The Santorini Bride

by Anne McAllister

  Martha nodded. She’d never been more sure of anything in her life. “Yes, please. I want to go home. Now.”

  As soon as she’d got back inside she had cornered her sister’s husband, Mark, in the corridor near the cloak room. She didn’t know him well, and at the moment that seemed like a plus. He was family so he was obliged to help. But he wasn’t a brother so wouldn’t ask questions.

  “Is it the baby?” he demanded, asking one anyway. “I know Cristina just needed to lie down sometimes. I could find you a place to rest.”

  “No, thank you.” Martha darted a gaze over her shoulder. “I just want to go. And I don’t want my parents to worry.” Which was certainly true. She also didn’t want them asking questions. And demanding answers.

  Martha wasn’t ready for that.

  “I should tell Cristina,” Mark said.

  “She’s over by my mom. Let’s just go. You can tell her later when you come back. It will only take a few minutes to run me back to their house to get my things. I can handle it from there. Please.”

  Past his shoulders she could see Theo craning his neck, looking around the dance floor. “Come on.” She grabbed Mark’s hand. “Let’s go!”

  “Right. Okay. If you’re sure…” Mark held the door for her, all the while looking panic-stricken. “You’d better not have this baby, though!”

  She wasn’t anywhere.

  Theo prowled the entire building, went outside, checked the cars. He went back down to the docks because he thought she might have gone to hide out on one of the boats tied up there. But wherever he went, Martha was nowhere to be found.

  He even went so far as to hunt down her sister. But the spiky-haired Cristina just shook her head. “Nope. Haven’t seen her. I’ll tell her you’re looking, though, shall I?” she said with a knowing smile.

  “Tell her I’ll find her,” he said through his teeth.

  But not now. God knew what he would say if he found her now. And he had a pretty good idea of what his parents—and hers—would say if he spoiled Tallie and Elias’s wedding by saying it.

  So he left. He stalked out to his rental car, pealed out of the parking lot and onto the highway, damn near flooring it until he realized that getting a ticket for speeding was not going to improve his day.

  He was already halfway to Montauk by that time, though, so he kept driving until there was no more land at all. It was nearly dark when at last he pulled off the road and sat staring into the distance at the gray wind-whipped sea.

  The sea had always been his solace, the vantage point from which he could look at the world, at life, and make sense of it.

  But right now nothing made sense.

  He’d come to the wedding to celebrate his sister’s nuptials, of course. But there had been, if he was honest, the added draw of seeing Martha again.

  It had been six months now and he still hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. She’d invaded his thoughts at inopportune moments wherever he went during the past six months. Whether he was in Newport or Marseilles or Cape Town or Auckland, he’d see something or hear something and find himself thinking, “Martha would like this.” Or, “I should tell Martha that.”

  Which was absurd. He barely remembered the women he had flings with. They were flirty, fun and finished. And that was that.

  All but Martha.

  He should never have gone back to Santorini. He was convinced that going back, expecting her to be there and discovering her gone, had ruined things. He hadn’t been the one to truly walk away—and thus he had inadvertently given her this power to pop into his mind. If he had just left and stayed gone, he would have been fine. Everything would have been fine.

  Except she still, he realized now, would have been pregnant. He should be appalled. Oddly, he wasn’t. In fact he felt exhilarated. Alive. Annoyed as hell at her refusal to marry him, but challenged. A sailor in a storm facing strong seas.

  Life the way he liked it.

  Besides, what the hell was wrong with getting married? It was the sane, sensible thing to do.

  He just had to convince Martha of that. Now he slumped against the seat in his car and scowled and plotted into the darkness until the flashing red lights of a highway patrol car stopped behind him.

  Oh, hell. Theo hauled himself up straight and rolled down his window as the officer approached.

  “Car trouble?”

  He shook his head. “Just…thinking.”

  The officer looked sceptical, asked to see his license, wondered just how much he’d been drinking.

  Fortunately, not much.

