The Heiress Bride

‘I’m impressed,’ Minos Gakis informed her with a quietness of tone that sent a cold shiver down her rigid spine. ‘You know your place in life now. That’s good, for I won’t take any nonsense over this matter. As your father, I know what is best for you.’

‘Yes, Papa,’ she muttered sickly.

‘Don’t you even want to know who your husband will be?’ he mocked, revelling in her submission to his dictates.

‘If you want to tell me,’ she intoned half under her breath.

‘Alexio Christoulakis.’

Her knees almost gave beneath her in shock. She glanced up and encountered her father’s cold look of amusement. ‘Alexio…Christoulakis?’

Slowly, painfully slowly, her triangular face drenched with colour for she recalled the night she had met Alexio Christoulakis with too great a clarity for comfort. Her long, naturally dark lashes dropped again to conceal her transfixed gaze. Alexio Christoulakis…the numero uno womaniser, who seemed addicted to making headlines in both the business section and the society pages. The guy who didn’t like to sleep on satin sheets and who had insisted she changed them even though it had been the early hours of the morning. The guy whose bride-to-be had drowned in a drunken moonlit swim. The guy who had treated her like a maid and barely registered that she was human. The guy who was so achingly beautiful to look at she had stared and stared in spite of herself every chance she had got…

‘I’m not surprised that you can hardly credit your good fortune,’ Minos Gakis murmured unpleasantly. ‘But I’m sure I don’t need to add that you need not look for fidelity from him. This is a business arrangement. He will take the place that your brother once occupied and as your husband he will become part of this family.’

With his every successive word the blood in her veins chilled more. He was spelling out the brutal facts. She would only be the means by which Alexio Christoulakis could be put in a position of trust as a son-in-law.

‘He’s brilliant, single-minded, strong. It took a lot to persuade him to agree to this alliance. But I need him. When he arrives tomorrow, you will do whatever it takes to keep him content. Is that understood?’ her father pressed coldly.

Pinning bloodless lips together, she nodded jerkily. ‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Even when you become his wife, your first loyalty will remain with me. You will not tell him that you are adopted. The Christoulakis family take great pride in their family tree. You will not embarrass or offend them with the news that you were born illegitimate or reveal that you have a twin sister, who is nothing more than a common prostitute. Nor will you again seek contact with her. Is that also understood?’

A faint shudder rippled through Ione’s slight frame until she pulled herself taut again. Bitter revulsion and anger currented through her but it was backed by despair. She saw how her future was being mapped out: a future that would be as confined and empty as the present. He expected her to marry a stranger and spy on him for his benefit. He was demanding that she go on living a lie for he did not want it to be known that macho Minos Gakis had adopted his daughter, rather than sired her himself. And to drive the knife in harder, he abused the twin she had never met, scorning her sister for her lifestyle. Hatred made her very lungs burn and she turned her head away.

‘Answer me, Ione,’ he growled.

‘Yes, Papa. I understand,’ she said with all the expression of a robot.

The instant the interview was at an end, she headed straight for the gymnasium. There she changed into an exercise outfit and embarked on a rigorous training session to empty her taut, shivering body of stress. She overdid it and exhausted herself, finally slumping down on a mat, damp and shaking, to stare at the floor. And it was only then, at the last expected moment, that she finally grasped why she should be greeting the announcement of her approaching nuptials with joy and relief…

The minute that she left the island with her bridegroom would simply be the countdown to her eventual escape from the whole darned lot of them! Ione flung back her pale blonde head and her laughter suddenly echoed across the big empty gym. Alexio Christoulakis would be her passport to freedom, not her future keeper, not yet another lord and master in her life.

Having had experience of one bullying, aggressive male, she had no intention of accepting a second. But it was essential that Alexio marry her just to get her off Lexos. Not even her father was likely to suspect that she might choose to walk out on her bridegroom after her wedding. Especially not when it came to a male as eligible and good-looking as Alexio Christoulakis, who was rumoured to be the top pin-up in girls’ schools across the globe.

