Mediterranean Millionaires

In Switzerland, Andreas set down his phone, a frown dividing his ebony brows as his analytical brain homed in on the question of what had upset Hope. She was not prone to moods. Indeed her temperament was remarkably even and upbeat. When something bothered her, she shared it with him. In fact, she told him immediately and appreciated his advice. What kind of problem would she choose not to share with him?

Although she remained blissfully unaware of the fact, Hope was currently enjoying very discreet twenty-four-hour protection. Andreas, in common with many wealthy individuals, had suffered threats. Concerned that Hope might also be targeted, Andreas had hired security professionals to watch over her. Initially he had planned to tell her. But he had feared that the safeguards he had put in place might frighten her. She was friendly and trusting and thought the very best of everyone she met. He did not want that to change and had decided that it was kinder to leave her in ignorance. Only for an instant did he consider contacting her security team to find out where she had been and whom she had been with. That would be taking advantage of the situation and he respected her privacy. Even so, a sense of annoyance that Hope should for once have given him cause for disquiet made Andreas icy cold and tough with the executives who at his signal returned to the conference table.

Hope always dressed up for Andreas. Staring into her wardrobe, she was mentally dividing it into three separate collections of clothes. Of the three, usually only one set fitted her at any one time. The first had enjoyed a brief but glittering life after a crash diet and the second was filled with all the replacement clothes in different sizes that she had had to buy while she’d steadily regained the weight she had lost. The third was full of stalwart outfits with forgivingly stretchy proportions. Almost everything was bright in colour. As she yanked out a dress her head spun a little and she felt momentarily dizzy enough to sink down on the edge of the bed. It had not been the first time that she had felt that way in recent weeks but she reckoned that the light-headed feeling was an irritating hangover from a virus she had found hard to shake off during the autumn. No doubt the bug was still working its slow way out of her system and she would be wasting her doctor’s time if she approached her with such a vague symptom.

In an hour, Andreas would be with her again and excitement was leaping through Hope in intoxicating waves. She refused to torment herself with Vanessa’s gloomy forecast of doom and disappointment. Her friend had only wanted to put her on her guard, had in short spoken up out of pure, disinterested kindness. But Hope was equally well aware that Vanessa, who had had several unfortunate experiences, cherished a pronounced distrust of men and their motives. Furthermore, Vanessa had never met Andreas, had not even had the opportunity to appreciate what a wonderful guy he was.

Andreas kept the media at arm’s length and suffered accordingly for his determination to protect his privacy. It took a great deal to anger Hope but she had been very much annoyed by several magazine articles and newspaper columns that had utilised old photos and old stories to enable their continued unjust depiction of Andreas as a ruthless, callous womaniser who was merciless in business. Had Vanessa read those items and been influenced by them?

As Hope brushed her hair she was thinking about the male she knew. Strong, generous, wildly passionate, literally everything she wanted in a man wrapped up in one fantastic package. Even though Andreas hated roughing it, he took her on picnics because he knew she loved them. Sightseeing bored him to death but he had flown her out to Paris, Rome and a host of other fabulous cities so that she could explore her passion for history in his company. Whenever she had been scared, discouraged or in need of support, he had been there for her. She loved him with her whole heart and soul for a host of very understandable reasons. On the debit side…? No, no, she wasn’t going there, she was determined not to allow foolish negativity to creep in and wreak havoc with her happiness.

Andreas called her from the airport.

‘I’m counting the minutes,’ she told him truthfully.

He called her from the limo when it got stuck in city traffic.

‘I can’t bear it…’ she gasped strickenly.

‘Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?’ Andreas finally broke through his cool to demand in his final call made as he stepped into the lift to come up to the apartment.

By that stage, Hope was in a heady fever of anticipation. The front door opened: she saw him and all intelligent thought ceased. Her knees felt weak. She leant back against the wall to steady herself. Everything about Andreas thrilled her to death. From the stubborn angle of his proud dark head to the lithe, leashed power and grace of his hard, muscular frame, he was spectacularly male. Lamplight burnished his cropped black hair and cast his lean, bronzed features into tantalising angles of light and shade. He was breathtakingly handsome and he still only had to walk through the door to make her heart threaten cardiac arrest.

Andreas kicked the door shut behind him and powered on across the hall to haul her into his arms. For an endless moment of bliss she was lost in the glorious touch and feel of him. Her nostrils flared on the familiar male scent of his skin overlaid with a faint tang of designer lotion and her responses went into overdrive. ‘Andreas…’ she breathed unsteadily.

‘If you could travel with me, we would have more time together.’ Brilliant dark golden eyes entrapped her misty gaze, his accented drawl husky and reasonable in tone, for he chose his moments with care. ‘Think about that. You could let your artistic endeavours take a back seat for a while.’

