Billion-Dollar Baby Clause

Chapter One

‘SIR, JUST TO let you know, we’re about five minutes away.’

‘Thanks, Frank.’

Looking up from his phone, Ares Konstantinou glanced out the limousine window.

The interior of the car was pleasantly cool, but outside it was a warm July evening.

Not the dry heat of Athens: the London air felt sticky and clogged.

The roads were clogged too. But finally, the Clarendon Hotel in Mayfair was only a street away.

He was so tempted to tell Frank, his driver, to keep on moving.

Larry wouldn’t mind if he skipped the party.

Or at least he would say he didn’t mind, he amended seconds later.

But the Konstantinous had been using Milner’s for the two hundred years the London law firm had been in business, and he was here to represent his family and celebrate the bicentenary.

In fact, he had promised his grandfather that he would do so, and this at least was a promise he could keep.

Not that Ares Sr was demanding he marry and produce an heir—he didn’t need to. Ares knew that it was his grandfather’s deepest wish.

And more than anything, he wanted to make the old man happy.

Ares Sr was a rock. A constant in his life, as reassuring as the Pole Star to a sailor on a turbulent sea.

But it was getting increasingly obvious that his star was fading.

He got tired easily, forgot things and was anxious in a way he had never been.

Particularly about his grandchildren and their futures.

A spiral of guilt twisted beneath Ares’s ribs.

Like his parents, his grandfather had never once condemned him for the wedding debacle that had made headlines around the world.

But then the old man’s disappointment would have been a bee sting compared to the trauma of losing his son and daughter-in-law the following month.

Grief at their loss had hollowed him out.

Even the business he loved no longer energised him as it once had.

Only one thing could do that. And it was the one thing Ares didn’t know how to do.

His heart thudded sluggishly against his ribs, and he stared past his driver’s head, battling the vortex of emotions stirred up merely by the thought of matrimony.

But right now, his own feelings about marriage were of less importance than his sister’s, because unfortunately Ariana seemed to find the idea of walking down the aisle an altogether more tempting prospect than he did.

He glanced back down at her latest message, which as usual was interspersed with exclamation marks and emojis that he didn’t understand.

She was everything he wasn’t. Romantic. Trusting. Impulsive.

Plus, she was ten years younger than him, and since losing their parents, he’d felt more paternal than fraternal towards her. Because she was his responsibility, even more so now that his grandfather’s health was failing.

But clearly, he was sleeping on the job.

His frustration segued into panic as he remembered Ari’s announcement last week. That she was engaged.

To a man she’d met just under five weeks ago.

It was ludicrous.

It was reckless.

It was not going to happen.

Not without a fight, anyway. But so far, and after several fights, nothing he’d said had made an atom of difference to Ariana.

There were few people on earth as stubborn as his sister.

But as his grandmother used to say, there were many roads to Athens.

If logic and threats wouldn’t work, an expertly worded prenuptial agreement should be enough to deter her young gold-digger from pursuing his claim.

Setting that in motion was the main reason for his trip to London.

Thankfully Ariana had seen the prenup as a sign that Ares was accepting the marriage, and she had happily flown out to a health clinic in Oaxaca that was as remote as it was exclusive. And there she would stay until this prenup was watertight.

What the—?

His seat belt tightened across his body, and he grabbed the side of the car as the limo slammed to a halt and a sludgy green liquid spattered loudly against the windscreen.

A protester? Konstantinou didn’t drill for oil, but they shipped it all over the globe. His brain was playing through hundreds of possibilities. Was it a diversion for a kidnap attempt? Some kind of street entertainment?

‘Are you okay, Mr Konstantinou?’ Stefan, his bodyguard, swung round in his seat.

‘I’m fine.’

Frank’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror. ‘Sorry, sir. She just stepped out in front of me.’

She? ‘Who?’

The answer was abruptly provided as a woman wearing sleek Lycra shorts and a cropped top smacked the driver’s-side window.

His bodyguard was already uncurling and reaching for the door-handle.

‘What the hell are you playing at? You could have killed me—’ The woman smacked the glass again. She glanced briefly into the back of the car, and he caught a flash of green, sharp like a shard of broken glass.

Interesting, he thought.

