Stranded With Her Greek Tycoon

‘We should follow the others to lunch,’ she said.

CHAPTER THREE

HAYLEY FOLLOWED CRISTOS into the dining area of the resort where some forty guests were gathering for an early lunch. In spite of all her resolve, she could not help but admire the splendour of the view of his back. His immaculately cut dark charcoal jacket—no doubt from the collection of his favourite Italian designer—worn with equally well tailored tapered trousers. The suit emphasised his broad shoulders and perfect behind, his long, leanly muscled legs. Cristos wore his clothes with effortless, masculine grace. No wonder he’d been such an instant hit as an international model.

Did he sense her gaze on him? He paused, turned back to her and reached out his hand. His eyes urged her to take it, for appearances’ sake.

Her first instinct was to pull back from any further physical contact, even such a simple act as holding hands. It aroused too many memories of happier times. Times when she’d felt a surge of joy as Cristos’s much larger hand had closed over hers. She had felt safe, protected and proud to let the world know that the extraordinarily handsome man by her side was hers. Then there were the memories of those skilful, loving hands on her body...

She shook her head to rid herself of unwanted thoughts. She especially didn’t want to think about how she had reacted to his kiss back there in front of his grandmother. Those feelings should be firmly relegated to the past. She could not lose control of her life again. Since she had left him she had learned to be herself instead of the support act to her handsome, glamorous husband. She wanted it to stay that way.

But some kind of show of togetherness would be expected of a husband and wife having a civilised meeting and she didn’t want to draw unwanted whispers from the people she knew were observing them. So she let her hand stay in his and made appropriate small talk about the resort as she walked by his side. It was just an act, she told herself, on his part as well as hers. He’d made steps towards divorce too. She could endure it for a few hours.

‘You’re not seeing the island at its best,’ he said in a casual, conversational tone that anyone could overhear and think nothing of. She was grateful to him for that; she was aware that many ears in the room were tuned into their conversation hoping for a hint of what was going on between Cristos and the wife who had left him. Even if they could lip-read they wouldn’t catch anything titillating. ‘We’re having an unusually cold winter,’ he added.

The weather was always a useful standby but in this case it was a topic of genuine interest. The breeze that had outside played havoc with her hair had turned into something much stronger, buffeting the windows that looked out to the sea. The view was magnificent, the deep turquoise sea whipped up to whitecaps, grey clouds scudding across the sky.

‘It must be breathtaking here in summer,’ she said. ‘But I can see the place has its own wild winter beauty too.’

‘Kosmimo is special at any time of the year,’ he said with an air of possession that surprised her. As far as she knew, his cousin Alex owned the island. But then his family were very close—perhaps what belonged to one belonged to the others. Who knew? She had an older sister but they weren’t particularly close.

Hayley didn’t have to fake how impressed she was by her surroundings. The resort building was white and elegant in its simplicity as it stepped down the side of the slope to the sea and the single jetty that served the private island. As she had approached it by boat earlier in the day she had admired the way the structure sat so perfectly in the landscape.

The interiors exceeded all expectations—strikingly stylish with pale marble floors, whitewashed woodwork, large shuttered windows and wide balconies facing the incredible view of the sea to the front and the forested hills to the back. It seemed serene, she thought, but with a subtle air of energy as well, fitting for a holistic resort where the guests came to rest and recharge. She was not surprised when Cristos told her the fit out had won design awards.

‘Why is the resort called Pevezzo Athina?’ she asked Cristos as he led her to their table.

‘Pevezzo in the local dialect means safe haven. Athina is after our family-run taverna on the island of Prasinos not far from here. It’s also the name of the restaurant my great-uncle, Alex’s grandfather, started in Sydney.’

‘So the name is a tradition,’ she said. Once she had realised the connection to his family, she had not gone anywhere near that Sydney restaurant.

He nodded. ‘Tradition is important to my family.’

When she had met him in Durham they had both been strangers away from home. His English had been near perfect, just slight differences in inflexion giving away that he was not a native speaker. They had been lovers and partners and husband and wife. The fact he was Greek and she was English hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t until they had visited Greece on their honeymoon that she had appreciated how Greek he was and how important his culture and traditions were to him.

‘A safe haven.’ She nodded slowly as she looked around her. ‘I can see that. And the way the wind is starting to lash around the windows I want to feel safe.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Do you think it will be okay for you to take me back to Nidri in your boat after lunch?’

Cristos had suggested she cancel the return trip she had booked with the boatman and let him take her back along with other guests in his bigger boat. Looking through the windows at how angry the sea had turned, she thought it had been a wise decision for her to agree.

