The Greek's Acquisition Read Free Page B

from the shy teenager he’d largely ignored on the few previous occasions when he had seen her at his father’s villa.
    He had been intrigued by her new maturity, and they had talked for hours. Not pointless small-talk, but interesting conversations. As the days had passed he’d found that he valued her friendship and her honesty as much as he was entranced by her beauty, which was not just skin-deep but truly came from within her.
    He had thought he had found something special—
someone
special. But he had been wrong.
    Dimitri was conscious of a faint feeling of regret, which he immediately dismissed as he slammed the door on his memories.
    ‘There’s more to this than you’re telling me,’ he guessed intuitively. ‘Why are you prepared to sell the island for significantly less than it’s worth?’
    When she did not reply he shrugged dismissively. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I am no longer interested in Eirenne.’ He shot her an intent look. ‘It holds too many memories that I’d prefer to forget.’
    Louise wondered if he deliberately meant to hurt her. He could have been referring to his father’s affair with her mother, of course. Kostas had left Dimitri’s mother to live with Tina on Eirenne. But somehow she knew he had been talking about more personal memories—of the few wonderful days they had spent together and that one incredible night.
    He drew back his shirt-cuff and glanced at his watch. ‘Your three minutes are up. A member of my security staff will escort you from the building.’
    ‘
No
… Wait!’ Shocked by his abrupt dismissal, Louise jerked forward and reached out to prevent him from picking up the phone on his desk. Her fingers touched his and the brief contact sent a quiver of electricity shooting up her arm. She could not restrain an audible gasp and snatched her hand back.
    She felt his eyes on her, but she was so shaken by her reaction to him that she could not bring herself to meet his gaze. She was stunned by his refusal to buy the island. She had been sure he would agree.
    Her mind whirled. If Dimitri did not want to buy Eirenne she could advertise it at the same below-value price she had offered it to him. But there was still no guarantee that it would be sold quickly, and time for Tina was running out.
    She pictured her mother’s painfully thin face the last time she had visited her. The slash of bright lipstick Tina still applied every day with the help of a nurse had looked garish against her grey skin.
    ‘I’m scared, Loulou,’ Tina had whispered, when Louisehad leaned over the bed to kiss her the day before she had flown to Greece.
    ‘It’s going to be all right—I promise.’
    She would do everything in her power to keep the promise she had given her mother, Louise vowed. Somehow she had to raise enough money for Tina to have that treatment in the U.S., and her best chance of doing that was to persuade Dimitri to buy back the island that she believed in her heart should be his.
    That was why she had offered Eirenne to him for less than it was worth. Her conscience was torn between wanting to help her mother and a desire to be fair to Dimitri. The figure she had quoted him would cover Tina’s medical costs at the specialist cancer clinic in Massachusetts, and would leave enough for her to live on once she was well again.
    She
had
to believe it was going to happen, Louise thought emotionally. She refused to contemplate that Tina would not survive. But Dimitri’s declaration that he was not interested in the island was a serious blow to her hopes.

CHAPTER TWO
    ‘I THOUGHT you would jump at the chance to own Eirenne.’ Louise prayed that Dimitri could not hear the desperation in her voice. ‘I remember you told me it meant a lot to you because you’d spent happy times there as a child.’
    His jaw tightened. ‘They were happy times—for me, my sister and my parents. We spent every holiday on Eirenne. Until your mother destroyed my family. Now you have the gall