The Cozakis Bride

'Planned it?' she questioned, but Nik was already opening the door and standing back for her entrance.

CHAPTER TEN

Five heads turned towards the door, and with only two exceptions all faces betrayed discomfiture of varying degrees when Olympia appeared.

Spyros Manoulis looked the least surprised and the most pleased. Nik's brother, Peri, greeted her with a wide grin of approval. Achilles, Nik's father, who always looked forbid­ding, merely stiffened. Nik's mother, Alexandra, cosily seated beside Katerina, froze with unease. And Katerina? Katerina stared, and then pinned a bright smile to her lips.

The other woman had no fear, either of Olympia or of her lies being exposed, Olympia recognised bitterly. In pleased receipt of a warm hug from her grandfather, and a cooler acknowledgement of her arrival from the other parties pres­ent, she took a seat. How was she supposed to confront Katerina without any proof that she had lied? Why should Nik's cousin confess anything when she had so much to lose? While Olympia was frantically wondering what she could say that might provoke the brunette into showing her true col­ours, Nik started talking.

'I have a story to tell you all,' Nik drawled lazily from his stance by the marble fireplace.

Curiosity awakened, everybody sat up a little straighter to listen. But when Olympia realised what story it was that Nik intended to tell she was disconcerted and embarrassed. She decided that the minute she got him out of the room she would kill him! It was purgatory to be forced to sit there while Nik told the tale of the message on the mirror on their wedding night, and then went on to mention the newspaper article which he had tried to protect Olympia from. By the time he got round to the photos which she had found hidden in her handbag Olympia was squirming.

Achilles Cozakis breathed with distaste. 'A most unpleasant business.'

Alexandra Cozakis, who had turned to ice at the mere mention of her eldest son featuring in an intimate photograph with Gisele Bonner, said without hesitation, ‘That was the behaviour of a very malicious woman.'

'Disgraceful!' Spyros Manoulis pronounced, with sincere annoyance on his granddaughter's behalf.

'Now I know why I never really took to Gisele,' Peri mused with a grimace.

'How awful for you!' Katerina gasped in turn, giving Olympia a look of caring commiseration.

Katerina's exclamation seemed to draw everybody's attention to the fact that neither of Nik's parents had offered their daughter-in-law sympathy for what she had suffered.

'Who do you think was behind that campaign against my wife?' Nik enquired softly.

Everybody frowned while they tried to work out why he was asking what appeared to be a stupid question.

'It wasn't Gisele,' Nik emphasised, and he drew a folded document from the inside pocket of his jacket. 'It was a member of this family. Someone who has run tame in this house since I was a child. Someone we trust, someone we care about.'

Comprehension hit Olympia as she looked across the room and recognised that Katerina had turned as white as milk. The brunette was sitting forward on her seat, her tension pal­pable. Dear heaven, Olympia realised then. It hadn't been Gisele behind that campaign; it had been Katerina!

'You shouldn't have been so careless, Katerina. Damianos is a very thorough investigator,' Nik delivered.

The whole room seemed to erupt then. Nik's parents spoke up in furious Greek, most probably defending Katerina, who had burst into instant floods of tears.

'Use English,' Nik cut in with quiet authority. 'Olympia's Greek is much improved, but you are speaking too quickly and nobody has a greater right to understand all that is said here. And before anybody gets carried away with the need to comfort my cousin, let me tell you how she contrived to wage such a campaign.’

Katerina had been on board Aurora with Achilles and Al­exandra Cozakis the week before the wedding. She had bribed Olympia's maid into carrying out her instructions. Nik handed the document in his hand to his father. 'The maid was in regular contact with Katerina during our honeymoon. Katerina flew to Spain to meet up with the maid and pass over the photos. That meeting was witnessed by another crew member. The photographer who sold the photos to Katerina was willing to identify her. The evidence against my cousin is incontrovertible.'

'How could you imagine that I would do such dreadful things?' Katerina wept brokenly.

'Because it wasn't the first time, was it?' Olympia heard herself answer, and slowly she rose to her feet.

'What's that supposed to mean?' the brunette demanded, her voice stronger the instant she saw Olympia in front of her, her hostility unconcealed.

