Buch lesen: «The Greek Tycoon's Ultimatum»
“You are due to receive your monthly allowance tomorrow.”
Although he had not bothered to identify himself, there was no mistakng the deep, commanding tones of Leiandros’s voice.
It was a voice that haunted her dreams, erotic dreams that woke her in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking.
“I won’t be sanctioning that deposit, or any other, until you come to Greece.” No explanation, just an ultimatum.
“The Greek Tycoon’s Ultimatum
is a compelling, sensual story.
A romance you won’t forget.”
—bestselling author Lori Foster
They’re the men who have everything—except a bride…
Wealth, power, charm—
what else could a handsome tycoon need? In THE GREEK TYCOONS miniseries you have already met some gorgeous Greek multimillionaires who are in need of wives.
Now it’s the turn of talented Presents® author Lucy Monroe, with her sensual and compelling romance The Greek Tycoon’s Ultimatum
This tycoon has met his match, and he’s decided he has to have her…whatever that takes!
Coming next moth:
The Greek Tycoon’s Wife
by Kim Lawrence
#2360
The Greek Tycoon’s Ultimatum
Lucy Monroe
MILLS & BOON
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To my mother, Shirley Ann… The beauty of your character and strength of your spirit in the face of adversity is a constant source of inspiration for me.
Thank you for believing in my dream.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
“THE coldhearted bitch.”
Flinching as the words flew venomously from her sister-in-law’s lips, Savannah Marie Kiriakis forced her gaze to remain fixed on the emerald-green grass in front of her.
The traditional Greek Orthodox graveside service was over and everyone had paid their final respects, everyone but her. Poised on the edge of the grave, a single white rose in her hand, she tried coming to terms with this—the final end to her marriage.
Relief warred with guilt inside her, forcing out the pain of Iona’s verbal attack.
Relief that her own torment was over. No one would ever again threaten to take her children. And guilt that this should be her reaction to the death of another human being, particularly Dion—a man she had married in good faith and youthful stupidity six years ago.
“What right has she to be here?” Iona continued when her first insult was not only ignored by Savannah, but also by the other mourners.
Dion’s younger sister had a flair for the dramatic.
Unbidden, Savannah’s gaze sought the reaction of Leiandros Kiriakis to his cousin’s outburst. His dark eyes were not set on Iona, but focused on Savannah with a look of such contempt if she’d been a weaker person, she would have been tempted to jump into the grave with her dead husband.
She could not turn away, though her heart and emotions were screaming inside for her to do just that. Leiandros’s contempt might be justified, but it hurt in a way that Dion’s frequent infidelities and bouts of violent temper had not.
The smell of fresh earth mixed with the floral offerings covering the now closed casket assailed her nostrils and she managed to shift her gaze to her husband’s grave.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered soundlessly before dropping the rose she carried onto the casket and stepping back.
“A touching gesture, if an empty one.” More words meant to wound, but these delivered directly to her with the sharp precision of a stiletto aimed at her heart.
It took every bit of Savannah’s inner fortitude to turn and face Leiandros after the way he had looked at her a moment ago. “Is it an empty gesture for a wife to say her final goodbye?” she asked as she lifted her head to make eye contact.
And wished she hadn’t. Eyes so dark, they were almost black, blazed with a scorn she knew she had earned, but nevertheless grieved. Of all the Kiriakis clan, this man was the only one with legitimate reason to despise her. Because he had firsthand knowledge of the fact she had not loved Dion, not passionately and with her whole heart as a man like her husband had needed to be loved.
“Yes empty. You said goodbye to Dion three years ago.”
She shook her head in instinctive denial. Leiandros was mistaken. She would never have risked saying goodbye to Dion before fleeing Greece with her two small daughters in tow. Her only hope of escape had been to board the international flight for America before Dion realized she was gone.
By the time he had tracked her down, she had filed for a legal separation, thus preventing him from spiriting their children from the country. She had also filed a restraining order, citing her healing bruises and cracked ribs as evidence that she was not safe in Dion’s company.
