The Cozakis Bride

by Lynne Graham

  'We're getting off the subject,' Olympia said in curt inter­ruption, tensing at the recollection of the names he had called her. In retrospect, she recognised that she now felt sensitive to his low opinion of her morals, and she wondered why on earth that should be.

  Just as quickly, she marvelled at her stupidity in allowing him to demand, unchallenged, that she sign away any claim on the Manoulis empire and trustingly depend on his gen­erosity. 'What you said about me signing away everything—'

  'Non-negotiable,' Nik interrupted with gleaming dark eyes. 'Take it or leave it.'

  Olympia breathed in deep. 'I don't care about the money—'

  'If you don't care, why are you arguing?'

  She didn't trust him. But she did nonetheless trust the promise he had made about her mother, and that was all that mattered, she reminded herself. After all, she would be living with her mother and looking after her. Why had she argued?

  Nik shot her a sardonic appraisal. 'Do you think I would keep my wife in penury?'

  She flushed. 'No.'

  He glanced down at the slim gold watch on his wrist and then back at her. 'This is progressing very slowly, Olympia. May I move on?'

  She nodded.

  'Your belief that we could marry and separate immediately after the ceremony is ridiculous. Your grandfather would not accept a charade of that nature, and nor would I be prepared to deceive him in that way.'

  She tensed. 'So what are you suggesting?'

  'You will have to live in one of my homes...for a while, at least.'

  She focused her mind on her mother's needs and gave him another reluctant nod.

  'You give me a son and heir.'

  Olympia blinked, lips falling slightly apart.

  'Yes, you did hear that.' Nik surveyed her shocked face with cynical cool. 'I need a son and heir, and if I have to marry you, I might as well make the most of the opportunity.

  'You've got to be joking!' Olympia gasped, so taken aback by that calm announcement she could barely vocalise.

  Nik elevated a black brow. ‘The son and heir is also non-negotiable. And, unless I change my mind at some future date, a daughter will not be an acceptable substitute. Sorry if that sounds sexist, but there are still a lot of daughters out there who do not want to be leaders in industry!'

  Olympia sat in the armchair staring at him as if he had taken leave of his wits. 'You hate me, you can't possibly w-want to—'

  'Wouldn't faze me in the slightest, Olympia. You may be damaged goods, but I'm not over-sensitive when it comes to practicality,' Nik delivered, running slumberous dark eyes over her as if he was already stripping off her clothes piece by piece. 'And as I have no respect for you whatsoever, con­ceiving a child should be fun.'

  'You'd have to make me!' Olympia breathed in growing outrage.

  Nik winced and regarded her with semi-screened eyes. 'Oh, I don't think so...I think you'll cling and beg me to stay with you like all my other women do. I'm a hell of a good lay, believe me. You'll enjoy yourself.'

  Olympia jerked up out of her chair, so shattered by that speech she was at screaming point. 'You invited me here to try and humiliate me—'

  'Trying doesn't come into it. Sit down, Olympia, because I haven't finished yet.'

  Olympia threw him a look of fierce disgust. 'Get lost!'

  She stalked over to the chair where he had tossed her jacket and snatched it up.

  'If I were you, I wouldn't push me,' Nik drawled in a soft undertone that danced down her rigid spine like a gypsy's curse. 'I've got you where I want you.'

  'No way!' she launched at him, in such a temper that if he had come any closer she would have swung a fist at him with pleasure.

  'Does your mother know about the sordid little encounter in the car park that concluded your visit to Greece ten years ago?'

  Olympia's feet welded to the carpet. Her face drained of colour as if he had pulled a switch. So appalled was she by that question she just stared into space, her stomach knotting with instant nausea.

  'Lesson one, Olympia,' Nik murmured with soft, sibilant clarity. 'When I say I've got you where I want you... listen!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nik Cozakis strolled across his enormous office and gently eased the jacket from Olympia's loosened grasp to cast it aside again.

