The Greek Tycoon's Tarnished Bride (Men of the Zodiac) Read online

  She shot him a look and could swear there was a spark of triumph in those bright green eyes. She’d just slipped up and let him know she hadn’t read those documents properly. Nick had been making such a fuss. “I missed that clause somehow. But that’s very generous of you. And it would be a nuisance to change it now.”

  “It would. So, are you happy?”

  “Content. And knackered.”

  “Ah, here’s our car.” He pointed to a sparkling white Mercedes that slid almost noiselessly to a halt in front of them. “And it has air conditioning.”

  “I love it,” Erica said and began to fiddle with the strap holding Nick in place. “I assume there’s a car seat in there already?”

  “Of course, it goes without saying.”

  She paused for a moment, one knee on the hot sidewalk. “You won’t let Nick down, will you?”

  He knelt down to look her in the eye, and her heart skipped a beat. “I won’t let either of you down, and I expect the same from you.”

  “Listen to us. It sounds like we have our civil ceremony vows worked out already.”

  His head moved closer to hers. “We can make this work, Erica. Everything is going to be fine.”

  Then instinctive forces beyond her control drew her eyelids down as his lips touched hers in the briefest, sweetest kiss she could ever remember receiving. Everything was going to be fine…

  Chapter Eight

  Just what had come over him at the airport? He had kissed her. He didn’t even know how that had happened, but it had and he was shaken by how it had left him feeling. One impulsive moment had changed everything in a seismic shift; a kiss that he couldn’t undo. He couldn’t even brush it off as meaningless. The moment for doing that was lost because she had looked at him in complete amazement, and he had been as silent as a boulder. He had felt as shocked as she looked because he had as good as promised her everything. And the nannies had been standing only a few yards away as well and had seen everything and smiled indulgently at the Happy Couple.

  Fortunately, it was less than a kilometer drive to where they were booked in for the night so they had little chance to talk even if Nick hadn’t woken up while being put in the car and hadn’t stopped protesting since. The car pulled up in a narrow street outside a building that proclaimed itself to be the Grand Portland Hotel, with the G hanging off at an awkward angle. Tito unbuckled his seatbelt and peered out of the window. “This is likely to be a little different to where we were sleeping last night, but it was the best we could find for all of us at such short notice. And the rooms sound large.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine.” Erica peered out of the window as well. “How bad can it be? It’s still trading, after all.”

  Both their cab and the nannies’ sped off immediately after being paid and Tito winced as they were forced to move quickly to the hotel steps or be jostled by the volume of pedestrians around. “Savage,” he muttered and pushed open the rotating door into reception.

  “You chose Gibraltar to get married in,” Erica said, and her gaze roamed around the drab lobby as he rang the bell on the reception desk. “And this place.”

  “Twenty-four hour reception,” he said confidently as all three women looked warily around the place. “We’ll be settled in soon.”

  “That would be very good, Mr. Makris,” Mary said quietly. “It has been hard on the baby. He needs to stretch his little legs and his mama—”

  Erica apparently didn’t like being nannied as well. Her tone was clipped. “His mama is fine, but I could do with a shower and a stiff drink!”

  Eventually a man came shambling to the reception desk smelling strongly of tobacco and it didn’t look like he had shaved for a few days. Tito tried very hard not to let his irritation and embarrassment show, but his heart was definitely sinking. It had been a long time since he’d been in a hotel of this low standard and that was when he was working his butt off to build up his savings and pay his way through university. “We have a reservation in the name of Makris, two suites.”

  He had been waiting for it. Erica’s voice sounded even sharper, and he couldn’t blame her. “Did you just say two suites?”

  “You heard correctly,” he said quickly and fetched his passport from a pocket in his jacket, sliding it in front of the concierge.

  “Reservation?” The man with an English accent wiped his nose on his forearm and coughed. “You sure about that?”

  Tito slid his cell phone across the desk. “The confirmation is just there. See?”

  The man grunted before running his fat fingers over the computer keyboard on the front desk. “Late booking, that explains it. Rooms are ready, you’re in luck.”

