Claiming My Bride of Convenience

* * *

‘Daisy, your head is in the sky again.’

Maria shook her finger at me, laughing, and I tried for a smile even though I felt leaden inside.

‘The clouds,’ I reminded her. ‘And I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted.’

I’d been back in Amanos for two days, but I felt like the walking wounded. The walking dead. Because something had died inside me when Matteo had let me walk away. And I’d done it—high-tailing it when it got hard, even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t. I was as much a coward as he was—if he even was a coward. Perhaps he wasn’t scared of love as I’d suggested. Perhaps he really didn’t believe in it—or feel it.

‘What is distracting you?’ Maria asked. ‘The so very handsome Kyrie Dias?’

I hadn’t told Maria or anyone about what had happened between Matteo and me, although most of the villagers had seen at least some of the photos that had appeared in the tabloids and on the online gossip sites. They could guess, although no one could possibly know how badly it had all ended.

‘Daisy.’ Maria placed a hand on my shoulder, her eyes filled with concern. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

And then, to both my embarrassment and my relief, I burst into tears. I ended up telling her the whole sorry story, from beginning to end, as the tears kept trickling down my face.

‘He doesn’t love me, Maria,’ I finished as I blew my nose. ‘I gambled everything on the hope that he would learn to, with time—and he didn’t. I don’t think he’s capable of it.’

Maria patted my shoulder in sympathy and then sat back with a loud sigh. ‘I don’t who is perissotero stupid—you or him.’

‘What?’ I managed an outraged laugh. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You are in love with him, Daisy, and he is in love with you. To me it is obvious.’

‘You weren’t there...’

‘Pfft. I don’t need to have been there. A man does not act like Kyrie Dias did when he is indifferent. So much emotion...he is in love.’

I stared at her disbelievingly. ‘Maria, he was so hard, so cruel—’

‘Did you expect him to forgive his grandfather like that?’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Daisy, the man suffered under his hand for many, many years. Forgiveness, it is—what do you say?—a process. It is not an instant.’

I stared at her, realisation slowly dawning like a fog lifting. ‘Do you think...do you think I demanded too much, asking him to forgive his grandfather?’

‘Yes—and he pushed you away too hard because he was angry and grieving, even if he did not show it.’ She paused, her expression reflective. ‘My husband Antonio’s mother, she was a cruel woman. Harsh and unloving. But when she died, he grieved. So much. Because something was lost even though he had not loved her. The hope of love one day.’

‘I didn’t think of that.’

And it was the hope of love that I had been yearning for, and then grieving for. My own desires and fears had blinded me to whatever Matteo had been feeling.

‘I think I have been stupid,’ I said with a sad smile. ‘But it’s too late now. Matteo...he was so final, Maria. He more or less said he wanted a divorce.’

‘More or less?’ She raised her eyebrows, her smile almost smug. ‘A bit less, I think.’

‘I don’t know...’

‘You could find him.’

I thought of how I’d marched into that ballroom, all terrified determination, having no idea what I was getting into. Could I do it again? Did I dare?

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘Then find out.’

All day long I dithered, caught between fear and a wild, desperate hope. But when I plucked up the courage to search the gossip sites for any titbit about where Matteo was, I came up empty. Determined, I called the head office of Arides Enterprises in Athens, only to be told he had left that morning and would not be back for at least a week.

Where had he gone? And was I brave enough to find him?