The Greek's Forbidden Princess Read online

  Slowly, as if not trusting her to dash past him and scale the huge gates, he bent and peered into the car. When he straightened his face was unchanged. Clearly little Seb’s presence made no difference. They could stay here in what appeared to be a full-scale snowstorm and there’d be no offer of shelter.

  Amelie bit the inside of her cheek to prevent the indignant outburst jammed in her mouth.

  The sensible thing would be to admit defeat, start the car and drive back to the nearest village, looking for accommodation. She’d do that. Soon.

  But her hands shook too much to drive down that winding, slick road. Infuriated, with him and herself, she hauled open the rear door and moved to get in.

  Instantly a vice clamped on her shoulder. A hot vice with fingers that dug into her flesh through her thin sweater. His heat after the stinging cold surely explained the rush of energy raying out from the spot.

  Amelie turned, meeting that gunmetal stare head-on.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘Or?’ This time both jet-black eyebrows rose.

  ‘Or I’ll bring a case of assault so fast your head will spin. And, in case you think I’m bluffing, let me warn you I’ve reached my limit.’

  ‘Even if it means inviting media attention?’

  Because he knew—how could he not?—that she’d only made it this far by avoiding the media.

  Carefully Amelie closed the door and turned fully to face him. He was so close he ate up her personal space. He was so big she’d feel crowded and intimidated if she weren’t past caring.

  ‘That’s one thing about reaching the end of your options. I don’t give a damn.’ She smiled and this time actually felt pleasure, for she saw the shadow of doubt in his stern face. He’d thought she’d be easier to bully.

  ‘I could call a reporter now. By nightfall we’d have a posse of them here, eager for developments.’ Amelie rested her hands on her hips, enjoying the fleeting sense of power that flooded her freezing body.

  Yet still he didn’t take the bait.

  She waited as the seconds ticked into a full minute and more. Still he didn’t move or give in.

  Even if she followed through and made a formal complaint, or brought in the press, she’d be the one to lose. She and Seb.

  They had lost.

  She’d gambled against the odds with Seb’s future and failed. Now time was running out.

  The enormity of it was a body slam, jarring her from head to toe. She had to stiffen her knees to stop from crumpling as she unravelled inside. All her hopes shattered and little Seb... No, she couldn’t think about it now, with this man watching her like a bird of prey spying on a mouse. She needed privacy when she finally crashed.

  Whiplash fast, she shoved his hand off her shoulder and moved towards the driver’s door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Amelie didn’t answer. This was probably the first time in her life she’d ignored a direct question. It should have felt liberating, but all she registered was choking misery.

  She ripped open the driver’s door. They couldn’t stay here. If she was to get them safely back down the mountain they had to go now.

  The sound of swearing stopped her. Low and soft, his rich voice turned even the tumble of foreign swear words into a stream of velvet heat.

  ‘Just tell me what you want, Princess.’

  Amelie didn’t let herself flinch at his bitter use of her title. He said it as if they were strangers. Nor did she turn.

  She didn’t want to see the steely face of Lambis Evangelos, the man who’d shattered her dreams and now held her hopes for little Seb in his brutally hard palm.

  ‘You.’ Her throat closed so it came out as a whisper. She swallowed and tried again. ‘I want you.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WANT YOU.

  Hell and damnation.

  Her words shouldn’t have any effect.

  They didn’t. She’d just taken him by surprise. How had she managed it? Where was her retinue of officials and paparazzi?

  More important—why did she want him?

  There was nothing here for her. He’d made that plain three years ago. Besides, Amelie had pride; she wouldn’t come after him again.

  Lambis scowled. The past was a place he refused to visit.

  ‘You’ll need to be more specific. What do you want me for?’

  Lambis stared down at her slim form as she slowly turned, her hand white-knuckled on the door, her upswept blonde hair and stunning green eyes the only colour in the scene before him. Her whole body trembled from the wintry blast she refused to acknowledge. She wore pale trousers and a matching sweater that clung elegantly and expensively to her lithe frame but did nothing to keep out the cold.

