The Cozakis Bride

by Lynne Graham

  But how much more shattered would her trusting mother have been had Olympia ever told her the whole dreadful truth of what had happened in Athens a decade earlier? Olympia had never told that story, and her awareness of that fact still disturbed her. Then, as now, Olympia had kept her own counsel to protect her mother from needless distress...

  The next morning, Olympia took up position in the waiting area on the top floor of the Cozakis building three minutes after nine o'clock.

  She made the same request to see Nik as she had made the day before. The receptionist avoided eye contact. Olympia wondered if this would be the day that Nik lost patience and had her thrown out of the building.

  At ten minutes past nine, after a mutually mystified con­sultation with another senior member of staff, Gerry Marsden approached Nik, who had started work as usual at eight that morning. 'Miss Manoulis is here again today, sir.'

  Almost imperceptibly the Greek tycoon tensed and the si­lence thickened.

  'Have you the Tenco file?' Nik then enquired, as if the younger man hadn't spoken.

  The day wore on, with Olympia praying that a pretence of quiet, uncomplaining humility would ultimately persuade Nik to spare her just five minutes of his time. By the end of that day, when the receptionist apologetically announced that Mr Cozakis had again left the building, Olympia experienced such a violent surge of bitter frustration that she could have screamed.

  On the third day, Olympia felt hugely conspicuous as she stepped out of the lift on to the top floor.

  Before leaving home she would have liked to have filled a vacuum flask and made herself some sandwiches, but to have done so would have roused her mother's suspicions and her concern. Since Olympia had yet to admit to her mother that their slender resources were now stretched unbearably tight Irini fondly imagined that her daughter bought lunch for herself while she was out supposedly seeking employ­ment.

  However, at noon, when Olympia returned from a visit to the enviably luxurious cloakroom on the top floor, she found a cup of tea and three biscuits awaiting her. Her strained face softened with her smile. The receptionist gave her a decidedly conspiratorial glance in return. By then, Olympia was convinced that just about every person of importance in the building had traversed the reception area to take a peek at her. Sympathy was now softening the discomfiture her initial vigil had inspired. Not that it was going to do her much good, she conceded heavily, when Nik obviously had an alternative exit from his office.

  At three that afternoon, when the last of her patience had worn away, her desperation started to mount. Nik would soon be on his way back to Greece and even more out of her reach. Olympia reached a sudden decision and got up swiftly from her seat. Hurrying past the reception desk that she had pre­viously respected as a barrier, she started down the wide cor­ridor that had to lead to Nik's inner sanctum.

  'Miss Manoulis, you can't go down there!' the young re­ceptionist exclaimed in dismay.

  She would be a loser now whatever she did, Olympia re­flected with despairing bitterness. Forcing a confrontation with Nik was the wrong line to take. No Greek male appre­ciated an in-your-face female challenge. He would react like a caveman, every aggressive primal cell outraged by such boldness.

  As she headed for the door at the foot of the corridor, a set of male hands whipped round her forearms from behind and stopped her dead in her tracks.

  'I'm sorry, Miss Manoulis, but nobody goes in there with­out the boss's say-so,' an accented Greek voice spelt out tautly.

  'Damianos...' Even after ten years Olympia recognised that gravely voice, and her rigid shoulders bowed in defeat. Nik's bodyguard, who was built like a tank. 'Couldn't you have looked the other way just once?'

  'For your grandfather's sake, go home,' Damianos urged in a fierce undertone. 'Please go home, before you are eaten alive.'

  Olympia trembled as the older man's fingers loosened their hold. But that reluctance on his part to treat her like any other unwanted visitor was Damianos's mistake. Breaking free without hesitation, she literally flung herself the last ten feet and burst through that door.

  There was a blur of movement from behind the desk: Nik rising with startled abruptness at so explosive an interruption.

  In the split second that she knew was all she had at her disposal before Damianos intervened again, with greater ef­fect, Olympia parted her lips and breathed rawly, 'Are you a man or a mouse that you won't face one woman?'

  CHAPTER TWO

  From behind Olympia, Damianos read Nik's face and avoided seeing the slight inclination of his employer's head which signified his own dismissal.

