She Can't Say No to the Greek Tycoon: The Kouvaris Marriage / The Greek Tycoon's Innocent Mistress / The Greek's Convenient Mistress

The stony track petered out beneath her feet and Maddie stared at the top of a cliff fringed with sparse, thorny vegetation, her heart beating wildly, her mind twisting and turning incoherently.

He had left the room. He had said something about fixing lunch, and something else. She hadn’t been listening—hadn’t grasped a thing through those shock waves.

The moment the door had closed behind him she’d lurched off the now hateful bed and dragged on her discarded clothing, flying down the curving staircase and out in to the sun. Running.

Running away from him. Running from her shame, from the deep and shameful humiliation he’d so cruelly dealt her. The self-disgust, wave after wave—so much of it she had no idea how to cope with it.

What sort of creature was she to forget his plans for her? Forget he only wanted to use her? To crave the joy of sex with him so much that she would offer it on a plate the moment he touched her?

A silly creature who had loved him once.

Who still loved him?

Her throat closed convulsively as she shook her head in sharp negation. How could she still love a man who, according to his cynical thought processes, had believed that she was only after a fat slice of his wealth in the first place, then, on reassessment, had decided that she might as well have sex thrown into the mix for good measure—a man who would stoop to blackmail to get her back, to get her to resume her brood mare duties?

Frowning, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with shaky fingers. She hated to admit it, but there was something wrong with that line of reasoning. He could have taken her. Just like that. If using her as a walking womb was his only reason for forcing her to return to him, why had he walked away? A power thing?

To demonstrate that he could have sex with her whenever he liked? To punish her, humiliate her for having had the gross temerity to leave him and say she wanted a divorce? Dimitri Kouvaris was a man who didn’t know what it meant to be rejected, who always expected, as of right, to be master of each and every situation.

What else was she to think?

A smothered sob escaped her. The sun was so hot, burning relentlessly down from the piercing blue vault of the sky, that she couldn’t think straight.

Below, the blue-green seawater, crinkling onto the shimmering white sand, looked irresistible. The thought of sinking into blissfully cool waters filled her head.

A paved path from the villa led to low cliffs, where shallow stone steps had been cut into the rock for ease of access. She’d ignored it. Too close. She’d needed somewhere to hide, some place where she could get her head straight, escape the awful humiliation of what had happened. Try to forgive herself where her fatal weakness for him was concerned.

During the three short months of their marriage she had lost herself. Lost the independant young woman she’d been before he had swept her off her feet, meeting his passion with her own because only then had her insecurites seemed ridiculous. Now it was time she found herself again.

Heading away, her breath shortening with exertion, she’d cut through a grove of ancient gnarled olive trees and had come out onto parched grassland, scattering a herd of goats. And here, on another clifftop, possibly at least a mile from the villa—and him—she was safe. Safe until she’d pulled herself together and decided to return. To him.

To tell him in exact detail why she’d left him. To grit her teeth and put her pride—the only thing she had left—aside. And end the farce that their marriage had become.

Countless times during those three months it had been on the tip of her tongue to repeat what Irini had said, to ignore Amanda’s advice. But something apart from Amanda’s sensible advice had always stopped her. The fear that Irini hadn’t been lying?

But she had to tell him now. And do her damnedest to hide the hurt that was still so raw it flayed her. Pride at least demanded that much. If she could manage it.

She had to.

In the meantime the cool waters called her. Feeling fresh and clean again would help clear her mind, wash away the still-burning memories that his hands had imprinted on her skin. Unsteadily, she walked closer to the edge of the clifftop. No convenient steps here. Nothing but the rock face, which seemed to shimmer and shift beneath her eyes. But she could do it—climb down, strip off, and walk into the cool, whispering, welcoming sea.

How he’d resisted the temptation of her he would never know. Even as he assembled the makings of a light lunch his body ached for her—for the only woman, the first woman, ever to separate his mind from his body, to take him to paradise and far, far beyond. But that way lay madness.

She had left him; she wanted a divorce. Lust he could control. But not the need to know the truth. Until he knew why he would have no peace. Money? The idea sickened him. He’d been the target of too many greedy little gold-diggers in the past to welcome the thought that he’d been well and truly suckered. But, in the absence of any other sensible explanation from her, it was the only viable answer he could think of.

When he’d given her no option but to comply with his demands she’d come back to him decided she would avail herself of the material advantages she could still claim as his wife, plus the thing she had become hooked on, the thing he gave freely. Fantastic sex. He’d just proved it, hadn’t he? And he didn’t like the feeling.

Carrying the loaded tray, his mouth curling with distaste, Dimitri told himself he’d get a truthful answer if it killed him. Only to discover that she wasn’t waiting on the balcony outside the master bedroom, as he’d instructed her to. Leaving the tray on the delicate white-painted cast-iron table, he took in the bathroom. No sign of her having had that shower.

Sulking somewhere because he’d denied her what her eager body had been begging for? With a hiss of impatience he set off to systematically search the empty villa, the grounds behind, the swimming pool and the area around the vine-shaded arbour.

