LITMIR.BIZ

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happened across the most lip-smackingly gorgeous man to inhabit the planet.

      She was a practical, down-to-earth qualified remedial nurse and—

      Every last sensible thought was swept out of her head as the gorgeous stranger hoisted her, without apparent effort, into a fireman’s lift and carried her down the steep rocks with the surefootedness of a mountain goat.

      Carefully depositing her on the soft white sand, he hunkered down in front of her, long, deft fingers gently exploring her injured foot.

      His touch was magic. A lock of soft black hair fell forwards over his tanned forehead. She wanted to run her fingers through it.

      Stupid woman!

      She was shivering all over.

      Merely the entirely natural after-effects of her hairy passage down from the cliffs!

      Only she hadn’t felt scared. She’d felt safe—gloriously safe.

      ‘Just a slight sprain and a tiny cut,’ he pronounced, a smile playing at the corners of that devastating mouth. ‘I’ll take you to the house and clean the cut.’

      Forcing herself out of the entirely unwelcome ditzy-schoolgirl-meets-pop-star mode, Bonnie located her best no-nonsense voice and used it. ‘You’ve been very kind already, but—Stavros, is it?—I don’t want to put you to any more trouble on my account. I’m sure that if I just rest a while I’ll be fine to go on.’

      Dimitri Kyriakis didn’t correct her.

      She must have heard him calling to his manservant/minder, to remind him to drive down to the port to collect the incoming mail that had been waiting for two days since the weekly ferry had docked.

      The longer his father’s blonde, gold-digging bimbo remained in ignorance of his true identity the better.

      His father had taste, though, he conceded grimly. The bimbo was even more enticingly sexy in the flesh than she’d appeared in the photograph. All that long, silky pale blonde hair, falling in a tousled touchable mass to well below her shoulders.

      Pretty shoulders, sleek of skin, warm with tan, partially concealed by the turquoise-blue halter top that lovingly cradled truly superb full and shapely breasts. Her cropped top left her tanned midriff naked and tempting above a pair of skimpy shorts. And those legs—

      ‘It will be no trouble,’ Dimitri contradicted her truthfully. ‘It would be my pleasure to help you.’

      Help you to unburden yourself, to tell me exactly what a woman with her eyes on the opportunity to marry an old man for his money is doing scrambling around on an island hardly anyone has heard about, out of her preferred milieu of fancy restaurants, swish hotels and designer boutiques.

      Unless, of course, the old man was with her. It seemed unlikely. And did she know that Andreas Papadiamantis was facing a vastly reduced financial status? He guessed not.

      She would run like a rabbit if he told her. There was only one reason a beautiful young woman would shack up with an old man, he decided, with the cynicism born of long experience of the female sex. Inform her of the non-existence of the bottomless pit of money and she’d take to her toes.

      Yet there was a more entertaining way of depriving his enemy of his bed companion, he thought, staring into a pair of beguiling smoke-grey eyes.

      He had never had any trouble in attracting the female sex. Quite the opposite. But he never knew whether his personality was the attraction or his massive wealth.

      The latter, he suspected.

      It cut both ways. On the few occasions when he’d taken a mistress, he had made it plain that he didn’t do long-term.

      So what was new? Earlier he’d played with the idea of settling down, creating a family. Seeing the photograph of this blonde had had the idea taking a nosedive. Meeting the blonde in the flesh had killed it stone-dead. For a while. The fates had delivered another chance to take his revenge for what his father had done all those long years ago right into his lap.

      Never one to lose an opportunity, Dimitri swept the delectable gift from the fates up into his arms. His smile as she wound her arms around his neck with a gaspy little sigh was grim. And satisfied.

      He had her!

      CHAPTER THREE

      DIMITRI deposited her on a padded cane chair in the shadiest part of the vine-covered, granite-paved terrace. His heavy-lidded, lash-veiled eyes moved with lazy assessment over her body, taking in the tempting swell of her full breasts, tiny waist and voluptuous hips, resting finally on her wide, generous mouth.

      Mistress material.

      Quite definitely.

      Yet as far as he knew—and he had tracked his enemy through the years with the dedication of a jungle cat stalking its prey—his father didn’t take high-maintenance mistresses. He’d come to know how the older man’s mind worked.

      Too great an expenditure of time, effort and money was involved in establishing a mistress.

      He would regard it as an unnecessary indulgence.

      A wife was different. A wife could be safely ignored, treated as part of the furniture until he had need of her. His extra-marital adventures were furtive backstairs episodes, if his poor mother’s sorry experience was anything to go by.

      This bimbo would be angling for a wedding ring. She was no wide-eyed innocent to be dazzled simply by the attentions of her lord and master—not the way she looked, she wasn’t!

      Aware that he could be in danger of making assumptions, he mentally ran over the known facts. His father had been off the radar for several months, holed up in his luxurious villa. With this blonde?

      Judging by that photograph, she had already got herself firmly embedded in his father’s villa, up close and personal, and an announcement in the press that Andreas Papadiamantis was to take wife number three would appear in the very near future. It was practically a certainty.

      How his enemy would be congratulating himself that he had got such a luscious creature to warm his old bones and his bed, whenever he chose to avail himself of such comforts.

      Unless he, Dimitri Kyriakis, stopped it.

      And that could be fun, as well as turning the screw a little tighter.

      Bonnie squirmed against the cushions. She could feel a blush spreading all over her. The way this Stavros guy was looking at her was seriously unsettling.

      Everywhere his hot gaze wandered it felt as if he was actually touching her. Her heartbeat quickened and fire licked her skin, a languorous warmth spreading through her, hot and heady, making her breasts feel swollen and heavy, their tips standing to attention within the confines of her halter top. This rivetingly sexy guy could so easily make her forget she was a sensible adult woman, with her head firmly screwed on.

      Once bitten twice shy, she reminded herself staunchly.

      Though being nibbled by those strong white teeth would be no hardship at all!

      Struggling to find something mundane to say, to break the spiralling sexual tension, Bonnie expelled a gusty sigh of relief when he came to her aid.

      ‘I’ll make that ankle more comfortable. Wait here.’ He disappeared through open, immense sliding glass doors into what she guessed to be his boss’s luxury home.

      Stavros’s temporary absence gave Bonnie a much needed breathing space, and the opportunity to don her sensible hat again. So, OK, he was the most charismatic, sexy guy she’d ever come across. But better than that he was probably local, working for one of the island’s wealthy incomers. The chances were he would be able to tell her where to find the elusive Dimitri Kyriakis.

      True, according to Andreas, his estranged son only used his island villa occasionally. But on the upside, in a small place like this everyone knew everyone else. It

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