The Greek's Virgin Bride
Andrea turned and left. The walk back to the door seemed much further than it had in the opposite direction. Her heart was pounding.
It went on pounding all the way back upstairs to her room. She shut the door and leant against it. So, that was her grandfather! That was the man whose son had had a brief, whirlwind romance with her mother, who had thrown her, pregnant and penniless, out of the country, and left her to bear and raise his grandchild in poverty, refusing to acknowledge her existence.
She owed such a man nothing. Nothing! Not duty, nor respect—and certainly not loyalty or affection.
What does he want of me?
The question went round and round, unanswered. Fretting at her.
In the end, to calm herself down and pass the time, she decided to make use of the opulent bathroom. Inside its lavish, overdone interior she could not but help revel in the luxury it offered.
The bath was vast, and it had, she discovered, sinking into its deep scented depths, whirling jets that massaged her body, easing the aching muscles in her tense legs. Blissfully, she gave herself to the wonderful sensation. Towering bubbles from the half a bottle of bath foam she’d emptied in veiled her whole body, from breasts to feet.
You walk perfectly well…
She heard the harsh accusation ring in her head again, and her mouth tightened.
When she emerged from the bathroom, entering her lavishly decorated bedroom suite, swathed in a floor-length towel, it was to see a maid at the open door of her closet, hanging up clothes. The girl turned, bobbing a brief curtsey, and hesitantly informed Andrea that she was here to help her dress.
‘I don’t need any help,’ said Andrea tersely.
The girl looked subdued, and Andrea immediately regretted her tone of voice.
‘Please,’ she said temporisingly, ‘it’s quite unnecessary.’
She walked past the huge bed, covered in a heavy gold and white patterned bedspread, and across to the room-sized closet. Whatever Yiorgos Coustakis had imagined she’d bought with her gleaming gold store card, all she was going to appear for dinner wearing was a chainstore skirt and blouse. But suddenly she stopped dead.
The racks were full, weighed down with plastic-swathed clothes.
‘What—?’
‘Kyrios Coustakis ordered them to be purchased for you, kyria. They were delivered just now by a personal shopper. There are accessories and lingerie as well,’ said the maid’s softly accented voice behind her. ‘Which dress would you like to wear tonight?’
‘None of them,’ said Andrea tightly. She reached for the hanger carrying her own humble skirt and blouse.
The maid looked aghast. ‘But…but it is a formal dinner, tonight, kyria,’ she stammered. ‘Kyrios Coustakis would be very angry if you did not dress appropriately…’
Andrea looked at the maid. The expression on the girl’s face made her pause. There was only one word for the expression, and it was fear.
She gave in. She could defy her grandfather’s anger, but she was damned if he would get the chance to terrorise one of his own staff on her account.
‘Very well. Choose something for me.’
She went and sat back on the bed while the girl leafed through the clothes hanging from the rail. After a few moments she emerged with two, deftly removing the protective wrapping from them and laying them carefully across the foot of the bed. Andrea inspected them. Both were clearly very expensive, and although it was the short but high-necked cocktail length one that she preferred for style, she nodded at the other one, a full-length gown.
‘That one,’ she said.
It was emerald-green, cut on the bias, with a soft, folding bodice and a long, slinky skirt. Andrea found her hand reaching out to touch the silky folds.
‘It is very beautiful, ne?’ said the maid, and sounded wistful as well as admiring.
‘Very,’ agreed Andrea. She glanced at the girl. ‘I don’t know your name,’ she said.
‘Zoe, kyria,’ said the girl.
‘Andrea,’ she replied. ‘And I don’t believe in servants.’
Some twenty minutes later, staring at herself in the long mirror set into the door of the closet, Andrea was stunned.
She looked—fantastic! That was the only word for it. The dress was a miracle of the couturier’s art, its soft folds contrasting with the rich vividness of its colour. True, the bodice, held up by tiny shoestring straps, was draped dangerously low over her full breasts, encased in a fragile, strapless bra, but she had to admit the effect was very…well, effective! It gave the dress the finishing touch to the ‘wow’ impact it made.
She had scooped her hair up into a knot on her head, with tendrils loosening around the nape of her neck and gracing her cheeks and forehead, and she’d redone her make-up to match the impact of the dress.
