Wedding Night with a Stranger

It wasn’t too hard to understand. They’d never stopped grieving over their own childless state. They’d pinned all their hopes on her, their ‘adopted’ daughter, to provide the nearest thing to grandchildren they could ever achieve.

‘You’ll like the Nikostos,’ Thio Peri had enthused on another occasion, determined to lure her into the trap. ‘They’re good people. They’ll look after you. My father and old Sebastian talked in the taverna every night for fifty years. They were the best of good friends. You will be taken care of there every step of the way.’

Thea Leni had hugged her so tightly. She should have seen then that it all felt like goodbye. ‘It will do you so much good, toula. It’s time you visited your own country.’

‘I thought Greece was my country now,’ Ariadne had put in, grateful they were at last moving on after the months of recriminations. And, face it, a little nervous to be venturing so far on her own at long last.

‘And so it is. But it’s important to see the land of your birth. Admit it. You’ve lost your job, you’ve lost your flat, people are whispering about you…You need the break.’

They needed the break. She could see that now. From her. From the embarrassment she’d brought them.

It wasn’t until she was on the plane buckling her seat belt that she’d woken up.

‘Sebastian will meet you at the airport and show you around Sydney,’ her aunt had said at the very last.

Her uncle’s hearty laugh had followed her down the embarkation corridor. ‘Don’t come back without a ring on your finger and a man in your suitcase.’

She should certainly have known then. Sebastian’s name had hardly been mentioned until that moment. Still, it wasn’t until the hostess was preparing to embark on the safety rigmarole that a shattering possibility had dawned. In a sudden panic, Ariadne had whipped out her mobile and dialled.

‘Thio. Oh, oh, Thio.’ Her voice shaking with a fearful certainty. ‘This isn’t some sort of matchmaking thing, is it? I mean, you haven’t set something up with this Sebastian Nikosto, have you?’

Guilt always made her uncle bluster. ‘You should be grateful your aunt and I have taken matters into our hands for you, Ariadne.’

‘What? How do you mean?’

His voice crackled down the phone. ‘Sebastian Nikosto is a good person. A fine man.’

‘What? No, no, Thio, no. You must be joking. You can’t do this. This isn’t my choice…’

‘Choice.’ His voice rose in her ear. ‘You’ve had choices, and look what you did with them. Look at yourself. You’re nearly twenty-four years old. There isn’t a man in Greece—Europe—who will touch you. Now try to be a good girl and do the right thing. Be nice to Sebastian.’

‘But I don’t know him. And he’s old. You said he was old. This is a holiday. You promised—you said—’

Her tearful protests were interrupted.

‘Miss, miss.’ The flight attendant was hovering over her, something about turning off her mobile phone.

‘I can’t,’ she told the man. She, who had always hated a fuss and had turned herself inside out at times to avoid making trouble. ‘Sorry,’ she tried to explain to the anxious little guy. ‘I have to…’ She made a hurried gesture and turned back to the phone, her voice spiralling into a screech. ‘Thio Peri, this isn’t right. You can’t do this. This is against the law.’ Her uncle hung up on her and she tried furiously to redial.

‘Miss, please…’ The attendant held out his hand for the phone, insistence in his tone. Her neighbours were staring with avid interest. All heads were turned her way.

‘But this is an emergency,’ she said. Glancing around, she realised the plane was already taxiing. She panicked. ‘Oh, no, no. I have to get off.’

She dropped the phone, unbuckled her seat belt and tried to rise. Someone across the aisle dived for her phone.

The urgent voices. ‘Miss, sit down. Miss. Sit, please. You are endangering the passengers.’

People around her stared as she half stood, clinging to the seat in front of her, craning their necks to see the distressed woman. Then the plane accelerated for lift-off, and she plumped down involuntarily. She felt the wheels leave the ground, the air under the wings, and was flooded with despair. They would have to turn back. The pilot would have to be told.

When the white rooftops of Athens were falling away below two more attendants had arrived, concerned and more authoritative. ‘Is anything wrong, Miss Giorgias? Are you ill?’

‘It’s my—my uncle. He…’ Already they were out over the sea and heading up through clouds. ‘We have to go back. There’s been a mistake. Can you please tell the pilot?’

