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But when Vicky had been finishing her university course Geoff had been given the opportunity to participate in a teaching exchange in Australia. He and her mother had moved there, finding both the job and the lifestyle so congenial that they had decided to stay. Vicky could not have been more pleased for them, but, adult though she was, she’d still felt miserable and lonely, left behind in England.
That was when her uncle Aristides had suddenly swept back into her life. He had descended on Vicky and carried her off to Greece for a much needed holiday and a change of scene. And also for him to get to know his niece better. His arrival had had her mother’s blessing—she had accepted that it was only natural that her daughter should get to know, even if belatedly, her own father’s family, and now that she had emigrated to Australia she was beyond the painful associations herself.
Having been brought up in England, in an English family, it had been strange for Vicky to realise that she was, by birth, half-Greek. But far, far more alien than coming to terms with the cultural heritage she had never known had been coming to terms with another aspect of her paternal family. Its wealth.
Because her father’s money had been spent on charitable causes, she had never really registered just how very different the lifestyle of her uncle would be. But staying with Aristides in Greece had opened her eyes, and she had been unable to help feeling how unreal his wealthy lifestyle was compared to her own. For all his wealth, however, her uncle was warm, and kind, and had embraced her wholeheartedly as his brother’s child. A widower in late middle age, without children, he was, Vicky had seen with fondness, clearly set on lavishing on her all the pampering that he would have bestowed on a daughter of his own. While honouring his brother’s altruism, and accepting her mother’s desire to put the tragic past behind her, Aristides had nevertheless made no bones about wanting to make up for what he considered his niece’s material deprivation.
At first Vicky had tried to stop him lavishing his money on her, but then, seeing him so obviously hurt by her refusal to let him buy her the beautiful clothes that he’d wanted her to have, she’d given gave in. After all, it was only a holiday. Not real life. So she’d stopped refusing and had let herself be pampered. Her uncle had taken so much pleasure in doing so.
‘Andreas would be so proud of you! So proud! His so-beautiful daughter!’ he would say, time and again, with a tear openly in his eye, his emotion unashamedly apparent and, Vicky had found with a smile, so very Greek.
And so very Greek, too, she’d discovered, in his attitude to young women of her age. They were, she’d had to accept, though loved to pieces, treated like beautiful ornamental dolls who must and should be petted and pampered, but also sheltered from the real world.
It had been the same when she’d made her second visit to Greece. She had visited her mother and stepfather in Australia for Christmas the previous year, and Aristides had invited her to spend the next festive season with him in Athens. But that time as soon as he’d greeted her she’d been able to tell something was wrong. There had been a strain about him that she’d sensed immediately.
Not that Aristides had said anything to her when she’d arrived in Athens. He’d simply reverted to his cosseting of her, telling her she was too thin and working too hard, she needed a holiday, some fun, new clothes. Because she’d known that his concern was genuine, and that he took great pleasure in pampering her, she’d once again given herself to his unreal world, where all the women wore couture clothes which they changed several times a day, according to the social function they were attending next. As before, she had gone along with it—because she’d seen the pleasure it gave her uncle to show off his young half-English niece, whose natural beauty was enhanced by clothes and jewellery.
‘My late brother’s daughter, Victoria,’ he would introduce her, and she’d heard the pride in his voice as he did so, the affection, too. Family, she’d swiftly learnt, was of paramount importance in Greece.
For Vicky it had been fascinating, the glittering world she had dipped her toes into, where breathtaking consumption was the order of the day. Sitting around her uncle’s vast dining room table, laden with crystal and silverware, with the female guests glittering like peacocks in their evening gowns and jewels, and the men as smart as magpies in their black-and-white tuxedos, she’d found herself realising with a strange curiosity that, had her father not been so determined to abnegate his wealthy background, this could have been her natural environment. Except, of course, she’d amended, she would not have had her English upbringing but one decidedly Greek. It had been a strange thought.
