by Jane Porter
“Your father made it impossible for my father to get employment on Oinoussai, resulting in my father being blacklisted. He couldn’t get work on the island, not ever again.”
A lump lodged in her throat. “How? Why?”
“Your father was engaged in unethical business practices—”
She closed her eyes, not needing to hear another word. So Christos did know. Her father, desperate to get ahead, hired men to damage other ship owners’ vessels, sabotaging sailings. When the ships couldn’t sail, her father rushed in and gathered the business. “Constantine told you?”
“No. I knew long before I ever went into business with Constantine. My father was one of the welders hired to dismantle Constantine Pappas’s ships.”
“He should have gone to the police,” she whispered, sickened at the horrible things her father had done in the name of business.
“He wouldn’t, out of respect to your mother.”
She felt a cold knot form inside her. “Actually I think my mother would have thanked him.”
“Don’t worry. Constantine and I settled our debts with your father. That’s why he and I went into business together. We both needed each other. And with his help, I’ve had my revenge.” He leaned against the counter, and smiled, but there was no warmth in his eyes, no tenderness in the twist of his lips. “I have you.”
And her father’s fortune.
She closed her eyes, swaying. She felt like a fool. Here she was, falling in love with Christos, while he was exacting his revenge. What an idiot she was! She never had been able to separate her body and her heart.
“Your father desperately wants grandchildren,” he added tightly. “And he’ll get them, but they’ll be Pateras, not Lemos. Never Lemos.”
Freezing inwardly she wrapped her arms around herself. “What children?” she taunted. “And from where?”
“I know you’ve said you can’t have children but you’ve never been to specialists. Doctors can perform miracles these days. There are procedures—”
“Stop telling me about doctors and procedures, and listen to me!”
“I’m listening but you’re not saying anything.”
“Yes, I am, but you just don’t want to hear it. You want me to be like your mother, you want me to stay home and take care of things here.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“But that’s what you want, not what I want. You can’t dictate my life, Christos. I’ve a mind. I want to use it.”
“Use it by creating a home for us, a family for us—”
The back door opened, silencing him, drawing them both up short. A cheery voice shouted out a bright hello. Christos drew in a ragged breath, his hard features brittle with anger. “Mrs. Avery,” he announced, his voice clipped.
They stared at each other, visibly shaken. Christos drank from his coffee cup and Alysia smoothed a hand across her skirt, trying to steady her nerves.
He married her for her body. For her ability to bear him children.
Children she wouldn’t have. Seven years ago, maybe. Now? Never.
The housekeeper’s low-heeled shoes clicked briskly on the hardwood floor as she entered the kitchen. Her small, plump hands busily tied her apron over her bright red dress. “Breakfast?” she asked, before catching sight of Alysia.
“Yes, please,” Christos answered grimly.
The woman’s round face suddenly wreathed in smiles. “The new Mrs. Pateras?”
Christos shot Alysia a dark glance. “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Avery. And now that you’re here, I’ll leave the new Mrs. Pateras in your capable hands.”
Alysia heard the front door slam in the middle of Mrs. Avery’s house tour. Alysia stiffened, turned toward the sound.
“Don’t worry. It’s just Mr. Pateras leaving for work.” And with a bright smile Mrs. Avery continued showing Alysia around.
The original house was over two hundred years old and had been greatly expanded and remodeled at the turn of the last century. The rooms were all large and well proportioned, the ceilings eleven and a half feet high with enormous paned windows providing spectacular views and welcoming light.
But it was hard to feel the sun’s warmth when she felt so cold inside. Hard to enjoy the comfortable luxury when she couldn’t forget her last conversation with Christos.
What he wanted, she realized wearily, was a traditional wife. A wife like his mother. A wife to carry his children.
Just like she’d failed her father, she’d fail Christos. The things he wanted she couldn’t give.
Christos called and left a message with Mrs. Avery, telling her he wouldn’t be home until seven-thirty. Mrs. Avery usually left at six, but tonight she offered to stay and serve the dinner she’d already prepared. Alysia assured the kindly housekeeper that she could dish and serve just fine and sent Mrs. Avery home.
Alone, Alysia slowly set the table, using the good china and crystal, carefully folding the linen napkins. All afternoon she’d replayed the scene in the kitchen through her head, reliving Christos’s revelation that his family had suffered at the hands of her father, reliving his own revelation that he’d married her not simply for her fortune, but to exact a price on the Lemos family, to take the Lemos name and make it his.
She’d paid the ultimate price for being her father’s daughter.
Numbly Alysia lit the tall tapered candles on the table, shaking her hand to extinguish the match, even as Christos appeared in the dining-room doorway.
She turned, caught a glimpse of the fatigue etched in deep lines at his mouth and eyes. His gaze took in the fresh rose centerpiece and elegant place settings. “Mrs. Avery must think we’re enjoying the honeymoon.”
She heard the cynicism in his voice but refused to be baited. “Would you like a glass of wine? I’ve opened a bottle. Mrs. Avery said you enjoy wine with your dinner.”