She took in their bemused expressions, the quick exchange of glances, and lurid images of the headlines flashed through her head. Ariadne Giorgias provokes airbus incident. Ariadne of Naxos in more trouble.

More scandal, more shame. More mockery of her name, using the coincidence of the ancient myth. She cringed from the thought of any further notoriety.

In the end she fastened her seat belt and apologised.

But she couldn’t just acquiesce. She might be stranded in a hotel room, in a strange city on the other side of the world with no one to turn to except a man who despised her, but she mustn’t give into panic. She had to keep her wits about her and find a solution.

First, though, she needed to be practical. She had expected many of her meals and all of her accommodation to have been paid in advance for the coming weeks, and her bank account was virtually empty except for the holiday money. Money for a little shopping, taxis, tips, day trips here and there. Holiday money. What a cruel laugh that was.

She took a deep, bracing breath and dialled Thea Leni’s private line at the Athens town house. This time she mustn’t lose control, as she had with the call from the plane.

‘Eleni Giorgias?’

Her aunt’s voice brought Ariadne a rush of emotion, but she controlled it. Thea sounded wary. Expecting the call, Ariadne guessed.

‘Thea. It’s me.’

‘Oh, toula, don’t…Don’t…Your uncle has arranged everything and it will be good. You will see. Are you…all right?’

Ariadne’s heart panged at the note of concern but she made herself ignore it. This wasn’t the time for tears. ‘There’s been a mistake in the hotel booking,’ she said in a low, rapid voice. ‘I find that I’m only booked for one night, and it hasn’t been paid for. The travel agent must have made an error. And when I met the tour director in the lobby my name wasn’t on his list. I thought Thio had paid in advance. And he was supposed to have paid the hotel for four weeks.’

There was a shocked silence. Then her aunt said, ‘Not paid for? But—but how…?’ Then her voice brightened. ‘Oh, I know what he’s thinking. Consider, toula, you won’t need to be in that hotel for long.’

The ruthlessness of the trick stabbed at Ariadne. Whatever had happened to chastity before marriage? ‘Oh, Thea, what are you asking me to do?’ This time there was no controlling her wail of anguish. ‘Are you expecting me to go straight into that man’s bed?’

Guilt, or perhaps shame, made her aunt’s voice shrill. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything except to give Sebastian a chance. He is a good man. He will marry you. He is rich, he has brains…Your uncle says he is a genius at what he does with the satellites. ’

‘He doesn’t want to, Aunt. He doesn’t want to marry me.’ She wound up to a higher pitch. ‘I’m not even cut out to be a wife.’

A gasp came down the line loud and clear, all the way from Athens. ‘Never say that, Ariadne.’ Her aunt was shocked to the foundations. ‘Where is your gratitude?’ she wailed. ‘You had a bridegroom who was willing and you stood him up at the altar rails and dishonoured the entire Giorgias and Spiros families. Your uncle’s oldest friends.’

Emotion welled up in Ariadne’s throat. She understood. After they’d taken so much care to keep her pure for her husband, in the eyes of their traditional world she’d been deflowered, dishonoured, and still had no husband to show for it. And what else was a woman for, in her aunt’s old-fashioned view, except to be a wife and mother?

‘I told you, Thea. He was unfaithful. You know it. He had a lover.’

Even from a hemisphere away she could hear her aunt’s world-weary sigh. ‘Oh, grow up, Ariadne. If you want to bear children you have to compromise, and put up with—things. Anyway, there is no use in all this arguing. Your uncle won’t change his mind.’

‘He has made a mistake, Aunt. This man won’t take an unwilling wife. If you met him you’d know. He’s not…He’s an Australian. He will walk away. Could you please…please, Thea, transfer enough money into my account for the hotel bill?’

She could hear tears in her aunt’s voice. ‘Toula, if it were up to me…of course I would. Listen, when you’re married all your money will be settled on you. Your uncle loves you. He thinks this is right. He only wants the best for you.’

‘He always thinks he knows best, and this isn’t best,’ she said fiercely. ‘And I won’t do it. Tell him there’s no way anyone will force Sebastian Nikosto to go through with marrying an unwilling woman.’

Her aunt was silent for a second. Then she said in a dry voice, ‘Oh, yes, he will. He certainly will go through with it. As I understand it, there’s nothing he wants more.’

