CHAPTER THREE
Lynne Graham
‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep her …’
Acheron frowned, his dark, deep-set eyes narrowing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What do you think? I’m desperate to keep Amber. If you have any suggestions on how I can be a better parent to her I’m willing to listen,’ Tabby said.
‘I thought you were offering me sex,’ Acheron confided bluntly.
‘Seriously?’ Tabby gasped in shock at that misconception.
Acheron nodded cool confirmation.
Tabby was helplessly aware of the tension in the atmosphere. As she collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze she saw a message even she couldn’t ignore. He attracted her. This filthy rich Greek with his dazzling good-looks and hard-as-granite heart attracted her.
‘There is a way you could keep Amber with you,’ Ash drawled. ‘But we would need to be married first,’ he delivered smoothly.
He would not admit the truth that he would have a great deal riding on the arrangement as well. That acknowledgement would tip the power balance between them, and he refused to take that unnecessary risk. The less she knew, the better.
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
‘BEARING IN MIND the history of the company’s expansion and success, it is a most unjust will,’ Stevos Vannou, Ash’s lawyer, declared heavily in the simmering silence, a wary eye locked to the very tall, dark and powerfully built male across the office.
Acheron Dimitrakos, known as Ash to his inner circle, and Greek billionaire founder of the global giant DT Industries, said nothing. He did not trust himself to speak. Usually his control was absolute. But not today. He had trusted his father, Angelos, as far as he trusted anyone, which was to say not very much, but it had never once crossed his mind that the older man would even consider threatening the company that Ash had single-handedly built with the bombshell that his last will and testament had become. If Ash didn’t marry within the year, he would lose half of the company to his stepmother and her children, who were already most amply provided for by the terms of his father’s will. It was unthinkable; it was a brutally unfair demand, which ran contrary to every honourable scruple and the high standards that Ash had once believed the older man held dear to his heart. It just went to show—as if Ash had ever had any doubt—you couldn’t trust anybody, and your nearest and dearest were the most likely to plunge a knife into your back when you were least expecting it.
‘DT is my company,’ Ash asserted between compressed lips.
‘But regretfully not on paper,’ Stevos countered gravely. ‘On paper you never had your father transfer his interest to you. Even though it is indisputably the company that you built.’
Still, Ash said nothing. Cold dark eyes fringed with ridiculously long black lashes locked on the sweeping view of the City of London skyline that his penthouse office enjoyed, his lean, darkly handsome features set in hard, forbidding lines of restraint. ‘A long court case disputing the will would seriously undermine the company’s ability to trade,’ he said eventually.
‘Picking