He followed her gaze and frowned. ‘We checked all the weather forecasts for this day when we were planning the celebration, but they didn’t predict this. Hopefully it will blow over. Most of the guests need to leave after lunch. I’ll check the reports again.’

From the time she had met him until the time she had left him, Hayley had leaned on Cristos. It was something she was determined never to do again. But checking weather forecasts in Greek was something she was happy to leave to him.

She knew she was gawking as she looked around her. The place really was extraordinary and she wasn’t used to such high-end luxury. She earned a reasonable salary as a mechanical engineer, but a resort like this would be way out of her reach, the stuff of dream vacations. Cristos had coerced her into staying for lunch—she was determined to lap up the luxury and enjoy it.

True to her word, Dell had seated her at the round table where she was already waiting with Alex. Hayley returned Dell’s big smile. Dell was one of those people she had liked on sight. Under different circumstances she felt they would be friends.

‘Kalos eerthes,’ Dell said to her and Cristos. ‘Welcome.’ She introduced Hayley to the other guests at the table: cousins from Athens and two sets of parents, Dell’s and Alex’s, who had flown from Australia. The family connections were all too much for Hayley to take in, though she recognised some of the names from long-ago conversations with Cristos.

She was seated next to Cristos as was her due as his legally wed wife. It was surreal to be treated again as a couple, to be swept back into something that was once so everyday. Hayley and Cristos. They’d once been an entity. How much did his cousin and his wife know of their history? Hayley certainly didn’t intend to mention anything of their future. The divorce was hers and Cristos’s business alone.

However, she suspected Dell and Alex might have guessed not all was what it seemed between her and Cristos, the way they steered the conversation strictly to neutral territory. Alex explained the history of the island, how it had long ago been owned by Cristos’s and Alex’s family, more recently by a Greek magnate, then the Russian billionaire who had sold it back to Alex. He and Dell had developed the resort, building around an existing unfinished building.

Then there was chit-chat about the food. The meal was certainly conversation worthy. Mezze platters with a selection of Greek appetisers to start, followed by lamb and chicken cooked with lemon and Greek herbs, accompanied by seasonal vegetable dishes made with artichokes, beets and spinach.

‘Most of what we’re eating is grown on the island,’ Cristos explained. ‘Even the olive oil and the honey. The cheeses come from the milk from their herd of goats, and eggs from the chickens kept here.’

Hayley was surprised at his depth of knowledge about the resort and the island. Perhaps he had been working here for his cousin. As far as she knew he had stopped the lucrative modelling. She wondered what he had been doing since to earn a living. Her lawyer wanted to find out but Hayley had instructed him that there was no need to investigate Cristos’s finances. She didn’t want to make any financial claim on him. A complete severing of ties was all that was required.

‘It’s fantastic to be practically self-sufficient for food,’ she said. ‘I saw water tanks and solar panels too.’

‘The island is self-sufficient for power,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised you noticed. You were always interested in alternative energy sources.’

‘I’m working for a solar-panel development company in Sydney,’ she said, then immediately regretted letting slip the information. Her life in Sydney was hers; her independence had been hard won. She didn’t want to share the details of her new life with Cristos. When she went back she wanted to forget she had ever been married.

‘Lots of sunshine in Australia, I guess,’ was all he said. His eyes narrowed. She was grateful for the semi-public forum they found themselves in so he didn’t press for details. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care what she’d been doing with her life since she’d left him.

The placement of the chairs around the table was close—perhaps because they’d had to accommodate her as an extra guest. But it meant she was sitting very close to Cristos. Too close. Whatever she did—reach for condiments, lean aside to give access to the waiters—meant her shoulder brushed against his arm, his thigh nudged hers. She was as aware of the slightest contact as if there were a jolt of current connecting them. But it would appear too obvious to jump back from the contact.

She found the proximity disconcerting. Cristos seemed to take it in his stride. In front of a table of people he knew well, he played the role of husband with aplomb, always taking pains to include her in the conversation. Perhaps more so because he must be aware the other guests were dying to know the truth about the sudden reappearance of his English wife.

But this whole fake reunion thing was messing with her head. Particularly disconcerting had been her reaction to his kiss back at the chapel. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could she have reacted like that when she was so determined to put him in her past?

The physical attraction between them when they’d met had been instant and magnetic. In the first blissful months of their marriage they had not been able to get enough of each other. Even when things had started to sour as he’d gone from business student to the hot man of the moment, any argument had ended up in bed. But physical attraction was not enough. Great sex was not enough.