But she’d known that, fascinating as it was to observe this rarefied social milieu, it was, all the same, profoundly alien. She’d felt as if she was at a zoo, observing exotic mammals that lived lives of display and ostentation that were nothing to do with reality. Their biggest challenge would be which new yacht to buy, which designer to favour, or which Swiss bank to keep their private accounts in.
Not that their wealth made them horrible people—her uncle was kindness personified, and everyone she’d met so far had been gracious and charming and easy to talk to.
All except one.
Vicky’s expression took on a momentary darkening look.
She hadn’t caught his name as her uncle had brought him over to be introduced to her before dinner, because as she’d turned to bestow a social smile on him it had suddenly frozen on her mouth. She’d felt her stomach turn slowly over.
Greek men were not tall. She’d got used to that now. But this man was tall. Six foot easily. Tall, and lean, and so devastatingly good-looking that her breath had congealed in her lungs as she’d stared at him, taking in sable hair, a hard-planed face already in its thirties, a blade of a nose, sculpted mouth and eyes—oh, eyes that were black as sloes. But with something hidden in them…
She’d forcibly made herself exhale and widen her smile. But it had been hard. She’d still felt frozen all over. Except for her pulse, which had suddenly surged in her veins. Mechanically she’d held out her hand in response to the introduction, and felt it taken by strong fingers and a wide palm. The contact had been brief, completely formal, and yet it had felt suddenly, out of nowhere, quite different. She’d withdrawn her hand as swiftly as politeness permitted.
‘How do you do?’ she said, wondering just what his name was. She’d missed her uncle saying it.
‘Thespinis Fournatos,’ the man acknowledged.
She was getting used to being addressed by her birth father’s name. At home she’d taken Geoff’s surname, because when her mother had married him he’d adopted her, and it was easier for them all to have the same surname. But understandably, she knew, her uncle thought of her as his brother’s son, and to him she was Victoria Fournatos, not Vicky Peters.
But there was something about the way this man pronounced her Greek name that sent a little shiver down her spine. Or maybe it was just because of the low timbre of his voice. The low, sexy timbre…
Because this man, she realised, with another surge of her pulse, was an incredibly attractive male. Whatever it was about the arrangement of his limbs and features, he had it—in buckets.
And he knew it, too.
She felt the tiny shiver turn from one of awareness to one of resistance. It wasn’t that he was looking at her in any kind of suggestive way. It was more, she could tell, that he was perfectly used to women reacting to him the way that she had. So used to that reaction, in fact, that he took it for granted. Instantly she schooled herself against him, making herself ignore the breathless fluttering in her insides. Instead, she glanced at her uncle, who made some remark to the man in Greek, which Vicky did not understand. She knew a few Greek phrases, and a smattering of vocabulary, and was with practice and effort just about able to read Greek script haltingly, but rapid speech was completely beyond her.
‘You live in England, I believe, Thespinis Fournatos?’ The man turned his attention to her, with the slightest query in his voice. More than a query, thought Vicky—almost disapproval.
‘Yes,’ she said, leaving it at that. ‘My uncle very kindly invited me for Christmas. However, I understand that in Greece Easter is the most important time of the year—a much more significant event than Christmas in the calendar.’
‘Indeed,’ he returned, and for a few minutes they engaged, with Aristides, in a brief conversation about seasonal celebrations.
It was quite an innocuous conversation, and yet Vicky was glad when it finished—glad when a highly polished, dramatically beautiful woman, a good few years older than herself, came gliding up to them and greeted the tall man with a low and clearly enthusiastic husk in her voice. She spoke Greek fluently, and made no attempt to recognise Vicky’s presence.
Although Vicky could sense that Aristides was annoyed by the interruption, she herself took the opportunity to murmur, ‘Do please excuse me,’ and glided off to talk to some of her uncle’s other guests.
She was equally relieved when the seating arrangements at dinner put her at the other end of the table, away from the man with the devastating looks and the disturbing presence. The Greek woman who had accosted him was seated beside him, Vicky saw, and she was glad of it. Yet for all the woman’s obvious intention to keep the man’s attention turned firmly on herself for the duration, Vicky was sure that every now and then those sloe-dark eyes would turn in her direction.
