The Greek's Virgin Bride

He looked down at her, his eyes flecked with gold. 'When you left me it was as if you had stabbed me to the quick. To the heart. I bled, Andrea mou. I bled.'

His fingers brushed her cheek, and she felt faint. 'Come back to me, pethi mou, come back to me—'

Her throat was tight, but she tore the words out. 'What for? If there's to be no merger then you don't have the slightest need of me!'

He smiled. Her heart turned over.

'Need? Oh, my Andrea, I need you to breathe. Without you I cannot live. Do you not know that?'

His hand cupped her cheek. 'I need you to light my way, to walk at my side all my life. I need you to be with me, every day and night.' His other hand closed around her other cheek, cupping her face, lifting it to his.

It was odd, Andrea thought. His face had gone out of focus; the flecks of gold in his eyes were misting. Something must be in her eyes—some mote of dust.

'But—' she swallowed '—but I don't see why you need me...'

He smiled, and it filled a gaping hole in her heart. 'Didn't I show you every night, every day we spent together? Didn't you show me?'

'Show you what?' she breathed. Her eyes were brimming now; she could not stop it.

He lowered his head and kissed her softly. 'That we were falling in love, Andrea mou.' 'Love?' It was a whisper, a breath.

'Oh, yes. Love—quite definitely love.' There was no doubt in his voice. None at all. 'There can be no other word for it. How else could the wound you dealt me when you left me have been so mortal to me? How else—' a finger lifted to her lashes and let the tears beading there spill onto him '—could these tears be making diamonds of your eyes?'

'But you don't love me—you can't—you don't have to! It was only because of the merger that you married me—' The gasp from Kim went unheard.

'Our marriage, my sweet, most beloved Andrea, is the only good thing to come of that cursed merger! I always meant to make you a good husband, even when I thought ours was to be nothing more than a mutually beneficial arranged marriage. Once I would have been content with that. But on Crete—ah, then it became much, much more! And when I discovered you had left me, oh, I realised just how much more! The pain of losing you was agony—and I knew then that something had happened to me that I did not ever dream of. I had fallen in love with you—fathoms deep.' He looked down at her tenderly, possessively—lovingly.

'You can't love me...' Her voice was a whisper, a thread. 'We come from such different worlds. Look—'

She gestured helplessly with her hand at the shabby apartment.

He followed her gesture with his eyes, knowing now why she had said the same words to him on the night of their wed­ding. To think he had thought it was because she had been born to a wealth he'd had to fight all his life to acquire!

'When you return to Athens with me,' he said in a low voice—and there was a strangeness in it Andrea had never heard, 'I will show you were I was born—where I lived until I crawled from the gutter as a young man. A man, Andrea, who never knew his father, whose mother did not care whether he lived or died. A man, Andrea, who vowed—vowed he would make something of his life! I was determined to achieve the success and recognition I craved!'

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and Andrea stared

at him, wordless, as suddenly—totally—she saw the man Nikos really was—not the gilded scion of a wealthy patrimony, but someone with the guts, the determination, the courage, to make some­thing of himself out of the nothing he had been born with.

'But I have learnt...' his voice had softened, taken on a sense of wonder '...that true riches are not in gold and silver. True riches...' his eyes melted her, and she felt her heart turn over '...are here—inside us. I envy you so much, Andrea.' His eyes glanced across to where Kim stood staring, bemused and won­dering. 'To have had the love of your mother—and I envy even more—' his voice, she thought, almost cracked '—your love for her. And so I ask you—beg you—' as he spoke her throat tightened to an unbearable tightness '—to accept my love for you—and to give me yours.'

He paused, looking down at her, gathering her hands against his heart.

'Come back to me, Andrea, and be the wife of my heart, for I love you more than I can bear.'

The tears were spilling down her cheeks now.

'Yes!' she uttered as he kissed her tears away, and then his mouth closed over hers, and what was the gentle, soft touch of homage became a salutation to the future they would have to­gether.

He released her, and turned to face Kim. Andrea could see the tears shining in her mother's eyes.

'Have we your blessing?' Nikos asked her quietly.

For a moment her mother could not speak. And then, with a broken cry, she answered.

'Oh, yes! Oh, yes!’

EPILOGUE