The Maid's Best Kept Secret (The Marchetti Dynasty 1)

Maggie was too nervous to dwell on who everyone else was and tried to focus on the ceremony, led by a registrar who conducted it in English for her benefit. She made a mental note to learn French as soon as possible. After all, Daniel was a quarter Greek and Italian and would be growing up in France. A true child of Europe.

‘You may now kiss your bride.’

Maggie panicked. It was over already?

She turned to face Nikos. He tipped up her chin with a finger and pulled her close. She cursed him for putting on a show.

He smiled. ‘No regrets, Mrs Marchetti.’

Before she could say anything he was kissing her, and her brain fused with heat. She hadn’t built all the sophisticated defences she’d need around Nikos yet. She probably never would.

When they walked out of the office some minutes later Nikos warned her, ‘There’ll be a few photographers. Not a crowd like the other night, though.’

Sure enough there were a handful, and they stopped and posed for pictures. One of them called out, ‘Baisez!’ and Maggie soon figured out what that meant when Nikos pulled her close for another kiss.

By the time they got to one of the most exclusive Marchetti hotels in the centre of Paris for the wedding breakfast Maggie’s whole body was one big mass of quivering nerve-endings and overload of adrenalin.

‘So you’re Maggie?’

Maggie turned around, a smile fixed on her face. It was the blond man she’d noticed standing near Sharif in the register office.

She held out her hand. ‘Yes—you must be Maks?’

‘Guilty.’ He shook her hand. He was very different from both Nikos and Sharif, and yet similar. More guarded. Intense grey eyes.

‘I’d say welcome to the family,’ he drawled. ‘But that would imply that we’re some kind of functioning unit.’

He looked over Maggie’s head and she followed his gaze.

‘That’s my younger sister, Sasha.’

Maggie took in the woman she’d thought might be his girlfriend. She was beautiful in a way that made Maggie suspect she tried to hide it. She was dressed almost frumpily, in a long skirt and a high-necked blouse, but she recognised the bone structure. Maggie felt an affinity with the girl, even though they hadn’t yet met. She recognised something about the way she was trying to hide herself.

‘You look alike,’ she said.

‘We take after our mother. Nikos and Sharif bear the brunt of the Marchetti genes. Sasha has a different father from me and my brothers. She made a lucky escape in that regard.’

Maggie was just absorbing this, and how complicated this family was, when she heard a voice.

‘Filling my wife’s head with nonsense, Maks?’

She felt a jolt at the words my wife. Nikos slid an arm around her waist.

Maks smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Not at all, I was merely welcoming Maggie to the firm.’

Nikos made a sound that might have been a laugh or a snarl. ‘If you don’t mind, I need to steal my wife away. We’re leaving for our honeymoon.’

Maks inclined his head. ‘Bon voyage and best wishes to you both.’

Nikos made efficient work of saying goodbye to everyone, and soon he was leading Maggie out of the hotel and into a waiting car. He undid his tie. Marianne had gone ahead with Daniel to the private plane, taking Maggie’s expressed milk with her to feed the baby. They were going to Athens for a couple of days—ostensibly for their honeymoon, but also so that Nikos could check in on his Athens office.

There was a brooding energy surrounding him that she tried to dissipate by saying, ‘Maks told me about Sasha...that she’s not your sister.’

Nikos glanced at her and then away. ‘I never spent any time with her growing up in any case—she made a lucky escape.’

‘That’s what he said too—or something like it. Was your father really so bad?’

Nikos made a slightly strangled sound. ‘Yes. The only thing he did for us was to create a legacy that we must nurture and grow.’