She’d been so naïve when she’d met him. Maybe she’d been not just old-fashioned but misguided to insist on staying a virgin until marriage. Then she might not have rushed into marriage. That overwhelming hunger for him had blinded her to other issues that had in the end unravelled. Like trust. And honesty.

Right now she had to be honest with herself—she needed to fight that physical attraction so she could free herself from him and move on. Sitting so close to him at the table for lunch, she was preternaturally aware of him—every nuance in his expression, every shift in his body. He had once been her world.

It wasn’t just his extraordinary good looks that were so compelling. It was also his effortless personal charisma. Switching between Greek and English, he had the entire table laughing at his story about a fishing expedition gone wrong. Yet when he turned to her, to translate a Greek phrase, his green eyes bright with laughter, it was as if she were the only person in the room who was of any importance to him. Once she had believed that to be true—before she’d had to share him with the rest of the world.

She forced a smile in response. He would know she was faking it but she hoped the others wouldn’t. This was Dell and Alex’s day and not to be marred by any antagonism between her and Cristos.

After the main course had been served, the guests on either side of both her and Cristos excused themselves from the table; those opposite were engrossed in conversation. Cristos picked up her left hand. ‘You still wear your wedding and engagement rings,’ he said in a low voice meant only for her.

‘Just to transport them safely back to you,’ she said. ‘They’re safer on my finger than in my handbag. I’ll give them back to you when we say goodbye.’

His face tightened, all traces of his earlier good humour extinguished. He released her hand. ‘There is no need for that. The rings are yours.’

‘What use are they to me?’ she said. ‘I’ll never wear them again. And I don’t want to be reminded of our marriage. I want to put all that behind me.’ She had been in the nebulous state of being separated for too long. Not a wife, yet not single either.

He swore in Greek under his breath. Hurt? Pain? Anger? It certainly didn’t sound like relief. She had agreed with Cristos not to disrupt the wedding renewal celebration. Now that she’d got to know Dell and Alex a little better she was glad she had stayed. But at what cost to her? And perhaps also to Cristos? She should never have come here.

‘Did you wear your rings in Australia?’ he asked abruptly.

She glanced down at the simple sapphire and diamond cluster set in white gold, the matching plain band. The stones in the engagement ring were tiny. When they’d got engaged Cristos couldn’t afford anything more than a ring from a chain of high-street jewellers. But she’d thought it was beautiful and Cristos had declared the stone was nowhere nearly as beautiful as the colour of her eyes. Later, when the money from his new career had started to flow, he’d wanted to buy her a more expensive ring but she’d refused. She’d cherished that ring. It had symbolised everything good about their love. If he wouldn’t take it back she would give it away.

‘No. I didn’t wear my rings in Sydney. And I didn’t go by my married name either. I used my maiden name, Hayley Clements. It was easier than explaining a Greek surname when I so obviously didn’t look Greek.’

Cristos slammed his right hand, where he wore his simple gold wedding band in the Greek tradition, on the table. ‘I have never taken mine off,’ he said.

Hayley swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. ‘You took it off many times for your modelling shoots.’

‘I was playing a role when I was working. Most often that role was not of a married man. I could not be seen to be wearing a wedding ring.’

‘I understood that. Of course I did. But then you started to leave it off all the time.’

‘You know why,’ he said, tight-lipped. He shifted in his seat. This wedding-ring thing had become an issue in their short marriage. One that had festered with her in their time apart.

‘Because it was seen as a disadvantage to your career to be married. A wife was a hindrance. “It would be better for your fans—both female and male—if you were seen to be single.” Don’t you remember your agent saying that?’ She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She’d been determined not to speak of their mutual past. No recriminations. No blame. Just a clean cut.

He frowned. ‘Of course I remember. We discussed it at the time—over and over. Then we agreed to take my agent’s advice. We needed the money too much to argue with him.’

She looked down at the table. Smoothed a barely visible crease in the white tablecloth. When she’d got engaged to Cristos her parents had cut off her allowance, stopped the rent on her accommodation. They’d both been students. To get extra money, he’d tutored kids studying Greek, she’d taught dancing. Neither pursuit had been lucrative. They’d struggled.

‘The idea was that we would still be together but not acknowledged as husband and wife,’ she said. That still stung—though it had made sense at the time and she’d gone into it with eyes well and truly open. ‘A girlfriend was acceptable. She was dispensable. That gave your fans hope that one day in their fantasies they might win you. The presence of a real-life wife ruined the fantasy.’

