The Cozakis Bride

Embarrassed by that recollection, which was way too accurate for her to dare to question it, Olympia managed a jerky shrug. ‘It was a long time ago.’

Nik sank down on the edge of his desk, his attitude one of total relaxation. He saluted her with his glass. ‘You were a class act. I was a hundred per cent positive you were a virgin.’

Suddenly Olympia was feeling uncomfortably warm in her cardigan jacket, and although she wanted to meet his eyes with complete indifference, she was finding that her eyes were unwilling to go anywhere near him. She hadn’t known what to expect from Nik tonight, but she definitely hadn’t expected him to refer with such apparent calm to that long-ago summer.

‘So…’ Nik trailed the word out in his darkly sensual drawl. ‘I have only one question to ask before we get down to business. It’s like a trick question, Olympia—’

Confusion was starting to grip her. ‘I don’t want to hear it, then—’

‘But you have to answer it with real honesty,’ he continued with the same unnerving cool. ‘It would not be in your best interests to lie. So don’t give me the answer you think I want to hear because you might well end up regretting it.’

Her mouth was dry as a bone. She tipped her orange juice to her lips. Her hand was trembling and the rim of the glass rattled against her teeth. The tension was so thick she could taste it. But she couldn’t think straight because Nik Cozakis now, tonight, was not behaving remotely as he had done a week earlier.

‘That night at the club, you may have seen me with another girl…Theos, I hope I’m not embarrassing you with this rather adolescent walk down memory lane,’ Nik murmured in a voice dark and smooth as black velvet as Olympia perceptibly jerked in shock at what he had thrown at her without warning.

‘Why should you be embarrassing me?’ she asked between gritted teeth.

‘Then let me plunge right to the heart of the matter that engages my curiosity even now,’ Nik continued softly. ‘Did you go out to my car with Lukas because you were drunk and distressed by what you may have seen, and did he then take advantage of you in that state? Or…’

Olympia stared fixedly at the desk lamp, outraged resentment and sheer hatred clawing at her. She wanted to toss the remains of her drink in his arrogant face and then hit him so hard, he wouldn’t pick himself up for a month. Ten years on, having been judged and found guilty for a sin she had not committed, why should she admit the agonies that he had put her through that night? Why should she further humiliate herself with that kind of honesty? Where did he get off asking her such questions? He darned well hadn’t asked her them at the time! Nor had there been any reference to the possibility that she might have seen him carrying on with another girl!

‘Or…what?’ she prompted in a hissing undertone.

‘Or…’ Nik responded without the smallest audible hint of discomfiture. ‘Did you go out to my car with him either because you thought you could get away with not being seen or because—’

‘I went out to your car with him because I fancied him like mad!’ Olympia suddenly erupted, provoked beyond bearing by his sardonic probing, her sea-jade eyes hot with defiance and loathing.

Dark eyes with a single light of gold held to her flushed and furious face. His outrageously long, lush lashes lowered, leaving only the dark glimmer of his gaze visible.

Her tummy clenched and she trembled, an odd coldness spreading inside her, as she met those dark, dark eyes. She spun away, shocked at the gross lie she had thrown at him, shocked that even ten years on her own desire for revenge could still burst back into being and send her off the edge into an insane response, for at the exact same moment she recalled exactly why she had come to Nik’s office.

‘You’re just toying with me for your own amusement!’ Olympia flung him an agitated glance of condemnation. ‘You’re going to say no, of course you’re going to say no…I really don’t know why I bothered coming here tonight!’

‘You were desperate,’ Nik reminded her with dulcet cool.

‘Well, why don’t you just say no?’ Olympia was beyond all pretence now, and she didn’t care that she sounded childish. He was winding her up and making a fool of her. She couldn’t wait to get away from him.

Nik rose lithely upright. ‘No need to get so rattled, Olympia,’ he mocked. ‘Why don’t you take that baggy cardy off and sit down?’

Her hot face got even hotter. She was boiling alive in her jacket, but she folded her arms.

Nik laughed with a sudden amusement that she found even more unnerving.

‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded sharply.

‘You always seemed so quiet. I awarded you all these qualities that you never actually possessed.’ His expressive mouth twisted with derision. ‘But now I’m seeing the real Olympia Manoulis. Hot-tempered, stubborn and reckless to the point of self-destruction.’

