‘Something like that.’
Her doe eyes were fixed on him with unashamed curiosity. ‘Something like what?’
‘My mother and I used to live in a room in the attic,’ he supplied, adopting the tone he used to denote the end of a subject.
Alessandra ignored his tone and raised her eyes to gaze at the ceiling. ‘You lived in the attic here?’
‘Yes, here. My mother was a childhood friend of his. When we were kicked out of our old place, Mikolaj and his wife gave us the attic room.’
She looked back at him, her pretty brows drawing together. ‘One room? For the both of you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That must have been hard.’
‘You have no idea,’ he said, more harshly than he’d intended. In those days, Mikolaj had been barely scraping a living for himself and his own family. If not for his incredibly generous heart, Christian and his mother would have lived on the streets. The attic room was given to them for free in exchange for his mother working in the kitchen. She’d been paid a share of the tips. It was all Mikolaj had been able to afford.
When Christian had made his first significant trade, a deal that had earned him a hundred thousand dollars, he’d sent Mikolaj a cheque for half the sum.
Looking back on those early years, it hadn’t been the poverty that had been the hardest to bear. The biggest cross had been living with his mother and her poisonous tongue.
Theos, but he didn’t want to imagine Alessandra losing the spark that made her such a passionate, vivacious person and turning into one of the Furies, as his mother had. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone but especially not her.
‘Do you ever see your father?’
‘No. He left when I was a baby.’
She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her hands on her chin. ‘That must have been hard too.’
‘It was hard for my mother, not me. I don’t remember him.’ He no longer wanted to remember him, although he had as a child, had been desperate to know any detail his mother could spare. As all her details had been disparaging at best, nothing concrete, he’d let his mind fly free to construct him. His father was a superhero who had gone to save a galaxy far, far away—unable to send his mother any money by dint of being in a galaxy far, far away. When that galaxy was saved, he would swoop back to Athens, and the little attic room his wife and son shared, and rescue them.
That fantasy sustained him for a few years until around the age of seven, when he’d overheard a conversation between Mikolaj and his eldest son. They’d been talking about Elena, Christian’s mother.
‘She can’t help the way she is,’ Mikolaj had said. ‘When Stratos left her for that woman, it poisoned her. He packed his stuff and left her with no money when the boy was only six months old.’
Christian had tuned the rest of the conversation out. It had been enough to convince him all his mother’s disparaging comments about his father were true. From that moment on, he’d no longer fantasised about his father. Stratos Markos was never going to swoop in to save them. That would be Christian’s job.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘HAVE YOU EVER tried to find your father?’ Alessandra asked a short while later, her eyes filled with curiosity.
‘What for?’ he dismissed. ‘Why would I want to involve myself with a man who abandoned his wife and child?’
‘I get that,’ she said, pulling a face.
He closed his eyes. ‘Your father is an alcoholic and a gambler. He was incapable of looking after you. He didn’t abandon you. He’s always been a fixture in your life. There’s a difference.’
She laughed contemptuously. ‘I thought you knew my background. My father dumped me on his father before I was a year old. Rocco took care of me from the moment I left hospital. My father wanted nothing to do with me—he still doesn’t. He’s never been there, not for any of the significant events in my life. My first Holy Communion, my Confirmation, the time I represented Milan in the under tens’ gymnastics,’ she said, ticking the events off on her fingers. ‘He wasn’t at any of them. The few times he’s bothered to join us as a family, he won’t speak to me. He’s never looked at me. I was there, I was present and still he didn’t want me. So don’t try and make out I can’t understand what it was like for you, growing up without a father, because my father abandoned me too, and, worst of all, he abandoned Rocco.’
He and Alessandra were like two peas but from pods grown in very different gardens, Christian realised. They’d both been abandoned by the people who should have been there for them. For good or ill, it had shaped them both. The distrust and avoidance of love and relationships.
They were more alike than he’d ever suspected.
Colour had heightened across Alessandra’s high cheekbones, her eyes ablaze with furious passion, the honey-brown a darkened swirl. He’d seen that swirl before, when she’d been pressed against the wall of her apartment.
Theos, she had felt unbelievably good in his arms, as if her contours had been shaped especially for him.
He regarded her carefully, pushing away thoughts of her naked: the way she had wrapped those lithe legs around him and clung to him, as if trying to burrow under his skin. Those same legs were pressed against his at that very moment...
The V of her dress had dipped, exposing the top of her golden cleavage, below which lay breasts that had become plumper since their time together.
What did they look like now? Did they still taste so sweet...?
This had to stop. Right now. Imagining them in bed together was what had got him into all this trouble in the first place, sitting in that Milanese restaurant, fascinated by her plump lips, imagining them over his...
