Nikos looked down at her as he held her tenderly to his chest. His dark eyes were shining.
“Thank you, agape mou,” he whispered, brushing her cheek softly with his hand. “Thank you for trying to take that bullet. There weren’t any bullets, but you didn’t know that. You...you saved me. In so many ways.”
“And you started early,” a man said from the doorway in heavily accented English. Anna looked up to see a man in a Russian police uniform, with half a dozen policemen behind him. “We missed it.”
“I couldn’t wait, Yuri.” Nikos jerked his head toward Victor, still stretched out on the floor. “There he is.”
The man called Yuri smiled. “You said you were calling in a favor. I wish I had to pay more favors like this. We’ve wanted Sinistyn a long time, but he was untouchable. Now, with your testimony and influence, he won’t see the sun again for a long time.” The policeman looked with concern at Nikos’s wrist. “My friend, you are hurt.”
“It’s nothing—”
“It’s his wrist. I think it’s broken. We need a doctor right away,” Anna said, then looked up anxiously at the face of the man she loved. “Please, Nikos. I need you to be well.”
“All right,” he muttered. “Get the doctor.”
Turning away from the policeman, he sank into a nearby chair and pulled her into his lap. “Anna, before the doctor starts filling me with drugs, I have to tell you something. I should have told you this a long time ago, but I was too stupid to see it and too stubborn to admit it—even to myself. I really do love you.”
“Nikos, I love—”
“Please let me finish, while I can still get this out.” He took a deep breath. “You saved me. From a life that was empty. I was stupid to prevent you from working, or doing anything else that brings you joy. If it makes you happy, I want you to work. As my secretary, as vice-president, as any damn thing you want.”
Tears filled her eyes even as she gave him a mischievous smile. “I think I’d make a good CEO.”
“Cocky.” He returned her grin. “You always were the only one who could stand up to me. I need that in my life. Someone to keep me in my place.”
As she looked into his handsome face she barely heard the noises of the swarming police, or Victor’s whining complaints as they took him away.
“Your place is with me.” She cupped his jaw, rough with dark stubble, in her hands. “As long as we’re together, anyplace in the world is my home. But there’s something that I have to ask you. Something I’ve never said before to anyone.” He’d called her cocky, but what she wanted to ask him now terrified her. She took a deep breath. “Nikos, will you marry me?”
For his answer, his smile lit his face from within, his dark eyes shining at her with hope and love. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
“I told you we should have gotten married at the drive-thru chapel in Vegas,” Anna whispered when she reached the end of the aisle.
“And miss all this? Never,” he whispered back with a wink.
As the priest began to speak the words that would bind them together for all time Nikos knew he should pay attention, but all he could do was look at his bride. Beneath the hot Greek sun, on the edge of a rocky cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea, they were surrounded by flowers and a small audience of people who loved them. It was a simple wedding, plain by some standards, but he knew in his heart it was what Anna wanted.
And, looking at her now, he knew he’d never be able to deny her anything. Her turquoise eyes, a mixture of sea and sky, smiled at him as he lifted her veil. She wore a white shift that made her look like a medieval maiden.
Her engagement ring, a four-carat diamond in an antique gold setting, sparkled from her finger. He’d given it to her two nights ago. She’d tried to refuse it until she’d realized that he’d found the original stone from her great-grandmother’s wedding ring. Now it was one of her greatest treasures.
The way she’d thanked him had made him forget all about the cast on his wrist. Remembering that night, and every night since they’d returned from Russia, still made his body feel hot from the inside out. He could hardly wait to give Anna her honeymoon present—Rostov Palace, which he’d bought from Sinistyn’s confiscated estates. Sinistyn didn’t need it anymore, as he’d be living out his days in a Russian prison.
Nikos glanced around him at family and friends and the sea and the bright blue sky. Justice. Another thing he’d thought existed only in fairy tales, along with love and happy endings.
He’d not only held his wedding in his parents’ hometown, but, at Anna’s urging, he’d invited his father’s family—Eudocia Dounas and her three daughters—to the wedding. To his surprise they’d all come, bringing their husbands and children. He now had a family. Siblings, nieces, nephews. He didn’t know them yet, but he would.
Near his family sat Anna’s mother who, in another wedding-day miracle, was not only on her best behavior, but had pinched his cheek and declared it was “about time” the two were married. Anna had spent last night talking to her sister, barring Nikos from her bedroom because it was “bad luck” for him to see her. Now, Natalie was bouncing Misha on her knee while she watched the wedding, smiling through her tears. And he could see his son’s two new top teeth in his smile as he watched his parents wed.
It was a day for families to join together.
All right, he’d admit it. It wasn’t just Anna who’d wanted this kind of wedding. He had wanted it as well. In some way he’d wanted this all his life.
Family.
Home.
Love.
As Anna said the words that made her his wife her voice was sweet and true. He barely remembered repeating the words himself, but he must have done so since before he knew it the priest was speaking in accented English, declaring them husband and wife, and he was kissing the bride. Over the sound of the crashing surf he heard their family and friends behind them burst into applause, and a noisy cheer from Cooper. But as he kissed her, holding her tightly in his arms, all he could feel was the pounding of his heart against hers.
She pulled back, caressing his face as she grinned up at him through tears. “See?” she whispered. “Wasn’t that better than having Elvis marry us?”
Hiding a grin, he looked down at her solemnly. “I’m yours to command now, Mrs. Stavrakis.”
“Mine to command?” She paused, pretending to consider her options, and then leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “In that case, my first order is that you take me to bed.”
“Leaving our guests to start the reception?”
She gave him a wicked smile. “They won’t miss us.”
“They won’t even notice,” he agreed with a grin. He picked her up in his arms and, to the delighted gasps of the crowd, he turned to carry her back to his villa.
“Ah, Anna. I can tell I’m going to have a hard life with you,” he observed with a sigh, and he kissed her with all his heart.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Playing the Royal Game by Carol Marinelli
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CHAPTER ONE
SHE was better off without the job, Allegra told herself.
No one should have to put up with that.
Except that walking in the rain along grey London streets, taking the underground to various employment agencies, the anger that her boss could make such a blatant a pass at her and then fire her for not succumbing started to be replaced with something that felt close to fear.
She needed that job.
Needed it.
Her savings had been obliterated by the bottomless pit that was her family’s excess spending. At times it felt as if her lowly publishing wage supported half the Jackson family. Yes, she was the boring reliable one, but they didn’t mind her dependability when their erratic ways found them in trouble. Just last week she had lent her stepmother, Chantelle, close to five thousand pounds in cash for credit card debts that her father didn’t know about. It was laughable to think that she might now have to have her family support her.
It was a miserable day, with no sign that it was spring; instead it was cold and wet, and Allegra dug her hands deeper into her trench coat pockets, her fingers curling around a fifty-pound note she had pulled out of the ATM. If her boss refused to put her pay in tomorrow it was all she had before being completely broke.