Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

‘I’m sure Javier said the same thing to his wife.’

Christian swore and inhaled deeply.

Alessandra leant forward, matching the intensity of his stare, close enough for his oaky, masculine scent to swirl around her.

His hand was still pressed against her neck, heating her skin. For a moment she lost her train of thought, suddenly pulled back to that night two months ago, his naked body covering hers…

She blinked herself back to the present, grabbing onto his hand and lacing her fingers into his. She squeezed. ‘When Javier’s wife saw those photos of her husband kissing a girl half his age, she must have thought her heart was breaking.’

Those dreadful, incriminating pictures.

Her brother and grandfather had taken a business trip together to New York for a long weekend. The Mondelli housekeeper had taken the day off. Alessandra and the man who was supposed to be giving her private tuition in maths over the long summer holiday had had the villa to themselves for the very first time. They could have done anything.

It had been her suggestion that they go out for lunch at a nearby hotel, famed for its discretion. Javier didn’t live locally. No one would know him.

She’d longed to do something as a normal couple, not have to keep her feelings hidden away, and this had been the perfect opportunity. She’d believed him when he’d said they had to keep their love a secret until she turned eighteen and finished her schooling.

How grown up she’d felt, walking hand in hand with her would-be lover. How naïve she’d been.

They’d dined in the fine hotel restaurant using her allowance to pay the bill, oblivious to the fact that half a dozen paparazzi had swarmed the lobby, awaiting the rumoured arrival of one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors.

While she’d been blithely oblivious, they’d recognised her in an instant. The photos they’d taken, published the next day across the whole of Italy, had been incriminating. Her and Javier holding hands, stealing kisses that looked a damn sight worse than the chaste kisses they’d actually been.

That was the last time she’d seen the coward. For a whole weekend, while her brother and grandfather had been in New York, she’d had to cope with a siege of paparazzi on her own. Those reporters had been there to witness Javier’s wife arrive at the villa and bang on the door until a guilt-stricken Alessandra had answered it, her fulsome apology ready on her tongue. She’d never had the chance to say the words. As soon as she’d opened the door, Javier’s wife had spat in her face, slapped her and called her a puttana—a whore. The press had caught every frame for posterity.

By the time her brother and grandfather had returned the damage had been done.

‘Why didn’t you ever put your side across?’ Christian asked. If he felt any pain in his fingers he didn’t show it, allowing her to continue squeezing tightly, as if he knew it to be an outward measure of the fury and pain recalling that awful time provoked.

‘I wasn’t allowed. Rocco and Nonno closed ranks.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘They were furious with me.’

‘Why? Your tutor took advantage of you. If they were furious with anyone, it should have been him.’

‘They were furious with him for taking advantage of me, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d been sneaking around with a man almost twice my age. They forbade me from speaking to the press, saying I’d caused enough shame on the family name.’ Even if she’d chosen to defy them, by the time she’d got over the shock that had rendered her virtually mute the press had moved on to its next victim. Alessandra Mondelli’s affair with a married man had been old news. No one had cared for her side.

Christian disentangled his fingers from her grip and muttered another curse as he got to his feet.

The place where he’d rested his hand against her neck suddenly felt cold.

She shivered and rose to her feet to stand before him. ‘If I leave with you today, my career will be ruined. No editor or fashion director will ever trust me again. It’s the only thing I’ve got to hold onto, the only thing that gives my life any meaning.’ How could she expect him to understand that? Her career was all her own. It had taken everything she had to get her name taken seriously and pull herself out from the cloud of scandal.

‘And what about our child? Or does he or she not come into it?’

‘Don’t twist it like that. When our baby is born everything is going to change—I know that, and I’m preparing myself for the change it will bring, but right now I’m healthy and capable of working.’

‘I’m not happy about this. You can’t take risks with your health.’

‘I don’t expect you to be happy about it, but ultimately the decision is mine, so please don’t patronise me about the health aspect—you were there when the doctor said I should live a normal life.’

He threw his hands in the air and shook his head, not bothering to hide his anger or frustration.

She continued speaking before he could open his mouth to argue any further. ‘I will hire a bodyguard for when I leave the apartment—I promise I will protect our baby.’

