Bride by Day

by Rebecca Winters

  “Perseus?”

  “Hmm...” He sounded as bemused as she felt.

  “Tell me a little bit about your fiancée so I’ll know what to expect. Forewarned is forearmed,” she said, trying to sound casual. They’d talked about many things, but he had yet to satisfy her curiosity where his past was concerned.

  “I haven’t seen her in twenty years. The girl who stabbed me before disappearing will have come back a woman.”

  “You’re evading my question,” Sam bit out frustratedly. “Why did she stab you?”

  After an ominous pause, “When we said our vows to each other on Delos, she must have thought we were playing some kind of game. I was the dangerous, forbidden fruit from the lowest class of society, the kind of boy you didn’t many, but had fun stringing along.

  “When I appeared in her bedroom, intent on taking her away with me so we could be married, she got her first clue that I was serious. Frightened and repulsed by the depth of my feelings for her, she panicked and did what came naturally to protect herself.”

  Sam shook her head. “But you would never have forced her. I know you wouldn’t have, so what she did to you wasn’t the least bit natural!”

  “But it was human,” he murmured against her temple where her pulse throbbed madly. “The women from my country have fiery temperaments, and she was young, only eighteen.”

  “Nothing excuses criminal behavior, Perseus. I don’t know how you can excuse her.” Sam’s voice shook. “But I guess it’s true that real love can overcome any obstacle, even cruelty.”

  “Love is cruel, and sometimes wonderful, Kyria Kostopoulos. One day even you will fall victim to it, experiencing glorious heights and agonizing depths. At that point your understanding will surpass guesswork.”

  Because of an unwise love, her own mother had suffered tremendous pain. Sam started to tremble. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  He clasped her tighter. “That’s the problem. Love doesn’t ask if it can come to stay. When we least expect it, it arrives full-blown, and we’re never the same again.”

  Thankfully he couldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes. “You’ve never been the same.”

  “No,” came the haunting reply.

  Her heart went out to him. “I—I want to help you, Perseus.” Her voice caught.

  “Then stay close to me. Don’t let me out of your sight. Above all, always be yourself, no matter the circumstances. Be the woman who in her righteous indignation called me Mr. Kofolopogos, and told me she wasn’t intimidated by my bellowing.”

  Sam lowered her head, embarrassed. “I can’t believe I said those things to you.”

  “I shall never forget them,” he murmured against the nape of her neck. His fleeting kiss turned her bones to liquid. It was a good thing she was holding on to the railing or she would have fallen.

  “Come. Let’s go below. This air makes me thirsty for a cup of my own kind of coffee. If memory serves me, we’ll enjoy negraki with it.”

  “Is that some kind of pastry?”

  “It’s chocolate cake made with rum and raisins, topped with devilishly rich chocolate sauce.”

  She smiled up at him. “That’s right You love sweets.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you eat dessert with every meal, and the tea you made me caused the spoon to stand on end.”

  His bark of laughter prompted heads to turn in their direction. Ignoring their audience, they made their way to the lower deck, their arms around each other’s waists.

  Like lovers.

  But they weren’t lovers. They were conspirators attempting to pull off a desperate charade. What if she failed him?

  After fulfilling her three wishes with a humbling generosity she didn’t know any human possessed to that high a degree, the fear that she might let him down had become her worst nightmare. But thus far, he didn’t seem to have reservations or complaints over her performance.

  He found them a table at a window, then summoned the waiter. Though she’d had a roll and juice at the hotel before they’d left Athens, she found that she still had room for chocolate cake. The rum gave it a different, marvelous flavor. She could see why Perseus ordered a second helping with his coffee.

  He reminded her of an eager, hungry little boy who instantly discarded what he didn’t want in favor of the things he consumed with relish.

  She wished she had pictures of him passing from babyhood through the various stages of adolescence to his teenage years. What had he looked like—been tike—when he’d first met the woman he’d made his fiancée, before that soul-destroying love had rebounded on him? Before making him retreat within himself, turning him into a wealthy, worldly-wise cynic who’d never been able to fall in love again?

  Worried he’d key in to her personal thoughts, she decided to change the subject. “I can see an island in the distance.”

  “We’re passing Kea. One day soon I’ll take you there. The sea is crystal clear. You’ll think you’re bathing in sunlight.”

  “I want to explore every island!” she enthused.

  For the moment he’d removed his sunglasses and his black gaze was studying her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Given a hundred years or so, you just might be able to accomplish that feat. While you’re my wife, I’ll do my best to take you to as many as time allows.”

  “That sounds wonderful. You know them all, don’t you?”

  “In the Cyclades, to be sure.”

  Taking a deep breath she ventured, “How did you get your start? I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but if I’m supposed to—be married to—”

  “There’s no supposed about it,” he interjected coolly. “You’re my legal wife for as long as I need you. We struck a bargain and I’ve already fulfilled my part of it.”

  Sam froze. She hated it when that remote, dark side of him emerged seemingly out of nowhere. “I know that, Perseus. Every time I express a desire for anything, it’s granted, just like magic. Y-you’ve already spoiled me beyond recognition. But I only meant that if our marriage were for real, a-and—”

  “And we were sleeping together—” came the mocking insinuation.