She didn’t like it. There was something that disturbed her at the thought of that tall, dark and leanly compelling man looking at her. She could feel it in the tensing of her body.
Why was she reacting like this? she interrogated herself bracingly. She knew she was physically attractive, had learnt to cope with male attention, so why was this man able to make her feel so self-conscious? As if she were a schoolgirl, not a grown woman of twenty-four.
And why did she get the uncomfortable feeling that he was assessing her, observing her? It wasn’t, she knew, that he was eying her up—though if he had been she would not have liked that in the slightest. Maybe, she chivvied herself, she was just imagining things. When his dark eyes intercepted hers it was nothing more than a trick of her line of sight, of her being so irritatingly aware of him. An awareness that only increased during the meal, along with her discomfort.
It was as the guests were finally leaving, late into the night, that the tall man whose name she had not caught came up to her. His dinner jacket, she noted abstractedly, sat across his shoulders to perfection, honing down to lean hips and long legs. Again she felt that irritating flurry of awareness and was annoyed by it. There was something unnerving about the man, and she didn’t like it.
‘Good night, Thespinis Fournatos,’ he said, and looked down at her a moment. There was a look in his eyes that this time she could not mistake. It was definitely an assessing look.
Her back stiffened, even as her pulse gave a sudden little jump.
‘Good night,’ she replied, her voice as formal as she could make it. As indifferent as she could get away with. She turned to bid good night to another departing guest.
Afterwards, when everyone was gone, her uncle loosened his bow tie and top shirt button, poured himself another brandy from the liqueur tray, and said to her, in a very casual voice, ‘What did you think of him?’
‘Who?’ said Vicky, automatically starting to pile up the coffee cups, even though she knew a bevy of maids would appear to clear away the mess the moment she and her uncle retired.
‘Our handsome guest,’ answered her uncle.
Vicky did not need to ask who he meant.
‘Very handsome indeed,’ she said, as neutrally as possible.
Her uncle seemed pleased with her reply.
‘He’s invited us for lunch at the yacht club tomorrow,’ he informed her. ‘It’s a very popular place—you’ll like it. It’s at Piraeus.’
I might like it more without Mr Handsome there, she thought. But she did not say it. Still, it was a place she had not seen yet—Piraeus, the port of Athens. But, instead of saying anything more on that, she found herself changing the subject.
‘Uncle, is everything all right?’
The enquiry had come out of nowhere, but it had been triggered by a sudden recognition that, despite the smile on her uncle’s face, there was tension in it, too—a tension that had been masked during the evening but which was now, given the late hour, definitely visible.
But a hearty smile banished any tension about him.
‘All right?’ he riposted, rallying. ‘Of course! Never better! Now, pethi mou, it is time for your bed, or you will have dark circles under your eyes to mar your beauty. And we cannot have that—we cannot have that at all!’ He gave a sorrowing sigh. ‘That Andreas were still alive to see how beautiful his daughter is! But I shall take care of you for him. That I promise you. And now to bed with you!’
He shooed her out, and she went, though she was still uneasy. Had she just been got rid of to stop her asking another question in that line of enquiry?
Yet the following day there was no sign of the tension she thought she’d seen in him, and when they arrived at the prestigious yacht club, clearly the preserve of the extremely well-heeled of Athens, her uncle’s spirits were high. Hers were less so, and she found her reserve growing as the tall figure at the table they were being conducted to unfolded his lean frame and stood up.
Lunch was not a comfortable meal. Though the majority of the conversation was in English, Vicky got the feeling that another conversation was taking place—one that she was not a party to. But that was not the source of her discomfort. It was very much the man they were lunching with, and the way his dark, assessing eyes would flick to her every now and then, with a look in them that did not do her ease any good at all.
