PROLOGUE
Eleven years previously...
LIZZIE WAS ON FIRE. He watched her brown eyes blaze bullets at him from the well of the court. She was just eighteen, with flowing red hair and—controversially at this most subdued of gatherings—black leather trousers, a skimpy top, tattoos and a pierced lip. He would have had to be unconscious not to want the force of nature that was Lizzie Montgomery
That didn’t change the facts. This was a court of law, and he, Damon Gavros, was part of the team from Gavros Inc—an international shipping company registered in Greece—attending court in London. He was there to support his father, who was appearing as the chief prosecution witness in the case of Gavros Inc. versus Charles Montgomery, fraudster.
It was a shock seeing Lizzie again in court—though to say he regretted sleeping with her last night wouldn’t be true. Even had he known who she was then, the fire between them would almost certainly have led them down the same road and to hell with the consequences.
They’d met for the first time the previous evening, when Lizzie, obviously distressed, had been refused a drink at the bar where he’d been sitting quietly in a corner, thinking about bringing to justice the man who had tried to defraud his father out of millions. Seeing a woman distraught, yet refusing to go home, and a barman on the point of ejecting her, he’d intervened. Taking Lizzie back to his place, he’d plied her with coffee and they’d got talking.
Lizzie was her name, she’d told him. He’d had no idea she was Charles Montgomery’s daughter. She was hot, funny, and almost too happy to laugh at herself. She was looking forward to college. He was just about to leave college. One thing had led to another, and now it was too late to repair the mistake even had he wanted to.
Just how much of a mistake he was about to discover as Lizzie’s father was taken down to the cells and he found Lizzie waiting for him outside the court. Her language was colourful. The slap came out of nowhere. He supposed he deserved it.
Touching his cheek, he held her blazing stare. She was half his size, but when Lizzie was roused she was a firebrand—as he had discovered last night in bed.
Uncaring of the crowd gathering around them in the expectation of a scene, she balled her fists and raged at him. ‘You bastard! How could you have sex with me last night knowing this was going to happen?’
‘Calm yourself, Lizzie.’ He waved the Gavros legal team away. ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’
‘Calm myself?’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘Thanks to you, my father’s a convicted criminal!’
Charles Montgomery would always be innocent in Lizzie’s eyes. As far as she was concerned the rest of the world—and most especially the man she’d clung to, panting out her lust the previous night—could go hang.
‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she blazed. ‘You don’t frighten me,’
‘I should hope not,’ he agreed.
‘Don’t!’ she warned, deflecting him when he reached out to comfort her.
In his peripheral vision he could see the Gavros security men politely but firmly ushering the spectators away, and now the head of his father’s legal team was approaching. He waved him back too. Lizzie was due some consideration. Her voice was shaking with shock. The judge had wanted Lizzie’s father to be an example to others who might think of following his lead, and had handed down a prison sentence lengthy enough to shock everyone in court.
‘Your father hurt a lot of people, Lizzie. It wasn’t just my family that suffered—’
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she screamed, covering her ears with her hands. ‘All you care about is money!’
‘I have a family to protect,’ he argued quietly. ‘And not just my family but all those people who work for our company. Don’t they deserve justice too?’
‘And you’re such a saint!’ she yelled before swinging away.
Guilt speared him as her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. Would he have acted differently last night if he’d known this would happen? However hard he tried, he could not regret having sex with Lizzie. His only thought now was to comfort her, to shield her from curious eyes, but Lizzie Montgomery was in no mood to be consoled.
‘I hate you!’ she yelled as her friends came over to lead her away.
The words sounded torn from her soul. ‘Well, I don’t hate you,’ he called after her.
Lizzie wasn’t to blame for her father’s actions, and however misplaced her loyalty might be he could understand it. He felt the same about his father, who had spent a lifetime building the business Charles Montgomery had almost destroyed.
Damon’s father had always been keenly aware of the families who depended on him—a responsibility that would pass to Damon one day. He looked forward to following in the great man’s footsteps. Lizzie didn’t know it yet, but she was another of her father’s victims. His best guess was that by the time her avaricious stepmother had finished with her Lizzie would be out on the street.
‘I’d like to help you,’ he offered.
‘Help me?’ Lizzie derided. ‘Not this side of hell freezing over! Go back to your wealthy friends and your comfortable life, rich boy!’
Several more ripe epithets followed as Lizzie’s friends tried to lead her away.
He would miss Lizzie. Who wouldn’t? Even in just one night he’d seen that she was a wildcat with a heart of gold.
‘My father’s innocent! Innocent!’ she yelled back at him with every ounce of strength she possessed.
‘Your father’s been found guilty on all counts,’ he countered mildly, ‘and by the highest court in this land.’
Breaking free of her friends, Lizzie spun round to face him. ‘Because of you and your kind!’ she raged, in a tone that was closer to an agonised howl than it was to speech. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this! Do you hear me? Never!’
He smiled faintly as he turned away. ‘Never say never, Lizzie.’
