Sun Chara - Greek Millionaire, Unruly Wife

“After I what, Julia?” he challenged, his words fueling white-hot anger.

“You made it clear you don’t want me.” She gripped her purse so hard, her fingers hurt. “And now I don’t want you.”

A shadow flittered across his eyes, and a muscle assaulted his jaw.

“You’re a necessity for the child,” he said, his tone reasonable. “While there you’ll also entertain me.”

“You can’t have me,” she bounded to her feet, finding her voice.

“I figured you might say that.” He signed the bill for the drinks to his room and stood, his eyes an ocean tempest.

Of course he’d be staying here, she thought, the extravagant rates would not dent his bank account. He was welcome to his money. All she wanted was her daughter. A ferocity rose up inside her. She’d never abandon her child like she’d been abandoned. The memory was like a scar on her psyche. Then to have Michalis do the same to her was—

“My solicitor will be in touch,” he bit out.

She blanched, a quake building inside her. There was no way she could fight him in court, she couldn’t afford it.

“You’ll have your divorce, Julia and I’ll have my daughter.”

“No, please,” she gasped.

“Then you will agree to my terms.”

She nodded, a void inside her. “A-a month, Michalis and not a day longer.” Not an hour, minute, second. A huff of a breath, then a grit of sound, and she whacked him with her gaze. “I’ll make every day I’m there hell for you.”

He chuckled, but it sounded lifeless, exactly how she felt. She took a step past him.

“I’ll send a car for you tomorrow at 8 a.m.”

She kept walking, shutting him from her thoughts.

“One more thing, Julia.”

She spun around, and her skin frosted. He stood there, tall, dark, remote. And sexy.

A lethal adversary.

To her heart…her mind…her life…her future.

“Don’t even think of skipping town tonight.” A cruel line carved his mouth. “I’ve security and—”

“You’re despicable.”

“Is that all?” He shrugged, but a nerve bashed his cheek. A moment of deliberation, and he delivered the blow that felled her. “You might have to explain to your daughter why your selfish actions nixed her billion-dollar inheritance.”

“Have you no honor?”

“You dare speak to me of honor?” he snarled. “You, who slunk out behind my back?”

Every fiber in her body quivered, the quake about to erupt inside her, and she blinked the blur from her eyes, easing the pressure. “You’d really use our child as a bargaining chip?” she murmured.

A lock of hair flopped over his brow, his Adam’s apple bopped, and his breath blasted from his nostrils like a snorting bull. “It’s your move, Julia.”

Her heart palpitated. By sleight of hand, he managed to immobilize her. She flexed her hands, breathed in and exhaled. If she was going to gain her freedom and secure her daughter’s financial future, she had to make a pact with this callous stranger before her. She’d be selling herself to him, and something seemed to die inside her.

“I won’t let you jeopardize her future, Michalis,” she fired, her words an ice blizzard.

“Then you’ll be there tomorrow, ready to warm my bed.”

“Did you undress me, Michalis?” Julia, wearing a mid-thigh length robe and with tousled hair, stomped barefoot onto the terrace of the Leonadis villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

“Did you want me to?” Amusement tugged at his mouth, and he set the newspaper he’d been reading on the table, his x-ray vision raking her head to toe.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She clutched the robe closer about her body, and he laughed. And that had her ire rising…as well as her temperature and heart rate.

“Is it?” He leaned back in his chair, his words a low rumble in his chest sent her emotions into a scramble.

“Answer me.” She slid her fingers in her long locks and shoved them off her forehead. “Did you…I mean did we…you…me—”

“Yes and no.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Coffee?” He picked up the briki , the coffee pot, and motioned her to sit down for breakfast.

“Don’t change the subject.”

An impatient sigh filtered from his mouth, and he took his time refilling his cup, then hers. “You were exhausted after the flight and conked out after putting Amy to bed.” He raised the demitasse, took a long sip and reset it on the saucer. “Good coffee. You should have some.”

The man was maddening. Aggravating.

Hot. Sexy.

Dressed in designer slacks and an open necked shirt with a gold chain around his neck, he exuded a casual confidence.

Deceptive. The thought criss-crossed her mind, and a sound, almost a snort tickled her throat, and she gulped it down. Beneath his casual air coiled the strength and power of a puma which, once unleashed, tore up everything in its path. His unquenchable drive fueled him to succeed in everything he did.

In everything except their marriage.

The snort blasted from her then, and although she slapped her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound, it tainted the air between them.

He quirked a brow, and she lowered her lashes a fraction, glancing at his rolled up sleeves.

His forearms were smattered with dark hair, and his hands invoked memories—him holding her, touching her in her most intimate places, loving her. Erotic sensations frisked her body, and she crunched the feelings she’d just as soon forget between her teeth.

“I removed your shoes and outer clothing—made you more comfortable.”

“How thoughtful,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm, her toes curling on the tile. Compared to him she looked and sounded like a shrew, and that compounded her resentment against him.

“I can be.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“Why, next to you.”

“No.”

“Mmm, yes.”

She wanted to smack the ‘gotcha’ look off his face, but instead, she leaned against the balustrade and gripped the twisted metal rods between her fingers. Jasmine leaves brushed her skin, and the white star-shaped flowers filled the air with exotic scent.

“Can’t have the help gossiping, now can we?”

“That never worried you before.”

His eyes glittered, his shoulders tensed. “Indeed.”

The early morning sun warmed her back, and she turned, her gaze skimming over the bougainvillea in the garden below, the scarlet blooms a contrast to the whitewashed villa. Lifting her lashes, she looked far out to sea at the sailboats dotting the horizon, and her thoughts went into reverse.

The flight from Paris to Athens had been anything but cordial. Taciturn, Michalis had sat next to her, his gaze glued on the sleeping child in her arms; but when he shifted his eyes to her, his tender look became eclipsed by the hardening of his pupils. A rip of dread pierced her, and she’d clutched Amy closer to her heart.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she’d said between her teeth.

“Like what?”

“Like I’ve committed some great sin.”

He scratched his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Conscience nipping at you?”

“No,” she hissed. “It’s not my conscience that’s guilty, it’s—”

“You’d better get some rest.” He’d hauled himself up, reached for his laptop from the overhead compartment and settled on the seat across the aisle.

Several hours later, the Leonadis jet taxied to a stop on the runway of Athens International Airport, and Julia still refused to relinquish the child in her arms. Not during the drive to the villa, and not even after the chauffeur had set their suitcases in the foyer, and she and Michalis stood alone in the huge house.