Stranded with Her Greek Tycoon Read online

  ‘I liked my lady in pink,’ he murmured, his eyes narrowed and intent as he stroked the length of her body, first with his eyes then with his large, warm hands. ‘But I so prefer my lady in nothing.’

  ‘Two can play at that,’ she said, laughing, as she fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, quickly rid him of his clothes. Then there was no more talk, just a slow burn of moans and sighs as they explored each other and made up for lost time.

  * * *

  Cristos had fallen into the deep sleep of a sexually satisfied, contented man. Contented because he had made love with the wife who had been missing from his life for so long, but whom he had never stopped wanting. Satisfied because they had lost count of the times they had brought each other to the ultimate peaks of pleasure.

  The early-morning light filtering through the shutters woke him. For that split second between sleep and awareness he wasn’t sure where he was. Then he remembered and a great surge of exultation had him wide awake. Hayley. This was not one of the many dreams of her that had haunted him for so long. She was real.

  His wife lay beside him, her head nestled against his shoulder, one arm flung across his chest, one leg entwined with his. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth swollen to a pout from his kisses. In places her tender skin was reddened with beard rash. He felt not a jot of regret. He had been tender with her but they had kissed and made love with mutual enthusiasm. His beard had left its mark on her and not just on her face—he had kissed her all over. He was glad he had marked her. She was his.

  Her fine, short hair was tousled and he gently smoothed it back into place with his hand. He breathed in the intoxicating scent of her, of them. Risked dropping a gentle kiss on her temple.

  She stirred. Cristos held his breath. He wanted to prolong this quiet moment of union. Just he and Hayley together as they should be, husband and wife. Because he knew it couldn’t last. Making love hadn’t solved their problems. Might even have caused more.

  He didn’t want this to be the end of it for him and Hayley. A night together for old times’ sake and then they both moved on. If she went back to Sydney—perhaps tomorrow, maybe even as soon as today—he wanted to go with her. He never wanted to let her go.

  However, if there were to be any chance of moving forward together, they had to revisit the past. And he did not imagine it would be anything other than a painful journey. For each of them. But he had to know the truth about why she had left him and made it impossible for him to find her. In turn, he had to strip himself of the masks he had variously worn and present his real face to her. To right the wrongs he had done her.

  After that, he hoped they could find their way back to each other. He imagined a renewal-of-vows ceremony like the one Alex and Dell had just taken part in. Perhaps a service where the church blessed their union as his traditional grandparents had so wished.

  Or not.

  Cristos didn’t want to think about the or not option. He did not want to give up on Hayley. He wanted to right the wrongs of the past and have his wife back by his side. This time for the rest of their lives. The thought of growing old with her made him smile—she would be a cute, feisty old lady—and he longed for it to happen so desperately he found himself praying for the first time in many years.

  His leg was starting to go numb from the pressure—light though it was—of her leg over his when finally Hayley stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, looked uncertain for a moment then widened when she realised where she was. The first expression was happiness, joy even, and as she reached out for his hand they shone a brighter shade of blue. But the joy was quickly suffused with panic and she started to edge away from him. He held her hand firm.

  ‘Before you try to scoot away from me and go back to being ice princess Hayley, you need to tell just why you left me nearly two and a half years ago.’

  She bit down on her lower lip. ‘You know, I’ve told you—’

  ‘Not all of it. There are gaps in your story, koukla. Gaps I’ve puzzled over how to fill for too long.’

  He pulled her close to him, loving the slide of her nakedness against his. His arm secured her close to him.

  ‘You know all you need to know.’

  Her voice quivered and he knew she wasn’t telling him the truth. Why? He thought he’d gone through every possible scenario in his mind but had never reached a viable conclusion.

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Those last weeks, those last days, you need to fill me in. There are also things I have not told you about me that you might want to hear.’

  He felt her stiffen beside him. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Things about myself I felt...ashamed to tell you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She twisted so she lay on her side and her eyes met his. ‘I’ve often felt that I don’t really know you. That perhaps I never really knew you at all.’

  Those blue eyes saw through him, realised the masks were there. She was, perhaps, the only person who had ever sensed there was someone different underneath.

  ‘I always thought I knew you,’ he said, not intending tit-for-tat, just telling it the way he saw it. ‘It was a shock to realise I didn’t. I had not imagined the Hayley I loved could be so callous.’

  She gasped. ‘That’s very harsh.’

  ‘That’s how it felt. Complete indifference on your part to my feelings, to our marriage. Not to mention I was worried sick about you. I had questions about why you left but could never find answers—because I couldn’t find you. Of course, me being away that night and leaving you alone was unforgivable. You know I will never forgive myself.’

  He didn’t expect her to contradict him. She nodded mutely in acknowledgment and again his anger at himself burned through him. But he would have been there afterwards for her—if he’d been given the chance.

