Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  A few more weeks went by. Melanie was changing fast now, becoming a real little personality with squeals and smiles, who liked to kick her legs on a blanket in the warm winter sunshine, as if her Mediterranean blood demanded it of her.

  The day they received official notification that Melanie was now their legal daughter, Claire had also begun to suspect that she might be pregnant.

  That evening Andreas took her out to celebrate. Decked out in one of her elegant evening gowns and with Andreas in dinner suit and bow-tie, they spent a wonderful evening dining at a very exclusive restaurant he knew in the hills behind Rafina, where they ate food that tasted like a dream and laughed and teased and talked a lot. And as they danced close together to music composed exclusively for lovers there was a point where Claire almost confided her suspicion that she could be pregnant. Only an unwillingness to overshadow the real reason why they were out celebrating like this stopped her.

  Plus the fact that she wasn’t sure that she was just experiencing a small glitch in her usual smoothly running cycle.

  But she was so happy. So lost in this all-encompassing love that she felt for this man of hers that by the time they drove home again that evening she was weaving delicious fantasies around the two of them that involved passionate declarations of love and a life spent making babies and growing old together. And she made love with him that night as if there were no tomorrow—sublimely unaware that, indeed, tomorrow was so very close.

  The next morning, Nikos drove them into the busy sea port of Rafina. Claire had shopping to do and Andreas had several business appointments, so Nikos was to drive her back home when she was ready.

  Andreas kissed her deeply before climbing out of the car and leaving her to Nikos’s indulgently smiling care.

  ‘You have made him very happy,’ he replied to the questioning look he caught her giving him via the rear-view mirror. ‘It is a delight to all of us who have known him for most of his life to see him like this again.’

  He meant since the death of his first wife, Claire realised, and felt the tiniest suspicion of a cloud begin to shadow her little bit of clear blue sky. Then she firmly dismissed the sensation as she too clambered out of the car a few minutes later.

  For this was now, not six years ago. The sun was shining. Life was great. And she wasn’t going to let anything spoil it!

  With the confidence of youth and a determination that it was she, Claire, who counted in his life now, she went about her shopping with her metaphorical chin high and her shining blue eyes set clear ahead—just asking to be tripped up by someone or something.

  It happened sooner rather than later, too. Unexpected and unprepared for it, she walked out of the chemist shop armed with her only purchase—and stopped dead in her tracks as she came face to face with her aunt.

  ‘Aunt Laura?’ she gasped in delighted surprise.

  Dressed to her usual sharp, immaculate standard, Aunt Laura looked so thoroughly disconcerted to see Claire standing there that there was a heart-stopping moment when Claire actually suspected she was going to turn away as if she didn’t know her!

  ‘Aunt Laura? It’s me—Claire,’ she inserted hurriedly, feeling just a little stupid for declaring herself like that.

  Her aunt must have thought so too, because her expression was derisive. ‘I know it’s you,’ she sighed. ‘I’m not blind.’

  But she had been going to turn away from her; Claire was certain about that now. And it hurt. Hurt almost as much as the realisation that if her aunt was right here in Rafina, then Andreas knew about it but hadn’t bothered to tell her.

  Her aunt was looking her over now, the derision more pronounced as her cool grey eyes took in the quality of Claire’s casual linen jacket worn with a simple straight skirt and skinny top that still managed to shriek designer at her.

  ‘Well, you certainly fell on your feet,’ she commented tightly. ‘You’ve caught yourself a rich man with a rich lifestyle—so who the hell can blame you for not caring if it is all just one big sham?’

  ‘It isn’t a sham,’ Claire denied, stunned by the bitterness filtering through her aunt’s voice. ‘We’re in love with each other.’

  ‘Love?’ Her aunt made a scoffing sound. ‘A man like Andreas Markopoulou doesn’t fall in love, Claire. He makes clear-cut, coldly calculating business decisions.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she responded, not understanding why her aunt was being so nasty. Besides Melanie, they were the only living relatives either of them had left in the world. Surely it had to count for something? But then, it never had before, had it? Claire reminded herself heavily. ‘Andreas is your boss,’ she said a little shakily. ‘I thought you admired and respected him.’

