Excerpt

VERY TALL, LEAN and powerfully built, Jet Cristos was a living, breathing heart-stopping giant of a male when he strode through the cemetery gates in the midst of a phalanx of security men. That constant protective presence that meant he was never truly alone exasperated him but his grandfather was becoming increasingly paranoid about his sole heir’s safety: argument got him nowhere.

And how could he argue? Jet asked himself grimly. Seven years ago, at the age of twenty-two, he had made a devil’s bargain with the embittered old man his grandfather had been back then. He, Jethro Carras, the maid’s illegitimate son, would agree to step into Aristide Cristos’s unimaginably wealthy and privileged world as his acknowledged heir. He would change his surname to Cristos, he would buckle down to work wherever he was put within the Cristos financial empire, he would do everything he was told, but only…if, in return, Aristide made it possible for him to gain revenge on those who had wronged him and his late mother.

‘Bravo! At heart, you are a Cristos!’ Aristide had given his grandson his very first look of appreciation. ‘We’re a vicious, ruthless family but it skipped a generation with your father.’

Considering that Aristide had been a mysterious puzzle of a character prior to that moment, Jet had finally breathed freely during that crucial first meeting. The acknowledgement of Jet as a Cristos heir gave him the tools to conquer an entire industry. And ever since, Jet had delivered exactly as expected: seven years of cutting cruel deals, hammering the opposition, and in short being every bit as heartless and brutal as his grandfather wanted him to be, wielding him like a sharp pruning knife or a punishment squad.

His attitude had done his reputation no favours. It had made him notorious and feared in business circles, shattering the fond illusions of people he had once called friends in his previous life. But in his remarkably clever brain, he knew that, ironically, those sacrifices had been necessary. He had genuinely needed to toughen up, shedding all those inappropriate sentiments that related to morality and empathy. He had needed to entirely forget the naïve, trusting boy he had once been, the girl he had once loved and her betrayal before he could forge his path forward to claim legendary triumphs and riches beyond avarice.

And now he had it all, a thought he paused to savour as he crouched down to place flowers on his mother’s grave, roughly fanning them out in the vase awaiting his arrival. Just as immediately, he knew that he didn’t in fact have it all. Because he had lost the love of the parent who had sacrificed everything to bring him into the world and raise him with what few advantages she could give him.

Pelagia Carras had been a gentle, loving soul and she had always been poor. Tragically, she hadn’t lived long enough to share in her son’s good fortune. He would always regret that, he acknowledged with piercing sorrow as he vaulted upright again. Yet, rationally, he knew that his well-bred grandfather had found it easier to accept him, knowing that there was nobody left alive on the more humble side of his grandson’s family tree.

Only as Jet straightened did he notice the decaying bunch of flowers lying to one side of the grave and he frowned, slashing ebony brows pleating as he attempted to guess who could possibly have honoured his late mother’s demise, other than himself. Pelagia had not had friends or much of a life at all. Possibly the old gardener, a church-going man, he recalled dimly, who had been fond of the overworked, underpaid cook-housekeeper in the Foxworth household.

He strode back to his limousine. He needed a stiff drink. He was discovering that he really wasn’t enjoying walking down memory lane into the past he had once struggled to put behind him. Even though that was not the mood he should be in on the very day he had finally achieved his revenge and acted to openly claim it. He was stronger than that, harder than that, he censured himself, policing his thoughts for even a hint of weakness with the ease of habit. But the sooner he left this village behind him and carried off his ultimate ‘prize’, the happier he would be.

He turned to address his nearest PA. ‘Cancel that appointment at Foxworth House and reschedule it for nine tomorrow morning,’ he instructed.

He swung back into the limo. They could wait for him a second time, he decided without concern. He despised the entire Foxworth family, from Max, the pompous patriarch, right down to his own onetime favourite, Amber…

*

‘You will meet with him tomorrow morning. I’m damned if I’ll hang around here another day!’ Max Foxworth practically spat in his frustrated rage as he paced the empty, echoing room. ‘We could have been spared all this moving-out nonsense if the new owner had simply responded to my solicitor. So, you will deal with this tomorrow.’

Amber stayed well back from her father, aware that in such a mood he might lash out at her with an angry fist. He had done it before and he was the kind of bully who would do it again. No, Maximilian Foxworth was not a decent, disciplined man but Amber was still stuck with him, powerless to step away and take the full freedom she needed, because if she defied him someone else would suffer worse.

