Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

CHAPTER EIGHT

MINUTES LATER SHE knocked on his door, her camera still slung round her neck.

She sensed movement behind the door before it opened, sensed him peering through the spyhole.

And there he stood, skin damp, hair wet…and with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips.

‘Sorry; I’ve caught you at a bad time,’ she said, having to fight to get her vocal cords to work properly and not stammer.

‘Not at all. Come in.’ He stood aside to admit her into his suite.

She stepped past him, moistening suddenly dry lips.

Dio, was he naked beneath that towel?

Her arid mouth suddenly filled with moisture.

‘Is there a reason you’ve come to my suite so early, agapi mou?’ he asked, a smile playing on his lips, as if he knew exactly what was going on beneath her skin.

‘No.’ She blinked sharply. ‘Yes. Do you want to get dressed before we talk?’

‘I’m good.’

‘Please?’

‘Does the sight of me undressed disturb you?’

‘It makes it hard for me to think straight,’ she admitted, wishing she could think of a decent lie.

‘That is good.’

‘It is?’

‘The thought of you naked makes it hard for me to think straight too. So, we are even.’

‘You think of me naked?’ Did she have to sound like a breathless imbecile?

The smile dropped. He closed the distance between them and inhaled deeply.

His voice dropped to a husky whisper. ‘All the time. I’ve just thought of you while I showered, imagining you sharing it with me.’

She swallowed. Was he suggesting what she thought he was…?

His lips brushed against her earlobe. ‘Until we are legally married I will have to satisfy myself with memories of our night together in Milan.’

Her skin fizzed beneath the warmth of his breath while heat such as she had never experienced surged through her, settling in the V of her thighs. He stepped closer still and placed a hand on her thigh, close enough that she could feel his erection jut through the cotton of his towel and press against her belly.

She tilted her head back and gazed into his eyes. It was there, that desire: stark, open, unashamed.

What would he do if she were to loop her arms around his neck and kiss him? If she were to clasp his towel and yank it off him…?

He must have read her mind for his lips brushed against her ear again. ‘Anticipation makes fulfilment taste so much sweeter.’

She pulled away. ‘Do you know that from experience?’

A strange look came into his eyes, a half-smile tugging on his lips. ‘Only in a professional sense. I look forward to finding out if it’s as sweet when it comes to us making love again.’

‘I thought you said it would depend on whether I wanted anything to happen,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

‘And it will.’ Now his eyes glittered, no mistaking the feeling behind them. ‘But we both know the anticipation is driving you crazy too.’

While Alessandra stood there, unable to deny what he’d said, too full of the heavy, pulsating thickness swirling through the very fabric of her to think clearly, Christian strode into the bedroom of his suite.

‘So, what did you want to see me for?’ he asked, disappearing from view.

Forcing her brain to unfog itself, she followed him to the door but stopped at her side of the threshold.

She took a moment to compose herself, but that very composure almost fell to ruins when he emerged back in view, now wearing a pair of black boxer shorts that only enhanced his strong physique.

He opened his dressing-room door and disappeared again, re-emerging moments later with a pair of grey trousers on. Looking at her, he slipped his arms into a pale blue shirt. ‘Alessandra?’

‘Sorry.’ She put her hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. ‘I just wanted to discuss the guest list.’

‘Everyone has accepted.’

‘Apart from Rocco?’

He nodded, his mouth tightening.

She watched as he deftly did the buttons of his shirt up.

‘I think you should reconsider inviting your mother,’ she said.

He didn’t react, other than a slight narrowing of his eyes.

‘It doesn’t feel right, us marrying without you having any family there.’

‘You haven’t invited your father,’ he said pointedly.

‘That’s because my father is an alcoholic who likes to pretend I don’t exist. She’s your mum—wouldn’t she want to see her only child get married?’

‘Just drop it. She’s not coming and that’s final.’ He tucked his shirt in and pulled the zip of his trousers up.

‘No. I won’t drop it. If you won’t invite her then can you at least tell me why?’

His mouth set in a forbidding line, he reached for the silver tie on his bed and walked over to the mirror on the wall, his back to her. He met her eye in the reflection.

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Why not? Christian, we’re getting married in three days. You know everything about me and my past—what is so bad that you don’t want me to meet your mother? Are you ashamed of her or something?’

‘Or something about sums it up,’ he said grimly. ‘But, no, I’m not ashamed of her.’

‘Really? Because it looks like you’re ashamed of her from where I’m standing.’

His nostrils flaring, his jaw clenched tight, he knotted his tie. ‘Can you not take my word for it?’

‘I’m sorry, but no.’ This was too important a topic to back down from.

