The Greek's Virgin Bride

Andrea didn't like the note in his voice, hinting at meanings she would rather ignore. Didn't like it at all- She started walk­ing along the pavement.

'I want to go sightseeing,' she said suddenly. After all, she would never come to Athens again. She might as well go sight­seeing now, while she could.

A pang hit her, hard and painful. This was her father's city. He had been raised here. His blood sang in her veins. She was as Greek as she was English—and this was the first time in her life she was setting foot on Greek soil. And the last.

Sadness swept through her—sadness and bitterness.

'Sightseeing?' Nikos queried. 'But you will have seen all the sights a hundred times!'

She stared at him. I've never been to Athens before—never been to Greece before.'

Nikos looked at her, disapproval in his expression. It was one thing for Andrea's English mother to be worried about her father-in-law's views on disciplining children, or unwilling to revisit her dead husband's country herself, quite another to for­bid her daughter to visit at all. It was bad enough Andrea did not speak Greek, let alone that she had never been here! He'd assumed that although Yiorgos Coustakis had not paraded his granddaughter to the world, she had, of course, been out here for holidays and so forth.

'Then it is high time/ he said decisively, 'that I show you Athens.'

And he did. They spent the afternoon doing what all first-time tourists in the city did—climbing the Acropolis to pay homage to the glory of the first flowering of Western civilisa­tion, the Parthenon.

Andrea was enthralled, refusing to acknowledge the wave of desolation that swept over her at the thought that soon, all too soon, she would never see Nikos again.

It didn't matter how much her eyes were drawn to him; it didn't matter how much she revelled in drinking in, as secretly as she could, the bounty that was this paean to manhood at her side. All of this, heady and intoxicating as she increasingly found his company, was nothing more than a temporary inter­lude in her life. Nikos Vassilis, though he could send a shiver of electricity through her with a single glance, the barest brush of his sleeve on her arm, was nothing more than a temporary interlude.

It was a phrase Andrea forced herself to remember day after day as, for the next two weeks, Nikos Vassilis made it very clear to the rest of the world that he had snapped up the Coustakis heiress as his forthcoming bride and that his sights were set, very firmly, on Coustakis Industries.

Andrea wished she could get used to him squiring her around-—lunching in fashionable restaurants, dining in fashion­able nightspots, always at her side, attentive, possessive, ram­ming home to all who saw them, time after time, that he was the favoured choice of Yiorgos Coustakis for the rich prize of Coustakis Industries—but she could not. Every time he picked her up in his gleaming, purring, powerful Ferrari she felt a kick go through her like an electric shock.

She did her best to hide it. Did her best to maintain the stony facade that she knew, instinctively, annoyed him.

Almost as much as it amused him.

'My English ice-maiden,' he said to her softly one evening, as she deliberately turned her face away from his greeting so that his lips could only brush her cheek, 'how I will enjoy melting you.'

She might think she was only marrying him to extract her capital from the covetous claws of Old Man Coustakis—but he would prove otherwise.

And take great relish in it!

'You're mussing ray hair, Nikos,' she replied snappily.

'It will get a lot more mussed than that soon,' he replied, eyes gleaming with mocking amusement—and promise. 'To­night,' he went on, '

we shall go dancing.' He leant forward. 'I long to hold you in my arms again, Andrea mou.'

She backed away, almost tripping.

'I don't dance,' she said abruptly.

He laughed. The sound of it made her feel irritated. Among other things she didn't want to put a name to.

With every passing day her feet were getting colder and colder. She would wake in the middle of the night and the sheer disbelief of what she was doing would wash over and over her. Only one thought kept her going—money. Money at last. She had to hold out—hold out until the money was in the bank.

Then she could cut and run—and run and run...

From demons she refused to give a name to.

'I wasn't suggesting we go hot-clubbing till dawn,' he as­sured her. 'Since it isn't your scene anyway, I recall, I was thinking of something a little more... .sophisticated. I think you will enjoy it. I know I will...'

She compressed her mouth. 'I said I don't dance. I mean it.'

He smiled lazily down at her, his mockery at her refusal glittering in his eyes like gold glinting in a sheet of slate, 'I can see I shall have to persuade you otherwise.'