. A muscular brown strip of male chest appeared between the parted edges of his monogrammed shirt. Her mouth went dry. He dropped the shirt on the floor and edged her round to unhook her dress. She almost stopped breathing. It was one thing to watch him as though he were a pin-up guy on a poster, but quite another thing to imagine getting naked with him. And the prospect of acquiring an audience for the fancy lingerie she wore was even more disquieting.

‘You’re very tense …’ Lysander unfastened the delicate bra that banded her pale narrow back and stood her up again.

She looked down at her bare breasts and hurriedly away again, only just resisting a prompting to cover her naked flesh with her hands. She considered telling him that he would be her first lover and swiftly discarded the idea. He might not believe her and if he did he might think her lack of experience was funny. Even worse, he might think that no man had ever been that interested in her. Every fear that could occur to her at such a moment up to and including a fear of pregnancy was piling up inside her mind when her dress fell round her ankles and he lifted her out of the puddle of white silk.

‘Oh …'she gasped, settled back down on the bed, her slender body alternately taut and quivering with nervous energy.

‘Oh …’ Lysander mimicked wickedly, dipping his imperious dark head to slide his tongue in a provocative invasion between her swollen lips.

Her hips jerked in immediate reflex reaction, damp heat surging between her slender thighs. He explored the ripe swell of her rounded breasts and toyed with the tender peaks. A melting, tingling wave of response took hold of her.

‘Luscious,’ he growled with masculine satisfaction.

As Lysander studied her pale curves an enervating mixture of pleasure and self-consciousness battled inside Ophelia. Her face burned. He closed his lips round a pointed pink nipple and she almost cried out in startled response. Her body wouldn’t stay still for her. Her fingers buried themselves into the silky thickness of his close-cropped black hair and her back arched. He lifted his head again and drove her lips apart with devouring hunger. She loved the way he kissed. It was addictive. Her hands dropped to the corded strength of his strong shoulders. Her mind was a blur of half-formed thoughts. She couldn’t credit the strength of what she was feeling or the power of her need to touch him.

Lysander lifted his tousled head to look down at her. Below the black fringe of his lashes, his smouldering dark gaze was intent. He ran long brown fingers through the glossy coils of golden hair spilling across the pillow. He was enjoying his new right to touch. Her bewitching ice-blue eyes shone against skin with the luminous quality of a pearl. ‘You looked incredible in that dress today,’ he told her.

Disconcerted by that comment, Ophelia blinked. Lysander frowned because he had not intended to compliment her. Feeling off balance, he crushed the strawberry ripeness of hervoluptuous mouth under his. Her senses swam and proper thought got lost behind a mental fog. A torrent of energising impressions struck her—the rippling power of his muscles beneath her hands, the long, lean, hair-roughened strength of his thighs and the intrinsically wonderful and familiar scent of him. The weight of him against her felt glorious. The feel of his bold erection shocked and pleased her. And the whole time she was learning about him, her blood was drumming in her eardrums and her heartbeat accelerating as the pleasure became more and more intense.

She didn’t even notice her remaining garments being removed. All honeyed heat and response, she reacted by instinct to the pulsing ache at the junction of her thighs. He skimmed through the pale curls that crowned her mound and teased the tiny sensitive bud beneath. Her ability to think vanished. In the grip of his sensual expertise she whimpered and angled up her hips. Desire was becoming a burning, irresistible need. He traced the slick wet heat at the heart of her and exquisite sensation engulfed her in wave after wave. Caught up in out-of-control excitement, she craved a completion she had never known before.

‘You’re very small,’ Lysander murmured.

Ophelia looked up at him in bewilderment for an instant before realising what he meant. ‘I’m a virgin …’ And the instant the admission left her she tensed and closed her eyes because ironically, no matter how intimate being in bed with him was, that information felt as if it was much too private to share.

Not for one moment did Lysander credit her claim, but he didn’t argue because at that moment he didn’t care what she was. Her fervent response to him had stoked his hunger for her to a ravenous height. A sheen of sweat on his bronzed skin and with hands that were rather less steady and controlled than usual, he parted her legs and came over her.

When he began entering her, Ophelia tensed and gasped, for he felt impossibly large. Desire and panic took her in equal parts. ‘If it hurts too much you’ll have to stop,’ she warned him and a split second later, ‘You’re hurting!’

His breathing fracturing with the effort that restraint demanded, his big, powerful body trembling over hers, Lysander stilled and stared down at her in shock and growing awe. ‘You were serious. You’re really tiny—’

‘Stop!’ Ophelia recoiled from the sharp stab of pain.

‘A virgin …’ Studying her with laser-beam intensity and potent appreciation, Lysander closed one large hand over hers. ‘I’ll be gentle … I promise, yineka mou.’

Ophelia discovered that being looked at with awe was rather pleasant. And just for once he was doing as he was told while at the same time accepting that she had told him the truth. Her body was adjusting a little to the intrusion of his and the throbbing ache of hunger was stirring again.

‘I’m mad for you,’ Lysander growled, his accent thick and deep as his long brown fingers toyed abstractedly with the wedding ring she wore. ‘Don’t make me stop.’

For the first time Ophelia was conscious of her feminine power and it was as intoxicating as the desire tingling back at every pulse point. ‘All right,’ she framed in a driven whisper.

Lysander shifted in a subtle move and she squeezed her eyes tight shut as he slowly, carefully sank deeper. It hurt and she cried out. He paused and cupped her face with his hands, then kissed her with a honeyed eroticism that somehow made her bite back the next moan. He murmured in Greek, bronze eyes like flames as she looked up at him. A ripple of pleasure rewarded her for her stoicism. When she had taken all of him, the burn of his possession faded and excitement quivered through her taut figure.

‘You feel like velvet,’ he told her with hoarse appreciation.

She had neither the breath nor the concentration to find words to describe what she was feeling. Sensual delight made her strain up to him, desire licking through her in a hot, feverish surge. He sank into her again and again with long, measured strokes. Sensation piled on wonderful sensation, stoking her excitement to incredible heights. Trembling with need, she cried out, her entire being caught up in the frantic climb to satisfaction. At a spellbinding peak, melting ripples of ecstasy consumed her in an explosive climax. Lost in the sweet drowning pleasure that followed, she lay in his arms in a daze.

A virgin, Lysander savoured with admiration, and pressed a kiss on her smooth brow. He was conscious of a rare sense of well-being and an even greater sense of satisfaction with her. It was the most extraordinary sensual experience he had ever had. He knew virginity shouldn’t count in the balance of her sins but somehow it did. Whatever other faults she might have she didn’t sleep around. All of a sudden marriage felt less like a trap and more like an indulgence. It was quite some time since his sex life had delivered the satisfaction he had once taken for granted. Women had become a faceless interchangeable blur, all too similar in type and behaviour, he acknowledged grudgingly. His bride was, at least, an original. He laughed huskily, thinking how easy it was to turn a negative into a positive. All it took was a creative and innovative mind.

That soft masculine laugh thrust Ophelia rudely back to reality at the same time as Lysander lifted her over him with easy strength and draped her across his chest like a rag doll. Shifting to a cooler spot in the bed, he kicked off the sheet. Oh, my word, what have I done? Ophelia asked herself in guilty horror. A one-night stand, she reminded herself, but thememory of that insane piece of self-justification only made her want to cringe with embarrassed self-loathing. She had surrendered to the enemy and he would never take her seriously again. She could have screamed with vexation.

‘I need a shower … and then …’ Lysander murmured thickly, running an intimate hand down over the curve of her bottom.

