Mediterranean Tycoons

‘Eloise, darling.’ She spun around in surprise at the entrance to the hall that led to the bedroom, and the breath caught in his throat.

Marcus’s gaze flew over her. Her red hair framed a startled but incredibly beautiful face and fell in a tumbling mass of curls over her creamy shoulders. Her body was encased in a wisp of blue silk, tiny straps supporting the slip-styled dress that ended a few inches above her knees. There was no mistaking the firm thrust of her breasts or the tightening of her nipples as she stared at him, and what held him transfixed was not the shock that widened her brilliant emerald eyes, but the sheer wonder of her smile that followed.

‘Marcus, you’re back!’ Eloise cried in delight. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until next week.’ She blinked; it really was Marcus, looking staggeringly handsome in a perfectly tailored silver-grey business suit. But it was the glittering warmth in his dark eyes, especially for her, that made her breath catch.

He started slowly towards her. ‘I cancelled the rest of my business meetings,’ he declared throatily. ‘I wanted to surprise you.’

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_64e44953-dbd8-50f7-9c37-2ac325a67186)

IT TOOK every bit of will power she possessed to stop herself running to him and throwing her arms around him. ‘Marcus.’ She licked her lips nervously. ‘I’m…’ Glad to see you, was what she had been going to say. What a copout! He was her lover, and she loved him, and courageously she decided to try honesty. ‘I’ve missed you.’ After all, he had returned early; that had to mean something.

He stopped when he was inches away from her. ‘Eloise,’ he husked. His dark eyes, blazing with desire, scanned her and, reaching out, he folded her in his arms and covered her mouth with his own.

His mouth was hot and searching with a hungry intensity that she met and matched. Eloise whispered his name as his tongue parted her lips. She arched against him and wound her arms around his neck, her hands stroking the silken hair at the nape, before sweeping lovingly across his powerful shoulders.

‘So long,’ Marcus groaned and pressed her body to his. ‘Too long.’ He could feel the rounded fullness of her breasts crushed against his chest. This was what he had come back for…

She was all woman; the scent of her, the soft curves and long shapely legs, promised and beguiled. He moulded her buttocks and lifted her, the seductive tilt of her pelvis fitting into the cradle of his hips, as he ground his rock-hard length against her in raw need.

‘Ooops, sorry.’

Marcus jerked his head back, his black gaze clashing with the blue of Ted Charlton. The man had obviously just strolled into the room from the direction of the bedroom. Marcus felt the breath leave his body as though he had been punched in the gut, and for a second a red haze of rage blinded him. He swore violently in Greek, and abruptly thrust Eloise away from him. ‘You bitch.’

Eloise stumbled back, her eyes widening in horror as she realised what it must look like. ‘No. It’s not like…’ She looked up at Marcus and ground to a halt. The change in him was devastating. Incredulous rage clenched his hard dark features, a muscle jerking uncontrollably in his taut cheek.

‘Then what is he doing here?’ Marcus’s eyes burnt into hers. ‘Or shall I guess?’ he drawled with cynical contempt. ‘A week without sex and you’re anyone’s.’ His gaze sliced back to Ted, apparently unable to believe what he was seeing.

Eloise was shaking, terrified by the cold deadly look in Marcus’s eyes; but beneath the terror she had a hysterical desire to laugh at his contemptuous conclusion she could not live without sex for more than a week. If only he knew…

She grabbed his arm. ‘No, Marcus, listen to me. I bumped into Ted in a department store; he was shopping for perfume for his girlfriend, and I challenged him to explain what he meant by telling you I had slept with him.’

‘I just bet you did. Persuaded him to lie for you?’

‘Damn it, no.’ Eloise cut him off. ‘Ted lied to you; he told me the truth over dinner.’ She tightened her grip on his jacket as he would have pulled away. ‘All about your celebration dinner and getting drunk and the girl in the bar. He told you he slept with me because he was jealous of you. Surely you can see that…?’ she prompted desperately.

‘All I see is a conniving lying bitch,’ he snarled, his black eyes blazing, ‘who would sell her body for the price of a dinner,’ and she knew he hadn’t believed a word she’d said.

The Marcus she loved didn’t exist, she realised with blinding clarity. He was a figment of a nineteen-year-old’s imagination. She didn’t recognise the man towering over her, dark and dangerous, but for Ted’s sake she tried once more to defuse the situation.

‘I shared dinner with Ted because he wanted to explain and apologise to me for lying about me to you, nothing more—and if you’re too pig-headed to see that, tough.’

Marcus took a step towards her and he lifted her hand off his sleeve, then he stopped. Her green eyes clashed with his; she saw the fury and contempt and thought, What was the point?

All that linked her and Marcus was sex. A shameful passion on her side she was helpless to control, and a virile man’s lust powered by revenge on his. Marcus did not love her, and never would, and that was the greatest pain of all. She took a deep shuddering breath and suddenly Ted was pushing Eloise to one side and facing Marcus.

‘If you want to lash out at anyone, Kouvaris, try me.’

Marcus’s hand shot out and he grabbed Ted by the collar and slammed him back against the wall. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he snarled. He wanted to smash the man’s face to a pulp and he didn’t question the reason.

‘You’re a fool, Kouvaris,’ Ted grated in a high-pitched voice, nearly choking and clutching at Marcus’s hands.

‘I can beat the hell out of you, any day, in any way,’ Marcus raged, his violence controlled by a thread.

