Greek Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

Woken from her sleep at an unusually early hour for a Sunday morning, Lindy sat staring aghast at the double-page spread in the tabloid newspaper. It was luridly entitled ‘Tycoon’s Secret Mistress and Child’.

‘This is my worst nightmare!’ she gasped, stricken, while she studied the photo of her that appeared in the catalogue which innocently advertised her business. ‘How on earth did they get hold of this stuff?’

Alissa, who had seated herself at the foot of the bed, groaned. ‘It looks like someone who knew you when you were living on the Chantry House estate put two and two together and decided to talk to the press—probably for a pay-off.’

Even before she’d read the accompanying text Lindy had broken out in a cold sweat. But when she digested an account of her relationship with Atreus in which she was described as a ‘weekend mistress’, and their sudden split was mentioned, together with hints that rumours of her pregnancy had circulated even before her departure from Chantry, her blood boiled with angry mortification. It was even more humiliating to see herself depicted side by side with a gorgeous picture of the ultimate size-zero hottie and heiress Krista Perris.

Her mobile phone started buzzing like an angry wasp on the bedside table, and after a moment of hesitation she snatched it up. Shock paralysed her when she heard Atreus’s rich, dark accented drawl.

‘Have you seen the article in the Sunday Voice?’ Atreus enquired with freezing bite.

‘Er…yes.’

‘I’m flying down to see you to deal with this. I’ll be with you in just over an hour.’

‘I don’t want you to come here—to my home—I really don’t want to talk to you, either!’ Lindy argued vehemently.

‘I didn’t offer you a choice,’ Atreus asserted, and the phone line went dead as he hung up on her.

Alissa frowned when Lindy informed her of Atreus’s plans. ‘It may not be what you want, but you do need to sort things out with him, Lindy.’

‘Why?’ Lindy manoeuvred her heavy body out of her comfortable bed and turned angry blue eyes full of enquiry on her friend. ‘After the way he behaved, I don’t owe him anything. And you and Elinor agreed with me!’

‘In the heat of the moment. I hate to admit it, but it was Jasim who made me stop and think. He’s always so levelheaded. Even if you don’t feel you have a claim on Atreus Dionides, your baby does, and it’s much wiser to get this out into the open now, rather than try to keep it a secret. On the face of it, the press have done that for you.’

Trembling with alarm, and a shameful sense of anticipation at the prospect of seeing Atreus again, Lindy breathed in deeply to steady herself. It had not yet occurred to her to think of her unborn child as an individual, with the right to seek an independent relationship with Atreus at some point in the future. Alissa’s reminder had sobered Lindy, however, and forced her to acknowledge how complicated the issue of her child’s paternity would become if she did not deal honestly with it in the present.

‘There are reporters waiting out on the main road,’ Alissa told her. ‘If you want to go out, I’d advise using the farm lane.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I need a shower.’ Lindy sighed, and headed in the direction of the bathroom.

‘I’ll stay a minute and pick out something for you to wear.’

‘Where are the children?’ Lindy was belatedly noticing the absence of Alissa and Sergei’s lively toddler, Evelina, and their six-week-old baby boy, Alek.

‘I left them with Sergei.’

Having witnessed Sergei in the role of childcarer when Alissa was recovering from giving birth to their son and their nanny had fallen ill, Lindy was surprised. Before Lindy had taken charge Sergei had tried to hand his newborn son a bottle, and had given Evelina a packet of biscuits instead of a meal.

‘He has to learn how to handle them some time, and he assured me he would manage fine,’ Alissa quipped, with the smile of a woman who liked to see her husband occasionally faced with the challenges of childcare.

Lindy ignored the pretty feminine outfit which Alissa had selected for her to wear and went for an embroidered black skirt and a black camisole top, both of which she was convinced minimised the size of her stomach. By the time she heard the noisy clatter of a helicopter approaching she was extremely tense. She let the dogs out, not wanting the fuss of their greeting Atreus indoors.

The helicopter bore a large scarlet Dionides logo, and it landed in the paddock next to her cottage. From upstairs, her heart beating very fast, she watched Atreus’s bodyguards emerge first and check the surrounding area before their employer appeared. The dogs circumvented the efforts of the bodyguards to head them off and hurled themselves at Atreus with joyful jumping abandon. No doubt he would be a little less immaculate than he usually was when he finally fought free and reached her doorstep, Lindy reflected, without even a small stab of conscience. She hated him, she totally and absolutely hated the man she had once loved because of the power he still had to hurt her.