Mediterranean Millionaires

‘Why would I do that?’ Hope dared to ask although sparkles of joy were running through her like precious gold dust.

His hard, sensual mouth slashed into a sudden smile of breathtaking assurance. ‘Because I will ask you to and you won’t be able to resist.’

Her heart was bouncing like a rubber ball inside her chest and she smiled up at him with all the natural warmth that was the very core of her character.

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_3ee9f3b2-ec6f-592d-b703-9312129b4ffa)

ALMOST two years later, Hope sat in a fashionable London café waiting for her friend Vanessa’s arrival.

Her thoughts were miles away and centred entirely on Andreas. She was dreamily wondering how she could best celebrate the second anniversary of that first eventful meeting. By seeking out a snow-bound barn? That would not be a good idea, she conceded with a grin. Andreas disliked inconvenience, cold and, indeed, had a very low tolerance threshold for any form of discomfort.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ A slim redhead with sharp but attractive features and bright brown eyes sank down into the seat opposite and settled a heavy camera case down. ‘If that hair of yours grows any longer,’ she remarked, surveying the pale blonde hair Hope wore secured at her nape but which reached halfway to her waist, ‘people are going to start wondering if you’ve got Rapunzel fantasies.’

Hope blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You know…the lady in the fairy tale who got locked up in the tower and let her long hair down to be used as a ladder to rescue her,’ Vanessa clarified. ‘Only unfortunately for her, it wasn’t the handsome prince who climbed up, it was the witch. Be warned.’

Hope laughed and they ordered coffee. She was accustomed to her more sophisticated friend’s cynical outlook on life. The daughter of a famous artist, Vanessa had survived a Bohemian and unstable childhood to become a gifted photographer. But the redhead still bore the scars inflicted by parents who had enjoyed tempestuous love lives.

‘So, how is your handsome prince?’ Vanessa enquired a tinge dryly.

Hope was impervious to that tone and her eyes sparkled. ‘Andreas is great. Very busy, of course, but he phones me a lot when he’s out of the country—’

‘A mobile phone being Andreas’s equivalent of a ball and chain,’ her friend mocked. ‘I seem to recall that if you switch it off he wants an explanation in triplicate.’

‘He just likes to know where I am. He worries about me,’ Hope countered equably. ‘Do you realise that in ten days’ time, Andreas and I will have been together for two whole years?’

‘Wow. The guy who doesn’t commit is going for gold. You could be making gossip column headlines. Of course,’ Vanessa murmured wryly, ‘the world would first have to know you existed and you remain a very well-kept secret.’

‘Andreas hates media attention and he knows I wouldn’t like it either. I’m a very contented secret,’ Hope admitted, telling herself with the ease of long habit that what little time she had with Andreas would be very much diluted if she had to share him with a social whirl and lots of people as well. ‘Right now, I’m trying to think of some special way to celebrate our anniversary.’

‘Andreas didn’t make the effort to mark the occasion last year, did he?’

‘I doubt if it even occurred to him that we had been together an entire year. I shouldn’t have sat around waiting for him to say or do something, I should just have reminded him,’ Hope said ruefully

‘Did he ever mention it afterwards?’

Hope shook her head.

‘Then, let me offer you a piece of advice,’ the younger woman remarked. ‘If you want to hang onto Andreas Nicolaidis, resist the urge to celebrate your second anniversary in his presence.’

‘But why?’

‘The reminder that you’ve been around for two years might set the cold wind of change blowing.’

‘What are you trying to say to me?’ Hope prompted anxiously.

Vanessa compressed her lips and sighed. ‘I just feel you’re wasting your time with Andreas. He didn’t even bother to show up the night you collected the top award for your design course.’

‘His flight was delayed.’

‘Was it?’ The younger woman looked unimpressed. ‘He has no interest in anything in your life unless it directly affects him.’

‘Andreas isn’t artistic…or into fashion. I don’t expect him to take an interest in the handbags I design—’

‘He hasn’t introduced you to a single member of his family or to any of his friends. If he takes you out it’s to some place where he won’t be bothered by the paparazzi and where he won’t be seen with you. He’s kept his life separate from yours and he keeps you in a little restricted box. Why don’t you face facts? You’re his mistress in everything but name—’

‘That’s not true! Andreas doesn’t keep me. I take nothing from him…OK, I live in that flat, but I pay all my own expenses and I don’t accept expensive gifts or anything from him,’ Hope reasoned in a low-pitched tone of urgency.

‘But it’s not a question of what you think, it’s all about what Andreas thinks and how he treats you—’

‘He cares about me…he treats me really well,’ Hope argued tightly.

Vanessa gave her a concerned look but Hope felt far too raw to take comfort from a sympathy that could only further dent her pride. ‘Why shouldn’t he? You’re devoted to him and he knows it and he uses it. He set the boundaries of your relationship way back at the beginning—’

‘No…there were no rules set. I am not his mistress…I wouldn’t be his mistress!’ Hope stated in an almost fierce undertone.

