Bride for Real

by Lynne Graham

  Sander suppressed a groan of disbelief. He had at least a dozen questions to ask but the French lawyer had already ended the call, having extracted Sander’s assurance that he would come as soon as possible to Paris. Why the hell would Oleia have left him anything at all? And could there be a worse case of bad timing? Out of the blue Tally had come back to him, their marriage was back on track and the very last thing Sander felt he needed was a shadowy link cast by a past lover. And, of all women, Oleia—whom Tally had more reason than she knew to be sensitive about, Sander reflected ruefully, his brilliant dark eyes clouding with grudging recollection. Oleia, exotic and flighty as a hummingbird, dead? It seemed impossible.

  His mind jumped to their last meeting and hastily backtracked from that contentious recollection again. Not his most shining moment. His strong bone structure tensed with strain: he really didn’t want to go there. It was well over a year since he’d had any contact with Oleia and he had had no idea that she had left London to make her home in the French capital. What on earth could Oleia have left him? She had no relatives, he recalled wryly. Orphaned as a child, Oleia had been raised by a godparent and she had gained full independence at eighteen once she’d come into a very extensive fortune left to her by her parents. He would fly over to Paris first thing the following morning, sort it out and be home again by evening without Tally being any the wiser.

  Yet, avoiding any issue and employing secrecy went against his inherently forthright nature. But the desire to keep his wife happy was making Sander cautious and, for the first time in his life, keen to avoid potential sources of conflict. He had never liked surprises and it still bothered him that he had absolutely no idea why Tally had suddenly changed her mind and decided to give their marriage a second chance, for she was not a capricious personality. Now Oleia, who had never surprised him before this, he acknowledged. Perhaps the young Greek woman had left him some ironic gift as a footnote to their troubled relationship … and his lack of forgiveness. Sander was very conscious at that moment that he had never found it within himself to forgive Oleia for sleeping with another guy when they were teenagers. Like the elephant who never forgot, he had retained a grudge and in retrospect that struck him as a sad indictment of his male ego. Had Oleia had to die for him to appreciate how senseless it had been to nourish a grievance for so long?

  The next morning Sander did not expect Tally to wake up before he departed for his early flight to Paris. He was in the kitchen nursing a cup of black coffee when she appeared in the doorway. Wrapped in a fluffy pink robe, she looked incredibly cuddly. Her green eyes were drowsy and her soft full mouth took on a tender curve as she surveyed him. ‘So, you’re still staging crack-of-dawn starts,’ she reproved.

  ‘Because I have an early flight and I want to be home for dinner.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Tally queried, her gaze lingering on his lean devastatingly handsome features with helpless appreciation.

  ‘Paris.’

  Tally recognised the tension etched in the taut angle of his stunning cheekbones and the tightening round the corners of his wide, sensual mouth and wondered at it. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  Sander shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Why would there be?’

  ‘Did you and your father have a disagreement recently?’ she asked, suspecting that that might lie at the root of his tension. Sander was usually too loyal to complain about the problems he had with the older man.

  Sander sighed. ‘He’s gone into virtual semi-retirement. He’s never forgiven me for winning that vote of confidence from the board of directors.’

  ‘You had to have their support to push through changes. He’ll get over it.’

  ‘Neither of my parents has a good track record for moving on,’ Sander reminded her wryly.

  And that was a truth and no mistake, Tally conceded ruefully when Sander had gone. Even when she was carrying their unborn grandchild, Petros and Eirene Volakis had made no attempt to welcome her into the family circle. They had kept her at arm’s length in much the same way as they treated Sander. He was their son but forever doomed to live in the shadow of his late brother, Titos, who had died in a car accident a few years earlier. Their attitude infuriated Tally, who knew that it had been Sander who had saved Volakis Shipping after Titos had steered the family firm to the edge of destruction.