Ophelia rolled off him as though she had been assaulted and flipped round. ‘And then … nothing!’ she stressed in a tight undertone. ‘This was a one-off. A colossal mistake. Please don’t ask me to explain myself.’

Lysander regarded her with scientific interest and considerable amusement. He would not have dreamt of asking a woman to explain herself, especially one with as much to say for herself as Ophelia. He had discovered that her Achilles’ heel was her essential lack of sexual experience and being Lysander he was unlikely to overlook that vulnerability. Ebony lashes low over glittering metallic eyes, he murmured wickedly, ‘You were so hot—’

‘Shut up—don’t you dare gloat! I don’t want to talk about this ever!’ Scarlet to the roots of her tumbling golden hair, Ophelia scrambled off the bed and went in frantic search of something to wear.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to my own room.’

‘That’s not allowed.’

Clutching his jacket in front of her to shield her naked body, Ophelia flung him an irate glance. ‘None of that stuff counts now. I don’t have to go along with this marriage, if I don’t want to. I’m sorry, but you must see that everything we agreed to is redundant now.’

In a lithe lazy movement, Lysander leant up on one elbow.

Sprawled naked in the tangled sheet, he was a magnificent vision of bronzed masculinity. He regarded her with level dark-as-midnight eyes and a curious little chill ran down her spine. ‘We have a deal,’ he reminded her very softly.

Ophelia wrapped both arms round his jacket to hold it in place and couldn’t help wishing she’d picked up something more appropriate. ‘Yes, but that—’

‘No argument, no compromise possible,’ Lysander cut in with ruthless bite. ‘Before the wedding you agreed that if our marriage went public you would act the part of my wife. It’s too late to change your mind.’

The cold implacability of his gaze took Ophelia aback but she refused to back down. ‘I’m sorry things aren’t turning out the way you expected but that can’t be helped. I’m afraid you can’t make me go along with the pretence that our marriage is real if I don’t want to.’

‘We have a deal. If you try to break it, I’ll destroy you. You promised to live up to that ring on your finger and you will,’ Lysander asserted with chilling cool, while he wondered what the hell she was playing at. ‘There is no alternative, glikia mou.’

Ophelia was clutching his jacket so hard her hands were hurting. ‘I don’t react well to threats.’

‘If you cross me, I will go to court over the two wills and keep you tied up there for so long that when you finally sell Madrigal Court you’ll owe all the money you make on legal bills. Complex lawsuits can drag on for years and the expenses of a court battle will bankrupt you. Is that what you want?’

Every scrap of colour had drained from Ophelia’s face by the time he had completed that speech. He had totally shocked her. It had not occurred to her that if she refused to honour their previous agreement he might be prepared to drag her intoa courtroom to contest the will. Moreover, the scenario he painted horrified her. The inheritance she hoped to share with her sister would be eaten up within months. Nobody would profit from that denouement.

Lysander was on full alert, reading every nuance and change of expression on her delicate features. He had assumed she had played an active role in ensuring that the paparazzi exposed their marriage because only publicity could gain her full access to his rarefied world of exclusive privilege and luxury. Now he was no longer so sure.

Dark eyes sardonic, he sprang off the bed and straightened to his full intimidating height. ‘You have to respect ground rules with me,’ he spelt out. ‘Keep your word and you will have nothing to fear. You’re my wife and I will treat my wife like a princess. But if you choose to step out of that charmed circle, beware because it’s a cruel world out there.’

‘You can’t do this to me!’ Ophelia snapped with a vehement shake of her head.

‘I’m going for a shower. When I return, I still expect you to be in this room as befits a bride on her wedding night,’ Lysander informed her lazily. ‘And tomorrow we’re leaving on our honeymoon.’

Ophelia glowered at him in frank disbelief. ‘A honeymoon … you’ve got to be joking! This is my home. I’m not going anywhere. And what about my plants? Who’s going to take care of them? The busiest season of the year is coming up for me. You can’t expect me to leave.’

‘You’re creasing my jacket,’ Lysander told her gently.




CHAPTER SIX


WRAPPED in Lysander’s discarded shirt, Ophelia discovered her new wardrobe stored in the room next door, which was furnished as a dressing room.

Lysander had switched from passion and seeming tenderness to threat at a speed that had shaken Ophelia to her conservative core. She hated him, she truly hated him. She didn’t know what had made her behave so stupidly with him when all her life to date she had been strong and sensible. So why had she slept with a guy who cared nothing for her? Didn’t she know any better than that? What had happened to her self-respect? Hadn’t she known all along what a rotten reputation he had?

Angry tears stung her shamed eyes while she freshened up in a freezing cold shallow bath in a bathroom along the corridor. How dared he threaten her with the full weight of the law? How dared he use his wealth and power as a weapon against her? As she slid into faded cotton pyjamas she pondered her predicament and struggled to ignore the dulled ache of discomfort that reminded her of the intimacy she was determined to forget.

The idea that she could turn Madrigal Court into a paying proposition on her current income was a total fantasy, sheadmitted with pained honesty. The house was in need of extensive restoration work, which she could not afford. Besides, she was already in debt to the tune of many thousands of pounds to Lysander, who had paid all her outstanding bills, not to mention the current emergency repairs being done. Unhappily, selling up was her only option. If she conceded that point surely he would drop the demand that she continue acting as his wife? Was he using that to put pressure on her into agreeing to sell?

Lysander was on the phone when Ophelia reappeared. Clad in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, he was reclining on the bed while one manservant built up the fire and another hovered with a trolley of food. Self-conscious in the face of that invasion, Ophelia fled back into the dressing room to find a wrap. When she emerged again, he was alone.

Tossing aside the phone, Lysander extended a lean brown hand to her. ‘Join me,’ he urged.

Ophelia froze like a dieter offered a pile of chocolate bars. ‘No, I’m not getting into that bed again.’

Stunning heavily lashed metallic eyes rested on her. ‘It’s your bed. A wedding present from me to you, yineka mou.’

‘Are you trying to say that you always planned to sleep with me?’ That idea filled Ophelia with so much rage that she could barely voice the question.

‘I wanted you … I still want you,’ Lysander stated without a shred of discomfiture. ‘That is a separate issue.’

Ophelia shuddered. A separate issue? Who did he think he was kidding? He had set her up for seduction and she had been too stupid to recognise his intentions. It took massive will-power but she managed to ignore his provocative admission. ‘Right now we have to concentrate our energy on our differences.’

‘In bed.’

‘No, not in bed!’ Ophelia contradicted between gritted teeth of restraint.

‘If I agree to sell you the house now, will you sign over the walled garden to me? And forget about us continuing the charade that we are a normal married couple?’

Suddenly serious again, Lysander slid off the bed in a fluid movement. ‘No. That’s not possible.’

‘You could at least consider the idea. It’s a fair offer. For goodness’ sake, why do we have to go on with this stupid pretence? It doesn’t make sense.’

His handsome bone structure was taut below his bronzed skin. ‘I have excellent reasons that I do not choose to share with you.’

‘So that’s put me in my place again, has it?’ Sizzling with temper and frustration at that snub, Ophelia folded her arms with a jerk.

‘Right now your place is by my side.’

‘I will not dignify that with an answer! You’re being horribly unreasonable.’

‘I have an important question,’ Lysander countered levelly. ‘Will you allow the restoration work here to continue?’