  She crushed the napkin in her fist. “I meant—” Her eyes flashed. “If we had met under other circumstances, and in the natural course of events had fallen in love and married, then I would know the most important things about you.”

  “You already know about Sofia.” His voice grated.

  Sofia.

  Sam wondered when he’d finally reveal his fiancée’s name. Already she hated it, hated what the other woman had done to him.

  “I realize that, Perseus. But I need to know more about your beginnings, your own family. Do you have family on the island?”

  The deafening silence between them made her wish she’d never asked the question, but it wasn’t in her nature to keep still. She imagined he was already regretting his impulsive decision to marry her. A desperate man on a desperate mission, no doubt he was beginning to realize he’d made a ghastly mistake.

  “I don’t remember my father,” he suddenly began in a low, pitchless voice. “He was a fisherman who died at sea before I turned a year old.”

  So far, Sam could relate to his story. As far as she was concerned, her own father had always been dead to her, too.

  “For years it was just my mother and me. Mother wasn’t that well. As soon as I could, I worked all the hours God gave me to eke out an existence for the two of us. When I had enough money saved, I made her visit the local doctor who was a widower with a child.

  “It turned out my mother was severely anemic. Even so, she was a beautiful woman. Men had always come around her, but she never responded to any of them. The doctor began treatments, but after the initial visit, he didn’t charge for them. That’s when I realized that like the other men on the island, he’d become enamored of her.

  “I suppose I was a typical little boy who loved my mother and didn’t .see any reason for a third party to di
srupt our lives. I grew to dislike him very much. He didn’t like me either. When mother wasn’t present, he treated me like the dirt under his feet.”

  Sam could imagine how hard that would have been on a proud son who’d done everything to keep them alive. She felt a pain pierce her heart.

  “On the other hand, I had to admit I’d never seen her looking or feeling better. It was selfish of me not to want her to get married. One day I heard them fighting over me. She told him she couldn’t be his wife unless he accepted me as his son.

  “He said he had a well-to-do brother in Athens who needed someone to help him in his shop. I could go and live with him and his wife.”

  At that revelation, Sam had to swallow the sickness welling up in her throat.

  “Mother refused to listen and told him it was over between them. They stopped seeing each other for a few weeks. Then one day, as I was entering the house where we rented a room, I could hear voices. Apparently he’d made up with her and said I could come and live with them.

  “Mother approached me about it. If I hadn’t seen how miserable she was when she thought he’d gone out of her life permanently, I wouldn’t have told her I was happy for her.

  “So, they were married. At the age of thirteen, I went with my mother to live in his house which seemed like a palace to me. In front of mother, he showed me a modicum of deference. When she wasn’t present, he couldn’t tolerate me and relegated me to a smaller room at the back, away from the view of the sea.

  “I didn’t mind. It was more luxurious than the hovel we’d come from on the other side of the island. He and I never exchanged words, but there was a tacit agreement between us that I would not interfere in the marriage, that I would be seen but not heard, that I would not consider myself a part of the household except when protocol demanded. Most of all, I would not associate with his daughter, Sofia, who was my age, and attended private school.”

  Sofia was his sister through marriage? Sam moaned, hardly able to take it in. Her eyes closed tightly. Five years under one roof was more than enough time for adolescent love to flower into adult love, the painful kind—the kind you never got over...

  “To his everlasting horror, Sofia had a mind of her own. I was off-limits, but it seemed I was the one novelty she couldn’t resist. Needless to say, I fell hopelessly in love with her,” he added with a depth of emotion Sam wished she hadn’t heard.

  “Since I knew her father considered me the lowest dregs of society, I made the decision to become the one man he’d eventually be forced to look up to.”

  Those words could have been taken right out of the age-old Greek myth, Sam mused with an aching heart.

  “What? No wedding present?” yelled King

  Polydectes.

  “I don’t have any money,” exclaimed Perseus.

  “That’s what you get for a lazy, good-for-nothing,”

  said Polydectes.

  Perseus was furious. “I can bring you any present in

  the world. Anything!” he said.

  “Then bring me the head of Medusa.”

  “Fine!” Perseus shouted.

  And like the Perseus of old, this modern-day Greek hero, rejected by his love and scorned by her father, had gone off on a perilous voyage. After twenty years, he was returning home triumphant, with a temporary bride to defeat his enemies.

  No one in the world but Sam knew how much Perseus was counting on her to carry off her part. Only now had she been given a glimpse of the frightening task ahead of her. She couldn’t stop shaking, and needed answers to many more questions.

  Her eyes searched the bleakness of his. “Will your mother be there to greet you?”

  “No,” came the quiet aside. “A year after I left Serifos, my mother asked for a divorce and came to live with me in Athens. Twelve months later, she died in my arms of pneumonia.”

  He must have seen the sheen of tears in Sam’s eyes because he murmured, “Don’t be sad. We didn’t have one unhappy day.”

  “But you were so young to lose her. Was her husband cruel to her? Is that why she left him?”