‘These are hardly normal circumstances. Don’t presume to know anything about me…because you don’t!’ Olympia slung back at him defensively.

‘But if you don’t take the ugly cardy off, I’m going to rip it off,’ Nik spelt out softly.

Olympia backed off a startled step. Only now was it dawning on her that she had never really known Nik Cozakis either. Clashing with brilliant dark eyes, she watched him extend a lean brown hand to receive the jacket, and suddenly it didn’t seem worth arguing about any more. Tight-mouthed, she peeled it off and tossed it to him. ‘You like throwing your weight around, don’t you? I should’ve remembered that.’

Ignoring that comment, Nik cast the jacket on a nearby chair. ‘Now sit down, so that you can hear my terms for marriage.’

Her eyes opened very wide and she froze.

‘Né…yes. What you want is within reach, but you may yet choose not to pay the price.’

‘The price…?’ Thrown by that smooth acknowledgement that he was seriously considering her proposition, Olympia backed hurriedly down into the armchair closest.

‘All good things come at a price…haven’t you learnt that yet?’ Nik murmured in a voice as smooth and rich as honey.

All of a sudden she couldn’t concentrate. Having forgotten to keep Nik out of focus, she collided head-on with amber-gold eyes. It was like being suddenly dropped from a height. Such beautiful lying eyes, she thought helplessly, curling her taut fingers into the fabric of her skirt. A quivering, insidious warmth snaked up between her thighs, making her tense, jerk her lashes down and freeze, no longer under any illusion about what was happening to her. As she felt her breasts stir and swell, their soft peaks pinch into straining sensitivity, she was aghast. A tidal wave of embarrassment surged up over her. Already her heart was banging as if she had run a race.

‘Olympia…?’

She crossed her arms and lifted her head again with pronounced reluctance. Nik was over by the window at a comfortable distance. He was planning to agree; he was going to marry her. She was home and dry, she reminded herself. What did it matter if her stupid body still reacted to him? He was really gorgeous, really, really gorgeous. It was a chemical response, nothing more. So she didn’t like it, in fact she hated that out-of-control feeling, but it wasn’t as if she would be seeing much of him in the future.

‘You’re in shock…I’m surprised,’ Nik admitted. ‘You seemed so confident last week that you could win my agreement.’

‘You weren’t very encouraging,’ she pointed out unevenly, no longer looking anywhere near him. It might just be a chemical response but she didn’t want to encourage it.

‘I thought your proposition over at length. I feel I should warn you that I tend to be ruthless when I negotiate…’

‘Tell me something I didn’t expect.’

‘I have certain conditions you would have to agree to. And there is no room for negotiation at all,’ Nik imparted gently.

‘Just tell me what you want,’ Olympia urged.

‘You sign a pre-nuptial contract—’

‘Of course.’

‘You sign over everything to me on our wedding day—’

‘Apart from a small—’

‘Everything,’ Nik slotted in immovably. ‘I’ll give you an allowance.’

She glanced up in surprise and dismay. ‘But that’s not—’

‘You’ll just have to trust me.’

‘I want to buy a house for my mother.’

‘Naturally I will not see your mother suffer in any way. If you marry me, I promise you that she will live in comfort for the rest of her life,’ Nik asserted. ‘I will regard her as I would regard a member of my own family and I will treat her accordingly.’

It was a more than generous offer, and she was impressed and pleased that there was no lack of respect in the manner in which he referred to her mother.

‘Your grandfather was born seventy-four years ago,’ Nik pointed out, as if he could see what she was thinking. ‘He’s from a very different generation. Your birth outside the bonds of marriage was a source of enormous shame and grief to him.’

Fierce loyalty to her mother stiffened Olympia. ‘I know that, but—’

‘No, you don’t know it, or even begin to understand it,’ Nik incised with sudden grimness. ‘Your mother brought you up to be British. She made no attempt to teach you what it was to be Greek. She stayed well away from the Greek community here in London. I am not judging her for that, but don’t tell me that you understand our culture because you do not.’

Lips compressed, Olympia cloaked her unimpressed gaze.

‘Greek men have always set great value on a woman’s virtue—’

‘We’re getting off the subject,’ Olympia said in curt interruption, tensing at the recollection of the names he had called her. In retrospect, she recognised that she now felt sensitive to his low opinion of her morals, and she wondered why on earth that should be.