Reluctantly he nodded. “All right, then.”
She poured him a glass, handed it to him. He avoided touching her fingers.
Christos wandered around the dining-room table, sipping his wine, studying her arrangement of flowers, the linen cloth, the gleam of crystal in the flickering candlelight. “We’re not celebrating anything, are we?”
“No.” She felt herself begin to flush, self-conscious and embarrassed. She’d tried to please him. “You don’t like the table?”
“Seems like a lot of trouble.”
“It was no trouble. Growing up we always set a formal table for dinner. Nice linens. Candles.”
“Ah, yes, the lives of the rich and famous.”
His sarcasm stung, sending blood surging to her face. “I can’t change who I am.”
“Just as I can’t change who I am.” He sipped from his goblet.
“It was not easy being Darius Lemos’s only child.”
“No, of course not. It must have been awful being rich.”
“Spoiled rotten, I was.” She smiled at him, her jaws aching with the effort. “Dining every night with crystal and candlelight.”
“We couldn’t afford crystal. Candles were frivolous.”
She felt wound so tightly, her body so tense she was trembling inwardly. Jerkily she leaned forward, blowing out the candles she’d just lit. The blackened wicks smoked. “Better?”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I didn’t have to do that, but it’s what you wanted. You’re going to punish me now, every chance you can get. You’re going to use every opportunity to impress upon me how desperate you were growing up and how revoltingly rich we were. You, working so hard, making something out of yourself, and me, just a spoiled little rich girl in need of a hospital and doctors to fix my self-esteem.”
“Is that why you were there? Low self-esteem?”
She laughed, even as her chest tightened with hurt and pain. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”
“I would, yes.”
“So you can figure out why my father couldn’t marry me off to a real Greek?” She caught sight of his expression, his
jaw jutted, eyes narrowed in anger.
She rushed on, fueled by his coldness and her acute loneliness. “You think you have the upperhand here, but I have news for you. You were bought, Christos, you were bought because you could be bought. A self-respecting Greek wouldn’t have me. A self-respecting Greek would sooner put his eye out than look upon me. But you, hungry for ships and money and power, made a deal with my father, and now you’re curious, dying to know why Daddy Darius couldn’t get rid of me.”
“I do have some questions.”
“I bet.” She trembled with rage. “You, Christos Pateras, like my father, love to play God.”
He said nothing, his back rigid, his dark eyes narrowed, thick lashes lowered.
“But I’m tired of you and my father making choices for me, deciding who I am, what I’ll do, how I should think. I’ve had twenty-five years of men making decisions for me and I will not put up with it anymore.”
“You’re making me out to be a monster.”
“Aren’t you? My father was a monster. He couldn’t love, or forgive. Tell me, how are you different from him?”
He said nothing, his jaw popping, his body so tense she feared he might reach for her, punish her insolence with a quick backhand the way her father used to do. But he didn’t move. Didn’t lift a finger.
Suddenly her anger deflated, and she felt wretched. She didn’t understand why she had to lash out at him and what she’d hoped to accomplish.
This wasn’t the way to his heart, that much she knew.
But she’d never have his heart. Just as she’d never have his respect.
Fighting tears, she fled to her room.
Unable to calm herself, Alysia tackled her stacks of luggage, finishing the unpacking job Mrs. Avery had begun. She was still filling the drawers in her dresser when Christos opened the bedroom door.
She’d felt him in the doorway, felt him watching her, but he didn’t speak and she didn’t turn around.
Her eyes burned and she blinked hard, concentrating on her task.
She’d said terrible things to him, called him terrible names, and he didn’t deserve it, not all of it, at least. She was angry with him because she wanted more from him but fighting wouldn’t bring him closer. It would only push him farther away.
“I’ve dished up dinner,” he said quietly.
A lump filled her throat. “I’m really not all that hungry.”
“You need to eat. Come,” he repeated, extending a hand. “Let’s not waste Mrs. Avery’s meal.”
She didn’t have the strength to fight him, nor the energy to resist. She was hungry, and tired, jetlag catching up with her, and she followed, if only to avoid further conflict.
In the dining room the candles glowed on the table, the lightbulbs in the grand crystal-and-silver chandelier dimmed. The room shone pale yellow in the flickering light and the plates on the table were filled with Mrs. Avery’s roasted chicken and buttery new potatoes.
They ate in silence, each contemplative, studiously avoiding conversation.
Finally Christos pushed his plate aside. “Fifteen years ago I made a choice,” he said quietly, not looking at her, but at a fixed point on the table. “It was a difficult choice.”
She looked across the gleaming table, her gaze fixing on his mouth, unable to meet his eyes. He undid her. He made her want things she thought she’d given up long ago.
“I had to choose between school and sports. I’d got into Yale on an athletic scholarship.”
“Baseball,” she murmured.
He nodded. “I loved the game, loved being outside, on the grass, and the camaraderie of being part of a team. But I wasn’t a great player. I was good, and I might have made it to the pros, but I couldn’t take the risk.”
