JACQUELINE BAIRD - Mediterranean Tycoons - Masterful & Married - Marriage At His Convenience / Aristides' Convenient Wife / The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

He turned, strode to his desk, and picked up the telephone, one long finger jabbing out the number he knew by heart. He straightened his broad shoulders beneath the exquisitely tailored dark blue silk jacket, and shoved his free hand in the pocket of his trousers, and with a look of grim determination on his face he listened to the ringing tone.

Amber Jackson walked back into her office with a dazed look in her lovely eyes and a broad grin on her face. She’d just had lunch with Sir David Janson, the chairman of the merchant bank by the same name, and she was still in a state of shock at what he had revealed to her. The ringing of the telephone brought her back to reality with a jolt. It might be Lucas, and, dashing across to her desk, she picked up the receiver.

‘Amber, good I caught you. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to see you tomorrow. It will be Saturday before we can meet, pressure of business, you understand.’

The happy expression that had illuminated Amber’s face when she’d picked up the receiver and heard the deep rich tones of her boyfriend’s voice turned into a disappointed frown.

‘Yes, I understand.’ What else could she say? Lucas was the managing director of his family firm, a large hotel and leisure company, and he spent much of his time travelling between the main offices in Athens and New York, and the various holdings around the world. In the year she had known him, she had accepted the fact he could not be with her all the time. She had a high-powered job herself as a dealer with Brentford’s, a large stockbroking firm, and she knew all too well the pressure of work. ‘But I’m not very happy,’ she added huskily. The sound of his voice alone was enough to make her pulse race, and she was missing him quite madly. ‘It is almost two months since I saw you. I was really looking forward to tomorrow—it is the anniversary of our first date and I have some marvellous news for you. You won’t believe it.’

‘I have some news for you as well,’ he drawled, and the trace of sarcasm in his tone wasn’t very reassuring. ‘But it will keep until Saturday.’

It was not the response she would have liked, but then for the past few weeks Lucas’s telephone calls had been few and brief, and her confidence in his love had begun to waver a little. She told herself she was being stupid. He loved her, she knew he did. But she knew the last time he had come back unexpectedly early hoping to surprise her he had been chillingly angry because she had refused to leave her office the moment he’d called and she’d insisted on keeping her work commitments. Later that night he had suggested yet again she give up her job, declaring a man of his wealth did not need a girlfriend who worked. Amber had tried to make a joke out of it, by answering with, ‘I will when I am married and pregnant, but not before,’ hoping he would take the hint and ask her to marry him. He hadn’t. But when Amber had had to go back to work on the Monday he had casually informed her he had to go to New York for a while. The while had stretched into two long months.

Amber was desperate to see him again. She had taken tomorrow, Friday, off work especially to be able to meet him. Now he was saying Saturday, and she could have wept with frustration. But she wanted nothing to upset their reunion, and so she responded with determined good humour.

‘Okay, but I miss you. It has been so long and I’m suffering from terrible withdrawal symptoms. I expect you to cure me on sight,’ she said throatily.

‘Sorry, darling, but it is only one more day—but it might be more if I don’t get off this line and back to work.’

The prospect of their reunion being delayed even further was enough for Amber to end the conversation within a minute. She replaced the receiver, her smile somewhat restored at his use of the endearment and his apology for the delay. She had waited so long, she could easily wait another day.

But on leaving the classic old building that housed the prestigious offices of the Brentford brokerage firm, she could not help a pensive sigh escaping. She thought her surprise was special, but would Lucas? Lucas had come into her life like a whirlwind and she’d changed from a serious young woman of twenty-two, who had never worn a designer dress in her life, into the sophisticated, elegant creature she was today. But sometimes when she looked in the mirror she did not recognise herself…

Securing the gaily wrapped parcel she was carrying more firmly under one arm, Amber waved down a passing cab by swinging her briefcase in her other hand. She was completely oblivious to the admiring glances of the dozens of men pouring out of the city office. At five-feet-seven, with a slender but curvaceous body clad in a smart navy suit, the short skirt ending inches above her knees, and the snug-fitting jacket enhancing her tiny waist and the soft swell of her breasts, she was an enchanting picture. She moved with a natural, sensuous grace. Her long light brown hair, gleaming like the colour of polished chestnuts, fell from a centre parting, and was loosely tied at her nape with a pearl clasp, before falling like a silken banner almost to her waist. Her face was a classic oval with high cheekbones, a small straight nose and a wide, full-lipped mouth, but it was her huge eyes, hazel in colour and tinged with gold, shining beneath extravagantly long lashes, that animated her whole face.

‘Where to, miss?’ The cab stopped at her feet, and with a bright smile she slid into the back seat and gave the driver the address of her friends Tim and Spiro.

She alighted from the taxi outside the door of a small terraced house in Pimlico, and, after paying the fare, she glanced up at the white-painted house. It was hard to believe it was five years ago since she had moved into the house with Tim, a lifelong friend from the small Northumbrian village of Thropton where they’d both been born and brought up. Tim had comforted her when her mother had died when she was seventeen, and he had been in his first year at art college when Amber had been about to start at the London School of Economics. It had been Tim’s suggestion she move into the spare room where he stayed. The house actually belonged to Spiro Karadines, a Greek student who was studying English at a language school before going to work at the deluxe London hotel which his family owned to learn the business from the bottom up. He reckoned he needed to let the rooms to students to pay for the upkeep of the house, because his closest relative was an uncle, Lucas Karadines, who controlled his trust fund, and was as mean as sin.

Lucas would not be pleased if he knew Amber was visiting his nephew Spiro, but he had been a good friend to her whatever Lucas thought about him. She rang the bell and waited, a reminiscent smile on her face. It was exactly a year ago tonight, Spiro’s twenty-second birthday, when she had first set eyes on Lucas. He had arrived unannounced at the party, and, after a furious argument with Spiro, Lucas had calmed down and accepted a drink.

For Amber it had been love at first sight. She had taken one look at the tall, dark-haired man, incongruously dressed in a house full of motley-clad students in an immaculate grey business suit, and at least a decade older than anyone else, and her heart had turned over. She’d been unable to take her eyes off him; her fascinated gaze had followed him around the room.

Well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and long-legged, with thick black hair slightly longer than the present fashion, he’d been the most handsome man she had ever seen. Even when it had been obvious he’d been hopelessly out of place in a room where quite a few of the men had been openly gay, he’d exuded a powerful sexuality that had been totally, tauntingly masculine. When his dark eyes had finally rested on her, he’d smiled and she’d blushed scarlet, and when he had casually asked her to have dinner with him the next night she had agreed with alacrity.