  He closed his hand over hers and guided her back to the armchair. Positioning her in front of it, he gave her a gentle push downward, and her knees bent without her volition. She sank down in slow motion but settled heavily as a stone. 'You wouldn't...you couldn't approach my mother...' Nik hunkered down in front of her with innate athletic grace. Level now with her, he scanned her ashen face and appalled eyes. 'Oh what a dark, dark day it was for you when you walked into my office, Olympia...' he murmured with silken satisfaction.

  Olympia was now in so much shock she was shaking. You don't know what my mother knows—'

  'What do you think I've spent the last week having done? I've had enquiries made,' Nik told her levelly. 'Your mother was very friendly with your next-door neighbour at your last address, and she was a very talkative woman.'

  'Mrs Barnes wouldn't remember—I mean, you couldn't possibly...' Olympia was stammering helplessly now, so horrified by the threat he had made she could barely string two coherent thoughts together.

  'Unfortunately for you, the lady remembered very well, for the simple reason that your disappointment that summer ten years ago has long been an ongoing source of regret to your mother, Irini, and a subject to which she often referred.'

  'No—'

  'You came home to loads of tea and sympathy, you little liar,' Nik framed with slashing scorn, his dark, deep drawl flaming through her like a cutting steel knife. 'You lied your head off about why our engagement was broken!'

  Transfixed, Olympia gasped strickenly. 'It wasn't all lies, j-just a few evasions...I mean, I never did what you thought I did in that car park anyway, so why would I mention it?'

  Nik shook his arrogant dark head at that claim and sighed, 'You're getting just a little desperate here, and really there's no need.'

  'No need? After what you just—?'

  'If you do as you're told, you have nothing to be afraid of. I will take your sordid little secret to the grave with me,' Nik promised evenly. 'Hand on my heart, I would really hate to be a prime mover in distressing your mother.'

  'Then don't!'

  Nik vaulted fluidly upright again and spread lean brown hands wide. 'I'm afraid there's a problem there...'

  'What problem?' Olympia rushed in to demand jerkily.

  'I have a powerful personal need for revenge,' Nik admit­ted, without a shadow of discomfiture.

  'Revenge?' Olympia stressed with incredulity.

  'You dishonoured me ten years ago. Philotimo...Or do you not even know what that word means?' he derided.

  Olympia had turned even paler. Philotimo could not be translated into one simple English word. It stood for all the attributes that made a man feel like a real man in Greece. His pride, his honesty, his respect for himself and for others.

  'I see that your mother educated you to some degree about our culture,' Nik noted. 'I wish to avenge my honour. You shamed me before my family and my friends.'

  'Nik...I—'

  'I could just about bear you surviving in misery some­where in the world as long as I never had to see you or think about you,' Nik extended gently. ‘Then you came into my office and asked me if I was a man or a mouse and I found out which...just as you're going to find out by the time I'm finished with you.'

  ‘I apologised—'

  But you didn't mean it, Olympia.'

  I mean it now!’

  Disconcertingly, Nik flung his handsome dark head back and laughed with reluctant appreciation at that qualification.

  Olympia took strength from that sign of humanity. 'You're not serious about all this,' she told him urgently. 'You're angry with me and you want to shake me up, and I wish...I really do wish now that I had never come
near you.'

  Nick dealt her a hard, angry smile. 'I bet you do. Accept that you've brought this particular roof down on yourself!'

  Olympia squared her aching shoulders. 'All I did—'

  'All you did?' Nik rasped with seething force, his lean strong face hard as iron, his fierce anger blazing out at her in a scorching wave of intimidation. 'You dared to believe that you could buy me with your dowry!'

  Olympia gulped. 'I—'

  'Even worse, you dared to suggest that I, Nikos Cozakis, would sink to the level of cheating an elderly man whom I respect for the sake of profit. That elderly man is your grand­father... have you no decency whatsoever?' he roared at her in disgust.

  Olympia was cringing, devastated by the manner in which he seemed to be twisting everything around and making her sound like a totally horrible person. 'It wasn't like that. I thought—'

  'I'm not interested in hearing your thoughts...every time you open your mouth you say something more offensive than you last said. So if you have any wit at all, you'll keep it closed!' Nik advised with savage derision, a dark line of col­our delineating his hard cheekbones. 'You owe debts, and through me you will settle those debts.'

