an interest in. The cynical part of him knew those conquests were due as much to his extreme wealth as to any personal attraction he may or may not possess, but he already knew Gemini well enough to know that neither his wealth nor the way he looked would be enough to tempt her into a purely physical relationship with him. She was a woman who would require…more…
Which left him precisely where?
Attracted—deeply attracted—to a woman he knew there was absolutely no possibility would ever return that attraction, let alone act upon it!
‘You do have the money, but?’ he prompted shrewdly.
Gemini shot him a frown. ‘What makes you think there’s a but?’
He gave a derisive smile. ‘Isn’t there?’
Yes, there was. And it was a big one. One that Gemini had desperately been trying to overcome this past month without success…
She sighed. ‘I told you earlier that my parents set up a considerable trust fund for me. The interest has been paid to me on a yearly basis since I reached the age of eighteen, and the capital amount is to be made over to me on my thirtieth birthday.’ She grimaced. ‘I’ve been trying for the past month to see if I can break that trust and have the capital now, so that I can buy Bartholomew House.’
‘And?’
She scowled. ‘My father’s lawyers assure me the trust was set up in such a way as to be unbreakable. Of course if Daddy had made the new will, as he promised he would…!’ She gave a frustrated shake of her head. ‘But obviously he didn’t, so I’m stuck with not being able to get at the bulk of my money until my thirtieth birthday.’
Dark brows rose over those coal black eyes. ‘Which means you will not receive the capital for…what…? Another three years or so?’
‘Two years and four months, to be exact,’ Gemini acknowledged grudgingly.
Drakon gave a humourless smile. ‘By all means let us be exact—’ He broke off, a perplexed frown appearing between his eyes. ‘That would make your birthday some time in October?’
She nodded warily. ‘The twenty-second.’
‘But that is not the month for Gemini.’
Her wariness proved merited! ‘No…’
‘I had assumed your unusual name derived from your birth sign?’
Gemini forced a bright and totally insincere smile to her lips. ‘Obviously you assumed wrong.’
Drakon studied her through narrowed eyes, noting that smile and the dull flatness of those sea-green eyes…‘You are being evasive, Gemini.’
‘Am I?’
‘You know that you are.’
Her expression was pained as she began to pace, slender and long-legged and extremely graceful, her hair a silvery curtain about her shoulders in the moonlight reflecting through the windows behind her.
‘I don’t see what my birthday has do with the offer I’ve made you—’
‘You have not made me any offer yet—nor do I wish to hear it until we have finished our present conversation,’ Drakon assured her decisively as she would have gone on. ‘Gemini is the sign of the twins…’ he murmured slowly.
The frown deepened between those sea-green eyes. ‘Most people would have realised by now—and accepted—that I would obviously prefer not to talk about this subject any more!’ she muttered crossly.
He nodded. ‘I have realised.’
‘But you continued anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ she demanded.
Because, painful as he could see this subject was to her, Drakon wanted—needed—to know!
She had told him so much about herself already—when her birthday was, what she did for a living, her love for her parents, her disharmonious relationship with her stepmother. And it wasn’t enough. Drakon found that he desired to know all that there was to know about Gemini Bartholomew. Almost as much as he desired to make love to her…
‘I’m a twin,’ she revealed suddenly, her eyes glittering brightly with unshed tears as she turned away. ‘I had a brother,’ she continued quietly. ‘He only lived for three hours after he was born, and my mother chose my name deliberately—not out of the sadness of losing him, but out of the joy of knowing him even for that short amount of time. She didn’t want any of us to ever forget him—’ Gemini broke off abruptly as her voice choked with tears. The silken curtain of her hair fell forward to hide the depth of emotion so clearly revealed in the rawness of her voice.
Drakon gave a self-disgusted snort and moved swiftly across the room. He took Gemini into his arms, resting her head against his shoulder, and moved his arms firmly about the slenderness of her waist, her closeness allowing him to breathe in the soft perfume of her hair. ‘I am so sorry, Gemini,’ he muttered. ‘You were right. I should not have pushed you in the way I did.’
‘No, it’s okay.’ She shook her head. ‘I—It’s just that since Daddy died there’s no one left who knew about Gabriel—that was my brother’s name. Gabriel. Gemini and Gabriel.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘It’s strange, because I never really knew him, but I’ve always felt as if…as if I were somehow incomplete…as if a part of me were missing.’ She looked up to give a tearful smile. ‘Weird, huh?’
Not weird at all when one considered that Gabriel had been her twin—that the two of them had shared their mother’s womb for nine months at the very beginning of their lives…
It also explained that sadness Drakon had recognised earlier in the beauty of Gemini’s eyes when he had mentioned there being no son to inherit her father’s business. Because he now realised there had been no living son…
Gemini had no brother living. No parents, either. Leaving her completely alone in the world.
Much as Markos’s flirtatious nature often annoyed him, and much as he sometimes grew concerned about his widowed mother spending months living alone in Athens, Drakon knew he couldn’t imagine being without either of them.
His hand seemed to move of its own volition to touch the softness of her hair. ‘I think that is a perfectly natural feeling in the circumstances,’ he said as he stroked that silkiness.
Those sea-green eyes widened as she breathed, ‘You do?’
‘Of course.’ Drakon nodded, entwining several of those silky strands about his long fingers. ‘I have considered Markos as my brother since I was ten years old, and we have always been close. To know that you could have had that same closeness with your own brother must be difficult sometimes. Especially this past six months, with both your parents now gone too.’
Gemini had no idea what she was doing, virtually spilling out her life history to Drakon Lyonedes of all people! Having only met him for the first time this morning, and having found him so remote and arrogantly sure of himself, she would have thought him the last person she would be confiding her inner emotions to only hours later!
Even more worrying was the fact that she was now completely physically aware of him…
Not that she hadn’t been aware of his dark and dangerous good looks from the moment she first looked at him—what woman wouldn’t be? But being this close to him…held tightly in his arms, with her body moulded against the lean and muscled hardness of his…every part of her, all her senses, seemed to be screaming with that awareness.
He smelled so good—clean and virile male, with a spicy and insidiously delicious cologne. And his body felt so warm and solid against her own. Those shoulders wide and muscled, his chest and stomach powerfully lean, his long legs placed solidly either side of hers, his thighs hard and—
Oh,