Ophelia almost uttered a furious negative. Then she thought of the roof leaking and the damage that would continue if she took a selfish short-term view of the situation. She couldn’t face doing that to the house she loved. ‘Yes!’ she ground out between clenched teeth.

Stalking over to the bed, she snatched up a pillow and the bedspread that had spilled onto the floor. She marched over to the luxuriously upholstered ottoman couch by the window.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Lysander indicated the selection of food on offer. ‘Neither of us had the chance to eat this afternoon.’

In spite of the fact that her tummy was growling with emptiness,Ophelia wrapped herself in the bedspread and lay down on the couch. ‘Goodnight.’

Lysander surveyed his defiant bride while he satisfied his appetite. A slight frown line now divided his ebony brows, for she was not behaving as he had expected. She was excessively obstinate. Why had she offered to sell the house without any effort to negotiate a stupendous price? Why the continued obsession with the walled garden? Did she genuinely like getting muddy? Why was she set on being a thorn in his flesh, rather than taking immediate advantage of his need for her continuing presence in his life? What had happened to her profiteering instincts? Cue for diamonds, he decided. It was time to show her the sparkling financial benefits of meeting his expectations. He swept up the phone to organise it.

Five minutes later he strode over to the ottoman, lifted Ophelia off it and strode back to the bed.

‘What the blazes do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled at him.

‘You sleep in the same bed,’ Lysander informed her, blue-shadowed jaw line set at an obdurate angle of challenge.

Ophelia was taken aback to feel tears threatening because she was genuinely exhausted and the prospect of another rousing battle of wits was too much for her just then. ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she warned him.

But it was soon obvious that Lysander had far more important matters in mind than sex. While she lay there with her back rigidly turned to him, he made five separate phone calls in a total of three different languages. His dark deep drawl was brisk and authoritative. But he paced round the room at length on another call, his voice softening in tone as he spoke in Greek. He even laughed a couple of times, although that humorous note struck her as a little forced. She was convincedhe was talking to another woman and she strained to catch every nuance even though she couldn’t understand a word. Was he explaining to a favoured mistress why he hadn’t mentioned the little fact that he was getting married? Why wasn’t he prepared to write off their marriage as a mistake? Why the need for an ongoing pretence?

And why had he slept with her? She couldn’t accept that the chemistry was as strong for him as it was for her, because he was a highly sophisticated man with an endless procession of gorgeous women to choose from. He was also extremely clever and a brilliant strategist. When she had tried to deny that they were truly married, he had simply turned the tables on her by sweeping her off to bed.

While Ophelia agonised over her failure to say no, Lysander had a television wheeled in and watched the business news, which provoked another round of phone calls. She was almost begging for mercy by midnight. He hadn’t even noticed she had a pillow over her head to blank out the light and noise level. An alpha-male workaholic, he had the most appalling level of energy. He also had a passion for controlling everybody and everything around him. His nature was neither tolerant nor patient. He was the last guy alive who would stand the hassle of coping with a demanding, difficult wife. In that knowledge, Ophelia savoured, lay her salvation and her escape route from the shackles of a marriage she didn’t want. What would Lysander most dislike?

Publicity would obviously come top of the list. He liked his privacy, so a wife who gave an interview to a downmarket tabloid would be an embarrassment. And she suspected that a clingy, possessive woman always demanding to know where he was and who he was with would revolt him even more. She would have to be careful not to overdo it, though. A sleepysmile melted the tension from Ophelia’s troubled mouth. Being a nightmare wife might well be fun and should ensure that she got back to her garden sooner rather than later.

For the third time the following day, Lysander checked that no phone call or message from Ophelia had been intercepted and withheld from him.

His sardonic mouth compressing into an even thinner line, he turned his attention back to the board meeting. The stock-market crisis had ensured that he had to fly back to London at seven that morning. Unsated desire had sentenced him to a restless night and plunged him into an icy shower at dawn. One tiny taste of Ophelia had unleashed a disturbingly powerful storm of sexual craving. What the hell was the matter with him? He couldn’t concentrate and he hated the unfamiliar edgy tension nagging at him.

In contrast, Ophelia, to whom histrionics came naturally, had happily slept in his arms half the night as well as through his departure. But then he was convinced that Ophelia would sleep through an earthquake, since he had contrived to clasp a superb pearl and diamond necklace round her neck without wakening her. Even though he had spoken to her she had only mumbled like a zombie and curled up in a ball again.

Any woman, however, would be overwhelmed by so magnificent a gift, he reasoned with conviction. He had also for the first time in his life left a note explaining his absence. And during the course of a phenomenally busy morning he had also arranged for the walled garden to be managed by an experienced horticulturist during their absence. In short, Lysander could not recall when he had ever made that much effort on a woman’s behalf and received less appreciation for it. Or, been treated to a total silence that was steadily beginning to grate on him.

Ophelia enjoyed an equally busy morning. She had opened her eyes to a terse five-word unsigned note on the pillow. ‘At office, flight Greece 20.00 hrs.’ She had almost leapt out of bed and saluted with a ‘Yes, sir!’ as though she were in the military. That amused response was doused by the staggering discovery that she was wearing an opulent pearl and diamond necklace, which put her worryingly in mind of a very elegant dog collar. Was it payment for her virginity? A reward for submission?

Filled with self-loathing at that awful suspicion, Ophelia was sufficiently preoccupied to find herself accepting the luxury of breakfast in bed without complaint. The same maid offered to run her a bath and lay out her clothes and a PA phoned to tell her that she would be leaving for Lysander’s house in London at eleven. Ophelia, who had relished her recent freedom to work all the hours of daylight in her garden, felt trapped by the schedule already mapped out for her.

Ophelia rang Pamela.

‘No, of course I didn’t tell my brother about your marriage,’ Pamela declared. ‘In fact Matt’s furious that I didn’t tip him off. I’m practically under siege by the paparazzi down here. Lysander’s security men have put up barriers at the foot of the lane and the police are patrolling. It’s hugely exciting.’

Ophelia was deep in thought. ‘Do you think anyone would be interested in interviewing me?’

‘Are you crazy? Any journalist would kill for the chance! You’re hot news now.’

Ophelia reckoned that she would never have a better opportunity to take the first step in her campaign to regain her freedom. Did she have the nerve to pull it off? She could not think of anything that Lysander would like less than a wife who could not wait to gush about him and his lifestyle in print.

‘I think it would be fun to do an interview, but it would have to be in London this afternoon. Do you think your brother would like to do it?’

Pamela was so thrilled by that offer that she offered to act as a go-between and handed out loads of tips on self-presentation. Ophelia inspected her new wardrobe with a purposeful glint in her gaze and combined several colourful items to achieve the tarty over-the-top effect she wanted. Lysander had to be made to appreciate that threat could only take him so far and no further, and that it would provide no defence whatsoever against the indignity of an unsuitable wife.

Lysander travelled back to his London town house around four that afternoon and found it in uproar. Stamitos greeted him tensely at the door and informed him that Ophelia was giving an interview to the press. Staff were grouped in doorways in strained silence. Nobody had the courage to meet Lysander’s utterly disbelieving gaze.

‘Which newspaper?’ Lysander demanded, thinking some sixth-sense prompting must have urged him home a good five hours in advance of his usual finishing time.

Stamitos’s big shoulders took on a visible slump. He named a very popular tabloid that had run several scurrilous stories about Lysander’s sex life in recent years. For a split second Lysander actually felt his skin turn clammy with shock, a sensation he had experienced on only one other occasion since reaching adulthood, which had been when his mother’s illness was first diagnosed.

‘Where are they?’