‘I will hire a bodyguard for you,’ he insisted, looking only slightly mollified. ‘And I want your word of honour that if at any time you feel in any kind of danger you will call me immediately.’

‘I promise.’

He appraised her with narrowed eyes for a moment longer before inclining his head. ‘Then I will have to trust you to keep to your word.’

She certainly deserved that.

Welcome to Athens.

No sooner had Alessandra stepped off Christian’s private jet than two bodyguards appeared from nowhere. They took her luggage and escorted her to the waiting car with its bullet-proof, blacked-out windows.

A week ago she would have thought this overkill. She’d thought her brother was a pain when it came to being over-protective. Rocco had always been protective of her. After Javier, he’d become even more controlling. Her grandfather had been even worse. He’d withdrawn her allowance and curtailed her freedom, which had always been limited, to the point of non-existence. She’d returned to her private all-girls school when the holidays had finished to find he’d given strict instructions not to let Alessandra leave the grounds under any circumstances. This had been particularly humiliating, it being her final year, the school year when more adult freedoms were permitted. But not for her. All trust between her and her grandfather had broken down irrevocably.

She’d spent years breaking free and now, just as her life and freedom were hers and hers alone, she found she was pledging herself to a man with the same controlling instinct she had spent so long kicking back from.

Christian had over-protectiveness down to an art.

He hadn’t merely employed a bodyguard for her, he’d employed an elite squad of hardened ex-soldiers.

Unfortunately they didn’t come with personalities, all having been highly trained never to crack a smile or share banter. In the safety of her apartment building she could forget all about them, but the second she stepped outside they would materialise.

As much as she found their presence stifling, she was grateful. She’d never imagined the paparazzi could be any worse than when she’d been seventeen. She’d been wrong. Eight years ago it had been mostly the Italian press with a handful of Brits thrown in. This time their number included Greeks—lots of them—Americans, French… She swore she’d even heard a Japanese voice throw questions at her. She’d known her engagement to Christian would generate a frenzy but had not been prepared for such madness.

The granddaughter of the great Giovanni Mondelli, a man of such stature he was regarded like royalty; the sister of Rocco Mondelli, the man credited with dragging the House of Mondelli kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, a man who’d recently married one of the most famous supermodels in the world; Alessandra Mondelli, the former scandal-hit teenager who’d become one of the world’s leading fashion photographers: for such a woman to be marrying the self-made Greek billionaire, the whizz of the financial world with the movie-star looks… For the press it was a dream combination.

For Alessandra it was a nightmare. She consoled herself that at least she wasn’t being called a slut any more. She’d kept her dark sunglasses on and answered only one of the hundreds of questions that had been thrown her way over the past week.

‘Are you looking forward to the wedding?’ someone had asked.

‘Of course,’ she’d replied with what she hoped was an enigmatic smile.

She hadn’t been the only target. Christian, his sunglasses permanently attached to his face too, had also been mobbed. As had Rocco, who ignored every single question. Rumours had started circulating in the past few days about the punch, a new frenzy ensuing.

Relieved to be away from the madness, she leaned back in the leather seat and gazed out at Athens, the city that would play a huge part of her life from this moment on.

She’d heard it referred to as ‘the cradle of Western civilisation.’ Even if she’d been unaware of its history, she would have recognised it. It had seeped into the walls, some pristine, some falling apart at the seams. With ugly apartment blocks and majestic buildings, it was a city that managed to be cosmopolitan yet obviously ancient and historic. A city of contradictions.

For the first time she felt something akin to excitement bubble in her veins.

She had six days in this city before she exchanged her vows. From worrying that she would be bored stuck in a place where she knew no one, she now saw a huge opportunity. If she could ever get anywhere. At this rate, she would be lucky to make it to the hotel before the sun set. She’d thought the traffic in Milan was bad…

Eventually, they came to a road with manned security gates that opened slowly and led to an enormous white building with pillars either side of the huge entrance. It was as though she was staring at a palace that had been home to the Greek gods themselves.

A fleet of staff was by her side within seconds of the car coming to a stop, her luggage whisked away while she was taken through to the marble foyer.