Just as quickly, she marvelled at her stupidity in allowing him to demand, unchallenged, that she sign away any claim on the Manoulis empire and trustingly depend on his generosity. ‘What you said about me signing away everything—’

‘Non-negotiable,’ Nik interrupted with gleaming dark eyes. ‘Take it or leave it.’

Olympia breathed in deep. ‘I don’t care about the money—’

‘If you don’t care, why are you arguing?’

She didn’t trust him. But she did nonetheless trust the promise he had made about her mother, and that was all that mattered, she reminded herself. After all, she would be living with her mother and looking after her. Why had she argued?

Nik shot her a sardonic appraisal. ‘Do you think I would keep my wife in penury?’

She flushed. ‘No.’

He glanced down at the slim gold watch on his wrist and then back at her. ‘This is progressing very slowly, Olympia. May I move on?’

She nodded.

‘Your belief that we could marry and separate immediately after the ceremony is ridiculous. Your grandfather would not accept a charade of that nature, and nor would I be prepared to deceive him in that way.’

She tensed. ‘So what are you suggesting?’

‘You will have to live in one of my homes…for a while, at least.’

She focused her mind on her mother’s needs and gave him another reluctant nod.

‘You give me a son and heir.’

Olympia blinked, lips falling slightly apart.

‘Yes, you did hear that.’ Nik surveyed her shocked face with cynical cool. ‘I need a son and heir, and if I have to marry you, I might as well make the most of the opportunity.’

‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Olympia gasped, so taken aback by that calm announcement she could barely vocalise.

Nik elevated a black brow. ‘The son and heir is also non-negotiable. And, unless I change my mind at some future date, a daughter will not be an acceptable substitute. Sorry if that sounds sexist, but there are still a lot of daughters out there who do not want to be leaders in industry!’

Olympia sat in the armchair staring at him as if he had taken leave of his wits. ‘You hate me, you can’t possibly w-want to—’

‘Wouldn’t faze me in the slightest, Olympia. You may be damaged goods, but I’m not over-sensitive when it comes to practicality,’ Nik delivered, running slumbrous dark eyes over her as if he was already stripping off her clothes piece by piece. ‘And as I have no respect for you whatsoever, conceiving a child should be fun.’

‘You’d have to make me!’ Olympia breathed in growing outrage.

Nik winced and regarded her with semi-screened eyes. ‘Oh, I don’t think so…I think you’ll cling and beg me to stay with you like all my other women do. I’m a hell of a good lay, believe me. You’ll enjoy yourself.’

Olympia jerked up out of her chair, so shattered by that speech she was at screaming point. ‘You invited me here to try and humiliate me—’

‘Trying doesn’t come into it. Sit down, Olympia, because I haven’t finished yet.’

Olympia threw him a look of fierce disgust. ‘Get lost!’

She stalked over to the chair where he had tossed her jacket and snatched it up.

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t push me,’ Nik drawled in a soft undertone that danced down her rigid spine like a gypsy’s curse. ‘I’ve got you where I want you.’

‘No way!’ she launched at him, in such a temper that if he had come any closer she would have swung a fist at him with pleasure.

‘Does your mother know about the sordid little encounter in the car park that concluded your visit to Greece ten years ago?’

Olympia’s feet welded to the carpet. Her face drained of colour as if he had pulled a switch. So appalled was she by that question she just stared into space, her stomach knotting with instant nausea.

‘Lesson one, Olympia,’ Nik murmured with soft, sibilant clarity. ‘When I say I’ve got you where I want you…listen!’

CHAPTER THREE

NIK COZAKIS strolled across his enormous office and gently eased the jacket from Olympia’s loosened grasp to cast it aside again.

He closed his hand over hers and guided her back to the armchair. Positioning her in front of it, he gave her a gentle push downward, and her knees bent without her volition. She sank down in slow motion but settled heavily as a stone.

‘You wouldn’t…you couldn’t approach my mother…’

Nik hunkered down in front of her with innate athletic grace. Level now with her, he scanned her ashen face and appalled eyes. ‘Oh what a dark, dark day it was for you when you walked into my office, Olympia…’ he murmured with silken satisfaction.