  While Sander was in Paris, Tally was looking forward to a relatively laid-back day browsing through furniture showrooms on behalf of a client. Sander caught his flight and had to wait for his appointment at Edouard Arpin’s offices. That waste of time chafed his already stretched nerves. When he was finally ushered into the solicitor’s room only to be handed a handwritten letter, which he was assured would answer his questions, he was far from impressed.

  It was a letter from Oleia and, apparently, a long-winded one.

  ‘This is crazy.’ Gritting his even, white teeth, Sander shook out the sheets of closely written notepaper with an air of long-suffering male incomprehension. Why the hell would Oleia have chosen to write him a letter? Who on earth wrote letters these days?

  ‘I believe everything will be clearer once you have read my late client’s explanation,’ the solicitor remarked as he left Sander alone in the room.

  Suppressing a groan of exasperation and extending his long powerful legs in an attitude of resolute relaxation, Sander settled down to read.

  Unfortunately he hit a rock that derailed him at the same instant that he came on the unexpected word, ‘baby’. Frowning in bewilderment, because he had no idea where the reference to an infant had sprung from, he had to retrace several lines and read with greater care and concentration. As he read an awful presentiment of impending doom began to creep through his big powerful length like spooky fingers of frost. His worst expectations fulfilled, he sprang upright in a sudden movement of repudiation with a curse on his lips and flung the letter violently aside.

  No, it couldn’t be true, he reasoned in thundering disbelief, unable to read any further because acting the role of passive victim made him feel like a rat caught in a trap. He could not have got Oleia pregnant when he had briefly turned to her for consolation after his marriage had disintegrated … Could he have? Hypothetically speaking, he was grudgingly forced to admit that as his recollections were vague in the extreme such a development was humanly possible.

  But surely God would not punish him that harshly? Had he not already lost a child? Sander clung to the comforting belief that he had paid his dues with pained conviction. He refused to credit that one ill-conceived night with the wrong woman could serve him with so brutal a retribution as a baby, a consequence that his wife would never accept or forgive. He had made a mistake and he had known as soon as he made it. He had also immediately done what he could to redress the balance with honesty. Even so, that night had lain on his conscience ever since.

  And only now was he learning—too late to change anything—that Oleia had fallen pregnant that same night and had chosen to keep the fact a secret from him. She had duly given birth to a little girl—but what the heck had she done with the child? Breathing audibly from lungs that felt constricted and with a fine veil of perspiration now forming on his brow, Sander was forced to retrieve the letter and read on a good deal faster than he had previously done to answer that all-important question.

  Apparently, Oleia had called her daughter Lili and she had not put the child up for immediate adoption as he might have assumed. It was even more of a challenge for him to imagine a free-spirited party girl like Oleia willingly assuming the responsibilities of a single parent. In fact he could not imagine that miraculous development at all. Yet evidently that, and in his opinion inconceivably, was what Oleia had done.

  Making it clear that she had long foreseen his likely reaction to the sudden shocking news that he was a father, Oleia had informed him in her letter that she had left a sample of Lili’s hair with a reputable French DNA testing agency so that Sander could have a test done and check out the child’s parenta
ge for his own satisfaction. There was something so frighteningly factual about that obliging information that it punched a substantial hole in the barrier of Sander’s disbelief. He folded the letter and dug it into a pocket, unable to face reading any further revelations before he had come to terms with what he had just learned. Could it be true that he had become a father without knowing it? That he had fathered a child with Oleia Telis? Shock and consternation ripped through Sander like a paralysing electrical current and it was at that juncture, while he was frozen by the window with preoccupied eyes, that Edouard Arpin chose to rejoin him.

  The lawyer spoke clearly and concisely and Sander finally understood why his presence had been so urgently required in Paris. A four-month-old little girl had just lost her mother and now Sander was her legal guardian. Whether or not he felt the need to check out Lili’s exact parentage was Sander’s own private business and had no bearing on the reality that, regardless of what he discovered in that line, he would still be officially responsible for the welfare of Oleia’s daughter.

