as the evocative scent of Giannis’s aftershave swamped her senses. Still in a state of shock after her near fall, she rested her cheek on his shirt front and heard the erratic thud of his heart beneath her ear. She wished she could remain in his arms for ever. The crazy notion slid into her mind and refused to budge.
There was another flash of bright light. ‘Who is your mystery blonde, Mr Gekas?’ a voice called out.
Ava heard Giannis swear beneath his breath. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked dazedly, lifting her head from his chest and blinking in the blinding glare of camera flashes.
When a taxi had dropped her at the hotel entrance the previous evening she had noticed the crowd of paparazzi who had gathered to take photos of the celebrity guests arriving at the party. Evidently some of them had waited all night to snap guests leaving the hotel the next morning, and they had struck gold when they had spotted Europe’s most notorious playboy and a female companion.
‘Hey, Mr Gekas, over here.’ A photographer aimed a long-lens camera at them. ‘Can you tell us the name of your girlfriend?’
‘I certainly can,’ Giannis said calmly. To Ava’s surprise, he did not move away from her as she had expected. Instead he kept his arm clamped firmly around her waist as he turned her to face the paparazzi. ‘Gentlemen,’ he drawled, ‘I would like to introduce you to Miss Ava Sheridan—my fiancée.’
She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Ava jerked her eyes to his face. ‘What...?’ she began, but the rest of her words were obliterated as his dark head swooped down and he crushed her lips beneath his.
The kiss was a statement of pure possession. Giannis ground his mouth against hers, forcing her lips apart and demanding her response, re-igniting the flame inside her so that she was powerless to resist him.
Ava felt dizzy from a lack of oxygen when he finally lifted his head a fraction. ‘What the hell?’ she choked, struggling to drag air into her lungs when he pressed her face into his shoulder.
‘I need you to be my fake fiancée,’ he growled, his lips hovering centimetres above hers. ‘Play along with me and I’ll drop all the charges against your brother.’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s blackmail.’
His fingers bit into her upper arms as he hauled her hard up against his whipcord body. To the watching photographers they must have looked like lovers who could not keep their hands off each other. ‘It’s called business, baby. And you and I have just formed a partnership.’
‘YOU’VE GOT A damned nerve.’
Giannis flicked a glance at Ava, sitting stiffly beside him. It was the first time she had uttered a word since he had bundled her into his car and driven away from the hotel. But her simmering silence had spoken volumes.
Tendrils of honey-blonde hair had worked loose from her chignon to curl around her cheeks. She smelled of soap and lemony shampoo and he had no idea why he found her wholesome, natural beauty so incredibly sexy. He cursed beneath his breath. She was an unwelcome distraction but she might be the solution to his problem with Stefanos Markou.
He focused his attention on the traffic crawling around Marble Arch. ‘It was damage limitation,’ he drawled. ‘Thanks to social media, pictures of us leaving the hotel will have gone viral within minutes. I couldn’t risk my reputation. Anyone who saw the photographs of us together would have assumed that you are my latest mistress.’
Ava made a strangled sound. ‘You couldn’t risk your reputation? What about mine? Everyone will believe that I am engaged to the world’s worst womaniser. I can’t believe you told the photographers that I am your fiancée.’ She ran a hand through her hair, evidently forgetting that she had secured it on top of her head. Her chignon started to unravel and she cursed as she pulled out the remaining pins and combed her fingers through her hair.
‘You’re right,’ she muttered, scrolling through her phone. ‘The news of our so-called engagement is all over social media. Thankfully my mother is at a yoga retreat in India where there is no Internet connection. She was seriously stressed about my brother and I persuaded her to go abroad and leave me to deal with the court case. But Sam is bound to see this nonsense and I can’t imagine what he’s going to say.’
‘Presumably he will be grateful to you for helping him to avoid going to prison,’ Giannis said drily. He sensed Ava turn her head to stare at him, and a brief glance in her direction revealed that her eyes were the icy grey of an Arctic sky.
‘You can’t really expect me to go through with the ridiculous charade of pretending to be your fiancée,’ she snapped.
‘Oh, but I can, glykiá mou.’
For some reason her furious snort made him want to smile. Usually he avoided highly emotional women but Ava’s wildly passionate nature fascinated him. She was beautiful when she was angry and even more gorgeous when she was aroused, he brooded. Memories of her straddling him, her golden hair tumbling around her shoulders and her bare breasts, round and firm like ripe peaches, caused Giannis to shift uncomfortably in his seat.
He cleared his throat. ‘I thought you wanted to keep your brother out of jail?’
‘I do. But two minutes before we walked out of the hotel you had refused to help Sam. I don’t understand why you have changed your mind, or why you need me to be your fake fiancée.’
‘Like I said, the reason is business. More specifically, the only chance I have of doing a deal with Stefanos Markou is if I can prove to him that I am a reformed character. He has refused to sell Markou Shipping to me because he disapproves of my lifestyle and he thinks I am a playboy.’
‘You are a playboy,’ Ava interrupted.
‘Not any more.’ Giannis grinned at her. ‘Not since I fell in love with you at first sight and decided to marry you and produce a tribe of children. Markou is an old-fashioned romantic and you, angel-face, are going to persuade him to sell his ships to me.’
Her expression became even more wintry. ‘There’s not a chance in hell that I’d marry you and even less chance I’d agree to have your children.’
Giannis’s fingers tightened involuntarily on the steering wheel as a shaft of pain caught him unawares. He had thought he’d dealt with what had happened five years ago, but sometimes he felt an ache in his heart for the child he might have had. Caroline had told him she’d suffered a miscarriage, but in his darkest hours he wondered if she had decided not to allow her pregnancy to continue because she hadn’t wanted to be associated with him after he’d admitted that he had spent a year in prison.
He forced his mind away from the past. ‘Forgive me for sounding cynical, but I am a very wealthy man and most women I’ve ever met would happily marry for hard cash. However, I have no intention of marrying you. I simply want you to pretend that we are engaged and planning our wedding. I’m gambling that Stefanos would prefer to sell Markou Shipping to me rather than to a rival company because he knows I will have the ships refurbished in Greece and employ the local workforce. All we have to do is convince him that I have turned into a paragon of virtue thanks to the love of a good woman.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ Ava’s
