The Greek Tycoon's Bride

Sophy was aware of Michael fidgeting at the side of them and knew her nephew was longing to ride in the car, and so she kept the explanation brief, merely shrugging as she said, ‘My husband died three years ago and time helps.’ She hoped, she did so hope he wasn’t as crass as one or two of their friends had been with their sympathetic remarks after Theodore’s death along the lines of, ‘Such bad luck, the pair of you having such tragedies,’ and ‘I can’t believe you’ve both lost your husbands,’ as though she and Jill had been unforgivably careless.

But Andreas merely nodded, the compelling eyes holding hers for a moment longer before he opened the door of the limousine and helped them in, his manner formal in the extreme.

It was the first time he had touched Sophy, and the feel of his warm, firm flesh through the thin cotton sleeve of her light top was unnerving, although she wasn’t quite sure why.

Once inside the overtly luxurious car, Michael’s oohs and ahhs filled the air space and provided a bridge over any difficult moments, and then Paul was negotiating the big car out of the car park and they were on their way.

‘Have you been to northern Greece before?’ Andreas asked politely after a few minutes, his glance taking in both women.

‘I haven’t been anywhere,’ Jill answered quickly, ‘apart from a holiday in France with a load of other students when we were at university, but Sophy’s always dashing off somewhere or other abroad with her job. She’s used to travelling.’

‘Really?’ The dark gaze focused on Sophy’s face.

‘A slight exaggeration,’ Sophy said quietly. ‘I’m a fashion buyer so I have to pop over the channel now and again, and there’s been the odd visit to Milan and New York, but most of the time I’m sitting at my desk with piles of paperwork in front of me.’

‘A fashion buyer.’ It could have been her imagination but Sophy thought she detected a note of something not quite nice in the deep voice. ‘So you are a career woman, Sophy? An ambitious one?’

It was a perfectly reasonable question and if anyone else had asked it she wouldn’t have minded in the least, but somehow, coming from Andreas Karydis, it caught her on the raw. ‘I’m a woman in an extremely interesting job which I’ve worked very hard to attain and enjoy very much,’ Sophy said coolly, ‘but I don’t care for labels.’ It was dismissive but she kept it polite. Just.

She felt Jill shift uncomfortably at the side of her but Theodore’s brother appeared quite unmoved, his eyes holding hers for a moment longer before he nodded unconcernedly, turning to Jill again as he said, ‘I might be prejudiced, of course, but I consider this part of Greece one of the most beautiful. Halkidiki is mainly an agricultural area with pine woods and olive groves, and you’ll find it’s picturesque but with a timeless feel about it. In many places the people’s way of life is still little affected by the twenty-first century, and the land is lush and green with wide open spaces and plenty of golden beaches. It is a pity you did not come in the spring; the fields are hidden under a blanket of flowers then, although they are still pretty in summer.’

‘Have you lived here all your life?’ Jill asked nervously after a few seconds had ticked by in silence.

Andreas nodded, and then the piercing gaze swept over Sophy’s face for an instant as he said, his mouth twisting sardonically, ‘But, like your sister, I travel a little. My father has olive, lemon and orange groves on his estate, but his main interest has always centred in shipping. Now he is older he prefers to take things easy and leave the main bulk of the Karydis business interests to me to handle. This suits us both.’

Jill nodded and said no more, but Sophy’s mind was racing with a hundred and one questions she knew she couldn’t ask. Was Theodore’s family as wealthy as this car and the way Andreas had been speaking was making her think they were? Had Theodore been the younger or the elder son, and were there any more brothers and sisters? What had caused Theodore to leave this wonderful part of the world and make a new life in England? Question after question was presenting itself to her, but she forced herself to turn and look out of the car window as though she wasn’t aware of the big dark man sitting opposite her, Michael at the side of him chattering away nineteen to the dozen.

They had been travelling along a wide dusty road with rows of cypress trees flexing spearlike in the faint hot breeze on either side, but now they approached a small village dozing gently in the noonday sun. The glare of whitewashed walls was broken only by purple and scarlet hibiscus and bougainvillaea, and chickens were pecking desultorily here and there at the side of the road, their scrawny legs only moving with any purpose when the limousine nosed its way past.

