Bride Behind The Billion-Dollar Veil (Crazy Rich Greek Weddings Book 2)

by Clare Connelly

  There was a reason he’d always avoided anything like commitment.

  He was terrible at it.

  And he didn’t see a need to change that aspect of his personality. Still, he didn’t like seeing Alice frown.

  ‘You’re going to break the chain,’ he said, aiming for teasing and light-hearted. Her fingers immediately snapped away from it, her features apologetic.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was doing it.’

  He bit back an impatient sigh. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  The stars of the night sky sparkled brightly, the isolation of his island ensuring complete clarity in the atmosphere.

  ‘Kosta said something interesting about you,’ she said slowly, her eyes roaming his face as though whatever it was might have an answer in his features.

  ‘Did he?’

  She sipped her wine, perhaps buying time. ‘He said you were on a dangerous downward spiral, after your father’s conviction.’

  Thanos felt as if a knife were being sliced along the side of his heart. ‘Oh?’

  She nodded, somewhat self-consciously. ‘He said your brother held you together.’

  Thanos’s smile was a self-deprecating acknowledgement of this. ‘I think Kosta was right.’

  ‘You’re very close to him?’

  ‘To Kosta?’ Thanos joked, deliberately misunderstanding, looking for a smile any way he could get it.

  She offered him a half-hearted lift of her lips.

  ‘Leo and I were pretty much raised as twins from the time I came to live with him.’

  ‘He didn’t resent you?’

  Thanos’s lips were a grim line in his face. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t mean he should have,’ she said quietly, reaching out and putting her hand over Thanos’s, her comfort and perceptiveness qualities that made something sharpen against his insides. ‘Only that he was a young boy himself, and his world must also have felt a bit like a bomb had been exploded into it.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Alice bit down on her lower lip. ‘But you’re close now?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled, because he wanted her to smile back at him, and she did, so his stomach rolled and all his breath threatened to explode from his lungs. Her smile was every bit as beautiful as the stars overhead.

  ‘He seemed nice,’ Alice said. ‘And I liked his wife.’

  ‘Hannah? She has been good for him.’

  Alice was quiet a moment. ‘In what way?’

  ‘You know his first wife died?’

  Alice nodded. She’d read about it at the time, and had heard of it again once she’d started temping at Stathakis. Murdered, along with Leonidas’s son Brax, in a vendetta against Dion and his criminal connections. A shiver ran down Alice’s spine.

  ‘Leonidas closed himself off after that. He just took himself out of life; he became a shadow of his usual self. It was hard to watch.’

  ‘But understandable,’ Alice murmured.

  ‘Perhaps at first. But after four years, I was worried he would never wake up again.’

  ‘And she woke him up?’

  Thanos’s smile was spontaneous. ‘Yes. She fell pregnant—unexpectedly—and Leonidas had no choice. If he wanted to be a part of their baby’s life, he had to open himself up to Hannah.’

  ‘Their little girl looked adorable.’

  ‘She is.’ His smile turned to something more serious as he studied Alice’s face. ‘I cannot imagine what was going through your father’s mind, to choose not to be a part of your life.’

  Alice shook her head. ‘Nor yours.’

  ‘But I was a nightmare,’ he said, his voice light-hearted despite his pronouncement. ‘And you were, I’m sure, a delight.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Hardly.’ Then she leaned forward, so her legs brushed his beneath the table and her fingers could lace through his. ‘And you don’t really think there’s any justification for choosing not to be a part of your child’s life, do you?’

  His eyes glittered but he didn’t answer.

  ‘I came to accept, a long time ago, that my father was a person lacking in moral fibre. That his choices weren’t a reflection on me. You must see the same is true of you and Dion?’

  ‘I think I was not an easy child to love,’ he said carefully, no longer wishing to continue the conversation. He pulled his hand away with an apologetic smile, and lifted his drink. He angled his face towards the ocean, wondering at the way his heart was slamming hard against his ribcage.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t be. I became used to being completely alone in the world a long time ago. I like being alone, Alice. It’s how I’m meant to be.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN ALICE WOKE with a start that night, she knew exactly why. The panic attack that was roaring through her was intense and impossible to ignore. A fine bead of perspiration had broken out on her brow, and her breathing was ragged. She shifted a little, casting a glance over Thanos before pushing the covers back and slipping from the bed. The silk negligee she wore moulded to her skin as she moved from their bedroom, down the wide, curving staircase and into the kitchen.

  It was the middle of the night, the witching hour, when dark thoughts were at their zenith and hope seemed to have ceased to exist. The view through the kitchen windows was all black, save for a milky line of moonlight that trembled across the ocean.

  ‘I like being alone, Alice.’

  His words had woken her. They’d been rushing through her, jamming her sleep, blocking her dreams, filling her with a sense of desperation, because they were wrong. They had to be.

  He’d chosen to be alone to protect himself, and more than anyone she understood that. She’d done the same thing, hadn’t she? Sure, she’d moved around a lot, but choosing not to make friends was a way of staving off hurt. Loss was something Alice had seen as a way of life, a necessity, and so she’d closed herself off to any hope of happiness and friendship.

