The Heiress Bride

Something akin to panic shrilled through Ione. What was that supposed to mean? Intrigue? Didn’t that suggest something covert? Did he suspect that her efforts to attract him were just one big empty pretence? How could he not? How could she possibly have believed that she could fool a guy who had slept with dozens of women into crediting that she would ever be a wow in bed?

‘You don’t know me,’ Ione pointed out tightly, an unsteady hand sliding down over her dress to smooth it as she braced herself to try and redress the damage by reassuring him. ‘But I can be anything you want me to be.’

The fall of silence that greeted that impulsive announcement was instant and it worked on her nerves like a chainsaw.

Taken aback by that startling assurance, Alexio frowned, dark golden eyes narrowing below winged ebony brows as he stared at her.

‘I just don’t know what you want from me yet,’ Ione stated, gathering steam from the sheer level of fear holding her rigid, for if she had blown any hope of him wanting to marry her with her silly play-acting, she had nothing left to lose. Not only would her father lose his head with her, but she would also be buried alive on Lexos for years to come.

‘What I want from you?’ Alexio prompted in fascination, having recognised the spark of panic in her wide green eyes before she’d veiled them and the extent of the tension keeping her so still.

‘I need to know what you want,’ Ione told him again. ‘Maybe you don’t want me interfering in your life if we get married. That’s fine. I won’t. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m a very practical person. Very quiet too. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Once I know what you like, everything will be as you expect it to be.’

A shaken surge of angry compassion stirred in Alexio. Anger at her father for giving her the impression that such assurances would be necessary and compassion that she should feel driven to humble herself in such a way for his benefit. ‘I have only one question that needs an answer. Do you want to be my wife?’

Eyes lowering, Ione trembled, compressed her lips, parted them again. An obvious question, one she should have foreseen but harder to answer than she could ever have dreamt, for by nature she was not a liar. And when she lifted her lashes and collided with the dark golden intensity of his questioning gaze, her breath feathered in her throat and her breasts seemed to swell inside her cotton bra. Embarrassment scythed through her as her nipples tightened into straining buds and an arrow of heat speared low in her pelvis. Yet still she could not take her eyes from his lean, dark, devastating features.

‘Ione…I’m aware that your father has a forceful personality. If you feel in any way pressured into this—’

‘Oh, no!’ Ione broke in hurriedly, keen to make that denial for she could now see the direction in which the dialogue was going. ‘How could you think that?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Alexio said with the frankness that as a rule he only employed within his own family circle, his brilliant gaze pinned to her with penetrating force. ‘I’m getting mixed signals from you.’

Sentenced to stillness by the sheer mesmeric effect of those beautiful eyes, Ione murmured half under her breath and without really knowing where the words had come from. ‘I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.’

Darker colour accentuated Alexio’s fabulous cheekbones for he had not expected that emotive a declaration. ‘Why?’ he heard himself say as if what she had just said was still not enough, though it was.

‘I had a picture of you in my locker at boarding-school.’ Her fair skin drenched with pink as she forced out that statement. ‘Everybody had a pin-up. You were mine.’

Initially disconcerted at the news that he had been the focus of a schoolgirl crush, Alexio suddenly found himself smiling, and it was a smile full of so much natural charisma that it turned Ione’s knees to cotton wool beneath her.

Gotcha, Ione thought with intense satisfaction in spite of that smile. He had fallen for it. And why not? The target of admiring and awestruck women all his adult life, he was accustomed to flattery. Actually, it had been one of her classmates who had languished over him at fifteen. Ione had thought love from afar was childish and a waste of energy and had kept cute photos of her dog inside her locker.

‘I suppose we have to start somewhere,’ Alexio conceded with a husky laugh of amusement.

Losing every suspicion of her motives, he castigated himself for the wildness of his own suspicions about her morals in the loggia. Her honesty was refreshing but naive. But then, after the sheltered life she had led, her naivety was understandable. In times to come, though, she might look back and hate him for having listened to that gauche little declaration, for what did he have to offer her in return? In the material line, nothing, and he didn’t like that. Indeed, he had already decided how best to deal with that potential problem.