He must have seen something in her reflection that made him read the stubbornness of her thoughts. He shook his head angrily. ‘If it means that much to you, I will show you.’

‘Show me what?’

He straightened his shirt, then turned back to face her. ‘I’ll take you to meet her. You can see for yourself why I don’t want my mother anywhere near our wedding.’

The car came to a stop outside an immaculate two-storey house in a quiet Athenian suburb.

No sooner had the engine been turned off than Christian got out, not bothering to wait for the driver to open the door for him.

The entire drive had been conducted in silence, Christian sitting ramrod-straight, only the whiteness of his knuckles betraying what lay beneath his skin.

It was a demeanour Alessandra had never seen from him before. It unnerved her.

That he’d cancelled his first appointment of the day had unnerved her even more; that, and the grim way he’d said, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

It was with a deep sense of dread that she followed him out of the car and up the small driveway.

A tall, thin woman with short white hair appeared at the door, lines all over her weathered face, her thin lips clamped together in an obvious display of disapproval.

Wordlessly, she turned on her heel and walked back inside, leaving the door open for them to follow.

The house itself was pristine, a strong smell of bleach pervading the air.

There was nothing homely about it. What could have been a beautiful home was nothing but a carcass, sanitised functionality at its best.

If Elena Markos could speak English, she made a good show of hiding it. She made no show of hiding her disdain for Alessandra, refusing her hand when Christian introduced them, and looking through her when Alessandra said, ‘Hárika ya tin gnorimía,’— ‘pleased to meet you’—a phrase she’d practised with the girl who’d brought breakfast to her suite that morning after Christian had grudgingly agreed to bring her here.

They gathered together in the immaculate kitchen, where the stench of bleach was even stronger. No refreshments were offered.

Alessandra might as well have been invisible. All of Elena’s attention was on her son. She was speaking harshly to him in quick-fire Greek, whatever she said enough to make the pulse in his jawline throb. When he replied, his answers were short but measured. At one point he seemed to be the one doing the talking rather than the listening, his words making Elena dart her blue eyes to the stranger in the midst, a sneer forming on her face.

In all her twenty-five years, Alessandra had never sat in such a poisonous atmosphere as this, or felt as unwelcome.

There was something almost unhinged in Elena Markos’s demeanour. Her eyes were the same blue as Christian’s but were like a frozen winter morning without an ounce of her son’s warmth.

Simply imagining being raised by this woman made her skin feel as icy as Elena’s eyes. But Christian couldn’t leave it to imaginings. He’d lived it, every cold, emotionless second.

Was it any wonder Christian eschewed any form of emotional entanglement when this was what he’d grown up with?

Her mind flitted back to their many conversations at Mikolaj’s taverna. She’d said the name Markos stood for guts and determination but had not appreciated then exactly how great his determination must have been, not just to drag himself and his mother out of poverty but to keep his humanity.

Mikolaj. She recalled the obvious affection between the two men. Surely it was from this man Christian had learned to form real human bonds? It soothed her to know he hadn’t been completely alone in his childhood.

So much for the couple of hours Alessandra had anticipated spending there. After twenty minutes, Christian took her hand and said, ‘We’re leaving.’

‘Already?’

‘Now.’

Elena glared at them, her eyes like lasers.

When they reached the door to leave she gave what Alessandra assumed was supposed to be a laugh.

‘Fool girl,’ she said, her accent thick. ‘Marry fools. He kill you heart.’

Alarmed and not a little scared, Alessandra nodded weakly, squeezing Christian’s hand so tightly her blood screamed for circulation.

Nothing was said until they were back in the car and moving, both pressed against their respective doors.

‘What did you think of my mother?’ Christian asked, amusement and bitterness both vying for control in his voice.

Alessandra was unable to do anything but raise her shoulders and blow air out of her mouth.

That had to be the most surreal experience of her life, like stepping into some parallel universe where poison ivy grew instead of roses.

‘Do you understand now why I don’t want her at our wedding?’

‘I think so.’ She shook her head some more. She could still taste the acrid atmosphere, overwhelming even the cloying bleach. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘The usual. That I’m a useless son for leaving it so long between visits; that her house isn’t good enough for her; that the house is too big for her, that it’s too small, that her car is getting old. The usual.’

‘You bought the house for her?’

‘It’s the third house I’ve bought for her—the other two didn’t match her needs. I buy her a new car every year. I give her a large allowance. It’s never enough. I could give her my entire fortune and it wouldn’t be enough. If she came to the wedding, she’d spend the day complaining. Nothing would be good enough for her, and when she isn’t complaining she’ll be telling all our guests about my no-good bastard of a father who broke her heart and deserves castration without anaesthetic.’

