Taken by the Greek Billionaire
Evernight Publishing
Copyright© 2012 Emma
Shortt
ISBN: 978-1-77130-197-8
Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor:
Melissa
Hosack
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
This
one is for Alexandra
O'Hurley
, my sister Evernight author, purveyor
of Sexy Man Monday and general all round awesome friend. She gets
extra points because she found us the perfect zombie hideaway and is happy for
me to have the machete. That being said,
O'Hurley
, if
the zombies do arrive and it comes right down to it...well, I'm tripping
you first!
TAKEN
BY THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE
Criminal Seduction, 1
Emma
Shortt
Copyright
© 2012
Prologue
The three sisters sat around the battered kitchen table each lost in
their own thoughts. Apart from the steady ticking of the clock and the
occasional bleep of an aged appliance, silence prevailed. Despite that, anyone
who happened to look in on the scene would have stopped for a longer look. If
it was a man, he’d have stopped, hoping for a damn sight more than that.
The first sister, Penny, sat with her legs curled under her. There
shouldn’t have been room on the chair for her to sit in such a position, but
Penny was the flexible one. The ways she could curl her legs had impressed many
a man over the years. She wore tight black, slightly frayed jeans and an
equally as tight tee. It should have been black too, but it had been washed so
many times it was almost grey. This was made all the more obvious by the fact that
Penny’s raven hair fanned her shoulders, reaching to the small of her back. She
sighed slightly, brushed her hair over and behind her ears before fixing her
emerald eyes on the picture in front of her.
The second sister, Rachel, the youngest by three weeks, had her legs
crossed under the table, her flowered sundress perfectly demure, just skimming
her knees. She looked like sunshine and happiness, the sort of girl you
couldn’t help but like even as her perfection grated. Her blonde hair was
curled like a fifties movie star and her limpid baby blue eyes were serene.
Everything about her screamed innocence.
Rachel knew her job well and she too had her gaze fixed on the
picture laid below her.
The third sister,
Lyra
, oldest by five
months, had her legs sprawled over the side of the chair so that her feet
rested on the spare. She was barefoot, dressed in tiny denim shorts and a
scarlet red halter neck top. Her huge mane of copper hair—which should have
clashed with the top but somehow didn’t—was tousled into an untidy bun and her
slate blue eyes were pensive.
All three sisters had a lot to think about.
“We’re good to go then?” It was Penny who finally broke the silence
and had her sisters lifting their gazes to her.
“It seems so.” Rachel’s voice was as soft as her curves. “There's
nothing left to do. We've gone over the plan a million times.”
“Not quite a million,” Penny said.
“Maybe a
thousand.”
“Well I feel like it's burned into my brain so I've lost count.”
Lyra
snorted,
swung her trim, tanned legs down and picked up one of the three pictures off
the table. “It should be burned in there. It needs to be."
Rachel nodded. “I know.”
“Think of it
like
a battle plan,”
Lyra
added, holding her picture in front of her. “You’d
want to be clear on the details before charging in wouldn’t you?”
“A battle plan?”
“Yep and I’ve definitely been given the hardest mission.”
Penny shot
Lyra
a look, tilting her head
in a gesture that was characteristic to her. “You think? I’d say Rachel has.”
Lyra
laughed. “She
can carry off the innocent flower look to perfection. I on the other hand….”
“Have to play sex bomb,” Penny said. “Not exactly a chore, sweetie.”
Lyra
swatted her
sister with the picture, a wide grin creasing her face. “No you’re right, it’s
not. But he’s going to be a tough one. You aren’t even going to have to see
yours.”
Penny shrugged and picked up the picture in front of her.
“A shame.
Sebastian Demetrious is all kinds of hot. I
wouldn’t say no to a quick tumble.” She held up her hand as Rachel made to
speak. “I know! I know! But if you guys had my skills you could get away with a
quick in and out, too. And don’t forget the success of my mission is crucial to
both of yours. I fail and the whole project fails. The auction for The Point
closes on Sunday. If we don’t have the money by then….”
“We know,” Rachel said. “The plan will fail.”
“The plan is not going to fail because
no one
is going to fail,”
Lyra
insisted.
“Penny, you’ll get the money so we can buy the building and Rachel and I will
sort out the rest. Your mad skills have got this, as have ours.” She stabbed a
blood red fingernail at her picture.
“As Andros
Casstellini
will soon find out firsthand.”
“That he will, sweetie,” Penny agreed, giving
Lyra’s
cleavage a nod. “I certainly wouldn’t bet against
Lyra
‘the man eater’ Matthews.”
The two sisters laughed, but Rachel did not join in. She twirled a
length of blonde hair around her tiny finger and bit down on her plump bottom
lip. “I know we’re making light of all of this, and I don’t doubt
Lyra’s
ability to get what she wants,” she said. “But I
still say yours is the most dangerous, Penny. If you get caught….”
Penny and
Lyra
both shot out their hands
to take Rachel’s, offering the comfort that was so natural between them all,
the laughter no more.
“No one is going to get caught,”
Lyra
said.
“Least of all Penny ‘the cat’ Matthews.
She’s
never even come close. And we agreed this all months and months ago. We can’t
do what we need to unless Pen succeeds. Screwing this up is not an option.”
“She’s never done anything this big before,” Rachel said.
“You haven’t either,” Penny replied, giving Rachel’s dress a tug
around the bosom before pointing to her picture, that of the notorious Italian
Playboy Dominic
Rimeria
. “But I don’t doubt the
skills of Rachel ‘the Madonna’ Matthews. So don’t you
be
doubting
mine.”
Rachel smiled, albeit a strained kind of one, and pulled the dress
back up. “Don’t mess with the disguise!”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Disguise my ass.”
“We’re all going to do this,”
Lyra
said,
standing up and looking back and forth between her sisters. She was doing her
oldest sister voice, though Penny had often said that five months barely
warranted the title. They were all in their twenty fifth year, each as old as
the other, in years and certainly in life experience. God knew they all had
plenty of that.
“And in a few weeks we’ll have exactly what we’ve been planning ever
since we escaped that God damn foster home ten years ago,”
Lyra
continued, almost daring her sisters to disagree. “We’ll be women of the world.
Free to do as we please, and no one will be able to tell us, or force us, to do
things we don’t want ever again.”
“The power will be ours,” Penny said.
“Ours,” Rachel agreed.
Lyra
nodded.
“Ours.”
She held out a hand to either side of her and the two other women
stood up. Penny’s pale hand took her left, Rachel’s lightly bronzed one her
right. Clenched tightly together, their arms made a perfect, equilateral
triangle, and there in the kitchen standing thus, and as they looked from one
to the other, resolve settled across them all.
Because danger or not, jokes or not, the women who were bonded over
a decade and a half ago by events that counted for more than a blood connection
ever could, each knew that in their world only those with the power could call
the shots. After twenty-five years of none, all were determined they would have
some. And they were realistic women. They knew that in reality there was only
one way for them to get it.
As if on cue they all looked down at the table, at the pictures of
Sebastian Demetrious, Andros
Casstellini
, and Dominic
Rimeria
.
Three billionaires, three
playboys, all disgustingly rich and ridiculously predictable.