He had never come to terms with his father’s reputation with women. He’d lost count of the number of lovers who had drifted through the older man’s life since his own mother’s death and become, for a time, surrogate materas to him while he was growing up. Not one of them had stayed, though three of them had become Cyril’s wife for a while, usually a very brief time.

Now it seemed that the fifth Mrs Antonakos was about to make her appearance. Quite frankly, Theo didn’t hold out much expectation that she would last any longer than any of her predecessors, but she was indirectly responsible for the restlessness and the unsettled mood that were eating at him tonight.

He reached for his glass of wine and drained the rich red liquid from the bottom of it, slamming the glass back down on the table top with a crash that revealed the turmoil of his inner feelings.

He usually loved London’s bustling vibrancy, the sense of people going places, living busy lives. The crowded streets, the lights, the hum of cars, reminded him of his home in Athens, the city life he had there, the cut and thrust of the business world that made every day a challenge he enjoyed.

But when it was dark and damp and cold as it was now on this October evening, then he wished he were anywhere but here. He missed the heat of the Greek sun on his back, the lazy lap of the ocean against the rocks of the island his family owned. He missed the sound of his native language. He missed his family. Hell, he missed home.

It had started with the letter that had arrived that morning.

One look at the stamp with the familiar Greek script had jarred him awake with a speed and roughness that had made his head spin. He hadn’t even needed to check the postmark, or the rough, almost illegible scrawl of the address. He had known immediately just who it was from.

His father had broken his long silence and had written at last.

‘Oh, come on, Red, lighten up. Sit down and have a drink with us!’

The rough-edged, slightly slurred comment followed by a chorus of laughter drifted over to him from across the other side of the bar, making him glance in that direction. A couple of youths were lounging around a table, beer bottles littering the polished surface.

But it was the woman with them who caught his attention. Caught and held it.

He couldn’t see her face because she had her back to him. But what he could see was stunning. Physically, sexually stunning in a way that made desire twist, sharp and hot, in his gut in immediate reaction.

Long hair in a glorious, burnished red gold cascaded down the slender length of her back, gleaming with coppery highlights even under the shaded lamps of the bar. She was tall and shapely: narrow shoulders, neat hips, a pert, tight bottom under the clinging skirt of her black dress.

Skirt? His faint laugh denied the description. That wasn’t a skirt, it was a pelmet—little more than an extended belt, leaving exposed the slim, elegant length of her legs in sheerest black nylon, right down to the point where her feet were pushed into the polished, ridiculously high-heeled shoes.

‘Anything you like, sweetheart…’

There was something about her that compelled him to watch her.

And he had been without a woman too long. That was the real reason he was interested. Ever since Eva had walked out three months ago, there had been no female company in his life.

He could have had plenty—he knew without false modesty that his dark looks attracted female attention and interest. Add to that the appeal of the wealth that came from both his family background and the results of his own efforts, and he rarely had to spend a night alone unless he wanted to.

But lately that knowledge hadn’t satisfied him. He was edgy, wanted more.

Not with Eva, though. That was why they’d argued and why she’d walked. Eva had thought that she was onto a good thing. She had had wedding bells and gold rings in her dreams, and he had had to disillusion her about that pretty forcefully. As a result, she’d left. Eva wasn’t the kind of girl to stay around when she knew she wasn’t going to get what she wanted.

And if he was honest with himself, he really hadn’t missed her.

‘No, really, no thanks.’

Her voice fell into one of those sudden lapses into silence in which even the quietest voice sounded clear and audible in the stillness of the room.

And what a voice! It was low and sensual, surprisingly husky for a woman. It made him imagine hearing that voice whispering to him in the deep, warm darkness of a king-size bed. His mouth dried, his body tightened just to think of it. But the next moment, the sexy mood vanished, the erotic thoughts driven away by a dramatic change in her tone.

‘I said no, thank you.’

Theo was on his feet before he was even aware of having reacted. There had been an edge to her words, a note of unease, of total rejection of the position in which she found herself. She wasn’t happy, it was obvious.

Half a dozen long, forceful strides took him across the room to come up close behind her. Neither she nor the men she was talking to had even noticed him.

Skye Marston knew that she was in trouble.

In fact, she had known it from three heartbeats into the conversation she had foolishly started with these two. She should never have stopped, never responded to their casually friendly greeting on her way into the room.

Their apparently casually friendly greeting.