  His instinct on seeing her had been to tear off his coat and wrap it around her slender shoulders. But he’d resisted. Better to kill her hopes so she left immediately than let her believe she had a chance of staying.

  ‘Seb needs you. As you’d know if you bothered to check my messages.’

  Messages he’d left unopened. Returning to St Galla for the funeral had been tougher than even he had imagined. He didn’t want reminders of the tragedy and his own guilt. Or of her.

  ‘Seb?’ How could the boy possibly need him?

  Amelie’s mouth flattened. Her eyes had lost their brilliance. They looked opaque with pain, even though her body language was almost aggressive as she leaned into his space. That in itself was remarkable. Amelie was always poised, graceful and polite, the least aggressive person he knew.

  Lambis was horrified to realise her eyes looked even more lifeless than on the day they’d buried her brother and sister-in-law. He hated that blankness.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten your godson, surely?’

  As if on cue Lambis registered movement in the car. A hand palmed the rear window. A pale, tiny hand. Beside it was a sombre young face, golden hair tufted from sleep.

  There was no smile of recognition. It was the numbed look of someone who didn’t expect a welcome and it cut like a blade to Lambis’s belly.

  He hunkered beside the door, putting his face on a level with the boy’s. Those big eyes regarded him, unblinking. They looked even more desolate than his aunt’s, as if they’d never glowed with mischief or delight.

  No four-year-old should look that way. But in the circumstances maybe it was inevitable.

  Lambis forced his stiff lips into something like a smile. ‘Hey, Sébastien. How are you?’

  Haunted eyes stared back through the glass. Sébastien said nothing. Nor did his face register emotion. Just that terrible blankness that stirred the frigid waters of Lambis’s soul.

  Looking at Amelie, and now at Seb, reminded him suddenly of another snowy day on this mountain. The day all the warmth inside him had been snuffed out in a catastrophic blast of icy reality.

  Lambis reached for the door, urgently needing to see that little face smile in recognition.

  ‘Don’t!’ Amelie’s voice was sharp as the crack of doom as she inserted herself between Lambis and the car. He found himself staring at a narrow waist and full breasts, her nipples budded enticingly beneath thin wool.

  Lambis’s breath stalled as heat ignited in his gut. Unseen parts of him might have long since shrivelled and died, but he was still a man, and it had been too long since he’d had a woman.

  Through the frosty scent of the thickening snow, he inhaled the gardenia perfume that always made him think of Amelie and sunny St Galla. He remembered how tempting they’d both been. How tough it had been to leave her.

  ‘Why not?’ His gaze strayed lower, over the feminine shape revealed by her fitted trousers, and a pulse quickened in his groin. Instantly he rose, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  Amelie looked petite and far too fragile, despite the way her chin swung up as if daring him to test her.

  ‘Because I was wrong. I thought you’d help, but the last thing he needs is some fleeting pretend friendly contact with a man who’d bar h
is door to us. Especially in this.’ The tilt of her head indicated the falling snow.

  A flake settled on her cheek, melting, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘If you’ll step away from the car, we’ll be on our way.’ She folded her arms and her breasts rose, plump and inviting. Lambis yanked his gaze higher.

  She wasn’t bluffing.

  He should be relieved. He didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with their problems. He had a multinational business to run, people relying on him. He didn’t want Amelie here, stirring emotions, interrupting the smooth running of his life.

  Yet he didn’t move.

  Whatever the problem, Lambis wasn’t the man to solve it. He knew his limitations. In his profession it was vital to know your strengths and weaknesses, and those of others. Yet the anxiety he’d felt, seeing Sébastien’s staring face, made him hesitate.

  She seemed ridiculously dainty to try facing him down. Dainty and shattered, though she tried to hide it.

  Snow crunched under his boots as he turned. The gates were high, designed to keep the world out. Yet they swung open at the click of his electronic key.

  ‘You go first. I’ll follow you in my vehicle.’

  * * *

  Amelie gripped the wheel too hard as she drove slowly through the dusting of snow.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting, Seb? Snow!’ Her voice wobbled but she doubted her nephew noticed.