‘What are you saying?’ Ariadne said, seized by an icy foreboding. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Oh…’ Her aunt’s voice sounded weary, more distant somehow. ‘You know I don’t know about business, Ariadne. Your uncle says Sebastian knows he has everything to gain from this marriage, and everything to lose if he doesn’t choose it. His company will fail if he doesn’t marry you. Celestrial. Isn’t that what it’s called?’

Sebastian rang the bell of his parents’ house, then strode straight in. He should have been back in his office, combing through the departments for more ways to cut costs to avoid cutting people, but events had wrenched his unwilling attention in another direction.

Before he took another false step, he needed to do some research. There had to be some explanation of why he of all the eligible Greeks on the planet had been chosen as bridegroom to the niece of Peri Giorgias.

When Giorgias had thrown in that extra clause at the time the contract was all but finalised, the completed designs on the table, at first it had seemed nothing more than a bizarre joke. The cunning old fox had chosen his moment well. With Celestrial suddenly adrift in the recession, the market dwindling, the sly operator must have known if he pulled out then, Celestrial would make a significant loss in terms of the precious resources already used to develop the bid.

In the gut-wrenching moment when Sebastian had understood that the eccentric old magnate’s demand was deadly serious, he was faced with a grim choice. Accept the woman and save his company, guarantee the livelihoods of his workforce, or walk away and face the possible ruin of all he’d built.

But why him? Why not some rich lothario back in Hellas?

Angelika, his mother, and Danae, his married sister, were ensconced in the kitchen, arguing with the cook over the best method of preparing some delicacy. Angelika interrupted her tirade with hugs, and a multitude of solicitous enquiries concerning his diet and sleep patterns. Danae listened to all of it with an amused expression and an occasional solemn nod.

Sebastian shot his sister a glance. She might have been amused, but he was willing to bet she was soaking up the technique so she’d know how to suffocate her own sons when the time came for them to escape from her control.

‘Look at how thin you are,’ his mother wailed like a Greek mother. ‘What you need is a really good dinner. Maria, set him a place. I have a moussaka in the fridge I was saving for tomorrow’s lunch, but this is the bigger emergency. Danae, put it in a box and he can take it home with him. Show that woman how to feed a man.’

He held up his hand. ‘No, thanks, Maria.’ A really good dinner was his mother’s inevitable cure for any disorder from flu to insomnia. ‘I’m not staying.’ He waved away the proffered dish. ‘Put it back. I do have a full-time housekeeper, you know. And Agnes is very touchy about her cooking.’

His mother snorted her contempt. ‘Cooking? What cooking? The trouble with you, my son, you are too wrapped up in your satellites to see what’s in front of your nose.’

His nephews caught sight of him then and came running with a thousand urgent things they needed to tell him at once.

Sebastian listened as patiently as time would allow to all the recent details of their exuberant young lives, while Danae looked on, beaming with maternal pride.

Eventually, he detached himself with a laugh. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, ruffling the two four-year-old heads. He waited for a brief respite in the voluble trio of voices, then jumped in with a query of his own. ‘Is Yiayia here?’

His mother tilted her head in the direction of the hall. ‘In the orangery.’

Sebastian approached quietly, in case his grandmother was having a late afternoon nap. He needn’t have been concerned.

Dressed in her gardening smock, her hair coiled loosely into a bun, the small, frail woman was up and active, struggling to lift a terracotta pot onto a bench.

‘None of that,’ Sebastian said, striding forward and removing it from her worn hands. ‘You know what the doctor said, Yiayia.’

‘Oh, pouf. Doctors,’ his grandmother exclaimed while Sebastian positioned the pot in the miniature rainforest that was her pride and joy, adorning every available space. ‘What do they know?’

She peeled off her gloves and reached up, tilting her soft, lined cheek for his kiss.

Sebastian obliged, declining to argue, knowing she worshipped the members of the medical profession as though their words were piped direct from heaven.

‘Well, glikia-mou. Now, what are you about?’ She settled herself into a high-backed wicker chair draped with shawls, while Sebastian sat facing her.

Filtered by leaves both inside and out, the afternoon sun slanted through the glass walls, bathing the room in a greenish light.

Sebastian made himself relax, aware he was being examined by an almost supernaturally astute observer of human frailty. ‘Do you remember the Giorgias family?’