The Kiriakis clan knew nothing of this. Even Leiandros, head of the Kiriakis Empire and thus the family, was ignorant of the reasons for the final break in Dion and Savannah’s marriage.
Leiandros’s sculpted face hardened. “That’s right. You never did say a final goodbye. You wouldn’t give Dion his freedom and you wouldn’t live with him. You were the kind of wife nightmares are made of.”
Each word pierced her heart and her sense of self as a woman, but she refused to bow in shame under the weight of his ugly judgments. “I would have given Dion a divorce at any time over the last three years.” He had been the one to threaten to take their daughters if she made good on her intention to file for permanent dissolution of their marriage.
Leiandros’s face tightened with derision and she felt the familiar pain his scorn caused. His opinion of her had been cast in stone the night they met.
She’d been nervous attending a party given by a man she didn’t know, a man Dion had raved about and stressed she had to impress in order to be accepted into the Kiriakis family. If that pressure had not been enough to make her tremble with anxiety, the fact that Dion had abandoned her in a crowd of strangers speaking a language she did not understand was.
Attempting to be unobtrusive, she hovered near a wall by the door to the terrace, away from the other guests.
“Kalispera. Pos se lene? Me lene Leiandros,” A deep, male voice speaking in Greek penetrated her isolation.
She looked up to see the most devastatingly attractive man she’d ever encountered. His lazy smile all but stole her breath right out of her chest. She stared at him, mesmerized by a rush of inexplicable feelings toward him, unhindered by societal conventions or even unfamiliarity.
Feeling horribly guilty for such a reaction to a man who was not her husband, she blushed and dropped her gaze. Using the only Greek phrase she knew, she told him she could not understand his language. “Then katalaveno.”
He placed a finger under her chin and forced her head up so she had no choice but to look in his eyes. His smile had turned vaguely predatory. “Dance with me,” he said in perfect English.
She was shaking her head, trying to force her frozen vocal chords to utter the word no even as he put a possessive arm around her waist and pulled her out onto the terrace. He then drew her into his arms, his hold anything but conventional. She struggled while their bodies swayed to the seductive chords of the Greek music.
He pressed her closer. “Relax. I’m not going to eat you.”
“But I shouldn’t be dancing with you,” she told him.
His hold grew even more possessive. “Why? Are you here with a boyfriend?”
“No, but—”
Demanding lips drowned her explanation that she was with her husband, not a boyfriend. Her struggles to get free increased, but the heat of his body and the feel of his hands caressing her back and her nape were already seducing her good intentions.
And to her everlasting shame she felt her body melt in helpless response. The kiss drew emotions from her Dion had never tapped into. She wanted it to go on forever, but even under the influence of a wholly alien passion, she knew she had to break away from the seduction of his lips.
The hand on her back moved to her front and cupped her breast as if he had every right to do so. The fact that he was touching her so intimately was not nearly so appalling as her body’s reaction to it. Her breasts seemed to swell within the confines of her lacy bra while their tips grew hard and aching. She’d never felt this way with Dion.
The thought was enough to send her tearing from Leiandros, her sense of honor in tatters while her body actually vibrated with the need to be back in his arms. “I’m married,” she gasped.
His eyes flared with the light of battle and she stood paralyzed for a solid minute, their gazes locked, their breathing erratic.
“Leiandros. I see you’ve met my wife.”
And Leiandros, whose body was turned away from Dion so her husband could not see his expression had glared at her with a hate filled condemnation that had not diminished in six years.
“Do not fool yourself into believing that since my cousin is not here to defend himself, your behavior can be dismissed with lies.”
Leiandros’s voice brought her back to the present, to a woman no longer capable of any kind of response to a man. For a moment she grieved the memory of those awesome feelings she had not experienced since and knew she would never experience again. Dion had seen to that.
Leiandros’s six-foot-four-inch frame towered over her own five feet, eight inches, making her feel small and vulnerable to his masculinity and the anger exuding off of him. She took an involuntary step backward and finding refuge in silence, she merely inclined her head before turning in order to leave.