His father’s desertion and betrayal had shattered her. Whatever love had once resided in his mother’s bones had been destroyed, leaving nothing but the toxic shell of the woman she must have once been. Christian understood it, could see how she had become like that. Stratos Markos hadn’t just walked away from her, he had walked away from the child they had created together—that was how little she had meant to him. He had wanted no part of her, so worthless that their baby meant nothing to him either.

‘Has she always been like this?’ she asked, her husky voice stark.

‘All my life. She thinks all men are like my father—that’s what she was saying to you when we left, that you’re a fool to be marrying me and that I’m going to break your heart.’

Alessandra’s shock was palpable. ‘She said that about her own son?’

‘She also said it would be kinder for me to rip your heart out now—you forget, agapi mou, that I am my father’s son, something she never lets me forget. In my mother’s world, all men are liars and cheats, especially those with the name of Markos.’

Her doe eyes widened, full of sympathy. ‘You’re not to blame for your father’s actions.’

‘I know that.’ But right then he didn’t want to hear any platitudes. A coldness had settled in his chest, bearing down on him.

It was always the same after he visited his mother. Regardless of the heat outside, inside all he felt was compressing ice.

‘And it’s not fair for her to label all men as bastards because of the misdeeds of one.’

‘But do you not believe that yourself?’ he said roughly. ‘That all men are scum?’

She swallowed, her eyes dimming as if in confusion. ‘I don’t hate men, I just don’t trust them.’

What would it take to get her to trust him? If she’d taken him at his word he would never have had to bring her here.

He wished he could demand it of her, as if trust were like a tap that could be turned on and off at a whim.

After a long pause, he said, ‘We’re lucky we both know how destructive love can be. We won’t fall into the trap our parents fell into. Our child will never have to deal with parents whose love has turned to bitterness and recrimination.’

Their child wouldn’t have to deal with his or her parents loving each other at all. All the love would be reserved for their child and only their child.

He exhaled slowly, waiting for the chill in his chest to lessen but it continued to cling to him like a thick, cold fog.

He hadn’t expected anything different from his mother; he was more or less immune to it. It had been witnessing Alessandra’s visible shock at it all that had really set the cold in, had brought the old feelings and memories hurtling back.

The empathy shining from her eyes had been too much.

He’d never introduced his mother to any of his friends or lovers before. His mother had her own special compartment in his life. He’d long ago accepted that she wouldn’t change, that no matter how he succeeded in life it would never be enough for her. Even the news of being a grandmother had failed to elicit a smile. She would never love him.

Far from repelling Alessandra, his mother’s behaviour had elicited her sympathy, her empathy: towards him.

He didn’t want her pity.

She was getting too close; he could feel it.

Any closer and she’d be able to see the gutter rat who lived in the blackness of his heart.

Christian’s driver dropped Alessandra back at the hotel before taking Christian to his offices.

A dozen more guests had arrived while they’d been at his mother’s house. It amazed her that so many super-wealthy and famous people were able to drop their commitments for what was essentially a free holiday, but surprisingly their presence worked in her favour, distracting her thoughts from their visit to Christian’s mother.

Every time she closed her eyes she saw the laser glare of Elena Markos’s eyes and she wondered how Christian had endured living with such coldness.

That he had dragged himself out, turned it around and made something of himself only added to what had been a slowly growing admiration towards him. That admiration had now accelerated.

Although she was suffering a large dose of guilt for forcing the issue, she was glad they’d gone. Her understanding of the man she was going to marry was growing by the day.

She spent the rest of the day mingling with their guests, some of whom she actually knew, lazing by the pool, playing cards, drinking non-alcoholic cocktails. It was fun, but she wished Christian could be there to enjoy it too. He worked so hard, just like her brother.

Maybe he would kick back and relax when they went on their short honeymoon. She hoped so. He deserved it.

She headed back to her suite late afternoon and had a long soak in the sunken bath, already looking forward to the evening meal which Christian had said he’d be back for.

As she slipped into a red tunic dress, she realised that there hadn’t been a single minute when she hadn’t thought of him. The thought was like a jolt, enough to make her hands tremble, making it hard for her to apply her make-up.

She’d just regained her equilibrium when there was a knock on her door.

And there he stood, wearing the same suit she’d seen him change into that morning in his suite but with the tie removed and the top three buttons of his shirt undone, exposing the top of his bronzed chest.

Finding him there sent a huge surge through her, making her heart pump and her pulses race. Dio, the man was divine. In all ways.

‘I thought I should let you know I’m going to New York,’ he said as he stepped into her suite.

‘Okay. When’s that?’

‘I’ll be leaving for the airport in a few minutes.’