‘I believe that our marriage will work best if you settle your future inheritance on any children we might have and we live on my income,’ Alexio spelt out without hesitation.

Suddenly, Ione was grateful she had no plans to become a kept woman. He was so Greek: he wanted a dependant wife. How dared he suggest that she consent to that kind of an agreement merely to conserve his precious male pride? In her place, what man would agree to such an arrangement? It did not seem to occur to him that she might already be wealthy in her own right, yet Ione had inherited considerable funds from both her mother and her brother. As for having children with him, since the possibility was not going to arise, she didn’t even think about it.

‘Ione…I appreciate that that will be a very difficult decision for you to make, but I would like you to give serious consideration to the idea,’ Alexio continued with level cool.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Ione responded with castdown eyes. Love in a cottage Christoulakis-style? Had she been born of Gakis blood and truly intending to be his wife, at that point, all negotiations would have broken down. But money had no power over her, for immense wealth had brought her adoptive family nothing but misery.

His strong jawline clenched, dark golden eyes challenging. ‘Your father will disapprove but I won’t allow him to interfere in our marriage. You must accept that too.’

‘Yes, of course.’ But at that aggressive announcement of intent, Ione almost released a shuddering sigh of relief over the escape she was planning on. What Alexio had just said was grounds for a battle royal. Minos Gakis was no fond parent, but he set great store on his own pride and he would be outraged if his daughter was seen to live in anything less than a palace. But then the situation would never develop, she reminded herself impatiently, for her relationship with Alexio would not last beyond their wedding day. Furthermore, Alexio was only dictating terms for what was essentially a business deal rather than a marriage.

‘I need you to voice your own opinions.’ Exasperation currented through Alexio as she stood there like a slender statue revealing nothing of her thoughts.

No, he didn’t. Since when had impervious demands required opinions? Ione regarded him from below curling brown lashes, green eyes cloaked, for every time she looked at him she was struck anew by his lethal dark attraction. ‘But I agree with everything you’ve said.’

‘You must have requests to make of me,’ Alexio informed her.

‘I would love to spend our honeymoon in Paris,’ Ione dared, her low-pitched voice a tad uneven for so much was riding on his response. ‘I believe you have a house there.’

‘I also have a very beautiful villa in the Caribbean.’

Even that one little thing, he had to argue about, Ione thought fiercely. He couldn’t help himself. An inability to give way gracefully to any will other than their own was the essential flaw in all ruthless, successful men. Well, whether he liked it or not, he was going to Paris. He had to take her to a city so that she could leave him. Staging a nifty vanishing act from a potentially remote Caribbean villa might well prove to be too great a challenge for her.

In some surprise, Alexio picked up on the antagonistic sparks in her silence. ‘We could go sailing.’

‘I get seasick,’ Ione lied in a wooden little voice that concealed her panic at what was an even worse suggestion.

Paris. Paris where he had spent so much time with Crystal, Alexio reflected in instinctive recoil, but then he looked at Ione and, seeing the anxious light in her upward glance, he felt like a selfish bastard for denying her what appeared to be her heart’s desire. ‘Paris it is, then…’

Her smile, the smile she had not let him see until that moment, lit up her whole face to a startling degree. While he gazed into her shining green eyes and experienced a tightening sensation in his groin that was becoming all too familiar in her vicinity, he decided that it would be healthier to make new memories of one of his favourite cities.

‘Let me show you round the picture gallery,’ Ione suggested, daring to take the lead now that her battle was won and her worst fears vanquished.

Instead and without warning, Alexio reached for her and drew her close, his lean hands linking with hers and then releasing them to glide with smooth expertise up to her slim shoulders. ‘First…’

No, no, no, no! Screamed through Ione’s brain. Touching was absolutely not allowed. She stiffened, froze from head to toe, putting out defensive signals that a blind man could have sensed.

