A Perfect Love: International Billionaires VI: The Greeks

R
aphael Vounó demands
custody of his nephews, who’s existence he’s just discovered. He cannot allow them to be sullied by their mother’s family—a family he’s vowed revenge on for years. Determined to win the boys, he finds himself facing a foe he’d long ago cursed for betraying him.

The boys’ half-sister, Tamsin Drakos, can’t believe she confronts an enemy she thought to never see again. But this man doesn’t resemble the shy, charming boy she fell in love with when she’d been sixteen. Hard and cruel, this billionaire will do anything to get his way—including forcing her out of her home and into his control.

When Raphael and Tamsin reignite a passion neither can deny, both are unwilling to admit to feeling the emotion that destroyed their lives before. But the terrible love flames to life, threatening to consume them and their families. How can they overcome the tragedy of the past when it follows them into the present?

R
evenge was not sweet
.

It burned in his mouth and gut like acid. It seared his throat and lungs.

Long ago, the need for it had charred his heart.

Raphael Vounó stood in front of the business that harbored his foes. The business he now owned, as well as the crumbling building it was housed in. London’s icy rain slanted against the skin of his cheek and jaw. The chill did nothing to lessen the burn inside.

Time to settle the score. Finally.

He pushed open the hotel’s battered steel door and strode in. The foyer was empty, but the low sound of a radio slid under the door behind the lobby desk. He didn’t glance around. He knew exactly where everything was in this cramped excuse of a building. His investigation had been thorough. Nothing was left to chance. Not this time.

Striding past the front counter, he didn’t hesitate. His hand slapped open the office door.

There he was. The first of his two enemies.

The man had aged during the last ten years. Yet he still lived, unlike Raphael’s father. Loukas Vounó had not been as lucky as this old man.

Whose luck had just run out.

The old man lifted his head from the papers strewn across his desk. His gaze was blurry and tired. His skin drooped in grey flaps along his jaw. The years had not been kind, and today this enemy would find out his remaining years would be even worse. Who are you?” he muttered.

Leaning against the doorway, he gave the older man a mocking smile. “You don't recognize me, Drakos?”

The hazy eyes slowly cleared. The man straightened. Then, the curses flowed.

Raphael ignored them all. There was nothing this man could do or say that would hurt him. Not any longer. He'd spent the last ten years planning and plotting for this moment. Unlike his father, he took nothing for chance, trusted no one. He'd purposefully built a wall of protection around himself, his family, and his business. No one, certainly not Haimon Drakos, could ever touch him or his again.

“You’re not welcome here.” The old man glared at him. “Get out.”

He laughed and prowled toward the desk. “No.”

“I will call the police and have you thrown out.” Drakos's words were edged with forced bravado as he uneasily reached for the ancient phone.

“The police are now your friends?”

The seated man gripped the phone in his shaking hand. “They will come and enforce my property rights. I own this place and I demand you leave.”

“Demand?” Raphael slid his leg onto the wobbly wooden desk. Crossing his arms, he smiled. “You will no longer be making demands. Not here. Not anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” Drakos’ voice quivered.

Bending forward to stare into the man's eyes, he delivered the first blow. “I own Viper Enterprises.”

The old eyes widened in horror. “No!”

“What’s going on?” The voice came from the open doorway. The familiar lilt, the unique slur at the end of the words, the husky edge to the vowels…all unmistakably her.

Enemy number two.

Rafe forced a deep breath into his lungs. Finding his formidable control, he turned to confront the girl who’d cut out his naїve heart with her betrayal. “Tamsin.”

She was no longer a girl.

Her bright-blonde hair had turned golden, impossibly more beautiful than before. Her green eyes no longer flashed with innocent joy; instead they had darkened into mist and mystery. Her body, the body he’d hugged in his arms when she laughed and clutched to his chest when she cried, the body no longer was a young girl’s.

His reaction to her was the same.

His skin heated, his muscles tightened, and his groin stirred. Precisely as it had in the past, in that long-ago summer when he’d thought he’d found his soul mate. Thought he’d found his love. Over the years, when he’d allowed a thought of her to cross his mind, he’d shrugged off his reaction to her as youthful folly. He labeled it for what it must have been—merely a young man’s hormones. In the last ten years, he’d had women when he needed them. None of them had elicited more than a night’s interest.

