He frowned. No politician, the poet who had said that. And no businessman either. Getting and spending was what his whole life was about. It always had been.
But then, he’d always known that his destiny was to do that. To continue with the work his grandfather had begun, rebuilding the Makarios fortunes after they had been lost in the debacle of the Greek expulsion from Asia Minor in the 1920s.
He could hear his grandfather’s harsh voice even now, in his head, from when he’d been a boy.
‘We had nothing! Nothing! They took it all. Those Turkii. But we will get everything again—everything!’
Rebuilding the Makarios fortune had occupied his grandfather’s life, and his father’s, and now his too. The Makarios Corporation spread itself wide—property, shipping, finance, investment, and even—Leo thought of his latest contribution to the family’s coffers—the ultimate in luxury goods: priceless historic jewellery, and the revival of a name that had been synonymous with Tsarist extravagance.
He gazed out over the moonlit sea, feeling the warmth of the Caribbean night, hearing the soughing of the wind in the palms, the call of the cicadas, and, drowning them out, the yet more incessant calls of the tree frogs.
A thought came to him out of the soft wind, the sweetfragranced air.
Who needed diamonds and emeralds on a night like this? Or sapphires and rubies? What use were they here, on the silvered beach by the warm sea’s edge?
What use are they at all?
Into his head jarred a voice—’They’re just carbon crystals…lots of other common crystals are just as beautiful.’ Anna Delane’s lofty sneer at the Levantsky jewels.
His face hardened.
Hypocrite! She hadn’t helped herself to the ruby bracelet because it was beautiful, but because it was worth a fortune.
It had been a mistake thinking about her. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours assiduously putting her out of his mind. Even when she’d spent the flight sitting right next to him he’d refused to think about her, let alone look at her, or speak to her, or in any way acknowledge her existence. Now, fatally, she was there—vividly in his mind.
Desire shot through him, hard and insistent. His hands clenched over the wooden balustrade.
No! Now was not the time nor the hour. Sleep was the priority now—and it would be for her, too. When he took her it would not be like this, on the edge of exhaustion, but in the rich, ripe fullness of all his powers.
He would need all night to enjoy her to the full.
And every night.
Starting tomorrow.
How long would it take him to tire of her?
The hard smile twisted at his mouth.
A lot, lot sooner than it would take her to tire of him.
He would see to that.
Anna walked along the edge of the beach. It was one of those crystalline white sand, palm-fringed crescents that were put into travel brochures to make everyone instantly want to go there. But this beach she had to herself. Completely to herself. It belonged to the beautiful sprawling villa spilling along the shore, and the villa belonged to Leo Makarios.
She could see why he’d bought it.
It was, quite simply, idyllic. Like the beach, a travel agent’s dream of what a Caribbean villa should look like. The green tiled roof, the white walls, the wraparound veranda, the palm trees fringing the shore, the crystal beach, the pink and purple bougainvillaea and hibiscus splashing colour, the turquoise glitter of a freshwater pool.
Quite, quite idyllic.
Anna stopped to look out to sea. The sun was lowering, a thin band of cloud just above the surface of the sea starting to pool in the lengthening rays of the sun, like rich dye running into spun silk. Bars of gold were sliding across the azure water. Across the sun’s face a large, ungainly pelican flapped lazily. High in the sky a frigate bird soared.
Anna glanced at her watch. Though only just evening, the sub-tropical latitudes meant the sun was going down apace. The night would sweep in from the east like a velvet concealing cloak.
And the night would bring, she knew, Leo Makarios.
There had been no sign of him all day. She’d slept long and when she’d surfaced it had been late morning. She’d eaten breakfast on her balcony, and as she’d gazed out over the beautiful grounds leading down to the sea she’d felt the biting, mocking irony of her situation. Here she was in a Caribbean idyll—and tonight she was going to have sex with a man. Deliberate, cold-blooded sex, with a man she did not want to have sex with—a man who thought her a thief, a man she had already thrown out of her bedroom once but who now she could not throw out.
Deliberate, cold-blooded sex.
She made herself say the words again in her head. And again.
Because that was what it was going to be.
Something flared briefly in the depths of her eyes, but she crushed it instantly.
A sudden panic speared through her. She couldn’t go through with this. She just couldn’t!
I’ve got to tell him the truth! Tell him it wasn’t me who stole his precious bracelet, that it was Jenny, and that she only did it because she’s pregnant and terrified, and has got herself involved with a man so dangerous he makes Leo-Money-Bags-Makarios look like a pussycat…
Cold pooled in her stomach. However much she desperately wanted to, she knew she could not tell Leo Makarios the truth. The risks were far too great. As a woman, she might automatically side with Jenny, but who knew what a rich, powerful man like Leo Makarios would think? His attitude to women was dire—she had personal proof of that already—so why should he think Jenny deserved any favours, any mercy? After what she’d heard him say about Vanessa, and guarding his precious cousin from her, he’d probably think Jenny had got herself pregnant on purpose—picking a rich man to get at his money—and that a man so entrapped was entitled to take a woman’s baby from her—especially a woman who’d shown herself so morally lax that she’d stooped to theft…He wouldn’t understand.
No—Anna’s face closed—there was no way she could take that risk. And that meant—her expression twisted—she just couldn’t tell Leo Makarios why she had taken the blame for stealing his rubies.
He had to go on thinking that she was the thief. It was the only way she could protect Jenny.
Which meant—the fear pooled in her stomach again, but with a different cause this time—that she was, indeed, going to have to go through with what Leo Makarios intended.
Have sex with him.
She stared unseeingly out over the water. In Austria it had seemed unreal; she’d been in shock, Anna realised, using all her mental energy to tamp down the panic that had been trying to erupt. Here, after being on her own all day, the reality of what she was going to have to do was hitting.
Hitting hard.
For a moment she felt revulsion stiffen through her.
A phrase welled up in her thoughts.
Self-respect. An alien concept to so many people, she knew, moving in the world she did. Men who treated women’s bodies as commodities—women who treated them the same way. She could name half a dozen other models she knew who would have thought themselves in paradise to have been offered the choice that Leo Makarios had offered. Queued round the block for it.
I’m not one of them!
Even as she mentally shouted her denial, another voice spoke in her head. With killing, merciless force.
But you will be…