With a final look at her reflection, she turned and headed towards the door, where the manservant who had come to summon her stood waiting. Staff though he was, she could see the admiration in his eyes. For an instant, in her mind’s eye, it was not one of the house staff who stood there, but the man she had encountered on the terrace that afternoon, looking at her with those powerful grey eyes, making her stomach give a little skip…
She bestowed a slight, polite smile on the manservant, and headed towards the curving marble staircase.
It was time to go into battle once more…
Nikos Vassilis stepped on the accelerator, changed gear and heard the powerful note of the engine of the Ferrari change pitch. He was not in a good mood. Twice in one day now he’d made the journey out of Athens at the behest of Yiorgos Coustakis. Tonight was not a good night to be dining with the old man. He’d planned a leisurely evening with Xanthe, whose petite, curvaceous body was, he had discovered, a pleasant alternative to Esme Vandersee’s greyhound leanness. Xanthe was proving very attentive—she was clearly keen to take his mind off Esme Vandersee, and was now pulling out all the stops to renew Nikos’s interest. Which meant, he mused, that she was coming up with some very interesting ideas indeed to do so…
A smile indented his mouth. Last night with Xanthe had been very enjoyable—she had seen to that. Ah, he thought pleasurably, there was nothing like a Greek woman for making a man feel good! Yes, Esme Vandersee might be eager for him, he was certainly a catch for her, but as an American she suffered that infernal affliction of thinking that a woman had a right to give a man a hard time if she chose! Usually, of course, any petulance that Esme displayed he disposed of very swiftly—she was as sexy as a cat and getting her horizontal soon improved her mood…
But even so, he mused, Xanthe understood what it was that a man wanted a woman to be. And she made it obvious that she was keen to be so very attentive to his every need….
His smile vanished. Well, he’d be kept waiting tonight before availing himself of Xanthe’s rediscovered charms! Yiorgos Coustakis was obviously taking considerable pleasure in jerking his strings—just for the hell of it, it seemed. Their meeting that afternoon, ostensibly to discus the technicalities of reversing Vassilis Inc into Coustakis Industries, had hardly been urgent, and could have been left to their respective finance directors to sort out. But obviously Old Man Coustakis had relished getting Nikos Vassilis to come traipsing out of Athens to that overblown villa of his whenever he snapped his fingers.
Thinking about the afternoon meeting brought another image vividly to mind—that of Yiorgos Coustakis’s flame-haired mistress.
Nikos’s mouth tightened. The woman had been so blatant, and so unashamed of what she was doing at the Coustakis villa. Not to mention eyeing him up and trying her wiles out on him to boot!
Mind you, Nikos thought, had the woman not been tainted by her distasteful association with a man old enough to be her grandfather, then her approach to him might well have got a warmer welcome.
Considerably warmer, in fact…
An image of her dark auburn hair floating around that perfect face, the way her breasts had thrust against the material of her jacket, played in his memory. Oh, yes, she was worth remembering, all right! Her beauty was so flamboyant, so eye-catching, that almost—almost he had been tempted to overlook just for whose benefit it had been paraded that afternoon. Not for him—for a seventy-eight-year-old man.
He thrust her memory from him. However alluring the woman, she was beyond the pale so far as he was concerned.
He revved the engine again, enjoying the superb handling of the extortionately expensive car beneath his hands. Driving a high-performance car like this was like having sex with a high-performance woman…they were both so extraordinarily responsive to his touch…
His mind snapped away from the analogy. For the next few hours, until the ordeal of a tedious, overlong dinner with Yiorgos Coustakis was done with, he had better keep his libido under control.
Think of your bride, Nikos!
That sobered him all right. It was about time Old Man Coustakis brought the girl out from wherever he had her stashed. She would know all about her intended bridegroom by now, no doubt, and she and her mother were probably already waist-deep in wedding plans. Presumably the girl wanted a lavish society wedding. Well, he didn’t care one way or the other, and, since the whole purpose of marrying her was to seal his acquisition of Coustakis Industries, the more high-profile the better! After all, he had nothing against the girl—let her have her extravagant wedding if she wanted. Once she was his wife it would be her who would have to fit herself around what he wanted—that was what Greek wives did. Oh, he would be generous, of course, and considerate to her position—he had no intention of making a bad husband—but he did not envisage changing his life a great deal on account of the Coustakis heiress.
