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The Drakon Baby Bargain
Tara Pammi
A deal sealed with passion!Illegitimate and overlooked, Eleni, Princess of Drakon, yearns for a family. And at a masquerade ball one stolen kiss with a stranger sparks an opportunity! Gabriel Marquez wants her to care for his child—could this be Eleni’s chance to strike a deal of her own?Gabriel, Drakon’s biggest investor, is shocked by Eleni’s bold bargaining…but a convenient marriage would be advantageous to them both! He’ll gain a stand-in mother for his daughter, and Eleni will have the baby she longs for. Except Gabriel hasn’t predicted the fire raging between them…one which will bind them together for ever!
A deal sealed with passion!
Illegitimate and overlooked, Eleni, Princess of Drakon, yearns for a family. At a masquerade ball, one stolen kiss with a stranger sparks an opportunity! Gabriel Marquez wants her to care for his child—could this be Eleni’s chance to strike a deal of her own?
Gabriel, Drakon’s biggest investor, is shocked by Eleni’s bold bargaining...but a convenient marriage would be advantageous to them both! He’ll gain a stand-in mother for his daughter, and Eleni the baby she longs for. Except Gabriel hasn’t predicted the fire raging between them...one which will bind them together forever!
“Come now, Princesa. You had the nerve to propose marriage to me. Don’t shy away now.”
“I…I do not ask for your fidelity or your love, Gabriel. I do not need such delusions in my life. I only ask that you give me…”
Such color filled Eleni’s cheeks that Gabriel stared, transfixed. Her lips trembled and she dug her teeth into the lower one. Lust punched him like an invisible blow, and it was all he could do not to tug at that lower lip and taste her himself.
“Eleni?” he prompted, in a harsh voice set on edge by the delectable temptation she made.
“I want a baby. A child of my own. I was in the process of going through adoption agencies when you…you threatened to pull your company out of Drakon. It’s not something I’m willing to give up on—for anyone.”
Every muscle in his body stiffened. Every instinct he possessed warned him to walk away from this deal with this woman. But even as he processed it, he had to admire her guts.
“A baby? You’re bargaining for a baby?”
The Drakon Royals (#u4aca266b-194c-5516-8c38-0074c0e1dad5)
Royalty has never looked this scandalous!
To the outside world, the Drakon Royals have the world at their feet. Yet beneath the surface black-hearted Crown Prince Andreas, his daredevil younger brother Prince Nikandros and their illegitimate sister Princess Eleni hide the secrets of their family name…
Until one brush with desire, and then all the Drakons find themselves at the heart of their very own scandal!
Find out what happens in:
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
April 2017
The Drakon Baby Bargain
June 2017
Look out for Andreas’s story
September 2017
You won’t want to miss this outrageously scandalous new trilogy from Tara Pammi!
The Drakon Baby Bargain
Tara Pammi
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook at school. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!
Books by Tara Pammi
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
The Sheikh’s Pregnant Prisoner
The Man to Be Reckoned With
A Deal with Demakis
The Drakon Royals
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
Brides for Billionaires
Married for the Sheikh’s Duty
The Legendary Conti Brothers
The Surpise Conti Child
The Unwanted Conti Bride
Greek Tycoons Tamed
Claimed for His Duty
Bought for Her Innocence
Society Weddings
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
A Dynasty of Sand and Scandal
The Last Prince of Dahaar
The True King of Dahaar
Visit the Author Profile page at
millsandboon.co.uk (http://millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
Contents
Cover (#u64277e85-9c75-5b43-b5b1-4dd7c874ea09)
Back Cover Text (#u485a3494-4773-5f2d-98d3-90ea39fd3e9b)
Introduction (#u54b7db28-c2eb-5525-aa2c-c20182b333ab)
The Drakon Royals (#uefa34bd3-020d-5cd1-bf45-fb83f153ef05)
Title Page (#ud5ef43db-f705-5b35-a550-3d447be0ca8b)
About the Author (#u4f8703ed-991c-5166-a09e-8fdf25c20f93)
CHAPTER ONE (#u04803059-61ad-50fc-9fa5-6ebde39c8dbd)
CHAPTER TWO (#uf475c42b-9cdd-5827-954c-0a0ce219c7e0)
CHAPTER THREE (#uebb466b4-9575-5fa7-af54-7bd47d1dc9f6)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u4aca266b-194c-5516-8c38-0074c0e1dad5)
ONE KISS...