Olympia was now in so much shock she was shaking. ‘You don’t know what my mother knows—’

‘What do you think I’ve spent the last week having done? I’ve had enquiries made,’ Nik told her levelly. ‘Your mother was very friendly with your next-door neighbour at your last address, and she was a very talkative woman.’

‘Mrs Barnes wouldn’t remember—I mean, you couldn’t possibly…’ Olympia was stammering helplessly now, so horrified by the threat he had made she could barely string two coherent thoughts together.

‘Unfortunately for you, the lady remembered very well, for the simple reason that your disappointment that summer ten years ago has long been an ongoing source of regret to your mother, Irini, and a subject to which she often referred.’

‘No—’

‘You came home to loads of tea and sympathy, you little liar,’ Nik framed with slashing scorn, his dark, deep drawl flaming through her like a cutting steel knife. ‘You lied your head off about why our engagement was broken!’

Transfixed, Olympia gasped strickenly. ‘It wasn’t all lies, j-just a few evasions…I mean, I never did what you thought I did in that car park anyway, so why would I mention it?’

Nik shook his arrogant dark head at that claim and sighed, ‘You’re getting just a little desperate here, and really there’s no need.’

‘No need? After what you just—?’

‘If you do as you’re told, you have nothing to be afraid of. I will take your sordid little secret to the grave with me,’ Nik promised evenly. ‘Hand on my heart, I would really hate to be a prime mover in distressing your mother.’

‘Then don’t!’

Nik vaulted fluidly upright again and spread lean brown hands wide. ‘I’m afraid there’s a problem there…’

‘What problem?’ Olympia rushed in to demand jerkily.

‘I have a powerful personal need for revenge,’ Nik admitted, without a shadow of discomfiture.

‘Revenge?’ Olympia stressed with incredulity.

‘You dishonoured me ten years ago. Philotimo…or do you not even know what that word means?’ he derided.

Olympia had turned even paler. Philotimo could not be translated into one simple English word. It stood for all the attributes that made a man feel like a real man in Greece. His pride, his honesty, his respect for himself and for others.

‘I see that your mother educated you to some degree about our culture,’ Nik noted. ‘I wish to avenge my honour. You shamed me before my family and my friends.’

‘Nik…I—’

‘I could just about bear you surviving in misery somewhere in the world as long as I never had to see you or think about you,’ Nik extended gently. ‘Then you came into my office and asked me if I was a man or a mouse and I found out which…just as you’re going to find out by the time I’m finished with you.’

‘I apologised—’

‘But you didn’t mean it, Olympia.’

‘I mean it now!’

Disconcertingly, Nik flung his handsome dark head back and laughed with reluctant appreciation at that qualification.

Olympia took strength from that sign of humanity. ‘You’re not serious about all this,’ she told him urgently. ‘You’re angry with me and you want to shake me up, and I wish…I really do wish now that I had never come near you.’

Nick dealt her a hard, angry smile. ‘I bet you do. Accept that you’ve brought this particular roof down on yourself!’

Olympia squared her aching shoulders. ‘All I did—’

‘All you did?’ Nik rasped with seething force, his lean strong face hard as iron, his fierce anger blazing out at her in a scorching wave of intimidation. ‘You dared to believe that you could buy me with your dowry!’

Olympia gulped. ‘I—’

‘Even worse, you dared to suggest that I, Nikos Cozakis, would sink to the level of cheating an elderly man whom I respect for the sake of profit. That elderly man is your grandfather…have you no decency whatsoever?’ he roared at her in disgust.

Olympia was cringing, devastated by the manner in which he seemed to be twisting everything around and making her sound like a totally horrible person. ‘It wasn’t like that. I thought—’

‘I’m not interested in hearing your thoughts…every time you open your mouth you say something more offensive than you last said. So if you have any wit at all, you’ll keep it closed!’ Nik advised with savage derision, a dark line of colour delineating his hard cheekbones. ‘You owe debts, and through me you will settle those debts.’

‘What are you t-talking about?’

‘What you did ten years ago cost your poor mother any hope of reconciliation with her father. What you did ten years ago savaged your grandfather. And what you did to me, you can find out the hard way,’ Nik concluded darkly.

Stabbed to the heart by that reminder about her mother, Olympia dropped her head, tears springing to her eyes. ‘It wasn’t my fault…what happened…I was set up—’

‘You’re embarrassing me,’ Nik slotted in with contempt. ‘Lies and fake shame are not going to protect you.’