Ione began to smile, soft mouth curving as she flung herself back on the padded mat and started to plan. When she reached England she would find her sister, Misty, for although it had been more than four years since that letter had arrived from her twin she still remembered every line of the address on it. Fossetts, her sibling’s foster home had been called, and surely from that point it would be a simple matter to trace Misty even if she no longer lived there. Yet her own sister knew nothing about her, not even her present name, Ione acknowledged ruefully. At birth Ione had been given the name Shannon, but Amanda Gakis had chosen a new name for her adopted daughter. However, when she did finally get to meet her long-lost twin she really would have to work out some very tactful, very, very kind way of persuading her elder sister that she did not need to be the victim of rich, using, abusing men.

As the helicopter came in to land over Lexos, Alexio was thinking about the disconcerting meeting he had had with Minos Gakis forty-eight hours earlier and the commitment he had made in agreeing to marry Ione.

After having advanced an extremely advantageous business partnership that had taken Alexio by surprise, Gakis had laid all his cards on the table. In telling Alexio the truth about his health, the older man had to a very great extent put himself in Alexio’s power, for the news that the billionaire tycoon might only have a few months left to live would send shock waves crashing through the business world and cause a steep fall in the value of the shares in Gakis Holdings, making it vulnerable to a takeover bid.

The Gakis empire ran only with Minos Gakis at the helm. His senior executives had been picked not for their ability to think on their feet but for the efficiency in following orders without question. Minos did indeed need a second-in-command, a son-in-law bound by family ties to hold the fort while he went into hospital for further treatment. For if he did not emerge again, what would happen to a daughter raised like a convent novice on an island and without the smallest grasp of what the real world was like? A young woman who would inherit billions and become the target of every smooth-talking greedy fortune hunter across the globe?

But without a doubt, Gakis was sick in more than body, a father jealous of his precious little girl’s affections, for why else should he have raised his daughter in such unnatural isolation? Almost twenty-three and never had a boyfriend? Was Minos Gakis crazy? Didn’t he realise that his daughter would fall madly in love with the first man who gave her some attention?

That’s likely to be you, Alexio’s intelligence told him and, even though women who clung and looked at him with adoration turned him off big time, the shadow of a faint smile touched the corners of his strong mouth. Ione would be his wife, after all, and she had not looked like the demanding type. Different horses for different courses, he reflected with cool confidence. If she loved him their marriage of convenience might well run a great more smoothly. But what kind of a woman allowed herself to be bartered off like a commodity?

The ‘commodity’ in question was engaged in equally careful thought at that moment. Ione was working out how she could best put Alexio at ease and lull him into a false sense of security. After all, she did not want him succumbing to an attack of cold feet and spoiling her plans, and she had not forgotten her father’s admission that it had taken a great deal to persuade Alexio into marrying her. She would have liked to show him that she could be a lot more presentable in appearance than her current circumstances allowed. Unfortunately that option was barred for her father might well lose his temper if she appeared wearing the cosmetics and the more flattering outfits that she sometimes put on to cheer herself up in the privacy of her bedroom.

Unfortunately, the only thought in Alexio Christoulakis’s head when he first looked at her would be…sex. Her nose wrinkled. He would wonder what she would be like in bed; he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He was Greek, he was very oversexed. And he had made an outsize fool of himself two years ago over a greedy little tart of a show-off with nothing else going for her but her ability to show her boobs and bare bottom off in public on a monotonously regular basis. Face it, she would be dealing with a very basic, testosterone-driven male, who left his supposedly brilliant brain outside the bedroom door. And here she was looking as plain and sexless as it was possible to look and he might well take fright. So she had to draw him in…somehow, ensure he got the impression that, no matter how devoid of instant appeal she might seem, the wedding night at least was likely to be a wow.

Of course, she didn’t plan on sticking around for the wedding night, but he could have no suspicion of that reality. But then, he deserved all that he had coming to him, didn’t he? What kind of a man agreed to marry a woman as part of a cold-blooded, callous business deal? A sexist, domineering, ruthless, power-hungry, insensitive pig!