“Do not walk away from me, Savannah. You won’t find me as easy to manage as my cousin.”
The implied threat in his tone halted her, but she did not turn around. “I do not need to manage you, Leiandros Kiriakis. After today, all necessity for communication between myself and your family will be at an end.” Her voice came out in an unfamiliar husky drawl when she had meant to sound firm.
“In that, you are mistaken, Savannah.” His ominous tone sent shivers skating along her nerve endings.
She whirled to face him, taking in the stunning lines of his masculine features, the way the sun glinted off his jet-black hair and the aura of power surrounding him even as she tried to read the expression in his enigmatic gaze.
“What do you mean?” Had Dion betrayed her in the end?
Leiandros’s sensual lips thinned. “That is something we will have to discuss at a later date. My wife’s graveside service begins in a few minutes. Be content with the knowledge that as sole trustee for your daughters’ inheritance, you and I must of necessity talk occasionally.”
Pain assailed her—a sympathetic pain for the grief this strong and arrogant man must be feeling at the death of his wife in the same car accident as his cousin.
“I’m sorry. I won’t keep you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I have no place there.”
“Iona thought you had no place here, yet you came.”
Because of the phone call. She never would have come if Dion had not made that call the night before his accident.
“Regardless of what the Kiriakis clan would like to be true, I married Dion. I owed my presence here to his memory.” Both the memory of the Dion who had courted her and the man who had called that one last time.
“Then do you not owe me your attendance at Petra’s service as a member of my family?”
“Why in the world would you want me there?” she asked, unable to hide her complete bewilderment.
“You claim your place in my family. It is time you paid the dues accompanied by that status.”
Humorless laughter fought to break free of the constriction in her throat. Paid her dues? Hadn’t she done that for six long years? Hadn’t she paid dearly for the privilege of wearing the Kiriakis name?
Leiandros watched emotions chase across Savannah’s usually expressionless face. She hadn’t been that way the first time they met. Then, she had seemed achingly vulnerable and sweet. So sweet she allowed another man to kiss her, to touch her while married to his cousin, he reminded himself.
Although she avoided eye contact with him on the few occasions they met after that, she’d still had an appealing vibrancy and beauty which made him understand why Dion stayed with her even after she had shown herself unworthy of her husband’s respect and love. At least for the first year, but the one time Leiandros had seen her the second year she lived in Athens, she had changed beyond recognition.
Her green eyes had dulled to the point of lifelessness. Had guilt over her lovers done that? Her demeanor had completely lacked emotion—except when she looked at her daughter. Then a love Leiandros had envied—and hated himself for doing so—had suffused her face and brought life back to her green eyes. No wonder Dion ran wild with his friends. His wife had reserved all her emotion for the daughter she bore as the result of a liaison with one of her lovers.
Leiandros had chided Dion for showing so little interest in fatherhood after Eva’s birth. Dion had cried when he told Leiandros that his wife had claimed the baby was not his. If Leiandros had ever doubted Savannah’s culpability in their shared kiss the night they met, he doubted no longer.
Remembering that encounter, his body tensed with anger. “Perhaps you are right. You have no place at my wife’s funeral. One display of false grief within our family is enough.”
Her eyes widened with what he could have sworn was fear before she took yet another step away from him. “I’m sorry Petra died, Leiandros.”
The apparent sincerity in her soft voice almost touched him, but he refused to be taken in by her act a second time. She was no more the vulnerable innocent than he was a gullible fool. “I think you will be, Savannah.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice quavering in a way that annoyed him while she brushed a lock of wheat-colored hair away from her face.
What did she think he was going to do? Hit her? The thought was so ridiculous, he dismissed it out of hand. She had reason to be concerned, if not afraid. He did have plans for her, but they had to wait. “Never mind. I have to go.”
She nodded. “Goodbye, Leiandros.”
He inclined his head, refusing to utter a farewell he did not mean. After he expressed his respect for Petra with a year of mourning, Savannah would be seeing him again.
Then she would be made to pay for all that she had cost his family…all she had cost him.