‘Oh, there, Jill, look.’ Sophy nudged her sister as she pointed to a spring some way from the road, where a collection of women had brought amphora-shaped earthen jars to collect the pure sparkling water, the overspill from the spring filling a trough from which a small brown donkey was drinking. ‘Isn’t that just lovely?’ The two women were quite entranced.

‘The water is quite untainted,’ Andreas said quietly. ‘Most of the villages have their own water supply plumbed in these days, but still the women prefer to come to the meeting place and chat and gather the water for their families in the time-old tradition. I think maybe very few people have the need to see the doctor for this epidemic called stress which is so prevalent in the cities, eh?’ he added a touch cynically.

‘Will I be able to drink from a stream like that?’ Michael asked hopefully, ‘at my grandparents’s home?’

All attention drawn back inside the car, Sophy saw Andreas was smiling indulgently, his voice faintly rueful as he said, ‘I’m afraid not, Michael. Your grandparents have all the conveniences of the twenty-first century, which includes water coming out of taps. However, if that were not so you would not be able to enjoy your own pool during your stay, so maybe it is not so bad?’

The village passed, the car took a winding road where the occasional stone house set among lemon, fig and olive groves broke the vastness of green fields baking under a clear blue sky.

‘Why are those ladies wearing big boots?’ Michael asked his uncle a few minutes later, pointing to where sturdy women were busy working in the fields, their legs encased in enormous neutral-coloured leather knee boots and big straw hats on their heads. ‘Aren’t they too hot?’

‘It is for protection against the bite of snakes,’ Andreas said soberly. ‘It is not wise to work in the fields without them. This is Greece, little one. It is very different from England.’

He was very different too. Andreas was giving his attention to his small nephew, and it gave Sophy the chance to watch him surreptitiously. And she dared bet he was just as dangerous as any snake. How old would he be? She looked at the uncompromisingly hard handsome face, at the firm carved lips and chiselled cheekbones, the straight thin nose and black eyebrows. He could be any age from his late twenties right up to forty; it was that sort of face. A face that would hardly change with the years.

Theodore, at thirty-six years of age, had been eight years older than she and Jill, and in the last couple of years before his death had put on a considerable amount of weight and lost some of his hair. His brother was as different from him as chalk to cheese. But that happened in some families.

And then Sophy came to sharply as she realised he had finished talking to Michael and that he was looking straight at her, his eyes like polished stone and his eyebrows raised in mocking enquiry.

She flushed hotly, turning away and staring out of the window as her heart thumped fit to burst. He might look different, she qualified testily, but inside he was certainly a one hundred per cent Karydis, all right. Arrogant, cold, self-opinionated and dominating.

She had never understood what had drawn her sister to Theodore and how she could have remained married to him all these years, although once Michael had been on the way perhaps there had been little choice about the matter. Whatever, she couldn’t have lasted a week, a day—an hour with him! And, although she was sure Jill was unaware of it, her sister was already beginning to lighten up a bit and show more evidence of the old Jill who had become buried under the authoritative weight of her husband.

This might be exactly what it was purported to be—a pleasant holiday for Jill and Michael to meet their in-laws and establish a long distance relationship for the future, but for herself she wasn’t so sure about the purity of the Karydises’s motives. And there was no way, no way she would stand by and see her sister come under the oppression of another dictator, be it Theodore’s parents or his brother or the whole jam pack lot of them.

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin as though she was already doing battle. She would keep her eyes and ears open whilst she was here. She had always been far better than Jill at picking up any undercurrents, and she was doubly glad she had made the effort and accompanied Jill out here.

The Karydises might find Jill accommodating to a fault and somewhat naive, but they would discover her sister was a different kettle of fish if they tried to pull any fast ones!

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS another half an hour before Andreas announced they were close to his parents’s home, but the journey through the Greek countryside where the vivid blue backdrop of the sky had provided a perfect setting for small square whitewashed houses with red tiled roofs, pretty villages and countless olive groves, and the odd dome-shaped spire dazzling in the sunshine, could have continued for much longer as far as Sophy was concerned. Apart from one factor, that was—the proximity of Andreas in the close confines of the car.