  In the rear-view mirror she saw he was at least staring at the view, his expression unreadable. Was he even a tiny bit excited to see snow for the first time? To see Lambis, the man he used to follow like a puppy?

  Amelie wrenched her mind to the private road winding around a spur of the mountain.

  She couldn’t quite believe Lambis had let them enter. If it had been her alone she’d be driving back down to the village now. Lambis didn’t want her near. He never had.

  Pride smarted at asking for his help. And something else, some tiny part of her that had wondered, even when all hope had fled.

  Amelie’s breath caught when she saw the house. She’d expected something sleek, hard and impersonal, like Lambis. Instead she discovered a charming traditional mountain house. From the size she guessed it had been significantly extended, but it looked as if the mansion had always sat here, cupped by the mountain on three sides.

  The ground floor rose organically from the mountain, its walls of stone. Above that rose another couple of floors, white-finished, and decorated with out-thrust balcony rooms overhanging the walls on wooden struts. They were decorated with intricate wooden carvings. Even the white plasterwork was beautifully decorated with what she guessed were traditional designs. The windows were large and the terracotta roof looked welcoming against the falling snow.

  Amelie stopped the car, feeling as if she’d turned a wrong corner. This was the home of mega-wealthy Lambis Evangelos? The self-contained man who shunned sentiment?

  She was staring when her door opened. There he was, his face stern. The wind stirred a glossy black curl at his collar and Amelie wondered what he was like when he relaxed. Once, long ago, she’d seen another side to him, when he was with her sister-in-law, Irini, for the two had been like brother and sister. Occasionally some of that tenderness he kept for Irini had rubbed off and he’d been enough to steal any woman’s breath. Especially one who’d been lonely so long.

  Amelie blinked and stiffened. She hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. That was why her mind drifted.

  ‘Do you need help?’

  She shook her head. ‘Seb and I are fine, aren’t we, Seb?’ She looked in the rear-view mirror and met familiar green eyes. Was he excited? Scared?

  Emotion swept through her and she shuddered.

  ‘Amelie?’ Lambis’s voice was like soft suede on raw skin. It still had the ability to make her feel. To want.

  She felt it now, the buzz of energy in her lower body, the trip of her pulse. Damn! She was past this. She’d moved on, determined not to wallow in regret.

  This had to be exhaustion creating phantom emotions.

  ‘Perhaps you could carry the luggage?’ She gave him one of her polite smiles, the sort she employed with boring diplomats or boorish industrialists.

  For a second that cool stare locked with hers, making her wonder how much he read in her face. Then, with a curt nod, he was gone.

  It took no time to bundle up Seb in warm clothes and usher him from the car to the house. Even the crunch of fresh snow beneath his feet barely made him pause and Amelie’s heart would have cracked if it weren’t already riven. Where was the little boy she’d loved for almost five years? A year ago he’d have been whooping with glee, investigating the unfamiliar icy white.

  Now he let her hold his hand. He was wide-eyed but so self-contained it would have scared her if it hadn’t become almost normal. She had to find a way to help him.

  A sturdy woman with iron-grey hair held the door open, expression inquisitive. This must be the woman who’d cut Amelie off as she’d pleaded to be let in. But, instead of disapproval, Amelie caught shock on the woman’s face as she appraised them, then a wide smile of welcome as she scooped Seb in out of the cold and Amelie with him.

  ‘This is Anna, my housekeeper.’ Lambis launched into a flurry of Greek that had the woman nodding and smiling. Amelie heard the name Sébastien and her own, then something that made the housekeeper’s head jerk up even as she dropped into a curtsey.

  ‘No, please.’ Amelie put out her hand in protest. ‘Tell her that’s not necessary.’

  Then the implications of Lambis identifying her sank in. She swung around to find herself facing a massive black-clad chest. She froze, refusing to back up and reveal how daunting it was to be so close to all that brawny strength. His evocative scent, so earthy and male, curled around her.

  ‘There was no need to tell her who I am.’