CHAPTER TWO
SAVANNAH could hear the happy chatter of her daughters playing in their bedroom as she settled into the creaking desk chair in the small, cluttered study of her home in Atlanta, Georgia.
She stared at the letter from Leiandros Kiriakis, feeling as if it were a black moccasin ready to strike. In it he requested her presence in Greece for a discussion regarding her financial future. Worse, he had demanded Eva and Nyssa’s presence as well.
He would be freezing Savannah’s monthly allowance until such a discussion occurred.
Panic shivered along her consciousness.
After the trial of attending Dion’s funeral a year ago, she had promised herself she would never have to see anyone Kiriakis again. Okay, if not never, then at least for a very long time.
The girls would have to be introduced to their Greek family someday, but not before they were old enough to deal with the emotional upheaval and possible rejection of doing so. In other words, not until they were confident, mature adults.
She wished. She knew that wasn’t realistic. Not after the revelations Dion had made in that final phone call, but she had intended to put the trip off for a while. Like until she had a secure job and her Aunt Beatrice no longer needed her.
Her mouth firming with purpose, she decided Leiandros would have to have his discussion with her over the phone. There was no earthly reason for her to fly all the way to Greece merely to talk about money.
Savannah’s confidence in Leiandros’s reasonability was severely tested ten minutes later when his secretary informed her he would not take Savannah’s call.
“When would you like to fly out, Mrs. Kiriakis?” the efficient voice at the other end of the line enquired.
“I don’t wish to fly out at all,” Savannah replied, her southern drawl more pronounced than usual, the only indicator the conversation was upsetting her. “Please inform your boss that I would prefer to have this conversation by telephone and will await a call at his convenience.”
She rang off, her hands shaking, her body going into fight or flight mode at the very thought of confronting Leiandros Kiriakis again in the flesh.
The phone rang ten minutes later.
Expecting Leiandros’s secretary, Savannah picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“You are due to receive your monthly allowance tomorrow.” Although he had not bothered to identify himself, there was no mistaking the deep, commanding tones of Leiandros’s voice.
It was a voice that haunted her dreams, erotic dreams that woke her in the middle of the night sweating and shaking. She could control her conscious mind, stifling all thoughts of the powerful, arrogant businessman, but her subconscious had a will of its own. And the dreams did nothing but torment her, as she knew without question she would never again experience those feelings outside the subconscious realm.
“Hello, Leiandros.”
He didn’t bother to return the greeting. “I won’t be sanctioning that deposit, or any other until you come to Greece.” No explanation, just an ultimatum.
The exorbitant prices Brenthaven charged for her aunt’s care and the expense of attending university had prevented Savannah from accumulating more than a few weeks of living expenses in her savings. She needed the deposit to make her monthly payment to Brenthaven, not to mention to buy mundane items like food and gas.
“Surely any discussion we need to engage in can be handled via the phone.”
“No.” Again, no explanation. No compromise.
She rubbed her eyes, glad that he could not see the gesture that betrayed both physical weariness and emotional weakness. “Leiandros—”
“Contact my secretary for travel arrangements.”
The phone clicked quietly in her ear and she pulled it away to stare at it. He’d hung up on her. She said a word that should never pass a lady’s lips and slammed the phone back into its cradle. Shocked rigid by her own unaccustomed display of temper, she stood motionless for almost a full minute before spinning on her heel to leave the now stifling study.
She’d reached the door and opened it when the phone rang again. This time it wasn’t Leiandros or his secretary. It was the doctor in charge of Aunt Beatrice.
Savannah’s beloved aunt had had another stroke.
Savannah tucked her daughters into bed, telling them their favorite rendition of the Cinderella tale for their bedtime story before ensconcing herself in the study to make the dreaded call to Leiandros.
She pulled up her household budget spreadsheet on the computer and ran the numbers one more time. Nothing had miraculously changed. She needed the monthly allowance. Even if she could manage to land a full-time job the very next day, starting wages in spite of a degree in business were not going to be enough to cover their household expenses and the increased cost of Aunt Beatrice’s medical care.