  ‘My—what?’ Aunt Laura gasped, staring at her niece as if she’d grown an extra head. ‘He isn’t my boss,’ she denied. ‘Where the hell did you get that idea from?’

  It was like standing on the edge of a precipice; Claire felt a frightening tingling sensation slither through her body right down to her toes. ‘Don’t play games with me.’ She frowned. Why else would they bump into each other here, in Andreas’s home town of all places? ‘You were both on your way abroad on a business trip the first time I met him!’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ Claire’s own confused expression gave her aunt the answer to that question, and she huffed out a tightly sardonic laugh. ‘You have to give it to the ruthless swine,’ she allowed. ‘He doesn’t miss a trick. Has he told you anything, Claire?’ she then asked cynically. ‘Or has the smooth, slick devil managed to con you into his life and into his bed, and get what he really wanted from you—which was really only ever Melanie—without having to let a single family skeleton out of the family closet?’

  She fell off that precipice. Standing there beneath the Greek winter-blue sky and with her feet planted firmly on solid earth, she felt herself beginning to fall a long, long way into a cold, dark place as she heard herself whisper, ‘What are you talking about?’

  Aunt Laura’s angry gaze shifted restlessly away as if she was trying to decide whether to say any more. Then she looked back at Claire—and her face hardened. ‘Why not?’ she decided. ‘He deserves his come-uppance, and I owe him one. So, come on …’ she urged. ‘Let’s find somewhere less public for this, because you’re in for a bad shock, and by the look of you it may be better if you receive it sitting down …’

  Nikos kept sending her strange glances via his mirror as he drove her home. Claire didn’t really blame him for looking at her like that. For the bright-eyed, happy person he had dropped off at the shops only an hour before had gone, and in her place was someone else entirely: a sad, pale, haunted-looking creature he had once seen before, lying in a road after she had been knocked down.

  ‘Are you all right, kyria?’ he enquired concernedly.

  Claire’s eyelashes flickered in an attempt to bring her glazed eyes into focus, but she wasn’t very successful. ‘Yes,’ she nodded, and tried to swallow the huge lump that was blocking her throat—she wasn’t very successful there either. ‘A small headache, that’s all. I’ll be fine once I get back and take something for it.’

  But she wasn’t going to be fine. She knew it—and perhaps Nikos knew it, because she saw him lift his mobile phone to his ear and begin talking in Greek just before she shut herself away inside her own head again.

  He was calling Andreas, she was sure. In a way she was glad. For the quicker Andreas was brought back to the house to find out what was the matter with her, the quicker she could leave it.

  It wasn’t far from Rafina to the house. Fifteen minutes at most. As Nikos drew the car to a stop, Claire climbed out, walked in through the front door and up the stairs without so much as glancing sideways.

  In her room—her room, not the one she had been sharing with Andreas for the last few months or so—she came to a stop in the middle of the carpet, then coldly and precisely began stripping off the casual but chic clothes she was wearing. Leaving them to lie where they fell, she then wal
ked naked into the dressing room hung with the kind of clothes most women only dreamed of owning. When she came back out again a few minutes later, she was wearing her old jeans and a tee shirt. In her arms she carried the rest of the clothes that she had brought with her from London and never worn since.

  Now she was shutting the door on the extravagant dressing room knowing that she would never be wearing a single garment in there again.

  For he could pay through the teeth for the privilege of having Melanie for his daughter, but he would never pay for the privilege of having Claire again!

  She heard a car come racing up the driveway as she placed the stack of clothes on the bed, ready for packing. It was Andreas, she was sure of it, though who he had got to bring him home she had no idea—nor cared. By the time he swung in through her bedroom door, she was just placing her rings in the little velvet jewellery box where she kept all of the things his grandmother had given her.

  She didn’t bother to turn and look at him, but could sense him taking in at a glance the mound of discarded clothes on the floor and what she was now wearing. Only a fool would have missed the significance in the change, and Andreas was no fool.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Explain to me what this is about.’