As the meal progressed she realised she was becoming increasingly aware of him—of his sheer physical presence, the way his hands moved, the strength of his fingers as they lifted a wineglass, or curved around the handle of his knife. The way his sable hair feathered very slightly over his forehead, the way the strong column of his throat moved as he talked. And the way he talked, whether in English or Greek, that low, resonant timbre doing strange things to her—things she would prefer not to happen. Such as raising her heart rate slightly, and making her stomach nip every now and then as her eyes, as they must during conversation, went to his face.
She watched covertly as he lifted his hand in the briefest gesture, to summon the maître d’. He came at once, instantly, and was immediately all attention. And Vicky realised, with a disturbing little frisson down her spine, that there was another reason other than his dark, planed looks that made him attractive.
It was the air of power that radiated from him. Not obvious, not ostentatious, not deliberate, but just—there.
This was a man who got what he wanted, and there would never, in his mind, be the slightest reason to think otherwise.
She gave an inward shiver. It wasn’t right, her rational mind told her, to find that idea of uncompromising power adding to his masculinity. It was wrong for a host of reasons, ethical and moral.
But it was so, all the same.
And she resented it. Resented the man who made her think that way. Respond to him that way.
No! This was ridiculous. She was getting all worked up over someone who was, in the great scheme of things, completely irrelevant to her. He had invited her uncle for lunch, presumably for that singular mix of business and sociality that those in these wealthy circles practised as a matter of course, and she had been included in the invitation for no other reason than common courtesy.
She forced herself to relax. Her uncle was turning to her, saying something, and she made herself pay attention with a smile.
‘You are fond of Mozart, are you not, pethi mou?’
She blinked. Where had that question come from? Nevertheless, she answered with a smile, ‘Yes—why do you ask?’
But it was their host who answered.
‘The Philharmonia are in Athens at the moment, and tomorrow night they are giving a Mozart concert. Perhaps you would like to attend?’
Vicky’s eyes went to her uncle. He was smiling at her benignly. She was confused. Did he want to go? If he did, she would be happy—more than happy—to go with him. Aristides liked showing her off, she knew, and as she did indeed like Mozart’s music, she’d be happy to go to a concert.
‘That sounds lovely,’ she answered politely.
Her uncle’s smile widened. ‘Good, good.’ He nodded. He glanced across at their host and said something in Greek that Vicky did not understand, and was answered briefly in the same language. He turned back to his niece.
‘You can be ready by seven, can you not?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ she answered. She frowned slightly. Why had her uncle spoken to their host about it?
She discovered, with a little stab of dismay, just why on her way back to Athens with Aristides.
‘He wants to take me to the concert? But I thought we were going?’
‘No, no,’ said Aristides airily. ‘Alas, I don’t have time to go to concerts.’
But he does, thought Vicky. A strange sensation had settled over her and she didn’t like it. She also didn’t like the feeling that she had been stitched up—set up…
With no room to manoeuvre.
Well, she thought grimly now, that was how it had started—and how it had gone on. And even now, after everything that had happened, all the storm and stress, the rage and frustration, she still did not know how it had ended up the way it had. How she had gone from being escorted to a Mozart concert by a man whose company disturbed her so profoundly, to becoming—her mouth pressed together in a thin, self-condemning line—his wife.
Mrs Theo Theakis.
CHAPTER THREE
HOW could I have done it?
The question still burned in her head, just as it always had. How could she have gone and married Theo Theakis? She’d done it, in the end, for the best of reasons—and it had been the worst mistake of her life.
She could still remember the moment when her uncle had dropped the thunderbolt at her feet. Informing her that Theo Theakis was requesting her hand in marriage, as if they were living in the middle of a Victorian novel.
Aristides had beamed at her. ‘Every woman in Athens wants to marry him!’
Well, every woman in Athens is welcome to him! thought Vicky, as she sat there, staring blankly at her uncle, disbelief taking over completely as he extolled the virtues of a man she barely knew—but knew enough to be very, very wary of. Since the Mozart concert she had seen Theo Theakis only a handful of times—and she could hardly have said he’d singled her out in any particular way. Apart from knowing that he was rich, disturbingly attractive, and, from the few conversations she’d had with him about any non-trivial subject, dauntingly and incisively intelligent, he was a complete stranger. Nothing more than an acquaintance of her uncle, and no one she wanted to get any closer to.