She had come into the bar on a whim. It had looked crowded, brightly lit and warm, in contrast to the cold wind and driving rain of the street outside. And she had wanted desperately to be with people. She had spent too much time on her own, and being on her own left her vulnerable to her unhappy thoughts.

Was it really less than a month since her father had broken down and admitted that his money problems were far worse than he had let on? That in an attempt to deal with them, he had made a real mess of things by ‘borrowing’ from his boss, Greek millionaire Cyril Antonakos, the owner of the hotels he managed—and, even worse, he had now been found out. He faced a lengthy prison sentence if charges were pressed.

‘I can’t go to jail, Skye!’ he had wept. ‘Not now, not with your mother so ill! It would kill her. She just can’t manage without me. You have to help me!’

‘I’ll do anything I can, Dad.’ Skye had reacted instinctively, knowing there was nothing else she could say.

Her mother’s heart condition had been a cause of great concern for some time, but lately her condition had deteriorated. Now it seemed that if the next operation she had didn’t succeed, her only hope was a transplant. ‘Anything at all—though I don’t know what help I can be!’

But her father had known. Cyril Antonakos had already proposed a way out of the terrible trap in which Andrew Marston found himself. And Skye had listened in horror as he had revealed just how vital she was to their scheme. Cyril wanted an heir. To achieve that end, obviously he needed a wife and, as his last marriage had ended in an acrimonious divorce, he had selected Skye as the potential mother of his child. If she married him, gave him the heir he craved, he wouldn’t prosecute.

In order to save Andrew Marston from imprisonment, she was being asked to marry a man older than her father.

And tomorrow she had to give him her answer.

That was why she was here tonight. That was why she was out on her own, spending her one last night of freedom in the impersonal bright lights and busy streets of London. She could only pray that those bright lights—and the crowded bars—were enough to distract her from what tomorrow would bring.

Not giving herself time to reconsider, she had swung into the wide doorway, struggling with the big glass doors, pushing her way through the crowd, trying to reach the bar.

And immediately she had felt that she had made a mistake.

The bar was warm and bright, true. It was also very busy. And everyone there seemed to know someone else. No one was on their own, without anyone else to talk to, to smile at.

And even if they had been alone, she told herself, no one else could ever be quite so lonely, quite so isolated as she felt right now.

She had been about to turn round and go back out when she had spotted the one other person who, like her, was on his own.

Should she—could she—make herself go up and talk to him? That had been her plan from the start. To meet someone and talk to them, so, hopefully, driving away this appalling sense of isolation and loss, melting the cruel block of ice that seemed to surround her world, and giving her some moments of freedom and relaxation before the world closed in on her again.

But this man didn’t look the type who could fulfil that hope for her. He was too big, too dark, too dangerous-looking. His long body lounged in the chair, apparently at ease, but there was an air of menace, of carefully leashed power, about him that made her heart kick inside her chest, so that she caught her breath in shock. His black-haired head was turned away from her, and hooded eyes stared down into a glass half-filled with red wine.

It was almost as if she had come across a sleek, honed hunting cat crouching in wait in some small, shaded jungle clearing. Just seeing him slowed her steps to a halt, making her hesitate and rethink.

And that was when the call from the nearest table had distracted her.

‘Hello, darling. Looking for someone?’

If she hadn’t been so diverted by the appearance of the dark-haired man in the corner, so desperate for company and distraction, Skye would have simply switched on an automatic smile, murmured something about having ‘just spotted them, thank you,’ and moved on. But her steps had already slowed, she had stopped beside the table, and somehow she couldn’t find the words to extricate herself.

And they clearly thought that she was with them for the evening—and more. Their smiles, the hot, lascivious way their eyes travelled over her, made her feel uneasy. She might have been looking for a last chance to spend her time as a free, single twenty-two-year-old, but this was not what she’d had in mind.

She tried to turn down the offers of a drink with what she hoped was an apologetic smile, an expression of regret, but she could see that they weren’t appeased. The blond was growing noticeably aggressive, and when she tried to step back and move away she found that his black-haired friend had grabbed her arm and was gripping it in a bruisingly tight hold.

‘So what’s wrong—aren’t we good enough for you?’

‘No—really—I—I’m waiting for someone.’

‘Like who?’ Frank disbelief sounded roughly in his voice.

‘My—my boyfriend. He said—he’d meet me here.’

