The Marakaios Marriage (The Marakaios Brides 1)

Or maybe you were just actually hoping she’d come back. Fool that you are, you still wanted her back. Because you loved her. Because you made promises.

And was that what was driving him now? The desire, the need to have Lindsay back in his life? Back as his wife? Or was it an even more shameful reason, one born of revenge and pride? Did he want to make her hurt the way he had, to pay for the way she’d treated him?

Antonios had no answer but he was resolved to stop this pointless back and forth, demanding answers that he knew would never satisfy him. The reasons she’d given him for leaving their marriage had been ridiculous. Maybe he had been working too hard, maybe he’d even ignored her a little, but that didn’t mean you just walked out.

Except to Lindsay it seemed it did, and nothing, no revenge or explanation, could change that cold fact. His mouth a grim line of resolution, Antonios headed back to their seats.

Lindsay had tidied herself in his absence, her jeans buttoned back up, her face turned towards the window. She didn’t move as he slid into the seat next to her. Didn’t even blink.

‘I’m sorry,’ Antonios said in a low voice. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ Lindsay didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge his words in any way. ‘Lindsay...’

‘Just leave me alone, Antonios,’ she said, and to his shame her voice sounded quiet and sad. Broken. ‘It’s going to be hard enough pretending we’re still in love for your family. Don’t make it any harder.’

He watched her for a moment, part of him aching to reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear, trail his fingers along the smoothness of her cheek. Comfort her, when he’d been the cause of her pain and he knew she didn’t want his comfort anyway.

‘I’m going to sleep,’ she said, and without looking at him she took off her shoes, reached for the eye mask. He watched as she reclined her seat and covered herself with a blanket, all with her face averted from him. Then she slid the eye mask down over her eyes and shut him out completely.

* * *

Lindsay lay rigid on her reclined seat, her eyes clenched shut under the mask as she tried to will herself to sleep and failed. She felt a seething mix of anger and regret, guilt and hurt. Her body still tingled from where Antonios had touched her. Her heart still ached.

Forget about it, she told herself yet again. Just get through this week. But how on earth was she going to get through this week, when being in Greece had been so hard even when Antonios had loved her, or thought he had, when she’d thought she’d loved him?

Now, with the anger and contempt she’d felt from Antonios, the hurt and frustration she felt herself...it was going to be impossible. Something had to change. To give.

She slipped off her eye mask, determined to confront him, only to find him gazing at her, the hard lines of his face softened by tenderness and despair, a look of such naked longing on his face that it stole her breath. She felt tears come to her eyes and everything in her ached with longing.

‘Antonios...’

His face blanked immediately and his mouth compressed. ‘Yes?’

‘I...’ What could she say? Don’t look at me like you hate me? Just then, he hadn’t. Just then he’d looked at her as if he still loved her.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even know you, not the real you. And you don’t love him. You can’t.

‘Nothing,’ she finally whispered.

‘Get some sleep,’ Antonios said, and turned his head away. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.’

* * *

They arrived in Athens at eleven in the morning, the air warm and dry, the sky hard and bright blue, everything so different from the damp early fall of upstate New York. Being here again brought back memories in flashes of pain: the limo Antonios had had waiting outside the airport, filled with roses. The way he’d held and kissed her all the way to his villa in the mountains of central Greece, and how enchanted Lindsay had been, still carried away by the fairy tale.

It wasn’t until the limo had turned up the sweeping drive framed by plane trees with the huge, imposing villa and all of the other buildings in the distance that she’d realized she’d been dealing in fantasies...and that she and Antonios would not be living alone in some romantic hideaway. His mother, his brother, Leonidas, his two unmarried sisters, an army of staff and employees—everyone lived at Villa Marakaios, which wasn’t the sweet little villa with terracotta tiles and painted wooden shutters that Lindsay had naively been imagining. No, it was a complex, a hive of industry, a city. And when she’d stepped out of the limo into that bright, bright sunshine, every eye of every citizen of that city had been trained on her.