A slight, small redhead with green eyes, she parted her lips with care. ‘The new owner may not wish to rent this house back to you,’ she dared to point out.
She was reluctant to add the obvious fact that a penniless bankrupt might struggle to pay rent when all his credit sources had been cut off and his former business was as lost to him as the sprawling old Edwardian house they now stood in was.

‘What the hell else is he going to do with it?’ Max barked at her as if she were hard of hearing. ‘It needs renovation. It won’t sell in a hurry—’

‘But he could be planning to demolish it and use the site for something else,’ Amber almost whispered.

Her father sent her a look of utter contempt. ‘That would be wasting a resource. The house is still worth a packet even in its current condition.’

Amber nodded, cautiously sidestepping his explosive temper. ‘It’s just…I don’t live here any more. He might ask what I have to do with the house if you’re not here—’
‘I’m not trailing over here again!’ Max thundered in angry repetition. ‘But you’ll need to see him anyway. He owns your business now too and your scummy little flat.’
Amber shivered at the unwelcome reminder and studied her worn ballet flats. It was true: the whole family was ruined, with the single exception of her older stepsister’s husband, who was a hedge-fund manager. She wondered how Charles Pennington felt about his in-laws’ and single sister-in-law’s having decamped to his guest cottage, where they had set up a supposedly temporary home. But then, she would never know, she reflected ruefully, as she wasn’t on visiting terms with her stepsisters.

And down through the years in a hideous echo of a distant past, she heard a male voice quipping with rueful amusement, ‘You’re like Cinderella with the ugly stepsisters and nasty stepmum.’

It had been a distressingly accurate statement. Amber’s mother had died soon after her daughter’s birth and her father had swiftly remarried a woman who had two older daughters of her own. Regrettably, his remarriage had still not provided him with the son and heir that he craved, and Amber had always been the unwanted and resented intruder in her step-siblings’ family home. While nobody had gone as far as making her sleep in the kitchen like the fairytale character, she had had to sleep in the old servants’ wing and she had been effectively ignored by everyone but her adored grandmother, Leticia, who had lived with them to take care of her when she was a child.

And Leticia, most undeservedly, would now be forced to move out of her comfortable assisted-living accommodation into the sort of underpowered old folks’ home that the authorities would be willing to pay for. She would probably have to share a room, have no corner she could call her own and she would hate it, Amber reflected wretchedly. It was so unfair too because Leticia had once been a wealthy woman with far from expensive tastes until her son-in-law, Max, had slowly and carefully stripped her of her investments with false promises of security and outright lies. Max and his second family had spent every penny of Leticia’s money on designer clothes, cruises and extravagant entertaining.

‘I was a trusting old fool,’ Leticia had once said, squeezing her only grandchild’s hand in sympathy. ‘But it’s nothing to do with you. Please stop worrying about what happens to me. I’m more worried about you.’

And just then, Amber was all too wretchedly aware that she needed to worry about her own situation as well. Her father had previously owned the old building which sheltered her little fledgling bookshop and her tiny studio flat above. Now it belonged to some unidentifiable company and she had already been served with an eviction notice under the rental terms of her tenancy. It was all perfectly legal but she had wanted the chance to speak to the new owner in the forlorn hope that she could change his mind. Of course, the new owner might be planning to redevelop, she conceded, so she might well be chasing windmills on that score. Even so, it was worth a try. Try, try again might have been her motto.

‘What’s going to happen to Leticia’s bills?’ Amber finally mustered the courage to enquire of her furious parent. ‘How will they be paid?’

Max, a small, portly man with silver hair, laughed with a sharp edge of malice. ‘What does that old hag have to do with me now?’ he demanded contemptuously. ‘My word, Amber, when will you grow up? I was married to your mother for only three years before she died and I was left with you, rather than the son I needed. You can’t expect me to keep Leticia any longer…isn’t twenty-odd years generous enough? I owe her nothing!’

Amber could have reminded him exactly why he should still consider her grandmother his responsibility but that would only encourage him to unleash his rage, and being assaulted was unlikely to improve anything for her or Letitia. She sucked in a sustaining breath while she watched her hateful father march out and climb into the sleek, expensive car he had inexplicably managed to acquire. Horrible man, she acknowledged heavily, totally horrible man. It shamed her to have his blood in her veins because he had never cared about anyone but himself and his own interests. His main goal had always been money and how to gain more of it. He worshipped money as if it were a god and walked in jackboots over anyone without it, automatically deeming them to be beneath his notice.