The blond made an elaborate play of looking around the room, searching for the imaginary boyfriend.

‘Then I think you’ve been stood up, Red. He’s clearly not coming for you.’

The grip on her arm tightened cruelly, pulling her closer so that she had to bend slightly to adjust to the tug on her wrist.

‘He—he’s just late.’

‘Do you know what I think, Red?’

It was a mocking whisper, a malicious gleam lighting in his eyes.

‘I think he’s not coming. In fact, I have this suspicion that you’re telling me lies—that this lover of yours just doesn’t exist.’

‘Oh, but he does.’

Skye jumped like a startled cat as the words came from behind her. The deep, gorgeously accented, sexy male voice was the last thing she had ever anticipated. It was the fantasy she might have wished for—the dream lover turning up to rescue her from the awkward, uncomfortable situation in which she found herself.

But this was no fantasy. The startled gaze of her tormentors had gone from her face to somewhere behind the back of her head, shock and consternation showing in their eyes. The controlling grip on her wrist had loosened, letting her pull free. ‘Oh!’

The soft cry of shock was pushed from her as a pair of tightly muscled arms slid round her waist from behind. A hard, powerful frame was pressed up against her back, its heat and strength reaching right through the material of her jacket, to her skin, her bones—seeming to scorch her soul.

She felt safe, protected, surrounded by this unknown man. His warmth and strength enclosed her, the sound of his breathing tantalised her ears, and the scent of his skin filled her nostrils.

‘Sorry I’m late, darling,’ the husky voice murmured against her neck. ‘You know how these meetings drag on. But I’m here now.’

‘Mmm.’

It was all she could manage and she didn’t care if it sounded more like a sigh of sensual response than any coherent answer.

Her body was tingling all over, burning in instant response to just this unknown man’s touch. She couldn’t see his face—the only parts of his body that were visible to her were the hands that were clasped around her waist.

And they were intensely masculine hands. Big and square and capable-looking. They dwarfed her own smaller, slimmer fingers as they closed warmly over them. No rings. The only adornment was a sleek platinum watch on one wrist, just above an immaculate white shirt cuff, the steel-grey of an elegant and expensive jacket.

‘Forgive me?’

‘Oh, yes!’

How could she say anything else? She would have agreed to anything, accepted anything from him. It was impossible to think straight, and what tiny fragments of thoughts still lingered inside her head were totally shattered, blasted into oblivion by what he did next.

She sensed movement behind her, just out of sight. Felt the brush of silky hair against her cheek, then suddenly there was the press of warm lips against the back of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat; her heart thudded hard against her ribcage, and her head went back against a strong, supportive shoulder, her eyes half closing in sensual response.

‘Hey!’

The stranger’s voice was soft, faintly reproving, edged with a disturbing laughter.

‘Not here, darling,’ he went on wickedly. ‘Better wait until we get home!’

Home! She wasn’t going home with this man…

That brought her back to the present in the blink of an eyelid, her head coming up again sharply, her mouth opening on a gasp of protest. But the protest never had a chance to form because the man behind her spoke again before she had a chance to say a word.

‘Time to go, sweetheart. Say goodbye to your friends.’

It was the way he said friends that alerted her. She had been in danger of giving away their pretence. If she had voiced her protest, she would have made it clear to the men at the table that her rescuer was not the lover she had claimed him as.

‘Goodbye, guys! Th-thanks for keeping me company.’

Just who was this man who had come to her rescue so unexpectedly? The question raged in her mind as she made herself turn, ready to walk off with him, struggling to look as if this were something she did every day.

He slid his hand into hers, lacing his strong fingers with hers, holding her in a way that felt light and gentle, but which she was sure would be even harder to break away from than the dark-haired man’s hold had been.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

He was tall, and strongly built, that much she could tell from the swift, sidelong glances she slanted in his direction, not daring to actually turn and stare. In the shadowy light of the bar, his face was turned from her, eyes fixed on the doorway towards which his determined strides were taking them. She could only let herself be pulled along in his wake, wanting to be well away from her earlier tormentors before she did what she knew she was going to have to do and put the brakes on sharply, saying, ‘This far and no further.’

‘Hang on a minute…’ she tried, but he either didn’t hear or pretended not to. His ruthless path through the bar didn’t falter, and where she had struggled through the crowds on her way in, now they just seemed to part smoothly to let him through.