In fact, he was someone, for all the reasons she was so disturbingly aware of, her preferred option would have been to avoid. It would have been much, much safer…
And now, out of nowhere, her uncle was saying he wanted to marry her?
It was unbelievable—quite, quite unbelievable.
She wanted to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it, but as she stared at her uncle blindly she started to become aware of something behind the enthusiastic words. Something that dismayed her.
He was serious—he was really, really serious. And more than serious.
Vicky’s heart chilled.
In her uncle’s face was the same tension she’d seen when she’d arrived in Athens. The tension that she’d been moved to ask about the evening she’d met Theo Theakis for the first time. And something more than tension—fear.
It was shadowing his eyes, behind the eager smiles and the enthusiastic extolling of just why it would be so wonderful for her to be Mrs Theo Theakis. Behind her uncle’s glowing verbiage of how every woman would envy her for having Theo Theakis as a husband, she could hear a much more prosaic message.
A dynastic marriage. Something quite unexceptional in the circles her uncle and aspiring bridegroom moved in. A marriage to link two wealthy families, two prominent Greek corporations.
Oh, Aristides did not say it like that—he used terms like ‘so very suitable’—but Vicky could hear it all the same. And more. Vicky realised, with a sinking of her heart, that she could hear something much more anxious. Her uncle didn’t just want her to marry Theo Theakis—he needed her to…
The chill around her heart intensified.
She waited, feeling her nerves biting, until he had finally finished his peroration, and was looking at her with an anticipation that was not just hopeful but fearful, too. She picked her words with extreme care.
‘Uncle, would such a marriage be advantageous to you from a…a business point of view?’
There was a flicker in Aristides’s eyes, and for a moment he looked hunted. Then he rallied, using the same tone of voice as he had when she had impulsively asked him whether everything was all right.
‘Well, as you know, sadly my wife was not blessed with children, and so it has always been a question—what will happen to Fournatos when I am gone? Knowing that you, my niece, are married to Theo Theakis—whose business interests do not run contrary to those of Fournatos—would answer that question.’
Vicky frowned slightly. ‘Does that mean the two companies would merge?’
A shuttered, almost evasive look came into Aristides’ face.
‘Perhaps, perhaps. Eventually. But—’ His tone changed, becoming bright, eager, and, Vicky could tell from familiarity, deliberately pitched to address a female of her age, who should not be concerning herself with such mundane things as corporate mergers. ‘This is not what a young woman thinks about when a man wants to marry her! And certainly not when the man is as handsome as Theo Theakis!’
It was the signal that he would not be drawn any more from the fairy tale he was spinning for her in such glowing colours. Vicky could get no more out of her uncle regarding the real reason behind this unbelievable idea of Theo Theakis saying he wanted to marry her. It was only the anxiety she felt about what she had seen so briefly in her uncle’s face and respect for his kindness and generosity that stopped her telling him that she had never heard anything so absurd and walking straight out.
With rigid self-control she managed to hear him out, and then, with all the verbal dexterity she could muster, she said, ‘I’m…I’m overwhelmed.’
‘Of course, of course!’ Aristides said hurriedly. ‘Such a wonderful thing is most momentous!’
Vicky hung on to her self-control by a thread. Groping about for some excuse to go, she muttered something about a dress fitting she had to get to in the city and slipped out of the room. Her mind was in turmoil.
What on earth was going on?
Her mouth set. Her uncle might not give her any answers, but she knew someone who could.
Even though he was the very last person she wanted to go and see.
She made herself do it, though. She went and confronted her suitor.
He did not seem surprised to see her. He received her in his executive suite in a gleaming new office block, getting up from a huge leather chair behind an even bigger desk. As he got to his feet, his business suit looking like a million euros all on its own, Vicky again felt that frisson go through her. Here, in his own corporate eyrie, the impression of power that emanated from him was more marked than ever.