‘The library,’ Stamitos said heavily.

Lysander could barely credit what he was being told. His library, the most private place in his London home, into which he invited only a chosen few. He had failed to appreciate thatthe very fact that Ophelia was his wife had put her in a position of unfettered power. Who would dare to question anything she did unless he first told them to do so? But why the hell hadn’t someone had the courage to phone him and let him know what was happening?

The library door stood open on a room crowded with people and camera equipment. Lysander breathed in slow and deep. It was beneath his dignity to make a scene but the violation of his privacy felt like an act of treachery. Ophelia was curled up on an antique sofa, looking as tiny, exotic and colourful as a tropical bird. Her make-up was dramatic and she had teamed a very short cerise pink dress with over-the-knee sheer black lace stockings and silver high heels. It was a bizarre outfit. His attention travelled from her enormous lilac-shadowed eyes to her glistening cherry-red mouth and lingered with satisfaction on the pearl and diamond necklace before heading down over the pouting swell of her breasts and finishing at the slender expanse of white thigh visible above the lace stocking. His libido reacted with raunchy enthusiasm: bizarre could be surprisingly sexy.

‘Lysander came to see my home and it was love at first sight,’ Ophelia was gushing with a huge smile. ‘I am so lucky, Matt. Right now it feels like I’m living a fairy tale!’

Lysander stared at that wide natural smile, noting that he had never seen it before, while wondering if there just might be a seed of truth in that brash declaration. All too many women had gone overboard for Lysander, which was why he preferred casual relationships. Constantly arguing with him could be Ophelia’s way of hiding her feelings or even a perverse way of attempting to grab and hold his attention. Was that why she had invited the media into his home and was talking like an overexcited schoolgirl? Some people would dovirtually anything to get publicity. Was this simply the fifteen minutes of fame that she felt she had to have? And why did she sound so chummy with the interviewer?

Lysander watched the young male journalist ogle Ophelia’s legs as she shifted position and suddenly it annoyed the hell out of Lysander that his wife was wearing a short skirt.

‘I want that smile of hers for the front cover,’ the cameraman was telling his assistant.

‘How does it feel to be married to a billionaire?’

‘Blissful.’ Ophelia touched the magnificent jewels encircling her white throat with reverent fingertips. ‘Lysander gave me this necklace today.’

Lysander set his even white teeth together and ground them. Didn’t she realise what she sounded like? He wanted to gag her for her own protection.

‘I understand that even though you only got married yesterday your husband is already back at work. How do you feel about that?’

‘Like I’ve been abandoned,’ Ophelia declared earnestly. ‘Lysander will have to change his lifestyle. I believe married couples should spend a lot of time together. I plan on going everywhere with Lysander. His friends will be my friends and I will share all his interests—’

‘Is that because you doubt your husband’s ability to stay faithful if you’re not around?’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt that at all,’ Ophelia told him chirpily. ‘Lysander worships the ground I walk on. I know he’s missing me just as much as I’m missing him today.’

At that precise moment, Ophelia saw Lysander and a guilty blush of mortification enveloped her in a heat wave from head to toe. Yet, for a split second, she still stared for he lookedbreathtakingly handsome and the sexy epitome of sleek male sophistication. Unfortunately she had not expected him to show up during the actual interview when giant fibs and breezy inanities of the most embarrassing sort were tripping off her tongue. Heads began turning and silence fell as his presence registered on Pamela’s brother, Matt, and his companions.

‘Which is why I came home early,’ Lysander drawled with a glittering smile, crossing the room to close an arm round his blushing bride.

Ophelia was struck dumb, but it didn’t matter because Lysander took over with a witty male quip about some racing event that had taken place that day. And suddenly, all the men were talking cars and drivers and she was no longer the centre of attention. In the midst of it, Lysander gave her a gentle little push in the direction of the door. ‘Go upstairs,’ he breathed in a don’t-mess-with-me undertone before he concluded the interview session with the information that she had to get ready for their flight.

Ophelia had barely reached the bedroom when Lysander strode through the door in her wake. She spun round, nervous as a cat, convinced he would be furious and, even though that was the result she had sought, she wasn’t looking forward to the fallout.

‘There are three little things you need to learn to survive the next five minutes,’ Lysander imparted huskily.

‘And what are they?’ Taut with uncertainty, Ophelia connected with his scorching bronze gaze and felt dizzy. Indeed she felt the sexual power of that driving appraisal to the very core of her being. Her breasts stirred within the push-up bra she wore, the delicate peaks tingling into rigid points. A white-hot tension clenched between her thighs, making her embarrassingly aware of the melting warmth there.

‘One. You don’t talk to the press in any shape or form unless I authorise it—and I never will. As I didn’t tell you that, I will not hold it against you on this one occasion. Who was the journalist? He was too familiar with you.’

‘Pamela’s brother, Matt.’ Ophelia watched his lean, powerful face darken with disapproval. ‘You think he was to blame for leaking the news of our marriage to the media but he had nothing to do with it. Pamela didn’t tell him or anybody else. You condemned my best friend unfairly.’

Lysander made no response.

Deflated by that non-reaction, Ophelia tilted her chin. ‘So because of that, I decided that if I was going to give anyone an interview it should be Matt Arnold.’

Lysander jerked loose his tie and unbuttoned his collar. ‘Two,’ he continued, ignoring her protest in defence of her friend. ‘You do not appear in public in clothes that reveal that much of your body.’

Ophelia was bewildered by that charge, as she had not thought a glimpse of cleavage and a little leg would bother him in the slightest. Her outfit was tame in comparison with those worn by most female celebrities.

‘I’m wearing underwear,’ she told him with a sniff, well primed by Pamela’s addiction to magazines to know that some women chose not to do so.

In the act of removing his jacket, Lysander gave her a smouldering look of censure. ‘Don’t even think about going out without it. In fact everything between shoulder and knee should be out of sight.’

‘Is that a fact? So why is it that according to what I’ve been told you’re always being seen out with half-naked women?’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ Lysander drawled with hauteur. ‘You’remy wife and in a different league. I expect modest and circumspect behaviour from you.’

Ophelia was dumbfounded by that little speech, which fairly bulged with the hypocrisy of double standards, but which carried not a single note of apology or self-justification. But she was also amazed that he wasn’t shouting at her. ‘So what was the third thing I needed to learn to survive the next five minutes?’

‘How to appease an angry husband.’ Lysander strolled forward and scooped her up in his arms.

A startled gasp escaped her as he hoisted her up onto the bed. Stunning metallic eyes blazed over her and he ravished her mouth with a hard, hungry kiss that sent her blood racing through her veins. The stab of his tongue mimicked the carnal thrust of his lean body and left her shaking with excitement, a knot of heat and tension pulsing and tightening low in her pelvis.

A wolfish smile on his lean powerful features, he kneed apart her legs and skimmed exploring fingers up below her skirt. It was broad daylight. She was shocked, uncertain. She knew she should stop him. She knew that she had promised herself that she would not sleep with him again but he was touching her with an intimacy that left her boneless with desire. He pushed up her skirt.

‘No, we shouldn’t,’ she mumbled in desperation.

‘But you’re so ready for me.’ Knowing fingertips traced the damp, swollen heart of her beneath the satin panties she wore and when he found the most sensitive spot of all, she moaned in supplication. As she writhed he made a roughened sound of masculine appreciation. Shame that she couldn’t control or hide her eagerness slivered through her.

Lysander studied her with smouldering satisfaction. ‘When all those guys were looking at your dainty white thighs, thisis what I was thinking about, yineka mou.’ he confessed. ‘My right to lie between them.’

