The Greek Tycoon's Bride

‘Right.’ She didn’t quite understand where this was going.

‘But one thing I would add, Sophy.’ As she went to walk on Evangelos stopped her for a moment more. ‘Andreas has had his fair share of hurt and disappointment, some of which—when combined with what I have already said—has produced a cynicism which it has grieved me to see. He is a good man, a very good man but a complicated one.’

This whole family was complicated. Complicated enough to make her wish she had never suggested accompanying Jill out here. Sophy stitched a smile on her face with some effort and said quietly, ‘I suppose we all are underneath the façade we put on for the rest of the world. My mother used to say—’ She paused, not sure if she wanted to continue what she had started to say. This was Andreas’s father, after all.

‘Yes?’ Evangelos asked mildly. ‘What did your mother say?’

Sophy dismissed the feeling that she was letting Andreas’s father persuade her to reveal too much. ‘She used to say that men and women could only be their true selves with very young children and babies, or their pets. Never each other. With other adults there was always self-protection built in which formed its own natural barrier.’

‘Do you believe that?’ Evangelos asked quietly, his eyes intent on her heart shaped face.

Sophy shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said carefully. ‘My father let my mother down very badly, so certainly after he had left us that was the case for her. Therefore it must be true for a percentage of people.’

‘That is very sad.’ Andreas’s father shook his head slowly. ‘For myself, I can say that I am totally myself with Dimitra, and, I believe, she with me. She knows everything there is to know about me—the good, the bad and the ugly.’ He smiled at her, his last words aiming to lighten what had suddenly become a very heavy conversation, and Sophy smiled back.

‘You’re lucky,’ she said simply.

‘Sometimes we have to go out and secure our luck,’ Evangelos murmured quietly. ‘This is an age of instant gratification. Instant meals, instant money, instant relationships. But a relationship worth having doesn’t happen without constant work and effort, not even the best of them.’

She stared at him, and then as he took her arm and walked her out into the hall where the others were waiting the moment passed.

But later, lying in the warm darkness of her bed, Sophy found she was more confused and disturbed than ever. Everything was wrong somehow and nothing was right, and yet she couldn’t really put her finger on what was bothering her so acutely. She frowned irritably in the blackness, turned over with a little sigh and determinedly shut her eyes.

CHAPTER SIX

SOPHY didn’t sleep at all well. She couldn’t remember anything of the dark dreams that had troubled her during the night, but only that they had been of a nature to make her feel disturbed and distressed when she awoke early the next morning.

She showered and dressed, and acted as though she hadn’t a care in the world during breakfast with Jill and Michael and Andreas’s parents. After exploring the grounds with Michael and playing a couple of games of tennis with him, she and her small nephew spent the rest of the morning in the pool while Jill and Dimitra were taken shopping by Evangelos. Sophy and Michael were included in the invitation by Andreas’s parents, but the look on Michael’s face at the prospect of a morning spent in shops was enough to induce Sophy to offer to stay at the villa with him.

The others were staying out for lunch, so Christina organised a small simple barbecue by the pool for Sophy and Michael which was great fun, Michael’s enthusiasm infecting Sophy.

Once they had eaten, Sophy insisted Michael wasn’t allowed in the water for at least an hour and persuaded her nephew to curl up on one of the cushioned sun-loungers for a nap, a beach towel wrapped round him and the shade of a large tree making the temperature comfortable in spite of the baking heat.

Gradually through the morning, Sophy’s face had become calm and relaxed in the young child’s uncomplicated company, and as she sat sipping at a delicious glass of iced lemonade and watching him sleep, she felt peaceful for the first time since she had set foot in Greece.

She was purposely concentrating on nothing more controversial than the sleeping child, the bright sunshine and scented air, and the lone drone of tiny busy insects in the surrounding vegetation.

She must have drifted off to sleep herself because when the others returned they awoke both her and Michael, and they all spent a happy hour or two chatting over more iced drinks and watching Michael playing in the pool with the enormous plastic cheeky-faced whale Dimitra and Evangelos had bought their grandson.

It was a pleasant time, easy and unhurried, and when—at just gone half-past five—they all returned to the house, Michael to have his tea with Christina and the adults retiring to their rooms to rest before getting ready for dinner, Sophy found herself humming a little tune as she entered her sunlit bedroom. She’d just been overtired before, she told herself firmly.

She had just walked through to the bathroom to run herself a bath, fancying a long luxurious soak rather than a quick shower, when Ainka knocked at her door informing her there was a telephone call for Mrs Fearn and please could she come right away?

‘For me?’ Sophy asked in surprise, her mind immediately expecting Annie to be on the other end of the wire with some catastrophe necessitating her immediate return to England. She ignored the faint sense of panic and disappointment the thought conjured up and walked across to the bedroom extension, lifting the receiver and speaking her name clearly and crisply.

‘Hallo, Sophy.’

The dark smoky voice could only belong to one man on earth, and for a moment the blood rushed in her ears like an express train. She licked suddenly dry lips and said steadily, ‘Andreas?’ as though she wasn’t quite sure. No need to inflate the super ego any more than it was already.

‘I am just calling to make sure that seven is still okay?’ he said smoothly. ‘I understand you have been taking care of Michael today, so if you would prefer to leave a little later after a siesta?’

‘No, seven’s fine.’ She took a deep breath and hoped the gallop of her heart hadn’t sounded in her voice. How come all the good the relaxing day had done her had vanished in a moment?

‘Great. I’ll see you a little later, then.’

She stood with the receiver in her hand for some seconds after the call had finished, until the sound of water reminded her about the bath and sent her hurrying into the en-suite. Suddenly the evening was there in front of her with all its capacity for potential disaster staring her in the face, and as she stripped off her swimming costume and shirt top her mind was buzzing. She should have said she was too tired, ill, anything.

She must not panic, she told herself silently. She would keep him at a distance with cool, reasonable politeness tonight; let him see he couldn’t touch her emotions and that the physical chemistry between them was simply mind over matter. Which it was. Of course it was. Otherwise they were no better than animals.