He would not touch her again until they were legally man and wife. He’d given her his word. He might have screwed things up but he was determined to do the right thing from here on in. On paper, his track record with women was less than complimentary. Given that and her own history, he could understand why Alessandra would be untrusting. It was down to him to prove himself to her.
Theoretically, it should be easy. Christian loved sex—what red-blooded man didn’t?—but he’d never allowed his libido to run his life. With Alessandra... The longer she kept those gorgeous doe eyes fixed on him, the more his blood swirled with the need to consume her again. Everything about her spelled temptation, from the glossy chestnut hair that begged to have his fingers run through it to the toned golden arms his hands itched to trace. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, drink or eat, he would watch those beautiful lips and ache to press his own to them, to feel the heat of her breath merge with his.
Soon. Soon she would be his again.
‘At least you had Rocco,’ he said softly, thinking he would have given anything for a sibling when he’d been a child. It hadn’t been until he’d met his fellow Columbia Four that he’d realised what had been missing in his life: true friendship.
‘Emotionally, I had Rocco,’ she conceded. ‘But he’s seven years older than me. By the time I was eleven he was at university, thousands of miles away. My grandfather loved me but he had no experience of raising girls and preferred to leave me in the hands of the household staff.’
‘Our lives have been very different,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘It’s pointless comparing them. You have lived yours and I have lived mine.’
‘How has it been different?’ she pressed, leaning forward.
‘It just was.’
‘But how?’ A troubled look flitted over her face. ‘Christian, we are marrying in five days. I don’t want to marry a stranger.’
He reached for his wine and took a swallow. ‘You, agapi mou, come from a world of glamour and money. You have no comprehension what it was like for us. We were so poor that for a whole year I went without shoelaces—trivial in the scheme of things but imagine it for a minute
. I arrived at university with only one change of clothes. I was the child people like you pretended not to see.’
Alessandra was like one of those mythical creatures he had watched swish past this very taverna’s front while he’d swept the floor. Unobtainable. Better than him. Better than he could ever be no matter how much money was held in his bank account.
Angry colour stained her cheeks, and she opened her mouth, surely to argue with him, before she visibly controlled herself. The outrage that had sparked in her eyes softened. ‘Maybe you’re right that I can’t understand what your childhood was like. But I would like to try.’
He didn’t want her to understand. Christian wanted her to remain untouched by the deprivation and misery that had sucked his mother down a black pit, turning her into a bitter woman who, even if presented with a glass three-quarters full would still regard it as being a quarter empty. All the riches and success in the world hadn’t been enough to earn his mother’s love.
He had no memory of the happy, vibrant woman Mikolaj assured him she had once been. Love that had turned sour had soured her, marking her with such blackness that nothing he’d done had been enough to turn it into a lighter shade of grey.
He didn’t want that for Alessandra. Never for her.
Alessandra needed protection from it before it infected her too.
‘We’ve had a good response from all the wedding invitations,’ he said, deliberately and overtly changing the subject.
One hundred and fifty invites had been couriered across the world. It seemed even heads of state could drop commitments when it suited them and, with all the hype already surrounding their ‘whirlwind courtship,’ as the press was dubbing it, their wedding was shaping up to rival Rocco and Olivia’s as Wedding of the Century. One of the British glossies had offered one million pounds for exclusive rights. They had, politely, ignored the offer. He liked that Alessandra hadn’t been tempted to accept, one of the many ways she differed from all the other women he’d been with.
But wasn’t that the reason he’d been with those women? Because he could see the pound signs ringing in their eyes and so knew there was absolutely no danger they could ever develop anything like a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on your point of view—attachment to him? He hadn’t needed to protect those women from himself.
Her eyes sparked again before she sank back into her seat, gazing at him with a thoughtful expression.
‘All but a handful have replied and all in the affirmative,’ he added.
After too long a beat, she asked, ‘What about Rocco? Has he replied?’
It had been at Christian’s insistence that her brother had been invited. Left to Alessandra, he would have been ignored, something he knew she didn’t mean, her pride and anger doing the talking for her. It would break her heart to walk up the aisle of the chapel in the grounds of the hotel without her brother on her arm.
‘No,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘He hasn’t replied yet.’ And neither had Rocco responded to the dozen emails and text messages he’d sent to him, entreating him not to abandon his sister. Rocco hadn’t replied to a single one of them. He’d ignored all the messages and calls from Stefan and Zayed too.
The Columbia Four had been broken, just as he’d known they would be.
At least Stefan and Zayed were coming to the wedding. He would need his friends there. But not as much as Alessandra needed her brother.
If he had to get on his bended knee and beg, he would get Rocco to their wedding.
‘I sent a bridesmaid dress to Olivia,’ Alessandra blurted out, her cheeks staining with colour.
‘Have you heard back from her?’ he asked hopefully. If anyone could get through to Rocco, it would be his wife.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t expect to. Her loyalty is with Rocco, not me.’
