His Contract Christmas Bride. Sharon Kendrick

that didn’t mean I wasn’t hopeful it might work for Niko.’ His mouth twisted cynically and there was a pause. ‘Apparently they had a beachside wedding and then I heard that she’d had a baby.’

      ‘B-baby?’ she echoed.

      Drakon saw the colour drain from her face but still he didn’t say it. It was as if he needed to mould the facts into some sort of recognisable structure before he hit her with the big one. Was he hoping to build up an element of sympathy, so she would find it impossible to say no to him? ‘He got in touch with me just after the birth, to tell me I was now an uncle. He...he asked me if I wanted to go and meet Xander for myself and I told him I would. So I scheduled in a trip to go and see them the following week and was hopeful that the birth of a healthy child might bring him the kind of fulfilment he’d been unable to find elsewhere. Maybe it would have done if he and his wife hadn’t decided to celebrate in their own time-honoured way. Not with a bottle of champagne or a candlelit dinner, but a lethal cocktail of narcotics.’

      Her face blanched even more. ‘Oh, no.’

      ‘Oh, neh,’ he agreed grimly. ‘My partner was on a business trip nearby and some instinct made me ask her to check on them unannounced.’ He paused, suddenly finding the words very difficult to say. ‘Their bodies were still warm by the time she got there. I got a local investigator to find out what he could, and a little searching revealed that Niko’s wife was as hooked on illegal substances as he was.’

      ‘Oh, Drakon. I’m so sorry.’

      He shook his head. ‘We spoke to the doula who’d been attending her throughout the pregnancy and the only thing I’m grateful for is that she must have retained some vestige of common sense, and was able to give up drugs for the whole nine months.’

      She flinched, the words spilling urgently from her mouth. ‘And the baby?’ she demanded. ‘What about the baby?’

      ‘Is unharmed,’ he supplied grimly. ‘The life force is powerful. He is lusty and strong and with his Greek nanny now—safe and warm not far from here, in London.’ He felt his mouth twist, as if recounting words he didn’t particularly want to say. ‘You see, Niko and his wife had named me as the child’s official guardian and so he is living with me.’

      She leaned forward, clasping her hands together as if in prayer, an expression of earnestness on her face. But he could see indecision there, too, and she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. ‘This is a heartbreaking story, Drakon—and I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she breathed. ‘But I’m still not quite sure why you’re telling me all this.’

      He stared at her. Was she really so naïve? Maybe she was. She’d certainly been innocent when he’d parted her thighs that hot summer evening and slid inside the unexpected tightness of her body. Though maybe he’d been the naïve one not to have realised that the wholesome Lucy Phillips had been untouched by another man. When he’d bumped into her in England she’d appeared almost invisible and the thought of seducing her couldn’t have been further from his mind. And yet things had inexplicably turned sexual when he’d dropped in on her when she’d been staying on his island.

      He remembered seeing her swimming in his pool, her strong arms arcing through the turquoise water in a graceful display of strength and power. Length after length he had watched her swim and when she’d eventually surfaced and blinked droplets of water from her eyes, she had looked genuinely surprised—and pleased—to see him. He shouldn’t have been turned on by her plain and practical swimsuit but he had been, though maybe because he’d never seen someone of her age wearing something so old-fashioned. Just as he shouldn’t have been unexpectedly charmed by the way she made him laugh—which was rare enough to be noteworthy. He’d found himself staying on for dinner, even though he hadn’t planned to—and even though he’d told himself that her dress was cheap, that hadn’t stopped him from being unable to tear his eyes away from the way the dark material had clung to her fleshy curves, had it?

      Maybe it was inevitable that they had started kissing—and just as inevitable that they’d ended up having sex. The unexpected and unwanted factor had been encountering her intact hymen and realising he was the first man she’d ever been intimate with. At the time he’d been irritated by the fact she hadn’t told him because, according to friends who knew about such things, taking a woman’s virginity brought with it all kinds of problems—not least the kind of mindless devotion which was the last thing he needed. In fact, he despised it, for reasons which still made him shudder. His mouth hardened. He had enough difficulty keeping women at arm’s length as it was, without some idealistic innocent longing for rose petals and wedding bells.

      But his irritation had lasted no longer than it took to resume his powerful rhythm inside her. And she had surprised him. Not just because she had proved to be an energetic and enthusiastic lover who had kissed more sweetly than any other woman he’d ever known. No. Because she seemed to have realised herself the limitations of their brief affair and to have accepted the fact that he had ghosted her from his life afterwards. She hadn’t made any awkward phone calls or sent texts carefully constructed in order to appear ‘casual’. And if his abundantly healthy ego had been fleetingly dented by her apparent eagerness to put what had happened behind her, the feeling had soon left him, because it was entirely mutual. But it made him realise that in many ways Lucy Phillips was exceptional. Emotionally independent, a trained midwife and, thus, the perfect candidate for what he needed...

      He felt his mouth dry as he studied her earnest face and the clothes which failed to flatter her curvy shape. It was hard now to believe that she had choked out her fulfilment as he had driven into her firm body or to imagine the way he had fingered her nipples in the blazing Greek sunshine so that they had puckered into tight little nubs just ripe for sucking. But when you stopped to think about it, all of this was hard to believe and he needed to present his case so that she would receive it sympathetically. Rising to his feet, he addressed her stumbled question as he slowly approached her fireside chair. ‘I’m telling you because I need your help, Lucy.’

      ‘My help?’ she echoed, her bright eyes looking up at him in surprise as his shadow enveloped her in darkness. ‘Are you kidding? How on earth can I help someone like you when you’re one of the richest men in the world and I have practically nothing?’

      ‘No, I’m not kidding,’ he negated firmly. ‘And, far from having nothing, you have something I need very badly. Niko’s baby needs security and continuity. He needs a home and I’m in a position to offer him one. But not on my own. Not as a single man whose work takes him to opposite sides of the world and who has no experience of babies, or children. And that’s why I’m asking you to marry me, Lucy. To be my wife and the mother of my orphaned nephew.’