His Love-Child. Jacqueline Baird
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His Love-Child
They’d once shared incredible passion… Now a secret bound them together forever…
Three powerful, intense romances from three favourite Mills & Boon® authors!
Jacqueline Baird began writing as a hobby when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romantic genre. She loves travelling and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. She lives in Ponteland, Northumbria, the county of her birth, and has two teenage sons. She enjoys playing badminton, and spends most weekends with husband Jim, sailing their Gp.14 around Derwent Reservoir.
Don’t miss Jacqueline Baird’s exciting new novel, The Billionaire’s Blackmailed Bride, available this month from Mills & Boon® Modern™.
In August 2008 Mills & Boon bring back two of their classic collections, each featuring three favourite romances by our bestselling authors…
HIS LOVE-CHILD
The Greek Tycoon’s Love-Child by Jacqueline Baird
The Spaniard’s Love-Child by Kim Lawrence
The Millionaire’s Love-Child by Elizabeth Power
THE ALCOLAR FAMILY
by Kate Walker
The Twelve-Month Mistress
The Spaniard’s Inconvenient Wife
Bound by Blackmail
His Love-Child
THE GREEk TYCOON’S LOVE-CHILD
by
Jacqueline Baird
THE SPANIARD’S LOVE-CHILD
by
Kim Lawrence
THE MILLIONAIRE’S LOVE-CHILD
by
Elizabeth Power
MILLS & BOON
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THE GREEK TYCOON’S LOVE-CHILD
by
Jacqueline Baird
CHAPTER ONE
THEODORE KADROS paid the cab driver. It was a warm June evening and he shrugged off his jacket as he walked up to the open front door of the Georgian terraced house in the centre of London Mayfair. It was a small asset in the vast family-owned international property company. The house had been used over the past few years by his sister, Anna, who was currently sharing with three other students from University College London. He had known all of the girls, but one of them, Liz, had left a month ago, and he had yet to meet her replacement.
A wry smile twisted his firm lips. The new girl was obviously not averse to partying. It was Friday night and the place was lit up like a Christmas tree, a party in full swing. He walked into the hall, hooked his jacket on the wall stand, avoided one or two couples in clinches and headed for the living room. The music was loud and the laughter louder. Anna wasn’t expecting him until Monday and she was obviously making the most of her last weekend without her older brother breathing down her neck.
The way he felt at the moment, he did not blame her. After five weeks attending to business in South America he had flown into New York yesterday looking forward to spending a long weekend with his girlfriend of the past ten months, Dianne, a high-flying New York lawyer. Tired and in need of relaxation, Theo had arrived only for Dianne to give him the spiel: Where was their relationship going? Couldn’t they just curl up and talk for this evening?
After a lot of talk, he had curled up eventually in the guest bedroom… And it was Theo who’d said ‘No’ in the morning. He had been six weeks without her and consequently without sex. He was always monogamous as long as a relationship lasted, but, lovely as Dianne was, no way would he let her, or any woman, manipulate him using sex. The sound of wedding bells had been so loud in his head, he hadn’t been able to get away fast enough.
‘Theo. What are you doing here?’ Anna gripped his arm, and looked up at him with shock in her brown eyes. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until Monday.’
‘Have no fear,’ he mocked. ‘Carry on with the party, just make sure you keep your friends out of my suite.’ His sister Anna, at twenty-one, was perfectly capable of looking after herself, but at his father’s insistence he was supposed to be keeping a wary eye on her. Their father was Greek and their mother Greek American and, while his mother was a modern woman, his father put great store on traditional Greek values. This was the reason Theo had been loosely based in London for the past three years and kept a room on the top floor of the house. At the family home in Athens Anna led a much more sheltered life than she did in London.
‘Sure thing, bro…’ Anna resumed dancing with her partner.
Theo helped himself to a stiff whisky, and looked around the neon-lit living room… Not his scene. A glance at his wrist-watch told him it was five minutes to midnight, but unfortunately his body clock was still on American time, and he was not ready to sleep. His hard mouth curled in a cynical smile as he pondered on the vagaries of women. The lovely Dianne in particular.
Dianne had known the score from the beginning. She was a beautiful, intelligent, career-minded lawyer, just the type he liked, and yet within a few months she had been after a wedding ring. But she had picked the wrong man with him. He was a bachelor and intended to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
He glanced around the crowded room. At the end of July Anna would be finished at university. Then the house would be converted into business premises, which had been the original intention when the family firm had bought the place. But when Anna had insisted she wanted to live in student accommodation, their father had flatly refused. This house had been a compromise between father and daughter. Still, looking around now, at the assorted party guests writhing in what looked like a mass fertility dance, Theo could understand his father’s point of view.
At the same time he realised he wouldn’t mind a writhing body of the female persuasion beneath his own for the night, but he wasn’t into one-night stands, and certainly not with his sister’s friends. It was a bit too close to home. Turning, he threaded his way through the crowd. A cup of coffee was what he needed, not more whisky, and he made his way to the kitchen.
He pushed open the door and walked in, closing it behind him. Turning, he stopped dead. In all of his twenty-eight years he had never seen anything like her…
The woman was standing with her back to him,