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

Cold pooled in her stomach. However much she desperately wanted to, she knew she could not tell Leo Makarios the truth. The risks were far too great. As a woman, she might automatically side with Jenny, but who knew what a rich, powerful man like Leo Makarios would think? His attitude to women was dire—she had personal proof of that already—so why should he think Jenny deserved any favours, any mercy? After what she’d heard him say about Vanessa, and guarding his precious cousin from her, he’d probably think Jenny had got herself pregnant on purpose—picking a rich man to get at his money—and that a man so entrapped was entitled to take a woman’s baby from her—especially a woman who’d shown herself so morally lax that she’d stooped to theft…He wouldn’t understand.

No—Anna’s face closed—there was no way she could take that risk. And that meant—her expression twisted—she just couldn’t tell Leo Makarios why she had taken the blame for stealing his rubies.

He had to go on thinking that she was the thief. It was the only way she could protect Jenny.

Which meant—the fear pooled in her stomach again, but with a different cause this time—that she was, indeed, going to have to go through with what Leo Makarios intended.

Have sex with him.

She stared unseeingly out over the water. In Austria it had seemed unreal; she’d been in shock, Anna realised, using all her mental energy to tamp down the panic that had been trying to erupt. Here, after being on her own all day, the reality of what she was going to have to do was hitting.

Hitting hard.

For a moment she felt revulsion stiffen through her.

A phrase welled up in her thoughts.

Self-respect. An alien concept to so many people, she knew, moving in the world she did. Men who treated women’s bodies as commodities—women who treated them the same way. She could name half a dozen other models she knew who would have thought themselves in paradise to have been offered the choice that Leo Makarios had offered. Queued round the block for it.

I’m not one of them!

Even as she mentally shouted her denial, another voice spoke in her head. With killing, merciless force.

But you will be…

Leo Makarios will reduce you to exactly that. Strip you of every last vestige of your self-respect even as he strips the clothes from your body…

Pincers bit inside her stomach, sharp and painful.

She went on staring out over the darkening sea, her mind even darker.

Facing up to what she was going to do.

What she was going to lose.

Yet, for all that was true, she could not sacrifice her friend’s future, her baby, just to protect her own self-respect.

I have to do this.

And after all, she thought, with savage mockery at her own prurience, supposing it was Jenny or jail? What would you do then? Would you still stand by her if it meant losing years of your life?

Instead of just a few days…a few nights…

So why make such a fuss about what Leo Makarios is offering?

Even as Anna let the thought into her mind she tried to suppress it.

Leo Makarios was dangerous. She’d thought him so the very first time she’d set eyes on him, and every encounter with him had proved it to her. Especially the one in her bedroom…

Memory flooded back like a drowning tide, and suddenly she was there, there again, as Leo Makarios held her, kissed her, caressed her—a sensual onslaught that had simply overwhelmed her, made it impossible for her to resist…

Until, with a strength she’d hardly been able to summon, she had flung him from her…

She shut her eyes in anguish, blocking out memory.

Self-respect? The words stabbed at her. Mocking her. Taunting her.

She wasn’t just going to sacrifice her self-respect by having deliberate, cold-blooded sex with Leo Makarios. She was going to lose it for a much, much worse reason…

She turned away abruptly. Grimly, she headed back up the beach in the brief sub-tropical dusk.

Her face had hardened.

She couldn’t get out of it now. That wasn’t in her power. Not if she wanted to keep Jenny safe, herself out of jail.

But she could, she must ensure that it was nothing but deliberate, cold-blooded sex.

Nothing more.

Dear God, let me have the strength I need—please, please!

’More champagne?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Smoked salmon?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Caviar?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘As you wish.’ There was an amused, baiting quality to Leo’s voice. He sat back in his rattan chair on the terrace. From the veranda the gardens were landscaped so that the curve of the beach opened up, framed by palm trees. A light, cooling breeze came off the sea. Moonlight bathed the surface of the water.

It was a beautiful scene—and the woman sitting opposite him complemented it perfectly. His eyes slid over her as she sat there, ramrod-straight, staring determinedly out to sea.

She was wearing a jade-green loose silk-trousered affair, with long sleeves and a high collar. As she’d stalked across the terrace, her hair caught back in a stark, high knot, not a scrap of make-up on her, he’d read the signals coming from her as if she’d been broadcasting in neon.

She was making not the slightest attempt to look alluring.

It hadn’t worked in the least. Anna Delane would have looked alluring in a sack. Her body had a long-limbed grace that could not be disguised, and the bones of her face had been constructed with a natural artistry that meant make-up or hairstyle was an irrelevance.

Oh, yes, Anna Delane had an allure that she could not suppress. Leo gave a mocking, inward smile. Even when she was doing her best to be sullen and monosyllabic, as she was now.

He took a mouthful of champagne and contemplated her. A sliver of irritation wormed its way under his amusement. She really was a piece of work—sitting there as stiff as a board and twice as hostile. He’d caught her red-handed, a proven thief. But was she abashed? Guilty? Contrite?

The words were unknown to her, clearly.