Mediterranean Millionaires

‘The position of live-in companion to an elderly woman but the interview never happened,’ Hope confided ruefully. ‘When I got to the house I found out that a relative had moved in with the lady instead and there was no longer a job available.’

‘So these people didn’t bother to cancel your interview and left you stranded?’ Andreas queried with disapproval.

‘I asked why I hadn’t been contacted but the woman who spoke to me said it was nothing to do with her because she hadn’t placed the ad in the first place.’ Hope just shrugged and smiled wryly. ‘That’s life.’

‘You are far too forgiving,’ Andreas told her. ‘Why did you want work of that nature?’

‘I’m not qualified for anything else…at least, not at present.’ Hope wanted a stable roof over her head and a period of steady employment before she checked out what she considered to be the much more remote and ambitious possibility of winning a place on a design course. ‘I also need somewhere to live and it would’ve suited me very well. Where were you travelling?’

‘I was heading back to London.’

‘Why did you kiss me?’

It was hard to know which of them was most surprised by that very abrupt question: Hope, who had not known that she was about to embarrass herself by asking for clarification on that score, or Andreas, who had never been faced with such a bald demand to know his motivation before.

Dark golden eyes surveyed her steadily. ‘Why do you think?’

Face hot again, Hope studied her tightly linked hands. ‘I haven’t a clue…I was just curious.’

‘You’re very sexy.’

Her lashes swept up on her astonished gaze. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I should know…I’m a connoisseur,’ Andreas asserted without hesitation.

Her lush, full mouth curved into a grin, for she liked his frankness. So, he liked women and no doubt in large numbers. And why should he not? He was gorgeous and women had to fall for him in droves. Naturally he took advantage and who could blame him? If deep down a little twinge of pain stabbed at her that that should be so, she ignored it.

After all, she was much more interested in what Andreas had said prior to that final statement. It seemed like a miracle to her but he had called her sexy. Hope was used to thinking of herself as plain, overweight and ordinary. She had spent years hating her own body and longing to be thinner. To that end she had dieted and exercised and her weight had fluctuated up and down while the slender figure she craved continued to elude her. Even the mother she loved had sighed over her daughter’s lack of looks and lamented her keen appetite.

Yet Andreas, who was heartbreakingly handsome, considered her attractive. And not only that…he thought she was sexy. Even better he had proven his own conviction by succumbing to charms she had not known she had. She reckoned that she was probably going to love him until the day she died for allowing her to feel just once like a young and pretty woman. She had waited what felt like half a lifetime to hear such words and had truly believed that she would die without ever hearing them. He was the fulfilment of a dream and she studied him with massive and grateful concentration.

‘So what do you do for a living?’ Hope asked chattily.

‘I deal with investments.’

‘I suppose you’re stuck at a desk all the time studying figures and it’s a bit boring. Still, somebody has to do it.’ Her turquoise eyes were warm with sympathy.

Andreas got a high out of his immensely successful career but he had met far too many women who faked an interest in finance in an effort to impress him. Hope, he recognised, was not tempted in that direction. His rare smile illuminated his lean bronzed features, which in repose could seem grave and cold.

‘Would you like some chocolate?’ she asked, rooting round in her capacious bag and emerging with a giant bar and only then seeing that smile and riveted by it. He had buckets of charisma and she was entrapped.

‘Yes…before you melt it,’ Andreas laughed, hunkering down to reach for the bar, which she was holding perilously close to the fire. He broke off a piece and let his brilliant gaze sweep from her clear bright eyes and the fascination she couldn’t hide to the ripe curve of her lips. He remembered the intoxicating taste of her and the laughter left him to be replaced by a disturbingly strong desire to haul her back into his arms. He put the square of chocolate he had intended for himself into her mouth instead.

‘Oh…’ Hope gasped in surprise and closed her eyes in slow, blissful appreciation as the cold chocolate began melting against her tongue.

Andreas was transfixed by the expression she wore. He could not take his attention from her. He wondered if she would react like that to him in bed. He tried to kill the thought. He tried to suppress the powerful tide of hunger she ignited in him, but his usually disciplined libido was behaving like a runaway train.