His words had the effect of making her heart sink to her knees. ‘Are you kidding with me? You’re leaving now?’

Dio l’aiuti, was he getting cold feet?

‘It’s only for a couple of nights—I’ll be back Friday evening.’

She forced her voice to remain calm. ‘We’re getting married on Saturday.’

‘I’ll be back in plenty of time.’

A little distance was all Christian needed. Distance away from Alessandra, time to clear the coldness on his chest that still hadn’t shifted. Time to track her brother down and force him to listen.

‘I thought we were supposed to be putting on a united front?’

‘We have been. Our guests will understand.’

‘But these are our guests. I’ve completely rearranged my schedule to be here this week so we can entertain them together and convince them that we’re the real deal.’ The brightness of her welcome had cooled considerably.

‘This is my life, Alessandra. I warn you now, there will be plenty of occasions when I have to fly off at a moment’s notice.’

She eyed him, lines appearing in her brow. ‘And what if I have to fly off at a moment’s notice? Will you show me the same latitude?’ The challenge was there, from the jut of her chin to the tone of her voice. ‘I have a career of my own too, remember?’

‘Our marriage is going to take time to shake down,’ he conceded, wishing he could be in his jet right now. He didn’t want to deal with her anger or acknowledge the suspicion emanating from her eyes. That was not what they were about. They were two individuals able to lead their lives to their own needs, not justify their whims and absences to each other. He shouldn’t feel any guilt. ‘We will find a path that suits us both.’

She nodded slowly but when she spoke her voice was fractionally warmer. ‘So long as you don’t expect all the compromise and sacrifice to come from my end.’

‘I don’t expect that.’

‘Good.’ After a moment of silence, she jerked her head in another nod. ‘Have a safe trip.’

He mimicked her movement. ‘I’ll see you at the chapel.’

CHAPTER NINE

ALESSANDRA STARED AT her reflection. She’d been primped and preened by an army of beauticians and now she was ready.

Ready?

She would never be ready. Not for this.

But it had to be done.

She had to marry Christian and she would do it alone.

Sebastian and Zayed, who had arrived together the night before, had both offered to give her away. She’d been touched by the offers but had declined. They were there for Christian, not her.

There were only two people she would have wanted to walk her down the aisle and one of those was dead. The other hadn’t even had the courtesy to respond to his invitation.

She straightened her spine. It wasn’t as if this would be a real marriage. This wedding was going ahead for one reason and one reason only: their baby. That was what she needed to focus on. It was all she should focus on—not Christian or the way he’d flown off to New York at a moment’s notice. Or her suspicions that there was more to his impromptu trip than business. Or those horrible hours waiting for him to return while the cynical part of her brain had thrown taunts that he wouldn’t be coming back, that he’d abandoned her. Just like her father had.

Do. Not. Trust.

She had to trust him with regard to their child. She had to.

Christian was not her father. And he hadn’t abandoned her. Right at that very moment he stood in the chapel waiting for her. Exactly as he’d said he would be.

The relief she’d felt late last night when he’d called to say he was back in Athens had been so powerful it scared her to remember the physicality of her reaction.

It was simply relief that he hadn’t humiliated her by standing her up, she insisted to herself. Nothing more than that. Nothing.

She checked her watch. It was time. In approximately one hour she would be married. Christian would be her husband.

She watched her reflected cheeks flush, her blood heating at the remembrances of their one night together, the night that had led to this very moment. Vivid memories of it played in her dreams every night, teasing her, haunting her.

People always said you couldn’t miss what you’d never had and in the sexual aspect of her life that had held true. Now that she had tried it…

But it wasn’t sex on its own that she wanted, that her body responded to. It was sex with Christian. Whether it was the alcohol loosening her inhibitions or something else undefined, he’d awoken her. He did things to her.

Before she’d put her wedding dress on, she’d stepped into her lacy white knickers, imagining him sliding them off; had put her lacy white bra on, imagining him unclasping it; had rolled the silk white stockings up her legs, imagining his strong fingers trailing over her skin as he slid them off.

Dio, how many times had she picked up her phone to call him before slamming it back down? Too many to count.

He’d called her a couple of times, though, conversations that had left her feeling all knotted yet incredibly warm inside. There was something about his voice that set tiny little bolts darting through her skin…

She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was hiding something from her, though.

Per favore, not another woman.

Do. Not. Trust.

How she could she trust him? She didn’t know how.

She did know that she wanted to. She wanted to believe he would treat her with respect, that maybe one day…

A rap on her door jolted her out of the trance she’d worked herself into.

It was probably a member of staff, come to escort her to the chapel. The sweet girl who brought her breakfast every morning had been shocked when Alessandra had told her she would be walking to the chapel alone.