  Tito restrained himself from exclaiming that there should be no good reason why they wouldn’t be ready by late afternoon, which it was now.

  “Want a hand up with your bags?”

  Tito snatched back his phone as his passport was being photocopied. “I can carry my own, but the ladies…it would be appreciated, yes.”

  “No problem, guv.”

  Erica piped up. “Been in Gibraltar long? I recognize your accent. London, East End?”

  The man’s eyebrows bristled as they rose. “You’re not wrong there, love, Mile End born and bred until we came here.”

  She laughed. “A bit sunnier here, though.”

  “Not ’arf!” He smiled and Tito couldn’t see many teeth. “Free bottle of wine on the house, my treat. It’s waiting for you in your room, and I’ll get Manuel to sort your bags.”

  Erica flicked back her hair. “Cool!”

  Her smile faded pretty quickly when they were two flights up and Manuel lingered for a tip. She looked inside the room. “Twin beds and a cot. Right.”

  Tito pressed a few euros into the bag boy’s hand. “Thank you, we will be fine from here.” He closed the door to the suite behind him and took in the comparative horror of it all. A manor house in Hertfordshire this was not. “It’s just one night,” he said gruffly and pushed their cases to one side against the interior wall.

  Erica stood silently for a second as she surveyed the room from ceiling to floor and looked into each corner before going to open what was presumably the bathroom. The door handle came off in her hand. “Home from home, Tito. Couldn’t have planned it better.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so shit. Really, there was nothing else.”

  She laughed. “You think it’s shit? I’ve lived in a lot worse, so believe me, it’s fine. And it has air conditioning.”

  “Apparently.” He reached for the tiny gray remote control that had a pink sticking plaster over the end with AC written on it in blue pen. He pressed a few buttons and nothing seemed to happen to the ugly unit on the wall above the twin beds. “It probably needs to warm up,” he said lamely.

  “Well at least we have wine!” Erica giggled as she lifted a bottle of screw cap red plonk from the bedside table. “Might have to pinch some glasses from somewhere, though.”

  Tito felt like ants were crawling under his skin. “I’ll make this up to you, I swear.”

  “Nick isn’t bothered, look at him! And he’s all that matters, right? Even if this is my last night of freedom as a single woman.”

  “And mine.” He coughed. “As a single man, obviously.”

  She laughed and the creases around her mouth and nose said she really meant it. It was a real laugh, not a sarcastic, spiteful one. “It’s a bit rough but, hey, it’s only one night. I am a bit concerned about the sleeping arrangements, though. At least we’ve not been landed with a double bed, but if you can’t get that air conditioning unit going I will be sleeping naked. Just saying.”

  That statement should not unnerve him. He had seen plenty of naked women before. He had seen Erica Silver practically naked within the last forty-eight hours, but something about sleeping in the same room while she was naked… “I’ll get it fixed. And I’ll wait outside while you get dressed and things. Or hang out in the bathroom, it’s not a problem.”


  She tipped her head to one side and ran a finger up the smooth wine bottle she was still holding. “And have you packed your pj’s, Mr. Makris?”

  “Pj’s?”

  “Pajamas.”

  He didn’t own any. He lived in Crete most of the time, and his house had full air conditioning whatever the weather. Wearing stuff in bed made him feel trapped, like being wrapped up in a sarcophagus, but he’d manage for one night. “I’ll sleep in a T-shirt and boxers. Can you cope with that?”

  “You don’t have to on my account.”

  “And tomorrow morning I’ll get up early and dress elsewhere so you can have some privacy.”

  “Like, you’ll commandeer the nannies’ room?”

  “Of course not. I’ll have a word with the proprietor. He must have somewhere if the price is right.”

  She threw back her head and laughed louder this time. “There’s probably a janitor’s cupboard somewhere in the place. I would so love to be a fly on the wall for that. It’s a shame we won’t be doing any wedding speeches. Anecdotally, this could be very entertaining.”