  ‘Losing our baby was tragic,’ he said. ‘With you thirteen weeks pregnant, us becoming parents was beginning to feel real. Something I really wanted. I mourned the loss too, although I never got the chance to cry with you. But other couples survive a miscarriage and go on to try again. I know you blame me for not being there—and I was at fault, more at fault than you guessed—’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘So there was something—’

  He gently laid his finger over her mouth. ‘Let me speak, koukla. You never gave me the chance to speak with you about that night that tore our marriage apart. Then you ran away from me. Can you imagine how worried I was? How frantic to find you?’ How like a piece of dirt on her shoe his mother had made him feel when he had arrived on their doorstep in Surrey looking for his wife.

  Hayley turned away so he couldn’t see her face and her voice was muffled by the pillow. She might have said she was sorry but he couldn’t be sure. He put his hand on her bare shoulder, warm and soft. He never wanted to lose her again. But something poisonous had happened that night and it had festered. There could be no hope for a genuine reconciliation unless it was lanced.

  Hayley turned to face him again. All colour had drained from her face. ‘I only realised in these last days what it must have been like for you. I had convinced myself I hated you. My family—my parents and my sister—never told me how hard you’d tried to find me. It hurt that you’d let me go so easily.’

  ‘I assure you I did everything in my power to find you. I had lost my world. Not just the child I wanted so much, but you. The wife I adored.’

  ‘Why did my parents—?’

  ‘I think we know the answer to that,’ he said. There had been a distinct note of triumph in her mother’s voice at their last encounter. But he had not given up.

  ‘I didn’t know. But at first I wouldn’t have cared if you were hurting. In truth, I wanted you to hurt. After a while I convinced myself you were off with another woman. Probably Ginny. Living happily ever after with a tall, long-legged model.’

  To hear such bitter words spoken, not with venom but wi
th sadness, was devastating to him. ‘I can’t believe you thought that,’ he said. ‘That you ever thought I wanted anyone but you. From the moment I saw you in that pub in Durham there was only ever you.’

  He turned her so that she was forced to face him. She sat up, blushed, clutched the sheets to cover her nudity. She blushed. After all the ways he’d made love to her and she to him over the last hours, and she blushed. He found it delightful.

  ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ she said.

  For one hideous moment he thought she would go into the bathroom and not come back. She would somehow escape and find her way out of the resort and onto a waiting boat and he would never see her again. He gritted his teeth to restore sanity to his thoughts. There was no trapdoor in the bathroom, no secret network of tunnels under the building. It was just his imagination running crazy, as it had when he’d feared something was wrong with her.

  Until first her sister and then her mother had told him Hayley was alive and well but just didn’t want to see him. He had thought he’d heard her mother mutter, Can’t you get that into your thick Greek head? But perhaps that had been an echo of his own thoughts. Many times he had berated himself for continuing the search for a woman who didn’t want him.

  Now he watched as she made a dash for the bathroom. Her back view was as beautiful as her front, slender with a narrow waist and curving hips too wide to make her a model but just right for a sensuous woman who was everything he’d ever wanted. He loved the new way her hair feathered to the nape of her neck, soft and fine. He had enjoyed kissing her there.

  She came back with a white hotel towel wrapped around her from her chest to her thighs. He was sad as he could never have enough of admiring her body. But perhaps it was for the best as he would only want to make love to her again and there were things that had to be said. He pulled the sheet over himself and sat up straight.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said. He’d always found that an ominous set of words when someone said it to him. But in this case it was true. He was no closer to understanding what had gone wrong.

  She carried two glasses of water and handed him one without speaking. They’d always joked that making love was thirsty work. He wanted that ease between them back. He wanted the laughter. Most of all he wanted the love. He had never stopped loving her. He had to give his everything to this last-ditch effort to mend things between them.

  Hayley sat on the edge of the bed next to him, modestly tugging the towel into place. He felt at a disadvantage reclining against the pillows and sat up so they could face each other as equals.

  ‘Why were you so concerned about Ginny?’ he said. He wished he’d never met the woman—although he wouldn’t have made so much money so quickly without her.

  ‘We seemed to bump into her more than could be put down to coincidence within the circles we moved in. I could see she wanted you, and she was the kind of woman who dismissed me with indifference. As if I were beneath her tall, skinny attention. Even though she believed I was your girlfriend, if not your wife.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.

  ‘Why would you?’ she said. ‘What was she to you?’

  ‘I was doing business with her.’

  Hayley took a sharp intake of breath. ‘So, I wasn’t wrong that there was something going on between you two.’

  He put up his hand. ‘Strictly business.’

  He hadn’t realised until he was well into the deal how predatory Ginny was. How at one stage she’d intimated that he was part of the bargain. He had quickly disillusioned her about that—he loved his girlfriend, he’d told her, choking on the lie ‘girlfriend’ when he’d proudly wanted to proclaim Hayley as his wife.

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘She and her brother are both very smart people. They were developing a shopping comparison app. I invested in it. It was a brilliant concept, just right for the time.’

