LITMIR.BIZ

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He turned to look at her and suddenly Lucy was scared by the expression on his rugged features. By the stony look which made his black eyes look so hard and bleak and cold—eyes which said quite clearly you can’t get close to me. Scared too by another instinctive urge to run over and hug him, wondering if she was using his heartache as an excuse to touch him again. Because hadn’t she yearned to stroke his silken flesh ever since he’d set her body on fire and made her realise what physical pleasure really meant?

      She poured tea, dropping four sugar cubes into his cup and giving it a quick stir, before placing it on a small table beside the fire. Then she sat down in a chair opposite him, her knees pressed tightly together. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she questioned softly. ‘About what happened to Niko?’

      Talking about it was the last thing Drakon wanted, but if he was to get Lucy to agree to his demands it was unavoidable. And how hard could it be to do that? He was a master of negotiation in the business world—surely he was able to employ the same tools of demand, cooperation and compromise in his personal life if he were to achieve what it was he wanted.

      ‘How much do you know about my brother?’ he questioned.

      She hesitated, shrugging her shoulders a little awkwardly. ‘Not a lot. Once he left school he seemed to disappear off the radar.’

      ‘Neh. That’s a good way to describe what happened. He disappeared off the radar.’ Drakon’s voice grew distant and sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. But it was, he realised, with a jolt. It was coming from the past—and didn’t they say that the past was like a different country? The Konstantinou twins, two black-eyed little boys, pampered like princes by a battery of servants yet overlooked by the wealthy parents who had employed those servants. They shared almost identical DNA and, for many years, few people could tell them apart, until they heard them speak. So similar in looks and yet so different in character. Sometimes they’d even been able to trick their own parents—but then, they’d lived such separate lives from their mother and father maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

      ‘Niko was the older of us—by just one and a half minutes—but those vital ninety seconds were all that were needed for him to be in line to inherit the family business. He thought he was going to be a very wealthy man—until the will was read and he discovered there was nothing left. All the money had gone.’

      ‘How come?’

      Drakon stared at her. Her bluebell eyes were a compassionate blur and for a moment he almost confided in her, until he drew himself short, reminding himself that certain segments of the past were irrelevant. He’d come here to talk about the future. ‘The reasons don’t matter,’ he said, the words acrid on his lips. ‘What is relevant is the way Niko coped with finding out the news, and the way he coped with it was with drugs. First it was a puff or two of dope at a party and then he started snorting cocaine, like so many of his buddies. But sooner or later, every addiction needs an additional boost because it isn’t working any more.’ His face twisted. ‘And that’s when he started on heroin.’

      She didn’t say anything. Had he expected her to? Had he secretly wanted her to come out with something trite and predictable so he could lash out as he had been wanting to lash out at someone for days now? He felt his jaw tighten as he continued with his story and yet somehow it was an unspeakable relief to unburden himself, because he hadn’t really talked about this with anyone. Not even Amy. He hadn’t dared. Had he been afraid that describing his twin’s fatal weakness might somehow reflect poorly on him? Might hold up a mirror to the cold darkness in his own soul and the guilt which gnawed away at him because he hadn’t been there for his brother when he’d most needed him?

      ‘I didn’t find this out until afterwards,’ he ground out. ‘Because he left Greece and kept his distance from me—from everyone, really—and resisted every attempt I made to meet up. I only realised afterwards that he wanted to hide the true extent of his drug habit from me. If I’d known I might have been able to do something, but I didn’t know. I guess I was too busy trying to make my fortune. Trying to recover something of the Konstantinou name and reputation.’ He sighed. ‘But eventually, I heard that Niko was living in Goa and was in a steady relationship and I can remember thinking that maybe things might be different. Personally, I’ve never believed in the transformative power of love—but 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

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