He tugged off her panties, positioned her to his liking and mounted her without ceremony. She trembled when she felt the hot probe of his rigid shaft against her yielding softness. He plunged into her honeyed passage hard and fast. It was primitive, raw and unbelievably exciting. Shock waves of erotic sensation racked her slender body. Raising her to him, he sank even deeper into her lush depths, withdrew and then slammed back into her. Delirious with need and on fire with sensation, she cried out. The pleasure was wildly intense. His rampant passion sent her soaring to a mindless peak of ecstasy where the world shattered around her. Nothing had ever felt so powerful and her slender body convulsed in wild contractions of delight. Drained in the aftermath and shaken by the sense of connection she now had with him, she wrapped her arms round him and struggled to breathe again.

Lysander was stunned to appreciate that he had lost control with her. Questioning eyes screened by his thick lashes, Lysander gazed down at her and marvelled at his appetite for her. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No,’ she framed gruffly, mortified by what had just happened between them and twisting her head away.

‘I was rough and you’re tiny, yineka mou.’ His dark drawl hoarse, he bent his handsome head and pressed his sensual mouth to the tender skin of her throat.

‘Hmm …’ Tiny little shivers rippled through Ophelia in response. She was sensitised to his every caress.

‘I’m a very sexual man. You excite me,’ he confided huskily, grazing her delicate skin with his teeth. ‘But I don’t think you could take me again right now.’

When she realized that she was being asked a question,Ophelia’s face flamed. Even lying there she was conscious of the ache of discomfort his passion had induced. ‘No, I couldn’t,’ she agreed in stifled embarrassment.

‘My little virgin wife—I should have been more considerate.’ His tone was teasing as he levered back from her, adjusted his clothing and smoothed back his black hair. He looked cool and in control. Yet after that wild conflagration, Ophelia honestly thought that she would never be the same again. With shaking hands she yanked down her skirt over her nakedness.

Without warning a frown line divided his well-shaped brows. ‘Are you using any contraception?’

In a daze at that query, Ophelia shook her head and sat up.

Lysander had fallen very still and there was an ashen quality to his skin, for he was shattered by his carelessness and unable to explain it even to his own satisfaction. The very last thing he wanted was a child. As he had no desire to be a father, he had always been very careful not to run any risks in that department. If his caution had occasionally restricted his enjoyment he had accepted that.

Theos … I’m afraid that I didn’t take any precautions either,’ Lysander imparted with a gravity that made his feelings on the subject very clear. ‘I won’t attempt to excuse my negligence. It’s not a mistake I’ve made before and I hope that there won’t be any repercussions.’

Ophelia dropped her head and very much hoped so too because his attitude chilled her. He was appalled by the very idea that she might fall pregnant. Negligence was a serious word to use. She was frantically counting dates inside her head and stiffened at the acknowledgement that she was dangerously within reach of the most fertile part of her cycle. ‘Let’s hope for the best,’ she muttered stiltedly.

‘I have some calls to make before we head for the airport.’

Ophelia let him get as far as the door before she spoke again. ‘Did you believe me about Matt Arnold? That his sister, Pamela, didn’t leak the fact that we were married to the newspapers?’

Sardonic eyes rested on her anxious face. ‘Of course I didn’t believe you. How could I? Perhaps you leaked that story yourself. Your conduct today underlined your guilt.’

‘And how on earth do you make that out?’ Ophelia snapped in disconcertion.

Lysander dealt her a derisive look of disbelief. ‘You married me yesterday. Today you invited a newspaper into my home. Your eagerness for media attention speaks for itself.’

Ophelia went for a shower in the state-of-the-art bathroom and while she washed she cried with anger, frustration and the most awful hollow sense of homesickness. It should have occurred to her that he would make that rather obvious deduction. An exercise intended merely to annoy him had rebounded on her, for she knew he would never accept now that she had not tipped off the press about their wedding. He saw her as a cheap publicity-hungry trollop, fine for sex but nothing else.

So why did that bother her so much when all she wanted from him was a divorce? Although how did she dare to ask herself such a question when he had put her on his bed and she had demonstrated as much self-command as a rag doll in the passionate encounter that had followed? When she looked at him, she burned for him and all her defences crumbled. It was that basic and it was the most tormenting truth she had ever had to deal with. She had believed that she was strong but now she was confronting her weakness and her pride was in the dust.

But why was she so hurt? That was what scared her the most. Why did she feel so rejected? Naturally he didn’t wanther to conceive, but had he had to turn pale as death at what was surely only a small risk? She didn’t want a baby either, of course she didn’t—well, at some time maybe in the future with the right person, and Lysander Metaxis was most decidedly not the right person. Her hunger for him had nothing to do with feelings, she reasoned fiercely. It was disgusting that it should be that way and she was ashamed of it, but she was not remotely like her mother. No, she wasn’t, she absolutely wasn’t. She was too intelligent to get fixated on a man who would never love her, who would never offer her exclusive affection or fidelity and who would never want to walk down the street with her and show her off. Much, much too intelligent …




CHAPTER SEVEN


IT was late afternoon the following day before Lysander and Ophelia finally landed in Greece.

A late seasonal fall of snow the night before had led to a cessation of flights and long delays. Hiring accommodation at an airport hotel, Lysander used the extra time to work with his business team and ensured that Ophelia didn’t get the chance to talk to him in private again. Indeed, faced with his cool detachment, she felt like the invisible woman. Listening to dialogues that centred solely on the stock market, derivatives and interest rates did not improve her mood. Once or twice, when she looked at Lysander, she found herself helplessly reliving the raw heat of their lovemaking the previous afternoon; his aloofness since then could only make her feel furiously ashamed of that episode. In the early hours she took a nap in the bedroom of their suite while still fully clothed.

Overlooked in the excitement of the stock market opening, she was the last person to be roused and she missed out on breakfast and the chance to change out of her creased clothing, so had to take care of that necessity when they finally boarded the jet. By then she was in a defiant mood and, disdaining the more dressy options in her suitcase, she pulled on casual combats and a T-shirt. Lysander had insisted thatthey pretend that their marriage was normal. He had threatened her with court action, then had wrenched her from her home, her garden and her parrot while persistently refusing to offer her the smallest explanation for his behaviour. But when was he planning to start acting like a newly married man? Or were his staff already aware that his marriage was an empty charade? Albeit a charade with a little sexual action thrown in for colour, Ophelia reflected, squirming with self-loathing.

When she emerged from the luxurious cabin an odd little silence fell and absolutely nobody looked in her direction, while her husband’s attention seemed welded to his newspaper. It was a response that did nothing to relieve her suspicion that on board a Metaxis jet non-working personnel ranked as the lowest of the low in the pecking order.

Lysander, however, was gripped by the article on his bride in the newspaper for which Matt, Pamela Arnold’s brother, was a writer. Unfortunately the old link between the Metaxis and Stewart families—the wedding that never took place between Aristide and Cathy—had been dug up and given a fresh melodramatic airing. Lysander hoped his mother didn’t come across the item, since she tended to be sensitive about that episode and he was determined to keep her spirits up during her medical treatment.

Ophelia’s interview was only the jewel in the crown of a spread that contrived to flatter her from every possible angle. The dialogue had been polished clean of the smallest hint that Ophelia might regard gifts of very expensive jewellery as the best bit of having married a billionaire. Indeed in the published version Ophelia now waxed lyrical about how she hoped to use her privileged position to do some good in the world and came across as a thoroughly nice girl with traditional values.