‘Don’t pretend you can’t see me, buddy—’

Buddy. She was American? The raw anger in her voice had made that unclear, but buddy was not something people said in England.

‘Stay in the car, Stefan. I’ll handle this,’ Ares said, and ignoring his bodyguard’s protests, he pushed open the car door and stepped onto the pavement.

‘Finally. Are you the organ grinder? Because your monkey almost ran me over.’

He felt a jolt of electricity as the woman’s eyes narrowed on his face.

He’d been wrong. They weren’t just interesting, they were spectacular.

Almost as spectacular as those cheek bones, that face.

Framed by dark hair that was twisted into a complicated plait, she had the look of an artist’s muse, but capturing her likeness would be hard. She would be hard to pin down.

His body hardened as his mind took a sharp, sexual turn into a bedroom that looked a lot like the one in his townhouse.

‘Did you hear me?’

Her question cut across his thoughts. She was definitely American, most likely from the West Coast, although the chill in her voice could have blown in from the Arctic.

‘I think the whole of Mayfair can hear you,’ he lied, because she wasn’t shouting or even speaking loudly.

But people were turning to look. Probably they always turned to look at this woman.

She was ballerina-slim with long lightly tanned limbs.

Not fragile, though. She was toned, sexy.

Angry too, although not in an out-of-control, hysterical way.

And she most definitely wasn’t a protester or a diversion.

She was angry on her own account and was currently drawing attention to that fact. Which meant she was trouble.

Her glare blazed across the space between them, and he felt the pavement tilt beneath his feet just as if he’d downed several shots in quick succession. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Is this embarrassing for you?’

The shape of her mouth as she spoke made him momentarily lose track of his thoughts.

Her lips were full and pink, and there was a slight crease in the centre of the lower lip.

If he’d wanted, he could reach over and fit the edge of his thumb into it, and for one destabilising moment he half imagined he had done so, when he realised she was looking at him intently.

Wanting to distract her—and himself—Ares leaned forward and touched the goop on the windscreen.

‘What is this?’

Her eyebrow rose in an arch, the glittering green cat’s eyes narrowing infinitesimally. ‘It’s—it was an energy smoothie.’

He was suddenly conscious of the green smear on his fingers and how badly he wanted to use those fingers to unravel her plait.

‘I can pay for a replacement.’

She stared up at him, and he wasn’t a mind-reader, but he could hear her thinking Jerk so loudly it was almost audible.

‘You’re offering to buy me a smoothie? Your driver nearly ran me over.’ Her forehead creased, and she reached down to pick up something from the road. ‘And you broke my travel cup.’

It was certainly dented, probably from when it hit the windscreen.

As she straightened up, she took a step closer and held it up for him to see.

But he wasn’t looking at the cup. Neither was she.

For a second, they stared at each other, narrow-eyed.

They were close enough that he could see flecks of the green liquid on her collarbone and the pulse jerking against the skin of her throat, and every single cell in his body was beating in time to that pulse.

‘Sir.’

His bodyguard was on the pavement now, and it was enough to bring him to his senses. Or, rather, stifle them.

He reached into his jacket to retrieve his wallet.

‘My driver was following the rules of the road to the letter, but as a gesture of goodwill, here.’ He held out a fifty-pound note.

‘This should cover your costs. Next time, though, perhaps take a moment to remember which country you’re in.

I think you’ll find they drive on the other side of the road here.

So you need to look right for oncoming traffic. ’

The woman gave him precisely the withering stare that remark deserved and, ignoring the money he was holding out, she said quietly, ‘You have a nice day.’ Pausing, she leaned back on her heels so that she could meet his gaze, and his eyes followed the uptilt of her chin, mesmerised.

‘Better still, may you live in interesting times.’ And then without giving him the right to reply, she turned and walked swiftly away.

Five minutes later as he strode through the revolving doors into the Clarendon Hotel, Ares was still replaying that final exchange and finding new things that annoyed him about it.

He’d half expected to see his tormentor sashaying down the street, but she had disappeared, and he found himself wondering where she had gone.

Only, of course, because he would have liked to have had the last word. To pin her down more successfully—

‘Ares.’

He turned and felt some of the tension leave his body. ‘Larry. It’s good to see you.’