Not that they seemed in any hurry to turn their backs on their Mum’s home cooking and laundry service.
Taking the key from the ignition she huffed out a sigh. At nearly twenty-three she should be leaving the nest, giving Mum a break. And she would—as soon as her business took off.
The profits from the Greek job were earmarked for new tools, a possible van upgrade and wider advertising—because the local press had only brought in one enquiry for the make-over of a small back garden in the nearby market town. The clients, recently moved in, wanted the usual. What they called an ‘outdoor room', with a play area for a young child, the ubiquitous decking and a tiny lawn. Bog standard stuff which she’d completed in five days, and nothing else on the horizon.
Normally optimistic—a bit too Micawberish her dad sometimes said, but fondly—Maddie felt unusually down as she locked the van and headed for the side door that led directly into the warm heart of the house—the kitchen. Mum would be beavering away, preparing the evening meal for when her ravenously hungry menfolk returned. Friday night, she usually made a huge steak pie. Maddie would prepare the massive amount of vegetables as soon as she’d got out of her muddy work boots and shed her ancient waxed jacket.
Fixing a bright smile on her generous mouth—dear old Mum had better things to do than look at a long face—Maddie pushed open the door and her smile went. Her mouth dropped open and her heart jumped to her throat, leaving her feeling weirdly lightheaded.
He was there. Dimitri Kouvaris. In the outrageously gorgeous, impeccably suited flesh. Sitting at the enormous kitchen table, drinking tea, and being plied with shortbread by her pink-cheeked chattering parent.
He looked up.
And smiled.
It was a perfect spring day. The day after his bombshell arrival on the scene. Her blue eyes narrowed, Maddie watched him saunter ahead along the narrow woodland path.
Dressed this morning in stone-coloured jeans that clipped his narrow male hips and long legs, and a casual honey-toned shirt that clung to the intimidating width of his shoulders, he dominated the surroundings. The sea of bluebells, now in promising bud, didn’t even merit a glance. She had eyes only for him. And deplored it.
Last night, at Mum’s invitation, he’d stayed for supper, integrating easily with her family. He had explained that he’d met her in Athens through a mutual friend, and that as he was in the area on business he’d decided to look her up.
And she might, if she’d tried hard, have believed it.
But not after the way he’d turned up this morning. All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, smoothly imparting that as he had a free day and Maddie, as he’d discovered—prised out of someone, more likely!—had no work on, he’d appreciate it if she showed him some of the surrounding countryside. He had tossed in the invitation that they all dine with him that evening at his hotel, erasing Mum’s tiny questioning frown at a stroke.
But Maddie was still questioning.
Why should a drop-dead handsome, rotten rich Greek tycoon with a gorgeous fiancée take the trouble to ‘look up’ an ordinary working girl and her ordinary family? A stranger to male sexual interest, she wasn’t so green as to fail to recognise it when it came her way. She’d registered it on that first day back in Athens. She chewed worriedly on her full lower lip. Trouble was, it was mutual, and she was drawn to him when common sense dictated that she should be running a mile.
Turning as the narrow path debouched onto a wide grassy meadow, Dimitri waited for her, his heartbeats quickening. Glossy curls surrounded her flushed heart-shaped face, her sultry lips were parted; her lush body was clothed in faded jeans and a workmanlike shirt. She was as unlike the elegant designer-clad females who threw themselves at him on a tediously regular basis as it was possible to be.
Testosterone pumped through his body. Self-admittedly cynical about the female half of the population, who looked at him and saw nothing but spectacular wealth, this immediate and ravaging physical awareness had never happened to him before. And no way was he about to knock it. He wanted her and would have her—would fight to the death to claim her!
‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ She sounded breathless. She was breathless. Yet the pace he’d set hadn’t been in the least taxing. All part and parcel of the effect he had on her, she conceded uneasily, and quivered as he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
The warmth, the firmness of his mouth as it trailed over the backs of her fingers, took what was left of her breath away. And when he murmured, ‘You want the truth?’ it took an enormous effort of will to look him in the eyes.
‘What else?’ she said.
Meeting those spectacular, mesmeric golden eyes had been a big mistake, she registered, as her knees went weak and simultaneously her breasts peaked and thrust with greedy urgency against the thin cotton of her shirt.
As if he knew exactly what was happening to her, his long strong hands went to her waist, easing her against his body, making her burningly, bone-crunchingly aware of the hard extent of his arousal.
Feverishly torn between what her mind was telling her and what her body craved, it took some moments before she registered his, ‘I need to get back to Athens within the month. And when I go I will take you with me. As my wife.’ When it did, her mind took over with a vengeance.
Pulling away from him, she squawked, ‘Have you gone crazy? How can you want to marry me? It’s madness. You hardly know me!’ Then her eyes narrowed to scornful slits. ‘Is that the way you usually get into a girl’s knickers? Promise to marry her?’
Shaken by his sudden peal of laughter, she could only splutter as he folded his arms around her and vowed, ‘I knew I wanted you in my body and in my soul the first time I saw you. And if that is crazy, then I like being crazy. Tonight, at dinner, I will ask your father’s permission to court you. And then I will do everything in my power to persuade you to accept me.’
At her shaky accusation, ‘You are mad!’ he lowered his head and kissed her. And all the niggling questions as to why a guy like him, who could pick and choose between the world’s most beautiful women, should earmark her as his future bride disappeared for the next earth-shattering couple of hours.
CHAPTER ONE
HIS face like thunder, Dimitri Kouvaris strode down the first-storey corridor of his sumptuous villa on the outskirts of Athens, hands fisted at his sides, his wide shoulders as rigid as an enraged bull about to charge.
Eleni, the youngest member of his household staff, flattened herself against the wall at his approach, and only expelled her pent-up breath as he shot down the sweeping staircase two treads at a time.
The soles of his handmade shoes ringing against the marble slabs, he crossed the wide hallway and after a cursory rap entered his aunt’s quarters.
‘Did you know about this?’ he demanded on a terse bite, lobbing over the piece of paper crumpled into his fist. And he watched, the gold of his eyes dark with inner fury, as the thin pale fingers of his father’s elder spinster sister smoothed the creases out.
The few words burned like acid into his brain.
Our marriage is over. My solicitor will be in touch regarding our divorce.
Three months and she said it was over! No explanation. Nothing but a note left on the pillow of their opulent marriage bed. How dared she?
‘She dishonours the Kouvaris name!’ he bit out, and the silvery head rose from her prinked-lipped perusal. The sharp black eyes were disdainful as his seventy-year-old aunt dropped the note on the small table at her side and fastidiously wiped her fingers on a silk handkerchief.
‘You dishonoured our family name when you made her your bride,’ Alexandra Kouvaris pronounced, with a profound lack of compassion. ‘A common gold-digger with her eye obviously on a handsome divorce settlement. A high price to pay for an abortive attempt to get an heir, nephew.’ She settled back in her