And lose her independence, which was quite out of the question, Hope acknowledged while she agonised with guilty longing over the seductive idea of being able to see more of Andreas. ‘I couldn’t…’

His hands closing over her smaller ones, and content to have planted yet another seed, Andreas pinned her back against the wall with all the single-minded purpose of a male guided by lustful intent. She succumbed to the allure of his hard, sensual mouth with the same fervour she would have employed in a life-or-death situation. He tasted like heaven, like something addictive she could not do without, and she clung. The tight knot of excitement in her belly fired her every nerve ending into an eager blaze of expectation. He dropped her hands to curve possessive fingers to the full, feminine swell of her hips and lift her into stirring connection with his bold erection.

‘Oh…’ she moaned, melting like honey in sunlight while the wicked throb of helpless hunger shimmied down into her pelvis and made her ache.

Plastered to every line of his big, powerful frame, she dragged her mouth free to snatch in a necessary gulp of oxygen while dimly her mind prompted her to recall an important ritual that she could not afford to overlook. ‘Your mobile…’ she gasped.

Andreas tensed.

‘It’s me or the phone,’ Hope reminded him reluctantly.

One-handed, Andreas wrenched the phone from his jacket, switched it off and tossed it down on the hallstand. He returned to plundering her mouth with devouring hunger and then wrenched himself back from her, dark colour scoring his aristocratic cheekbones. ‘For once, we are going to be cool and make it out of the hall.’

Dazed by passion, Hope slowly nodded.

With determination Andreas angled her away from the wall and backed her towards the bedroom. ‘If I surrender my phone, you have to make it worth my while, pedhi mou.’

‘Oh…’ Hope gazed back at him, soft mouth pink and tingling from the heat of his, her legs unsteady supports. The blaze of sexual challenge in his eyes imprisoned her as surely as a chain. A blinding wave of excitement sizzled through her.

Andreas surveyed her with scorching satisfaction. He ran down the zip on her turquoise dress and shimmied it down over her hips to expose the pink lace bra and panties that moulded her ripe curves. He vented a husky masculine sound of appreciation. ‘You’re superb…’

Self-conscious colour flushed her cheeks and even burnished the slope of her full breasts. Scooping her up, he deposited her on the bed, his rare charismatic smile flashing across his lean dark features, and her heart leapt as though it had a life of its own.

‘Don’t move,’ he told her with urgency.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she whispered, her attention locked to him like a magnet as he peeled off the tailored jacket of his business suit.

He looked sensational. Lithe, dark and arrestingly handsome, he emanated the prowling, lethal sexiness of a predator. Butterflies were fluttering in her tummy and she was on a helpless high of anticipation. But on another level, she suddenly discovered that she was fighting off a sense of shame that she should be lying on a bed in her underwear for his benefit. She had not been raised in a liberal home and when Andreas had come into her life she had not just thrown away the rulebook, she had virtually burned it. Did she mean anything to him? Or was what they had just a casual thing on his terms?

‘Do you think about me when you’re away?’ Hope blurted out.

His shirt hanging loose on his bronzed muscular chest, Andreas came down on the bed and laughed out loud. ‘After two weeks without sex?’ he teased in his dark deep drawl. ‘By this week, I was thinking about you at least once a minute!’

Hope flushed to the roots of her pale hair, hurt and disappointment scything through her that he should be so literal. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

Andreas hauled her up against him with strong hands, and golden eyes ablaze with arrogant confidence assailed hers. ‘Don’t ask a Greek trick questions,’ he warned her. ‘You’re my lover. Of course I think about you.’

Without hesitation, he plundered her mouth and her uneasy thoughts blurred. Fire sparked low in her belly and a wave of tormenting hunger consumed her. Two weeks without Andreas felt like half a lifetime. Even as she doubted his commitment, she could not resist her need to take refuge in his passion. Her body was taut with sensitivity, begging for sensation. The expert caress of his hands on her breasts made her moan. The rosy buds crowning her tender flesh tingled and when he utilised his teeth and his tongue on those inflamed peaks, she writhed, control slipping from her as steadily as any form of rational awareness.

Her heart was racing, the breath catching in her dry throat. He was pure bronzed elemental male and he knew exactly what inflamed her. He found the hot, swollen secret at the heart of her and clever fingers drove her to ever more desperate heights of longing. The passion took over, roaring through her twisting, turning length like an explosive fireball.

‘This is how I like to picture you,’ Andreas rasped with raw satisfaction. ‘Out of your mind with the pleasure I give you.’