Savannah picked up the phone and dialed Leiandros’s office.
His secretary answered on the first ring. The conversation was short. Savannah agreed to fly out the following week, but she refused to bring her daughters. The secretary hung up after promising to call back within the hour with an itinerary.
Savannah was making herself a cup of hot tea in the kitchen when the phone rang only minutes later.
A sense of impending doom sent goose bumps rushing down her arms and up the backs of her thighs. She just knew the secretary wasn’t calling back with travel plans already.
After taking a steadying breath, she picked up the phone. “Yes, Leiandros?”
If she’d hoped to disconcert him, she was disappointed as there wasn’t even a second’s pause before he started talking.
“Eva and Nyssa must accompany you.”
“No.”
“Why not?” he demanded, his Greek accent pronounced.
Because the thought of taking her daughters back to Greece terrified her. “Eva has almost two weeks left of school.”
“Then come in two weeks.”
“I prefer to come now.” She needed the money now, not in two weeks. “Besides, I see no reason to disrupt the girls’ schedule for what will amount to an exhausting, but short trip.”
“Not even to introduce them to their grandparents?”
Fear put a metallic taste in her mouth. “Their grandparents want nothing to do with them. Helena made that clear when Eva was born.”
She’d taken one look at Savannah’s blue-eyed and blond-haired baby and decreed the child could not possibly be a Kiriakis. Eva’s eyes had darkened to green by the time she was a year old and her baby fine hair had been replaced by a thick mane of mahogany waves by the time she was four.
It was too bad Helena had refused point-blank to even come to see Nyssa. Savannah’s youngest had been born with the black hair and velvet brown eyes of her father.
Unmistakably a Kiriakis.
“People change. Their son is gone. Is it so strange Helena and Sandros should wish to know his off-spring?”
Savannah sucked in much needed oxygen and marshaled her thoughts. “Do they now acknowledge Eva and Nyssa as Dion’s?”
“They will when they meet them.”
No doubt. Both her daughters had enough physical characteristics of the Kiriakis clan that once seen their parentage could not be challenged, but that did not mean she was ready to introduce them to their family in Greece.
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, wondering how he knew of her daughters’ physical resemblance to their relatives.
“I have seen pictures. There can be no question Eva and Nyssa are Kiriakises.” The words sounded like an accusation.
“Dion’s pictures, you mean?”
She’d sent him frequent updates on the girls’ progress along with photos, hoping that one day he would show some inclination to acknowledge them. She’d felt her own lack of family and mourned her inability to know her own father and did not want the same grief visited on her daughters.
“Yes. I supervised the disposal of his effects from his Athens apartment.” Again Leiandros’s voice was laced with censure, as if she should have done the job herself.
After three years of separation and living independent lives on two different continents, she hadn’t even considered such a thing. “I see.”
“Do you?” he asked, his voice silky with unnamed menace and that awful sense of dread washed over her again.
“Have Helena and Sandros expressed a desire to meet them?”
“I have decided the time has come.”
And as the head of the Kiriakis clan, he expected the rest of the family to go along with whatever decision he made.
“No.”
“How can you be so selfish?” Condemnation weighted each word with bruising force.
“Selfish?” she asked, feeling anger roiling in her stomach, making it churn. “You call it selfish for a mother to wish to protect her children from the rejection of people that are supposed to love them, people that should have loved them since birth, but decided for their own obscure reasons not to?”
She knew she wasn’t being entirely fair. For six years, Savannah had believed Dion’s family had hated her because she was not the suitable Greek bride they had chosen for him to wed and therefore rejected her children. His phone call the night before he died effectively obliterated that theory.
Along with other stunning revelations, her dear husband had admitted that he’d been poisoning their minds with his insane jealousy, accusing her of infidelity, from almost the very start of their marriage. Helena and Sandros had what they believed to be legitimate reasons to question the parentage of Savannah’s daughters, but that didn’t make her any more willing to expose Eva and Nyssa to possible rejection and pain.
