Jacqueline Baird - Mediterranean Tycoons

Eloise awoke early the next morning and yawned widely. She stretched languorously and was instantly aware of the warm male body beside her. Slowly turning her head, her green eyes widened on the sleeping figure of Marcus.

He lay on his back, one arm trailing across the top of her pillow, the other flung across the other side of the bed. The sheet was draped low across his hips, his broad hair-roughened chest rising slowly and evenly in sleep.

She glanced up at his face. With his eyes closed, and a day’s growth of beard darkening his firm jaw, he looked less than his perfect self, younger and somehow vulnerable.

Heat coloured her cheeks as she recalled last night, and her own part in it. She had actually touched him intimately with hands and mouth, something she had never imagined doing, and yet with Marcus she wanted to. It was unbelievable…

He was amazing. They had made love with a passion a hunger that lasted for hours until, sated and exhausted, she had fallen into a dreamless sleep. Her love-swollen lips curved in a smile of pure female satisfaction. Hardly surprising he was still asleep, she thought, her fascinated gaze sliding over his naked torso.

Even with her body aching in muscles she never knew she had, she couldn’t keep her eyes off his gorgeous bronzed body, and recalling how it felt to be thoroughly possessed by him made her shudder with remembered pleasure. Unable to resist, she reached out her hand and gently smoothed the soft black hair from the centre of his chest down to the narrow strip that disappeared beneath the sheet.

‘Hmm. That’s nice,’ Marcus murmured, moving and pressing a kiss on the top of her head.

‘I thought you were asleep.’ Eloise blushed scarlet and lay back, feeling almost happy. Marcus had said last night he believed her about Ted. A giant step forward—surely it couldn’t be long before he believed she was innocent of all he had accused her of?

‘I was, until you assaulted me.’ Marcus grinned and sat up, pulling her up with him. The dark eyes that met hers danced with wicked humour, and she smiled back.

‘Me?’ she questioned in mock indignation.

‘Yes,’ Marcus answered, and after kissing her thoroughly he rolled off the bed. ‘I’ll make breakfast, you start packing. We’re going to Greece.’

‘You’re kidding, of course,’ she exclaimed, her eyes skimming over his lithe body and wondering how a naked man could still manage to portray such stunning arrogance.

‘I couldn’t possibly leave London at the moment,’ she said easily, thinking of all the new designs she was involved with for their expanding business, and Katy’s light workload because of her preoccupation with Benjamin. Which was only as it should be, Eloise thought, her mind wandering into the realms of fantasy, imagining what a baby with Marcus as a father would look like.

The thought brought her up cold, all the colour leaching from her face… She looked at him as he turned back to face her, and watched the humour vanish, and his face grow cool and distant.

His dark knowing eyes rested on her pale face. ‘You can and you will, Eloise. You have far too many distractions in London.’ He knew he sounded harsh, but he couldn’t help it; she had looked at him, white-faced and horrified, and it gave him a peculiar feeling in the area of his heart again.

How could he have gone from wanting, needing and believing her to this hard-faced tyrant, Eloise wondered, within minutes of waking up? A night of passion meant nothing to Marcus, and his complete lack of emotion simply confirmed what she already knew.

But she lived here, Eloise reminded herself firmly. She worked here. He had to be crazy. She couldn’t drop everything and swan off to Greece at his say-so…

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I would be ridiculous if I left you here alone again. On Rykos, when I am not around, my family and friends will take care of you.’ Marcus knew from experience how difficult it was to have a sex life on the tiny island without everyone knowing about it, and he was a man… For Eloise, branded as his woman, it would be impossible. No man would go near her, and that suited him just fine.

‘I do not need taking care of,’ she fumed. Where did he get off ordering her around? Well, she wasn’t putting up with it any more and she was damn well going to tell him so, but before she could open her mouth again he’d left.

She listened to him running the shower in the bathroom, and expelled a shuddering sigh. What was the point of arguing with him? she decided with bitter resentment. After the night they’d spent together, she’d had high hopes Marcus might begin to trust her, might care about her. But he’d made it brutally clear he didn’t. Her mind in turmoil—Greece apart—it had hit her when thinking about babies. Marcus was always meticulous about using protection, but last night he had forgotten…

Half an hour later, she joined him in the kitchen. As she walked towards him, clad in well-washed denim jeans and a baggy grey tee-shirt, she was aware she looked a mess, and didn’t give a damn. She wasn’t going anywhere and that was final.

‘You’re wearing that to travel?’ he asked flatly. ‘Hardly flattering, and jeans are far too hot for August in Greece.’

‘I’m not going to Greece. I have neither the time nor the inclination,’ she told him coldly, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite him at the tiny kitchen table, surprised he had actually prepared coffee, toast and a selection of conserves. He wasn’t totally hopeless in the kitchen, she thought dryly, suddenly feeling hungry. She filled a cup with coffee, took a sip, and reached for a slice of toast, before bravely raising cool green eyes to his. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

Marcus’s gaze narrowed and swept over her tensely held body perched on the chair. She was nowhere near as confident as she tried to appear. ‘Nice try, Eloise,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘But it isn’t a request, it’s an order.’

‘Tough. I have to work, and I have a commitment to Katy.’

‘Need I remind you, we have a deal? Your first commitment is to me and, as for your work, you can design as easily in Greece as in London.’

His deliberate mention of their deal hit her like a cruel blow, and she despised herself for harbouring a lingering shred of hope that he would grow to love her. When was she going to learn? Pride alone made her squeeze back the tears that threatened and, lifting her head, she said, ‘But I don’t want to,’ bravely defying him.

Hooded dark eyes surveyed her. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘So this is the end of the truce,’ she snapped back.

Marcus cast her a cynical smile. ‘Yes, if that’s how you want to see it. But why pretend, Eloise? We both know I only have to touch you to make you change your mind.’

Stunned at his arrogance, her appetite deserted her, and the toast dropped from her fingers. Her gaze skated helplessly over him. He was wearing the same clothes he had arrived in last night. He should have looked a mess. But the grey designer suit fitted him like a glove, the jacket straining over broad muscular shoulders; even the blue shirt still looked perfect. How did he do it? Or was it her?

God help her! But she was made humiliatingly aware that he only spoke the truth, and it shamed her to the depths of her soul. She felt so vulnerable. What was he doing to her? A vivid mental image of last night heated her flesh, the images so real, she could almost feel the touch of his hot, hard body against her skin.

The doorbell rang and she leapt to her feet, almost stumbling on her headlong flight through the small hall to open the door. He was insidiously taking over her life; she did not seem to have the strength to deny him, and it terrified her.