Jacqueline Baird - Mediterranean Tycoons - Masterful & Married

His eyes darkened, and for a moment Amber saw a flash of violent anger in their glittering depths, and she knew she had been right to feel threatened. Then he was smiling mockingly down at her. ‘You used to like playing games,’ he reminded her, his eyes cruel. ‘Sexual games.’ His finger lifted and stroked down the curve of her cheek.

‘Cut that out,’ she snapped, taking a deep, shuddering breath. ‘You’re a married man, remember.’ Her golden eyes clashed with his, and as she watched it was like a shutter falling down over his face.

Lucas’s hand fell from her face, his black eyes cold and blank. ‘No, I am not. I told you before, I have no family.’

Confusion flickered in Amber’s eyes. Had he? Then she remembered, but she had thought he’d meant Spiro. ‘But what about Christina and your child?’

‘The child was stillborn. My father died three years ago, and Christina was gone the next,’ he informed her in clipped tones.

Her soft heart flooded with compassion, and unthinkingly she laid a hand on his arm in a tender gesture… Such tragedy must be heartbreaking even for a man as hard as Lucas. ‘I am so sorry, Lucas, I had no idea.’

‘These things happen…’ he brushed her hand away ‘…and, as you never cared much for any of them, I can do without your hypocritical sympathy. I would ask you not to mention the subject again. Except for Spiro, of course,’ he demanded with chilling emphasis.

Why was she wasting her sympathy on this man? Lucas meant nothing to her. He was simply another irritant in an already bad day, she told herself. So why did her cheek still burn where he had touched her, her pulse still race? It wasn’t fair that one man could have such a terrible effect on her senses. She glanced up at him, and briefly his towering presence was a threat to her hard-won sophistication, then she casually took a step back.

‘You want to talk about Spiro, fire away,’ she said flatly, retreating behind her usual hard shell of astute businesswoman, and deliberately she lifted her wrist and scanned the elegant gold watch she wore. ‘But make it quick, I have a lunch appointment.’

‘You have changed, Amber.’ His lips quirked in the semblance of a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. ‘I can remember a time when you begged for my company, you couldn’t get enough of me and pleaded with me to stay with you,’ he said silkily.

The unexpected personal attack made her go white, a terrible coldness invading her very being that he could be so utterly callous as to mention the last time they had been alone together. ‘I can’t,’ she denied flatly. He might even now make her heart race, but no way was she foolish enough to get personal with Lucas Karadines ever again.

‘Liar.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘But I’ll let it go for now, as you say you are busy, and we have a much more pressing item to discuss, partner.’

‘Partner.’ She bristled. What on earth was the man talking about? She’d rather partner a rattlesnake.

‘All right, pretend you’re innocent, I don’t really care. But, put simply, the will Spiro made when you invested in his art gallery made you his heir if anything happened to him.’

‘Oh, no!’ Amber exclaimed, a horrible suspicion making her face pale. It couldn’t be. But one look at Lucas’s dark countenance confirmed her worst fear. When she had given Spiro the money he had insisted on making a will naming her his heir as collateral for the loan, until he could pay her back.

‘Oh, ye-es,’ Lucas drawled derisively. ‘Spiro never changed his will. You are now, or very soon will be, the proud owner of a substantial part of Karadines.’

He was watching her with eyes that glittered with undisguised contempt and something else she could not put a name to.

Amber simply stared at him like a paralysed porpoise, her mouth hanging open in shocked horror. How typical of Spiro. He would get a bee in his bonnet about something, do it and then forget all about it. His business sense had always been negligible, but Amber hadn’t seen it until it was too late.

Lucas laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘Struck dumb; how very typical of you. The silent treatment might have worked for you in the past with Spiro,’ Lucas drawled, a smile creasing his firm mouth, ‘but not this time. I am a totally different male animal to my late nephew.’

He’d got that right! Amber had a hysterical desire to laugh—a more ruggedly aggressive macho male than Lucas would be impossible to find. Her lips quirked, while she damned Spiro for landing her in this mess.

‘You find something amusing in this situation?’ he challenged icily.

The ring of the telephone saved her from answering. ‘Yes, Sandy, what is it?’ she asked briskly. ‘Clive.’ She glanced sideways at Lucas and caught a thunderous frown on his dark face.

‘Tell him two minutes, my client is just leaving,’ she informed Sandy before turning towards Lucas. ‘My lunch date has arrived, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.’

‘Clive Thompson, I might have guessed—he was lusting after you the first time he met you,’ Lucas opined bluntly. His dark eyes swept over her cynically. Her wide, oddly coloured gold eyes, and the full sensual lips that begged to be kissed. Her startling beauty combined with a slender yet curvaceous body was enough to make a grown man ache. Lucas was aching and he bitterly resented it. ‘Obviously he has succeeded, but by your ringless fingers I see you have had no success getting him to the altar yet,’ he taunted.

The arrogant bastard, Amber thought angrily. He was still of the opinion she was good enough to bed, but not to wed. Well, he was in for a big surprise.

‘Ah, Lucas, that is where you are wrong.’ Amber smiled a deliberately slow, sexy curve of her full lips. ‘Clive appreciates my talents.’ Let the swine make of that whatever his lecherous mind concluded. ‘He has asked me to marry him, but I have yet to give him my answer—perhaps over lunch,’ she said. ‘So, if you will excuse me.’

He moved so fast Amber didn’t have time to avoid him. One minute there were six feet of space between them, and the next she was hauled against the hard-muscled wall of his chest. Before she could struggle, one large hand slipped down over her buttocks, pressing hard against his thighs, and she felt the heat of him searing into her even through her clothes. ‘No, I won’t excuse you,’ he rasped.

Amber’s throat closed in panic. The years since they had last met might never have been. It was as if Lucas had rolled back time, his sexuality so potent that it fired her blood, making her once again the young girl who had been a slave to her senses. Then his dark head descended and he kissed her.

‘Lucas, no,’ she managed to croak as his mouth plundered hers, as he ground the tender flesh of her lips back against her teeth in a brutal travesty of a loving kiss. But even as she hated him, her body flooded with a feverish excitement and she fought the compulsion to surrender with every ounce of will-power she possessed, but it was not enough. The sexual chemistry between them had always been explosive. The years had not dulled the effect, and with a hoarse moan she responded. Lucas’s hold relaxed as he sensed her surrender, and, realising how completely she had betrayed herself, she swiftly twisted out of his arms.

‘Get out,’ she ordered in a voice that shook, her arms folded protectively across her breasts as she put as much space between them as her office allowed.

‘Christo! It was only a kiss—since when have you ever objected to a kiss?’ he derided savagely. ‘I was wrong, you haven’t changed. You can’t help responding. It is to be hoped Clive knows what he is taking on.’

The cruelty of his attack drove every last vestige of colour from her face.