None of them had made him sweat.

He twitched his shoulders and felt the trickle slide down his spine. The bitterness inside him churned into anger at himself. Lusting after an enemy wasn’t part of the agenda.

“Raphael?” Her eyes went wide, her arms wrapping around her in useless defense.

Dóxa to̱ Theó.
His enemy didn’t sense the lust running through him. The element of surprise, the element he’d planned so carefully for this situation, saved him from revealing anything she could use against him.

“
Nai
.”
Yes. Oh, yes. Tamsin. Did you think I would forget
?
Forgive
? He stood with a jerk, ignoring the old man’s snarl behind him. “It’s me.”

“I can’t—”

“I’m here.” He stared right into her eyes so she would know. Know what was in store for her. “Did you think I would forget you and your family,
kardiá mou
?”

She flinched.

An exultant flare of acid triumph whipped through him. She remembered. She remembered what he’d called her. Which meant she remembered everything. The loving nickname. Her betrayal. His anger at the very end.

My heart
.

What a foolish, stupid boy he’d been to give her those words. To give her any power over him at all. Now, though, she would know everything was different.

Her hands dropped to her sides and her jaw tightened. A familiar glint of defiance flashed in her green gaze. “What are you doing here?”

She’d given him this same bold scowl when they’d met for the first time. Sure, he’d been a cocky twenty-one-year-old, full of himself, surly about having to spend time with his younger sisters and a girl too young to be of any interest. All because his father had business with Drakos and wanted the families to know each other. He’d slouched into the unfamiliar house, knowing he’d be bored out of his mind. And then it had happened.

He’d gazed into these green eyes and fallen.

Completely and utterly fallen.

Did she think she merely had to give him a defiant look and he’d be a fool once more?

“I’m here,” he forced himself to stroll to her and stare into those dangerous eyes, “because I now own this place.”

His claim slammed into her. He could see it in the taut, tense thrust of her jaw. See it in the way her head went back, as if slapped. He tried to focus on these telling details which told of his victory, but…

But the effort was futile.

These eyes.
Theós.
He’d truly forgotten. Her eyes had always reminded him of the laurel leaves his mother used in her cooking, the green glistening pure and clear in the heated water. There was no hint of blue or brown to lessen the impact of flawless color. In his fanciful youth, he’d dreamed her gaze had shone with a perfect love, with a belief in his ability to make all his dreams, and hers, come true. He’d fallen asleep in his lonely bed knowing someday these green eyes would look at him as he slept, watch over him and caress him and bless him with the crown of her love.

What a complete and utter fool he’d been.

The fringe of her blonde eyelashes whisked across her fair skin as she blinked. When she opened her eyes once more, they no longer reminded him of his lovesick days. They reminded him of the last time he’d stared at her. Then the green had turned dark and dirty, dulling into dismissal.

Exactly as they did now.

“We own this building.” Her mouth twisted, turning the lushness of her lips into a rejecting curl. “We have for years.”

The old man rustled some papers behind him. The noise shot through Raphael like a poisoned arrow. As soon as this woman had entered the room, he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten the old man. His plans. His revenge. He’d forgotten everything but her.

Damn her.

Turning around, he glared at the old man. “Tell her, Drakos.”

The skin under the man’s eyes looked like splotches of tar compared to the pale sickliness of the rest of his face. The scent of fear mixed with alcohol wafted off his fat body as he slouched down into the creaking hull of the plastic chair, still cradling the phone. The last puff of smoke rose from the chewed cigar lying in the ashtray among the waste of paper.

Theós
. The realization struck Rafe. He’d come just in time.

How cruel would fate have been if he’d left his revenge too late, moved too slow, let this man escape into death before being punished? He could not have lived with himself if he’d not fulfilled the pledge he’d made over his father’s dead body. He could not have looked at himself in the mirror if this final revenge had not been delivered.

Yet luck and fate had been with him all through these past ten years.

The man before him still lived and would still suffer.

“Tell her,” he demanded once more.

Rafe felt her behind him. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Still, he felt her. Like a burn in his blood, like a venomous snake sliding on his skin. He sensed her zigzagging thoughts. He tasted her growing unease. He knew what was inside of her. Just as he’d known the moment he’d first seen her.

The fact this connection still existed between them stunned him. He’d thought his reaction to her would be entirely one of bitter anger and harsh judgment.