‘You don’t need to be nervous,’ Alexio soothed in his dark velvet drawl, that roughened timbre setting up a chain-reaction echo down her rigid spine. But he knew he was lying. Every time she froze around him, he wanted to smash down her barriers, storm an attack through her defences and watch those beautiful eyes drown in him, cling to him, hunger for him.

She collided with smouldering golden eyes that made her head spin and her heart skip a beat in shock. She meant to step back out of reach but instead she found herself concentrating on just catching her breath. It shook her even more to feel her body wanting to push forward into the hard, all-male muscularity of his, for the rigorous control that had always been her saviour was nowhere to be found.

‘Alexio…’ Her own voice sounded strange to her, almost placatory.

He brought his wide, sensual mouth drifting down onto hers and then, with rueful amusement sounding deep in his throat, he pried her sealed lips apart with the tip of his tongue and explored the moist interior of her tender mouth. As the explosion of sensual sensation hit her she shuddered in its grip, her slim body alternately tensing and dissolving in the storm of physical feelings firing through her skincells. Crushed against the unyielding wall of his chest, her breasts pinched tight into throbbing peaks and the ache that stirred at the very heart of her almost hurt.

Alexio lifted his arrogant dark head to gaze down into her dreamy, bemused eyes with a sense of achievement entirely new to him. ‘Am I the first?’

Having yet to regain mastery over herself in that moment and stunned by her own galloping heartbeat and excitement, Ione mumbled. ‘The first to kiss me? No…’

In an abrupt movement, Alexio freed her. Who was she trying to kid? She hadn’t even known how to kiss until he had shown her! But the dreaminess in her eyes had dissipated and she had lost colour. Indeed, she spun away from him as if he no longer existed for her and, registering that withdrawal, he immediately suspected the most likely cause.

‘Who was he?’ Alexio demanded, seized by a sudden dark anger that inflamed him into an instantaneous reaction.

Pale as death in the aftermath of that unwise admission, Ione could have bitten her own tongue out. Wounding memories were attacking her from all sides, but fear had risen uppermost again. If her father found out that she had mentioned Yannis, he would be furious. She did not consider Alexio’s anger abnormal. Her father was a hypocrite too, preaching female purity one moment and taking solace with tarts the next.

‘He was a fisherman’s son. It was over two years ago. He k-kissed me. That’s all,’ she lied shakily.

Alexio’s lean, powerful hands closed back into fists and slowly uncoiled again. Why shouldn’t she have kissed someone else? And it was such a pathetic little confession that he was momentarily ashamed of himself for forcing it out of her. He could not explain the strength of his own irrational anger, and then he looked at her afresh and noted that she had turned a sort of sickly shade, her eyes refusing to meet his. That seething anger came out of nowhere at him again. He recognised that he wasn’t hearing the whole story and was torn by a primitive desire to drag all the rest of it out of her as well, for her pallor told him that that fisherman’s son had been a major event in her life.

CHAPTER THREE

‘LET’S go and see those pictures,’ Alexio breathed in a raw undertone. So he was unaccustomed to the experience of a woman reeling out of his arms to think about another man. But, in the circumstances, he knew his anger was unreasonable.

Ione was trembling. ‘Please don’t mention what I said to my father.’

Alexio flung her an astonished glance from his brilliant eyes and his jawline hardened. ‘Of course not.’

Ione led the way to the ultra-modern picture gallery but her tummy was still churning. Yannis had been her first and only love and it had been sweet and innocent and harmless until the day that she’d been followed and her father’s henchmen had forced her to watch as Yannis had been beaten to a pulp. Soon afterwards his family had left the island. She would never forget what her foolishness had cost him.

And what even greater foolishness it had been to admit to her bridegroom that she was not quite untouched by human hand! He was now thinking that she might not be a virgin. As she watched him view the magnificent paintings, which she believed ought to hang in a museum where at least they would be appreciated as something other than an investment, she recognised the lingering tautness in his strong, bronzed profile. Like her father, he was the contemporary equivalent of a caveman, who wanted a bride no other man had ever dared to touch. And wouldn’t he just love it if she questioned him about his all-too-numerous affairs? Even so, she was puzzled that he had once intended to marry a woman like Crystal Denby, whose reputation had been far from spotless.