The next moment they were at the door and moving down the steps into the street.

‘Now hang on!’

She dug her heels in as she spoke, mentally slamming on the brakes and praying that his strength and power wouldn’t just drag her over, tumbling ignominiously down the stone stairs after him.

‘That’s far enough!’

This time her voice reached him. Either that, or the pull on his hand was enough to drag him to a halt. He stopped abruptly, then whirled round, coming to face her, and she saw his features for the first time in the full glow of the light of the street lamps.

She’d seen them before. Seen that strong-boned, forcefully arrogant face. The jet-black, deep-set eyes above slashing cheekbones, the long, straight sweep of a nose, and the fall of rich, thick hair, darker than the night’s shadows around him.

‘You!’

The word escaped on a cry of shock as she recognised the man she had seen at the other side of the bar. The only other person who had been on his own in the busy, noisy room.

The man she had not dared to risk approaching because some intuitive sense of fear had held her back. Her instincts had sprung straight to red alert, flashing warning signs before her eyes and shrieking, ‘Danger—keep away! Don’t touch!’ even before she had had a chance to think why. She just knew that something deep and primitive inside her had made her feel that he was someone to be treated with the intense caution with which she might approach a prowling jungle cat if she came face to face with it out hunting.

And seen up close he looked even more so. More dangerous; more devastating. More blatantly masculine. More shockingly attractive—and yet even his undeniable sexual appeal had a worrying core of threat at the bottom of it.

This wasn’t the sort of man she usually encountered. He was nothing like the men she had known at home and in the office, the few, friendly dates she had ever been out on. He was beyond her experience, beyond her knowledge—and very definitely beyond her control.

Those instincts were working overtime again—and this time they were yelling at her that she was completely out of her depth with this man.

And if she wasn’t very much mistaken, she had just jumped right out of the frying-pan and straight into the very heart of the fire.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ME?’

THEO’S response to Skye’s shocked exclamation was as calm and relaxed as he could make it, though any real control was the last thing he felt capable of.

He should never have touched her.

His body still burned at the thought of it; his brain had almost melted in the burn of the fierce, erotic heat that had flooded every inch of his body, making him hard and hungry in a second. He still ached from the sudden ebbing of the blazing tide, the effect of the cold night air that had hit him as soon as they had left the bar.

He should never have touched her, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the way that she had responded to him.

He’d thought she felt it too.

If she hadn’t, then what the hell had she meant by the way she’d reacted—resting her head against his shoulder, leaning back into him?

But now she was behaving as if she thought he was a demon from hell and not at all the person she’d been hoping for

‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘N-no—not exactly,’ she stammered. ‘I—it’s just—I never thought that you’d be the one to come to my rescue. I should thank you,’ she added, too belatedly to smooth his very ruffled feelings.

‘Think nothing of it.’

A wave of his hand dismissed her stumbling thanks. Theo was well aware of the way that the frustrated demands of his aroused body were distorting his mood, making him feel bad-tempered and edgy. And what made a bad mood infinitely worse was the way that, seeing her face full on now, in the light from the doorway, he found that the promise suggested by her back, her profile, indoors, was more than fulfilled by the reality.

She was gorgeous. A pale, oval face. Stunning light coloured eyes, with incredibly thick, lush lashes. A full, soft mouth seemed just made for kisses, and the thoughts that imagining that mouth on his own skin triggered off were so X-rated that he was glad of the shadows in the street, the darkness of the evening, that hid his response from her.

‘And I should introduce myself.’

Her hand came out, stiffly formal.

‘I’m—Skye…’

The hesitation before her name and the way that she didn’t add a surname told him she didn’t want to trust him with the full details of her identity. Fair enough, that was fine with him.

‘Anton,’ he growled, knowing he was forced to take her hand, but making the contact as brief and brusque as possible before letting it drop.

He didn’t want a repeat of the cruelly demanding sensations he’d experienced before, especially when it seemed that this Skye was determined to be on her way as soon as possible and there was no chance of taking things any further.

‘Anton.’

The way that she echoed the name he had given her made him wonder if she really knew, or suspected, it was not genuine.

He didn’t give a damn one way or another. Even here, in England, the Antonakos name—and, more importantly, the Antonakos fortune—was so well known that the realisation he was a member of that family was enough to create an interest where there wasn’t one, to put a speculative light in the eye of anyone he met.

