The Greek's Pregnant Cinderella Read online

  “You will go to the ball.”

  And be seduced by a billionaire...

  Hotel maid Tabitha is stunned to be gifted a ticket to an elite ball hosted by Greek tycoon Giannis Basinas. It’s meant to be a night of pure luxury. But this untouched Cinderella ends up in Giannis’s bed—utterly pleasured! Making a hasty morning exit out the window, Tabitha expects to return to her ordinary life. Until she discovers her midnight mischief had nine-month consequences!

  Lose yourself in this enchanting Cinderella story...

  Giannis had never known a night like it.

  Whether Tabitha was the future Mrs. Basinas or not, right then his intention was to bring her coffee and climb back into bed with her. He hoped she hadn’t made any plans. He’d already messaged his PA to inform her he wouldn’t be returning to Santorini that day and to rearrange his appointments.

  Still whistling, he carried the tray to his bedroom and opened the door...

  The bed was empty.

  “Tabitha?” he called. She must be in the bathroom...

  The bathroom door was open.

  He placed the tray on his dresser, and as he did so, he noticed something else that had gone. Her ball gown.

  Two minutes later and every room in the apartment searched, he returned to his bedroom perplexed and angry.

  She had run out on him.

  From the corner of his eye, something sparkly caught his attention.

  He strode to the bed, where the sparkly item was, and found, on the pillow where her exquisite head had rested, one of her earrings.

  Cinderella Seductions

  Seduced into the billionaire’s luxurious world...

  Billionaire school friends Alessio Palvetti and Giannis Basinas are throwing the party of the century: a masquerade ball in Vienna with no expense spared!

  For event planner Beth Hardingstone and maid Tabitha Brigstock, it’s like stepping into another world. Now as these sweet Cinderellas go to the ball, and each share a red-hot dance with a billionaire, they have no idea their lives are about to change—forever!

  Find out what happens when the clock strikes midnight in...

  Alessio and Beth’s story

  A Cinderella to Secure His Heir

  Giannis and Tabitha’s story

  The Greek’s Pregnant Cinderella

  Available now!

  Michelle Smart

  The Greek’s Pregnant Cinderella

  Michelle Smart’s love affair with books started when she was a baby, when she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Harlequin book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading—and writing—them ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.

  Books by Michelle Smart

  Harlequin Presents

  A Bride at His Bidding

  Conveniently Wed!

  The Sicilian’s Bought Cinderella

  Bound to a Billionaire

  Protecting His Defiant Innocent

  Claiming His One-Night Baby

  Buying His Bride of Convenience

  Cinderella Seductions

  A Cinderella to Secure His Heir

  Rings of Vengeance

  Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

  Marriage Made in Blackmail

  Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM HIS TWO ROYAL SECRETS BY CAITLIN CREWS

  CHAPTER ONE

  TABITHA BRIGSTOCK WHEELED her trolley to the laundry room and heaved the sack of dirty linen and towels from the suites she’d spent the morning cleaning into the white dirty washing tub, then left the laundry to wheel the trolley further up the corridor to the storage room, where she locked it away with the other trollies. Her hands were red and sore but there was no time to go to her room to rub the hand lotion on them that sometimes stopped them cracking too badly. The staff quarters were right at the other end of the hotel, a good fifteen-minute walk away.

  Instead she climbed the stairs and headed to the far end of the first floor. She knocked on the door out of habit then used her master key to unlock it.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Coulter,’ she said cheerfully as she walked into the opulent suite. ‘How are you feeling? Sorry I couldn’t pop in earlier but they needed me to help out on the second floor.’

  At eighty-three, Mrs Coulter was the oldest guest at Vienna’s Basinas Palace Hotel and had been in residence for three months. The poor woman had been floored by a virus that had left her bed-bound for two weeks. Tabitha had been very concerned and had taken to dropping in on her regularly to make sure she was okay. Thankfully, Mrs Coulter had been much improved the last couple of days, and today she was up and dressed and eating her lunch at the table by the window that overlooked the palace’s vast grounds.

  Mrs Coulter smiled, the twinkle in her eye that had been missing all week very much back. ‘I’m feeling much better, thank you. And thank you for getting Melanie to check on me earlier.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’ve got the vitamins you asked for.’ She pulled the small plastic pot out of her handbag and put it on the table.

  Gnarled arthritic hands covered hers. ‘You are an angel. Will you sit and have a cup of tea with me?’

  As Tabitha still had twenty minutes of her lunch break left, she took the offered seat and poured them both a cup from the bone-china pot.

  It felt wonderful to sit after six straight hours of physical exertion. The hotel was in a state of great excitement. The Greek owner, Giannis Basinas, was hosting a masquerade ball there that evening for the world’s elite.

