Theo did not anticipate the time would ever come but if, by some cruel twist of fate, or possibly a blow to the head, he ever found himself in a situation where he was tempted to express his carnal appetite with the word love or forever Theo knew that replaying the deeply unpleasant scene etched into his brain would restore him to sanity.
On that previous occasion Theo had turned on his heel and walked away; that, unfortunately, was not on this occasion an option.
Now, his responsibility was clearly to save his brother.
It seemed unlikely that Andreas would appreciate his efforts. Though, on the plus side, Andreas, for all his faults, had never been what anyone would call a romantic and he had never displayed his own embarrassing youthful tendency to put women on pedestals; to recall the idealism of his youth still made Theo wince.
He wondered briefly whether Ariana had been unable to resist the temptation of his brother when an opportunity had presented itself or if she had gone out of her way to entrap Andreas, not that it mattered. He was genuinely astounded that she thought he would sit back and let this happen; maybe, in retrospect, it had sent the wrong message when he had permitted her to enjoy her petty revenge six years ago.
At the time he had calculated that responding to the interview she gave to a women’s magazine would have only prolonged the public interest, even though the story she had shared with the readers had been fiction from start to finish.
I was crazy about Theo but I was shocked when he gave me an ultimatum. Theo made me choose between him and my career. He’s very Greek; he wanted an old-fashioned sort of wife who would live her life through him.
She had phoned him to tell him that the article had been directly responsible for getting her the contract as the face a new perfume ahead of the model who had been tipped for the job.
‘So thanks, Theo,’ she’d said, warning, ‘but you still owe me.’
Presumably this was payback time.
‘Am I interrupting?’
The ironic question caused the couple, who were in a tight embrace, to pull apart. The woman rather ostentatiously adjusted the low gaping neckline of her dress and the man, looking flushed and embarrassed, dragged a hand through his tousled hair and cleared his throat.
‘Theo…I…we…didn’t hear you. We were…’
Theo arched a questioning brow at his clearly embarrassed brother and smiled. Actually, he wanted to throttle him; how could he not know that Ariana was poison, that she was motivated by two things—revenge and greed?
Like you did?
Ariana lifted a beautifully manicured hand to Andreas’s lips and gave a complacent smile as she observed, in a voice that had been likened by more than one smitten man to a purr, ‘Darling, Theo knows what we were doing.’
Andreas kept a wary eye on his brother as she pressed a lingering kiss to his lips. ‘Well, I don’t need to introduce you two, do I…?’ he said, grinning weakly at his own joke.
Tall and universally considered good-looking, Andreas Kyriakis had learnt early in life that the warmth and charm of his smile would tip the balance of most situations in his favour, but on this occasion his smile was wary as he reached for the chilled champagne.
The unease vanished as his attention turned to his beautiful bride-to-be. As he popped the cork he was unable to stifle a smile of triumph.
It was his brother’s turn to be second best.
Ariana had not wanted Theo but she wanted him.
Chapter Two
‘THAT was all a very long time ago. We were children, weren’t we, Theo?’ Ariana took the glass of champagne and looked at the older brother through the mesh of her darkened lashes, experiencing a moment’s uncertainty as she realised that Theo was looking relaxed when he was meant to be denouncing her to Andreas and flinging ultimatums.
‘Infants,’ Theo agreed as his sardonic glance brushed the rock sparkling on Ariana’s finger. ‘At least I was.’
As he smiled and watched the puzzled pout settle on Ariana’s lips he found himself comparing the cosmetically enhanced fullness, which he found not even vaguely inviting, with the softer and much sexier lushness of Elizabeth Farley’s naturally pink lips.
Well, now he had the cause of the tears and tantrums in the outer office; it appeared he wasn’t the only one unhappy about that diamond.
‘You should have been at Ariana’s birthday bash in Paris, Andreas,’ he commented offhandedly.
He paused, a flicker of something close to shock moving across the reflective surface of his dark eyes—he had just thought sexy, inviting and Elizabeth Farley in the same sentence!
How had that happened?
‘But, no, I remember now, you were doing your exams. What was it, Ariana—your thirtieth?’ he asked innocently.
Ariana’s careful smile slipped; her blue eyes were hard as she corrected sharply, ‘I was still in my twenties.’
‘Yes, that would be right,’ Theo agreed, feeling no remorse for attacking one of Ariana’s weak spots. ‘I did have a thing for older women at that age. Do you remember there were balloons and clowns?’
‘There was a famous mime artist,’ Ariana told Andreas, ‘and Theo fell asleep.’
‘Age isn’t relevant when you’re in love,’ Andreas said quickly and with enough defensiveness in his manner to reveal this was not an opinion he had formed in the moment. ‘And Theo was never a child; he emerged with a phone in one hand and a contract in the other.’
Theo accepted the glass from his brother and turned to close the door behind him while he fought to control his temper.
He would lock his brother in a cellar if that was what it took, but he was hoping to come up with a more imaginative solution.
Failure was not something that Theo considered.
Considering failure was not the attitude that had quadrupled the profits of the already prominent international company he’d become head of after his father’s death; considering failure was not why Theo was spoken of as one the most influential figures of the decade, the template for any man who wanted to make his first billion before he was thirty.
‘So what is the occasion?’ he drawled, his dark glance sliding once more to the ostentatious diamond before his eyes lifted and he looked directly at his brother. ‘Or is that a foolish question?’ he asked, resisting the strong impulse to yell, Have you lost your tiny mind? And added, ‘I take it congratulations are in order.’
Ariana fluttered her lashes and waved her left hand at him. ‘We wanted you to be the first to know, Theo.’
But he wasn’t; the girl who was probably composing a second resignation letter as they spoke had known.
‘I’m touched,’ Theo said, his thoughts turning to the problem at hand—namely, how to make his brother see that he would be better off marrying a barracuda, or at least safer.
Forcibly beating the information into his brother’s head was an appealing option and it would have the added bonus of making Theo feel moderately better in the short term but, as this was the reaction Ariana was probably hoping for, he was not going to give her the opportunity to call him the jealous brother.
It was actually not jealousy but nausea he felt as he watched Andreas slide his arm