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‘Your money means nothing to me, Sander, nothing at all,’ she told him truthfully, adding for good measure, ‘And neither do you. For me, the fact that you choose to think in terms of money simply underlines all the reasons why I am not prepared to allow my sons anywhere near you unless I am there.’
‘That is how you feel, but what about how they might feel?’ Sander pressed her. ‘A good mother would never behave so selfishly. She would put her children’s interests first.’
How speedily Sander had turned the tables on her, Ruby recognised. What had begun at least on her part as a challenge to him, which she had been confident would make him back down, had turned into a double-edged sword which right now he was wielding very skilfully against her, cutting what she had thought was secure ground away from under her feet.
‘I am…they need their moth—’ she started.
‘They are my sons,’ Sander interrupted her angrily. ‘And I mean to have them. If I have to marry you to facilitate that, then so be it. But make no mistake, Ruby. I intend to have my sons.’
Best-selling Modern™ Romance authorPenny Jordan brings you an exciting new trilogy…
NEEDED: THE WORLD’SMOST ELIGIBLE BILLIONAIRES
Three penniless sisters, pure and proud…but about to be purchased!
With bills that need to be paid,
a house about to be repossessed and little twin boys
to feed, sisters Lizzie, Charley and Ruby refuse to drown
in their debts. They will hold their heads up high
and fight to feed their family!
But three of the richest, most ruthless men in the world
are about to enter their lives…
Pure, proud, but penniless,
how far will the sisters go to save the ones they love?
Lizzie’s story—
THE WEALTHY GREEK’S CONTRACT WIFE
Ilios Manos is Greek and ruthless.A dangerous combination! Lizzie owes him thousands,but he’ll take her as his wife in payment.
Charley’s story—
THE ITALIAN DUKE’S VIRGIN MISTRESS
When project manager Charley is hired by demandingRaphael Della Striozzi, he’s adamant she must have amakeover! Now the dowdy frump has been transformed,she’s sexy enough for another role: his mistress!
Ruby’s story—
MARRIAGE: TO CLAIM HIS TWINS
Out of the blue, Alexander Konstantinakos has turnedup at Ruby’s house to take his twin sons back to Greece!Ruby will do anything to keep her boys by her side—even marry Sander!
Marriage: To Claim His Twins
by
Penny Jordan
MILLS & BOON
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PROLOGUE
ALEXANDER KONSTANTINAKOS, powerful, formidable, billionaire head of an internationally renowned container shipping line originally founded by his late grandfather, stood in the middle of the elegantly luxurious drawing room of his home on the Greek Ionian island of Theopolis, his gaze riveted on the faces of the twin boys in the photograph he was holding.
Two black-haired, olive-skinned and dark-eyed identical faces looked back at him, their mother kneeling down beside them. The three of them were shabbily dressed in cheap-looking clothes.
Tall, dark-haired, with the features of two thousand years of alpha-male warriors and victors sculpted into the bones of his handsome face the same way that their determination was sculpted into his psyche, he stood in the now silent room, the accusation his sister had just made was still echoing through his head.
‘They have to be your sons,’ she had accused Nikos, their younger brother. ‘They have our family features stamped on them, and you were at university in Manchester.’
Alexander—Sander to his family—didn’t need to keep gazing at the photograph Elena had taken with her mobile phone on her way through Manchester Airport after visiting her husband’s family to confirm her statement, or to memorise the boys’ faces. They were already carved into his memory for all time.
‘I don’t know anything about them,’ his younger brother Nikos denied, breaking the silence. ‘They aren’t mine, Sander, I promise you. Please believe me.’
‘Of course they’re yours,’ Elena corrected their younger brother. ‘Just look at those faces. Nikos is lying, Sander. Those children are of our blood.’
Sander looked at his younger sister and brother, on the verge of quarrelling just as they had always done as children. There were only two years between them, but he had been born five years before Elena and seven before Nikos, and after their grandfather’s death as the only adult family member left in their lives he had naturally taken on the responsibility of acting as a father figure to them. That had often meant arbitrating between them when they argued.
This time, though, it wasn’t arbitration that was called for.
Sander looked at the photograph again and then announced curtly, ‘Of our blood, but not of Nikos’s making. Nikos is speaking the truth. The children are not his.’
Elena stared at him.
‘How can you know that?’
Sander turned towards the windows and looked beyond them to where the horizon met the deep blue of the Aegean Sea. Outwardly he might appear calm, but inside his chest his heart was thudding with fury. Inside his head images were forming, memories he had thought well buried surfacing.
‘I know it because they are mine,’ he answered his sister, watching as her eyes widened with the shock of his disclosure.
She wasn’t the only one who was shocked, Sander acknowledged. He had been shocked himself when he had looked at her phone and immediately recognised the young woman kneeling beside the two young boys who so undeniably bore the stamp of their fathering—his fathering. Oddly, she looked if anything younger now than she had the night he had met her in a Manchester club favoured by young footballers, and thus the haunt of the girls who chased after them. He had been taken there by a business acquaintance, who had left him to his own devices having picked up a girl himself, urging Sander to do the same.
Sander’s mouth hardened. He had buried the memory