Her elderly brows lifted. ‘From Naxos?’ He nodded, and she said, ‘Of course. From when I was a child. There was always a Giorgias in our house. My father and their father were friends.’

‘Do you remember Pericles Giorgias?’

‘Ah.’ She gave a sage nod. ‘Of course I remember him. He was the one who inherited the shipyard, and the boats. He married Eleni Kyriades. He was such a generous man. It was he who helped your father when the stores nearly collapsed back in the eighties.’

Sebastian tensed. ‘How do you mean, he helped Papa? Are you sure?’

‘For sure I’m sure. When the banks wouldn’t help Pericles made your father a loan. To be repaid without interest over a very long time. No strings attached.’ She shook her head in wonderment. ‘Such a rare thing, generosity.’

Dismay speared through Sebastian. Such generosity was rare indeed. But there’d been strings attached, all right. Strings of honour. With grim comprehension he recognised the situation. The Nikostos were now under an obligation to the Giorgiases. For some reason Peri Giorgias required a favour, and he’d chosen to collect from the son of his debtor.

A son for a father. A favour for a favour.

He could almost hear the clang as the trap snapped shut around him. Chained to a stranger in wedlock.

In an attempt to break free from the vice sinking its teeth into his gut, he got up and paced the room. Another marriage was the last thing he’d ever intended. How could he dishonour Esther’s memory with some spoiled tycoon’s poppet?

‘There were other brothers too. Three. At least three.’ Yiayia’s gentle voice filtered through his reflections. ‘I remember the youngest, but the middle boys…’ The old lady sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. After a moment she said, ‘I remember young Andreas. He didn’t care for the family business. I think he was an artist. He came out here, and married an Australian girl. Oh, that was a terrible tragedy. Poor Andreas and his wife.’

In spite of his resistance to knowing anything about the Giorgias woman’s history, Sebastian’s attention was arrested, and he turned to watch his grandmother’s face. ‘What happened?’

‘A boat accident. Night-time on the harbour. You may not remember. Your parents, your grandfather and me, we all went to the funeral, but you’d have still been a boy. Only imagine a Greek being killed in a boating accident! They said it was a collision. Silly young people out skylarking. Andreas and his wife didn’t stand a chance.’

He frowned, unwilling to feel sympathy. Unwilling to feel. ‘They left children?’

His grandmother’s face lit up. ‘That’s right, there was a child. A girl, I think. I’m nearly sure the poor little thing was taken back to Greece with one of the brothers.’

Sebastian grimaced and resumed his chair. After a smouldering moment he made the curt acknowledgement, ‘Pericles.’

‘Ah.’

A pregnant silence fell.

Sebastian wondered if by admitting he knew that one fact, he’d given away something crucial. Sooner or later, if he went through with this charade, they would all have to know. What would they think of their brilliant son then, snagged like a greenhorn in a duty marriage? Forced up the aisle with a woman he hated?

A flash of the Giorgias woman’s drawn, anxious face at the last stirred a sudden unaccountable turmoil in his chest and he had to rescind the thought. No, he didn’t hate her, exactly. He just felt—angry. What man wouldn’t? To have his bride, his life, decided by someone else.

In the first flush of his outrage Sebastian had blamed—he allowed himself to use her name—Ariadne. He’d imagined her as a spoiled little despot, winding her doting uncle around her little finger. How had she come to choose him? Had he been listed in some cheap catalogue of eligible males?

Now, after hearing Yiayia’s words he began to see it was almost certainly instigated by Pericles himself.

His grandmother studied his face, her shrewd black eyes revealing nothing of her thoughts. After a long moment, she said, ‘You have met her? Andreas’s daughter?’

Sebastian hesitated, then shrugged and said without expression, ‘I have had that pleasure.’

The wise old eyes scanned his a moment longer, then closed, as if in meditation. ‘I don’t think Pericles and Eleni were blessed.’

Sebastian knew what she meant. Other people might be blessed with brains, beauty, talent, health or wealth, but to Yiayia children were the most worthwhile of life’s gifts, so blessings referred only to them.

‘They ’d have wanted to take on the little one,’ she continued. ‘I expect they’d have been overjoyed. Eleni had nothing much else to fill her heart. That Pericles liked the business. He was the right one to take over the shipping because he had an eye for money. Clever, but not always very smart. Andreas, now…A thoughtful boy, I think. Sensitive.’ She shook her head and clasped her lined hands in her lap. ‘Oh, that was a terrible shame. The young shouldn’t have to die.’