But then Crystal had been totally, fantastically gorgeous, Ione conceded with wry acceptance. A woman blessed with such undeniable attributes got away with a great deal more than a plainer one. It must feel really good, she thought with rueful longing, to have that kind of power over a man.

‘I’m sorry about the way I questioned you downstairs,’ Alexio remarked in a driven undertone, swinging round without warning to level dark-as-night eyes on her triangular face. ‘I have no right to question your past.’

His apology surprised her but she immediately sensed that he wanted to know more about Yannis, was indeed expecting and inviting her to respond with further details. Angry defiance stirred in her and only with the greatest difficulty did she resist the temptation to ask if he wanted to tell her about his lost love. Instead she simply nodded agreement in silence.

Even though she had thwarted him, grudging admiration assailed Alexio. His wide, sensual mouth slashed into a wolfish smile of acknowledgement that exuded such innate masculine power over her that she found herself smiling dizzily back at him without even thinking about it.

‘I brought you this…’ He drew a ring from the pocket of his beautifully tailored jacket. ‘It’s the Christoulakis betrothal ring, but if you don’t like it it’s not a problem. You can choose your own ring if you prefer to do so. I will admit upfront that my own mother considered it too old-fashioned for her taste.’

Attacked by sudden discomfiture, Ione studied the diamonds that glittered below the gallery lights. A family betrothal ring, an heirloom. A stab of guilt pierced her for, whatever she might think of his motives, he was on the level about their marriage and she was not. ‘It’s beautiful…’ she muttered and she made herself extend her hand in acceptance lest she betray herself.

Alexio reached for her hand and threaded the ring onto her wedding finger. ‘I may not love you but I will do everything in my power to be a good husband,’ he asserted.

In receipt of that little speech, Ione gritted her teeth together. Well, it was just as well that she had no intention of hanging around to test him out on that unlikely promise! Like any other woman, she deserved to be loved and she intended to be loved by someone one day. In the meantime, she would be playing the field with loads of different boyfriends. Well, if she could get one to start with, she conceded, climbing down from her mental soapbox to allow that until she had tested herself out on the dating scene she had no idea how much man appeal she might possess.

Although a boyfriend who kissed as Alexio did would be a very good start, she acknowledged. Without a doubt, his sexual expertise had roused her own much too enthusiastic response. However, seeking to deny him that small intimacy would have been a major mistake on all fronts. And it had only been her hormones that had got carried away, she told herself in consolation. Since she had been deprived of almost all the natural learning experiences that she should have had with men, she might even qualify as being sex-starved. So, why should she be ashamed of the wild excitement she had felt beneath that hard, hungry mouth of his? There had really been nothing at all personal in her response to him.

‘Ione…’ Alexio began, studying the smooth perfection of her shuttered face and yet far-away gaze and endeavouring to fathom what had stolen her attention from him yet again.

‘Alexio…how are you? Ione should have brought you to me immediately,’ a coy female voice shrilled from the entrance to the gallery.

Sprung from her introspection by the sight of Kalliope heading for Alexio with a delighted smile on her thin face, Ione breathed in deep. She need have no further concern as to how to occupy Alexio, for her aunt, who adored young, handsome men, was more than equal to the task. And over the following hour, while he endured Kalliope’s voluble enquiries about every single member of his family near and far, Alexio demonstrated the most perfect manners, patience and courtesy.

‘You don’t deserve a husband from a good family.’ Kalliope shot her niece a look of angry resentment as the two women walked back to their own wing of the villa to change for dinner. ‘If Alexio Christoulakis knew the truth about your background, nothing would persuade him to marry a girl from the gutter!’

For once, in receipt of her aunt’s venom, Ione felt only a weary compassion. Her mother had once told her that, twenty years earlier, Kalliope had fallen in love with one of her brother’s executives, but Minos Gakis had reacted in fury and had refused his permission for them to marry. Kalliope had dutifully accepted his decision and now she was in her fifties, still unmarried and bitter over the lot life had dealt her.