  'What are you t-talking about?'

  'What you did ten years ago cost your poor mother any hope of reconciliation with her father. What you did ten years ago savaged your grandfather. And what you did to me, you can find out the hard way,' Nik concluded darkly.

  Stabbed to the heart by that reminder about her mother. Olympia dropped her head, tears springing to her eyes. ‘It wasn't my fault...what happened...I was set up—'

  'You're embarrassing me,' Nik slotted in with contempt 'Lies and fake shame are not going to protect you.'

  'You're scaring me...' Olympia condemned tearful 1, 'You are really scaring me!'

  Nik bent down and closed his hands to hers and tugged her upright. 'You're getting too upset.'

  'You can't mean all this stuff you've been saying...'

  'I do...but I don't like seeing a woman cry.' Linking hi arms round her, Nik stared down at her from his immensely superior height, dark eyes smouldering gold over her damp upturned face.

  Olympia's breath tripped in her throat. Suddenly she could feel every individual nerve-ending in her trembling body coming alive. The effect was so immediate it made her head spin. The scent of him was in her nostrils. Warm, husky male with an intrinsic something extra which was somehow exotic and exciting and dizzily familiar. Her heart began to pound in her eardrums.

  'Even crocodile tears can get a reaction from me.' Nik slid a big hand down over her hips and eased her so close to the muscular power of his thighs that she gasped, a sort of wild heat whipping over her entire skin surface, leaving every inch terrifyingly sensitive to the contact of his lean, hard physique.

  'Nik... no—'

  'Nik...yes, only you'll learn to say it in Greek and it will be your favourite word,' Nik husked, suddenly hauling her up to him and plunging his mouth down on hers with de­vouring force.

  The hard, sensual shock of him engulfed her in a split second. She had never tasted passion like that before the stab of his tongue inside the tender interior of her mouth hit her with such electrifying effect her whole body jerked and quivered, a low moan of response breaking deep in her throat. Instantly she was melting, burning, craving more. Her arms closed round him and an amount of hunger that blew her away erupted with the shuddering force of a dam breaking its banks within her.

  Nik dragged his mouth free of hers and lowered her to the carpet again, a derision in his raking scrutiny that stabbed her to the heart. 'Hungry, aren't you?'

  Devastated by what she had allowed to happen between them, and jolted by a sense of loss so strong it hurt, Olympia swung up her hand to strike him. Nik caught her wrist be­tween firm fingers, the speed of his reaction shocking her. 'Those kinds of games don't excite me,' he warned her dryly. Olympia whirled away from him in a fever of confusion and distress. She couldn't believe that she had responded to him. She didn't want to believe it, any more than she could come to terms with the stormy surge of sexual need which had betrayed her. 'You wouldn't tell my mother—*

  'Want to run that risk? And destroy the single character trait you have that I can admire?'

  'And what's that?' she muttered shakily. 'You love your mother and you don't want her to know what you're really like.'

  Olympia felt her jacket being draped round her slumped shoulders. 'You can't want to marry me—'

  'Why not? I get the Manoulis empire and a son and heir. Spyros gets a great-grandson—a reward and consolation which he certainly deserves. I also get a wife who really knows how to behave herself, a wife who never, ever ques­tions where I go or what I do because we have a business deal, not a marriage,' Nik enumerated lazily. 'A lot of men would envy me. Especially as I didn't even have to go look­ing for my bridal prize...she put herself on a plate for me.' 'I hate you...' Olympia whispered with real vehemence. 'I'll never marry you...do you hear me?'

  'I hope you're not about to go all wimpy on me, Olympia,' Nik sighed. 'I'd find that very boring.'

  'You bastard...you rotten bastard...what are you doing?' she demanded as he separated the ringers of her hand.

  'Here is your engagement ring... No, not the family heir loom you flung back at me ten years ago...you don't qualify for a compliment like that.'

  Olympia stared down mute and stunned at the diamond solitaire now adorning her engagement finger.

  'Romantic touch. Your mother will appreciate it even I you can't.'

  Nik walked her through a connecting door into another, room and straight into a lift.

  'You can't do this to me, Nik!' Olympia argued weakly.