  “No. He was very good to her, but she couldn’t forgive his treatment of me, or Sofia’s actions.”

  “I love your mother already!” Sam blurted.

  A sudden smile transformed his features. “You would have come as a delightful surprise to her, too. Because her health was always fragile, I’ve never regretted her death till this moment.”

  Beneath the compliment, Sam stirred uncomfortably. “I think I’m thankful that she’s not alive to learn that her son didn’t end up with the woman of his dreams after all.”

  Like the brilliant sun suddenly disappearing behind a thunderhead, his smile vanished. “There are worse fates, Kyria Kostopoulos.”

  Naturally after the stabbing, Perseus’s mother would have been like a mother lion with her adored cub, guarding him with her life, wanting only joy for him.

  In that respect, Sam was grateful his mother hadn’t lived to see this day—Perseus arriving home with a counterfeit bride.

  She pushed her seat back and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the powder room.”

  “Of course, but don’t take too long. We’re passing Kythnos. You’ll enjoy the sight of the windmills. That particular island has great significance for me.”

  Her heart pounded far too hard to be healthy. “Why is that?” She had a feeling he was going to share another intimate memory about him and Sofia. Sam didn’t want to hear it.

  “You asked about my beginnings. As my bride, you’re entitled to an explanation.

  “It was there, at the thermal springs, whose radioactive waters are considered to be beneficial to many maladies, that I received the inspiration to market the water in locally made glass bottles, and sell them to the tourists at Piraeus.

  “Such a simple concept. With one trip, I made enough money to buy a fishing boat. At that point I sold not only bottled thermal water, but fish. I had so much success, many vendors at the harbor paid me handsomely to supply them. In time, I was able to buy one vendor out, then another.

  “Soon I bought a fleet of boats, some for fishing, others for pleasure. I discovered that wealthy tourists would pay me ten times my asking price when I took them to an uncharted island with virgin beaches for the day, and made certain they caught fish.

  “Word traveled that I was the man to package the best tours in the Cyclades. I rented an office in Athens and set up my travel business. By this time I had contacts supplying me hand-painted icons and ceramics from Mykonos, local pottery from Sifnos, embroidered goods and crafts from Naxos.

  “As time went on, I hunted for properties and buildings which were being foreclosed on. With a minimum of refurbishing, I could resell them for a great deal more money than the original purchase price. Through investments, I was led to more ambitious endeavors, such as the purchase of larger ships, freighters to export goods.”

  Sam’s eyes rounded in awe at each revelation falling from his lips. He made it sound so easy, when in fact she knew that only one man in several billion was even born with his kind of know-how and genius. Even then, the driving force behind such colossal success lay in the need to blot out the pain brought on by one woman. Sofia.

  The more Perseus admitted Sam into his confidence, the more frightened she became of this faceless woman who would know with a woman’s instincts that his marriage to an American college student fourteen years younger than himself was a total sham.

  “Now no one knows as much about me as you do,” he said, sounding curiously pleased with himself. “Thank you for telling me,” she mumbled. “I—I’ll hurry.”

  “I’ll be waiting. Then it will be your turn to tell me why you’re so afraid of men. Me, in particular...”

  That was one subject she would never discuss with Perseus, she vowed as she went to the ladies’ room, then joined her husband on deck when it was time to disembark.

  “Look this way, Mrs. Kostopoulos.”

&nbs
p; Caught off guard by the man speaking American English in the midst of foreign conversation exploding all around them, Sam turned her head and met the flash of a camera.

  Muttering a torrent of Greek which didn’t need translation, Perseus tightened his arm around her waist. He ushered her through the crowds to a car waiting for them close to the pier.

  Once they were ensconced in the back, and he’d introduced her to Yanni, the driver, he said, “Welcome to Serifos, your new home, Kyria Kostopoulos. Another day we will explore Livadi to your heart’s content. Right now a cold shower and iced drinks are in order.”

  He was right. The sun’s rays were pitiless. After Perseus’s suggestion, Sam could think of nothing more divine. Yet the charming horseshoe-shaped beach below the adorable little cube-shaped white houses and churches made her long to investigate every square inch.

  The bare, undulating hills of this island dotted with fertile valleys and a fairy-tale Venetian castle, had been Perseus’s playground from birth, and as such was very precious to her.

  Sam craned her head to see everything. “Do you live way up high in that village?”

  He chuckled. “No. Panagia may offer a spectacular view, but I prefer to be on the water. A few years ago, I purchased beachfront property where I once fished and bodysurfed. I hired an architect to design a small villa in the Cycladic style, then had it built and furnished. It’s around the other side of the island, totally private.”

  This has to be a dream. When are you going to wake up, Sam?

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I haven’t. For the last twenty I’ve worked out of Athens. However, from time to time I’ve flown here by helicopter to confer with the builder and oversee the construction.

  “Serifos is my home,” he stated in a voice of unashamed longing. “My roots run deep on this island. I’ve yearned to return and make it my future. Now everything is done except the landscaping. I’ve decided I’m putting you in charge of that project.”

  She shook her head in dazed consternation. “What do you mean?”