  Out of breath, and expecting at any minute to be dragged out again, Olympia focused on Nik Cozakis for the first time in ten long years. Shock shrilled through her. He had got taller, his shoulders wider, and he had been tall and wide even to begin with. Well over six feet, he had towered over his relatives and friends. Now he cast a shadow like an in­timidating stone monolith.

  Olympia could feel his outrage like a physical entity, churning up the heavy silence, beating down on her in suf­focating waves. Man or mouse? A truly insane, derisive opening likely to push the average Greek male to violent response. She marvelled at his self-control, even as she winced at the loss of her own. Had she been a man, Nik would have knocked her through the wall for such an insult.

  'I'm sorry,' Olympia said, though she wasn't one bit sorry.

  'Damianos...' Nik murmured flatly.

  The door behind her finally closed.

  Olympia stared at him, couldn't help it. His sheer impact hit her and she reeled back an involuntary step, her tummy full of butterflies, her skin dampening. She took all of him in, all at once, in a single, almost greedy visualising burst. The devastating dark good looks, the raw, earthy force of his sexual aura, the contrasting formal severity of his beautifully cut dark suit. All male, nothing of the boy left but that aching beauty which had once entrapped her foolish heart. And those eyes, amber-gold as a jaguar cat, spectacularly noticeable in that lean, strong face.

  'Why are you humiliating yourself in this way?' Nik en­quired in a drawl as lazy as a hot summer afternoon.

  Belatedly, Olympia recognised her disorientation for the weakness it was. Angry dismay trammelled through her. She dredged her dilated pupils from his and stilled a shiver. 'I haven't humiliated myself.'

  'Have you not? Were it not for the respect I have for your grandfather, I would have had you forcibly ejected on the first day,' Nik shared in the same conversational tone.

  That dark, deep drawl betrayed no anger, but still a reflex­ive quiver snaked down Olympia's taut spinal cord. Colour ran up over her cheekbones. She forced her head high, dared a second collision with those stunning eyes, but was now careful to blank them out. 'I have a proposition to put to you.'

  'I'm not listening to any proposition,' Nik asserted dryly. But in spite of that cool intonation the atmosphere sizzled. She could feel goosebumps rising on her arms. She forgot to look through him without focusing and registered that those extraordinary eyes of his were now roaming over her with unconcealed derision. And instantly she became aware of her creased suit, the flyaway tendrils of hair that had dropped round her hot face, indeed of how very, very plain she was. In fact, just plain ugly next to him: Beauty and the Beast with a transfer of sexes.

  And it was mat harsh, long-accepted reality that hardened Olympia and gave her the backbone she had almost lost. Ten years ago it had broken her heart not to have even a smidgen of the beauty that might have attracted Nik to her. Now, that contemptuous look of his only reminded her of the pain he had caused her.

  'How can you look me in the face?' Nik growled in sudden disgust.

  'Easily...a clean conscience.' She flung her head back, challenging him.

  'You're a little whore,' Nik contradicted with purring insolence.

  Untouched by an accusation so far removed from the truth Olympia was, however, quite amazed that he still felt a need to abuse her so long afte
r the event. It struck her as almost hilariously ironic that she appeared to have made a bigger impression on Nik with her apparent infidelity than she had ever contrived to make on him as his fiancée.

  As a rueful laugh fell from her lips, his darkly handsome features clenched hard. 'Call me what you like,' she advised with patent indifference. 'But I have genuinely come here with the offer of a business deal.'

  'Spyros Manoulis would not employ you as his messenger,' Nikos derided.

  'Well...in this particular case, of the three of us, it seems that only I have the indelicacy it requires to make this direct approach,' Olympia informed him in taut and partial apology for what she was about to spring on him. 'Can't you just take your mind off what happened ten years ago and listen to me ?'

  'No.'

  Olympia frowned in honest surprise. 'Why not?'

  Nik studied her with blazing golden eyes full of even greater incredulity.

  Refusing to be discouraged, Olympia breathed in very deep. 'My grandfather still wants you to take over Manoulis Industries. Now, let's face it...that's all he ever wanted, and all your father ever wanted was to ensure that you got it. I was just the connecting link...I wasn't remotely important except as a sort of guarantee of family kinship and mutual trust.'

