Michelle Reid - A Passionate Marriage

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

LEANDROS PETRONADES sat lazing on a sunbed on the deck of his yacht and looked out on the bay of San Estéban. Satisfaction toyed with his senses. The new Spanish resort had developed into something special and having enjoyed a very much hands-on experience during its development, he felt that sense of satisfaction was well deserved. Plus the fact that he had multiplied his original investment, he was business-orientated enough to add.

He had done a lot of that during the four years since he took over from his late father, he mused idly. Multiplying original investments had become an expectation for him.

Which was probably why he’d found this project just that bit different. It had always been more than just another investment. He had been in on it from the beginning when it had been only an idea in an old friend’s head. Between them, he and Felipe Vazquez had carefully nurtured that idea until it had grown into the fashionable new resort he was seeing today.

The problem for him now was, where did he go from here? The resort was finished. The luxury villas dotted about the hillside had their new owners, the five-star hotel, golf and leisure complex was functioning like a dream. And San Estéban itself was positively bustling, its harbour basin filled with luxury sail crafts owned by the rich and famous looking for new places to hide out while they played. By next week even this yacht, which had been his home while he had been based here, would have slipped her moorings. She would sail to the Caribbean to await the arrival of his brother Nikos, who planned to fly out with his new bride in three weeks.

It was time for him to move on, though he did not know what it was he wanted to move on to. Did he go back to Athens and lose himself in the old cut and thrust of the corporate jungle? His wide shoulders shifted against the sun bed’s padded white cushion as an old restlessness began to stir deep within his bones.

‘No, it is not possible to go over the top with this.’ A soft female voice filtered through the open doors behind him. ‘It is to be a celebration of San Estéban’s rebirth, and a thanks and farewell to all who worked so hard to make the project happen. Let it be one of fireworks and merriment. We will call it—the Baptism of San Estéban, and it will become its annual day of carnival.’

A smile eased itself across his mouth as Leandros listened, and his shoulders relaxed as the restlessness drained away. The Baptism of San Estéban, he mused. He liked it.

He liked Diantha. He liked having her around because she was so calm and quiet and so terribly efficient. When he asked her to do something for him she did it without bothering him with the irritating details. She was good for him. She tuned in so perfectly to the way of his thinking.

He was almost sure that he was going to marry her.

He did not love her—he did not believe in love any more. But Diantha was beautiful, intelligent, exceedingly pleasant company, and she promised to be a good lover—though he had not got around to trying her out. She was also Greek, independently wealthy and was not too demanding of his time.

A busy man like him had to take these things into consideration when choosing a wife, he pondered complacently. For he must be allowed the freedom to do what was necessary to keep himself and the Petronades Group of companies streets ahead of their nearest rivals. Coming from a similar background to his own, Diantha Christophoros understood and accepted this. She would not nag and complain and make him feel guilty for working long hours, nor would she expect him to be at her beck and call every minute of the day.

She was, in other words, the perfect choice of wife for a man like him.

There was only one small obstacle. He already had a wife. Before he could begin to approach Diantha with murmurings of romance and marriage he must, in all honour, cut legal ties to his current spouse. Though the fact that they had not so much as laid eyes on each other in three years meant he did not envisage a quick divorce from Isobel being a problem.

Isobel…

‘Damn,’ he cursed softly as the restlessness returned with enough itchy tension to launch him to his feet. He should not have allowed himself to think her name. It never failed to make him uptight. As time had gone by, he had thought less and less of her and become a better person for it. But sometimes her name could still catch him out and sink its barbed teeth into him.

Going over to the refrigerated drinks trolley, he selected a can of beer, snapped the tab and went to rest his lean hips against the yacht rail, his dark eyes frowning at the view that had only made him smile minutes before.

That witch, the hellion, he thought grimly. She had left her mark on him and it still had not faded three years on.

He took a gulp of his beer. Behind him he could still hear Diantha’s level tones as she planned San Estéban’s celebration day with her usual efficiency. If he turned his head he would see her standing in his main stateroom, looking as if she belonged there with her dark hair and eyes and olive-toned skin, her elegant clothes chosen to enhance her beauty, not place it on blatant display like…

He took another pull of the beer can. Up above his head the hot Spanish sun was burning into his naked shoulders. It felt good enough to have him flexing deep-bedded muscles wrapped in rich brown skin.

Recalling Isobel, he felt a different kind of bite tug at his senses. This one hit him low down in his gut where the sex thing lurked. He grimaced, wondering if or when he would ever want another woman the way he’d wanted Isobel? And hoped he never had to suffer those primitive urges again.

They had gone into marriage like two randy teenagers, loving each other with a passion that had them tearing each other to pieces by the time they’d separated. He had been too young—she had been too young. They’d made love like animals and fought in the same ferocious way until—inevitably probably—it had all turned so nasty and bitter and bad that it had been easier to lock it all away and forget he had a wife than to risk allowing it all to break out again.

But, like his sojourn in San Estéban, it was over now—time to move on with his life. He was thirty-one years old and ready to settle down with a proper wife, maybe even a family…

‘Why the frown?’

Diantha had come up beside him without him noticing. Turning his head, he looked down into warm brown eyes, saw the soft smile on her lips…and thought of a different smile. This mouth didn’t smile, it pouted—provokingly. And those intense green eyes were never warm but just damned defiant.

‘I am attempting to come to terms with the fact that it is time for me to leave here,’ he answered her question.

‘And you do not want to leave,’ Diantha murmured understandingly.

Leandros sighed. ‘I have come to love this place,’ he confessed, looking outwards towards San Estéban again.

There followed a few moments of silence between them, the kind that allowed his mind to drift without intrusion across the empty years during which he had hidden away here, learning to be whole again. San Estéban had been his sanctuary in a time of misery and disillusionment. Isobel had—