The Maid's Best Kept Secret (The Marchetti Dynasty 1)

But isn’t that what you signed up to? asked a small voice.

Maggie put the note down. Yes, it was exactly what she’d signed up to—so she shouldn’t be feeling this...this wrench.

She just hadn’t expected him to be so tender. Generous. Passionate. She hadn’t expected sex to be such a transformative, transcendental experience. She hadn’t expected to...to like him. She hadn’t expected to want to know more about him. To sense that his very charming exterior hid a far more steely interior.

Maggie’s history had taught her to be wary, but Nikos had turned her preconceptions and her fears on their head.

Before she knew what she was doing she found herself in the study, turning on the main computer.

She put Nikos’s name into the computer search engine. Hundreds of hits came up straight away. Business deals... A new casino recently acquired in Monte Carlo... Lurid headlines alluding to his playboy reputation.

There were other headlines too: speculation about him and his two half-brothers, about who really held the reins of power in the family business.

She barely glanced over the few pictures of him with his half-brothers, who looked equally physically impressive. Her eye was drawn treacherously to the pictures of him with dozens of different women on his arm at various events. They were all beautiful—stunning—and well out of Maggie’s league. Not one woman appeared twice.

She felt a little nauseous now when she thought of how easily he’d seduced her. Had he just been intrigued because she wasn’t as polished as the women he usually hung out with?

Clearly he was a renowned playboy—as if she hadn’t deduced that for herself when he’d left her the way he had. When he’d seduced her with such ease. The fact that he was known for this kind of behaviour only took the sting away slightly.

But she shouldn’t be feeling any sting. No doubt she was already just a blip in his memory as he flew high over the Irish Sea back to his jet-set lifestyle. A lifestyle that didn’t impress her or tempt her in any way.

If anything, she should be feeling lighter. She’d lost her virginity to a consummate master of the arts. The problem was she had a sick feeling that he’d ruined her for any other man.

Nikos’s words came back. ‘I don’t do relationships... I’m not interested in happy-ever-afters.’

She welcomed the reminder—because the last thing Maggie Taggart wanted was for history to repeat itself and for her to fall in love with a rich and powerful man. Or, worse, have his baby. Nikos Marchetti was a man in her father’s mould—avowedly anti-relationship and anti-family. The kind of man Maggie had promised herself she wouldn’t ever seek out.

So, if anything, she should be grateful that Nikos Marchetti had spelled it out so brutally—because he was the last man she would ever consider as a long-term partner or as a father for her children.

Literally the last man.

CHAPTER FOUR

A year later

THE CHAUFFEUR-DRIVEN CAR wound its way through the small country roads, tall hedges on either side. The sky was turning a dusky lavender as the sun set and the smell from the farming fields around them was pungent.

The sense of déjà vu was strong. As was the sense of anticipation that Nikos could not push down.

But she wasn’t there.

She’d given in her notice about two weeks after that night they’d spent together. Him and the Viking Queen...

In spite of his best efforts to forget her she’d haunted him all year. His memory of that night was so vivid and potent that she’d ruined him for any other woman. His shock and surprise that any lover could linger so effectively in his memory had turned to serious frustration—so much so that he’d even looked for her.

To no avail. She’d disappeared and she hadn’t given his staff any contact details or a forwarding address.

This was unprecedented for Nikos. The fact that he could still want a woman after one night and that she wasn’t pursuing him. He wasn’t so arrogant to think he was irresistible, but his wealth and fame made him a seductive package to most women.

But she’d been different. A virgin. Sparky. Not intimidated. Passionate. Responsive. Theos. So responsive.

In the back of the car Nikos’s body hardened at the memory. He cursed again, then said to the driver curtly, ‘How much further?’

The driver’s eyes met his in the mirror, ‘Almost there, Mr Marchetti.’

Nikos sat back, feeling on edge. His fingertips drummed impatiently on his thigh—a habit he hated and strived to hide around anyone but himself, fearing it showed some kind of weakness.

He was only here because he’d accepted an invitation to his friend’s end-of-summer party at a house nearby. It was the same friend who had encouraged him to buy Kildare House and invest in horse racing. An investment he’d never followed up.