  “Better move along, then,” the officer advised. “Go on home. Things will look better tomorrow, bud.”

  Theo hoped to God he was right.

  He didn’t go home, though, since home in this instance was the motel room near his parents’ house which he was sharing with his brother, Demetrios.

  And Theo knew his brother well enough to know that by now Demetrios would have invited over at least half the single women from the reception.

  The last thing Theo wanted to do tonight was deal with more women.

  But he had no desire to spend the night in the car, either. Or to try to convince an already overwrought Martha that she should marry him tonight.

  He could do it—he would do it—but it would take finesse, cool, and a little breathing room.

  So he found a motel in Montauk and checked in. The bed was lumpy. The light was dim. There was little hot water. And all night long the wind rattled the windows.

  He heard it because he never slept.

  He tried to think. To plot. To plan. To understand what the hell Martha thought she was doing.

  He knew she’d been upset at the reception. And he knew that he hadn’t helped matters when he’d appeared abruptly, demanding a dance.

  He’d come on strong, yes. But that was because he’d been determined to make her realize that she should never have gone back to bloody Julian!

  But how the hell was he supposed to know the blond guy wasn’t her ex-boyfriend at all?

  It wasn’t as if she’d written and told him. She hadn’t written and told him anything—and she’d definitely had something to tell!

  She hadn’t bothered. The very thought galled him.

  Why would she think he didn’t care? He cared. Damn it, he cared a lot.

  He tossed and turned all night—caring. And by morning he felt like death—and determined to find her and make her realize that.

  He would be calm, cool, rational. And he would make her understand that there was no similarity between what had happened with Agnetta and what was happening now. In her heightened emotional state—worried about what he would say and do, worried about talking to him at her brother’s wedding, no doubt magnifying all her concerns, she wouldn’t understand that there was a simple solution.

  Marriage. A child should have two parents. It only made sense. And it wasn’t as if they weren’t compatible. God knew they’d nearly burned the house down in Santorini. If necessary, he would remind her about that, too.

  And her nonsense about love?

  His jaw tightened. It wasn’t important.

  She would say yes. She had to.

  He only had to find her first.

  He tried the Manhattan phone directory. He checked all the other boroughs, too. Then he rang the offices of Antonides Marine. He struck out on all counts. There was nothing left to do but turn up on the Antonides family’s doorstep and hope she was around.

  He didn’t relish tackling her there, but he would if he had to. Maybe she wouldn’t be there and he could get her address. He could get into the city in a couple of hours. And en route he could figure out what to say.

  Now he stood on the porch of a big stone-and-timber pseudo-English pseudo-manor house, the sort that Long Islanders of a certain generation built if they had money and a modicum of taste. It spoke of older more established money than his own parents’ place. He rang the bell and shifted from one foot to the oth
er, hoping Martha’s father would be glad to see him. He doubted it. He had the feeling Aeolus Antonides would enjoy making him squirm.

  After the sailboat race in which Theo had won the Antonides house on Santorini last spring, Theo could hardly blame him.

  Well, fine. If it would smooth things over he’d give the damn house back—except, now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure his father and hers had already worked some sort of deal.

  He rang the bell, then rubbed the back of his neck, massaging tight muscles while he waited. And waited.

  Finally the door handle rattled and the door opened. A black-haired bare-chested young man whom Theo recognized as Martha’s twin, Lukas, stood there, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, blinking sleepily at him. “Yeah?”

  “I want to talk to Martha.”

  Lukas yawned, then blinked several times, then rubbed a hand down his face. “Oh?” he said. “Why?”

  “That’s between Martha and me.”

  “Yeah? You the dad?”

  The words gave Theo a jolt. He didn’t like the look Lukas was giving him—the narrow-eyed, calculating, disapproving stare. It made him stiffen and straighten and square his shoulders.

  “That’s right,” he said with more than a touch of defiance. “I am.”