As Alexio Christoulakis emerged from the helicopter he was gilded by bright sunlight. The selfish, spoilt pig who had demanded that she change his wretched bed sheets at two o’clock in the morning, Ione reminded herself as she stood like a small, rigid statue by her burly father’s side.

But she had chosen to forget the sheer raw impact of Alexio in the flesh and the closer he got, the less she breathed and her chest tightened, for he was so incredibly good-looking. The golden light shimmered over the luxuriant blue-black hair cropped to his arrogant head, accentuated his superb bone structure, the stunning dark, deepset eyes, the bold brows, aggressive jawline and wide, charismatic mouth. His pearl-grey business suit was cut to fit wide shoulders, lean hips and long, powerful thighs that required no helpful enhancement from his tailor. He strolled towards them not one whit put out by a reception committee and a situation that would have filled ninety-nine out of a hundred men with a sizeable degree of discomfiture.

Her own heart was hammering with nervous tension and, had she not been holding herself taut with the self-discipline of years of training, she would have trembled. His vibrant self-assurance infuriated her, but on another level she could only be impressed by that show of strength, that cool, contained tough front. One wrong move, one word out of place and her father would ruin him. Didn’t he realise that he was walking into the lion’s den? Didn’t he appreciate that if he married into the Gakis family he would be selling his soul to the devil?

‘Ione…’ Alexio looked down into eyes the same shade as precious jade, the most unreadable female eyes he had ever met, utterly empty of any impression, and the smooth and polished greeting ready on his tongue somehow died there. She had the pale, still face of a madonna, possessed of pure, perfect symmetry and…untouchable. At a distance she had looked like a doll, now she bore a very close resemblance to an ice statue: frigid from head to toe. The wedding night promised to be a real challenge.

‘Alexio…’ Ione squeezed out his name in acknowledgement, straining with all her might to get enough oxygen back to manage that feat.

Alexio watched the flow of warm pink colour burnish her cheeks, the uncertain flutter of her silky brown lashes and the brief relaxation of her taut lipline into soft, sexy fullness as she spoke. As he noted the tiny pulse beating out her tension below her delicate collar-bone, he recognised that she was neither indifferent nor cold, but raw with nerves and struggling to hide the fact. A primal sense of satisfaction lancing through him, his slow, dangerous smile curved his handsome mouth…

CHAPTER TWO

‘BRING us coffee…’ Minos Gakis rapped out to Ione the instant the three of them entered the air-conditioned cool of the villa.

Conscious of Alexio’s veiled surprise at that harsh demand, Ione reddened. It was an effort at that instant to recall what mattered most, for somehow being treated like an object of derision in Alexio’s presence hit her even harder than usual. However, suppressing her embarrassment, Ione pushed her head up high and lifted her slight shoulders back. Praying that her father was too busy talking to notice, she walked down the long marble hall with small, slow, measured steps that made her slim hips sway in what she hoped was a subtle but enticing manner.

She knew how experienced women practised such small visual wiles on the male sex. Goodness knew, she had had ample opportunity to observe the behaviour of the voluptuous giggling blondes her father brought over to Lexos when he entertained. Of course, on such occasions she was supposed to behave as though she were quite unaware of what went on in her own home and keep to her own wing of the villa, but as the years had passed Minos Gakis had become less discreet. She had often seen those women basking round the pool and had watched them switch on the seductive charm to attract lustful male visitors. Her soft mouth tightened with helpless distaste.

Engaged in listening to his host, Alexio watched Ione progress down the hall, a faint hint of a frownline marking his winged black brows as he questioned his own reluctance to take his attention from her. The fluid slowness of her walk attracted his gaze first to the intrinsically feminine curve of her derrière and then to the soft rise of her hemline above her slender, shapely legs. She moved with the grace of a dancer but it was another, far more disturbing quality that caused the sudden startling ache of fullness in Alexio’s groin.

