Sinful Affairs by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham [Graham, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mills & Boon Special Release
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A week crept past on leaden feet for Maribel.

She was surrounded and ambushed by paparazzi at home and wherever she went. At her request, the police restricted the press presence to gathering at the foot of the lane, but she was still afraid to take Elias into the garden lest a stray photographer pop up from behind the hedge or the fence. She was also tormented by the fear that she had been unfair to Leonidas who, after all, was what he was because he had been horribly neglected as a small child.

In Maribel’s opinion, his late mother, Elora Pallis, had had no more notion of how to be a parent than a shopwindow dummy. An only child, the volatile heiress to the Pallis fortune of her generation, Elora had racked up four marriages and countless affairs before she’d died of a heart attack in her mid thirties. Non-stop scandal and drug and alcohol addiction had ensured that Elora was a poor mother to the daughter born while she was still a teenager and the son born three years later. Leonidas had only found out who his true father was after the man had died. He had received little in the way of love, attention or stability. When he was fourteen, he had gone to court to demand legal separation from his capricious mother and had moved in with his grandfather. Within three years, however, his mother, his older sister and his grandfather had passed away leaving him alone. And alone was what Leonidas had been ever since, Maribel conceded heavily. At least, until he had met Elias.

Eight days after their London meeting, Leonidas strode into Maribel’s office in the ancient history department when she was labouring over a timetable.

‘Leonidas?’ she queried in stark disconcertion, rising hurriedly upright behind her cluttered desk. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast because her once rock-solid nerves had taken a real battering since the paparazzi had begun chasing her around.

Although the lean sculpted face was austere and his dark, deep-set eyes hard as granite, his breathtaking attraction still made the breath catch in her throat. ‘If marriage is the only way, I’ll make you my wife.’

Shock took Maribel by storm as this was not a development she had foreseen. ‘But I wasn’t serious … I was only making my point.’

Leonidas looked grimmer than ever and unimpressed by her claim. ‘Elias is a powerful incentive. I’m suggesting a business arrangement, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she echoed, not really sure she knew what she was saying, or indeed what she was feeling, beyond a sense of unreality. ‘How could a marriage be a business arrangement?’

‘What else could it be? I want access to my son. I want him to have my name. I want to watch him grow up. You won’t share him without a wedding ring. I recognise a deal when I get offered one, glikia mou.’

‘But that’s not what I meant. I simply want what is best for Elias.’

Leonidas elevated an imperious brow. ‘Yes or no? I will not ask twice.

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