The Cozakis Bride

'Save the act for someone who hasn't experienced your idea of friendship,' Olympia advised.

Katerina darted a careful glance around herself, anxious that their conversation should not be overheard. Only then did she risk giving Olympia a mocking smile. 'I almost died of fright when I was invited to your wedding. I thought it might be a trap, but when Nik greeted me just the same as ever I knew I was safe!'

'Safe?' Olympia queried.

Katerina tossed her head and laughed. 'It's so obvious that Nik still doesn't know what really went on ten years ago.'

'Is it really?' Although Olympia was struggling to look unconcerned, she was mortified by having that reality flung in her face.

But Katerina was too clever to be fooled. If Nik had been aware of the appalling lies his cousin had once told, he would naturally have confronted her.

'All hell would have broken loose if Nik had known that I fibbed about you and poor old Lukas!' Katerina gave a little mock shiver of apprehension, her dark eyes scornful as she sneered. 'So, if Nik's married you without knowing the truth, he can only have done it to get Manoulis Industries. You'd still take Nik at any price. Don't you have any pride?'

The knowledge that her lies still stood unchallenged had not only filled Katerina with triumph but had also given her a humiliating insight into the nature of Olympia's marriage. Olympia was cut to the bone.

'More pride than to stand here exchanging insults with you,' she answered tightly, starting to turn away.

But Katerina hadn't finished yet, and she giggled, 'What a come-down for Nik...I expect he'll have to close his eyes and try to pretend you're Gisele Bonner tonight!'

Olympia took refuge in the cloakroom. She felt sick. Her hands were trembling as she rinsed them in cooling water. Katerina hadn't changed one bit. Indeed, it was just a little scary to realise that the passage of ten years hadn't made any appreciable difference to the other woman. Katerina was sweet only when she had an audience she wanted to impress, and she still hated Olympia like poison.

However, Olympia did not want a rumour that her mar­riage was simply a business merger reaching her mother's tender ears. Which it might well do, if Irini Manoulis moved back into her father's home outside Athens. And judging by the way her grandfather was hovering round her mother to- day, his anxiety for her fragile health writ large in his every , protective look and gesture, Olympia reckoned that her parent would not be living in London for much longer.

As she headed in me direction of the top table she saw Nik on the other side of the dance floor. He was scanning the crowds with a frown. Across that distance, brilliant dark eyes suddenly found and held hers. Her heart jumped and her mouth ran dry and she faltered to an unplanned halt. The innate power of mat single look electrified her. Involuntarily, she relived the fierce hunger of his mouth on hers and felt the swift answering rise of heat surge at the centre of her trembling body. A wave of burning mortification sent hot colour flying into her cheeks.

No, she hadn't allowed herself to think about that kiss, until just looking at Nik forced her to remember what she would have much rather forgotten. That when Nik touched her, she couldn't yet control her own sexuality. That ac­knowledgement shamed and embarrassed her. At seventeen she had been able to control and stifle her physical reaction to Nik only because her ability to resist him had never been pot to the test. But now the powerful responses she was ex­periencing frightened and confused Olympia. Nik made her feel like a wanton, and that terrified her. Only frozen indif­ference would hold Nik Cozakis at bay, and so far she was conscious that she wasn't doing very well in that department. Nik crossed the floor to her side, black eyes grim. 'It's time for us to leave.'

Olympia tautened. 'But we've only been here a couple of hours—'

'Quite long enough,' Nik cut in with flat finality. 'You put on a lousy bridal act.'

'I don't know what you're talking about...' But even as she said it her memory was serving up taunting images: her silence throughout the meal, the way she had argued with him during that first dance and not once but twice broken free of him to walk away. 'Yes, you do.'

A sensation akin to panic surged up inside Olympia and she dropped her head to study the floor. 'I'm sorry...I'll make a bigger effort.' .

'Why tax yourself?' Nik murmured silkily. 'You think I care what people think?'

'I just wasn't concentrating on how I should be behaving. Believe me, I can do better,' she asserted in haste, that pan­icky feeling increasing. All of a sudden the presence of a couple of hundred guests seemed like the best protection she had ever had, and she could not understand why she had been foolish enough to anger Nik by failing to behave like a normal bride.

