Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4. Maisey Yates
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for attracting Jax and, from what she had seen of Jax and Kat in the newspapers, Kat must still have cherished hopes of something more coming from their long friendship.
‘Jax will take the kid and dump you again,’ Kat murmured lethally. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned.’
Lucy closed the door firmly behind her. Pale and shaky after that nasty little threat of what could be, she concentrated on removing her gown and freshening up. She pulled on a light dress and thrust her sore feet into sandals, touching up her make-up with a light hand. Kat was such a shrew, she reflected ruefully. Jax would never try to take Bella from her. Why would he do such a cruel thing? Or even think about separating a mother from her child? It wasn’t as though she was an unfit mother. All right, she wasn’t perfect. She had been known to snarl a little when Bella tried to get her out of bed at dawn but she loved her daughter. Nothing pleased Lucy more than the ability to give Bella all the little things she had never had herself, the small stuff like bedtime stories, favourite foods and lots of hugs.
Her luggage packed and then collected, Lucy went to meet Jax. A limo ferried them to the airport, where they boarded a helicopter.
‘Are we going on the yacht?’ she asked before the noise of the engine made any conversation impossible.
‘No. Tifnos,’ Jax told her simply.
And Lucy nodded, secretly intimidated by the prospect. She had read about the fabled private island Heracles had bought as a base in the eighties. Her father-in-law was reputed to live in feudal splendour there in a house that had never been photographed or shown in any publication. But it was supposed to have gardens that could rival the Garden of Eden, a private zoo and literally hundreds of staff.
Lucy felt inadequate. She was far too ordinary for such a backdrop. She had always been ordinary and had once thought that that was what attracted Jax to her. She didn’t put on airs, she didn’t say things she didn’t believe to impress and when she didn’t know something she admitted it. Unexpectedly, Jax closed a large hand over hers and then slowly laced his fingers with her own. His thumb massaged her inner wrist soothingly. It was as if she had hoisted a flag telegraphing panic and he had picked up on it. Or as if he was a little apprehensive too...
An idea she swiftly dismissed, for Tifnos was the Antonakos home and he had to be well accustomed to it.
It was fully dark by the time helicopter landed and Jax scooped her out onto the helipad. Momentarily she was thrilled by the dark heavens filled with thousands of the stars that were never visible in the city. Their luggage was piled into a beach buggy and Zenas took the wheel to drive them up a steep hill road hedged in by a forest of pine trees.
And then at the top the Antonakos house stretched like a giant illuminated cruise ship.
‘It’s big,’ she said abruptly.
‘Yep, for a man who doesn’t like to entertain, Heracles built a very large house,’ Jax conceded wryly.
They stepped into a foyer glossy and glittering with pristine marble and chandeliers. It looked exactly like a plush hotel reception without the desk. A double staircase swanned up to the next floor, each tread wide enough to march an army.
‘Think movie set,’ Jax urged. ‘My mother redesigned the entrance, so there are some very theatrical touches.’
A small middle-aged Greek man approached them with a tray of welcoming drinks. Jax passed her a champagne flute but demurred on his account. ‘I don’t like champagne,’ he admitted.
Lucy drank down hers to be polite while she peered into rooms furnished with the kind of opulence that just screamed old money to her. There were statues and collections and cabinets and elaborate artwork everywhere she looked. Suddenly she understood why there were supposedly hundreds of staff. It would take a fair number to look after so many possessions.
Jax set down her glass for her and closed his hand over hers and told the hovering manservant whom he addressed as Theo that they were going to bed.
‘Wasn’t that a little...offhand?’ she pressed self-consciously as they climbed the stairs.
‘It’s one in the morning and it’s our wedding night,’ Jax intoned, his hand tightening on hers. ‘We can get chatty tomorrow.’
She thought about what she had been avoiding thinking about and colour mantled her cheeks as Jax walked her into a vast room overflowing with urns of white roses and lilies, ornamented with trailing ivy. It was magnificent but not as magnificent as the vast divan bed on the dais scattered with rose petals.
‘Heracles wasn’t joking when he said he’d set the house up for the bridal couple,’ Jax conceded with forbidding cool.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Lucy muttered, because it was and she was grateful that her father-in-law had been prepared to make the effort on their behalf. ‘But maybe a little too grand for the likes of me.’
‘The “likes of me” now happens to be my wife,’ Jax reminded her in reproof. ‘And nothing is too grand or too good for my wife.’
‘I’ll get used to it...it’s just a little overwhelming coming to a house like this,’ Lucy confided.
‘It’s ours now,’ Jax revealed, sharing his father’s plans with her. ‘I think he’s hoping we’ll go forth and multiply now for him.’
Lucy shrugged a slim shoulder, making no comment on that possibility.
‘I think Bella’s enough for us at present. I still have to learn how to be a father,’ Jax completed, making his opinion clear. ‘Do you want a drink or anything to eat? There’re snacks waiting on the trolley.’
‘No. I only want to get my shoes off,’ Lucy admitted, dropping down into a luxurious armchair with a sigh. ‘My feet are hurting.’
‘Let me...’ In the most disconcerting way, Jax crouched down lithely at her feet and unfastened her shoes to slip them off. ‘You have such tiny feet. They used to fascinate me.’
Long brown fingers gently stroked the back of a delicate ankle and Lucy snatched in a sudden startled breath because her skin felt super sensitive, as though he had touched her somewhere much more intimate.
‘All that got me through the day was the glorious thought of sating myself inside you again, koukla mou,’ Jax said huskily, rising to lift her bodily out of the chair and settle her down on the huge bed.
Eyes flying wide, cheeks flushing, Lucy stared up at him with bright blue eyes.
‘So, why do you look like a cornered rabbit?’ Jax asked pleasantly. ‘You’ve been acting strangely all day.’
‘I... I FELT OVERWHELMED,’ Lucy told him and it was true.
The cathedral wedding, the sleek bejewelled Antonakos relatives and guests and the absence of any actual friends aside of her father’s had weighed her down. The constant stares and the low buzz of conjecture hadn’t helped either but when someone as rich as Jax married a waitress, who was the mother of his child, people stared and speculated. The wedding had been a strain and her father’s confession of wrongdoing had crushed her. It had been the ultimate humiliation to learn that only Kreon’s criminal act had made it possible for her to marry Jax.
And yet what could they possibly do about it now? Kreon had confessed too late to change anything. If she and Jax were to part this very night, it would cause a major scandal and she knew Jax wouldn’t want to invite that media attention, which meant that at the very least they would have to stay married for a few months to make any breakup appear less worthy of comment.
‘I can understand that,’ Jax conceded, removing his jacket in a lazy fluid movement.
And Lucy watched him with a fast-beating heart, still wondering what she should do and how she should be behaving. Yet with a