  'What is this nonsense?' Nik demanded with raw distaste.

  'I'm stripping matters back to their bones...OK?'

  'No, it is not OK. Get out,' Nik said flatly.

  'No...no, I am not getting out!' Olympia's hands trembled and she clenched them into fierce fists. 'You've had ten years of revenge already—'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' he grated.

  'If you marry me, I'll sign everything over to you...' Olympia told him shakily.

  She really had Nik's attention now. His brilliant eyes rested on her with a quality of stunned stillness she had never seen etched there before.

  'Not a proper or normal marriage...just whatever would satisfy my grandfather—and he doesn't give a damn about me either, so he really wouldn't be looking for much!' Olympia pointed out, frantically eager to state her case before Nik emerged from what had to be a rare state of paralysis. 'I'd stay on here in England...all I'd need is an allowance to live on, and in return you'd have the Manoulis empire all to yourself and not even the annoyance or embarrassment of me being around...'

  A dark flush of red had now risen to accentuate the prom­inence of Nik's fabulous cheekbones. He grated something in guttural Greek.

  ‘Nik...try to understand that I'm desperate or I wouldn't be suggesting this. I know you think—'

  'How dare you approach me with such an offer?' Nik de­manded thunderously.

  I—'

  Striding forward, Nik Cozakis fastened powerful hands to her slim forearms before she could back away. 'Are you in­sane?' he questioned rawly. 'You must be out of your mind to come to me like this! How could you think for one mo­ment that I would marry an avaricious, brazen little tramp like you?'

  'Think business contract, not marriage.' Although Olympia was shaking like a leaf in his hold, she was determined not to be sidetracked by meaningless personal insults. After all, she didn't give two hoots what he thought of her.

  His outraged amber-gold gaze raked her pale oval face. 'A woman who went out to a public car park to lift her skirt for one of my friends like a common prostitute picked up out of the street?'

  Not having been prepared for Nik to get quite that graphs Olympia jerked and lost every scrap of colour. She parted tremulous lips. 'Not that it matters now...but that never hap­pened, Nik.'

  He thrust her away from him in unconcealed disgust. 'It was witnessed. That you should offend me with such an of­fer—'

  'Why should it be an offence?' Olympia demanded fiercely. 'If you could just turn your back on the past, you would see that this is exactly what you wanted ten years ago and more...because I'm not expecting to be your wife or live with you or interfere with you in any way.'

  'Spyros would strike you dead where you stand for this...’ Olympia loosed a shaken laugh. 'Oh, he would cringe at my methods, but not three days ago he told me that the only way I would ever win his forgiveness would be to marry you...so it's not like I have a choice, is it?'

  'You made your choice ten years ago in the car park.' Studying the carpet, Olympia felt drained. She saw the pointlessness of protesting her innocence now when she had failed to do so at the time—when, indeed, silence had been so much a part of her revenge.

  Warily, she glanced up again, and noticed in some surprise that his attention was welded to her chest. Lowering her own gaze, she saw that a button had worked loose on her blouse and exposed the full swelling upper curves of her breasts. With unsteady hands, her cheeks hot and flushed, she hastily redid the button. Nik slowly lifted his eyes, inky black spiky lashes low on a glimmer of smouldering gold that entrapped her eyes and burned through her like a blowtorch.

  'I just wish I'd had you first...if I'd had you, you wouldn’t have been desperate enough to go out to that car park.' 'Don't talk to me like that,' she muttered, seriously disconcerted both by that statement and the offensive manner in which Nik was looking her over.

  A hard curve to his wide, sensual mouth, he watched her fumbling efforts to tug her jacket closed over her blouse with derisive amusement. 'I'll talk whatever way I want to you. Did you think you'd cornered the market on forthright speech?'

  'No, but—'

  Nik flung back his handsome head and laughed outright. 'You thought you could come here and ask me to marry you and get respect?'

  'I thought you would respect what I could be worth to you in terms of financial profit,' Olympia framed doggedly.

