After the Greek Affair. Chantelle Shaw

      ‘Well? Are you coming? I haven’t got all day for you to make up your mind.’

      She gave a start at the sound of his faintly mocking tone and realised that he had jumped into the boat and was holding out his hand to help her step on board. She would love to tell him to take a running jump, Belle thought viciously, preferably over the edge of a high cliff. But the stark truth was that she needed this job. If she could not start to pay back her business loan to the bank Wedding Belle would collapse without any help from Loukas.

      In her high heels and pencil skirt there was no way she could climb into the boat without his help. Reluctantly she leaned forward to take his hand, and gave a startled cry when, having lost patience with her dithering, Loukas gripped her waist and swung her down from the quay.

      The few seconds that he held her against him scrambled her brain, and the feel of his muscular torso and rock-hard thighs pressed so intimately close to her body was causing a coiling sensation deep in her pelvis. She snatched a breath when he set her down and gave him a fulminating glare, desperate to hide her awareness of him. ‘Thank you,’ she said icily, ‘but I could have managed perfectly well, Mr Christakis—’

      ‘Nonsense.’ He cut her off mid-tirade. ‘You’re as wobbly as a newborn foal in those ridiculous shoes. And you’d better make it Loukas. My sister was keen that I should welcome you to Aura, and she’ll expect us to be on first-name terms—Belle.’

      Something about the way he said her name sent a little quiver through Belle, and his amused smile stole her breath. Already devastatingly sexy, the sudden upward curve of his sensual mouth caused her knees to sag, and she could feel her heart thundering as if she’d run a marathon.

      ‘You’d better hold on to this before the wind whips it away.’ Loukas lifted the elegant cream and black hat from Belle’s head, and stiffened when pale gold hair unfurled and fell almost to her waist in a silken stream. He had been right about her being a blonde. In the sunlight her hair was the colour of platinum. It seemed unlikely that the shade was natural, but she was so tiny compared to his six-foot-four frame that her head only came halfway up his chest, and he could see no telltale sign of darker roots on her scalp.

      The breeze blew a few fair strands across her face and, unable to stop himself, Loukas reached out and brushed the hair back from her cheek. Time was suspended. Belle’s heart stopped beating as she stared into dark grey eyes that were no longer cold and hard as tensile steel, but glinting with a blatant sexual heat that evoked a shameful longing inside her for him to pull her into his arms and plunder her mouth with the savage passion she sensed he was capable of.

      How could she be attracted to him when he was everything she hated? It was just a physical thing, she assured herself frantically—a chemical reaction that she had no control over. But somehow she would have to ignore her sexual attraction to Loukas if she was not going to spend the next week embarrassing herself by ogling him like a teenager with a severe crush.

      The throb of the boat’s engine seemed to reverberate through her, and she gripped the edge of her seat as he opened the throttle and sped out of the harbour, heading towards the small island of Aura—a green haven set amid the sparkling blue sea. Her hair whipping across her face, Belle glanced back at Kea, already far behind them. Sudden panic flooded through her and she felt an impending sense of unease that her life would never be the same again once she had set foot on Loukas Christakis’s private domain.