  The one time she’d let herself believe that maybe there was someone out there who would choose to love her, she’d been forcibly reminded of how completely unlikely that seemed.

  So she’d gone back to choosing solitude, loneliness, and a lack not just of companionship, but of everything.

  She’d fallen into a track of being on her own and it had taken this sham marriage to pull her out of it, to realise how incredible it felt to let yourself share with someone, to be vulnerable with them, to enjoy their company and crave more of it.

  Her heart gave a funny thump and she sat down on one of the kitchen stools with a little gasp of understanding.

  Because she hadn’t just come to rely on Thanos.

  She’d come to think of him as a part of her, or maybe that she was a part of him. Just that they were wound together, woven as if made of cloth, and no divorce could dissolve that. And this marriage wasn’t the reason this had happened. It was something much bigger and more important than that.

  She’d fallen in love with him.

  She loved him.

  She loved him in a way that made her unable to bear the thought of leaving him. She loved him in a way that made it impossible for her to think that he might not feel the same way—that he might be anxiously waiting on Kosta to sell P &A so he could walk away from this.

  Worse, to get back to the life he’d led before they’d met.

  At that, a genuine wave of nausea exploded inside her, the idea of seeing him with another woman, of seeing him with some glamorous model or actress draped over his frame, was as painful to her as if she’d cut off a limb.

  She loved him. The more she thought about it, the more it exploded in her brain, the realisation as clear and plain as day. Why hadn’t she seen it earlier? It was in every single moment they’d shared. She definitely hadn’t realised it at the time, but from the
first meal they’d shared—in that incredible restaurant tucked away in New York—something had been happening inside her. Something huge and powerful and all-important.

  She had to tell him.

  But what if he didn’t love her? What if he didn’t feel the same way?

  Uncertainty shimmered on the edges of her brain because she knew from experience that there was every possibility of that.

  Her own father hadn’t loved her.

  And Clinton had walked away from her—had derided her and humiliated her.

  What if Thanos did the same?

  Oh, he’d never hurt her, she knew that, but what if he looked at her with sympathy swirling in the depths of his beautiful eyes and shook his head, explained that he simply didn’t love her? That she was living in a fantasy world to even hope he might?

  Then she’d live.

  Somehow.

  She’d coped with heartbreak before. True, never like this had the potential to be, but it had been bad. Soul-destroying. Ugly. Unpleasant. And yet, she’d coped then; she’d cope again.

  What she’d never make her peace with was pretending she didn’t feel the way she did—pretending she didn’t feel as though her heart were going to burst from inside her chest, to explode all the way through her.

  She could live with loss.

  But never, ever with not knowing.

  * * *

  ‘Thanos. Are you awake?’

  He flung an arm over his eyes, squinting into the complete blackness of their bedroom. When had it become ‘theirs’? He didn’t even frown as the word slipped through his mind.

  It was just for now. He could deal with that.

  ‘No.’

  She made an impatient noise and then Alice’s fingers were prodding him in the shoulder. ‘I’m serious. I need to speak to you.’

  He wanted to go back to sleep. He’d never needed much—a few hours a night—but those few hours he generally liked to sleep deeply and undisturbed. Still, there was something in Alice’s tone that penetrated his fog, so he sat up, his eyes scanning her face.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ She let out a tremulous laugh. ‘I don’t know.’

  His expression shifted, worry slipped inside him. ‘What is it, agape?’

  The column of her throat shifted visibly as she swallowed. ‘I... I couldn’t sleep.’

  He laughed. ‘So you thought you’d wake me to suffer in insomnia with you?’

  She bit down on her lower lip and it wasn’t light enough to see her properly, so Thanos reached out and switched on the bedside lamp. Both squinted a little as they adjusted to the brightness.

  ‘I need to speak to you.’

  ‘Okay.’ The word was a prompt, an invitation.

  But Alice didn’t speak. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, but she also seemed to be anxious about something. Stressed. Nervous.

  He hadn’t seen her like this since that first day in the office when she’d been staring at the stack of overdue bills and her face had been ashen and her eyes bleak.

  ‘Tell me,’ he prompted, knowing that whatever it was, he’d fix it. Money, health, her mother? ‘Alice?’ Impatience zipped through him. Still, she didn’t speak. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said, her eyes beseeching.

  But it wasn’t good enough. Concern was slashing through him as a whip would butter. ‘Try harder.’

  Her voice shook when she spoke. ‘What are we doing?’

  It wasn’t at all what he’d expected her to say. ‘Huh?’

  ‘This. You, me.’ She pointed from him to her. ‘What is this?’

  Something shifted inside him, an emotion he couldn’t quite grasp. Guilt. Annoyance. Frustration. ‘I don’t understand.’ His voice was guarded.

  She breathed out softly, shifting a clump of her dark brown hair so he reached a hand out and caught it, smoothing it behind her ear.

  ‘This. Our marriage. I—can’t make sense of it.’

