CHAPTER ONE

IN THE penthouse boardroom of the vast Christou shipping empire, Alexei Christou swung round in his chair and leaned back to gaze at the ceiling as the beautiful brunette who knelt before him began to unzip his trousers.

'Mmm,' he murmured. 'Omorfo.'

A sigh of pleasure escaped from his lips, and he had just settled back to enjoy the ministrations of the ever-eager woman when the telephone began to ring. His mouth hardened with disbelief and fury and he tried ignoring it, thinking that the interruption might just go away. But it didn't go anywhere. Infuriatingly, it just rang and rang, and he snatched it up in anger.

'Ne? What the hell is going on?' he bit out. 'I told you that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed!'

He heard his male assistant give a nervous cough. 'Forgive me, Kyrios Christou, for making this one exception—but in the circumstances I thought—'

'What is it?' hissed Alexei, deadly as a snake.

'I have your…er…wife on the phone.'

There was a pause.

'My wife?' echoed Alexei softly, and the brunette jerked her head up from his lap to stare at him.

'Ne, kyrios. What would you like me to tell her?'

That she was a heartless, unfaithful bitch? That she was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life and Alexei was not a man who tolerated mistakes in anyone—least of all himself?

His eyes narrowed. This was no doubt a follow-up call to the letter he had received from England—so it wasn't completely out of the blue. But even so, to hear from someone who had been out of your life for seven long years was a pretty strange sensation. Someone who had ripped through his heart and body and soul. A woman who had ensnared him and then betrayed him. His attention now fully engaged, he gave a cruel smile which would have filled his many business rivals with abject fear.

He held his hand up in a silent command for the brunette to stop what she was doing. Temporarily. It might not be the wisest thing in the world to be orgasming into her mouth while talking to his estranged wife—though in view of the way she had betrayed him might it not be a fitting revenge? His black eyes glittered. With ice for a heart—would she even care?

But Alexei resisted the temptation, recognising that such a self-indulgence would put him at a disadvantage—for what would it yield other than the momentary pleasure of release? There was a reason why men abstained from sex before battle and it was a good one. Sex weakened even the strongest of men, and Alexei was never weak—not any more. Not since the cheating witch he had married had disappeared from his life.

'Put her through,' he told his assistant softly.

In her poky London apartment, Victoria waited to be connected, clutching onto the telephone with a palm which was becoming clammier by the second. She was dreading this more than she could remember dreading anything—but maybe she would be immune to him by now. Immune to his potent sexuality and his unrealistic expectations of her as a woman and as a wife. Because she was not his wife, not any more—except in name—and even that wouldn't be for very much longer. She was no longer bound to him—she had been freed from the stifling prison of marriage to the formidable Greek. What Alexei thought was no longer her concern.

Just stick to the facts, she told herself as she stared at the pile of bills which just seemed to grow higher by the day. Tell him what you want as quickly as possible, and let that be an end to it.

And then at a last there was a click, and she heard a voice clip out one single, cold word. 'Ne?' A familiar and threatening voice, and one which made the surface of her skin prickle and the beat of her heart begin to thump madly beneath her breast. Immune to him? As if.

'Hello, Alexei.'

Black eyes glittered at the sound of her soft English voice, but he kept his voice as neutral as if he were talking to any other enemy. 'Ah, so it is you,' he said tonelessly. 'What do you want?'

No, Hello, how are you, Victoria? Not even an attempt at social niceties—but what had she expected? Solicitous enquiries after her health from the man whose vicious parting words to her had been, 'You're nothing but a cheap, common tramp, and I rue the day I ever married you!'?

'I…I need to talk you.'

'How fascinating,' he said, his voice deadly soft, like a tiger moving silently through the undergrowth towards its helpless and unknowing prey. 'About what, precisely?'

Victoria closed her eyes. The words of her lawyer came back to her.

'If you're after a swift settlement, I would be cautious in how you handle him, Mrs Christou.' And his even more disturbing follow-up. 'Your husband has the upper hand. Not because he's in the right, but because he's rich. Very rich.'

He was right, of course. Rich men always won, because they could afford to employ lawyers to play long and obstructive games for them. And Alexei was richer than most. Millionaires were ten-a-penny in today's world, but Greek shipping billionaires did not exactly grow on olive trees. The last thing in the world she wanted was a protracted fight over money. Just as her lawyer had said…she must handle him carefully.

Victoria opened her eyes and stared hard out of the window at the grimy grey chimneypots of the London skyline. She was far enough away to pretend that she was talking into an answering machine, not to the charismatic Greek she had married.

Copyright © 2006 by Sharon Kendrick.