‘That’s how it was supposed to work,’ he said. ‘We both agreed I would take my wedding band off when I was in public. Then put it back on in private when I came home to you.’

Hayley couldn’t keep the sadness from her voice as she looked back up at him. ‘Until there were more and more times when you didn’t come home. When you were on shoots all over Europe. Then exotic, far-flung places like Morocco and Africa.’

‘Those jobs were the most lucrative,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘And the conditions weren’t as glamorous as they looked. You didn’t complain about the income they generated. I only did it for the money.’

Perhaps. But she would see the results of those shoots plastered all over billboards and in glossy magazines. More often than not they would feature Cristos, his body toned and buffed to perfection, wearing nothing more than swim-briefs or even underpants, with a gorgeous female model with next to nothing on draped all over him. She doubted even the most secure of wives wouldn’t help but feel threatened. And a wife who had to keep her presence hidden, who didn’t live up to the glamorous standards set by his new world, had found it difficult to deal with.

‘You know I asked could you come with me,’ he said. ‘Repeatedly. It just wasn’t done.’

The conversation was heading into territory Hayley had no wish to revisit. She picked up the little marble dish containing organic salt crystals from her place setting then put it down again. ‘I know you tried to include me. And I appreciated it.’

On one stomach-churning occasion she had overheard his agent’s reply when Cristos had asked could his beautiful wife perhaps join his agency as a model too. The agent had replied very quickly that it wasn’t a good idea. ‘She’s pretty enough. But she’s too short and too wide in the hips.’

His words had been so brutally dismissive. Even the word pretty had sounded like an insult. Was it then that she’d begun to believe that her husband’s new world would not have room for her?

* * *

Cristos realised there were several ways Hayley looked different from when they’d been husband and wife. The short hair for one. But it was in her eyes he saw a shadow of sadness that wrenched at him.

‘You’re thinking about that comment my agent made, aren’t you?’

Back then he had been furious at the insult to his wife and had wanted to walk out. He had cursed. He had fisted his hands by his sides to stop himself from punching the agent out.

But Hayley had swallowed the insult, had placated him and talked him into staying—for the sake of the money modelling had brought them. ‘It’s such an opportunity for us. How many people our age get that chance?’ she’d said. Her strategy had been to put everything they saved into the bank to give them a better start than many young couples starting off life together. He’d preferred a riskier, higher-yielding investment option—but he hadn’t told her that. Not then. Not ever.

Now she waved his comment away with a flick of her wrist. ‘I can laugh at that awful guy now,’ she said. Cristos doubted that was true. ‘I got used to people like him treating others like commodities, where the length of a woman’s legs or the shape of a man’s nose made them marketable or not.’

‘Yeah. It could be brutal,’ he said. In Cristos’s eyes, Hayley had been the most beautiful woman in the world. His agent had seen her differently. If a woman wasn’t fit for purpose then she had no use. Or a man. That was an inescapable reality of the business. And one he’d ultimately walked away from. He’d only endured it for her sake. When they’d discovered she was pregnant he had worked even longer hours for financial security for his wife and child.

It wasn’t a business Cristos had signed up for intentionally. Six months after they’d married, when he had finished his master’s degree in business and Hayley still had a term to go to finish her degree in engineering, they’d taken the train down to London for a mini-break. Cristos’s patience for shopping was limited. While Hayley had looked through every dress on the rack in a boutique in Covent Garden, Cristos had leaned against a wall outside and waited for her. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black jacket, he’d been happy to watch the world go by. London and the people from all around the world who flocked to it had fascinated him.

When the very fashionably dressed middle-aged man had approached him and asked him had he ever considered being a model, he’d brushed him off. Less politely the second time. Cristos had never lacked female attention, and often male attention too. He hadn’t wanted to insult the guy but he’d made it clear in no uncertain terms that whatever pick-up line the older man chose to use it would not work on him. He was a happily married man.

Cristos had taken the man’s card just to get him off his back. It had indeed been from a talent agency but anyone could print off a business card and make it say whatever they wanted. He’d put it in his pocket and forgotten about it.

Later at lunch in an Italian restaurant off Leicester Square he’d remembered and pulled the card out of his pocket to show Hayley. Her eyes had widened. ‘If that guy was genuine, this is one of the biggest model agencies in the world. I think you should follow it up.’

‘Me? A model?’ he’d scoffed. He’d thought himself way too macho to even consider it. In his world, modelling wasn’t a serious man’s profession. ‘No way. Never.’

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