Her lashes lifted. ‘I would do just about anything for chocolate…’

Her voice faded away and her mouth ran dry on the glittering blaze she met in his intent golden eyes. On a level of understanding she had not even known she possessed she recognised his hunger and she leant forward without even thinking about what she was doing and sought his hard, sensual mouth again for herself. With a hungry growl, Andreas came down on his knees and kissed her until the blood drummed at an insane rate through her veins and her head swam.

‘I’ll buy you chocolate every day,’ Andreas promised huskily.

‘You know…I wasn’t meaning anything provocative,’ Hope warned him anxiously.

‘I know.’ Long fingers framed her cheekbones while his eyes devoured her. ‘I find that straightforward streak of yours very refreshing.’

‘Other people call me blunt—’

‘Whatever, I don’t meet with much of it,’ Andreas admitted thickly, his hands not quite steady on her. ‘I also want you so much it hurts to deny myself. That’s a first for me.’

Hope felt utterly unlike herself. It was as though at that first kiss she had become an alien inside her own once familiar skin. She felt wild and greedy and joyous and as tempting as Cleopatra. All the years of stoically repressed regret at the manner in which life was passing her by, all the wistful longings and fanciful dreams that crowded out the fertile imagination she hid behind a front of no-nonsense practicality finally got to break free. Andreas was the embodiment of her every fantasy.

‘A first for me too,’ she confided breathlessly.

He unbuttoned the coat and then froze, a rare glint of confusion in the wondering appraisal he gave her. He had no grasp of quite how the situation had developed but he couldn’t make himself let go of her. ‘We have to be out of our minds—’

Hope closed her fingers into the lapels of his suit jacket. ‘Shush…don’t spoil it,’ she whispered pleadingly.

Andreas spread her back against his coat and let his mouth glide down the length of her throat. ‘Tell me when to stop…’

With no intention of calling a halt at any point, Hope shivered with delicious tension and lay there. She booted the misgivings struggling to be heard out of her mind and slammed shut the door on them for good measure. For twenty-eight years she had been good and just once, and for the space of one stolen, secret night, she was going to be bad and what was more she was going to enjoy it.

He unsnapped the lace bra and groaned out loud at the creamy swell of her pouting breasts in the firelight. ‘You have a body to die for.’

Hot with a mix of self-consciousness and helpless longing, she opened her eyes to see if he was teasing: his appreciation spoke for him. With reverent hands he toyed with the tender pink peaks already straining into thrusting points. Deep down inside she felt as if she were burning and her hips shifted in a pointless effort to contain the feeling. Within very little time the whole world centred on him and what he was doing to her.

He employed his knowing mouth on the stiff crests that crowned her breasts and the inner thrum of her body’s response became so powerful she could not stay still. Her entire skin surface felt unbearably sensitive but more than anything she was aware of the damp ache at the swollen heart of her.

‘Andreas…’ She sounded his name in a throaty, pleading purr and at last he touched her where she most needed to be touched.

Sensation electrified her and took her to a place she had never been before, where all that mattered was the sensual glory of his touch and the wildness that was being born within her. She writhed, wrapped herself round him, lost in the hot, male scent of his skin and hair and the enervating roughness of his hard, muscular body against her.

‘I can’t wait…’ Andreas confessed rawly, passion breaking through his formidable control at a level of excitement he had never known before.

The sheer overload of physical pleasure had driven her to a tortured peak and she was helpless in the hold of the powerful craving that controlled her. He pulled her under him and she was with him every step of the way. With an earthy groan he sank into the slick, hot heat of her and met with unexpected resistance.

‘You’re a virgin?’ he breathed in stark shock.

‘Don’t stop…’ she gasped, reaching up to lock imprisoning arms round him.

He yielded and swept her through the sharp little pain into a fast, frantic rhythm as primal as the overpowering sensations that had taken her over. Intolerable excitement pushed her into ecstasy and a cocoon of pleasure. In the aftermath, she felt amazingly silly and happy and buoyant.

Andreas gazed at Hope with wondering golden eyes and then he gathered her very carefully back into the warmth of his coat and tugged her into his arms. He kissed her brow. ‘You’re very sweet…but you should have told me I’d be the first.’

‘It was my business,’ Hope muttered, burying her face into his shoulder, fighting off the shock of what she had just done.

‘But now’s it mine,’ Andreas asserted, determined fingers tipping her chin up so that he could look at her again in the flickering light cast by the burning logs. ‘I think that in the very near future you will decide to move to London and I will be your lover.’