Since the moment he had caught her watching him she had been very careful to avoid any eye contact, but she knew without looking at him every time the grey gaze was levelled in her direction and it was unnerving. He was unnerving.

She hadn’t met a man who exuded such a stark, virile masculinity before, and the open-necked shirt he was wearing had enabled her to catch a glimpse of the bronzed, hair-roughened flesh beneath which had caused her stomach muscles to tighten. And she liked that reaction even less than her earlier irritation and dislike because it suggested a kind of weakness.

It wasn’t as though she liked the caveman type, she told herself crossly. Matthew had had the sort of looks she was drawn to: thick fair hair and blue eyes, a slim, almost boyish frame and classical fine features in an academic sort of face. Matthew had been gentle and mild, non-threatening, and that was her ideal man. Matthew. Poor, dear Matthew.

As the car turned off the main road into what was virtually a narrow lane, Sophy’s thoughts were far away. She and Matthew had met at university and she had liked him right away. He had been funny and warm and easy to be with and, although at uni they had just been friends, once she had moved up to London—Matthew’s home territory—their relationship had moved up a gear, and they had slowly begun to get to know each other better.

They had been married for just eight months before Matthew had fallen ill, and it had been a happy time. He had been her first lover and their sex life had been tender and comfortable, which had summed up their life together really, Sophy silently reflected, as the car came to a halt outside a pair of eight-foot-high wrought-iron gates set in a gleaming white wall.

And then, within two months of the liver cancer being diagnosed, Matthew had died, leaving her alone and utterly devastated.

Friends had rallied round and her job had helped, but it had been a full twelve months before she had felt she was beginning to enjoy life once again. And she hadn’t dated since, in spite of several offers; shallow affairs weren’t her style, and whether she had just been unlucky or men as a whole assumed a young widow was fair game she didn’t know, but certainly the ones of her acquaintance seemed to assume a dinner and a bottle of wine meant a bed partner. And the married ones were the worst of the lot. It had been quite a disillusioning time, if she thought about it. She frowned to herself, oblivious of her surroundings.

‘…Aunty Sophy?’

She came out of her reminiscences to the realisation that Michael’s chatter had been directed at her for the last few moments and she hadn’t heard a word. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said quickly. ‘I was day-dreaming. What did you say?’

But Michael was talking to his mother now, and it was left to Andreas to say quietly, ‘He was merely pointing out the gates opened by themselves, courtesy of Paul’s remote control of course.’

Sophy nodded, forcing herself to meet the level gaze without blinking. She noticed his grey eyes had turned almost silvery in the blinding white sunlight, throwing the darkness of his thick black lashes into startling prominence and yet earlier, at the airport, the grey had been nearly black. A human chameleon, she thought drily, and no doubt his nature was as enigmatic as his appearance. Some men liked to project an air of mystery.

More in an effort to show she was not intimidated than anything else, she said politely—the car having passed through the gates and into the spectacular gardens beyond—‘It must be wonderful to live in such beautiful surroundings. Have your parents always lived here?’

‘For the last thirty-two years,’ Andreas said softly. ‘I was actually born here twelve months after they first moved in.’

So he was only thirty-one; he seemed older somehow. And then her attention was taken by Jill who touched her arm, her voice awe-struck as she said, ‘Look, Sophy, banana trees.’

They were travelling very slowly down a long winding gravel drive, the tyres scrunching on the tiny pebbles, and either side of the car was a cascade of vibrant colour. Masses of exotic, brilliantly coloured flowers and small shrubs were set strategically among silver spindrift olive trees, and the feathered leaves of jacarandas and the broad polished leaves of banana trees were also etched against the blue sky. The effect was riveting.

And then the car turned a corner and a long and very beautiful house was in front of them, its white walls and deep red roof perfectly complemented by the riot of colour at its many balconies, the same lacy ironwork reflected in the veranda which ran the full length of the house and which again had bougainvillaea, anemones, lobelia and a host of other trailing flowers winding over it.

‘Oh, wow!’ Michael, with the innocent ingenuousness of a child, verbalised what both women were thinking as he turned to his uncle, his brown eyes wide, and said, ‘Are my grandparents very rich, Uncle Andreas?’