He was very surprised to learn that until the age of sixteen years she had lived in a tough housing estate with a mother who had problems with alcohol and unsuitable men. Social Services had been frequent callers. There was a photograph of Ophelia about the age of ten clutching a dark-haired toddler. They looked like half-starved waifs.

‘Ophelia was a great little mother to her sister. Took her to school, did everything for her, but then she didn’t have a choice, did she?’ a former neighbour was quoted as saying. ‘Her ma, Cathy, was more of a child than she was.’

Lysander wondered if the little sister had died with the mother in the train crash as there was no further mention of her. Without doubt, as sob stories went, it was a blinder and the unnamed contributors must all have been close friends, for nobody had a bad word to say about his bride. Had her difficult childhood made her avaricious? Or had her troubled mother and scheming, embittered grandmother tainted her with a desire for revenge?

Why did nothing about Ophelia add up? Why was she such a mixture of opposing traits? She had trained for three years to be a low-earning horticulturist and there was a picture of her dressed like a scarecrow—albeit one with shining eyes and a happy smile. Yes, she liked getting muddy and clearly always had. He found it hard to equate that Ophelia with the woman who had posed in lace stockings and with a vacuous smile for the camera. Why had she claimed to want out of their marriage when, just twenty-four hours later, she had done her utmost to attract the very worst kind of publicity?

When Lysander handed Ophelia a newspaper she felt bewildered—until she saw the picture of herself and Molly. Her tummy went into a nervous spiral, a reaction that only got worse as she ploughed through the article that laid bare herchequered childhood. Her late mother’s inadequacy as a parent was now revealed for all to see and it filled Ophelia with shame. But what she hated most was the raking over of Cathy’s doomed romance with Aristide Metaxis and she blamed herself for being stupid enough to court publicity in the first place. A lesson had been learned, she conceded painfully.

‘I’m afraid I have some matters to take care of before I can join you on the island,’ Lysander murmured as they disembarked the plane.

‘What island?’ Ophelia enquired stiffly without looking at him.

Even Lysander’s tough hide was pierced by the ramifications of that leading question. ‘I bought an island a few years ago.’

Her expression stony and unimpressed, Ophelia pursed her pink lips as if she were sucking on a lemon. ‘I suppose it’s surrounded by sea and very private?’

‘Ne … Yes.’

‘How thrilling,’ Ophelia droned in a not-thrilled voice, imagining herself marooned on a giant sun-baked rock without occupation while he enjoyed himself elsewhere. ‘Please don’t worry about me. I may well be as dried-up as an Egyptian mummy by the time you deign to take notice of my existence again. But no doubt if someone props me up in a corner you’ll be quite happy with the remains rather than the demanding reality of a living, breathing wife!’

‘Very funny,’ Lysander countered flatly.

‘You ignored me all the way here—you didn’t even tell me where we were going—’

‘We are in the middle of a stock-market crisis,’ Lysander growled in an incredulous undertone. ‘While you were sleeping, I was working!’

Shimmering eyes the colour of pale blue ice landed on him. ‘So?’ Ophelia challenged just as a plethora of cameras went off behind security barriers in the airport arrivals hall that prevented the paparazzi from getting any closer to their quarries.

Wholly disconcerted by a counter-attack of a type he had never previously received, because the importance of making money had always provided an acceptable catch-all excuse, Lysander gritted his perfect teeth. ‘Smile for the cameras,’ he told her in a sardonic undertone.

‘Oh, dear, my battery’s gone flat,’ Ophelia responded. ‘Nothing to smile about either—’

‘You’re the one who set off this media circus!’

Ophelia paled at that blunt reminder and contrived a rather hunted curve of the lips. In truth she was genuinely shocked when it finally dawned on her that the heaving crush of shouting people behind the barriers was comprosed of members of the press waiting solely on their arrival.

In the limousine, Lysander turned bronzed eyes of censure on her. ‘I expect you to behave in public!’

‘I expect you to behave in private,’ Ophelia responded with spirit. ‘You told me to act like a wife and that’s what you’re getting. No bride in her right mind would put up with this kind of treatment on what is supposed to be her honeymoon!’

Lysander startled her by throwing back his arrogant dark head and laughing with husky appreciation. She was crazy, but it exerted the strangest appeal for him. Just as quickly he remembered the silk and velvet feel of her and the eager curve and welcome of her slight body against his. The heavy pulse at his groin threatened to become painful. He closed his lean, powerful hands over hers and pulled her to him with easy strength. ‘If I make it back tonight, I promise not toignore you,’ he murmured huskily, slumberous metallic eyes full of sensual promise.

Her rising temper was punctured by the shock of that unsettlingly direct masculine response as it made nonsense of her attempt to call him to book and shame him for his attitude. Ophelia went red to the roots of her hair. ‘That isn’t what I meant,’ she hissed. ‘You are not welcome in my bed. There’s not going to be any more of that kind of nonsense—’

In silent answer, Lysander clamped her up against the hard contours of his lean, muscular frame and ravished her soft mouth with devouring hunger. A glittering ripple of white-hot heat and energy snaked through her and she fought a pitched battle with her response before the sudden sound of the passenger door opening made both of them pull apart in a simultaneous action.

‘Later, yineka mou,’ he breathed, before he climbed out in front of a large building. The passenger door thudded shut again and the limo moved off.

In a daze Ophelia shook her head, uncertain whether he was finally acting the part of her new husband or simply set on outmanoeuvring her.

Inside the exclusive clinic, Lysander was greeted by the medical specialist he had arranged to meet. Reassured by the latest bulletin on his mother’s health, he used a private lift to access her comfortable suite. The older woman’s passion for keeping her illness a secret from all but her closest friends had exasperated him. But he was deeply attached to Virginia and, although it was not a sentiment he could bring himself to share even with her, he tried to respect her wishes. Her cancer diagnosis had shattered him and the strain of keeping his concern hidden had been compounded when the older woman initially succumbed to depression and refused to consider surgery.

Although exhausted by her recent treatment, Virginia, a slim woman in her late fifties, still maintained the highest standards of grooming. But her son was quick to notice her reddened eyelids. He also recognised the corner of the newspaper protruding from beneath a hastily rearranged bedspread.

‘You’ve already seen the article about Ophelia,’ he guessed.

‘I get all the English newspapers.’

‘It upset you.’

Her discomfort patent, Virginia evaded his gaze. ‘No, memories of the past did that. Naturally I’m curious about my new daughter-in-law—her mother was once my friend.’

‘If you had agreed to my telling Ophelia that you were in hospital, I would’ve brought her to meet you.’ In truth, however, Lysander was not yet sure that he could trust Ophelia with his vulnerable mother. Virginia would always be the woman who had supplanted Cathy Stewart in Aristide’s affections.

‘I refuse to blight your first weeks together with this illness,’ the older woman declared staunchly. ‘Particularly so soon after your wife has lost her grandmother. You shouldn’t even be here tonight; you should be with your bride.’

An indulgent look on his lean, strong face, Lysander sat down. ‘I haven’t seen you for several days.’

Virginia sighed. ‘But I’m content. I was very happy when you told me you’d got married. I swear, I was only scared for about twenty seconds thinking that you might’ve married the poor girl purely to get hold of Madrigal Court!’

With difficulty he retained his charismatic smile. ‘Where would you get such a wild idea from?’