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she said. Not, I’m leaving you, for she no longer acknowledged there was a him to leave. The man wasn’t human. He was cast from some hard, impenetrable metal that gave him the will to do unspeakable things just to get his own way.

  She heard the bedroom door close as she was rummaging in the dressing-table drawers, picking out the bits that belonged to her and leaving behind the ones that no longer did.

  ‘Why?’ he asked quietly.

  She didn’t answer—couldn’t. It was all stopped up inside her as if someone had ground a cork into a fizzing bottle. But what really bothered her was what would happen if that same person came along and shook the damned bottle.

  ‘Something happened in Rafina,’ he prompted when she didn’t say anything.

  Naturally he would presume that because that was where she had been when she’d altered into a different person. Or went back to being the person she used to be, she corrected grimly.

  ‘You saw someone …’

  She could feel his footsteps vibrate through the carpet as he came towards her. Her hands began to shake badly as she pulled open another drawer.

  ‘Desmona, perhaps. Has Desmona been stirring up trouble again, Claire?’ he demanded. ‘Is that what this is about?’

  Try again, she thought bitterly. She picked up a framed photograph of her mother holding Melanie in her arms and made as if to edge round him.

  His hand came out to touch her shoulder. ‘Claire …!’ he rasped out impatiently. ‘This is—’

  The cork blew. In a fountain spout of bitter fury, she turned on him and let fly with her hand to the side of his wretched, deceiving face. ‘Don’t touch me ever again—do you hear?’ she spat at him.

  His hand was already covering the side of his face where she’d stung him. He should have been angry—Claire would have preferred him to get angry so she could feed off it, build on what was bubbling up inside her.

  But those black eyes of his just looked bewildered. And she couldn’t cope with that. ‘You lied to me,’ she accused him thickly. ‘Ever since the first day that we met you’ve lied and you’ve lied and you’ve lied …’

  With that she managed to step around him. On trembling legs she walked across to the bed and placed her mother’s photograph on the stack of things already assembled there.

  ‘You’ve seen your aunt Laura,’ he realised belatedly. ‘I did wonder if there was a risk of that when she turned up at my office today.’

  Claire said nothing. She just stood tautly, with a white-knuckled grip on each side of the photo frame, and let the silence grow to suffocating proportions.

  ‘What did she tell you?’ he asked eventually, sounding flat and weary, like someone who knew he had been exposed without the ability to defend himself.

  ‘She doesn’t even work for you,’ she whispered. ‘She never did.’

  ‘You made that assumption, Claire,’ he murmured. ‘All I did was allow you to go on thinking it.’

  That was his defence? Claire didn’t think much of it, then.

  ‘But why?’ she demanded, spinning around to lash the question at him, and so hurt by her own wretched gullibility that she couldn’t keep it out of her voice. ‘Why should you want to deceive me and trick me and manipulate me like this—when the truth would probably have given you the same results?’

  He released a heavy sigh. His hand fell away from the side of his face and as it did so Claire felt a tiny pinch of remorse when she saw the imprint of her fingers showing white against his olive skin.

  ‘I could not afford to take the risk that you would not fall in with my—plan,’ he answered.

  ‘Your plan to take Melanie away from me.’ She spelled it out clearly.

  ‘That was the original idea, yes.’ He freely admitted it. Then his eyes flicked her a searching look. ‘Your aunt told you about my brother and your mother?’

  For an answer, she wrapped her arms around her slender body, her eyes closing as her mind replayed her aunt’s wretched story of her mother’s brief affair in Madrid with the hugely wealthy but very married fifty-year-old Greek merchant banker, Timo Markopoulou, which had resulted in Melanie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she heard him mutter.

  What for? she wondered. For being responsible for making her feel like this, or was he apologising on behalf of his brother and her mother?

  ‘Did you know about their affair while it was happening?’ she whispered threadily.