‘Michael!’ Jill turned as red as the scarlet roof. ‘You mustn’t ask things like that, darling,’ she said reprovingly.

‘Why?’ Michael stared at his mother in surprise.

‘Because it isn’t polite.’

Polite or not, it was a pretty valid point, Sophy thought bemusedly. She could see tennis courts to the left of the house and Andreas had already mentioned the swimming pool; these people were loaded. She had always thought Theodore was nicely set up—what with his restaurant business and the lovely house he and Jill had lived in—but this, this was something else. Why hadn’t Theodore ever said he came from such a wealthy family?

Jill must have had the same thought because her voice was small when she turned to Andreas and said, ‘Theodore never talked about his family, Andreas, as I suppose you’ve guessed. You’ll have to excuse our surprise.’

There was a moment’s hesitation on Andreas’s part, and then he surprised both women as he leant forward slightly, saying quickly under his breath, ‘I understand this, Jill, but I would implore you not to reveal it to my mother. My father and I would expect nothing else, but she…she is desolate and it would serve no useful purpose to know he has not mentioned her to his wife and child. You understand?’ he added urgently.

‘Yes, yes of course.’ Jill stared at Andreas as he settled back into his seat and then glanced once at Sophy.

Understand? She didn’t understand anything about this family, Sophy thought militantly, but she was so glad she had come here with Jill. If the parents were anything like their offspring, they might soon be on the next plane home rather than enjoying a couple of weeks in the sun! Overwhelming wasn’t the word for it.

However, she had no time to reflect further as the car had drawn to a halt at the bottom of the wide, semi-circular stone steps leading up to the house, and Andreas had already exited, turning to extend his hand as he helped both women out on to the immaculate drive.

The heat struck again with renewed vigour after the cool air-conditioning inside the limousine, but it wasn’t that which caused the colour to flare in Sophy’s cheeks. For a brief moment as she had slid out of the car and risen to stand beside her sister, she had been just a little too close to Andreas. Close enough to sense the muscled power in the big frame next to her and smell the faint, intoxicatingly delicious scent of his aftershave, and she couldn’t believe how her body had reacted.

Fortunately the front door to the house was already opening and all attention was diverted to the couple standing framed in the aperture. ‘There are your grandparents, Michael,’ Andreas said very softly as he touched his small nephew on the shoulder. ‘Would you like to take your mother and say hello?’

‘Sophy?’ Jill had turned to her, her hand reaching out, and Sophy said quickly, ‘Take Michael and introduce him, Jill. I’m right here, don’t worry.’ She smiled encouragingly, her eyes warm, and after a split-second of hesitation Jill turned and did as Sophy had suggested leaving Sophy and Andreas standing together at the bottom of the steps.

That the women’s swift exchange had not gone unnoticed by Andreas became clear in the next moment when, Jill and Michael now out of earshot, he said softly out of the corner of his mouth and without glancing down at her, ‘So, it is true what I have read. I have always wondered if the text books are right.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Her voice was as quiet as his and Sophy didn’t take her eyes off her sister and nephew either. Immediately Jill and Michael had reached the couple standing at the door to the house they had been enfolded in Theodore’s parents’s arms; Michael’s grandfather lifting him up and hugging him to his chest, and Jill’s mother-in-law embracing the younger woman with an embrace which looked to be welcoming. Sophy relaxed slightly.

‘Dominant twin and submissive twin?’ Andreas drawled coolly.

It was less an observation and more an implied criticism, and directed specifically at her. Sophy recognised it at once and, true to her nature, rose instantly to the challenge. ‘It is both dangerous and naive to believe everything you read, Mr Karydis,’ she said icily, her eyes leaving the party framed in the doorway and sweeping with cold dislike over the dark profile next to her. ‘I would have thought you knew that?’

‘So it is not true, then?’ he returned evenly, the phantom of a smile playing round the hard mouth suggesting he found her attitude amusing rather than anything else.