  She frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to concern you.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. Surely any business deal you were doing was my concern. We were married. And I thought we shared everything.’

  This was it. The make it or break it. The kicker that might cause her to walk right out of the room and his life. No need for escape routes through the bathroom. ‘I didn’t want you to know I was a gambler. And I had put a considerable chunk of our savings at risk.’

  He couldn’t meet her eyes, dreading what he might see there.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HAYLEY STARED AT CRISTOS, unable to comprehend what she was hearing. ‘What do you mean?’ Her husband, now her lover again, was suddenly a stranger to her. Even though he lay naked in her bed. Cristos a gambler?

  What else had he been hiding from her?

  She swallowed hard against her disbelief and disappointment. ‘What was it? Horses? Casino? Online gaming?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not that kind of gambling. I told you about my trading stocks and shares at university, backing the small apps my fellow students were developing. Once I started to earn big money with modelling, I upped the stakes and took that a step further. Investing a lot more money in untried businesses where I saw potential. With a lot more risk.’

  Hayley frowned. ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you talking something dishonest?’ Fear grabbed at her with icy claws. Cristos a criminal? She couldn’t bear the thought. ‘Something illegal?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m talking one hundred per cent legitimate investment. But not of the blue-chip kind—think the total opposite of blue-chip investment. Where the risks are so much higher.’ There was an edge of excitement to his voice.

  ‘You sound as though you enjoyed it.’

  ‘I did. I do. When the odds are stacked against you, when it’s a bigger leap of faith than you thought yourself capable of, when there’s a very real risk you could lose everything on something as intangible as an idea to be thrown out into cyberspace—there’s something heart-stopping about it. That’s the kind of gambling I risked our savings on.’

  The feeling that she had never known this man intensified. ‘How? I would have known. We had a joint bank account.’

  ‘Confession time,’ he said, his green eyes sober. She steeled herself for his answer. ‘I still had my own account. I diverted some of my earnings into it. You never saw them. That was my seed money.’

  ‘But you were earning so much.’ More money than two young people could have dreamed of at that time.

  ‘More than you knew.’

  She clutched at her heart. ‘I can’t believe you did that. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Two reasons. The first was that I was ashamed to be a gambler. I was doing it for our future. But I didn’t want to look diminished in your eyes. Be someone less than you thought me.’

  ‘Less? Why would you think that? My father is a banker. He used to say that the money market was just one big gambling den. Trading on currency, trading on futures, on the price of commodities. Not the kind of desperate gambling that’s an addiction, an illness, that ruins people’s lives. That wasn’t you, was it, Cristos?’

  She held her breath for his answer. He gave it to her immediately. ‘No. That wasn’t me. The risks I take are informed by business savvy and market awareness as well as gut instinct. I didn’t do that Master’s degree for nothing.’

  She let out her breath on a sigh of relief.

  ‘But it was my father.’

  ‘What?’ Was there to be one unexpected blow after another?

  ‘He was the kind of gambler that you described. But he wasn’t a clever gambler. He lost more than he ever won.’

  ‘Gambling—the sure way to get nothing for something,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know where that saying comes from but it seems apt.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But with my kind of gamb
ling I’ve ended up way ahead.’

  ‘But not your father.’ Why hadn’t he told her this before? What other secrets were there for him to spill?

  ‘He was also a petty criminal, a grifter. Fraud. Embezzlement. Out and out theft.’ Cristos spoke in a matter-of-fact way and she knew it was because he found this ‘confession’ so difficult. ‘That’s why he worked to improve his English—it made it easier to target tourists. Ripping off naïve visitors to the Greek islands was his specialty. He was handsome and charming and people believed his schemes and fabrications.’

  ‘Cristos, I’m so sorry.’ She reached out her hand to clasp his. ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘I think I always knew,’ he said. His grip tightened on her hand. ‘Was always aware there was something not right about our family. That my baba was someone I couldn’t boast about like other kids did about their dads.’

  Compassion for him swelled in her heart. She imagined him as an adorable little boy, feeling different and alone. ‘That must have been tough for you.’

  ‘It was much worse for my mother.’

  ‘I can imagine. How did your mother get involved with him?’ His family seemed so traditional, so straight. Now she realised in the time she’d been here no one had ever mentioned Cristos’s parents. It was as if they’d been wiped from the family history.

  ‘He was working as a barman in Nidri when he met my mother. He conned her into falling in love with him. By the time she realised what he was, she was pregnant. She married him anyway. Soon after, they had to leave town before the bar owner discovered he’d been cheated of his profits.’ He paused and her heart clenched at the anguish on his face. ‘We were always having to leave town.’

  ‘You said he was away a lot of the time. I assumed you meant on business.’

  ‘He was in prison,’ he said bluntly.

  His answer was not totally unexpected, but no less shocking all the same. ‘Oh, Cristos. I’m so sorry. How awful for you. And for your mother.’