'When Nik and I got engaged ten years ago, you decided to break us up.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' Katerina said woodenly.

'Like hell you haven't!' Nik launched without warning at his cousin. 'Ten years ago you swore in front of witnesses that you caught Lukas and Olympia having sex in my car!'

Such plain speaking provoked a moan of reproof from Nik's already shaken mother.

'I'm sorry.' Olympia was sympathetic towards the older woman's embarrassment. 'Of course you don't want to be forced to listen to anything more unpleasant, but this does have to be cleared up. I was unjustly accused and I do want the truth to be known and accepted.'

'Katerina!' Nik thundered impatiently.

'All right!' Katerina said flatly. 'For what its worth, I got together with Lukas and we set you both up. Nothing hap­pened between Lukas and Olympia...I just made the whole story up! Are you satisfied now?'

An unearthly silence fell at that unemotional rendering of such offensive facts.

‘Why? Nik demanded with sudden rawness. 'Why would you make such filthy allegations about my fiancé? You're my cousin. Lukas was my friend.'

Katerina turned her head away in mute refusal to respond. In silence, Spyros Manoulis ushered Olympia back into her seat and remained beside her.

'She was in love with you, Nik,' Olympia sighed ruefully. 'I'm afraid it was a little more than just a crush. I moved in on what she saw as her territory and she's hated me for that ever since.'

'I am appalled by this,' Achilles Cozakis admitted to Olympia, making no attempt to conceal his horrified embar­rassment at the lies which the brunette had told. 'We accepted everything Katerina said without question.'

'I too am filled with disgust, Katerina,' Alexandra Cozakis stated with tear-filled eyes but a cold, steady voice. 'You hurt and distressed my son and destroyed Olympia's good repu­tation. Yet I remember how warmly Olympia received your offer of friendship. She did you no harm and neither did Nik. Your lack of shame even now shocks me most'

Beneath that onslaught of censure, Katerina's face hard­ened.

'What was Lukas's part in all this?' Nik breathed with a roughened edge to his dark drawl, ashen pale now beneath his bronzed skin.

'Lukas had to get very drunk to do what he did that night, Nik,' Olympia answered in gentle consolation. 'He was very unhappy about it, but he seemed to believe that if the Cozakis and Manoulis families got together in business, his family's company would be unable to compete.'

Nik awarded Olympia a stunned look of comprehension. 'Yes, when I think of it, that would have been a possibility, but it did not occur to any of us at the time. Christos... where were my wits?'

'We can be grateful that at least Lukas's parents don't have to live with the knowledge of their dead son's part in this sordid affair,' Achilles Cozakis stepped in to say, his tone one of finality before he turned to address Katerina. 'I have called a car for you. You will not be welcome in this house again!'

'You were still telling lies about Olympia on our wedding day!' Nik suddenly erupted in an outraged roar, taking ev­erybody by surprise.

Katerina jumped up, her face twisting with sudden fury and violent resentment as she stalked to the door. 'You could have had me as a wife but you picked a nothing, a bastard from a backstreet in London, and you got what you de­served!'

Nik's parents reared back in al

most comical horror from Katerina's rage and abuse. It was clear that neither had ever seen that side of the younger woman.

'No, Olympia got what I deserved,' Nik muttered with sick distaste, and turned away as the door slammed on his cousin's exit.

'What a lively family you have, Achilles!' Spyros Man­oulis said to Nik's father in apparent wonderment. 'But that one who has just gone out is a snake. I would not like to think that Katerina would again be in a position where she might harm Olympia.'

'She leapt up like a madwoman!' Alexandra Cozakis gasped with a stricken sob. 'Who would ever have thought that Katerina could be like that?'

'Be assured that that young woman will cause no further trouble,' Achilles Cozakis asserted in considerable mortification, patting his distraught wife's shoulder. 'But I think we have all had enough of her for one evening.'

Nik was by the window, silent, still, and not looking in anybody's direction.

'Yes, indeed.' Spyros extended a hand down to Olympia, who clasped it and stood up. 'By the way, I'm taking my granddaughter home with me.'