'Too late. You had your chance and you blew it. Any notion I had of playing the proud bridegroom is long gone,' Nik spelt out very dryly. 'So go and say goodbye to your mother.'

'I wanted to spend some time with her—'

Tough.'

She began to turn away. 'I'll go and get changed first—'

'You'll stay as you are. Your luggage is already on board the helicopter.'

She frowned, taken aback. 'But I have a going-away out­fit... I gave my cases to the driver before I left your apartment this morning and told him.'

'I countermanded your instructions,' Nik informed her with complete cool. 'I want to be the one to take you out of that wedding dress.'

Her head flew up, sea-jade eyes sparking. 'But I told you—'

'When are you going to learn to listen to what / tell you?' Eyes black as pitch raked over her and her tummy just flipped at the bleak coldness of that appraisal. 'And I'm not a happy camper right now.'

'H-happy camper?' Olympia stammered weakly.

'Just fifteen minutes ago I watched my cousin Katerina make a second, very generous attempt to reinstate a reason­ably civil bond with you,' Nik related with a grim twist of his hard mouth, watching further colour fly into her startled face. 'I also watched her take off again in tears at your rebuff and then pretend that she wasn't feeling well so that she could leave our reception early without causing undue com­ment!'

Olympia was stunned by that revelation about Katerina. Katerina in tears at her rebuff and making an early departure from their reception? It finally dawned on Olympia that Katerina would still put her in the wrong whenever she got the chance. She was shaken. 'Nik...that's not true. I said nothing—'

'You behaved like a real bitch and I'm ashamed of you. But don't worry about it. I won't be letting you loose socially again,' Nik enunciated with icy clarity.

Olympia, who had never considered herself to be a fanciful woman, felt the most chilling sense of foreboding spread through her, but in angry discomfiture she tried to defend herself. 'Nik, you're not being fair. She—'

'I have no interest in hearing your excuses. We're leaving in ten minutes.'

'To go where?'

Belatedly, she recalled the helicopter he had mentioned. 'We're joining my yacht at Southampton. So I suggest you spend those ten minutes with your mother,' Nik incised with ruthless implacability.

Rigid-backed, Olympia approached her parent, who was sitting with her grandfather. Her mother's eyes were troubled. Spyros Manoulis stood up, his beetling brows set in a frown of censure.

‘Thankfully your behaviour is now your husband's responsibility, but allow me to tell you that no lady embarrasses her husband in public'

Olympia's teeth gritted behind her compressed lips. She shot a pained look at her mother, who hurriedly scrambled up to give her daughter a soothing hug. 'Don't let your pride come between you and happiness,' she urged then, in an anxious whisper.

For a dismaying moment Olympia registered that she was attracting censure from every conceivable source, and when that censure also came from the mother she adored, it really hurt. But an apologetic smile softened her mouth, for she was genuinely sorry that anything she had done should have worried the older woman. 'When first we practise to deceive...' she thought bitterly, for when honesty

was forbidden, self-defence was impossible.

Indeed, more than anything else at that moment Olympia felt trapped. Her grandfather thought she was incredibly lucky to have got Nik to the altar, and he would always take Nik's side. Her mother was solely concerned with her daugh­ter's happiness, but Olympia was in no doubt that she had just received a firm scold. Meanwhile, Nik was simmering like a volcano about what he saw as her ungenerous reaction to what he had assumed to be an olive branch from his cousin, Katerina. And, no matter what Olympia did or said, all of them would keep on seeing her as being the one in the wrong.

As Nik came to her side, depriving her of even the ten minutes he had promised, resentment currented through Olympia. Then a sharp and disturbing pang of fear assailed her as she appreciated that the very last thing she could face right now was being alone with her new husband.

And wasn't that ironic? she found herself thinking help­lessly, as they took leave of all their guests. Ten years ago, the one thing she had most longed for was the chance to be alone with Nik, and the natural privacy offered to a newly married couple would have struck her as a heavenly blessing...

CHAPTER FIVE