But at least her aunt still had her life, Ione reasoned with a superstitious shiver as she selected another dull dark dress from her wardrobe. Cosmas had not been so fortunate. The night that her brother had crashed his plane, he had been under enormous stress and his resulting lack of concentration had killed him. If anything, Cosmas had been even more afraid of their father than she was.

Cosmas had had the Gakis head for business laced with their mother’s sensitivity. Her eyes stinging as she thought about the big brother she still missed a great deal, Ione promised herself that, no matter what it took and regardless of what deception might be involved, she would do what Cosmas had been too scared to do: she would break free, she would escape before her self-will was crushed as his had been.

The first course of the lavish dinner had been served when Minos Gakis announced that the wedding would have to take place within two weeks as business commitments would keep him out of the country during the following month. Ione’s startled gaze shot to Alexio, who seemed to be absorbing the news with a lot less surprise than she was. His lean, strong face was not even tense. Indeed, he shot her a long, lingering glance from heavily lidded dark golden eyes that burned hot colour into her cheeks and made her hurriedly look away.

‘The ceremony will, of course, take place here on the island,’ Minos decreed and he turned to study Alexio with a half-smile. ‘I see no reason why you and Ione should not then take up residence here.’

Shock powered through Ione and her fork fell from her nerveless fingers with a clatter.

‘In her own home, my daughter would have the company of her aunt while you are abroad and she would also enjoy the continued security of a full protection team.’

‘No…no!’ Ione gasped in horror, driven into defiance by the stricken conviction that such an arrangement could only have been planned from the outset.

Even as her dismayed aunt dug warning nails into her thigh below the table, Ione’s red-faced father was flying out of his chair like a jet-propelled steamroller and raising a punishing fist as he roared down at his daughter in a rage, ‘What did you say to me?’

Mutely awaiting the blow about to descend and white as milk, Ione jerked as the crash of a chair falling backward sounded from the other side of the table.

‘If you lay one finger on her, I swear I’ll kill you!’ Alexio thundered with a raw aggression more than equal to his host’s.

A silence beyond any silence that had ever fallen in the Gakis household fell at that point. Nobody had ever challenged Minos Gakis like that. Sheer disbelief had paralysed the older man’s heavy features as he slowly turned his big greying head to focus on his challenger. Ione wanted to throw herself across the table and stuff the tablecloth in Alexio’s big, stupid macho mouth before he got himself beaten up. What madness had come over him? Where were his much-vaunted brains when he most needed them? Her father had said that he needed Alexio but her father would still throw him off the island and destroy him sooner than swallow such an insult.

Minos surveyed the younger man with outraged dark eyes and hissed. ‘So you think she’s your property now…eh?’

‘Yes.’ His lean, powerful face rigid, the surge of pure black rage that had powered Alexio was still in the ascendant.

With an abruptness that made his female relatives flinch, Minos Gakis threw back his head and laughed with a derisive appreciation that curdled Ione’s quivering tummy. She would call the police. No matter what it cost her, if he let his henchmen hurt Alexio, she knew that this time she would call the police and inform on her own father.

But a split second later, she could only watch with a dropped jaw as her father dealt Alexio a considering look of ironic approval. ‘You’re a man not unlike me. Possessive, protective of what’s yours. Well, then, you keep your mouth shut from now on!’

Ione just closed her eyes, still sick from the threat of the violence that had so nearly exploded upon them all and equally sick with humiliation. The men resumed their seats. Alexio skimmed a probing glance at Ione and asked himself if he had been guilty of a crazy overreaction, for she did not seem grateful for his intervention. He had believed that her father had been about to hit her, but it was more probable that the older man had only been waving an angry fist in the air. After all, Ione had just sat there and would surely not have done so had she feared a blow. What grounds did he have to suspect Minos of abusive behaviour? And much might be forgiven of a man fighting terminal illness and looking death in the face, Alexio reminded himself with all the discomfiture of a young and healthy male.

‘I feel unwell. Please excuse me,’ Ione muttered chokily.