The Cozakis Bride

At the age of seventeen Olympia had fallen for Nik Cozakis like a ton of bricks, and she had hardly believed her good luck at being accepted into the select group of his friends, for she had had nothing in common with them and she had been painfully shy.

Indeed, that summer in Greece she had entered a disturbingly different world. A world peopled with terrifyingly sophisticated teenagers with flash cars and designer wardrobes. And sometimes, looking on, listening to them agonise about their often incredibly superficial concerns, it had seemed to her that though cocooned by so much parental affluence and indulgence, none of them had the slightest idea about what real life was like. But Nik had been the exception. He hadn't just been gorgeous. His stunning dark good looks had been matched by an infinitely greater maturity and intelligence.

At the outset of their relationship it had not occurred to her that the regularity with which she'd ended up getting a lift in Nik's car meant anything more than kindness on his part. Then Katerina had told her that Spyros Manoulis had business connections with Nik's father and Olympia had cringed at the idea that her grandfather might have asked Nik to look after his English granddaughter.

'You know, I could've copped a lift in someone else's car this time,' she said, on one occasion.

'I don't want to be taking you so much out of your way,' she said on another, squirming with embarrassment when he stayed teetotal all evening at a party and then drove all the way across Athens to take her home. 'Couldn't I just jump on the bus?''

Please don't feel you have to keep me company. I'm not lonely. I'm quite happy watching everything that's going on,' she said with determination at a swimming party Lukas Theotokas staged at his home when his parents were abroad.

That night Nik flashed Olympia an incensed look and finally abandoned her to her own devices. Becoming tearful on the discovery that she was not at all happy watching Nik taking her advice and dancing with a very attractive girl, she fled indoors to find a quiet corner where she could break her jealous heart in private.

Lukas found her in the kitchen. 'I see Nik's got another fish to fry tonight,' he remarked, cruelly amused by her red­dened eyes and pink nose. 'Someone should have warned you that he likes variety. But I've just had a really good idea...'

Olympia had never warmed to Lukas Theotokas, but she didn't understand why until it was too late; he was one of Nik's closest friends but he was jealous of him. Nik was richer, better-looking and more popular. . 'A good idea?' she echoed.

'Why don't you and me have some fun?'

'What sort of fun?' she muttered, genuinely bewildered, for she was well aware that Lukas was crazy about Katerina. who flirted like mad with him but refused to go out with him.

'Yeah...I'd be interested in hearing the answer to that too.' Nik drawled from the doorway several feet away.

Stiffening in surprise, Lukas swung round. Nik said some-thing guttural in Greek and his friend reddened and turned on his heel, leaving Nik and Olympia alone.

'What on earth did you say to him?' Olympia muttered uncomfortably.

'That I'd rip his head off if he said anything like that to you again.' Nik closed one hand over her tightly clenched fingers and drew her to him with cool, controlled determination. And then he kissed her. Lightly, gently and without the passion she had dimly imagined would figure in her very first kiss, but still her tender heart stopped dead for a split second before flying off into orbit.

You're mine,' Nik sighed, in anything but a lover-like way. 'Don't you know that yet?'

'Yours?' she whispered shakily.

'My girlfriend,' he extended, looking exasperated by her need for that explanatory extension.

Struck dumb, she hovered, lips tingling, shyly studying their linked hands, still unable to meet his eyes. And then the joy hit her so hard she very nearly fell over with the force of it.

'Why do you mink I've been running after you?' Nik de­manded.

'I thought you were just being nice.'

Nik laughed outright. 'I always have a reason for be­ing... nice.'

When she told her grandfather that she was dating Nik, Spyros Manoulis gave her a huge approving smile, and at the time she thought nothing of his lack of surprise. Nor did she smell a rat in the fact that her relationship with Nik stayed low-key and that they were only ever together in a group. On some abstract level she noted her friend Katerina's grow­ing coolness, but she was too much in love and too wrapped up in Nik to pay proper heed.

Since they had only been dating six weeks, she was frankly stunned when Nik asked her to marry him. 'I really care about you...' he confided flatly, not exactly pushing the boat out in the New Age man emotional stakes, staring through the windscreen of his Ferrari as if his life depended on the view. 'I think when we're older we could be great together. You're a really caring person. You like kids and stuff.'

