The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Wife

He gave a slow smile. ‘Why not?’

She wanted to be outraged at his arrogance but how could she be when a tiny part of her had been tempted to do just that? Hadn’t she felt an overwhelming urge to ask Kirsty to get ready at her own house—so that she’d be able to spend a little time alone with the black-eyed Greek she’d never really forgotten?

She’d told herself that it was normal to want to catch up on the lost years. That maybe it would help give her proper closure on their affair once and for all. But all that would have been a lie. There was only one reason why she wanted to spend time with Kyros—and it had nothing to do with talking and everything to do with his dark, sexual allure. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she swallowed.

There was a pause. ‘Ah, but you never did disappoint me, Alice,’ he said softly. ‘Not then, and certainly not now—despite the showgirl appearance.’

He let his eyes drift over her and suddenly Alice wondered why the hell she hadn’t thrown on a silk kimono over the dress. It had been a rebellious gesture to answer the door like this—one intended to demonstrate that she might be almost thirty and unmarried but her figure was as slim and her legs as toned as they had been at university. Yet all it was managing to do was to make her feel vulnerable…naked beneath that candid appraisal which had followed on so quickly from his obvious initial disapproval.

But she couldn’t turn him away, not now. Not only would it make her look foolish, it would hint to Kyros that he still exerted some kind of power over her—and he didn’t, did he? Not anymore. And besides, Alice was curious. You didn’t spend years wondering and aching to know what had happened to the one man you’d ever loved, only to shut the door in his face.

So wasn’t this her opportunity to change the tape? To wipe the bad memories clean and replace them with new ones? To realise that Kyros was just a man and not a god, and that she had moved on. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could do all that?

She stepped back. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

‘At last,’ he murmured sardonically, and as he stepped into the house it felt like a kind of victory—as he looked around the large hallway which itself was as big as a room.

It was a cosy, English family home—with its books and cushions, its walls studded with paintings and photos and its scruffy, overstuffed sofa. He remembered the first time he had come here and how alien it had seemed—for he recalled envying such an environment, while feeling stifled by it at the same time.

He remembered the home-made cake which her mother had produced. The cups of faintly scented tea in cups so delicate that they were almost transparent. And the dog which had sat at his feet—its liquid brown eyes huge as it silently begged for food.

‘But you mustn’t give him any,’ Alice had giggled. ‘He’s a greedy pig!’

He had fed the dog, of course—as he suspected he had been supposed to all along, for everyone had laughed. Was that some kind of silent test he had passed? he wondered. Some crude initiation test to see whether the dark and macho Greek would be accepted into a family home which was light years away from the dysfunction of his own? For Alice had looked deep into his eyes and smiled and in that moment he had felt…

What?

Danger?

Oh, yes. Along with the certainty that he was getting in too deep—and the even greater certainty that he was much too young to settle down, and when he did it would never be with someone like Alice.

He stared at her now. Beneath the too-heavy makeup she still had the most beautiful pair of eyes he had ever seen on a woman—green and deep as a forest glade. He remembered the flow of her hair like a bright cascade—a waterfall of moonlight over her bare back. He felt the call of forgotten poetry and the hard stir to his groin and he sank down onto one of the battered sofas before it became a talking point.

‘So…what exactly are you doing in England?’ questioned Alice, quickly walking across to the other side of the room and away from his dangerous proximity.

He stretched his long legs out in front of him and watched with a curl of wry amusement as Alice perched herself self-consciously on a piece of furniture as far away from him as it was possible to be. That flash of bare thigh above her stocking top was quite something. ‘I’ve been to a wedding,’ he drawled.

It was the last thing she had expected him to say. Alice’s fingernails gripped the sofa. Kyros and weddings went as well together as water and electricity. And didn’t the very word sound uncomfortably intimate, especially to her, who had once—mistakenly as it turned out—rather hoped to marry him? What an idiot she had been. She stared at him. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘My twin brother Xandros.’

‘Xandros?’

‘You sound surprised.’

Alice shook her head in disbelief. ‘Surprise doesn’t come close to it. I thought your brother was a commitment-phobe—legendary for the number of lovers he had.’

