CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WHAT DO YOU think of the news that Papa is engaged to the Ice Queen? Isla has hooked her claws into him, make no mistake.’

      Andreas Karelis came to an abrupt halt a few feet away from the helicopter which had brought him to his family’s privately owned island, Louloudi, and stared at his sister, who had run across the garden to meet him. Nefeli’s shrilly furious voice had risen above the whomp-whomp of the slowing rotor blades.

      From the air the island, partially covered with a cedar forest and olive groves, resembled an emerald set amid the azure Aegean Sea. Andreas’s happiest boyhood memories were of running free on Louloudi, away from his parents’ expectations of the Karelis heir. He owned houses in California and the French Riviera and a penthouse apartment in Athens, but Louloudi was the only place he thought of as home.

      ‘I have heard nothing from Stelios,’ he said curtly and his sister’s eyes widened. Usually Andreas kept a tight control over his feelings and no one, not even Nefeli, who was the only person he was at all close to, knew what he was thinking. But he disliked surprises, good or bad, and this was definitely the latter.

      ‘I thought Papa might have phoned you. He dropped the bombshell when I arrived.’ Nefeli tossed her dark curls over her shoulders. She was petite with a volatile temperament—the opposite of Andreas, who owed his tall, athletic build to his Californian maternal grandmother and had learned early in his childhood to suppress his emotions. It was a lesson he had mastered with astonishing success.

      ‘A press statement will be released tomorrow to formally announce Papa’s engagement to Isla, but he wanted to share the news with his family first. God!’ Nefeli’s voice went up another octave. ‘She’s his housekeeper, and young enough to be his daughter. What is Papa thinking?’

      Andreas gave a careless shrug to hide his violent dislike of his father’s matrimonial plans. The strength of his reaction surprised him, and he reminded himself that Stelios was free to do as he pleased. There was no fool like an old fool, especially a widowed, elderly billionaire in thrall to a beautiful young woman, he thought sardonically.

      A restlessness gripped him as he visualised the woman who was now apparently Stelios’s fiancée. Isla Stanford was undeniably beautiful. An English rose with her spun-gold hair and creamy skin. But she had an untouchable air that Andreas would usually find off-putting. He preferred women who were sexually confident, which was why he had found his intense awareness of Isla on the few occasions that he had met her so puzzling.

      ‘Papa has brought her to Louloudi and she is to attend my birthday party at the weekend,’ Nefeli said sulkily. She slipped her hand through her brother’s arm as they walked towards the villa. ‘You will have to do something, Andreas.’

      ‘What do you suggest?’ His trademark lazy drawl with its blend of cynical amusement disguised his thoughts but his restless feeling intensified when Nefeli spoke again.

      ‘Why don’t you seduce her? I’m sure you could quite easily. Women always fall at your feet, and when Papa realises that the Ice Queen had only pretended to be interested in him for his money, he’ll get rid of her and everything will return to normal.’

      By normal Nefeli presumably meant that Stelios would revert to behaving like a man in his late sixties who should be preparing for his retirement instead of lusting after a blonde bimbo who saw cash signs when she looked at him. Except that Isla was not your average bimbo. It would make life a lot easier if she was, Andreas brooded.

      ‘I don’t want to risk getting frostbite,’ he quipped. He swore silently. It wasn’t that he had any objection to his father taking another wife. Just not her. Not Isla. Why couldn’t the old man marry a woman of a similar age to him? A comfortably plump widow who would share Stelios’s twilight years, rather than an ice-cool blonde with intelligent grey eyes and a Mona Lisa smile that drove Andreas to distraction.

      His thoughts flew back to eighteen months ago when he had been summoned to the house in Kensington which his father had purchased shortly after his wife’s death, some six months earlier. Stelios’s decision to move to London had been a surprise, and after Andreas had handed his rain-spattered jacket to the butler and been shown into the drawing room, he’d intended to ask why his father had chosen to live in a country with such an infernal climate.

      But his mind went blank and his gaze was riveted on the woman sitting close to Stelios on the sofa. Too damned close, had been Andreas’s first thought, followed by a strong urge to snatch her away from his father’s side. She rose to her feet, as graceful and supple as a ballerina, and slipped her hand beneath Stelios’s arm when he stood up. Her solicitousness as she hovered protectively next to his father had irked Andreas.

      ‘Andreas, finally you have found the time to pay me a visit.’

      Stelios’s greeting held a note of criticism which Andreas had come to expect, and he gritted his teeth as he stepped forwards to kiss his father’s cheek. ‘It is good to see you looking well, Papa.’

      In fact his father looked tired, but Andreas barely noticed and his attention was on the woman. Who was she? Stelios’s personal assistant perhaps? Her appearance gave no clue to her role in Stelios’s life. She was wearing a white dress with three-quarter-length sleeves and a softly flared skirt that fell to just below her knees. A narrow black belt around her slender waist and black patent stiletto-heeled shoes were elegant accessories. Her hair was the colour of pale honey, drawn back from her face and tied in a ponytail that reached halfway down her back. She looked as demure as a nun, but the curve of her full lips and her high, firm breasts suggested an understated sensuality.

      Andreas couldn’t take his eyes off her and he gave a jolt when his father said drily, ‘Allow me to introduce my housekeeper, Miss Stanford. Isla, this is my son, Andreas.’

      ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she murmured.

      Her voice made Andreas think of a cool mountain stream and at that precise moment he would have gladly jumped into an ice bath to put out the fire raging inside him.

      ‘The pleasure is mine, Miss Stanford.’ He had intended to sound sardonic, but the word pleasure hovered in the air, infusing his greeting with sensual heat and something that sounded to his own ears like a challenge. He noticed the faint flush of rose pink that stained her cheeks like the sweep of an artist’s brush over a white canvas. Her eyes widened a fraction and Andreas glimpsed his confusion mirrored in those grey depths.

      There was another emotion too. He recognised a flash of awareness, before her long eyelashes that were a few shades darker than her hair swept down and shut him out. Time juddered to a standstill. In the silence Andreas heard the harsh rasp of his breath and the unevenness of hers, but when she met his gaze again her expression was unreadable.

      She turned to Stelios. ‘I’ll go and make tea.’

      ‘Thank you, my dear.’ A look passed between the old man and his housekeeper that Andreas could not decipher. Irritation swept through him. When the hell had his father, a lifelong coffee addict, started drinking tea?

      ‘I prefer coffee,’ he said abruptly, earning a frown from Stelios.

      ‘Of course.’ Isla Stanford gave a perfunctory smile that made Andreas long to ruffle her composure. He wanted, badly, to discover