He didn’t like this trace of lust in his blood.

He didn’t like this connection, this
feeling
of her.

However, he couldn’t deny both were there inside him.

Haimon Drakos glanced at his stepdaughter. His eyes said everything his mouth would not say. Defeated. Dead. Two black holes of despair.

“What have you done?” Her whisper, soft and stark, sifted through the hushed silence.

The scent of her sudden fear wrapped around Rafe and he reveled in it. His impulse was to turn. Turn to see the fear in the green, green of her gaze. But he didn’t want to stare into those dangerous eyes and chance losing his focus. Right now, he wanted to stare at this man before him who had tricked and scorned his father.

He glared at the old man who’d caused his father’s death.

“Tell her.”

R
aphael
.

Here.

Close enough to touch.

The reality was so intolerably unreal, Tamsin could barely breathe. She’d dreamed so many dreams of this moment. Dreams of ecstatic cries of love. Dreams of walking into his strong arms and crying out the years of pain and misery. Dreams that followed her from her bed every morning and swirled around in her head throughout the day.

Raphael.

He was so
him
and yet so very different.

He no longer had the lanky posture of youth. Years ago, he’d seemed more legs and arms, had always walked and moved as if he still were learning how to handle the growth spurt into six-feet-plus of male. Now his shoulders were no longer bony and lean. They were heavy with muscle. His body moved with fluid masculine grace, confident in its supremacy, filling the tiny, dingy room with its power.

Raphael.

She stared at his broad back, turned against her. Then her gaze took in the way he held his head. The proud tilt told her he no longer had any of the shy charm she’d found so irresistible when she’d been sixteen. His hair had been longer too, a mass of ebony curls. Curls that had clung to her fingers as they lay together in the sunlit vineyards of her stepfather’s Greek estate. Curls that had given him a boyish beauty she’d fallen for within seconds of meeting him. Now those curls were ruthlessly suppressed, the cut emphasizing the symmetry of his ears, the elegance of his jaw line.

Rafe.

“Tell her.”

His voice was different too. No longer warm and fun and full of laughter. Of love. Now his voice slashed into her like a cold slice of steel. His voice hacked through all her old memories and yearnings and brought her back to the reality of what stood before her.

A threat.

She had no doubt of this. None. She’d heard the voices and known immediately something was terribly wrong. Haimon rarely had anyone visit him anymore. He did all his dirty business by phone and she ignored what was going on because she couldn’t do anything about it. As long as he left everything else alone, she was content to let him play his games from his seedy, shabby office.

“Don’t involve the boys,” she’d warned him.

“Of course not,” he’d assured her, puffing on his ever-present cigar.

She’d chosen to believe him because she’d had no other choice.

Yet when she’d heard the voices today, she’d known with gut certainty this wasn’t one of Haimon’s customers surprising him in his office. This was worse. This was far worse. But not even her usually keen instincts had prepared her for what she saw as she walked into disaster.

Her past walking into her present.

No longer a ghost of regret and pain. No longer a memory she’d hidden in her heart all these years as she’d lived with her choice and her sacrifice. No, her ghost of past love now stood before her. And as soon as she’d seen his expression, she’d known.

He was a threat.

To Haimon, surely. Maybe with some justification. But not only to him.

To her home. To her.

To the boys
.

“What have you done?” She managed to push out the words through the horror leaching into her belly. Her stepfather had promised her, promised he wouldn’t touch what she’d created here. He’d assured her this place she’d hobbled together to make a home for the boys would stay safe. Stay apart from his dirty games.

Raphael Vounó suddenly threw his head back and laughed.

The sound clashed and jarred her. So different, so different and sad and horribly wrong compared to how he used to laugh. How many memories had she stored inside her soul, memories of the joy of his laughter as he’d swung her around in his arms? Memories that had sustained her through her terrible decision and the ugly aftermath.

This laugh told her everything about him.

A lethal, deathly threat to everything she held dear.

With a swift jerk, he turned to face her one more time. The grief for all she’d lost and he’d lost swept through her again as she stared into his black, pitiless eyes. The eyes that had once danced with a bright glow. As a girl, she’d never been able to describe in her journal the way his black eyes were not dark but light. Not deep but open. She couldn’t communicate in words how the very blackness of his gaze highlighted how brilliant the love shining from them was.