LITMIR.BIZ

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      PROLOGUE

      THE EXECUTIVE JET cut through the wintry night, heading north. Inside, its sole passenger stared through the darkened porthole. His face was sombre. His gaze unseeing. Looking inward, into the distant past.

      Two boys, carefree, happy.

      Brothers. Who’d thought they had all the time in the world.

      But for one time had run out.

      A knife stabbed into the heart of the man sitting, staring unseeing into the night sky beyond the speeding plane.

       Andreas! My brother!

      But Andreas was gone, never to return. Leaving behind only a weeping mother, a stricken brother.

      And one precious, most miraculously precious gift of consolation…

      The front doorbell rang, peremptory and insistent. Ann paused in clearing the mess in the kitchen and glanced into the second-hand pram, checking that the noise hadn’t woken Ari. She hurried to the front door, pushing back untidy wisps of hair, wondering as she opened it who on earth it could be.

      But even as she opened the door she knew who it was. He stood, tall, and dark, face set like stone. Beyond him, at the kerb, a chauffeured car, sleek and expensive, looked utterly out of place in this run down part of town.

      ‘Miss Turner?’

      The voice was deep, and accented. It was also cold, and very hard.

      Ann nodded briefly, dread suddenly pooling in her stomach.

      ‘I am Nikos Theakis,’ he announced, as the breath caught in her throat in a shocked rasp. ‘I have come for the child.’

      Nikos Theakis. The man she had most cause to hate in all the world.

      Ann could only stare, frozen, as he stepped past her, inside, dominating the narrow hallway, glancing dismissively around the shabby interior before arrowing back on her, as she stood shocked into immobility. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded.

      His eyes lasered into her—dark, overpowering. Her mind was reeling. Out of all the insane things to do at this moment all she could do was stare at him. Stare at six foot of lean packed male, sheathed in a business suit that shouted wealth, sable hair immaculately cut, and a face—Ann’s stomach clenched—a face that widened her eyes involuntarily.

      Night-dark eyes, a strong blade of a nose, high cheekbones, steel-jaw and sculpted, sensual mouth.

      She gulped mentally. Then, with a jolt of effort, she dragged her mind away. What the hell was she doing, staring at the man like that? As if he were anyone other than the man he had just announced himself to be.

      Nikos Theakis—rich, powerful, arrogant and ruthless. The man who had ruined her sister’s life.

      Because he had. Ann knew. Her sister had told her time and again.

      Carla, always the golden girl, vibrant and glamorous. Partying her way through life. Then the party had ended. She’d turned up late last summer at Ann’s poky, dingy flat with no place else to go. Distraught.

      ‘He said he was crazy about me. Crazy! But now I’m pregnant and he won’t marry me! And I know why.’ Her beautiful face had twisted in hatred. ‘It’s that snobby bully-boy brother of his! The almighty Nikos Theakis. Looking down his nose at me like I’m dirt!’

      Shocked, Ann had listened while Carla’s tearful tirade flowed on. She had tried to reassure her, to remind her that the father of her child had to support it financially—

      ‘I want Andreas to marry me!’ Carla had railed.

      The months that had followed had not been easy. Carla had sunk into a depressive lethargy, forbidding Ann to make contact with the father of her child even to at least sort out maintenance for the baby.

      ‘Andreas knows where I am,’ she’d said dully. ‘I want him to come and find me! I want him to come and marry me!’

      But Andreas had not come, and Carla’s difficult pregnancy had ended with an even more difficult labour that had left her with postnatal depression, brought on, Ann was sure, by Andreas’ rejection of her. To Ann had fallen the task of looking after baby Ari—for Carla, it seemed, had failed to bond, sinking deeper into depression, refusing all treatment.

      The cure, when it had come, had been dramatic. A knock at the door—a young man, handsome, but with a strained, uncertain manner.

      ‘I—I am Andreas Theakis,’ he’d told Ann.

      That was all it had taken. Carla had flown to him, her face transfigured. Her life transfigured. Or so she had believed. In reality it had been a little less romantic than Ann had hoped. Andreas had wanted a paternity test done.

      ‘I have to convince my brother…’ he’d said uneasily to Ann. But Carla had been viciously triumphant.

      ‘Oh, Ari is Andreas’, all right! And Mr Almighty Nikos Theakis is going to get his comeuppance! Andreas will marry me now—he’s promised me, because he wants his son—and there isn’t a thing his damn brother can do about it!’

      Had Carla been tempting fate, to be so triumphant? Ann wondered, with a bitter twist of misery. It had not taken the malign will of Nikos Theakis to keep his brother from marrying her sister. It had taken a moment’s misjudgement by Andreas, whisking Carla away—glamorous once more, vibrant once more—in his powerful hire car on unfamiliar British roads. Nothing more than that.

      And two lives snuffed out.

      Ann had been at home with Ari, looking after him

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