The Greek Tycoon's Bride

‘If I say I know you are right and that I’ll make very sure not to get involved, does that help?’ she said after a few moments. ‘If I promise to keep him at arm’s length?’

‘It does if I can be sure you really mean it and you aren’t just saying it to make me feel better,’ Jill said in true blunt sisterly fashion. ‘But I’ve seen the way you look at each other.’

‘I mean it.’ Sophy raised her head and looked into the mirror image facing her with such concern. ‘I promise. The thing is, I want to go, Jill. I’ve never felt so alive as I’ve felt the last few days and I want to have some fun, for once. I won’t do anything silly, and Andreas knows I’ve got no intention of sleeping with him, but I just want to be with him for a while.’

‘If that was supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t,’ Jill said ruefully.

‘Best you’re going to get.’ Sophy forced a quick grin. ‘So, you’ll be getting an invitation to go lording it on Stevos’s father’s yacht, and I’ll be touring the country with one of its most eligible males. We never dreamt of that when we were sitting on the plane coming over, did we?’

‘Oh, Sophy.’ Jill’s voice was troubled. ‘Be careful.’

Two days later, when Sophy emerged into bright sunshine with her overnight case crammed to bursting, she glanced across the drive to where Andreas was sitting waiting for her in the sports car, the roof rolled back and his black hair shining in the white light. He looked every inch an icon of the silver screen.

She must be mad. The same thought had occurred at five-minute intervals all during the last forty-eight hours, but since talking to Jill a number of things had clarified in her mind.

Like Andreas himself had said, this would be a few days out of real life—a golden time to remember. She didn’t intend to treat it anymore seriously than he did. She was physically attracted to him and she had to admit she liked his company—when he wasn’t being confrontational and difficult, that was—but now she had acknowledged both those things she was in a position of control again. He knew the score, she hadn’t tried to mislead him in any way—just the opposite—and he was quite prepared to accept this wasn’t going to be a full-blown affair in the physical sense. She’d been totally up front and honest.

Anyway… She smiled at him as he raised a lazy hand in greeting. He probably secretly felt it was the best thing all round. With Jill being an in-law, it wasn’t the most sensible thing in the world to have a fling with her sister. Too messy and potentially problematical, and she knew from little remarks Dimitra had let drop over the last few days that Andreas ran his life with a ruthless uncomplicatedness.

Yes, she could handle this. She could. But she was still probably mad! But a little summer madness was excusable, wasn’t it?

The morning air was warm and moist, the sun blazing down out of a crystal blue sky, and as Sophy ran lightly over to the car Andreas slid out of the driver’s seat and opened the small boot for her case.

‘Good morning.’ He kissed her full on the mouth before stepping back a pace, his eyes roaming over her clear creamy skin and blonde hair. She was wearing white cotton trousers and a white silk top and no make-up, and didn’t look a day over twenty-one. ‘You look like the essence of summer.’

‘Do I?’ She grinned back at him, determined to start as she meant to carry on and keep things light and amusing. She let her eyes run over the big muscled body clothed in black denim shirt and jeans, and wrinkled her smooth nose consideringly. ‘You don’t,’ she pronounced at last, slanting a mocking glance out of blue eyes.

‘Thank goodness for that. In the car, wench.’

That conversation set the tone for the most deliriously happy few days of Sophy’s life. Andreas knew the surrounding country like the back of his hand and the first morning they went straight to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, where they visited the Acropolis and Sophy stood spellbound by the panoramic view, before they paid a visit to the gold of King Philip.

They ate lunch mid afternoon in a tiny inn perched high on a flower-covered hillside, before continuing on to Pella where they browsed in the museum for a while along with seeing the superb ancient mosaics. It was fascinating and enthralling and slightly eerie.

Andreas took her to a small sweet little café with tiny carved wooden balconies and white-painted walls after they had emerged into languid evening sunshine, and they sat watching the world go by while drinking rich red wine and eating keftedes and warm garlic bread at a little table outside.

The evening sky was full of muted colours flowing into a lake of gold by the time they left, and they wandered through dusky streets where the odd intermittent barking of a dog or once, the unmistakable sound of a bonzouki could be heard. It was peaceful and timeless and possessed of a charm that couldn’t be translated into words.

Their hotel was a modern one and, true to his word, Andreas left her at the door to her room, kissing her very thoroughly before he left. It took her a long time to get to sleep.

And so one golden day followed another. They talked and they laughed together, touched and tasted each other, but all within the constraints Sophy had set. She felt she had got to know Andreas better than she had ever known anyone in her life and, perversely, in the same breath, that the more she got to know him the less she seemed to understand.

When he suggested on the afternoon of the third day that they spend a couple of more days together she didn’t object, dutifully phoning Jill to explain and to ask her sister how she and Michael had enjoyed the yacht, and then returning to the car and to Andreas with the others wiped clear from her mind the moment she put the telephone down.

They visited the spectacular Byzantine monasteries perched high on the cliffs at Meteora, the olive groves of Amphissa and much, much more, but on the night of the fourth day Sophy cried long and hard once she was alone in her hotel room.

Perhaps it was just that the idyll had ended and they had to go back to the real world the next day? she asked herself flatly, when—at two in the morning and utterly unable to sleep—she stepped on to the balcony of her small hotel room and sat looking out over quiet streets sleeping under a calm, deep midnight-blue sky pierced with stars. And soon she would be back in England, back in the frantic pace of life that she had thought she loved but which now seemed so far away.

Why hadn’t Andreas tried to make love to her? The thought she had been ignoring for the last two or three days wouldn’t be denied any more. She hadn’t expected he would be so crass for the first twenty-four hours or so, and she knew she had told him this trip had to be a platonic one, but why hadn’t he pushed things? He was that sort of man, wasn’t he? The sort that took what he wanted, regardless of anyone else? Wasn’t he?

Of course, she would have fought him and made it clear an affair wasn’t on the cards, but she didn’t understand this…control. It could only mean he had mastered the feeling he had had for her. And yet the way he kissed her, the way he held her wasn’t platonic. She had expected him to try and cajole her, to use his infinite experience to sweep her off her feet—something! But he wasn’t confor

ming to the mental summing up she had made of him before the trip.

She frowned to herself, her face feeling tight after the tears she had shed earlier and her mind in turmoil. There had been Jill warning her to be on her guard before she had left, and Andreas hadn’t put a foot out of place. It would be funny if it wasn’t so humiliating. And she did feel humiliated…and hurt, which was utterly unreasonable, of course. She ought to be glad he’d kept to their bargain. It had saved any unpleasantness and meant they could part as friends when she left for England.

Andreas was in the room next to her; what would he say if she knocked on his door and asked to go in? She had had the odd crazy thought like this one over the last few days—impulses to reach up and tug his mouth down to hers at the strangest moments, or suddenly throw herself into his arms and ask him to make love to her. Impulses she’d denied, but which refused to lie down and die. It was high time she was back at the villa with Jill and Michael. She nodded silently at the thought. Andreas had exploded into her life with all the dark force of a nuclear missile and embedded himself deep in her psyche. No one had ever affected her like this and she didn’t recognise herself any more.

She shivered, although the night was warm and humid, and stepped back into the bedroom. She was just about to close the balcony windows when she heard the ones next door flung open.