‘I know,’ Ted shot back. ‘That’s why I lied and said I’d slept with Eloise. I saw the way you looked at Eloise the first time I met you,’ he stated cynically. ‘And I saw the way the girl in the bar looked at you, when the night before she had been all over me. I was drunk, I was jealous and I lied. Rejected by a wife and a bar-girl, I was damned if I was going to make it easy for you to get Eloise. Lousy, I know, but that’s the truth.’

The two men stared at each other. Ted’s face red and Marcus’s grey beneath his tan, only his eyes blazing black with rage.

For a long moment Eloise simply stared at the scene before, all her energy concentrated on fighting the awful pain she was trying to hide. But as she watched the pain dissolved into a quite different emotion.

They were like two stags at bay, both ruthless powerful men, leaders of the pack. She recognised the angry acknowledgement between them—the old giving way to the young, but not without a fight—and a slow-burning anger ignited in her breast.

This was her home, her life. Pride stiffened her spine. She didn’t have to justify her actions to any man, certainly not the two egotistical male chauvinists before her, who were scrapping like two dogs over a bone. And in her living room!

‘Right, that’s it! Cut it out,’ she yelled. ‘And both of you can get out.’

Marcus shot her a look of outraged incredulity. She was ordering him out… He was the injured party in this debacle.

She met his gaze, her green eyes sparking fire, and she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so angry, Marcus looked so put out! ‘Let him go,’ she snapped.

Slowly, Marcus released his iron grip on Ted’s collar and some of the rage faded from his eyes. She was standing tall and proud, her luscious body bristling with tension. She was beautiful when she was angry. She was beautiful any time, and lost in passion beneath him she was paradise. Whether she and Ted were telling the truth or not, was he prepared to give up all that simmering sexuality? The tightening in his groin answered for him. Hell, no—not yet.

Marcus glanced back at Ted. ‘I think it’s time you left,’ he grated through his teeth. ‘Eloise is mine.’ His narrowed eyes fixed on Ted, his great body tense and towering threateningly over his rival. ‘You understand?’

‘Do you?’ Ted murmured dryly, shaking his head. He walked past Marcus. And, for sheer devilment, stopped and dropped a light kiss on Eloise’s cheek. ‘So long and good luck, and if you ever need me get in touch.’

‘You’re pushing your luck,’ Marcus growled, taking a step towards him.

‘No.’ Ted grinned back and, picking up the gift-wrapped bottle of perfume from the table where he had placed it earlier, he waved it in front of Marcus’s face. ‘I never trust to luck. I have a hot date tomorrow night, and I know how to treat a lady, unlike some.’ Laughing, he strolled out of the apartment.

Her legs trembling, Eloise sat down on the nearest sofa. ‘I think you’d better leave.’ Marcus had claimed her as his, as though she was an inanimate object, instead of an intelligent woman with thoughts and feelings. Well, he could go to hell, for all she cared. She had had enough.

‘No,’ Marcus bit out, crossing the space between them in one lithe stride. ‘I cancelled my plans for the next few days to see you, and I haven’t changed my mind.’

He looked down at Eloise. Maybe she was innocent where Ted was concerned. Ted had been very drunk in New York, and bitching at losing his wife and a ton of money. He vaguely remembered Ted introducing him to the blonde bimbo, and then she had been all over Marcus like a rash, so much so he had been quite rude to get rid of her.

As for the rest—his dark eyes roamed over Eloise. She was watching him, her green eyes cool, her luscious mouth held in a grim line. The red-gold tumble of her hair falling over her silky-smooth shoulders, so proud, so brave, and he was yelling at her like a loony.

If he was honest, he doubted she’d ever been involved with her mother’s scam. He’d seen the company books, and discovered the company had been set up nine months after Chloe’s death. Harry had told him the initial finance was from Eloise’s inheritance from her late mother’s estate. Eloise had bought the premises. Realistically, Eloise should be the major shareholder, and yet according to the records they were three equal partners, all drawing the same salary. If Eloise was a gold-digger, as he had thought, then she had a very funny way of going about it. Katy and Harry would not have a business if it were not for Eloise.

She was probably innocent of all he had accused her of, and incredibly generous to those she considered friends. Marcus suddenly realised he wanted to be in that company, to bask in Eloise’s approval. He’d known a lot of women in his life, some almost as beautiful and with the same luscious curves as Eloise—well, no, not quite as perfect, but some a lot more sexually aggressive in bed. But he also knew with absolute certainty none had come close to affecting him the way she did.

If he’d ever caught any other woman he was involved with alone with another man, he would have walked out the door and out of the woman’s life without a second thought. It scared the hell out of him that he couldn’t do that with Eloise.

Since the day he’d first met her as a young girl, she’d never really left his mind and, after the last weeks together, the happiest in all his thirty-four years, she had become an obsession. An obsession that had made him act out of character, and dash back early from the USA, his business incomplete, simply to see her. She was a fever in his blood, and he intended to keep her until the fever burnt out. A secret obsession Eloise need never be aware of, but he would have to watch her more carefully in the future. Innocent or not, there would be no more Teds… He would take her home tomorrow, he concluded arrogantly.

Marcus was still here and he still wanted her. Eloise did not know whether to laugh or cry. She could hear her heart thudding in shock, an erratic rhythm against her breastbone. Marcus must be able to hear it in the tense silence, but she dared not look at him; instead, she asked the one vital question.

‘So, now do you believe I never had an affair with Ted?’ Her eyes focused on the floor. It suddenly seemed imperative to her that Marcus showed some tiny bit of faith in her.