  When he questioned Edouard more closely about the circumstances of Oleia’s death he was dismayed to be told that Oleia’s party lifestyle had probably weakened her immune system and led to the pneumonia that had killed her. In addition Lili’s current living arrangements could not continue as her nanny had already handed in her notice. Decisions had to be made and quickly.

  As a guy who had already paid a steep price for his unwillingness to commit to the responsibility of being a parent, Sander felt as if he were walking on eggshells over ground he had hoped he’d never have to cover again. In the back of his mind he could not help but ask himself what Tally would expect from him. He knew that his reluctance to be a father had caused the first cracks in his marriage and had further contributed to Tally’s lack of faith in him as a husband. After all, Tally had had a hopeless father figure in Anatole Karydas, which had ensured that she set a very high value on a man’s ability to be a good parent. He could only wish that that painful truth had occurred to him when they were first married.

  Within ten minutes of leaving Edouard Arpin’s office, Sander was on the way to the DNA testing agency, keen to get that formality settled and out of the way. The procedure, the taking of a saliva swab, took only seconds. At Oleia’s apartment, Sander was greeted by the nanny, Suzette, a thin, frowning blonde, and before he even got as far as the hall he received a stream of complaints.

  Her charge was impossible… refused to sleep … eat … stop scratching. How soon would the new nanny be arriving? In the background a baby was wailing incessantly. It was shrill, forlorn crying and an assault on Sander’s eardrums. His brow furrowing, a pained look in his dark eyes, he admitted that he had yet to hire a replacement nanny but that he would be doing so immediately. He offered to significantly increase Suzette’s salary if she would stay on until he could put other arrangements in place. A smile removing the sour slant from her lips, the blonde agreed and insisted on showing him straight into the nursery.

  So great was the noise that Sander would not have been surprised to see an entire row of screaming babies in the room, but the big centrally placed cot contained only one very small child. It had to be said that Lili was a very miserable-looking baby. Her very red face was screwed up unattractively and swollen, her equally undersized limbs lost and flailing around in the folds of a baby suit that was too large. No magical sense of recognition or bonding assailed Sander, who had to work hard just to stand his ground in spite of the appalling racket.

  For an instant he recalled on a sharp surge of grief the baby son who had failed to even draw breath at birth. He remembered those terrible minutes while the doctors had worked frantically in an effort to save the life already lost. He remembered that hideous silence, when any sound from their son would have been welcomed, finally being torn apart by Tally’s sobs of disbelief. He remembered trying to be strong for her, which basically had meant not crying alongside her while he wondered insanely if his lukewarm attitude to becoming a father could have somehow caused the tragedy.

  ‘Does Lili often cry like this?’ he enquired without any expression at all.

  ‘Toujours… always,’ the nanny contended wearily. ‘I get no sleep.’

  Unable to summon up at will a more acceptable emotional response, Sander strove to be practical instead. He questioned the nanny carefully about Lili’s short life to date and his lean strong face took on a grave aspect. The baby would have to be taken to London. The Paris apartment would be cleared and the contents stored until someone had time to go through them and see if anything ought to be kept. Returning to the hall, which was at least quieter, Sander called his PA in London and then Edouard Arpin and did what came naturally to him: he made arrangements and reached decisions. He contacted an agency in London and was promised the crème de la crème of nannies to care for Lili in the hotel suite he had booked for her occupation. He saw no space for inspiration in any of the choices he made. To look after Lili he had to take her back to London with him and he could scarcely take her home to Tally. His brain found it impossible to move beyond that boundary.

  ‘I will travel to London with her and pass her over to the new nanny,’ Suzette conceded reluctantly.