Seconds later, Ione moved out of view and slumped back against the cold corridor wall, all of a quiver from the stress of a masquerade she found demeaning. But she had to try to engage Alexio’s interest and convince him that she was content to marry him, for if he suspected otherwise he might change his mind and, if he did so, even her father couldn’t force him to marry her and all hope of her getting off the island would be lost. She shivered at that awareness. Yet to attempt for the first time ever to attract a man and to do so in her father’s vicinity demanded a degree of courageous subtlety she feared she did not possess.

She had worked so hard at forgetting just how unnerving a personality Alexio Christoulakis was, Ione acknowledged uneasily as she collected the already prepared coffee tray. His arrival had shaken her up a lot more than she had expected. With reluctance, she recalled their first brief encounter.

That night a couple of months earlier she had been relieved to be mistaken for an employee, for it was humiliating to be treated like a servant by her father in front of his discomfited guests. Alexio had been in too much of a rage to be more discerning, she recalled abstractedly. Dark eyes blazing gold with fierce pride, aggressive jawline hard as iron. And she had had a very fair idea of what hoops her father had put him through for his own amusement.

But she had still been struck as dumb as a tongue-tied schoolgirl when she’d first laid eyes on Alexio Christoulakis. Even though she had seen those same lean, dark, handsome features in the magazines she read, he had always looked so impossibly cool and reserved. She had not been prepared for a male so vibrant and so volatile in the flesh that raw energy literally sizzled from him.

And when he had called her back to change those satin sheets that her aunt believed to be the last word in sophistication, she had had no need to make that her own personal task for the villa had staff on duty twenty-four hours a day. Yet inexplicably she had hurried off to fetch fresh linen. When she had returned to his bedroom, he had been standing by the open doors onto the balcony, exuding a ferocious tension that had sent her own sensory processes into overload.

Guilty as a sneak thief but unable to resist her own fascination, she had kept on stealing covert glances at him. It had taken her for ever to make up the bed again, for her hands had been all fingers and thumbs. But he had seemed indifferent to her lingering presence and her lack of dexterity. Only once had their eyes met head-on and her mouth had run dry as she’d fallen victim to those spectacular golden eyes. A split second later he had swung away as though he were alone and had strode out onto the balcony where he had remained until she had departed again.

As she emerged from that unsettling recollection, perspiration beaded Ione’s short upper lip. As she entered the main salon with the laden tray, she could see the shaded, vine-encrusted loggia outside where her father was seated in regal splendour and her heart sank at his choice of location. Evidently impervious to any fear of heights, Alexio was lounging back against the low retaining wall that was built into the very edge of the cliff, the relaxed angle of his lean, powerful frame pronounced.

Ione’s hands clenched bone-white round the tray handles as she attempted to blank out the panoramic view and forestall the sick sense of dizzy terror that always threatened her in the loggia.

His keen gaze narrowing with questioning force on her drawn face, Alexio straightened and strode forward. ‘Let me take that for you.’

Dismayed that he had broken off the conversation to offer her assistance, Ione froze. She collided with gleaming dark golden eyes fringed with dense black lashes and her heart seemed to crash inside her. He detached her death grip from the tray and strolled back to set it on the stone table. Screening her bemused gaze, she edged as close to the house wall as she dared to reach the table and serve the coffee.

‘You’re afraid of heights,’ Alexio murmured.

Minos Gakis said drily, ‘She must overcome it.’

Conscious of her father’s annoyance that she should have interrupted their dialogue, Ione breathed jerkily, ‘It’s foolish, irrational. I mustn’t give way to it.’

Alexio studied her. She was making a valiant effort to control her fear but she was as white as a sheet and the coffeepot was shaking in her hand. And her father? He was smiling. Alexio had a sudden primal desire to tip his host out of his seat and suspend him upside down over that fearsome drop to kill that smile. It was an urge that shook him.

Ione sank down into the closest chair and struggled to get a grip on herself again. Accustomed as she was to being ignored in her father’s company, she focused on Alexio while the two men talked business, and she reflected on what a poor impression she must have made in betraying her terror of heights. Hardly the right way to connect with a male once fabled for his taste in dangerous sports. He had the most amazing eyelashes, she thought, losing her concentration to momentarily dwell on the lush black sweep visible in his hard, angular profile.