Pity she was obviously so plain… The thought of having a sexually desirable, docile and attentive wife had its attractions, now he came to think of it.
He braked the Ferrari in front of the security-guarded gates of the Coustakis villa, presented his credentials, and moved on down the drive at a speed greater than he would normally. He wanted this evening over and done with.
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKOS stood in the ornate salon, itching for dinner to be announced. His host seemed to be in no hurry. He was regaling his guest with a lengthy description of his latest toy—a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht which he had just taken delivery of. It was, by all accounts, an opulent vessel, and Yiorgos was telling him in great detail about the splendour of the décor of its interior—and how much it had all cost. The telling seemed to be putting him in a good humour. His colour was high, but his eyes were snapping with satisfaction.
‘And you, my friend,’ he said, slapping Nikos on the back with a still powerful hand, ‘will be the first to try her out! You will spend your honeymoon on it! What do you think of that, eh?’
Nikos smiled briefly. Again, a honeymoon spent on board Yiorgos Coustakis’s new yacht would send just the message to the world he wanted.
‘Good, good,’ said his grandfather-in-law-to-be, and slapped him once more on the back. Then his head snapped round. Automatically Nikos followed his gaze. A servant had opened the double doors to the salon.
A figure stepped through.
It was the flame-haired temptress!
Nikos felt a kick to his gut that was as powerful as it was unwelcome.
What the hell was she doing here?
The woman had paused for a moment in the doorway—making sure all eyes were on her, Nikos thought—and now started to glide forward towards them. Her head was held high—that glorious dark auburn hair twisted up into a topknot that revealed the perfect bone structure of her stunning face.
As for the rest of her…
Nikos felt his breath catch again. The dress was simply breathtaking on her, revealing the lushness of her figure even more generously than the close-fitting jacket had that afternoon. Now, instead of only being able to imagine the rich creaminess of her skin, he could see acres of it displayed for him, from her swan-like neck down across the sculpted beauty of her shoulders, the graceful curve of her bare arms and, best of all, towards the swell of her ripe breasts…
He felt himself ache to caress them…
Like a chill breath on the back of his neck, he felt Yiorgos Coustakis watching him. Watching him lust after his mistress.
Disgust flooded through him. Whatever the hell the old man was playing at, bringing his mistress to dinner, taking pleasure in seeing his guest responding to her lavish charms, he would have none of it! His face hardened.
For Andrea, walking in through the doors and then freezing to a stupefied halt at seeing the very man she had been trying not to think about all evening standing there beside her grandfather, it was like déjà-vu all over again. Just as the first sight of her had brought instant sexual appreciation into the man’s eyes, so, an instant later, that had been replaced by disdain—all over again.
And, just as she had on the terrace, she reacted instinctively. Her chin went up; her eyes glinted dangerously.
She was glad of her anger—it took her mind off the fact that her heart was racing like a rocket and that her eyes were glued to his face.
She stopped, resting her hand on the back of an antique sofa beside her. Her eyes met those of the stranger, defiant and glittering.
‘Well,’ said Yiorgos Coustakis to the man he had chosen to be his son-in-law, ‘what do you think of her?’
What the hell do I say? thought Nikos savagely. He said the only thing he could.
‘As ever, Yiorgos, you have impeccable taste. She is…outstanding.’
They were speaking Greek, Andrea registered. Well, of course they would be! Her eyes flew from one to another.
‘You are to be envied,’ Nikos went on, with gritted politeness, wondering what the hell to say to the old man about the woman he was warming his bed with. Disgust was filling his veins. He wanted out of here—fast.
Yiorgos Coustakis smiled.
‘I give her to you,’ he said. He made a gesture of presentation with his hand. The satisfaction in his voice was blatant.
Nikos froze. What the hell was this? Was this supposed to be some kind of sweetener that the old man imagined he might want in order to bed his plain, sexless granddaughter? If so, he had better extricate himself from the delusion.
‘Your generosity is…overwhelming, Yiorgos,’ he managed to get out. ‘But I cannot accept.’