She opened her mouth to fire back another put-down but Jill was already turning back down the steps, calling her name as she urged her sister to come and meet Theodore’s parents. All Sophy could do was to stitch a bright smile on her face and keep it there during all the enthusing of how very alike they were, and how amazing it must be to have a mirror image, and so on and so on. But there was no edge to Theodore’s parents’s greeting—unlike their younger son’s—and Sophy found herself relaxing still more. After a little while the five adults and Michael entered the huge, marble-floored hall behind them which was vast by any standards.

Evangelos, Theodore’s father, was an older version of Andreas, but try as she might Sophy could see nothing of Jill’s husband in the tall, handsome man in front of her. And Dimitra, Theodore’s mother, was not at all what she had expected. The doe-eyed and still quite exquisitely beautiful woman was clearly overjoyed to see her grandson and daughter-in-law and couldn’t take her eyes off Michael. ‘He is so like my Theodore at that age,’ she said brokenly more than once, clutching hold of her husband’s arm as though for support. ‘You remember, Evangelos? You remember his curls and what a pretty child he was?’

Sophy saw Andreas and his father exchange a glance over the top of Dimitra’s light-brown hair which was liberally streaked with strands of silver, and it was Andreas who gently walked his mother through to the beautiful drawing room off the hall, the others following with Evangelos.

‘I am sorry.’ Dimitra’s glance included Sophy as well as Jill once they were all seated and she had composed herself. ‘I just wasn’t expecting Michael to be so like his father. It…it is wonderful, of course, but…’

As the older woman’s voice trailed away and an awkward silence ensued, Sophy said quietly, ‘Just at the moment a mixed blessing? But that will pass and it’s perfectly understandable in the circumstances. Jill was only saying on the plane coming over that, having had Michael, she could understand a little of what you must be feeling.’

Jill flashed her sister a grateful glance and took her cue, moving off the sofa on which she and Sophy and Michael were seated and kneeling down in front of Dimitra before taking her mother-in-law’s hands and saying softly, ‘I would like us to be friends and for you all to get to know Michael, Dimitra. I know it won’t take away the pain of your loss, but perhaps in time you could feel a little part of Theodore is still with you in the form of your grandson?’

‘Oh, my dear…’ Now the tears were pouring down Dimitra’s face as she held out her arms to Jill and Jill, still kneeling, hugged her mother-in-law.

Andreas cleared his throat before saying to a now silent and subdued Michael, ‘How about if I show you the pool? You would like this? And also your grandfather has something in the garages that might take your fancy. Have you ever sat in a Lamborghini, Michael?’

‘A Lamborghini? A real one?’ Michael was over the moon.

‘And there is a Mercedes too in your favourite colour,’ Andreas told the small boy in a stage whisper, ‘but don’t tell your grandfather I’ve told you. Perhaps you and your aunt would like to come and see now and we can have a cold drink by the pool, yes?’ The question was spoken in a tone which made it rhetorical.

Sophy stiffened slightly. It was one thing to remove Michael from the overwhelming emotions throbbing about the room, but from the way Jill turned and looked at her as Andreas spoke she knew her sister wasn’t at all sure about being left alone with Theodore’s parents, even if things did seem to be going well. And Jill was still the only person she was concerned about.

She squared her shoulders. ‘I don’t think—’

And then, to Sophy’s surprise and anger, she found herself lifted up from the sofa by a determined, strong hand at her elbow. ‘Come along, Sophy.’ Andreas was smiling and his voice was soft and pleasant, but the granite-hard eyes were another matter. ‘Ainka is going to serve refreshments in a few moments, so it is better I tell her now we will have ours by the pool in the sunshine. It is lovely there this time of the day.’

She glared her protest at his cavalier treatment. ‘Now look—’

And then she found herself literally whisked across the room and out of the door, Michael padding along behind them, and it wasn’t until Andreas had shut the drawing room door and had pointed down the wide expanse to his nephew saying, ‘That door down there, Michael. That is the way,’ that she came to her senses. And she found she was mad. Spitting mad.

‘Let go of me, this instant!’

It was a soft hiss—Sophy was well aware of Michael’s ever-flapping ears—but none the less vehement for its quietness, and Andreas immediately complied, his voice as low as hers as he said, as they both watched the small boy dance off down the hall, ‘Your sister and my parents need time to themselves, Sophy. Surely you see that? This is an important time for them all.’