He sank into her with ravishing force and her body leapt and clenched. The frenzy of excitement mastered her with terrifying immediacy. Delirious with desire, she was way beyond any hope of mastering the tempestuous surge of her responses. Her need for Andreas was almost painfully intense. His passion pushed her to a wild peak of unbearable pleasure and then she fell down and down and down into a state of turbulence that bore no resemblance to her usual languorous sense of peace and happiness. Her body was satisfied but her emotions were raw. Tears lashed her eyes and overflowed before she even knew what was happening to her.

Andreas rolled over onto his back. In the act of rearranging her on top of him, he pushed her hair gently off her face and his fingers lingered on her damp cheekbone. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Hope gulped. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s silly.’

Foreboding nudged at Andreas, who excelled at second-guessing those who surrounded him. She buried her head in his shoulder. He smoothed her hair. Handsome mouth taut, he closed his arms round her. If he were patient she would tell him what was wrong. She was quite incapable of keeping anything important from him. Her confiding habits were engrained, he reminded himself.

‘I’m sorry…I suppose I’ve just come over all emotional thinking about our anniversary,’ Hope mumbled in a muffled voice.

Lush black lashes lifted on guarded dark golden eyes. ‘Anniversary?’

‘Don’t you know that in another few days we’ll have been together for two whole years?’ Hope lifted her tousled head, a happy smile of achievement on lips still swollen from his kisses. ‘I want to celebrate it.’

Two years? His gaze narrowed, his lean, darkly handsome face impassive, concealing his stunned reaction to that news. Had she really been in his life that long? He was appalled that he had neglected to notice her staggering longevity. Two years? Marriages didn’t last that long. When had she become the equivalent of a fixture? She had inserted herself into his daily routine with astounding subtlety. She was just…there. She didn’t cling but the tendrils of her existence were as meshed with his as ivy round a tree. That was not an inspiring analogy. But when had he last slept with another woman? He squashed the instant sliver of guilt that even the thought ignited. He had been incredibly faithful to her. Acknowledging that reality set his even white teeth on edge. Inexplicable as it seemed to him, she had infiltrated his freedom like an invisible invading army and conditioned him in ways that were foreign to him. Angry surprise turned him to ice as though he were in the presence of the enemy.

‘I’m not into anniversaries with women,’ Andreas delivered, brilliant eyes dark as coals and diamond-bright. ‘I don’t do the sentimental stuff.’

Hope could hardly breathe. She wanted to put her hand over his beautiful mouth and prevent him from saying anything more. She could not bear that he should fulfil any part of Vanessa’s disparaging forecast, yet she was equally unable to let that laden silence lie. ‘But it’s special to me that you’ve been a part of my life for so long.’

Andreas shrugged a muscular bronzed shoulder and firmly lifted her off him. ‘We have a good time together. I value you. But it would be inappropriate to celebrate an anniversary. That’s not what we’re about.’

Hope felt like someone tied to the railway tracks in front of an express train and the roar of the metal monster was his words crushing the dreams she had cherished and ripping apart her illusions. In one lithe, powerful movement, he sprang off the bed and headed into the bathroom. She lay there cold and shocked and shattered. In her presence he had changed from the guy she loved into an intimidating stranger with cold eyes and a harsh, unfeeling voice and he had pushed her away. She got up to pull on the ice-blue wrap lying on a nearby chair. But she was forced to sink back down onto the bed because her head was swimming. It was that stupid dizziness again, she thought wearily. Perhaps it was an ear infection that was interfering with her sense of balance.

I value you. What sort of a declaration was that? That Andreas knew the exact extent of her worth? In terms of convenience? No, he didn’t do sentimental but, perhaps more tellingly, he had not cared whether or not he wounded her feelings. He had to be very sure of her to put a blanket ban on even a minor celebration. Biting her lip and with a knot of fear forming inside her, Hope tightened the sash on her wrap. But anger was also slowly stirring out of the ashes of the hurt caused by his humiliating response to her perfectly innocent remarks.

Taut with angry, frustrated tension, Andreas leant back against the limestone wall in the power shower and let the water stream down over his magnificent bronzed body. Usually he was still in bed with Hope at this stage of the evening. His chill-out time with her had been wrecked. Taken by surprise, he had been tactless. He wanted to punch something. Their relationship was as near perfect as he had ever hoped to achieve on a casual basis. Hope never made unreasonable demands and appeared to have no greater ambition in life than to make him happy. And she was bloody brilliant at making him happy, Andreas acknowledged grudgingly. He did not want to lose her. But what did he do with a mistress who did not know she was a mistress? A mistress who wanted to celebrate anniversaries as if she were a wife? Theos mou… He winced. What had come over her?