Rebecca Winters - Latin Lovers - Greek Tycoons - Aristides' Convenient Wife / Bought - One Island, One Bride / The Lazaridis Marriage

Helen grimaced and picked up the post she had not yet had time to look at from the hall table. Maybe Delia had written, but it was a forlorn hope. Her friend had never written a letter in all the time she had known her, the nearest she got was a card at Christmas and birthdays. Telephone or e-mail were her preferred forms of communication.

The doorbell rang, and she dropped the post and, heaving a sigh, wondered who could be calling in the middle of the afternoon.

‘All right, all right I’m coming,’ she muttered as the bell pealed out again and continued to ring. Whoever it was they obviously were not big in the patience department, she thought as she walked down the hall to open the door.

Leon Aristides. Helen stiffened, her hand tightening on the door handle, unable to believe her eyes. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she had forgotten to wear her contact lenses and he was a figment of her imagination, but only for a moment.

‘Hello, Helen ,’ a deep-throated voice drawled, and although she was slightly myopic there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Oh, my God, Delia’s brother! Here, at her door.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Aristides.’ She automatically made the polite response, her shocked gaze flicking up over him. Six feet plus and immaculately clad in a dark business suit, white shirt and silk tie, he hadn’t changed much in the years since she had last met him. He was just as big, and dark, and forbidding as she remembered.

With heavy-lidded dark eyes and angular cheekbones, a large straight nose and a wide mouth, he looked hard rather than handsome. But he was physically attractive in a raw, masculine way. Unfortunately for Helen, he still had the same disturbing effect on her as he had the first time they had met, bringing a sudden fluttering in her stomach that she determinedly put down to nerves. She couldn’t possibly still be afraid of the man. She was twenty-six, not seventeen any more.

‘This is a surprise. What are you doing here?’ she finally asked, eyeing him warily.

She had met him nine years ago, the one time she had gone on vacation with Delia to her family holiday home in Greece, and she had been left with a lasting impression of cynical arrogance and powerful masculinity.

She had been walking along the beach when a deep voice had called out demanding to know who she was. She had understood that much Greek. Glancing towards the sea, she had seen a man standing on the shoreline. She had known it was a private beach, but as Delia’s guest she had had every right to be there, and in her innocence she had called out a response and walked towards him, concentrating on trying to bring him into focus. As her vision had improved she had offered her name with a smile, and held out her hand, then stopped and stared, her hand suspended in mid-air.

He had been tall and broad with a white towel draped around his lean hips, and the musculature of his magnificent bronzed body had been so clearly defined Michelangelo himself could not have sculpted better.

His gaze had captured hers, and the breath had stopped in her throat. There had been something dark and dangerous swirling in the black depths of his eyes that had made her heart beat faster. Every primitive sense she had possessed had told her to run but she had been paralysed by the physical presence of the man. Then he had finally spoken, and his sarcastic comment rang in her head to this day.

‘Flattered though I am, and available as you so obviously are, I am a married man. You should try asking before ogling.’ And he had walked away. She had never been so embarrassed before, or since.

‘I would have thought that was self-evident.’ The sound of his voice jerked her back to the present. ‘I am here to see you. We need to talk.’ He smiled but she noticed the smile didn’t touch his eyes.

Helen didn’t want to talk to him. She shuddered at the thought.

After their first meeting, for the rest of her stay in Greece she had tried to avoid him. It had not been too hard. With the constant flow of sophisticated friends and family to the Aristides home, it had been quite easy for two young girls to go unnoticed. On the rare occasion when Helen had had no option but to be in his company she had addressed him with cool politeness. When his beautiful wife Tina had arrived near the end of Helen’s stay, she had only been able to wonder what the happy-go-lucky American woman saw in such an aloof, cynical man.

For Helen his scornful and deeply embarrassing comment to her, coupled with the senior Mr Aristides’ distant politeness to both her and his daughter, simply confirmed what Delia had told her when they had first become friends at school.

According to Delia the reason she was at boarding-school in England rather than at home in Greece was because her father and her brother had agreed she needed to improve her English, but the reality was they had both decided she needed the discipline of a girls-only boarding-school. Apparently she had been caught smoking and flirting with a fisherman’s son. No big deal according to Delia, who had personally thought it had more to do with the fact that her mother had committed suicide when she was twenty months old, from depression after her birth. Her father had blamed her for the death of his wife, and preferred her out of his sight.

To quote Delia, her father and brother were both stiff-necked chauvinist pigs. Ultra-conservative wealthy bankers totally devoted to the family business of making money, the females in their lives chosen simply as assets to enhance the business.

Delia had had no intention of being married for the benefit of the family company, as her mother and sister-in-law had been. She had been determined to stay single until she was at least twenty-five and then her father could not prevent her from inheriting the banking shares her mother had left in trust for her. Helen over the years had helped her to do just that.

Recalling Delia’s low opinion of her brother, Helen stared at the tall, wide-shouldered man in front of her. His black hair was plastered to his head by the driving rain, but he still exuded the same shattering aura of aggressive male power that had so frightened her the first time they had met.

‘Are you going to ask me in?’ His dark eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Or is it your habit to keep visitors wet and freezing on the doorstep?’ he mocked.

‘Sorry, no, y-yes…’ she stammered. ‘Come in.’ She stepped back as he brushed past her into the hall. She closed the door and turned to face him, and it took all her self-control to say coolly, ‘Though I can’t imagine what you and I have to talk about, Mr Aristides.’

Why was Aristides here? Had Delia finally told her family the truth? But if so why hadn’t she called and told Helen? Suddenly not having heard from Delia for so long took on a frightening aspect. She had been worried for young Nicholas, but now she was more worried for her friend.

‘Nicholas.’

‘You know!’ Helen exclaimed and lifted shocked violet eyes to his. ‘So Delia finally told you,’ she prompted with a sinking heart.

She had always known that when the time came Delia would reveal to her family that Nicholas was her son and take over the full-time care of the boy, but she hadn’t expected it for at least another three months. Nor had she fully expected the extent of the pain in her heart at the prospect of becoming an honoured aunt, a visitor in Nicholas’s life rather than virtually his sole carer.

‘No, not Delia,’ he said curtly. ‘A lawyer.’

‘A lawyer…’ Helen was hopelessly confused and the mention of the legal profession filled her with foreboding. To give herself time to gather her scattered thoughts she crossed the hall and opened the door to the large cosy sitting room. ‘You will be more comfortable in here.’ She indicated one of the two sofas that flanked the fireplace, where a fire burned brightly in the grate.