  “’Bout time you showed up then, isn’t it?” Lukas demanded. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Not it, Theo thought, remembering Martha correcting him yesterday. Him. A boy. His son.

  “I’m going to talk to Martha,” he said firmly. “Not you.”

  Lukas’s brows hiked up under his fringe of dark hair. “Well, now.”

  “So just go get her,” Theo commanded. “Now.”

  Lukas folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. His mouth quirked in a slight smile. “Can’t. She’s not here.”

  Theo frowned. “Where is she?”

  “Went home.”

  “Fine. Give me her address.”

  Lukas shrugged. “Don’t know it. Got her e-mail,” he offered.

  “I’m don’t want her e-mail. I want her. In person. Now. I want to marry her, damn it!”

  Lukas’s eyes snapped wide open. “Yeah? Since when?”

  “Since now! Since yesterday,” Theo snapped. “When I finally found out about the baby!”

  “You didn’t know?” Lukas seemed surprised. Then he scratched his head. “Yeah, maybe you didn’t. Martha’s got her own mind.”

  No kidding.

  “Does she know?” Lukas asked. “That you want to marry her?”

  “Of course she knows!”

  “Ah.” Light seemed to dawn in Lukas’s alcohol-soaked brain. He smiled again, more to himself than at Theo. “That explains it.”

  Theo scowled. “Explains what?”

  “Why she was gone when we got home. Left a note. Wouldn’t even stay till this morning an’ go to Elias and Tallie’s to watch ’em open the gifts like everybody else did. ’Cept me.” Lukas yawned again. “Who needs that?”

  “I need her address,” Theo said with more patience than he felt. “Who has her address?” He did not want to go to Elias and Tallie’s and ask her parents in the middle of the gift opening.

  Lukas was shaking his head. “She doesn’t want to marry you, does she?”

  “We’re discussing it,” Theo said evenly. “Look, someone must have her address written down. Your mother, perhaps? Your sister?”

  “Ma might,” Lukas agreed. “I guess I could check that book by the phone.”

  “Would you?” Theo asked in a deceptively mild tone. Convincing Martha to marry him if he’d killed her brother trying to get her address would probably make the task even more difficult.

  Lukas’s jaw cracked in one more yawn. “Yeah, c’mon in.” He turned and disappeared into the house.

  Martha’s parents’ house was warm and friendly—a welcoming sort of place Theo could imagine her growing up in. There was lots of dark gleaming wood, but it was softened by robust overstuffed chairs and sofas, lots of books and pictures, including a large family portrait taken when she was probably a gap-toothed seven. Seeing her grinning youthful face reminded Theo of the way she’d looked when they had played and swum in the sea at Santorini. It made him smile despite his annoyance with all the Antonideses at the moment.

  Lukas flipped through a book he’d taken from a small table next to the stairs. “Here it is.”

  Theo pulled a pen out of his pocket and a parking stub to write on.

  Lukas’s brows lifted as he looked at the page. Then he grinned. “Well, imagine that. She lives on Park.”

  “Park Avenue?” Painting murals must have become suddenly lucrative, Theo thought. Or—the notion blindsided him—maybe she was living with someone else.

  Was that why she was so adamant about not marrying him? Did she have a lover?

  Lukas shook his head. “No, Park Street.” He grinned again.

  Theo frowned. “Park Street? Where’s that?”

  “In Butte.”

  Theo blinked. “What?”

  “Butte,” Lukas repeated patiently. “Montana.”

  Montana.

  Americans who knew what they were talking about called it “the last best place.”

  Remote, expansive, rugged, wild—and that was just the city of Butte—the state of Montana was, to Martha, heaven on earth.

  It had been her bolt hole in the beginning, when she’d come back from Santorini. She knew she’d been a fool about Julian. But that was nothing compared to the complete and utter imbecile she’d been by really falling in love with a man who had promised her nothing but mind-blowing sex and after a week had walked out without a single glance back.

  New York City hadn’t been big enough to hold her despair and her self-contempt. She’d boarded the plane in Santorini—when she’d finally managed to get a standby ticket a week early—desperate for a new start, a new life.

