have my word.’
‘Your word means nothing.’ She ignored the flash of anger in his eyes. ‘Phone your lawyer now and instruct that you no longer want to press charges against Sam.’
Giannis glared at her. ‘How do I know you won’t immediately go to the press and deny that you are my fiancée?’
‘You’ll have to trust me.’ Ava glared back at him and refused to be cowed by his black stare. In the tense silence that stretched between them she could hear the loud thud of her heart in her ears. Giannis was a man used to being in control, but if he thought she was a pushover he had a nasty surprise coming to him.
Finally he took out his phone and made a call. ‘It’s done,’ he told her moments later. ‘You heard me inform my lawyer that I have decided not to press a charge of criminal damage against Sam McKay. Now it is your turn to keep to your side of the bargain.’
Ava felt light-headed with relief that Sam would not face prosecution and prison. ‘I won’t let you down,’ she assured Giannis huskily. She glanced at the trays and selected an ostentatious diamond solitaire ring. ‘Does this have enough bling to impress the paparazzi?’
He frowned at her choice and studied the other rings. ‘This one is better,’ he said as he picked out a ring and slid it onto her finger.
She stared down at her hand, and her throat felt oddly constricted. ‘Really?’ she tried to ignore the emotions swirling inside her as she said sarcastically, ‘Don’t you think a pink heart is romantic overload?’
‘It’s a pink sapphire. You said you dislike diamonds, although there are a few small diamonds surrounding the heart. But the ring is pretty and elegant and it suits your small hand.’
The ring was a perfect fit on her finger and, despite Ava’s insistence that she did not like jewellery, she instantly fell in love with the pink sapphire’s simplicity and delicate beauty. Once again she felt a tug on her heart. Didn’t every woman secretly yearn for love and marriage, for the man of her dreams to place a beautiful ring on her finger and tell her that he loved her?
Giannis was hardly her fairy tale prince, she reminded herself. If they had not been spotted by the paparazzi leaving the hotel together, she would have been just another of his one-night stands. She stood up abruptly and moved away from him. ‘I don’t care which ring I have. It’s simply to fool people into thinking that we are engaged and I’ll only have to wear it for a month.’
He followed her over to the door but, before she could open it, he caught hold of her shoulder and spun her round to face him. His brows lowered when he saw her mutinous expression. ‘For the next month I will expect you to behave like you are my adoring fiancée, not a stroppy adolescent, which is your current attitude,’ he said tersely.
‘Let go of me.’ Her eyes darkened with temper when he backed her up against the door. He was too close, and her senses leapt as she breathed in his exotic aftershave. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Giving you some acting lessons,’ he growled and, before she had time to react, he covered her mouth with his and kissed the fight out of her.
He kissed her until she was breathless, until she melted against him and slid her arms up the front of his shirt. The scrape of his rough jaw against her skin sent a shudder of longing through Ava. It shamed her to admit it, but Giannis only had to touch her and he decimated her power of logical thought. She pressed herself closer to his big, hard body, a low moan rising in her throat when he flicked his tongue inside her mouth.
And then it was over as, with humiliating ease, he broke the kiss and lifted his hands to unwind her arms from around his neck. Only the slight unsteadiness of his breath indicated that he was not as unaffected by the kiss as he wanted her to think.
His voice was coolly amused as he drawled, ‘You are an A-star student, glykiá mou. You almost had me convinced that you are in love with me.’
‘Hell,’ Ava told him succinctly, ‘will freeze over first.’
PARIS IN EARLY autumn was made for lovers. The September sky was a crisp, bright blue and the leaves on the trees were beginning to change colour and drifted to the ground like red and gold confetti.
Staring out of the window of a chauffeur-driven limousine on his way back to his hotel from a business meeting, Giannis watched couples holding hands or strolling arm in arm next to the Seine. What it was to be in love, he thought cynically. Five years ago he had fallen hard for Caroline when he’d met her during a business trip to her home state of California. Theos, he had believed that she loved him. But the truth was she had loved his money and had hoped he would pay for her father’s political campaign to become the next US President.
Caroline’s pregnancy had been a mistake but, as long as they were married, a baby, especially if it was a boy, might help her father’s campaign, she’d told Giannis. Images of widower Brice Herbert cuddling his grandchild would appeal to the electorate.
However, having a son-in-law who had served a prison sentence would have been a disaster for Brice Herbert’s political ambition. Caroline had reacted with horror when Giannis had revealed the dark secret of his past. He’d sensed that she had been relieved when she’d lost the baby. Motherhood had not been on her agenda when there was a chance she could be America’s First Lady. It was probably a blessing in disguise, she’d said, and it meant that there was no reason for them to marry. But he could never believe that the loss of his child was a blessing. It had felt as if his heart had been ripped out, and confirmed his belief that he did not deserve to be happy.
The limousine swept past the Arc de Triomphe while Giannis adeptly blocked out thoughts of his past and focused on the present. Specifically on the woman who was going to help him prove to Stefanos Markou that he had given up his playboy lifestyle. He should have predicted that Ava would argue when he had given her his credit card and sent her shopping, he brooded.
‘I packed some things when you drove me home to collect my passport. There is nothing wrong with my clothes,’ she’d told him in a stiff voice that made him want to shake her.
‘I am a wealthy man and when we are out together in public, people will expect my fiancée to be dressed in haute couture,’ he had explained patiently. ‘Fleur Laurent is a personal shopper and she will take you to the designer boutiques on the Champs-Élysées.’
Most women in Giannis’s experience would have been delighted at the chance to spend his money, but not Ava. She was irritating, incomprehensible and—he searched for another suitable adjective that best summed up his feelings for her. Ungrateful. She did not seem to appreciate that he was doing her a huge favour by dropping the criminal damage charge against her brother.
Giannis frowned as he remembered meeting Sam McKay briefly when he’d driven Ava home before they had flown to Paris. He had been surprised when she’d directed him to pull up outside a shabby terraced house. It was odd that her family had moved from Cyprus to a run-down area of East London. Perhaps there had been a change in her parents’ financial circumstances, he’d mused.
He had insisted on accompanying Ava into the house to maintain the pretence of their romance. He wasn’t going to risk her brother selling a story to the press that their engagement was fake. But, instead of a swaggering teenager, he’d
