“This is a marriage of convenience, yes?”
“Marriages of convenience don’t produce children. I need children.” Before she could speak he continued. “I’ll do my best to ensure you’re satisfied. I want you to be happy. It’s important we’re both fulfilled. Sex is a natural part of life. It should be natural between us.”
Blood surged to her face, heating her cheeks, creating a frisson of warmth through her limbs. “We hardly know each other, Mr. Pateras.”
“Which is why I won’t force myself on you. I’m content to wait until some of the newness wears off and we’ve grown more…comfortable with each other before becoming intimate.”
in
Harlequin Presents®
Looking for sophisticated stories that sizzle?
Wanting a read that has a little extra spice?
Choose Passion™—sexy stories, hot romance!
This month, enjoy
Jane Porter’s gripping, sensual novel
Christos’s Promise
And look out for another
Passion™ title in December: The Husband Test by Helen Bianchin #2218
Available wherever Harlequin books are sold.
Christos’s Promise
Jane Porter
MILLS & BOON
Before you start reading, why not sign up?
Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!
Or simply visit
Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.
For my husband, Joe. You are my miracle.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU’D rather remain locked here in the convent than marry me?”
Disbelief echoed in Christos Pateras’s voice. How could this girl—woman, actually, although she didn’t look a bit like the twenty-five her father claimed she was—prefer living in the spartan convent over marrying him?
He was no barbarian. Compared to the Greek men she’d been raised with, he was downright civilized.
“You had my answer earlier,” Alysia Lemos retorted coolly. “You needn’t have wasted your time coming here.”
He turned his back on the anxious nun hovering in the background, intentionally making it harder for her to hear. The abbess might have insisted on providing Alysia with a chaperone, but that didn’t mean the sister needed to be privy to the conversation.
“You told your father no,” Christos answered, his tone mild, deceptively so. “You didn’t tell me no.” He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t need to. His size and authority generally were persuasive enough.
But Alysia Lemos’s fine dark eyebrows only arched higher. “Some women might find such persistence flattering. I don’t.”
“So, your answer is…?”
Alysia’s incredulous laughter contrasted sharply with the dark blaze in her eyes. “I know you’re an American, but surely you can’t be this much of an idiot!”
Her cutting dismissal might have crushed a man of lesser ego, but he wasn’t just any man, and Miss Lemos wasn’t just any woman. He needed her. He wasn’t going to leave Oinoussai without her. “You dislike Americans?”
“Not all.”
“Good. That should help ease the transition when we move to New York.”
Her eyes met his, the dark irises all the more arresting against her sudden pallor. “I’m not moving. And I’d never agree to an arranged marriage.”
He dismissed this along with her other protestations. “In case you’re worried, I consider myself Greek. My parents were born here, on Oinoussai. They still call this home.”
“Oh, happy people, they.”
He almost smiled. No wonder her father, Darius, was feeling desperate. She was not an eager bride-to-be. “I don’t know if they’ll be happy with you for a daughter-in-law, but they’ll adjust.”
Bands of color burned along the curve of her cheek. “I’m sure your mother dotes on you.”
“Endlessly. But then, most Greek mothers live for their sons.”
“While daughters are disposable.”
He gave no indication that he’d heard the hurt in her voice, the small wobble in her breath as she spat the bitter words. “Not mine. My daughters will be cherished.”
At thirty-seven, he needed a wife, and Darius Lemos needed a husband for his wayward daughter. This was no love match, but a match made in a bank in Switzerland. “I’m an only child, the last of the Pateras in my branch of the family. I’ve promised my parents a grandchild before my thirty-ninth birthday, and I shall deliver.”
“No, you hope I’ll deliver!”
He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “I stand corrected.”
