CHAPTER ONE

      NIKOS COSTANIDES needed a woman.

      Not just any woman, either. He needed a babe. Luxuriously blonde. Definitely sultry. Naturally brash. And the blowsier the better.

      It wouldn’t hurt if she wore a skintight leopard-spotted dress, either, he thought with a ghost of a smile. But he wasn’t going to hold out for that, he decided as he tucked the telephone under his chin and punched in the number. A close approximation would do just fine.

      “Debbie’s Dollies Escort Service,” a voice purred moments later on the other end of the line.

      Nikos grinned. If the woman who came was as promising as the voice on the phone, he’d be out of here by sundown. “I’d like the services of one of your escorts this afternoon.”

      “Certainly, sir,” the voice purred. “Whatever your heart desires.”

      What his heart desired was to be five thousand miles away from his father’s Long Island mansion, but he knew that wasn’t what the woman on the phone had in mind. Still, she would be helping him get there, so he gave the receptionist an idea of the sort of escort he wanted.

      “A flagrant sort of woman?” she said doubtfully when he’d finished.

      “In your face,” Nikos agreed cheerfully. “Over the top. Definitely not subtle. You know what I mean?”

      “Er, well,” the receptionist said, though she still sounded a little doubtful. Then her business sense won out. “I’m sure we have just the woman. I’ll send her right out.”

      Nikos gave the receptionist the address. “I’m in the caretaker’s cottage behind the main house. There’s a party going on by the pool, but it’s perfectly all right if she comes straight up the main drive and walks right past them.”

      Nikos looked out at the group of party-goers on the patio behind the main house—particularly at his stubborn, strait-laced father, who was carrying a footstool for Julietta, his very pregnant young wife—and flexed his shoulders in anticipation. The weight of his confinement eased slightly. It wouldn’t be long now and the shackles would be completely gone.

      “Yes, sir. I’ll tell her. And I’m sure she’ll do just what you want her to, Mr. Costanides,” the receptionist assured him.

      “Yes,” Nikos agreed with a purr of satisfaction in his own voice. “I’m sure she will.”

      It was actually closer to forty-five minutes before he heard the knock on the cottage door. It was a short rap. Brisk and no-nonsense. Not especially sultry. But then it was probably hard to sound sultry in a knock.

      No matter. Maybe the gardener had stopped her when she came up the drive, suspecting she was lost. She would hardly look like one of the guests coming to his stepmother’s baby shower! Nikos grinned again and finished stuffing the last of his gear into a duffel bag, the better to be ready when his father threw him out.

      If he’d been able to drive, he’d have been gone long before this. But a car accident following a shouting match with his father a month ago had left him with a cast on his leg that limited his mobility. It had given his father the chance he wanted—to nail Nikos down until he could badger him into working for Costanides International.

      Not on your life, Nikos thought now, as he thought every time the subject came up. There would be six feet of snow in hell first.

      He hauled himself out of his chair to go answer the door, thinking that if, in fact, old Thomas the gardener had stopped the floozie, it would be that much better. He would be one more person shocked by Nikos’s disrespectful behavior, one more voice telling Stavros that his elder son was irredeemable, one more reason to throw the blackguard out.

      To be honest, though, Nikos doubted