The Cozakis Bride

Indeed, she might well have called him a liar this evening had Nik not been demonstrating a most impressive amount of current desire for her! Was that why she had lost control and ended up in bed with him? Learning that she could actually be attractive to Nik had demolished her defences. Somewhere inside her still lurked the hurt and humiliated teenager who had been forced to see herself as fat and sexless.

Only now, when sanity returned in the aftermath, did she despise herself for surrendering to her own most basic urges, not to mention his. At what price too? 'Consum­mating their deal'? She shuddered, mortified, tears welling up and running down her cheeks.

Why didn't she know more about men? She had spent ten years sitting home with her mother, ten years distrusting the motives of every man who asked her out, and oh, yes, even with her restricted social outlets there had been invi­tations. She had succumbed to a handful of first dates but had invariably seen so many faults in the man she'd then said no to a second date. Yet now she had the horrible suspicion that the only flaw one or two of the nicer men had suffered from had been an inability to be Nik Cozakis! And if that was true, that meant she was a bigger fool than even he thought she was!

As she clambered out of the bath a wave of dizziness engulfed Olympia. In the act of wrapping herself in a fleecy towel, she overbalanced and fell. A cry of fright broke from her lips as she hit the floor. She was winded and she was hurt. She lay there sobbing with pain and self-loathing.

‘Theos mou!' The first she knew of Nik's arrival was the outburst of Greek, swiftly followed by the domineering command to lie still while a pair of infuriatingly invasive hands roamed over her legs and her arms.

'Haven't you had enough of that yet?' Olympia muttered, reddened eyes squeezed tight shut while she lay there like a corpse.

You might have broken something...I heard you scream!'

‘Go away!'

'I'm going to make you comfortable here on the floor. I have a doctor flown in,' Nik announced, sounding strangely breathless.

‘That would be stupid.' Olympia planted both hands on floor and slowly raised herself. She felt bruised and tired but knew she had done no lasting damage. Her head was still swimming. She opened her eyes to get her bearings and registered that the bathroom walls were heaving around her. That optical illusion made her feel horribly nauseous.

'Oh...' Nik sighed, suddenly recognising what was really wrong and propelling her in the right direction so that he could offer support while she was ingloriously ill.

He was a true prince when she would have given anything for a male who was squeamish and had simply cut and run to leave her to it. He mopped her brow with a cool cloth, murmured what sounded like concerned things in Greek, and stood by while she freshened up again.

'I'm drunk,' Olympia breathed, rebelling against a sympathy which stung her pride. Glancing up, she collided with liquid dark golden eyes framed by the most astonishingly long dark lashes, and even in the weakened state she was her heart skipped a beat.

'No, you're seasick,' Nik contradicted without hesitation. 'I should have thought of this, and I'm about to hit the first-aid supplies and make you feel much better.'

He carried her back to the bed, rolled her out of the towel and flipped the duvet over her. The entire manoeuvre was carried out with such dexterity that it was done before she knew what he was about.

'If I had ever got to take you sailing I'd have been better prepared for this,' Nik commented with wry amusement.

'Who stopped you?' she muttered, tongue-in-cheek.

'Spyros,' Nik responded, startling her with that answer 'Your grandmother and your uncle drowned in the sea. Your grandfather didn't trust a teenager to look after you on the water, and with losses like that in the family how could I argue with him?'

As Nik left the state room, Olympia stared into space with shaken eyes. Such a simple explanation for his failure to take her sailing all those years ago, and yet it had never once occurred to her.

Five minutes later Nik reappeared with a glass of water and a tablet. She took them and lay back against the pil­lows.

Sheathed in tight black jeans and a beige T-shirt, Nik looked younger, more approachable, even more gorgeous than he usually looked. She turned her head away, her pinched profile taut, knowing that she had to look her plainest at that moment

'I'll be fine now. You can leave me.'

'No. I'll stay until you go to sleep.'

Her lip curled. Nik had been brought up to have won­derful manners. Confronted with apparent female fragility, he went into automatic protective male mode. It mean, nothing. It meant no more than the consummation of their marriage deal, she conceded grimly. So Nik enjoyed sex. So Nik wanted a son and heir. All she had really learnt was that she didn't need to be beautiful, like his ex-mistress Gisele Bonner, to get Nik in the mood, but since men had the reputation of being less choosy than women were about their sexual partners she was in no danger of seeing herself as irresistible.

'If you wanted me so much ten years ago, why did you never do anything about it?' she whispered suddenly, since he seemed to be in a more approachable mood.

'Get real, Olympia,' Nik urged lazily. 'If your grandfather had found out that we were sleeping together, he'd have sent you home in disgrace. I didn't want to be re­sponsible for causing another family rift, nor did I want you thousands of miles away in London.'

'Yes,' she acknowledged, shutting her eyes.

'Do you want any more good reasons? Like the fact that a pregnancy would have been a disaster for both of us at that age? Or the simple truth that I honestly did want to try to wait until we were married?'

Olympia was so disconcerted by the ease with which he offered those explanations that she said nothing. On yet another count Katerina had

lied. Nik had never found her unattractive. Indeed, Nik had merely been a remarkably sensible teenager.

She drifted off to sleep without being aware of it and wakened in the early hours to the dim glow of a lamp somewhere close by. When she opened her eyes, she tensed in dismay to find Nik barely a foot away. Still clothed, he was lying on top of the duvet in an indolent sprawl, hooded dark eyes coolly intent on her face.

'What are you thinking about?' she heard herself whis­per.

His beautiful mouth twisted. 'Lukas...'

'Magic!' Olympia snapped, and flipped over to present him with a defensively turned back.

'We grew up together. He was a clown but I was fond of him,' Nik breathed in a driven undertone. 'When he died, I felt like I'd let him down.'

'Died?' Olympia flipped back over to focus on him with shocked eyes. 'When did he die?'

'In a drunken car smash a few weeks after you left Greece.' Nik grimaced as he sat up. 'Apparently he was rarely seen sober after that night. I don't think he could cope with what he had done.'

Her face drained of all colour. 'So you're blaming me for that as well.'

'No, I'm not.'

But she didn't believe him. She felt hollow inside. Lukas Theotokas had been Katerina's dupe. Had Lukas even appreciated what he was getting involved in that night ten years ago? He had had to get very drunk to play his part in the brunette's plans. It was sad, terribly sad. And if she told Nik now that his one-time friend had deliberately set out to break them up by the nastiest means available, Nik would no doubt go through the roof. She sensed that Nik now saw Lukas as more sinned against than sinning.

'So much grief followed from that night,' Nik stated curtly. 'Katerina failed her exams, and for a while her fam­ily were very concerned about her. She was upset about Lukas—'

'I bet she was.'

Nik dealt her a chilling appraisal. 'You think that Katerina should have lied to protect you because you were friends, but for a Greek family loyalty always takes precedence.'