And, in his experience, women were the worst offenders. Along with the name Antonakos, they saw the prospect of a meal ticket for life; a future of luxury and ease, if they could just play their cards right.

As he was not at all sure what sort of cards this Skye, whoever she was, was about to play; he preferred to keep his own—and the truth of his identity—very close to his chest.

Not that she seemed in the least interested right now. Those pale eyes were scanning the street, looking up and down the road.

‘Are you looking for someone?’

Suspicion made him voice it. Damn it, had he got this all wrong from the start? He cursed under his breath at the way that thought made him feel. He didn’t want her to have been really waiting for anyone. He had assumed that the lover she had claimed was imaginary—had wanted him not to exist.

The truth was that he wanted this woman for himself, and right now he was prepared to do whatever it took to get her.

‘Was that boyfriend you mentioned real after all?’

‘Oh, no.’

The shake of her head sent the red-gold fall of her hair flying around her face, tiny drops of rain shimmering in its depths from the drizzle that was falling.

‘No, I made him up in the hope they would let me go. I wasn’t looking for anyone—just a taxi.’

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

‘A taxi will be fine.’ It was the vocal equivalent of several steps backwards and away from him. No physical action could have put more of a distance between them.

A black cab was approaching and she lifted a hand to hail it, but too late. It swept past in a spray of water from the puddles filling the gutter, spattering her skirt and legs with mud.

‘I can give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’

The way he repeated his exact words of just moments before brought Skye’s eyes to his face in a rush. Meeting the glittering darkness of his gaze, seeing the way that the muscles of his jaw were drawn tight, she knew a sinking sense of realisation.

She’d insulted him with her refusal. He was angry too, something that told her how much her rejection had meant to him.

‘I—was trying to be sensible,’ she managed.

‘Isn’t it a little late for that now?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, the situation you got yourself into back there—’ His dark head nodded towards the noisy, smoky bar. ‘That was hardly the action of a sensible person.’

The deliberate emphasis on the repeated word goaded her, as she was sure it was meant to do, sparking her temper and bringing her chin up, eyes flashing angry fire.

‘I didn’t exactly ask for that!’ she snapped. ‘It just happened!’

‘I only offered you a lift in my car.’

The resignation in his tone had a hard edge to it, one that warned her of the way his temper was fraying at the edges.

‘I’m sor—’ she began, but he ignored her and rushed on angrily.

‘I was brought up never to let a woman risk being on her own, if I could do anything to help her.’

‘Then get me a taxi—please.’

She prayed he wouldn’t argue further. She was rapidly losing her grip on her self-control as it was.

‘No.’

It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it chilled her blood just to hear it.

Out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The ominous phrase that had slipped into her head in the first moments they had been outside now pounded round and round inside her skull until she felt as if her mind would explode.

‘You don’t need a taxi. I will take you wherever you want to go.’

Skye’s eyes closed on a shudder of horror as she tried to imagine just how that scenario would play out. She didn’t even want to think of her father’s reaction if she was to arrive home in a strange car—with an unknown man. Even less did she want to imagine the way her prospective fiancé would view that situation.

Oh, why had she ever thought she could do this? Why had she let herself believe that she could fling herself into one night of liberty just to try and put a temporary barrier between herself and the future that lay ahead of her?

Why had she ever imagined that she could have one night in which she lived the same sort of life as her friends, as other young women her age? One night of total freedom, of irresponsibility, of reckless abandon before the walls of restraint and restriction closed round her once and for all?

She had never been able to live that way even when she had had her freedom—the freedom of youth. So why had she ever thought she could do it now, just for tonight? She had been out of her depth from the start—and she was sinking in deeper with every second that passed.

‘I’ll get one myself, then.’

She swung away from him violently, knowing in her heart that she was really running from herself, not from him. But she was closer to the edge of the pavement than she thought. Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.

‘Skye—look out!’

In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.

Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?

Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.

The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.

And it was all happening again.

Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.

It felt like coming home.

It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.

She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.

‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’

‘What?’

Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.

But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.

Had he really said…?

Tilting her head, she tried to look up into his face, to read the answer there, but even as she moved his dark head came down towards hers. His mouth closed over hers and captured it in a searing, blazing kiss that sent a sensation like a lightning bolt fizzing through her body, right down to the tips of her toes.

Bepul matn qismi tugadi. Ko'proq o'qishini xohlaysizmi?