  'Damianos is waiting in the car park down below. He'll see you get driven home. Get some sleep. I'll see you to­morrow.' As Olympia's- cardigan threatened to fall off, Nik wrapped it round her like a blanket. Then he punched the relevant button on the lift control panel for her.

  The doors whirred shut. Olympia snatched in a shivering breath, suddenly appreciating that she had a dreadful pound­ing headache and that she had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. She tottered out of the lift into a well-lit basement car park. Damianos glanced at her waxen face and averted his attention again.

  Nik's bodyguard had warned her that she would be eaten alive, she recalled dully. She hadn't listened, hadn't believed him, would not have credited in a million years that Nik Cozakis could run rings round her now that she was an adult of twenty-seven. But Nik had run so many rings round her that right now she might as well have been lurching one-legged through a swamp as she followed Damianos to the. waiting limousine.

  All of a sudden she saw herself as a fisherman, who had dangled a worm as bait and suffered the gut-wrenching shock of a man-eating shark rearing up out of the waves in front of her. And she couldn't believe, didn't believe, flatly refused to even begin to believe that Nik would carry through on such threats.

  Olympia wakened with a heavy head the next morning.

  When she had arrived home the night before, Irini Manoulis had already retired to bed. Olympia had lain awake far into the early hours, engaged in a frantic mental search for an escape. But there was only one possible escape route: she had to have the courage to call Nik's bluff. Why on earth hadn't she mentioned her mother's weak heart? However much he hated and despised Olympia, Nik would not threaten the health of a sick and fragile woman.

  Olympia clawed up into a sitting position, using both hands to throw back die heavy mane of hair that rippled in tumbled mahogany waves almost to her waist. She grimaced. A grown woman of her age with hair still that long! She remembered her mother brushing it when she was a little girl, but most of all she remembered Nik skimming light fingertips through those glossy strands and saying, 'I love your hair...'

  Ten years ago, ferocious bitterness and a mindless need to hit back at Nik Cozakis the only way she could had con­trolled her. That was why she hadn't defended herself whe
n she'd been accused of betraying Nik with Lukas Theotokas. By then convinced that she had been used and abused by everyone who surrounded her, she had preferred the tag of being shameless to the reality of being exposed as she really was.

  Number one wimp and patsy and fool! That was what she had been. She had only been a means to an end to her grand­father, human goods to be traded through marriage to the most prestigious bidder. Nik and his ambitious father had only seen the Manoulis empire, on offer for the price of a wedding ring. Hands had been shaken on the deal before she had even set foot on Greek soil.

  And though she didn't want to relive the past, emotional turmoil had released memories she usually kept buried, and her treacherous subconscious summoned up afresh her first sight of Nikos Cozakis at her grandfather's villa...

  Nik by the pool, with a drink in his hand, sleek and de­signer casual in cream chinos and a black T-shirt. There had been at least ten other young people present that afternoon but Olympia, shy and self-conscious and nervous at being among so many strangers, had seen only Nik.

  Nik, laughing at a friend's quip, jaguar eyes glittering in the sunshine. He had stared fixedly at her as she'd emerged from the villa. Deliberate slow cue to double take. Olympia reflected bitterly now on that moment. He had probably looked and thought, She's even plainer than her photographs! But back then Olympia had lacked all such perception, and she had been as transfixed by Nik as an eager new convert before a golden idol.

  With a distinct lack of subtlety her grandfather had urged Nik over so that he could immediately introduce them. And Olympia had duly mumbled and stammered and blushed like an idiot, staring a hole in Nik's black T-shirt. Her mind had been a blank while she'd struggled without success to come up with something verbally witty and memorable to hold his attention. But she needn't have worried, Nik had done all the talking for her.

  Pained by that memory of her own naivety, Olympia emerged from her reverie and made herself concentrate on the present. The even more hideous present. If she told her mother the truth of what had happened that summer, Irini Manoulis would be devastated. Her mother would believe her daughter's version of events, but the humiliation of what Olympia had endured would cause her deep distress. And her gentle parent would never, ever understand why Olympia had failed to hotly defend her own reputation.