‘You’re my son and I love you, even though you can be veryruthless,’ his mother retorted. ‘But I know you would only give up your freedom for someone very special and that quiet, quick wedding was very much your style. From what I’ve read, though, Ophelia’s had rather an unhappy life to date—’

‘But she doesn’t wear it like a badge. She sparkles.’ Lysander selected the descriptive word with care, thinking of the sassy light in Ophelia’s eyes and the liveliness of her quick movements.

Virginia rested anxious brown eyes on her handsome son. ‘What I’m about to say may annoy you, but if I don’t say it and your marriage ends in divorce, I’ll blame myself. You must’ve been angry about the interview that Ophelia gave to the press. She needs time and support to adjust to our world—’ ‘Of course.’

‘Too many women have spoiled you, or perhaps I should say that the possession of power has spoiled you,’ the older woman murmured heavily. ‘You haven’t had to learn how to compromise. I want your marriage to work. I need to know that you have a loving home and family to rely on.’

Lysander paled and drew in a stark swift breath. If your marriage ends in divorce, I’ll blame myself. That assurance in tandem with that word, ‘family', struck him like a thunderclap. Virginia must always have been eager for him to settle down with one woman. Respect for his privacy had kept her silent until illness had concentrated her thoughts on a future that she feared she might not be around to share. He should have guessed that his mother was secretly longing for him to present her with a grandchild. Even though he was an adult, more toughened than most by his experience of violence, betrayal and cruelty, Virginia continued to worry incessantly about his happiness rather than her own. Moremoved than he could bear, he sprang up and walked over to the window.

‘Cherish Ophelia—don’t let business become an excuse to neglect her. There, all done,’ Virginia muttered tightly, well aware that she had trespassed where angels feared to tread. ‘I promise that I won’t say another embarrassing word.’

But though Virginia moved on to urge him to tell her about how her childhood home had fared in Gladys Stewart’s hands, Lysander remained disconcerted by what she had said to him. Such interference in his private life was unprecedented and tapped into the concern he contrived to suppress most of the time. Now that concern resurfaced and a hollow sensation filled him. Did his mother know something about her medical condition that he did not? Although her treatment was proceeding well, did she have reason to suspect that her long-term prognosis was poor?

Her first glimpse of Lysander’s island took Ophelia’s breath away; Kastros was very lush and beautiful.

A colourful fishing village lay at one end of the island while Lysander’s stunning contemporary house sat in splendid isolation at the other, the two joined by a winding single ribbon of road. His home overlooked a glorious bay bounded by pine forests and a shimmering white crescent of empty sand. When Ophelia walked through the front door, she was greeted by a smiling group of staff, who could not do enough for her. She was offered an immediate tour of the vast house, which was amazing in terms of design, technology and comfort. A delicious dinner was served on a shaded terrace. The chef even came out to check that she had enjoyed the food. She was impressed to death—she couldn’t help it.

But as the night hours advanced and there was no furtherword from Lysander, a closer scrutiny of her surroundings had a rather different effect on her. The master bedroom suite was built on palatial lines. She was astonished when she discovered that the closets in the dressing room already contained a remarkable array of brand-new designer garments, sets of silk lingerie and accessories—all in a selection of sizes. The adjoining bathroom was stuffed to the gills with a wide selection of exclusive perfume and cosmetics. Slowly it dawned on Ophelia that the house was a playboy’s paradise where Lysander must have entertained many different women.

She rested newly aware and censorious eyes on the massive bed, the number of mirrors and the mood lighting. His bedroom was a sophisticated adult pleasure room. No prizes for guessing how Lysander liked to relax between business deals! With lots of sex and the sort of women who expected to be richly remunerated for their time in a billionaire’s bed. She thought of the necklace he had given her and shuddered with distaste.

By midnight, Ophelia had installed her possessions in a guest room at the far end of the house. She had to make boundaries and stick to them. Besides, she wanted a divorce and her goal was to become a thorn in Lysander’s flesh. Her good behaviour had not advanced her cause at the airport hotel or during the flight to Greece. Lysander was accustomed to women who accepted being treated like the wallpaper. She should have moaned incessantly and clung to him, but she had shrunk from putting on such an act in front of his staff.

Her pride revolted at the suspicion that she was already allowing Lysander to ride roughshod over her. He had torn her from her busy, fulfilling life and dumped her on a private island where she had neither company nor occupation. Andwhere was he? That was what Ophelia wanted to know. While she was marooned in a giant house in the middle of nowhere, where was her bridegroom and what was he doing? After all, hadn’t he insisted that they pretend that theirs was a normal marriage? Was every single sacrifice to be hers?

Mid-morning the next day, she was informed of Lysander’s imminent arrival long before she actually saw the helicopter flying in over the bay. The staff rushed around. Anticipation hung heavy in the air. Everywhere Lysander went, the red carpet was rolled out to welcome him and awe-inspired ordinary mortals made enormous efforts to ensure that nothing displeased him. She discovered that it took considerable courage to ignore the fuss and the expectation that she behave in a similar fashion.

Lysander was annoyed that Ophelia wasn’t in the front hall when he arrived. He discovered that he had a surprisingly clear concept of how a wife should behave. Ophelia should have been eager to see him and have taken the first opportunity to greet him. Didn’t she know anything at all about what pleased a man? Well, not in the bedroom, he conceded, but he didn’t have a problem with his role of instructor in that department. Virginia’s strictures nudged to the forefront of his mind and his sleek black brows pleated. Of course, if he didn’t tell Ophelia what he expected from her how was she to know? Perhaps he should write it all down in clear, concise language that could not be misunderstood. Proper guidelines would soon sort out the problem.

‘Where is my wife?’ he demanded of his staff.

Lysander could not credit the answer. Broad shoulders straight as axe handles, the carriage of his big powerful frame imposing, he strode through his house and knocked on the relevant guest room door. A man spoiled by too many womenor the possession of too much power might not have knocked, might even have raised his voice from the foot of the corridor. But he was not such a man, Lysander told himself with sterling conviction.

On the other side of the door, Ophelia tensed and braced herself for a showdown.




CHAPTER EIGHT


‘YES?’ Ophelia enquired frostily as the door spread back in an ever-widening arc. It was a challenge not to react physically to her sudden view of Lysander, for the minute she saw him she became intensely aware of him. It wasn’t just that he was gorgeous and intensely, unashamedly masculine. It wasn’t even his vibrant aura of energy that attracted her most. It was the powerful buzz of his presence that excited her to the point that she literally held her breath.

Dense black lashes semi-screened Lysander’s stunning bronze gaze and a wicked smile of amusement marked his stubborn, passionate mouth. She might not have been poised by the front door, but she had most definitely been waiting for him. Her crystalline blue eyes glimmered like stars in her heart-shaped face. Her tension and unease were so palpable in the delicate contours of her face and the tautness of her slight figure that his exasperation evaporated. He strode forward and snatched her up into his arms with raw masculine enthusiasm.

‘Sta diavolo …! thought I was never going to get here, yineka mou!’

‘Lysander!’ she squeaked and it wasn’t supposed to be a squeak, it was supposed to be a freezing reproof. But onceagain he had taken her totally by surprise and had steamrollered over her defences before she could muster a more forbidding stance.

‘I haven’t tasted you since the day before yesterday,’ Lysander declared thickly against the tremulous line of her mouth. Then, pulling her right into him, he strode with her out of the room, both arms wrapped round her in a potent embrace. ‘For a man of my strong appetites that is a very long time, hara mou.’

His deep accented drawl shimmied down her taut spine like a velvet caress.