  Tabitha had caught a glimpse of him earlier. She’d just finished cleaning a room and was wheeling her trolley down the corridor when he’d strolled past. Her heart had soared to see him but, as normal, he didn’t spare her so much as a glance.

  In the five months since she’d started working there, she had seen the billionaire widower, who was rumoured to be descended from Greek royalty, only a handful of times. The Basinas Palace Hotel was but a small part of his vast empire. When he did bother to show his face in Vienna, the excitement and fear amongst the staff was palpable. The hotel had once been a royal palace and was now regarded as Europe’s most prestigious hotel with a price tag to match. Working there was a coup in itself but, should standards be deemed to have dropped, the risk of being fired was all too real.

  Tabitha could not afford to lose her job and had no idea what it was about Giannis that meant every rare glimpse of him played on her mind so much or made her stomach come alive with butterflies. As a live-in member of staff, to be fired would be to be made homeless. The salary here was much better than her old job in a small English hotel, and the tips were often amazi
ng, but even with all the overtime she grabbed she still hadn’t saved anywhere near enough for a deposit on her own home.

  That was all she wanted. A place of her own. A home where she could be safe. A home that no one could ever take away from her.

  ‘I was hoping you would come see me this lunchtime,’ Mrs Coulter said.

  Tabitha raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you ready for a game of cards?’ The two women had taken to playing rummy most days when Tabitha’s day shift was over.

  ‘My head’s still too fuzzy for that, my dear. No, I wanted to discuss tonight’s ball.’

  ‘The masquerade ball?’

  ‘Is there another one I should know about?’

  Tabitha laughed. ‘I hope not. I’m grateful for the extra shifts it’s giving me but I’d need a holiday to recoup if we had another one too soon.’ And she could not afford a holiday.

  The twinkle reappeared in Mrs Coulter’s eye. ‘I have a ticket for it.’

  ‘No way!’ Tickets for the ball were forty-thousand euros. To have the privilege of forking out that astronomical amount of money, you had to be invited. To be invited, you had to be rich and part of the global elite. It was an open secret that all the single women who’d been invited were under the age of thirty, the rumour—not denied—being that Giannis Basinas was using the ball as a means of finding himself a new wife. Mrs Coulter was rich and recently widowed but she was not part of the global elite and she absolutely was not under the age of thirty. ‘How did you get that?’

  Mrs Coulter winked and tapped her nose. ‘A lady has her secrets, dear.’

  Tabitha felt a surge of excitement for her. To go to the ball... She’d seen all the preparations for it, heard all the whispered talk, and it was obvious it was going to be the ball of century. ‘Do you want me to do your hair and nails for it? My shift finishes at four, so I’ll have time...’

  ‘No, dear. The ticket is for you.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I bought the ticket for you.’

  Tabitha was momentarily struck dumb. She stared at the wizened old woman with the white wispy hair and twinkling eyes and wondered when she’d gained such an evil sense of humour. It had to be a joke. Who would spend forty-thousand euros on a ticket to a ball for a chambermaid?

  The gnarled hand covered hers again. ‘Tabitha,’ she said earnestly. ‘You have been a godsend to me. You have looked after me since I first arrived in Vienna and often in your own personal time. You’ve cared for me this week when my own selfish children could hardly be bothered to call to see if I was okay. You work your fingers to the bone for little money and you never complain. You’re a ray of sunshine in a dark world and I wanted to show my love and appreciation for all that you do.’

  Tabitha swallowed. A ray of sunshine? Her?

  The only people who had ever said such nice things to her had been her father and paternal grandmother. Her lovely grandmother had died when she’d been seven but her memories of her were strong. Mrs Coulter had the same mischievous twinkle her grandmother had had and the same easy affection. Tabitha supposed that was what had drawn her to the elderly lady to begin with and partly why she felt such deep affection for her.

  ‘The ticket is in my name. Tonight, you will be Amelia Coulter, and you will dance with handsome men and drink champagne and spend an evening being who you were born to be.’

  Tabitha blinked, partly to push back the tears threatening to spill down her face and partly in shock.

  Being who you were born to be...?

  She had spent the past four years trying her hardest to forget her birth right. The memories were too painful. All she could do was tackle each day as it came and look to the future.

  Her heart thumped. Did Mrs Coulter know...?

  The twinkling eyes were steady on hers. If Mrs Coulter knew Tabitha’s true identity, she was keeping her cards close to her chest.

  But Tabitha had never hidden her true self. Her name was the only thing her stepmother had been unable to take from her. She’d taken everything else, though. Her home, her education, her money, her future...

  ‘Take a look in my wardrobe. Go on, dear.’

  On legs that felt strangely drugged, Tabitha stepped through to the bedroom.

  ‘Right-hand door,’ Mrs Coulter called.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  And she did see.