Was she thinking of Esther now? ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘They shouldn’t.’

Again, her wrinkled lids drifted shut. She remained silent for so long Sebastian thought she must have nodded off to sleep. He was about to get up and cover her with one of her shawls when her eyes opened, as clear and focused as ever.

‘Is she beautiful?’

Sebastian’s gut tightened. Resistance hardened in him to the notion of Ariadne Giorgias’s beauty. He opened his mouth to growl something, but nothing would come. Anyway, the less said the better. Regardless of how he felt, whatever he said now could come back to haunt him.

‘Do women have to be beautiful, Yiayia?’ he hedged. ‘Wasn’t there an entire generation of women who rebelled against that notion?’

The old lady made an amused grimace. ‘They usually are, though, aren’t they, glikia-mou? To the men who love them. A man needs something lovely to rest his eyes on.’

Again, he guessed she was thinking of Esther. And it was true he’d loved her as much as it was possible for a man to love a woman. People in his family rarely made reference to her now, not wanting to remind him of the bad times, all the losing battles with hope after each bout of surgery, the radiation treatment, the nightmare of chemo.

Even after three years they were still exquisitely careful of his feelings, even Yiayia, tiptoeing around him on the subject, as if his marriage were a sacred area too painful for human footsteps.

Sometimes he wished they could forget about all that and remember his wife as the person she’d been. He still liked to think of those easy-going, happy days, before he and Esther were married, before he’d started Celestrial.

A stab of the old remorse speared through him. If only he’d spared her more of his time. In those early days of the company…

With an effort he thrust aside the useless self-recrimination, thoughts that still had the power to gut him. Too late for regrets, now he’d lost her.

No one would ever replace her in his heart, but often he was conscious of a hollowness that his work, exciting and challenging as it was, didn’t fill. He hardly spent any time at home now, even sleeping on the settee in his office at times. He could imagine his parents’ amazement if he ended up marrying this Greek woman, after they’d long since given up hope and become inured to the prospect of his ongoing singularity.

The reality was, he might as well admit it, one way or another a man still needed a woman. Somehow, against his will, against all that he held decent, meeting Ariadne Giorgias in the flesh had roused that sleeping dragon in him.

Though she wasn’t his choice, she was no less lovely than any of the women he knew. If he’d met her at some other point in time, he might even have felt attracted. But…

Resistance clenched inside him like a fist. He wasn’t the man to be coerced.

He became aware of Yiayia’s thoughtful scrutiny. What was it she’d asked? Beautiful. Was she?

‘She probably is,’ he conceded drily. ‘To anyone who cares for her type.’

‘What type is that?’ Yiayia enquired.

Defensive, scared, fragile. Pretty. Sexy.

CHAPTER THREE

MIDWAY through winding her hair into a coil, Ariadne’s hand stilled. What had Sebastian Nikosto meant by ‘a start’? And how much of a start? Surely he wouldn’t expect to kiss her. Or worse.

She remembered his cool, masculine mouth, the seductive blue-black shadow on his handsome jaw, and felt a rush in her blood. Panic, that was what it must have been, combined with a fiery inner disturbance to do with how little she’d eaten since she’d boarded the plane.

The man had revealed himself as a barracuda. Her feminine instincts told her he might want to try something, but she’d just have to hold him off. That shouldn’t be so hard, given how much he’d disliked her at first sight.

She’d managed to hold Demetri at bay for months, even though they’d been engaged and she’d believed herself in love. She made a wry grimace at herself. What a fool she’d been.

Afterwards, Thea had hinted that that might have been where she’d gone wrong with her ex-fiancé, but Ariadne knew better. It was because he’d had the mistress that Demetri hadn’t been concerned about making love to her.

And everyone knew that like or dislike didn’t necessarily have much to do with a man’s sexual desires. Take Demetri’s case. He’d made love to people he didn’t even know. And she’d been such a contemptible pushover, believing his lies every time, doubting the evidence her close friends had tried to give her. Making excuses for his lack of interest in her, because she’d wanted to believe it was all fine and everything was as it appeared. Until she’d gone for lunch at that Athens restaurant and seen him there with his girlfriend.