‘So he was too smooth an operator to put a label on it. Has he ever mentioned a future with you? Love? Marriage? Children?’

Battered down by those bold words, Hope almost flinched.

‘You have a right to ask where things are going at any stage of a relationship,’ Vanessa informed her and then she changed the subject.

Afterwards, Hope had no real idea what she had discussed with Vanessa beyond that point. She remembered having smiled a lot. She had been keen to reassure her closest friend that she was not offended by that blunt appraisal of her relationship with Andreas. But, in truth, those same comments had blown her peace of mind sky-high and caused her considerable pain. Vanessa’s every word replayed again and again in Hope’s troubled thoughts. She was devastated when she was forced to acknowledge that most of what the other woman had said had been based on unarguable fact rather than personal opinion.

Only hours earlier, Hope had felt supremely happy and perfectly contented with her life and with Andreas’s central position within it. It had been Vanessa who had sowed discontent inside her. Yet she did not blame her friend. After all, Vanessa had only shown her a more disturbing interpretation of limitations that Hope had simply accepted. Slowly and painfully, Hope felt all the concerns that she had suppressed and all the questions she had never dared to ask Andreas rise like taunts to the surface of her mind.

Andreas had never taken her to Greece, although he knew that she longed to visit the country of his birth with him. Even though his one and only sibling, his younger sister, Elyssa, was married to an Englishman and lived in London, Andreas had not succumbed to Hope’s gentle hints that she would like to meet Elyssa. Hope had always avoided dwelling on that omission and had told herself that in time Andreas would make that suggestion on his own account. In the same way, she had also convinced herself that she was unconcerned by her lack of contact with Andreas’s family and friends. But he had never given her the option, had he?

It was equally true that Andreas had never been known to make a reference to the future as something they might share…at least not a future that extended further than a calendar month ahead in his highly organised schedule. Not once had he mentioned marriage or a desire for children. As for love, well, he was prone to making cutting comments on that topic and she had learned to avoid the subject.

Her eyes stung with a surge of rare tears as she entered the big penthouse apartment that had become her home. Andreas might be in no hurry to offer commitment, but that still did not mean that she was his mistress. Did it? By nature, Andreas was reserved and cautious. Another doubt crept in to make itself heard: how could she even tell herself that they lived together? In the strictest sense they did not because Andreas continued to own and make occasional use of another, even more substantial city property. He had pointed out that the apartment was a necessary convenience for him because it was a lot closer to his office than his town house. His relatives also stayed at the town house when they visited London, as did he when it suited him. Furthermore, Hope had never set foot inside the town house…

Suddenly, Hope was seeing the foundations of her happiness wash away like sand on a beach. She adored Andreas. She had truly believed that their relationship was wonderful and well worth cherishing. But Vanessa’s frankly offered opinion had lacerated Hope’s pride and destroyed her confidence. Was it possible that she had been wilfully blind rather than face the harsh, hurtful truth? Was it possible that, like the penthouse apartment, she was really just a convenience to Andreas too? A sexual rather than residential convenience?

The phone in the echoing reception hall was ringing. After a moment of hesitation, she picked up.

‘Why has your mobile been switched off for three hours?’ Andreas demanded. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I was meeting Vanessa and…er…shopping and I forgot to put it on again.’ Hope crossed two sets of fingers as she told that small lie and swallowed hard.

‘I’ll be with you by eight tomorrow night. So, talk to me,’ Andreas invited, because he had taken a break for coffee and he could always depend on her to fill the space with the minutiae of her daily existence. No matter where he was in the world, he could pick up the phone and within minutes her tide of chirpy chatter would filter away all stress and entertain him. Hope had been very well named. She never said anything bad about anyone. She went out of her way to do favours for total strangers. She put a positive spin on every experience.

Her mind was blank. ‘What about?’

‘Anything and everything…how clothes are shrinking in size to fuel the diet industry…the addictive quality of chocolate…what a lovely day it is…how even wet days can be fun…what wonderfully pleasant people you have met in the apartment foyer, on the street, in the stores,’ Andreas enumerated without hesitation. ‘I’m used to a deluge of irrepressibly cheerful chatter.’

Hope’s face flamed. Did he see her as a mindless babbler? What did he see in her? She had always wondered. It took huge effort but she managed to talk and it must have been mindless because, the whole time, one half of her was concentrated on the less-than-encouraging reflection she could see in the contemporary mirror on the wall opposite. How could any guy who looked like Andreas really care for a woman her shape and size? Stop it, stop it, stop it, the voice of common sense urged her. With resolute courage, she turned away from the mirror and assured herself that self-doubt was not about to make her bolt to the kitchen and use food as a source of comfort.