  A tiny muscle jerked tight at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. 'You play with fire and you don't even know it. How desperate are you, Olympia?'

  Her knees were wobbling. Something had changed in Nik. She sensed that, but she couldn't see or understand what The atmosphere was so tense, and yet he was now talking with smooth, calm control, and she couldn't believe that he was still angry. Perhaps he had finally let go of that anger, seeing how irrational it was to still rage about something which had only briefly touched his ego. After all, it wasn't as though he had cared one jot about her as a person.

  'My mother's not been well—'

  'Oh, not the sob story, please,' Nik cut in very dryly. 'What sort of idiot do you take me for?'

  Olympia's hands curled into tight, defensive fists by her sides. 'Maybe I'm just sick of being poor... what does it mat­ter to you?'

  'It doesn't.' Making that confirmation, Nik lounged back with innate poise and grace against the edge of his desk and surveyed her where she hovered tautly in the centre of his office carpet. 'However, one fact I will acknowledge. You have more nerve than any woman I've ever met.'

  A little natural colour eased back into Olympia's drawn cheeks.

  'You must indeed be desperate to approach me with a marriage proposal. I'll think it over,' Nik drawled with soft, silken cool.

  The rush of hope she experienced left her light-headed.

  'Giftwrapped with the Manoulis empire, you saw no rea­son why I shouldn't consider your proposition?' Nik ques­tioned in smooth addition.

  She frowned uncertainly. 'You're a businessman, like my grandfather. You would have nothing to lose by agreement, and so much to gain...'

  'So much,' Nik Cozakis savoured, regarding her wir.fi veiled eyes that were nonetheless surprisingly intent on her.

  But then he wasn't really seeing her, Olympia reckoned. He was thinking of the power he stood to gain. Yet the sizzle of unbearable tension still licked at her senses. Her breath shortened in her throat, her heart-rate speeding up. She collided head-on with his steady gaze and the most disturbing sense of dizziness almost overwhelmed her. It vaguely re minded her of the way she'd used to feel around Nik, elec­trified in all sorts of deeply embarrassing ways by his mere proximity in the same room. But now she put the reaction down to hunger, stress and sheer men
tal exhaustion, because she wasn't attracted by him any more. It had only been the initial shock of seeing him again which had discomfited her at the outset of their interview.

  'So where do I contact you?' Nik enquired.

  She stiffened. Her fierce pride was reasserting itself now. There had been nothing personal in the proposal she had made to him: that had been strictly business. But she really . didn't want him to know that she couldn't even afford a telephone line. Indeed, she couldn't bear the idea of him finding out just how deep she had sunk into the poverty trap because that felt like a very personal failure. 'I'll give you a number but it's not my own...you can leave a message for me there.' 'Why the secrecy?'

  Olympia ignored the question. After a moment, he ex­tended a notepad and pen to her. She scrawled down the number of the only neighbour she and her mother had be­come friendly with. Mrs Scott was the middle-aged widow who lived opposite them.

  'I'll go now, then...' she said, suddenly awkward again now that she had nothing more to say. Nik shifted a careless shoulder, signifying his indifference. And she thought then that he wouldn't ever use that phone number. Her own shoulders downcurved. Without another word, she walked out of his big fancy office and closed the door with a quiet snap. Damianos was waiting outside, his broad features stiff and troubled.

  'He didn't eat me alive,' Olympia announced with a weak but reassuring smile, for she had always liked the older man. 'He will...' The bodyguard muttered heavily. 'But that's none of my business, Miss Manoulis.'

  She reached Reception before her head began to swim and her legs threatened to buckle. She dropped down into a seat and bowed her head, breathing in slow and deep, struggling to get a hold on herself again. It was as if she had used up every resource she possessed. Never had she felt so totally drained. But a minute later she got up, hit the lift button and raised her head high again. She had done what she had to do and she was not about to waste time regretting it.

  Before she let herself into the flat she shared with her mother, Olympia called in on Mrs Scott to mention that she might be receiving a phone call. The older woman looked amused when Olympia added with palpable embarrassment that if a call did come, she would be grateful if any message was passed on to her personally, rather than to her mother. But three days later Nik hadn't called.