Her worst nightmare.

She’d seen everyone lined up in front of the villa—the family, the friends, the employees and house staff, everyone staring at her, a few people whispering and even pointing—and she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Antonios had propelled her forward, one hand on her elbow, and she’d gone, her vision already starting to tunnel as her chest constricted and the panic took over.

She hadn’t felt panic like that since she’d been a little girl, her mother’s hand hard on her lower back, shoving her into a room full of academics.

Come on, Lindsay. Recite something for us.

Sometimes she’d managed to stumble through a poem her mother had made her memorize, and sometimes her brain had blanked and, with her mouth tightening in disappointment, her mother had dismissed her from the room.

After too many of those disappointments, she’d dismissed her from her life.

This isn’t what I expected.

And, standing there in the glare of Greek sunshine, Lindsay had felt it all come rushing back. The panic. The shortness of breath. The horrible, horrible feeling of every eye on her, every person finding her wanting. And she’d blacked out.

She’d come to consciousness inside the house, lying on a sofa, a cool cloth pressed to her head and a white-haired woman smiling kindly down at her.

‘It’s the sun, I’m sure,’ Daphne Marakaios had said as she’d pressed the cloth to Lindsay’s head. ‘It’s so strong here in the mountains.’

‘Yes,’ Lindsay had whispered. ‘The sun.’

Now, as she slid into the passenger seat of Antonios’s rugged SUV, having cleared customs and collected their luggage, she wondered if he even remembered how she’d fainted. He’d certainly been quick to accept it as her reaction to the sun, and she’d been too overwhelmed and shell-shocked to say any differently.

And she’d have to face his family again in just three hours. How on earth was she going to cope?

They drove out of Athens, inching through a mid-morning snarl of traffic, and then headed north on the National Highway towards Amfissa, the nearest town to Antonios’s estate in the mountains.

With each mile they drove, Lindsay’s panic increased. This time she knew what she was facing, and it would be so much worse. Now everyone would be suspicious, maybe even hostile. She could picture his sister Parthenope eyeing her with cool curiosity, her husband by her side and dark-haired, liquid-eyed little Timon clinging to her legs; Leonidas, Antonios’s younger brother, giving her one of his sardonic looks; Ava and Xanthe, his younger sisters, eyeing her with sceptical curiosity, as if they’d already decided she didn’t belong. And the questions...she would have to answer so many questions...

‘Antonios,’ she said, his name little more than a croak, and he glanced at her briefly before snapping his gaze back to the road.

‘What is it?’

She focused on her breathing, tried to keep it even. ‘Would it...would it be possible for me to come to the villa quietly? I mean, not have everyone waiting and...I’d rather not see anyone at first.’ In. Out. In. Out. With effort she kept her breathing measured and her heart rate started to slow. She could do this. She’d managed to control her anxiety for most of her life. She could do it now. She had to.

‘The point,’ Antonios returned, ‘is for you to see people and be seen. No one thinks anything is wrong between us, Lindsay.’

But they would have guessed. Of course they would have guessed. His siblings weren’t stupid, and neither was Daphne. Lindsay had been gone for six whole months and then Antonios had come all the way to New York to fetch her. Everyone would be wondering just what had gone wrong between them.

‘I understand,’ Lindsay said, her eyes closed as she pressed back against the seat and kept concentrating on those deep, even breaths. ‘But I’d rather not have everyone there when we arrive.’

‘What am I meant to do? Send them away?’

She opened her eyes as she tried to suppress a stab of irritation or even anger, wondering if he was deliberately being difficult. Or was he just obstinately obtuse, as usual? ‘No, of course not. I just don’t want them all lined up in front of the villa, waiting to welcome me.’ Or not welcome, as the case well might be.

Antonios was silent for a moment, his gaze narrowed on the road in front of them, the sun glinting off the tarmac. ‘You mean like last time.’

‘Yes.’

‘You fainted,’ Antonios recalled slowly. ‘When you got out of the car.’

So he had remembered. Just. ‘Yes.’