“Sandros and Helena will accept the girls with open arms.”
“Who do you think you are. God?”
Funny, she could actually sense the fury sizzling through the phone lines. He was not used to being questioned. He’d been in charge of the huge Kiriakis financial empire since his father’s unexpected death when Leiandros was twenty. At thirty-two, his arrogance and sense of personal power were as ingrained and natural to him as making his next million.
“Do not be blasphemous. It is unbecoming in a woman.”
She almost laughed out loud at how stilted he sounded, like someone’s maiden aunt giving lessons in etiquette. “I’m not trying to be offensive,” she replied, “I simply want to protect my daughters’ best interests.”
“If you expect those interests to include further financial support from the Kiriakis family, you will bring them to Greece.”
Savannah tried to draw in a breath, but it seemed to get stuck somewhere between her windpipe and her lungs. The edges of her vision turned black and she wondered with a sense of detachment if she were going to faint. Leiandros didn’t know it, but he was forcing her to choose between the elderly aunt who had raised her and the safety of her daughters’ emotions along with her own sanity.
It was her second worse nightmare. The first had already happened. She’d married Dion Kiriakis.
“Savannah!”
Someone was shouting in her ear. Her hand instinctively tightened on the phone and the room came slowly back into focus.
“Leiandros?” Was that thready voice hers?
How pathetic she must sound to the self-assured man on the other end of the line, but then she doubted anyone had ever forced him to do anything he did not want to.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” she admitted. The last of her emotional reserves seemed to have dissipated with his overt threat.
“Savannah, I’m not going to let anyone hurt Eva and Nyssa.” His voice reverberated against her ear with conviction and assurance.
But would he let them hurt her? “How can you prevent it?”
“You will have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust people named Kiriakis.” Her words came in the flat monotone she couldn’t seem to shake.
“You don’t have a choice.”
Leiandros hung up the phone, satisfied.
The opening gambit had gone to him. It would only be a matter of time before he captured her.
Savannah and her daughters would be flying to Greece the day after Eva’s school let out for the summer. Savannah had agreed only after extracting a promise from him not to instigate any meeting between Eva, Nyssa and their grandparents before she had an opportunity to speak to Helena and Sandros.
How could she now show such concern for her daughters’ emotional well-being when her lies about their parentage had denied them the love of their family since birth?
No doubt, her arguments were an attempt at manipulation. Perhaps she intended to try to use the girls as bargaining chips for a larger allowance. While her current stipend was substantial, it would hardly support the designer clad, jet setting lifestyle she had experienced while living with Dion.
He put through a call to his secretary. “Arrange for my jet to land in Atlanta to transport Savannah Kiriakis and her children to Athens two weeks from today.”
He cut the connection after giving his secretary other necessary details.
Savannah had balked at flying on his jet, but after he told her the plane had a bedroom the girls could use to sleep in comfort, she had agreed. If she’d remained insistent he would have given in to her. The first step in his plan was the most important: getting Savannah and the girls to Greece.
Savannah had to be on the chessboard in order to engage her in the game.
He would not allow an ocean and two continents to prevent him from exacting full payment from her for all that she had cost his family, all that she had cost him.
Savannah had committed the gravest of all sins against his family, that of withholding her children, using lies and manipulation to cheat Dion out of his fatherhood and Helena and Sandros out of their rightful role as doting grandparents.
That would end in two weeks time.
When he had first met Savannah, he had been drawn to her apparent innocence, to the impression of untouched sensuality she had exuded. So drawn he had kissed her without knowing her name or anything else about her.
She had struggled at first, but within seconds had gone up in flames. Her response had been more exciting than any other sexual experience he’d ever had. Then, she’d yanked herself from his arms and told him she was married. His first, primitive instinct had been to tell her she had married the wrong man. And then her husband had arrived. His cousin.
Leiandros’s body still remembered the feel of hers. His mouth still hungered for her taste. His sex still ached for the release denied him that night. No matter how he tried to forget the forbidden desire for his cousin’s wife, she was always there, in his dreams, in his mind.
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