The Greek's Unknown Bride

He’d said icily, ‘This ends here now. Take a shower and get dressed. When

you’re ready I’ll have my driver take you home.’

Sophy’s focus came back to the present. It wasn’t much comfort that she had more context now for why Apollo would have found seducing a virgin so unappealing. He was averse to relationships after losing his family. And she knew what that loss felt like. Ironic that they had so much in common.

She turned to face him, steeling herself not to show him how the memory of that night flayed her.

Apollo tried to resist the image of intense vulnerability Sophy displayed when she faced him again. Arms wrapped around herself. Her cheeks had two bright pink spots but the rest of her face was pale.

It didn’t help that images of that first night they’d spent together kept intruding on his thoughts. The way her hair had spread out around her head like a halo of fire.

Little flame.

He gritted his jaw and bit out, ‘We really don’t have to continue this now if you’re not up to it.’

She looked at him. ‘No, I want to do this now. Maybe I will have a small drink, though.’

Apollo went over and poured her a measure of brandy. He brought it over and said gruffly, ‘Sit down, before you fall down.’

She sat down again in the chair and he handed her the drink. He let her take a sip, and sat back on the edge of his desk. ‘Were you and your sister in on the act together? Was she sent to me a month later because you didn’t have the nerve?’

Sophy sat up straighter, a look of shock and horror crossing her face. ‘That’s... No, it wasn’t like that. I had no idea.’

Apollo forced himself to resist trusting his first impression of her innocence. ‘You weren’t working together?’

‘Not at all. How can you think that?’

‘How did she end up in my office then? Telling me she was pregnant, if you weren’t working together? How did she know if you hadn’t told her?’

He saw the slim pale column of her throat work as she swallowed. She avoided his eye, as if ashamed. ‘Sasha and I lived together. She knew something had happened...she eventually got me to confide in her. I told her your name. I know Sasha had her faults, but I never in a million years thought that she would use that private information. She looked you up, kept going on about how I should contact you, try to go out with you again...but I wouldn’t.’

She looked at him again. ‘After all, you’d left me in no doubt as to how you felt about seeing me again.’

His conscience smarted. Yes, he’d told her that but he also hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind in the following days, weeks. Making a total mockery of his words to her.

Sophy continued, ‘It was around the time of our birthday and Sasha said she was concerned about me, so she bought me a return flight to one of the Canary Islands for a holiday. I didn’t want to go but she insisted.’

Apollo said. ‘Go on.’

‘By the time I got back she was gone. She’d left a note saying something about securing our future. Then I saw it in the papers. Your marriage.’

Apollo remembered the feeling of claustrophobia that day. ‘If you weren’t working together, when you heard about the marriage, why didn’t you contact me to tell me who she was, who you were? That she was tricking me?’

Sophy looked sheepish. ‘I didn’t know about the pregnancy. It wasn’t inconceivable to me that you’d met Sasha and had been more attracted to her. That you’d wanted something more with her.’

Apollo felt a surge of anger mixed with frustration rise up inside him. Before he could say anything Sophy cut in, ‘I know it sounds pathetic. But in a weird way it made sense. I’d been innocent and you hadn’t wanted to see me again. Sasha was experienced...the experienced version of me. I felt like you’d seen something in her that I hadn’t been able to give you, and that had made you fall for her. I know how convincing Sasha could be.’

Apollo grimaced at that. The fact that he’d fallen for her act negated his anger a little. Sasha had managed to dupe them both.

He stood up again, paced back and forth. ‘Why did you come to Athens?’

Sophy fought not to squirm under that exacting gaze. ‘Sasha rang me, she was hysterical. Incoherent. It must have been when you found out she wasn’t pregnant. When you’d shown her the divorce papers. She begged me to come as soon as I could... I arrived the next morning.’

She went on. ‘I couldn’t even understand half of what she was saying when she picked me up at the airport. She was gabbling about you not wanting her, and that I needed to go and pretend to be her so I could seduce you...’

Apollo went very still. ‘She was hoping that if you switched places, I’d suddenly want you and in spite of everything sleep with you and get you pregnant?’

Sophy avoided his eye. ‘Something like that, I think.’