Claiming My Bride of Convenience

Between caring for my grandmother, taking a few classes at the local college, and holding down two part-time jobs, I hadn’t had time to make friends or form ties of any kind, and most people my age had left anyway. It had been a relief to leave the memories behind.

I didn’t say any of that to Matteo, however. It was all becoming a bit too pathetic, a bit too ‘poor little me’. So I just smiled and reached for my wine. ‘I’d always wanted to go to New York. I had dreams of being a singer, once upon a time.’

I tried for insouciance but a sour note entered my voice. That memory hurt too.

‘A singer?’ Matteo looked properly surprised. ‘Now, that I really didn’t know. So you went to New York to become a star on the stage?’

‘Yes—and ended up waitressing instead. A story told a thousand times, I’m sure.’

I was definitely not going to tell him about my awful ‘audition’ with Chris Dawson, or the terrible words he’d flung at me, and how that experience had led me to my lowest point, which had led me to here. No, I’d talked about myself enough for one day...for one lifetime.

‘Anyway, that all went up in smoke, as you know. I sing in the shower these days—if at all.’ Hummed was more like it. I’d stopped singing the day Chris Dawson had told me I was deluded about my talent.

You’re a talentless nobody, Daisy Campbell, and you always will be.

‘Perhaps you’d sing for me?’

Matteo’s voice held an undercurrent of sensuality, as if his words had been dipped in dark chocolate.

‘I doubt it,’ I replied, and my voice was a little too hard to be bright, the way I’d meant it to be. ‘Apparently a good voice in Briar Valley, Kentucky, is not a good voice in New York or even anywhere else.’

Matteo’s eyebrows rose. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that I was disabused of the notion that I was anything special.’

And that was all I was going to say about that. I’d said too much already, exposing a few too many flaws than was either comfortable or wise.

‘Anyway, that’s all old news and rather dull,’ I said, and this time I thought I’d managed the bright tone. ‘Tell me about you.’

‘Not much to tell.’

There could be no ignoring the repressive tone that Matteo adopted like

an invisible, iron mantle—I suspected without even realising it. The doors were inexorably swinging shut.

‘There must be something.’

I found I was intensely curious about Matteo Dias. All I knew about him was that he was CEO of Arides Enterprises and he’d married to satisfy his grandfather, to whom he was not close. And, of course, that he was considered the sexiest bachelor in Greece, if not all of Europe, and women fawned and fell at his feet.

But did he have parents? Siblings? Friends? Hobbies or quirks or funny stories? Birthmarks or scars or hidden talents?

If our marriage turned real would I find out?

‘What about your family?’ I persisted. ‘All I know is you have a grandfather you don’t like very much.’

‘Massive understatement, I’m afraid, but he feels the same.’ Matteo’s smile didn’t look like a smile.

‘What about your parents? Siblings?’

‘My parents are both dead, and have been since I was a baby.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t be. Like you, I never knew them.’

Which reminded me of that poignant comment he now seemed to regret making—how it could be easy to miss something you never knew. What did he miss? The love of a parent?

‘What about brothers or sisters?’ I asked.