As Alexio sent her a winging glance, brilliant dark golden eyes flaring into connection with hers, a surge of inflaming heat tremored through Ione in a shock wave of response. Her teeth set together as her breath caught in her throat and she tore her attention from him again. Highspots of colour formed over her cheekbones as she fought her own instinctive reaction to his raw masculinity with shamed and angry resentment.

She had no intention of following in her unfortunate mother’s footsteps and letting her body rule over her brain. So he was gorgeous, but what was that worth? She had recognised her own foolish susceptibility three months earlier and had despised herself for her weakness. A womanising louse like Alexio Christoulakis figured nowhere in the future she craved. No man was going to break her heart. No man was going to control her. Once she had her freedom, if anybody broke hearts, it was going to be her. That ambition in mind, Ione curled back into her chair, arched her back a little and shifted her slim legs to let her hemline ride up ever so slightly.

Conscious of her every move, Alexio was entertained by her attempt to portray herself as a sensually exciting woman by exposing an inch of flesh above her knee, and he was equally conscious that her every provocative move was studied. Was she trying to turn him off the idea of marrying her? Or turn him onto it? Whichever, he was already appreciating that that smooth madonna face was deceptive.

Angling her blonde head back, Ione lowered her lashes and let the tip of her tongue slide out to dampen her lower lip. His gaze zeroed in on her, black lashes screening his shimmering eyes to linger on the darting pink tip moistening her full, inviting mouth. Amusement ebbing, his lean, hard body clenched on a surge of sexual hunger strong enough to infuriate him. Why was she playing games with him?

Minos Gakis rose upright, his heavy movements betraying his weariness. ‘I must attend to business, Alexio… Ione will entertain you. We’ll discuss the wedding arrangements over dinner.

Ione was startled by that speech. If wedding arrangements were to be discussed, then their marriage was already a foregone conclusion. As it seemed that Alexio must have agreed to marry her even before he’d arrived on Lexos, her attempts to make herself seem more attractive had been a ludicrous waste of time and energy. On Alexio’s terms, her true worth lay in her Gakis surname and her future dowry, not in her looks or her individuality. Her cheeks blossomed with chagrined colour. Once again she had been made to feel the sting of her own essential unimportance, but she realised that it would be unwise to suddenly abandon the act she had been putting on for his benefit.

‘Shall we go inside?’ Alexio drawled, taking charge with all-male decisiveness.

But for the reality that sitting out in the loggia was a punishment to her, Ione might have disagreed. Looking up at him to note how very, very tall he was from that angle, and filled with almost childish resentment by the intimidating nature of that fact, she got up with a nod.

Sudden angry suspicion gripped Alexio as he stood back to let Ione precede him indoors, his glinting appraisal resting on her undeniably sensual gliding walk across the terracotta tiles. How did he know that Ione Gakis wasn’t a raving nymphomaniac with a father desperate to marry her off before she engulfed the family in scandal? If that were the case, the Gakis billions would be equal to preventing the spread of damaging rumours, but not the most optimistic of men could hope to hide such a shame for ever. The constant references to Ione’s shyness and her protected upbringing added to her dowdy appearance might just be ploys to convince him that she was what her father said she was. But how could he know for sure? How did he know he wasn’t being suckered into marriage with a woman who might try to make the Christoulakis name a laughing stock?

‘Your father was a little premature in his reference to wedding arrangements,’ Alexio imparted, smooth as velvet. ‘I did tell him that you and I would have to talk before anything could be finalised.’

Ione stiffened, her nervous tension reawakening in a dismayed surge as she registered that she still had to win him over. Flustered, she muttered unwarily, ‘I should’ve guessed. Papa…Papa can be impatient. He makes assumptions.’

‘Which of us doesn’t?’ Alexio rested a light hand to her spine to guide her out of the bright sunlight into the vast salon and she was so ridiculously aware of his touch, his very proximity, that she imagined she felt his fingers burn through the dress fabric into the taut skin of her back. ‘But you intrigue me. I’m not sure what to make of you.’