  He placed his hand on her arm, gently stroking her smooth flesh. Goosebumps trailed in the wake of his touch. ‘What’s to make sense of?’ he prompted, trying to join the dots and unable to connect them. He looked around for his phone, to check the time.

  ‘Alice, it’s two in the morning. Three hours ago we were making love and now you look as though you’ve seen ten ghosts. What’s happened?’

  A strangled noise erupted from her chest, a pained noise, and his worry grew.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘You said that.’

  She nodded jerkily, standing then, pacing towards the window and staring out of it. She wore a flimsy silk negligee and even then he ached to draw her into his arms, to pull her to his body and pleasure away whatever was worrying her.

  ‘I keep having this premonition of disaster,’ she said. ‘Like a blade of panic that comes out of nowhere. And I had no idea why; I couldn’t understand it because everything’s so good. Perfect, actually.’

  She turned around to look at him, her expression haunted, her eyes pleading.

  ‘And this is a problem?’

  She nodded slowly, her expression stricken. ‘Yeah, I think it might be.’

  His laugh was just a short, sharp sound of confusion. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the kind of perfect I want to hold onto.’ She bit down on her lip, allowing her words to sink in. ‘It’s the kind of perfect I want to last for ever.’

  For ever. Her words slammed into him, and on a cellular level he rejected each one instantly. There was no such thing as for ever. No such thing as happily-ever-after and a perfection that didn’t disappear.

  ‘I fell in love with you, Thanos.’ Her voice cracked, and then there was silence, as if she was waiting for him to speak. But he couldn’t because panic was strangling him, just as she’d described, wrapping around him, making his eyes a little blurry, and his brain squeal.

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Now she was whispering, wrapping her arms around her torso so she looked both ethereally beautiful and fragile all at once. ‘I swore I wouldn’t ever get involved with a guy again. I was done with men.’ The words were laced with self-directed anger. ‘And then you came along and you were so different.’

  She drew in a shaking breath. ‘Different from anyone I’ve ever met and so different from what I expected.’

  She crossed to where he sat—mute, and like stone—and kneeled before him. She had no choice—it was the only way to meet his eyes.

  ‘I couldn’t work out why I’ve been experiencing this growing sense of unease, but then when you said last night that you like being alone, that it’s how you’re meant to be, it made me see everything clearly. I don’t want to be alone.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, I don’t want to be with anyone else either. I want to be with you.’

  It was like grating his feet on boiling bitumen. He shook his head in a silent, visceral rejection of her words. He could imagine a future just as she painted it, with no end point on this marriage, with Alice by his side day in, day out, for no purpose other than that they enjoyed being together, and, damn, so much of him wanted to agree, to admit this had changed completely from what he’d expected, too.

  But the thing was, there was always an end point. To every relationship in life, there was a cessation, and he’d rather know when and why than be blindsided. He needed those boundaries in place.

  His eyes met hers and pain opened up inside him, because he felt her upset, he felt it pulling at him.

  ‘Alice.’ He had to think of what to say. She stared at him, almost as though she were holding her breath. ‘What do you want from me?’

  She opened her mouth, apparently not sure of that. ‘I want to know how you feel.’

  ‘How I feel?’ His response was unintentionally scathing.r />
  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes sparked with courage. ‘Because I don’t think I’m the only one who’s been falling in love here.’

  He ground his teeth together, rejecting her implication whole-heartedly. Love was a minefield he had no intention of getting involved with.

  The very idea filled him with the sense he was falling off the edge of a very tall building.

  ‘Not once—’ he spoke slowly, clearly, choosing his words with great care ‘—have I given you any reason to think love was on offer.’

  He heard her shocked intake of breath and, a second later, tears sparkled on her lashes, tears that might as well have been made of acid, being dripped onto his flesh. ‘You don’t think?’

  ‘I know. I have been very careful on that score.’

  ‘Liar,’ she whispered, her own anger obvious now.

  ‘From the beginning, we have both been absolutely clear about the parameters of this.’

  ‘We said one thing,’ she muttered, ‘and did another.’

  His heart careened into his ribcage as he acknowledged that there was potentially some truth in that.

  He’d been careless and stupid. His own rule of thumb—of never getting involved with anyone—had served him well all his life. And the one time he’d let his guard down, he ended up in this mess.

  And it was a total mess. Because he didn’t want Alice to be upset. He didn’t want her to be hurt. And he sure as hell didn’t want her to go, and he had a sneaking suspicion that she would, if he didn’t play his cards very, very carefully.

  ‘I like being with you.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  Her eyes lifted to his and she was quiet, which he took as a very encouraging sign. Carefully, he continued. ‘You think you’re in love with me.’ He ignored the way her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. ‘But I think maybe it’s just sexual infatuation. This has been pretty amazing.’ He smiled, to show how much he meant that. ‘I think that we should just keep going as we are. Enjoy what we have. But not get too invested in what comes next.’

  The second she stood, he knew he’d said the wrong thing. She hadn’t been listening with an open mind, she’d been listening with obvious disbelief.