  “No, thank God. Weddings are bad enough, but when the speeches start I lose my will to live and generally drink too much wine.”

  Erica sat down heavily on the bed and sighed. She held the wine bottle up to the light. “Shall we open this monstrous stuff, then? Get it over with?”

  It seemed a strange thing to suggest right there and then, but for some reason the notion of drinking rough red with Erica Silver in a tatty hotel room was bizarrely appealing. It would be like turning the clock back to his youth when there was no money for fine hotels and restaurants, just cheap lodgings and smuggled in booze. “Why not?” he said and smiled back at the mischief on her pretty, but very sexy face. “I expect there are a couple of glasses in the bathroom.”

  He made for the bathroom and poked back in the door handle as she said, “I hope so. I don’t really want that sweaty old bloke coming up here unless absolutely necessary. Did you get a whiff of him? Disgusting.”

  To Tito’s relief there were two tiny glass beakers on the sink behind the creaky door. “Success!” He handed her a glass and watched as her fingers twisted off the cap, and she poured out the thin, red liquid. “Thank you. Looks pretty grim but any port in a storm.”

  “Needs must,” she replied and gulped down half the glass in one go before shuddering. “Nasty.”

  Tito took a drink himself and winced. “Medicinal. Bound to thin the blood it’s so sharp.”

  “Tannic?”

  “Dirt cheap and made from the fermented must of something very undesirable, I’d imagine.”

  “But it’s starting to work.” She put her glass on the bedside table and laid back on the stack of thin, brown fabric-covered pillows. “I feel like I could sleep for ages. Even in here. Even in here with you staring at me like that.”

  Shock bolted up his spine and put him on high alert. He hadn’t realized he was staring at her quite so obviously, but being discovered and told so in such a way also fired up his blood. He couldn’t go anywhere near her, of course, because she was Yannis’s woman and certainly no ingénue. Her flirtatious manner was suggestive of someone who didn’t consider sex to be a sacred act; it was almost a recreational activity judging by her night club moves and the fact she had been sleeping with his best friend within a week of them meeting in a foreign holiday resort. He would be just one more notch on her bedpost if he gave in to that kind of temptation, but it wasn’t going to be easy…

  “You look so relaxed, it’s good to see.” He deliberately ran his gaze over her prone body, and she gave him a lazy smile. Could she be flirting with him again? He suspected she was, and in spite of everything he had just thought and inwardly warned himself about, he was enjoying it. “Not hot in those jeans?”

  “Would you be shocked if I took them off for a bit?”

  He shook his head and took another gulp of wine. “I’ve seen most of you before, remember?”

  “So you have. And you even had a little feel, as I recall.”

  “That was completely accidental.”

  “Of course it was,” she said with a playful frown and kicked off her shoes. “You tripped and your hand fell into my panties with a fifty pound note. Happens all the time.”

  “You didn’t seem too shocked.”

  She pulled off her socks. “You’d just shoved a total of a hundred quid into my underwear. You made my week!”

  He loosened his tie, and the relief around his neck was immediate. “Good, you can treat me to dinner tonight, in that case.”

  “Now hang on a minute.”

  He was enjoying this little game, and he wanted to get her at a disadvantage before she took her jeans off, if she actually did take her jeans off and wasn’t just teasing him. Because at that point he really would have to put some distance between them or implode with adolescent-style lust. It was ridiculous, but he wasn’t stupid enough to ignore what was starting to happen to his body, and it was quite alarming. “You can’t have spent any of it,” he said with a wicked smile. “And I didn’t take you up on that private dance.”

  She made a tiny huffing noise through her nose. “I’d offer you the dance if I got to keep my running away money.” Nick made a grunting noise, and there was suddenly a rather noxious smell in the room. “But we have a rather obnoxious chaperone on our hands.”

  Tito’s nostrils trembled as the stench reached him. “Jesus…”

  “So I’ll get him cleaned up, and we can all go out to eat early, yes?”

  He nodded and wrinkled his nose. “I’ll meet you down in the bar when you’re done.”