‘So he was,’ he agreed, with a careless shrug. ‘But it seems that even the world’s most restless lovers can be tamed—for now he has met and married a woman called Rebecca—’

‘She’s not Greek?’ Alice interrupted quickly, with a sudden painful pounding of her heart.

‘No. She is English.’ Their eyes met. ‘Just like you.’

No, not like me at all, thought Alice trying not to allow the hurt to show. Kyros had done his best to convince her that their upbringings were too dissimilar for the relationship to work—and that the cultural differences would sound a death-knell to a shared future. Or maybe that had just been him alighting on the perfect excuse to finish a youthful romance that she’d had no desire to let go of. ‘I thought that you and your brother were estranged. That you didn’t speak anymore.’

Kyros raked a hand through his thick dark hair. It was true—he and Xandros had fought all their lives and eventually they had fallen out in dramatic style. His twin had left the island for America and had never returned, both brothers telling themselves it was for the best—and that was how the rift had been born. How black and white things could seem when you were eighteen years old—and then somehow life turned them grey and indistinct.

‘That was a long time ago,’ he said offhandedly. ‘Time heals—and both of us seem to have forgotten what the original row was about. So I thought, why not go to his wedding?’ It had meant a lot to Xandros, or so he had told him just before the ceremony, when he’d clasped Kyros in a fierce hug. His wincing face hidden from view, Kyros had submitted to this unheard of and unwanted display of emotion, telling himself that his brother was clearly overwrought with wedding plans.

‘And is he…. happy?’ questioned Alice.

‘Happy?’ Kyros’s mouth hardened. How foolish and predictable women could be—with their naïve supposition that happiness was a permanent state! Something which came ready-made and indestructible with the marriage certificate. Happiness was like a bubble—perfection itself until it popped and then it was gone, leaving no trace other than a faint memory.

Yet, undeniably, he had been slightly taken aback to observe his brother in the throes of a love affair. To see his tough twin unashamed of showing the world—and a woman—how much he adored her had filled Kyros with unease. It could not last—it rarely did—and such a weakness would come back to haunt him. As well as effectively slicing off a huge piece of his considerable fortune if they divorced.

‘Oh, everyone can be happy for a while,’ he said, his black eyes hardening into shards of jet as he looked at her. ‘Whether it will last, who knows? I doubt it.’

‘What a cynic you are,’ Alice observed wryly.

‘Or realist?’

Their eyes met in a long, unspoken moment until Kyros finally broke it—because the slow flicker of desire was threatening to catch fire. Her fingers were bare, yet he wanted to make sure—because the new breed of women in Western society often seemed to decline to wear a wedding band.

‘You don’t have a husband yourself, Alice?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘A boyfriend, then?’

‘Again, no.’

He smiled. ‘No one who could match up to me, ne?’

Had he read her mind? Damn him. That no man had ever captured her heart and her body in the way that Kyros had. ‘Certainly not in the ego department,’ she said drily.

He laughed, shifting his position on the sofa very slightly. ‘Nor any other department, I imagine,’ he murmured.

‘I really haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ she said, ignoring the blatantly sexual boast and praying that the lie would not show and that nothing in her expression would alert him to the sleepless nights she’d spent aching for him after he’d gone. It had taken a lot of time and a lot of work to reach a place where the thought of Kyros didn’t bring an involuntary catch to her throat—and she wasn’t going to throw it all away now. ‘Or rather, I haven’t given you a lot of thought.’

‘Really?’ he questioned sardonically.

‘The past is a place I don’t choose to visit often, Kyros—apparently it’s best left behind,’ she continued, though inside she was wondering how she could have forgotten his arrogance. His obvious belief that his memory should burn as bright as some eternal light. ‘We had an affair when we were both young. It ended. So what?’ She shrugged. ‘It happens to everyone.’

Kyros’s eyes narrowed first with disbelief, and then irritation. Was it possible that she was speaking the truth? That she could dismiss her ‘affair’ with him as if he were just some insipid ex-boyfriend?

Well, either she meant what she said, or she was trying to make a point—to show him she no longer cared. And either way she would take those words back, Kyros thought as the hard beat of desire made him want to take her there and then.

He had come here tonight on an impetuous and half-formed wish to see what had happened to her—but her throw-away remark was like hurling a bucket of petrol over the smouldering embers of a fire which had never quite died.