Amber locked up the empty house again and walked home along the village main street. She went straight upstairs to her little flat. It wasn’t much but it was home and she loved it, had loved it from her first night of escape from Foxworth House. Her father, stepmother and stepsister had, at first, been content to see her move out but she had been downright ecstatic to leave the three of them behind her. There would be no more shrill voices screaming for her, demanding that she do this or that because her father was too cheap to pay staff to serve him in the manner to which he had become accustomed. She had no longer been the family errand girl, cook or cleaner and she had not been foolish enough to return when they tried to tempt her back, having belatedly appreciated just how much she had done for them.
Morris, her chihuahua mix, danced round her heels and she lifted him to tuck the tiny dog below her arm while she made a cup of tea. She was frantically trying to figure out some way of keeping her grandmother in her current comfortable little apartment in the former manor house on the outskirts of the village. But there was no way, not with an empty bank account. Money, she reflected heavily. Until that very moment she had never craved money in her life. Yet to keep Leticia secure and content after all the years of insults and hurts dealt out to her at Foxworth House, there was little Amber would not have done. If Leticia had been foolish to trust her son-in-law, Max, with her wealth, she had paid dearly for her mistake long before she moved out.

A quiet knock sounded on the flat door and she went to answer it. It was her friend, Ellie, a tall, slender brunette in yoga gear with anxious dark eyes. ‘Well?’ she asked apprehensively.

‘The new owner cancelled the meeting last-minute. It’s on for nine tomorrow morning now,’ Amber explained. ‘Dad was hopping mad and totally unreasonable. He just can’t seem able to accept that he’s lost everything and that there’s no way of getting it back—’

‘And don’t you be the one to tell him that,’ Ellie warned. ‘You don’t want another black eye. I still wish you’d reported him to the police the last time.’

‘Not while Leticia’s needs were still being met,’ Amber countered squarely. ‘He’d have taken any assault charge out on her. He knows how to pull my strings.’

‘Then that’s one good thing to come out of all this…I know you’re upset about the idea of your granny having to move somewhere less private, but now your father is broke you’re free of the whole darned lot of them and good riddance!’ her friend completed feelingly.

‘Yes, but losing this place and the bookshop doesn’t leave me in a position to help her in any way.’ Amber sighed. ‘Now I’m regretting putting my savings into the shop to fit it out. Do you realise I have to be out of here altogether in six weeks? And there’s absolutely nowhere near by where I could afford to live. I won’t even be able to visit her very often—’

‘You know you’re welcome to move in with us—’

‘No, not to play gooseberry to the lovers,’ Amber declared quietly, lifting her chin. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you and Rich. I might have to spend a night or two with you in the course of moving out and going wherever the heck I’m going to go, but that will be the longest I’ll stay.’

Amber lay sleepless that night, Morris curled under one arm like a hot-water bottle and her only consolation, although she already foresaw the difficulties there would be finding somewhere to rent that would allow an animal. It crossed her mind that this was her seventh year of terrible bad luck and it made her recall Jet laughing in disbelief when she had panicked after breaking an old mirror and voicing that superstition.

Jet. She almost never thought about him now. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about him, not after he had turned his back on her so decisively at his mother’s funeral and walked away. Yes, walked away without a look or a word as though she had suddenly become invisible. The same boy she had adored since she was a child, entwined within her every happy memory. He had blamed her for the false allegation her father had made against him. He had punished her and yet she had been the one to clear his name at the police station. Some thanks she had got for putting herself through that mortifying ordeal!

And the next time she saw Jet he was living in a world so far removed from hers that she couldn’t believe it when she first recognised his face in a newspaper. These days he featured on magazine covers like Forbes and Time and in the more serious Sunday newspapers, the business mogul, the new blood in the Greek Cristos family of billionaire-level wealth. He appeared in glossy magazines with glossy women like models and socialites. He was a playboy, decadent and entitled and notorious for casual flings. To say he had moved on would be to put it mildly.

Eventually, and it had taken far longer than she liked to admit, Amber had moved on as well, meeting other men even though her heart was still breaking, even when she still didn’t want to get up in the morning and face another day. She had wanted to love again but nobody had even come close to what Jet had once made her feel and she hadn’t wanted second best, hadn’t been prepared to settle for less.