  By that stage, Lili had cried herself to sleep. Sander gazed broodingly down at the slumbering child. He saw no familiar Volakis traits in her indistinct features and felt absolutely nothing. Was this wretched little waif his daughter? His flesh and blood? His conscience was pricked and he was angry with himself. Shouldn’t he feel something? Or was it shock freezing his responses? He had one final act to perform in Paris: he bought the orchids Oleia had loved, flaunting blooms in her favourite scarlet, and set them on her grave. For the first time he wished he had some of Tally’s faith but he could find no comfort in prayers. What had happened had happened, and nothing he said or felt in retrospect could change that hard fact.

  When Sander phoned that evening to say he wouldn’t be back until the next day instead, Tally was not that surprised. He sounded preoccupied and she assumed his mind was still on business. But just thirty minutes later she received another call, which took her very much by surprise. That second call came from her half-sister, Cosima Karydas, and it broke a silence that had lasted for well over two years, during which time Cosima had ignored Tally’s wedding in order to maintain her distance from her illegitimate elder sibling. Cosima, Anatole’s younger daughter, born of his marriage to a Greek woman, had never really come to terms with the existence of Tally, who had been raised apart from Cosima and with none of the material advantages Cosima took for granted. ‘My goodness, Cosima …’ Tally exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch … you know how it is when you’re busy—’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Tally responded, relieved to hear from the younger woman again.

  ‘Would you be free for lunch tomorrow? I’m dying to see you!’

  Pleased by Cosima’s enthusiasm but wryly amused at her impatience after so long a silence, Tally mentally rescheduled an appointment and agreed to meet up. Her sibling made a predictably late arrival. Heads turned to follow Cosima’s enviably shapely figure as she crossed the restaurant. With silky dark wings of hair framing her bright dark eyes she was very pretty girl.

  ‘I gather you’re back with Sander,’ Cosima remarked over a glass of wine. ‘I don’t blame you: he’s gorgeous.’

  Tally went pink and smiled, heartened by her sister’s easy acceptance of their reconciliation. ‘He still floats my boat.’

  ‘Boat … Volakis Shipping … Pun! Well, it’s good to know you haven’t lost your sense of humour.’ In spite of that sentiment, however, the younger woman still looked very tense. ‘I’ve heard something. I just had to check it out with you, though you’ll have to promise first not to tell Dad that I passed it on …’

  Tally’s smooth brow furrowed. ‘I won’t repeat anything you tell me.’

  ‘You weren’t always so scrupulous,’ the younger woman reminded her ruef
ully.

  Tally took that on the chin, for she had once reported Cosima’s wrongdoing to their father to ensure that she did not carry the can for things that had gone wrong while both were staying for a weekend at a country house. ‘You were much younger then.’

  Cosima winced. ‘And in the wrong when I spiked your drink at that party,’ she slotted in, shamefaced. ‘I’m sorry about that and sorry, too, I didn’t have the guts to apologise at the time.’

  ‘It’s over and done with,’ Tally said soothingly.

  Cosima rested troubled eyes on Tally. ‘You’re making me feel awful. I just can’t tell you the story I heard recently …’

  ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about—’

  ‘I know and that makes it worse,’ Cosima complained.

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ Tally advised. ‘That’s usually the best place.’

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Cosima began in a teasing tone but her eyes were troubled and evasive, ‘there was a very beautiful girl called Oleia … Oleia Telis.’

  Every scrap of colour slowly drained from Tally’s cheeks, her eyes reflecting the jolt of shock she had received at hearing that particular name spoken out loud for the first time in a very long time. ‘I’ve heard about her.’

  ‘So you know that Oleia and Sander—’

  ‘Were an item when they were teenagers,’ Tally slotted in flatly, wondering why her sibling was subjecting her to such an unwelcome reminder.

  ‘A little bird in Athens is suggesting that they’ve been together a lot more recently than that,’ Cosima let drop in a concerned undertone. ‘I thought you should know. I honestly didn’t want to upset you. I just thought you shouldn’t be left in the dark while other people talk behind your back.’