  ‘I knew about an affair—yes,’ he confirmed, turning away from her to go and stare grimly out of the window. ‘But I did not know who the woman involved was,’ he went on. ‘Or the fact that she had borne him a child, until almost a year after Timo’s death and I was in London on business when your aunt came to see me.’

  Claire’s eyes flicked open, the blue bright with a derision she speared at his profile. ‘You mean you went to see my aunt,’ she corrected him. ‘To get her to bargain with me for possession of Melanie!’

  ‘Is that what she said?’ His dark head turned. ‘Then she lied,’ he declared, holding her sceptical gaze with a grim demand that she believe him. ‘Your aunt Laura approached me, Claire,’ he insisted. ‘It was she who told me that my brother’s mistress had given birth to his daughter. It was she who wanted to bargain—not for Melanie,’ he made succinctly clear, ‘but for your silence about the affair. Your silence, Claire,’ he sombrely repeated. ‘Your aunt placed herself in the role of mere mediator between myself and her niece—the niece she swore had been my dead brother’s mistress!’

  ‘M-me?’ she stammered in shocked confusion. ‘My aunt told you that I was your brother’s mistress?’

  Her sense of horror and dismay was obvious. Andreas acknowledged her right to feel like that with a tight-lipped grimace. ‘Apparently you were threatening to sell the story to the papers if I did not pay for your silence,’ he explained.

  ‘But how could you think such terrible things about me?’ Claire cried.

  ‘I had not met you then,’ he reminded her. ‘So I gained an impression of a grasping young woman who saw her child’s wealthy Greek relatives as a pushover for a bit of lucrative blackmail.’

  It made a kind of sense. Claire felt sick suddenly. Sick with shame at her aunt’s mercenary cunning.

  ‘I could not afford to risk such a scandal breaking in the press when my grandmother was so frail,’ he continued, whilst, white as a sheet now, Claire stared blindly at the floor. ‘The one thing your aunt could not have known was my grandmother’s dream to hold her great-grandchild before she died. But it was only a dream,’ he sighed, turning back to the window. ‘Both she and I knew she didn’t have a chance of fulfilling it …’

  He meant because his grandmother’s days had already been numbere
d, Claire realised sadly. ‘Learning about Melanie must have seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity, then.’

  The dark head nodded. ‘I offered to take the child off your hands for a—certain amount of money,’ he told her. ‘Your aunt led me to believe that you would not be averse to the idea of giving up the burden of caring for Melanie—for the right price.’

  Nice of her, Claire thought bitterly. The whole thing was a macabre circle of deceit, betrayal and greed, she acknowledged with a terrible shudder.

  ‘So you drove her over to my flat then sat outside it in your big limousine, and waited for her to buy your brother’s child for you,’ she concluded, beginning to feel more than a little sick now as the rest fell into place without needing to be dragged out and pawed over.

  She’d come running out of her flat and got herself knocked over in front of him. He had then been given the opportunity to see where she lived and how she lived, and eventually learned that not only was she innocent of any charge of extortion, but that he would have a hell of a job convincing her to give her sister up to him!

  So then came the next round of lies, she continued while he remained silently staring out of the window, perhaps doing the same as she, and replaying the whole thing scene by miserable scene! The proposition, the coercion, the sob story gauged to tug at her tender heartstrings about a grandmother who wanted to hold her only great-grandchild before she passed away.

  The only bit of truth in among all the lies, she noted cynically.

  ‘Did your grandmother know whose child Melanie is?’ she asked huskily.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, and there was something very—odd about his hesitation. It smacked at another lie on the way, Claire judged, eyeing him suspiciously.

  ‘She—guessed,’ he said in the end.

  Truth or lie? Claire wondered. ‘You devil,’ his grandmother had said to him, she recalled, and got to her feet as an icy chill went washing through her.

  What a waste of all his efforts, she mused acidly. For by then the wedding had taken place, otherwise he could have saved himself a whole lot of inconvenience. Then she remembered that Andreas had still needed to acquire legal control of his brother’s illegitimate child. So—not such a waste of his time.