But then what choice had Nik had in that timing? By then she'd been within days of her scheduled return to London. He hadn't said that he loved her, but his marriage proposal had encouraged Olympia to take that belief for granted, and it had also freed her from all reserve. She'd been far too busy burbling about how passionately and devotedly she adored and loved him to notice his silence on that point.

Nik had liked that too. In fact, she could still recall him turning his bronzed classic profile towards her, a scorching smile slowly forming on his beautiful mouth, all his earlier tension put to flight. Nik had been relieved that he didn't have to be more verbal, demonstrative or persuasive. But Olympia had only been disconcerted when Nik had taken her home that evening and it had become obvious that Spyros had known Nik was planning to propose before she had.

'Of course I spoke to your grandfather first. He thought that perhaps you were too young, but I said we'd wait until I finished university before we got married,' Nik explained when she taxed him about that.

Indeed the serpent entered Olympia's private Eden only at the huge fancy party which Spyros Manoulis threw to announce his granddaughter's engagement.

'I'm just so relieved that Nik's parents like and accept it; Olympia admitted to Katerina Pallas.

'And why wouldn't they?' Katerina vented a deris laugh. 'I can't think of a single family in this room who would have said no to an alliance with the Manoulis heiress:

'What do you mean?'

'Don't you ever get tired of acting like you're the p little orphan girl without a blessing to your name? It's getting painful, Olympia,' Katerina said cuttingly. 'Everybody knows Spyros will be leaving his empire to you!'

The next morning Olympia uneasily broached the astonishing concept of her being an heiress with her grandfather.

'Yes, it's true. Who else do I have?' Spyros was amused by her unconcealed shock. 'You think I would let you join the Cozakis family with nothing but the clothes on your back? You think Nik's fa

ther would have been content to see his oldest son tie himself up this young without a little sweetener to the deal?'

'But... but—'

'I'm a self-made man, Olympia. I don't have any illustrious ancestors. The Cozakis family may be top-drawer high-society, but I can match them for every drachma and every tanker they've got!' her grandfather asserted with consider­able satisfaction.

'I'm sure you can,' she muttered, thoroughly taken aback by what he was telling her. Suddenly her engagement was acquiring an extra dimension which she had never dreamt existed. A financial dimension...a deal?

'I'm proud that I can give you a dowry that puts you on their level. It's a good marriage for both families. I need someone to take over Manoulis Industries when I retire, and I can think of no young man who has already shown more promise than Nikos Cozakis. And now, instead of stealing profit from each other by staying in competition,' Spyros continued with positive triumph, 'Nik's father and I will work together.'

That same morning Katerina called in to apologise for her sharpness the night before. She found Olympia in a pensive, troubled mood.

'A dowry, for goodness' sake;' Olympia groaned. 'It's worse than the medieval barter system! Why did nobody mention it to me before now?'

'Women don't tend to get involved in that side of things. But money marries money in our world.' Katerina shrugged her own acceptance of that reality. 'Don't you appreciate how lucky you are? You're not exactly Helen of Troy, but you've still got Nik!'

But would she have got Nik if she had not been the Man­oulis heiress? That fear powered Olympia's new insecurity. Her trusting assumption that Nik truly cared about her started seeming naive. She began looking to Nik for greater reas­surance, but she did not open the subject of her massive dowry with him. She was afraid to confront the possibility of an awful truth. However, day by day that awful truth seeped in on her like a remorseless drowning tide...

Nik did not mention love. Nik did not seem to want to be on his own with her. When she said she'd like to go shop­ping, he just dumped her on his mother. When Spyros was away overnight on business she asked Nik over for dinner, but he took her out instead, totally ignoring the kind of in­vitation that most teenage boys could be depended on to take instant advantage of. She remembered all the teasing that had once gone on around Nik, all the earthy references to all the girls he'd supposedly slept with which had once embarrassed her. At one point, becoming desperate to justify his reluc­tance to so much as put a hand on her breast, she wondered if all that talk had just been fuelled by macho fantasy on his part for his friends' benefit, and if Nik was really still a virgin just like she was!