Eleni Drakos stood at the outer fringes of the black-and-white-tiled ballroom and peered through her elaborate mask.
One kiss from any man who’d look at her with warmth and desire, a man who could make her forget that a chasm of cutting loneliness was all that stretched ahead in her life.
One kiss because it was her thirtieth birthday and she was quite sick of her stagnant life, of pretending that the sight of her sister-in-law with her swollen belly didn’t send a shaft of ache through her, or that she didn’t crave a family of her own.
She’d lived her entire life within the rules her father, King Theos, had set, ensuring that her brothers, Andreas and Nikandros, had everything they had ever needed.
What she hadn’t foreseen was that in the end, she would be alone. Just as she had been all these years.
She walked aimlessly at the fringes of the vast oval-shaped ballroom, the cut-crystal chandeliers making the resplendently dressed men and women glitter. She wasn’t the only one hiding her identity behind the mask. The masquerade ball was an annual tradition of the House of Drakos and yet, with her father Theos’s dementia becoming worse, it had not been held in four years.
But because the conservative traditionalists were balking at Andreas’s continued absence after their father’s death, and they feared that Nikandros and Gabriel Marquez’s partnership was a risk to Drakon’s economy, Eleni had suggested that they hold the ball again as a way of pacifying them.
And then she’d put the ball together in three weeks.
Scanning the stunningly dressed women and tuxedoed men who were dancing to a slow waltz, satisfaction filled her veins. Her fingers tingled to look through her fabled to-do list and check it off.
The black-and-white mask she’d bought on her trip to Paris last week went particularly well with the dark red lipstick. Piled high in a chignon, wispy tendrils of her usually unruly hair kissed her jaw.
Strapless and snug around her chest, her black-and-red silk ball gown accentuated an hourglass figure no amount of careful dieting could reduce, dipping at her waist and flaring into a full flounce.
The four-inch stilettos she had pushed her feet into boosted her five-two height, flashing her toned leg through the thigh-high slit. She’d been stunned when she’d looked at her reflection in the gold-filigree full-length mirror.
She’d always be plain compared to her half brothers, the Princes of Drakon; the media frequently reminded her by calling her the Plain Princess, but in that moment, she’d thought she had almost looked beautiful.
Good enough for the House of Drakos, her father would have said.
She continued wandering across the ballroom, marveling at the magnificence of the hotel.
It had been a crumbling Victorian-style mansion with out-of-date plumbing and bad interiors, but in three months Marquez Holdings Inc. had renovated it into a world-class destination for the nouveau rich that were pouring into Drakon, thanks to Gabriel Marquez’s interest.
The ruthless real estate mogul was a guest of the palace of Drakon, and had been in Drakon for three months to oversee his company’s investment in Drakon.
Casinos, luxury resorts that rivaled the King’s Palace in style and ambience, mountain escapes, a world-class racing circuit—the map of Drakon was changing under Mr. Marquez’s and her brother Nik’s deft guidance.
A modern-day Midas, as the media called him, Eleni wouldn’t have believed the transformation of the building Gabriel Marquez had wrought if she hadn’t visited it herself almost a year ago.
Taking a sip of her chilled champagne, she looked down over the lush gardens. The scent of roses was thick in the air; a clock struck midnight at the old church in the city’s main square.
She took a longer sip than was wise, felt the bubbly kiss her throat cold and sighed. It was a sound that seemed to come from the depths of her lonely soul.
The night stretched empty in front of her again.
“Why the long sigh, querida?”
The deep, slumberous voice sent a shiver down Eleni’s spine that rivaled the tingles in her throat. Heart beating faster, she turned, bracing her hand on the balcony balustrade. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—”
“Stay.”
With the one command, he made her spine lock. Even her father, who had been a bossy, hard-to-please man, had never ordered her around like that. “Excuse me?”