‘You’re scaring me…’ Olympia condemned tearfully. ‘You are really scaring me!’

Nik bent down and closed his hands to hers and tugged her upright. ‘You’re getting too upset.’

‘You can’t mean all this stuff you’ve been saying…’

‘I do…but I don’t like seeing a woman cry.’ Linking his arms round her, Nik stared down at her from his immensely superior height, dark eyes smouldering gold over her damp upturned face.

Olympia’s breath tripped in her throat. Suddenly she could feel every individual nerve-ending in her trembling body coming alive. The effect was so immediate it made her head spin. The scent of him was in her nostrils. Warm, husky male with an intrinsic something extra which was somehow exotic and exciting and dizzily familiar. Her heart began to pound in her eardrums.

‘Even crocodile tears can get a reaction from me.’ Nik slid a big hand down over her hips and eased her so close to the muscular power of his thighs that she gasped, a sort of wild heat whipping over her entire skin surface, leaving every inch terrifyingly sensitive to the contact of his lean, hard physique.

‘Nik…no—’

‘Nik…yes, only you’ll learn to say it in Greek and it will be your favourite word,’ Nik husked, suddenly hauling her up to him and plunging his mouth down on hers with devouring force.

The hard, sensual shock of him engulfed her in a split second. She had never tasted passion like that before. The stab of his tongue inside the tender interior of her mouth hit her with such electrifying effect her whole body jerked and quivered, a low moan of response breaking deep in her throat. Instantly she was melting, burning, craving more. Her arms closed round him and an amount of hunger that blew her away erupted with the shuddering force of a dam breaking its banks within her.

Nik dragged his mouth free of hers and lowered her to the carpet again, a derision in his raking scrutiny that stabbed her to the heart. ‘Hungry, aren’t you?’

Devastated by what she had allowed to happen between them, and jolted by a sense of loss so strong it hurt, Olympia swung up her hand to strike him. Nik caught her wrist between firm fingers, the speed of his reaction shocking her. ‘Those kinds of games don’t excite me,’ he warned her drily.

Olympia whirled away from him in a fever of confusion and distress. She couldn’t believe that she had responded to him. She didn’t want to believe it, any more than she could come to terms with the stormy surge of sexual need which had betrayed her. ‘You wouldn’t tell my mother—’

‘Want to run that risk? And destroy the single character trait you have that I can admire?’

‘And what’s that?’ she muttered shakily.

‘You love your mother and you don’t want her to know what you’re really like.’

Olympia felt her jacket being draped round her slumped shoulders. ‘You can’t want to marry me—’

‘Why not? I get the Manoulis empire and a son and heir. Spyros gets a great-grandson—a reward and consolation which he certainly deserves. I also get a wife who really knows how to behave herself, a wife who never, ever questions where I go or what I do because we have a business deal, not a marriage,’ Nik enumerated lazily. ‘A lot of men would envy me. Especially as I didn’t even have to go looking for my bridal prize…she put herself on a plate for me.’

‘I hate you…’ Olympia whispered with real vehemence. ‘I’ll never marry you…do you hear me?’

‘I hope you’re not about to go all wimpy on me, Olympia,’ Nik sighed. ‘I’d find that very boring.’

‘You bastard…you rotten bastard…what are you doing?’ she demanded as he separated the fingers of her hand.

‘Here is your engagement ring… No, not the family heirloom you flung back at me ten years ago…you don’t qualify for a compliment like that.’

Olympia stared down mute and stunned at the diamond solitaire now adorning her engagement finger.

‘Romantic touch. Your mother will appreciate it even if you can’t.’

Nik walked her through a connecting door into another room and straight into a lift.

‘You can’t do this to me, Nik!’ Olympia argued weakly.

‘Damianos is waiting in the car park down below. He’ll see you get driven home. Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ As Olympia’s cardigan threatened to fall off, Nik wrapped it round her like a blanket. Then he punched the relevant button on the lift control panel for her.

The doors whirred shut. Olympia snatched in a shivering breath, suddenly appreciating that she had a dreadful pounding headache and that she had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. She tottered out of the lift into a well-lit basement car park. Damianos glanced at her waxen face and averted his attention again.