Nothing.

Standing at the head of the steps down to the nearest beach, he scanned the empty sands. Nothing.

Anxiety made a furrow on his brow. She couldn’t go far. The island was a mere five miles by three at its widest point. But the midday sun was ferocious.

His stride, long and swift, took him to higher ground. Beyond the olive grove, Yiannis’s goats were scattered. Unused to strangers, something seemed to have spooked them. Or someone.

Moving faster than he had ever moved in his life before, he followed in the direction he was sure she must have taken. Sunstroke or heat exhaustion was a very real danger for someone who wasn’t used to the unforgiving midday climate at this latitude.

His features tight, he cursed himself. He’d needed proof that, denied her first choice of a ton of alimony and her freedom, she had settled for the very real perks of being his wife.

But had she wanted to end their marriage, get him completely out of her life, because she no longer loved him? Because unknowingly he’d done something to hurt or disgust her? But, if so, she wouldn’t have been so eager to have sex with him. Making love didn’t come into it. Much as the idea repelled him, for her it was all about lust. Sex.

Well, he’d had his proof and he didn’t much like himself for it. He was tough in business matters, he’d had to be, but never unfair and certainly never cruel.

Yet he’d been cruel to Maddie—driven her to put as much distance between them as she could manage within the confines of the small island. He despised himself for the first time in his life. He had his proof and it left a sour taste in his mouth, because in getting it he had shattered his code of honour.

And then he saw her. His thumping heart picked up a beat. Her bright head bent, she was too near the edge of the clifftop. The sound of his approach brought her head round and she took a step back, thankfully away from the edge. As he quickened his steps to a flat-out run one hand fluttered up to her forehead, and she swayed, then crumpled in a heap on the ground.

Within heart-banging moments he was at her side, kneeling, cradling her head and reaching into his back pocket for his mobile. Her face was deathly pale, and the delicate skin around her eyes looked bruised. Two calls. His instructions, bitten out, concise. Repocketing the slim phone he lifted Maddie in his arms and began the slow journey back to the villa—slow because he didn’t want to jolt her. He promised himself that once she’d recovered from this—sunstroke?—they would sit down and talk like the sensible adults they were supposed to be. No more threats, demands, mind-games.

As they entered the shaded area in the olive grove she stirred, her eyes drifting open. ‘It is all right,’ he assured her softly, his heart lightening as he saw her colour begin to return. ‘You collapsed, but we will soon be back at the villa and Dr Papantoniou will be with you within the hour.’

‘I don’t need a doctor. Put me down. I can walk.’ A feeble attempt to struggle to her feet had his arms tightening around her—which was absolutely the last thing she wanted, wasn’t it? She wanted distance between them. She didn’t want him to think he had to be kind to her just because she’d been stupid enough to pass out. It was demeaning!

‘I fainted. No big deal,’ she grumbled fiercely. ‘I don’t want a doctor! I skipped breakfast, that’s all!’ Because once again the sight of food had turned her stomach.

‘Save your energy.’ His golden eyes were dark with concern and something else she couldn’t read as he glanced down at her. ‘Just forget your middle name is Stubborn and do as you’re told for once, yes?’

After that Maddie saw no point in pitting herself against his iron will, and submitted, with gritted teeth, to being carried through the cool interior of the villa and gently deposited on the huge bed that had been the scene of her recent stomach-churning humiliation.

But she drew the line when he attempted to undress her.

‘I can do that!’ She batted his hands away, squirmed round and planted her feet on the floor, snapping tartly, ‘If you’ve decided it’s necessary for me to be in bed in a nightie when the doctor calls, to keep up the pretence of not dragging him out here for no purpose, I won’t do it—you can go and wait and make your apologies when he arrives!’

Dimitri stood back, but he didn’t leave the room. To her utter chagrin he even looked slightly amused, standing watching her, his arms folded over his chest.

Thinking of the invitingly cool-looking sea water, Maddie headed for the shower in the huge marble and glass bathroom. He followed. She was spikily aware of those unreadable eyes pinned on her, and as the only slightly warm water sluiced over her grateful body her anger with him, with herself, increased in proportion to the ache of wanting that flickered and burned deep within.

Damn him! Damn him for making her feel like this. She didn’t want it. It was the last thing she needed, she fumed as she grabbed a towel and stumbled back into the bedroom, pointedly sidestepping when he reached out a hand to help her.

Thankfully, the whump-whump of approaching rotors brought an end to the situation that was winding her up to explosion point. Glaring at him, pink-cheeked and furious, she watched him move to the door with the innate grace that was so much a part of him.

‘Tell him there’s nothing wrong with me,’ she flung after him. ‘And apologise for wasting his time.’

He turned back briefly. ‘You are looking better.’ There was an almost-smile on his sensual mouth. It made her want to go and smack it away. ‘Nevertheless …'He spread his hands, palms uppermost, and closed the door gently behind him.