Conversation paused when a waiter arrived at their table laden with plates of steaming food.
Once they had helped themselves to a little of each meze, Alessandra said, ‘Are many of your family coming?’
‘I don’t have any family.’
She looked confused. ‘What about your mother?’
‘I haven’t invited her.’
‘Why not?’
‘We do not want my mother at our wedding.’
‘Why not?’ she repeated.
‘Trust me.’ He dipped some pitta bread into the hummus and popped it into his mouth, leaving her in no doubt that, as far as he was concerned, this thread of discussion was over.
Her eyes glittered with incredulity, as if to say, trust you?
Instead of arguing with him, she took a drink of water and allowed him to steer the conversation to innocuous small talk about music they liked and films they had both seen and enjoyed. Their tastes were surprisingly similar.
Theos, she was so easy to talk to; she had a way of fixing her honey eyes on him and making him feel he was the only man to exist in the world.
To know he was the only man to have tasted her delights and to imagine tasting them again made him feel as if he had heated syrup running through his veins. It wasn’t just the contents of his trousers that stirred to be with her— everything felt heightened.
In that respect, the day of their wedding couldn’t come fast enough.
* * *
The hotel was in silence when they returned. For the first time Christian regretted having the entire complex to themselves. There was no one—other than the handful of duty staff—to distract his attention away from Alessandra.
His fiancée.
She’d taken the hint and stopped digging for information on his past, although something in her eyes had warned him not to expect her silence to last for long. Instead, they had relaxed into easy conversation, just as they had on their one real date together. As on that night in Milan, he’d found his eyes drawn to her lips. They fascinated him. She fascinated him.
What was it with this woman? he wondered as they climbed the private lift to the top floor. His awareness of her was off the charts. His body reacted to everything, from the way her mouth moved to her husky laugh, to the way she smoothed her hair back to keep it from her face.
Alessandra’s eyes had been as firmly fixed on him as his had been on her. She hadn’t drunk any alcohol but he recognised the signs of inhibitions loosening. Just as they had that night in Milan.
He would not act on it. Not tonight. Not until they were legally man and wife.
Man and wife.
Three words he would never have put together with himself and, he knew, Alessandra would never have put with herself.
If he were being honest, he would have to admit that, if someone had put a gun against his head and said he had to choose one woman of all the women he’d been with to marry and have a baby with, Alessandra would have topped the list. All the other women had been fun and flirty but without an ounce of substance. Exactly the way he’d liked them. No commitment, no emotions. No chance of them falling in love and that love turning into bitterness.
Alessandra had a fun and flirty streak in her but she also had substance by the barrel. Her emotions were right there on the surface, no pretence, no subterfuge and, Theos, she was sexier than any mortal had a right to be.
He’d spent half the evening fantasising about those luscious lips.
They reached the door to her suite.
‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ she said, leaning against the wall by the door. Her eyes were wide; even under the soft lighting he could see the dilation of her pupils.
‘It’s been my pleasure.’
And it had been.
He didn’t want the evening to end.
What was there to stop him leaning in for a kiss?
Nothing.
Except he’d given his word that nothing physical would happen between them
again until they were legally married and he would keep that promise even if his testicles exploded with frustration.
‘Are you working tomorrow?’ She rubbed a hand up her arm, the movement pushing her breasts together. The image of dusky pink nipples immediately floated into his mind and with it came the thickening of his blood he was fast associating to feeling when with her.
He had to assume it was a simple case of forbidden fruit tasting sweeter. Like the child in the sweet shop who had no money and salivated over every piece of delicious confectionery on offer.
‘Yes. Some of our guests are arriving in the evening. I should be back to greet them with you.’
‘I guess this will be the first public display of our love and unity,’ she said, an ironic smile whispering across her face.
He palmed her cheek and rubbed his thumb over the soft skin. He could do that much without breaking his vow. ‘Can you handle it?’
‘Can you?’
‘For the sake of our child, yes, I can.’
Her eyes held his. She raised a hand and pressed it to his fingers still resting against her cheek. ‘Then I can too.’
Alessandra was certain he was going to kiss her. She recognised the look in his eyes, the desire in them that darkened the blue. She’d seen that look before, right before she’d pressed her lips to his in her apartment...
He stepped away before either of them had the chance to act on it, dragging his thumb down her cheek one last time.
‘Sleep well, agapi mou,’ he said, bowing his head, then turning on his heel and striding down the corridor to his own suite.
She didn’t know if the breath she expelled was one of relief or disappointment.
* * *
After yet another unsettled night, Alessandra got out of bed early, not long after the sun had begun to rise.
Showering quickly, she shrugged on a short, lime-green sundress and slid her feet into a pair of wedged espadrilles, then grabbed her camera and headed out of her suite. As she made her way up the corridor, she passed Christian’s room.
Was he still sleeping?
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