He lifted his wineglass, took a sip and set the goblet down again. “If I stuck with baseball there was a good chance I’d struggle for years. I wouldn’t be able to take care of my parents, and I knew without my help, my mother would spend her life scrubbing other people’s toilets. I couldn’t bear it. My pride couldn’t bear it. My family had been through so much. I wanted more for them, more for all of us.”
“So you pursued business instead.”
“I pursued your father,” he corrected softly, self-mockingly. “Every decision I made, every contract I signed, every investment had one purpose—to get me closer to the day I’d crush your father.”
“You hated him that much?”
“I hated what he did to my father. As you can see, I’m not a very forgiving man.”
“You don’t strike me as ruthless.”
“I wasn’t always.”
Had there been a different Christos then, a younger Christos who wanted less, and perhaps loved more? “I might have liked you then.”
His dark head lifted and he gazed at her from beneath a furrowed brow. His cheekbones jutted, his jaw at an angle, and even though he stared at her, she was sure he was looking inward, seeing not her, but himself, and his expression haunted her. “Maybe,” he answered in a deep, strangled voice. “Maybe.”
She rose from her chair, wanting to go to him, but halfway around the table realized he wouldn’t want her, didn’t need her, not that way.
Torn, she gathered the dishes, stacking the bread plate on the dinner plate and pushing the cutlery to the middle.
“There is one other thing.” His deep voice stilled her jerky motions. “I wouldn’t mention it except I know my mother, and I know she will.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, waiting for whatever would come next. He smiled, but the smile didn’t warm his eyes. “I was engaged earlier this year, before I married you.”
Dishes cradled to her tummy, she struggled to make sense of what he was saying. “Engaged to whom?”
“A local girl.”
“Someone from a family like yours.”
His dark head inclined. “Our mothers arranged it.”
With a flash she intuited what he was really saying. “Your mother was the matchmaker.”
His gaze held hers. “Yes, and our families were thrilled. They made quite a big fuss.”
“I can imagine.” And she could. Christos Pateras, an American-Greek tycoon, a dazzling American success story, marries local American-Greek girl. It would have been a perfect match. Even the gods would have been smiling.
“You loved her?” she whispered, hating how her body responded with pain. Why did she care? Why did she have to feel so much?
“I loved her sweetness. I loved her gentleness.”
“She wanted children.”
“She dreamed of a big family.”
Jealousy consumed her. Alysia didn’t even know this other woman and she felt wild with envy. To be the woman Christos would cherish…
But she couldn’t leave it at that. She had to know more. “Was there an accident?”
“No.” Christos’s black brows knitted, his expression grim. “I broke it off a couple of months ago, realizing she wasn’t the one for me.”
Sweet relief flooded her limbs. “What changed your mind?”
“Your father.”
Alysia didn’t know if she dropped the dishes or if they simply fell. Either way, they came crashing down, plates rolling, cutlery clattering, one fork bouncing. Nothing, she dimly realized, broke. How fortunate.
She struggled to gather the dishes but her fingers wouldn’t cooperate.
All she could see was her father, pen in hand, scribbling staggering figures on paper, promising Christos ships, wealth, more power.
She sucked in air, scalding tears filling her eyes and grabbed blindly at the fallen silverware, unable to see, unable to think.
Her father cutting a check and Christos taking it all. The deal, the marriage, the business. Not for love. But for money. For revenge.
Christos’s chair scraped back. He took her arm and she jumped back, his touch setting her skin on fire.
If only she’d been the poor girl from a poor emigrant family, engaged to Chri
stos. To be chosen for one’s goodness, to be chosen for one’s rightness, to be chosen and loved!
“Don’t,” Christos said roughly, taking her arm again.
She opened her eyes, looked at him, unaware of the tears filling her eyes. Emotion darkened his own beautiful features. “Don’t what?” she whispered.
“Don’t say it. Don’t want it. What we have is what I wanted.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“But what we have is nothing.”
“That’s not true. It’s no better, no worse than any other arranged marriage.”
“I can’t live like this.”
“Sorry. You don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t I?”
“No. Not anymore. Not as my wife.”
CHAPTER NINE
BEFORE he’d taken a step, she knew he was going to touch her, to take her into his arms and create havoc within her again. She wanted his touch as much as she dreaded it, fearing the loss of control, especially to him.
Alysia tried to escape but Christos was too quick, catching her by her arms and drawing her against his chest. His hands cupped her bottom, pulling her firmly against his hips. “All your life you’ve been the poor neglected Alysia. No one to love you. No one to want you.”
He pressed her even closer to his hips, making her vividly aware of his arousal. “But I want you, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”
“You want me to punish my father—”
“I couldn’t care less about your father. I want you.” He kissed the side of her throat, his breath warm, his lips making her skin tingle.
His lips felt incredible, his mouth sending torments of feeling racing up and down her spine. He was turning her into something hot and dangerous. Her body felt electric, her nerves overly sensitized.
Helplessly she slid a hand across his chest, dazed by the warmth he created within her, and her desire to feel him, be a part of him, capture the passion she’d felt in his arms before.