CHAPTER ONE
‘DAMON GAVROS! LONG TIME, no see!’
Damon Gavros! Lizzie felt weak. Surely there had to be more than one Damon Gavros in London? She could hardly breathe as Stavros, her excitable boss, burst into the busy restaurant kitchen where Lizzie was ploughing her way through a mountain of dirty dishes at the sink. No. There was no mistake. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was the Damon Gavros when she could feel Damon in every fibre of her being. Was it really eleven years since they had last seen each other?
Steadying herself against the sink, Lizzie braced herself for an encounter she had never expected to happen—least of all here in the safety of her workplace.
Images of Damon started flashing behind her eyes. Impossibly compelling and dangerously intuitive, Damon Gavros was the only man to have made an impact on Lizzie so powerful that she had never forgotten him—never could forget him. And for more reasons than the fact that Damon was the most charismatic man she’d ever met.
‘Welcome! Welcome!’ Stavros was calling out on a steadily mounting wave of hysteria. ‘Damon! Please! Come in to the kitchen! Follow me! I want to introduce you to everyone...’
Lizzie remained rooted to the spot. Head down, with her fists planted in the warm suds, she drew a deep, shuddering breath as a spurt of the old anger flashed through her. Standing outside that courtroom in London eleven years ago, she had never felt more alone in her life, and she had cursed Damon Gavros to hell and back for being part of the root cause of that upheaval.
Now she could see that Damon and his father had done a good thing, and that the fault had rested squarely with Lizzie’s father, who had defrauded so many people out of their life savings. At the time she had been too confused and angry and upset to see that. It had only been when she had returned home and her stepmother had thrown her out of the house that Lizzie had finally accepted that her father was a crook and her stepmother was a heartless, greedy woman.
And Damon...?
She’d never forgotten Damon.
But where had he been for the past eleven years?
He certainly hadn’t been part of Lizzie’s life. Not that she held him responsible for anything except his absence. In fact she thanked him for making her life infinitely richer. She wondered what he would think of her now. She’d been such a rebel then, and now she was conventional to a fault. Would that make him suspicious?
Her body trembled with awareness as he drew closer. She hadn’t felt this affected by a man in eleven long years. She’d sworn off sex after Damon—and not just because no man could compare with him.
Damon and Stavros were growing closer to the dishwashing section of the busy kitchen, and the warmth between the two men reminded Lizzie of the warmth between Damon and his father after the trial. How she’d envied them their closeness. To have someone to confide in had seemed such an impossible dream. Looking back, she could see now that the court case had done her a favour. She had learned to stand on her own feet and now, though she didn’t have much, she earned her living honestly and she was free.
‘Lizzie!’ Stavros’s voice was full of happy anticipation as he called out her name across the banks of stainless steel counters. ‘May I present a very good friend of mine, recently returned from his travels...? Damon Gavros!’
She turned reluctantly.
There were a few seconds of absolute silence, and then Damon said, ‘I believe we know each other.’
Damon’s voice slicked through Lizzie’s veins like the slide of warm cream. It was so familiar she felt as if they’d never been apart.
‘That’s right,’ she agreed, trembling inside as she made sure to give Stavros a reassuring smile.
‘I’ll leave you two together,’ Stavros said tactfully, practically rubbing his hands with glee at the thought that he had finally managed to play Cupid.
‘It’s been a long time, Damon.’
‘Indeed it has,’ he agreed, scrutinising her with matching interest.
She felt vulnerable. She was hardly kitted out in her armour of choice for this reunion, in rubber overshoes, with an unflattering overall over her old clothes and an elasticated protective hat covering her wilful red curls, and her face was no doubt red and sweaty from the steam of the kitchen.
And I don’t know you, she thought as she stared into a ridiculously handsome face that had only improved with age. Apart from the information in press reports about his public persona, she didn’t know who Damon Gavros had become. And if he was back in London for good she had to find out.
Incredible eyes. Seductive eyes. Laughing eyes...
Dangerous eyes. They saw too much.
Damon’s impact on her senses was as devastating as it had ever been—which was the only warning Lizzie needed that she should take care. From the flash of black diamonds on his crisp white cuffs to the faintly amused stare that could obliterate her sensible mind at a stroke, Damon Gavros, with his power and money, was the most terrible threat to everything Lizzie held dear.
And still her wilful body clamoured for his attention while her sensible mind screamed caution. Damon was overwhelmingly charismatic, as well as physically imposing, but it was the power of his mind that dominated everything—and that frightened her.
‘Success suits you,’ she said, carelessly speaking her thoughts out loud.
He gave a slight nod of acknowledgement to this, but made no reply. That was probably the best he could do, after finding her here in the kitchen.
Business pundits spoke of Damon’s unparalleled success, and his monumental wealth since taking over his father’s company. When their articles weren’t referring to him as the world’s most eligible bachelor, they were dubbing him the benevolent billionaire, because of his charitable interests. She doubted he’d feel charitably disposed towards her if he discovered how she’d lived for the past eleven years.