  Serendipitously the means to achieve just that had sat down next to her on the plane.

  His name was Spencer Tyack. He was young and lean and tanned and gorgeous, and Martha was totally and completely immune.

  The only thing that mattered was that he had taken one look at her tear-streaked face as the plane had lifted off and thrust a clean handkerchief into her hand.

  “I hate it when women cry,” he’d said gruffly. “Mop up.”

  Guilty and grateful, aware she needed a no-nonsense approach to life right then, Martha had done just that.

  And Spence, who apparently really did hate women’s tears, helped by talking to her. Martha tried to listen. Mostly she thought about Theo. About loving him—and hating him. And knowing all this anguish was her own damn fault.

  And then the tears would threaten again.

  “For God’s sake!” Spence had flagged down the flight attendant and requested an entire box of tissues. “You’re not going to get past it, obviously, unless you talk about it. So talk.”

  So she had. She’d talked. And talked. And talked.

  Theo. Theo. Theo.

  “Sounds like an idiot to me,” Spence had said flatly when she finally sniffled her way to a halt and blew her nose. “I don’t know why you’d bother.”

  Martha didn’t either. But real love, unlike what she’d felt for Julian, was something she couldn’t seem to control. And she said so.

  “Maybe you can’t. But you can get over it,” Spence had informed her with the assurance of a man who either had done it or who had never been in love at all. “Tell me what you do when you’re not crying.”

  “I paint m-murals.”

  “Murals?” It seemed as if he’d never heard of such a thing. At first she thought he was feigning intrigue and demanding more information so she would shut up about Theo. But when they disembarked at JFK he gave her his business card. “Spencer Tyack, Real Estate and Property Development,” it said. That, she learned later, didn’t say the half of it.

  But what mattered was that he also said, “
You ever want to paint a mural in Montana, give me a shout.”

  Even so, he probably hadn’t expected to hear from her three weeks later, much less learn that she was standing on Park Street with most of her worldly belongings after the bus to Seattle had let her off.

  Still, he’d taken her arrival in stride. He’d even looked approving. “You don’t let grass grow under your feet, do you?”

  “I hope not,” Martha had said sincerely. All she knew was that there had been no life for her in New York when she got back. There had only been curious parents and nosy siblings, all of them demanding to know where she’d been and what had happened to Julian.

  Julian who? she’d wanted to say.

  The only person she had wanted to talk about—the only person she ever thought about—was Theo.

  For all the good it did her.

  Theo was gone. Theo probably didn’t even remember her name. Theo had left and never looked back.

  It took less than two weeks of enduring New York to know she needed to get out, to get a life, to act like an adult instead of a lovesick fool. She needed to “get over it”—get over Theo—exactly as Spence Tyack had told her.

  And so she’d done the most drastic thing she could think of—she’d packed up the barest essentials and bought a bus ticket to Butte.

  “I want to paint a mural in Montana,” she’d told him when he collected her at the bus stop.

  He’d studied her closely. Probably looking for signs of tears—or insanity.

  But Martha had never felt more sane or determined in her life. She was over Theo. Done crying about a man who wasn’t worth a single tear. She’d given Spence a bright smile and a thumbs-up.

  And apparently Spence believed her. He’d grinned and picked up her suitcase. “Welcome aboard.”

  Perhaps not the best words he could have used. Aboard meant a boat. And a boat meant Theo. And, oh, hell, maybe she wasn’t totally over him yet. But she would be. It was just a matter of time.

  The trouble was, even when she tried to keep thoughts of him at bay, everything conspired to remind her of Theo.

  She had picked her apartment in an uptown renovated Victorian because of the cozy interior. But every time she looked out the front bay window, she could hear Theo, as he’d stood in the living room on Santorini, saying, “This is a great house, but I couldn’t stand it if it didn’t have this view. I can’t be hemmed in. I like a horizon. I need space.”