A look of deliberate astonishment lit Yiorgos Coustakis’s face. ‘How is this?’ he demanded. ‘I thought…’ He paused infinitesimally, milking the pleasure he was getting from the situation to its utmost, watching this arrogant, ambitious pup squirm for one moment longer. ‘That you wanted my granddaughter? That you were impatient to meet her…’
He gave a short laugh, his eyes snapping with malicious pleasure as he watched Nikos’s face change expression as the truth dawned.
‘She is my granddaughter, Nikos—what did you imagine, eh?’ he asked softly.
Only Nikos’s years of self-discipline enabled him to keep his expression steady. Inside, it felt as if the floor had given way beneath him.
‘This is your granddaughter?’ he heard himself say, as if seeking confirmation of the unbelievable.
Yiorgos laughed again, still highly pleased with the joke he had played on the younger man. He knew perfectly well what conclusions he had jumped to when, just as Yiorgos had planned, he had first set eyes on the girl that afternoon, sublimely unaware that the plain-faced fiancée he had been led to expect was no such thing at all.
He glanced across at the girl and beckoned imperiously.
‘Come here,’ he commanded in English.
Andrea walked forward. Her heart was pounding again. She could feel it thrilling in every vein. The man with the steel-grey eyes was looking at her full on, and she was all but knocked senseless by the way he was looking at her—either that or jolted by a million volts of electricity scorching through her.
If she’d thought he’d looked a knock-out that afternoon, in his hand-made business suit, the way he looked now, in his tuxedo, simply took her breath away! She swallowed. This was ridiculous! No man should have such an effect on her! She’d seen good-looking blokes before, been eyed up by them—even kissed some in her time—but never, never had any man made her feel like this.
Breathless, terrified—enthralled. Excited!
Beside the man, her grandfather ceased to exist. She took in a vague impression of a stockily built figure, shoulders bowing with age, and that craggy, heavy-featured face she had registered as he’d sat at his desk that afternoon.
But right now she had no eyes for him.
She was simply drinking in the man at his side—she wanted to stare and stare and stare.
‘My granddaughter,’ said Yiorgos.
Nikos hardly heard him. The entire focus of his attention was on the woman in front of him. Theos, but she was fantastic! Was she really the Coustakis girl? It couldn’t be possible. Then, with a fraction of his brain that worked, he realised that the old man had set him up deliberately—leading him on to think that he was going to be shackled to a plain wife, when all along…
He smiled. Oh, what the hell—so the old man had set him up! He didn’t care! Hell, he could even share the joke! A sense of relief had flooded through him, he realised, and something more—exultation.
Yes! That woman, that fantastic flame-haired temptress, was not out of bounds after all. In fact—his smile deepened—she was very, very within bounds…
Andrea saw the smile, brilliant, wolfish, and felt her stomach lurch. Oh, good grief, but he was something all right! She felt the breath squeeze from her body.
Nikos reached and took the girl’s hand. He lifted it to his mouth. Andrea watched the dark head bend as if in slow motion. She still couldn’t breathe, her lungs frozen as she felt the long, strong fingers take hers.
Then even more sensation laced through her. He was brushing her fingers with his lips. Lightly, oh, so lightly! But oh, oh, so devastatingly. A million nerve endings fired within her, like the whoosh of a rocket cascading stars down upon her head.
As he raised his head he smiled down at her.
‘Nikos Vassilis,’ he said, and looked right into her eyes.
His voice was low—the tone intimate.
She stared up at him, lips parted. She could say, or do, nothing.
‘Andrea—’
The word breathed from her. She could hardly speak, she found.
‘Andrea…’ His voice echoed her name, deeper than her husky contralto. ‘It is good to meet you.’
He let his eyes linger on her one last, endless moment, then, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, he turned to his host.
‘You’re an old devil, Yiorgos,’ he said with grating acknowledgement. ‘But in this instance the joke was worth it.’
Andrea’s eyes flew between them—the language was back to Greek. What was going on? Then, suddenly, Nikos turned back to her.
‘Come, let me take you through to dinner.’ His voice was warm, and the caress in it made her nerve-endings fire all over again. That and the over-powering closeness of him, her hand caught in his arm. She felt she ought to pull away from him—but for the life of her she could not.
As if in a dream she let herself be escorted from the room, across the vast entrance hall, and into a grandiose dining room.
