Purchased for Passion: Shackled by Diamonds / A Mistress for the Taking / His Bought Mistress

Sleep—that was all she wanted. All she craved in the world right now.

The room she was shown to was vast. Up a short, shallow flight of stairs, off a broad gallery-style landing. Inside the room another high, wooden cathedral ceiling soared. A huge mahogany four-poster bed, swathed in what looked like ornamental muslin but was, Anna assumed, mosquito netting, dominated the room. Again, although the room was chilled by airconditioning, a ceiling fan rotated lazily.

‘May I get you some refreshment?’ the woman was saying. Even as she spoke a porter entered, carrying Anna’s suitcase.

She shook her head.

‘Thank you—I’m just going to sleep.’

The woman nodded, said something to the porter in local patois, quite incomprehensible to Anna, and then they both left. Anna looked around her blearily. Her eyes automatically went to the vast four-poster bed.

Easily big enough for two.

Not tonight, Mr Makarios, she thought sourly—you’ll have to wait.

Five minutes later, clothes stripped, en suite bathroom perfunctorily utilised, she was fast asleep.

Leo stood out on his balcony. A half-moon glittered over the palm-fringed bay that curved in front of the villa. The location was superb, the scene in front of him idyllic, tranquil and untouched. He’d bought this place five years ago, yet how often had he been here? Not often enough.

Life seemed to be rushing by him at ever faster speeds.

Leo’s mouth twisted. So little done, so much to do—some politician had said that, and he could identify with the sentiment.

Another line drifted through his head.

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

He frowned. No politician, the poet who had said that. And no businessman either. Getting and spending was what his whole life was about. It always had been.

But then, he’d always known that his destiny was to do that. To continue with the work his grandfather had begun, rebuilding the Makarios fortunes after they had been lost in the debacle of the Greek expulsion from Asia Minor in the 1920s.

He could hear his grandfather’s harsh voice even now, in his head, from when he’d been a boy.

‘We had nothing! Nothing! They took it all. Those Turkii. But we will get everything again—everything!’

Rebuilding the Makarios fortune had occupied his grandfather’s life, and his father’s, and now his too. The Makarios Corporation spread itself wide—property, shipping, finance, investment, and even—Leo thought of his latest contribution to the family’s coffers—the ultimate in luxury goods: priceless historic jewellery, and the revival of a name that had been synonymous with Tsarist extravagance.

He gazed out over the moonlit sea, feeling the warmth of the Caribbean night, hearing the soughing of the wind in the palms, the call of the cicadas, and, drowning them out, the yet more incessant calls of the tree frogs.

A thought came to him out of the soft wind, the sweetfragranced air.

Who needed diamonds and emeralds on a night like this? Or sapphires and rubies? What use were they here, on the silvered beach by the warm sea’s edge?

What use are they at all?

Into his head jarred a voice—’They’re just carbon crystals…lots of other common crystals are just as beautiful.’ Anna Delane’s lofty sneer at the Levantsky jewels.

His face hardened.

Hypocrite! She hadn’t helped herself to the ruby bracelet because it was beautiful, but because it was worth a fortune.

It had been a mistake thinking about her. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours assiduously putting her out of his mind. Even when she’d spent the flight sitting right next to him he’d refused to think about her, let alone look at her, or speak to her, or in any way acknowledge her existence. Now, fatally, she was there—vividly in his mind.

Desire shot through him, hard and insistent. His hands clenched over the wooden balustrade.

No! Now was not the time nor the hour. Sleep was the priority now—and it would be for her, too. When he took her it would not be like this, on the edge of exhaustion, but in the rich, ripe fullness of all his powers.

He would need all night to enjoy her to the full.

And every night.

Starting tomorrow.

How long would it take him to tire of her?

The hard smile twisted at his mouth.

A lot, lot sooner than it would take her to tire of him.

He would see to that.

Anna walked along the edge of the beach. It was one of those crystalline white sand, palm-fringed crescents that were put into travel brochures to make everyone instantly want to go there. But this beach she had to herself. Completely to herself. It belonged to the beautiful sprawling villa spilling along the shore, and the villa belonged to Leo Makarios.

She could see why he’d bought it.

It was, quite simply, idyllic. Like the beach, a travel agent’s dream of what a Caribbean villa should look like. The green tiled roof, the white walls, the wraparound veranda, the palm trees fringing the shore, the crystal beach, the pink and purple bougainvillaea and hibiscus splashing colour, the turquoise glitter of a freshwater pool.

Quite, quite idyllic.

Anna stopped to look out to sea. The sun was lowering, a thin band of cloud just above the surface of the sea starting to pool in the lengthening rays of the sun, like rich dye running into spun silk. Bars of gold were sliding across the azure water. Across the sun’s face a large, ungainly pelican flapped lazily. High in the sky a frigate bird soared.

Anna glanced at her watch. Though only just evening, the sub-tropical latitudes meant the sun was going down apace. The night would sweep in from the east like a velvet concealing cloak.

And the night would bring, she knew, Leo Makarios.

There had been no sign of him all day. She’d slept long and when she’d surfaced it had been late morning. She’d eaten breakfast on her balcony, and as she’d gazed out over the beautiful grounds leading down to the sea she’d felt the biting, mocking irony of her situation. Here she was in a Caribbean idyll—and tonight she was going to have sex with a man. Deliberate, cold-blooded sex, with a man she did not want to have sex with—a man who thought her a thief, a man she had already thrown out of her bedroom once but who now she could not throw out.

Deliberate, cold-blooded sex.

She made herself say the words again in her head. And again.

Because that was what it was going to be.

Something flared briefly in the depths of her eyes, but she crushed it instantly.

A sudden panic speared through her. She couldn’t go through with this. She just couldn’t!

I’ve got to tell him the truth! Tell him it wasn’t me who stole his precious bracelet, that it was Jenny, and that she only did it because she’s pregnant and terrified, and has got herself involved with a man so dangerous he makes Leo-Money-Bags-Makarios look like a pussycat…