  When she opened the right-hand door of the wardrobe, all that hung on the rail was a floor-length ball gown that could have leapt off the pages of a fairy tale.

  She stretched out a hand and ran her fingers over the delicate material, her eyes soaking up the pastel-pale pinks and greens overlaid with embellished gold-threaded patterns and encrusted with jewels and the palest of pink roses. An eighteenth-century princess would have been thrilled to wear something so beautiful.

  On the shelf above it lay a pair of white-gold high-heeled shoes, a white eye-mask with gold detailing and gold braiding around its edges and a plume of wispy pale pink feathers shaped into a flower on the left cheek.

  Hands now shaking, she took hold of a shoe and examined it in awe.

  It was her size.

  Dazed, she went back to the living area of the suite. ‘How...?’

  Mrs Coulter smiled. ‘A lady has her ways.’

  ‘I can’t. I wish...’ She took a deep breath and hugged the shoe to her chest. ‘I wish I could go but I can’t. If I get caught, I’ll be fired. We’ve all been warned.’ And warned unambiguously. Any member of staff caught trying to enter the ball would have their contract of employment terminated.

  But Mrs Coulter was not to be deterred. ‘We will make you unrecognisable. No one will know it’s you—no one will be expecting you to be there. In my experience, people see what they want and expect to see. They will not see a chambermaid. Come back here at five. I’ve arranged for a beautician to join us. She will turn you into a princess. And then tomorrow you can join me for lunch and tell me all about it.’ She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘I admit, I’m not being entirely altruistic. I’m too old and my knees too shot to go to the ball myself but I can live it vicariously through you.’

  Hot tears prickled the back of Tabitha’s eyes. No one had ever done such a thing for her before.

  ‘Do not be afraid, my dear. Tonight you will be a princess and you will go to the ball, and I will not hear another word of argument about it.’

  * * *

  Giannis Basinas left the apartment he used as a base when in Vienna and strolled up the rose-hedged path that led to his hotel. He could have earmarked one of the suites for his own use but he preferred to give himself at least an illusion of privacy. Privacy was a concept frequently ignored by his large, exuberant family.

  It was partly down to his family that he was making this walk now dressed in an all-black, leather swallowtail suit and hosting this masquerade ball. His sisters had been dropping hints since he’d turned thirty-five that he needed to find a new wife. He’d come to the reluctant conclusion that they were right.

  When his oldest friend Alessio Palvetti had pulled in a favour owed from their school days and asked him to host a masquerade ball, using a specific event team to manage it, Giannis had figured the ball could work in his favour. He could repay his debt and let his sisters believe he was serious about finding a wife. Everyone would be happy.

  He didn’t hold much hope that his ideal woman would emerge tonight but this was as good an opportunity to find her as any. He’d even let Niki, his youngest sister and the biggest socialite in his family, select fifty of the four hundred guests to invite. These fifty guests were unmarried women, their wealth determined by their ability to pay the forty-thousand-euro price tag he’d set the tickets at.

  If Giannis was going to marry again, he had three criteria. Firstly, and most importantly, his potential wife had to be independentl
y rich. He would not make the same mistake as he’d made in his first marriage. Secondly, she must be of childbearing age, a criterion that was self-explanatory. Thirdly, and least importantly, she must be pleasant to look at. She didn’t have to be a model, or even be particularly beautiful, but if he was going to spend the rest of his life with one woman he would prefer it to be with someone he found attractive.

  Slipping through a rear door into the hotel he’d bought less than two years ago, he made his way to the ballroom.

  Giannis’s business interests were varied but mostly concentrated in shipping and property across the globe. This former palace he’d spent millions on renovating into a world-class hotel was his first venture into the tourism industry outside his Greek home. As a status symbol, there was none better.

  About to open a side door into the ballroom, he spotted a female guest on the cantilevered stairs. Her fingers trailed the railing as she made her descent. Her other hand clutched the gold invitation all ball guests were required to show on their arrival.

  There was something hesitant about her graceful walk that made him look twice.

  He looked at her. Then looked again.

  Although much of her face was hidden behind a white-gold eye-mask with a plume of dusky-pink feathers on the left cheek, there was something about her that set his pulses racing.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  Her beautiful dress, all delicate pale greens, dusky pinks, golds and jewels that sparkled when the light caught them, was strapless and form-fitting to the waist then puffed out to fall in layers to her hidden feet.

  She looked like a princess.

  She could be a princess.

  He imagined the dazzling circle the skirt of the dress would make on the dance floor...

  Leaving the door he’d been about to enter, he approached her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  She was shorter than he’d thought and, up close, even more ravishing. Honey-blonde hair had been coiled into an elegant knot at the base of a graceful neck adorned with a gold choker necklace covered in jewels, and roses that matched her dress and the drop earrings hanging from the lobes of her pretty ears.