  She shot him a pained look as he made for the door and a quick escape. “It’s only poo.”

  Tito smiled at the proprietor as he shambled toward the reception desk. It seemed likely that the guy had just been out the back having another cigarette. “Hard work this hotel business,” Tito said. “Ever thought about retiring?”

  The other man coughed loudly and then did a gummy grin. “Would if I could, mate.”

  Tito nodded and kept smiling. “Where to?”

  “Ah, dunno, Caribbean? Majorca? All academic though. Nobody wants a dump like this right now. Nope, just got to keep on grafting.”

  Tito leaned his elbow on the wooden reception desk and lowered his voice. “Find me a large space to get ready for my wedding in the morning, and I’ll buy this place off you immediately.”

  The proprietor snorted and looked annoyed. “Yeah, course you will.”

  “Would three million do you?” he looked around the foyer. “The place needs a lot of work but hotels are my business. Look up Makris Enterprises if you don’t believe me.”

  “Christ, I’ve ’eard of you!” He wiped his forearm across his forehead. “What the bleeding ’ell are you doin’ ’ere?”

  “It’s complicated, but I want anonymity and discretion. Let’s leave it at that.”

  The proprietor tapped the side of his nose with his finger and winked. “Nuff said.”

  “This place does need a total facelift.”

  The other man guffawed. “It needs an arse lift too if you ask me! And some new titties.”

  Tito couldn’t help but laugh at the crude humor. “Yeah, quite. I could do with a foothold here in Gibraltar. I could make this hotel five star.”

  “You can have the lot for three mil, and you can have my own flat upstairs for your wedding and all that.”

  “Great! Show me the way.”

  The proprietor hesitated. “I’ll be wanting a deposit, mind. And a written deal.”

  Tito dropped a roll of notes onto the reception desk that was quickly snatched up. “I’ll get the legal documents emailed through within the hour from my London lawyer.”

  “Blimey!”

  “And as part of our deal some fresh soap would be good.”

  Erica’s eyes gradually eased open at the familiar creaking sound that her baby made as he was going to sleep or waking. She called it “
creaky door” and had laughed about it many times with Kimmie. It was strange to think that there were only two adults in the world who had heard him do it, but now, if he woke up anytime soon, there would be a third.

  Tito Makris would bear witness to such an intimate thing, something she held precious, something Nick was completely unaware of right now, but she would tell him when he was older. And now they weren’t on the breadline anymore, there would be evidence. She’d never been able to afford a cell phone with a camera and her only camera had gotten sand in it when she was on holiday in Majorca when her world irrevocably changed. Perhaps those tiny grains had been a warning; tiny grains, like tiny cells that left unhindered would grow and grow and become something completely phenomenal.

  There was a chink of dawn light threading its way through the thin patterned curtains, and she could see Tito still fast asleep after their fish and chip meal in a tiny café the previous night. The Filipino lady owner had been so kind about Nick’s buggy on a crowded evening, and they had enjoyed a wonderful evening pretty much eating with their fingers and shouting above the noise of the busy road outside. Tito had even eaten a chip butty, which made her laugh so much she thought she’d never stop. The moment had been captured on his iPhone as well as Nick posing with a tomato-shaped ketchup bottle. They had been treated like any other young family on a budget, and it felt good. Three felt better than two. Having money was great but some of the best things in life were cheap.

  Tito turned in his sleep, his broad shoulders clad in the T-shirt he had promised to wear and the sheet slipped to expose his bare feet. They were long and beautiful like a statue’s, and his toes were just as nature intended, not crushed and twisted from wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Her vision sharpened and latched on to the instep of his right foot. There was a mark, a tattoo. Tito Makris, Mr. Stiff Upper Lip and moral guardian of all things pure and proper had a tattoo!

  She quietly leaned forward and squinted. The tattoo was script, which looked like Latin. Sapere aude. What did that mean? Her heart beat a little faster because she had found a chink in his armor. That tattoo meant something, and it was very close to his Achilles heel, easy to hide away from an unsuspecting world.