The Cozakis Bride

Nik’s bodyguard had warned her that she would be eaten alive, she recalled dully. She hadn’t listened, hadn’t believed him, would not have credited in a million years that Nik Cozakis could run rings round her now that she was an adult of twenty-seven. But Nik had run so many rings round her that right now she might as well have been lurching one-legged through a swamp as she followed Damianos to the waiting limousine.

All of a sudden she saw herself as a fisherman, who had dangled a worm as bait and suffered the gut-wrenching shock of a man-eating shark rearing up out of the waves in front of her. And she couldn’t believe, didn’t believe, flatly refused to even begin to believe that Nik would carry through on such threats.

Olympia wakened with a heavy head the next morning.

When she had arrived home the night before, Irini Manoulis had already retired to bed. Olympia had lain awake far into the early hours, engaged in a frantic mental search for an escape. But there was only one possible escape route: she had to have the courage to call Nik’s bluff. Why on earth hadn’t she mentioned her mother’s weak heart? However much he hated and despised Olympia, Nik would not threaten the health of a sick and fragile woman.

Olympia clawed up into a sitting position, using both hands to throw back the heavy mane of hair that rippled in tumbled mahogany waves almost to her waist. She grimaced. A grown woman of her age with hair still that long! She remembered her mother brushing it when she was a little girl, but most of all she remembered Nik skimming light fingertips through those glossy strands and saying, ‘I love your hair…’

Ten years ago, ferocious bitterness and a mindless need to hit back at Nik Cozakis the only way she could had controlled her. That was why she hadn’t defended herself when she’d been accused of betraying Nik with Lukas Theotokas. By then convinced that she had been used and abused by everyone who surrounded her, she had preferred the tag of being shameless to the reality of being exposed as she really was.

Number one wimp and patsy and fool! That was what she had been. She had only been a means to an end to her grandfather, human goods to be traded through marriage to the most prestigious bidder. Nik and his ambitious father had only seen the Manoulis empire, on offer for the price of a wedding ring. Hands had been shaken on the deal before she had even set foot on Greek soil.

And though she didn’t want to relive the past, emotional turmoil had released memories she usually kept buried, and her treacherous subconscious summoned up afresh her first sight of Nikos Cozakis at her grandfather’s villa…

Nik by the pool, with a drink in his hand, sleek and designer casual in cream chinos and a black T-shirt. There had been at least ten other young people present that afternoon but Olympia, shy and self-conscious and nervous at being among so many strangers, had seen only Nik.

Nik, laughing at a friend’s quip, jaguar eyes glittering in the sunshine. He had stared fixedly at her as she’d emerged from the villa. Deliberate slow cue to double take. Olympia reflected bitterly now on that moment. He had probably looked and thought, She’s even plainer than her photographs! But back then Olympia had lacked all such perception, and she had been as transfixed by Nik as an eager new convert before a golden idol.

With a distinct lack of subtlety her grandfather had urged Nik over so that he could immediately introduce them. And Olympia had duly mumbled and stammered and blushed like an idiot, staring a hole in Nik’s black T-shirt. Her mind had been a blank while she’d struggled without success to come up with something verbally witty and memorable to hold his attention. But she needn’t have worried, Nik had done all the talking for her.

Pained by that memory of her own naivety, Olympia emerged from her reverie and made herself concentrate on the present. The even more hideous present. If she told her mother the truth of what had happened that summer, Irini Manoulis would be devastated. Her mother would believe her daughter’s version of events, but the humiliation of what Olympia had endured would cause her deep distress. And her gentle parent would never, ever understand why Olympia had failed to hotly defend her own reputation.

But how could she have defended herself? Her supposed best friend, Katerina, had backed up Lukas’s lying confession of having betrayed Nik with Olympia. Olympia had been sick to the heart, and so bitter after seeing Nik with that beautiful model that all she had cared about was hitting back. Revenge… Yes, Olympia understood both the concept and the craving. Her revenge, her punishment of Nik and her grandfather for misjudging her, had been allowing them to go on believing that she was the shameless little tramp they had already decided she was. Nik had been incandescent with stunned rage, his rampant ego severely dented by the shocking discovery that his plain and seemingly adoring fiancée could stray.

Only now did Olympia see how wrong she had been to try to punish them all with their own blind stupidity. Though she could not imagine even now how she could possibly have proved her innocence in the face of the lies that had been told, she knew that her frozen defiance that awful day must have contributed to that guilty verdict. And left Nik fired up with outrage and a desire for retribution that refused to dim even ten years on.

Well, he had given her a blasted good fright the previous evening, Olympia acknowledged. But in the light of day she was too practical, too down to earth to credit that he could have meant all that he had threatened. Giving him a son and heir, for goodness’ sake! And what about that extraordinary kiss? The way he had just grabbed her? What point had he been trying to make? That he could kiss her and fantasise about some other infinitely more sexually appealing woman?

Bitterness black as bile consumed her. Of course Nik couldn’t be serious…or could he be? He had taken her desperate offer and twisted it into something so threatening her brain had gone into freefall. Having a baby with Nik—worse, going to bed with Nik…sheer madness!

In the midst of her feverish thoughts, Olympia glanced at her alarm clock and gasped. Why hadn’t her mother woken her up? It was ten to twelve in the morning! Scrambling off the bed, she hurried out of her bedroom and skidded into the lounge, hearing too late the deep burst of masculine laughter that might have forewarned her that her mother had a male visitor.

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