The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

his reputation as a ruthless tyrant with the suffering boy she’d met years ago.
    That boy had been vulnerable and still able to show it, to the extent of telling a total stranger that a betrayal of trust had broken his heart. Now he was a man who inspired fear, who would deny having a heart, who would probably jeer at the idea of trust.
    What had really happened all those years ago? And could it ever be put right for him?
    She thought again of dancing with him, the other women with their envious, lustful glances as they relived hours spent in bed with that tall, strong body, yielding ecstatically to skills they’d found in no other man.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Lysandros asked suddenly.
    ‘Yes—why do you ask?’
    ‘You drew a sharp breath, as though you were in pain.’
    ‘No, I’m not in pain,’ she hurried to say.
    Unless, she thought, you included the pain of wanting something you’d be wiser not to want. She pretended to searchher bag. When she glanced up she found him regarding her with a look of wonder.
    ‘Fifteen years,’ he said. ‘So much has happened and we’ve changed, and yet in another way we’re still the same people. I would have known you anywhere.’
    She smiled. ‘But you didn’t recognise me.’
    ‘Only on the surface. Inside, there was a part of me that knew you. I never thought we’d meet again, and yet somehow I was always certain that we would.’
    She nodded. ‘Me too. If we’d waited another fifteen years—or fifty—I’d still have been sure that we would one day talk again before we died.’
    The last words seemed to reach right inside him. To talk again before they died. That was it. He knew that normally his own thoughts would have struck him as fanciful. He was a strong man, practical, impatient of anything that he couldn’t pin down. Yet what he said was true. She’d been an unseen presence in his life ever since that night.
    He wondered how he could tell her this. She’d inspired him with the will to talk freely, but that wasn’t enough. He didn’t know how.
    The food arrived, feta and tomato slices, simple and delicious.
    ‘Mmm,’ she said blissfully.
    He ate little, spending most of his time watching her.
    ‘Why were you up there?’ he asked at last. ‘Why not downstairs, enjoying the wedding?’
    ‘I guess I’m a natural cynic.’ She smiled. ‘My grandfather used to say that I approached life with an attitude of, Oh, yeah? And it’s true. I think it was already there that night in Las Vegas, and it’s got worse since. Given the madhouse I’ve always lived in, it could hardly be any other way.’
    ‘How do you feel about the madhouse?’
    ‘I enjoy it, as long as I’m not asked to get too deeply involved in it or take it seriously.’
    ‘You’ve never wanted to be a film actress yourself?’
    ‘Good grief, no! One raving lunatic in the family is enough.’
    ‘Does your mother know you talk like that?’
    ‘Of course. She actually said it first, and we’re agreed. She’s a sweetie and I adore her, but she lives on the Planet Zog.’
    ‘How old is she really?’
    ‘As old as she needs to be at any one moment. She was seventeen when she had me. My father didn’t want any responsibility, so he just dumped her, and she struggled alone for a while. Believe me, anyone who just sees her as a film star should see the back streets of London where we lived in those years.
    ‘Then my father’s parents got in touch to say that he’d just died in a road accident. They hadn’t even known we existed until he admitted it on his deathbed. They were Greek, with strong ideas about family, and I was all the family they had left. Luckily, they were nice people and we all got on well. They looked after me while Estelle built her career. My grandfather was a scholar who’d originally come to England to run a course in Greek at university. At first I didn’t even go to school because he reckoned he could teach me better, and he was right.’
    ‘So you grew