  His eyebrows lifted. ‘I respect Anna too much to lie.’

  ‘It’s not about lying. It’s about revealing only what needs to be revealed.’ The memory of the press pack outside the palace gates in St Galla, telephoto lenses trained on the windows and gardens, slammed into her. Bile rose. They’d been eager to snap the grieving Princess or ‘the tragic little King’, as they dubbed Seb. They’d even tried to bribe the palace employees.

  Amelie, who’d lived all her life at the centre of public attention, had never felt so degraded. As if she and Seb weren’t real people but sideshow freaks that existed purely for the titillation of the viewing public.

  ‘Can you guarantee your staff won’t tell anyone we’re here?’

  Lambis stiffened. His hard face became unforgiving granite, as if she’d questioned his integrity, not raised a valid concern.

  ‘You were the one who arrived uninvited and demanded entry. You’ll have to live with the consequences.’

  Would Lambis really sell them out to the press? She didn’t want to believe it. Once she’d thought she knew him well enough to trust him with her life. But this was Seb’s life in question.

  ‘Answer the question, please.’

  Lambis folded his arms across that massive chest, like some disapproving god of old passing judgement. It wouldn’t surprise her if he suddenly pitched a thunderbolt at her.

  ‘You’ve had my answer.’

  Behind her Anna asked a question and Lambis responded, his tone so brusque and dismissive Seb edged up against Amelie, his teddy squeezed to his chest. Amelie put her hand on his shoulder.

  It was the reminder she needed. It didn’t matter that she’d once thought Lambis Evangelos had a softer side, or that Irini, her sister-in-law, had said he was the best man alive, apart from her dear Michel. Nor did it matter that he had a reputation for integrity.

  Amelie couldn’t take risks with her nephew. Despite what she’d threatened outside, Seb needed quiet, not paparazzi camped on the doorstep.

  She’d thought they’d be safe with Lambis. He was the CEO of the world’s most successful international security firm. His priv
ate premises would be more secure, she suspected, even than the St Gallan royal palace. But the consequences if she and Seb had to run the gauntlet of the press whenever they stirred weren’t to be borne.

  Amelie stroked her nephew’s soft hair, bending down as she spoke. ‘I’m sorry, mon lapin. I made a mistake coming—’

  ‘Don’t be absurd! You’re not up to driving back down the mountain tonight.’ The words were soft but the growl in that bass baritone was unmistakable.

  Seb flinched and pressed his face into Amelie’s skirt, his arms wrapping round her thighs.

  She stood unmoving, shocked by his first overt show of emotion in weeks. Something broke inside her as pity and protectiveness vied with a tiny pulse of hope. Heart welling, Amelie gathered him in. ‘It’s all right, mon lapin. Truly. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Sébastien?’ Lambis hunkered in front of the boy but didn’t touch. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m not angry, truly. You and your aunt are welcome here.’

  Liar. He was furious. But Amelie had no sympathy to spare for the man staring at the little boy with all the wariness of someone facing a man-eating beast.

  If the situation weren’t so dire she’d almost laugh. As if big, bad Lambis Evangelos, the man who organised protection for the world’s most eminent VIPs in some of the most dangerous places in the world, was scared of a child.

  ‘Seb?’ Amelie knelt and wrapped him close, inhaling the fresh scents of clean little boy and melted snow. ‘Don’t be afraid, darling. Everything will be all right. Lambis won’t hurt us. In fact—’ she lifted her head and glared at the man who hadn’t taken his eyes off Seb ‘—he’s sworn to protect you. Did you know that?’

  Of course Seb said nothing and Amelie snuggled him tighter, rubbing her hands up and down his thin back.

  ‘Soon we’re going to have something to eat and then I think it will be time for Monsieur Bernhard—’

  ‘Monsieur Bernhard?’ Lambis’s eyes locked on hers, questioning. She didn’t bother to respond. If he couldn’t work out that Bernhard was a teddy bear, tough.

  ‘I think he’s getting sleepy. It’s almost his bedtime. Come on, mon lapin, come with Aunt Lili.’