‘P-put me down,’ Ophelia stammered in a hoarse undertone.

‘You don’t mean that, not now that you finally have me all to yourself. I will never ignore your existence again,’ Lysander husked, letting his white teeth nibble at her lower lip and taking advantage of her strangled gasp to dip his tongue into the moist tender interior of her mouth, which she had attempted to deny him.

Her slim fingers clenched the springy depths of his black hair. He used his tongue to dart and thrust with erotic mastery and she shivered violently in his hold. Her body was awakening in a feverish burst of response that was so powerful it almost hurt. She tried to think, to reason, at virtually the same moment that he pushed her flat on a yielding surface. Her heart was pounding fit to burst. He thrust her green cotton top out of his way and dealt even more expeditiously with the wisp of silk and lace that covered the pouting mounds of her breasts as they rose and fell with the rapidity of her breathing.

Stunned by the speed with which events were unfolding and the humming urgency of her own quivering body, Ophelia froze. Her brain might not feel that agile, but the baring ofher skin for Lysander’s touch sent her mental alarm bells jangling and she whipped up her hands to cover herself. ‘I mustn’t …’ she told him.

‘And I must,’ Lysander traded with amusement, bending his arrogant dark head to taste her full pink mouth with slow, delicious intensity.

The shimmer of desire washing through her taut length became a hot greedy surge that centred on the pulse at the damp, hot heart of her body. She dug her hips into the mattress in an unconscious need to ease that ache while her palms dropped away from her chest.

‘Do that again,’ she heard herself whisper.

And he did. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recognised the faint heady aroma of a fragrance that was familiar to her. Her bewildered senses and preoccupied brain attempted to cut through the confused feeling that something didn’t fit. He closed his hands over hers to lift her back against the pillows.

Eyes brilliant with hunger, he paused to admire the jutting fullness of her bare breasts. ‘Delectable,’ he purred, skimming a thumb over a rigid rosy nipple so that her teeth clenched together in helpless reaction.

Her eyes were shut tight. He lowered his head and captured the lush, tender peak with his mouth and his fingers. In the same instant that she clutched at his shoulder to steady herself and her wanton body was racked by an explosion of excruciating pleasure, she recognised the mysterious scent that had tugged at her memory and almost simultaneously appreciated why it had felt so wrong. It was a woman’s perfume, not a man’s cologne.

‘You’ve been with someone else …’ Ophelia framed, sick and empty with shock as she made that obvious deduction.

Lysander straightened with a frown. ‘What did you say?’

Ophelia wrenched down her top with shaking hands and scrambled clumsily off the bed. Both responses were instinctive. Her skin felt cold and clammy. How could she have been so stupid? She spread a stricken glance round the room, which she had earlier deemed an adult playroom for a man who preferred sexual variety to steady relationships. Well, she could not say that she had not been warned.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lean, strong face taut, Lysander was studying her with concerned bronze eyes.

Ophelia folded her arms because she was afraid he would see that she was shaking. Her legs were all woolly and wobbly. She felt utterly betrayed and foolish. ‘That’s why you stayed in Athens last night. You were with another woman.’

Lysander had fallen still. He had no idea what had sparked off the accusation and he had no intention of responding to it. He had a policy of never explaining or denying such allegations and it had served him well since the teen years. He didn’t do jealous scenes. He didn’t soothe tantrums. He didn’t go there at all.

‘Don’t you dare stand there looking at me like I’ve lost my wits!’ Ophelia slung at him, her temper rising as her nervous tension ran off the scale.

‘What do you expect?’ Lysander enquired with abrasive cool. ‘One minute we’re making love and the next you call a halt without warning and start trying to stage an argument.’

Her indignation was increasing in direct proportion to his cold-blooded lack of concern. ‘You’ve got about as much feeling inside you as the rocks on the beach!’

‘But you have more than enough for both of us, glikia mou,’ Lysander countered, smooth as silk in his satire.

That retaliation struck Ophelia like a sobering slap. Hecould not have made it clearer that he didn’t care how she felt. How could she have slept with a guy willing to treat her like this? A hurricane of stormy emotion clawed at her. On some level she suspected that if she paused for thought and actually faced what she was feeling it might destroy her. She had ignored her misgivings, turned her back on what she knew to be right and succumbed to the temptation he offered. So if she couldn’t resist Lysander, did that make her one bit better than the women who couldn’t resist him or his wealth?

‘Your jacket smells of a woman’s perfume,’ Ophelia told him resolutely. She was giving him one more chance to explain himself without knowing when she had made the decision to give him an extra opportunity, which he most certainly did not deserve.

Handsome head at an imperious angle, dark, deep-set gaze stony, Lysander lifted and dropped a shoulder in a fluid shrug that just roared bone-deep stubborn insolence. ‘I don’t do scenes like this.’

All fired up and desperate to hear him assure her that her suspicions were wildly off beam, Ophelia could not believe that that was all he was prepared to offer her in the way of explanation. ‘You don’t do—?’

‘I don’t accept being shouted at either,’ Lysander delivered icily.

‘If you imagine that that was a shout, I wouldn’t like to think how you would react to the genuine article.’ Flushed and rigid, Ophelia rested defiant blue eyes on him and tilted her chin. She would have no peace of mind until she knew the worst and had never ducked bad news in her life. ‘Were you with someone else last night? I have the right to know.’

Lysander dealt her a smouldering appraisal. ‘You have the right to nothing.’

Her slender hands snapped into tight fists by her side. ‘Oh, yes, I do. We’re married. If you’d kept it platonic and everything was fake, then I wouldn’t have the right to question you like this. But you wouldn’t settle for that arrangement,’ she reminded him fiercely. ‘So, either this is a marriage or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.’

‘No comment.’

It was the last straw for Ophelia. She lifted the water carafe by the bed and chucked it at him. She didn’t think about doing it, she simply closed her hand round the glass bottle and slung it with all her might. He ducked, which infuriated her, and the glass smashed against the wall, sending pieces of glass and drops of water flying in all directions.

‘I need a shower,’ Lysander imparted with hauteur. ‘Hopefully you’ll have calmed down by the time I reappear, yineka mou.’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Ophelia advised shakily.

In the smouldering silence, Lysander removed his jacket and tossed it on the bed. He was furious with her. How dared she start ranting and raving and throwing things at him? He couldn’t believe it, but he had married a bunny-boiler! He would have dumped her if he weren’t married to her. Although he wouldn’t have dumped her until she had apologised. No, he thought with seething fury, not until he had her in his bed begging for release or on her knees pleading for forgiveness.

‘These rooms say all there is to know about your attitude to women,’ Ophelia condemned in a driven rush of pent-up feeling. ‘You just use us with contempt.’

Lysander swung round. Metallic eyes landed on her like lightning rods. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘The designer clothes in multi-sizes in the wardrobes. Payment for services received?’ she questioned in a voice thatwas very close to breaking, stark strain etched in her fragile bone structure. ‘You don’t treat women like equals. You keep them at a distance. You prefer to buy sex or should I call it … rewarding your lovers with very expensive presents?’

Lysander was incensed by that indictment of his character. ‘The rich are expected to be generous. I like my guests to enjoy themselves. I won’t apologise for that.’

Ophelia compressed her lips. ‘I—’

‘Be careful how you refer to my sexual partners when you’re one of them and when you’ve cost me much more than any other woman in the short time I’ve known you,’ Lysander drawled in sardonic continuance.





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lynne-graham/playboys-the-greek-tycoon-s-disobedient-bride-the-ruthless-ma/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.