Mediterranean Tycoons - JACQUELINE BAIRD

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Harold is always going to be weak where his son is concerned, and I realised it that night when I spoke to Nigel. Suffice to say, after Nigel left the apartment I had a long talk to Harold.’

      ‘Yes, you said so at the time.’ Lisa knew that was true. Was it possible Alex was telling the truth and he really was not the villain she had painted him?

      ‘I believe I did. Just before you seduced me.’ He stopped, an arrested expression on his handsome face. ‘Now I understand,’ he declared, a sensual, reminiscent smile lighting his brown eyes. ‘Your sudden aggression in bed last week was more fury than a fever of passion?’ he queried softly, lifting their joined hands to his mouth and kissing her fingers.

      ‘Never mind that.’ She wasn’t going there for anything! ‘What did you say to Harold to get him to sell his shares?’

      ‘I promised to pay off Nigel’s debts.’

      ‘What!’ Lisa exclaimed. ‘Are you mad?’ She pulled her hands free and eyed her husband with stunned disbelief.

      ‘I am now,’ Alex said with wry amusement. ‘When I learn he laid a hand on you. But it is too late. It is done. Harold loves his son, and would do anything for him, though he is not entirely blind to Nigel’s faults. Harold and I agreed that the money I paid him for his shares would go into a trust to give Nigel an income from the interest. But Nigel can’t get his hands on the capital.’

      ‘And you did this for me?’ Lisa said, feeling her way through what felt like a minefield. ‘You bought the Lee shares first, to protect the company from a hostile bid set up by Nigel?’

      Alex gave her a considering look. ‘No,’ he said and, rising to his feet, he stared fixedly down at her.

      ‘No? But—’ She raised confused blue eyes to his, and suddenly she felt the strong grip of Alex’s hands on her arms, pulling her up against his body.

      ‘I bought the shares for you, and only you. I don’t give a damn about Lawson’s, except as it affects you. You’re my wife, my partner, and if you had shown a little more trust in me, talked to me, you could have spared us both a lot of unpleasantness,’ Alex declared, with a disturbing intensity in his voice that left Lisa in no doubt he was telling the truth.

      ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not that easy to trust a husband when you think he’s plotting behind your back, and then you’re confronted in the apartment you share by an almost naked ex-mistress all in the same night,’ Lisa retorted dryly. She believed his explanation; she had to. Alex was the majority stockholder now, whether she liked it or not, and did that matter if he was prepared to let her run the company as she wished? More than that, she loved him, and eventually she might persuade her cynical husband to fall in love with her.

      ‘Okay, so there were mistakes on both sides,’ Alex conceded. ‘Mine being I should not have brought you back to this apartment in the first place. I know you don’t like it.’

      Lisa had to smile. ‘Oh I don’t know.’ Placing a hand in the open vee of his robe, she felt his hot satin skin beneath her fingers. ‘I seem to remember our wedding night was not that bad.’ Rising up on her toes, she pressed her lips to his; his arms tightened around her and he took over the kiss with a passionate thoroughness that had her melting in his arms.

      Suddenly Alex pulled back, his hands falling from her waist. ‘No, Lisa, I am not going to give you the chance again to accuse me of manipulating you with sex.’

      ‘I wasn’t going to,’ she teased, suddenly feeling lighthearted.

      ‘Good, then get dressed. We are leaving. We have to learn to communicate better and here is not the place to do it. Too many bad memories,’ Alex insisted.

      ‘I’ll send you an E-mail from my laptop. Is that communication enough for you? Though I do remember overhearing you tell Nigel something about your lap.’

      Alex stiffened, and she watched with laughter in her eyes as his brow furrowed and he tried to remember, then he disconcerted her completely by roaring with laughter. Sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her to the bed.

      ‘You’re right. Who needs to talk when we have this?’ And, with a wolfish smile, he dropped her on the bed. Falling down beside her, he deftly eased her out of her robe, shed his own, and drew her in to the hard heat of him. Lisa trembled violently, and wondered how she had ever been dumb enough to even consider forgoing such pleasure.

      A long time later she lay with her head resting on his broad chest.

      ‘Are you okay?’ Alex queried softly. She felt the vibration of his words against the wall of his chest.

      ‘I’m speechless,’ she sighed.

      ‘I’m surprised,’ Alex murmured. ‘You are usually such a verbal lover.’

      ‘Yes, well, for once I am struck dumb.’ But she knew what he was getting at.

      Before she would have cried out in the throes of passion and declared her love in gushing terms. Not any more… She had accepted his reason for buying the shares in her company the same way she had accepted the fact that Alex did not believe in love. She told herself she didn’t care, that the pleasure she found in his arms was enough…

      ‘Good.’ He rolled her on to her back and, propping his head on one elbow, he grinned down at her. ‘How about a long weekend in Kos? Or perhaps you would prefer house-hunting again?’ he ended less than enthusiastically.

      Lisa pretended to consider. ‘Well, a house is important…’ She saw the flash of disappointment in his dark eyes. It was time to take a chance, and her lips parted in a purely feminine smile. ‘But I doubt we’d find anything better than the first one we saw last week. So Kos it is.’

      ‘You little witch.’ Alex surveyed her with a disturbing light of understanding in his dark. ‘You wanted the house, but you had so little trust in me you could not admit it, hmm.’

      ‘Something like that,’ she agreed.

      ‘Hardly flattering, but understandable, I suppose.’ Slipping off the bed, Alex picked up his robe and put it on. ‘I have a few calls to make, so why not get up and get packed?’ He glanced down at where she lay on the bed, her blonde hair spread in a tangled mass over the pillow, her body relaxed in the aftermath of passion, and his firm lips curved back over his brilliant white teeth in a blatantly sexy grin. ‘And hurry, wife, or I might just change my mind!’

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      THE flight from London took a little over three hours and, allowing for the time difference, it was midnight when the jet touched down at Kos airport. They had travelled in the Solomos company jet, Alex explaining his father had been using it at the time of their wedding.

      ‘Are you sure your mother won’t mind our arriving in the middle of the night?’ Lisa asked Alex, as he helped her onto the Tarmac.

      Alex gave her a surprised glance and tucked her hand under his arm. ‘You don’t know much about Greek custom if you think midnight is late. In my mother’s house we do not dine before ten, and quite often later.’

      Two cars drew alongside them. In minutes, passport and customs details were accomplished, and Alex was ushering Lisa into the back seat of the second car, a chauffeur-driven limousine, and sliding in beside her.

      ‘You must be famous?’ She prompted. ‘Not for you the queue at Customs!’ She slanted him a sidelong glance. Dressed casually in jeans and a short-sleeved white shirt, he looked totally relaxed.

      ‘Famous no, but local, yes. The population of the island is only twenty-five thousand, and most people here know each other. Actually, I had forgotten the first weekend in July is one of the busiest of the year. For the next two months the island will be heaving with tourists and the population swells to more like a million. For which I should be grateful.’

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