With the utmost attentiveness this most devastating man, Nikos Vassilis—Who is he? she found herself wondering urgently—drew back her chair, waving away the manservant who came forward to perform the task, and settled her in her seat.
She wanted to glance up and smile her thanks politely, but she could not. Shyness suddenly overwhelmed her. This was like something out of a fairytale—she dressed like a princess, and he, oh, he like a dark prince!
Instead she mumbled a thank-you into her place-setting.
As he took his place opposite her—only one end of the long mahogany table was occupied, with Yiorgos taking the head and his granddaughter and her fiancé on either hand—Nikos felt a deep sense of well-being filling him.
He couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful bride! Old Man Coustakis was doing him proud. Oh, he would never have been unkind, even to a plain wife, but having that flame-haired beauty at his side, in his bed, was going to make married life a whole, whole lot sweeter for him!
He glanced across at her. She was still staring at her place-setting as if it was the most interesting thing in the room, but she was aware of him all right. Every male instinct told him that. But if she were behaving as a well-brought-up young girl should—showing a proper shyness in the face of the man she was to marry—well, who was he to complain?
A memory of the way she had boldly walked up to him on the terrace, her voice husky as she sought to introduce herself, intruded, conflicting with the image of the meekly downturned head opposite him. A frown flickered in his eyes. Then it cleared. She must have seen the look he had given her then and been angered by it—and rightfully so! No gently reared female would care to be taken for such a one as he had first thought her. Well, now that misunderstanding was out of the way it would not trouble them again.
Another frown flickered in his eyes. The girl was English, that was obvious—both by her colouring and her use of the language, quite unaccented.
As the manservant drew forward to start serving dinner Nikos glanced at his host.
‘You did not tell me that your granddaughter was half-English, Yiorgos,’ he opened. He spoke in Greek, and as he did he noticed Andrea’s head lift, her eyes focus intently on him, concentrating.
Yiorgos leant back in his chair.
‘A little surprise for you,’ he answered. His eyes gleamed.
Nikos let his mouth twist. ‘Another one,’ he acknowledged. Then he turned his attention to Andrea.
‘You live in England? With your English mother?’ he asked politely, in Greek. That must be the reason she had addressed him in English this afternoon.
Andrea looked at him. She made as if to open her mouth, but her grandfather forestalled her.
‘She does not speak Greek,’ he said bluntly. He spoke in English.
Nikos’s eyes snapped together. ‘How is this?’ he demanded, sticking with English.
‘Let us say her mother had her own ideas about her upbringing,’ said Yiorgos.
Andrea stared at her grandfather—just stared. Then, as if knowing exactly why she was staring, he caught her eye. Dark, intent. Warning.
His words echoed in her mind from the afternoon. You will be on the first plane back to London unless you do exactly, exactly, what I want you to do!
She felt her blood chill. Was going along with some fairy story he wanted to tell this guest of his about her upbringing part of that imprecation? What do I do? she thought wildly. Open my mouth and set the record straight right away?
And achieve what, precisely?
She knew the answer. Get herself thrown out of her grandfather’s house and sent back to London without a penny for her mother. And she wouldn’t go home empty-handed; she wouldn’t! She would get Kim the money she deserved, whatever it took. Even if it meant colluding with Yiorgos Coustakis’s attempt to whitewash his behaviour.
So she buttoned her lip and stayed silent.
From across the table Nikos saw her expression, saw the mutinous gleam in those lustrous chestnut eyes. So, the girl had been brought up in England, by a mother who had her own ideas, had she? Ideas that included depriving the Coustakis heiress of her natural heritage—the language of her father, the household of her grandfather. What kind of mother had she been? he wondered. An image presented itself in his mind—one of those sharp-tongued, upper-class, arrogant Englishwomen, expensively dressed, enjoying a social round of polo and house-parties at one stately home after another. He frowned. Why had she married Andreas Coustakis in the first place? he wondered. Doubtless the marriage would not have lasted, even if Yiorgos’s son had not been killed so young. He found himself wondering why Yiorgos had so uncharacteristically let the widow take his granddaughter back to England with her, instead of keeping her in his household. Well, his generosity had been ill-paid! Now he had a granddaughter who could not even speak his own language!