So really, whether she liked to acknowledge it or not, Jet Cristos had stopped her life in its tracks when she was seventeen, trapped her like a moth pinned to a board and left her floundering in a future without him. Not one time when she was growing up had she ever thought that Jet wouldn’t be there for her if she needed him. Only her one hundred per cent faith in him had not been returned…or her love for that matter. Even her horrible dad had told her to grow up and, lying there in the darkness of the middle of the night, she reluctantly conceded that for once he had had grounds for that comment.

‘No, you can’t come with me,’ Amber informed Morris, who was performing pleading motions at her front door, pawing the mat, looking up at her with giant, begging eyes. ‘I can’t turn up with a dog to a business meeting.’

Breathing in deeply, she walked down the street, trying not to think of the disappointments that undoubtedly lay ahead of her. Firstly, there was no way her father was likely to achieve his desire of renting back his former home. Secondly, there was only a tiny little chance that the new owner would even consider allowing her to keep renting her shop and flat when from the outset he had had her served with an eviction notice. Clearly, he had plans of his own for the property, and why shouldn’t he when it now belonged to him?

Her father had also owned a sizeable transport firm which had been on a downward spiral for several years. It had finally gone bust over a slew of unpaid bills accrued by her family, who had continually lived beyond their means. Her father gambled and drank, her stepmother, Helen, and stepsister Janette spent and spent and spent. It was always a challenge to feel sorry for those sorts of people, she reckoned. They had never cut their coat according to their cloth. They had never put employees and their security before their own wants and wishes. She could only hope that the new owner of the firm would re-employ the staff and continue the business because the majority of the locals worked there in one capacity or another. After all, Amber had once worked there too in the office, saving up every pound of her meagre earnings to support her dream of establishing her own business.

As she walked up the driveway, she gaped at the sight of the collection of vehicles already sitting there parked. There was a limo and several expensive SUVs. Her brow furrowed. She had assumed that she was only meeting one man, certainly could not envisage making her rather pitiful requests in front of an entire audience…well, didn’t want to, she admitted, paling at such a prospect.

*

From the limousine, Jet watched Amber pick her way slowly up the pot-holed drive. She didn’t even have a car? And what the hell was she wearing and when had she started needing spectacles with her perfect vision?

Right now, she was frump central, some pleated skirt flapping well below her knees, a fussy blouse with a bow, flat shoes and a large old-lady cardigan. Her beautiful hair was anchored in a heavily braided bun at the nape of her neck. So she hadn’t cut it…good…he liked something to grab hold of in bed, he reminded himself, even if right now she didn’t look as if he would ever want to take her to bed. If she had mysteriously lost her looks over the past seven years, did he even still want her? He cursed his own impatience. He should have had a report done on her in advance, known exactly what he was walking into and likely to receive. But the only thing Jet had paused to check was that Amber was still single. After all, she couldn’t be a target if another man had already acquired her.

Dressed like that, no bloody wonder she was still single! He poured himself a whiskey to chase the chill of disillusionment filtering through him from some spot deep down inside that he didn’t wish to explore. It wasn’t even nine in the morning and she had already driven him to alcohol! Furious with himself, furious with her for failing to meet even his lowest expectations, Jet watched her climb the front steps to unlock the house. Well, he’d be getting those keys back before he called in the bomb squad to demolish the ghastly place. What the hell was she even still doing with the keys when it was no longer her home? And exactly where was she now living? And with whom?

Only once inside the dusty hall could Amber breathe again. When she no longer had to act as if she were unconscious of the many eyes pinned to her from inside the cars. She had left the door ajar for the new owner and whoever else was to join the meeting. She set the keys down because it would be her last ever visit to the house. But then she thought it would be more appropriate to hand them directly to the owner and lifted them again, as uncertain of herself as a deer suddenly faced with a shotgun and a man with an itchy trigger finger. After all, she was wasting her time with this appointment. Common sense warned her of that but she would go through the motions for the sake of it.

Hearing footsteps, she swung round and a very tall male ducked his dark head a little to come indoors. As he looked up again, she couldn’t believe the evidence of her own eyes and she turned as white as a corporate shirtfront before his dark piercing gaze. ‘J-Jet…?’ she stammered shakily. ‘What are you doing here?’

And then her eyes rolled back in her head and the darkness folded in as she dropped like a stone on the wooden floor.

His PA surged forward, swearing in Greek.

‘Ignore her…she’s faking it,’ Jet intoned chillingly. ‘But she’ll soon find out that I’m not an easy guy to fool.’

Petros sped over, regardless, to check her pulse and brush her damp forehead. ‘No, she’s not faking. She’s out for the count.’