‘Don’t I need to sign in?’ she asked when a woman, who identified herself as the general manager, offered to take her straight to her room.

‘No, despinis,’ the woman replied. ‘Everything is taken care of.’

Christian’s work, Alessandra told herself, her belly tightening at the thought of seeing him again. She’d been so busy over the past week that she’d hardly had the time to think of him on anything other than a practical level. Her dreams, though, had been…disturbing. Enough that merely to think of him made her bones feel as if they’d been through a blender.

Pregnancy hormones. That was all it was, she told herself—pregnancy hormones playing with her emotions.

‘Where are all the other guests?’ she asked, following the manager to the lift.

‘Today, you are our only guest. The others will be arriving from tomorrow.’

How strange. She’d never known a hotel to have only one guest before.

Her suite was one of two located on the top floor. She guessed the other had been reserved for Christian.

Stepping into it, she couldn’t help the little thrill that ran through her at the opulent marvel of marble and the stunning views. The back window had a direct view of the Parthenon.

Over the years she’d stayed in many luxurious hotels but the lavishness of this suite had a magical quality to it.

‘Will you require lunch in your room or would you prefer to eat in the restaurant?’ the manager asked.

‘I think I’ll eat on my balcony.’ She had a quick skim of the menu and selected a tomato salad with crusty bread. Nothing fancy, just something healthy to keep her going until Christian joined her that evening…

The same tightening in her belly happened as she thought of him again, her heart rate speeding up to a thrum.

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER A LAZY afternoon spent by the swimming pool, unwinding after a full-on week of work and the morning’s travels, Alessandra was stepping out of the shower when the phone in her room rang out.

‘Ciao?’

‘Good evening, agapi mou.’

A tingle fluttered up her spine to hear his rich tones.

‘Hello, Christian,’ she said, keeping her voice formal. ‘Does this call mean you’re here?’

‘It does. Can you be ready in a couple of hours?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m taking you out for dinner.’

Trying hard to dampen the excitement fluttering low in her stomach, she opened the large wardrobe where a maid had hung all her clothes. Amongst them was her wedding dress.

Her intention had been to buy the first dress that fitted and didn’t make her look like a hag. Her intentions had gone to hell. Her brain had tried to hand over the cash in the first boutique but her heart had overruled it. It wasn’t until the fourth boutique that she’d found The One, the dress that had made her heart want to burst with delight.

She didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she had then parted with a large sum of cash for the lacy white lingerie she’d selected to wear with it.

No, that was a lie: she did know what she’d been thinking. She’d been thinking of Christian.

For now she selected a khaki shirt-dress that fell to mid-thigh. She stared with longing at her five-inch-high red Manolo Blahniks but ended up disregarding them for black strappy sandals with a more reasonable three-inch heel. She had a little life inside her to think of and to totter on sky-high heels was asking for trouble.

She wondered if her own mother had faced such trivial conundrums in her pregnancies. So many questions she would never hear the answer to.

She would give anything for one day—one hour, even—with her mother. One hour to be held in her arms, to inhale her scent and hear her voice.

She prayed her baby never grew up having the same longings: so many hopes and fears, a mountain of them. All that mattered was getting her baby safely into this world.

Accessorising with beaded orange jewellery and dangly ruby earrings, she’d just applied a second coat of matching ruby lipstick when she heard a rap on the main door of the suite.

She pressed a hand to her chest, a sop to trying to control her heart that had galloped at the first knock.

Opening the door, her stomach plunged to see Christian so tanned and gorgeous before her, dressed in a silver suit, tieless, the white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She’d kissed that neck, remembered vividly its taste…

Their eyes met; there was nothing said for the breath of a moment before she stood aside to admit him.

‘You’re looking good,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, striving for breeziness.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Let me get my bag and we can go.’ The expansive room seemed to have shrunk in the space of seconds and she was glad to escape, if only for a moment.

In the sanctuary of the bedroom, she sat on the corner of the bed and took some deep breaths. Keep it together, Alessandra.

Keep it together?

At Rocco and Olivia’s wedding she’d been too worried about informing Christian of his impending fatherhood to read too much into the raging emotions sleeping with him had provoked. She’d assumed that, once she’d shared the news, her equilibrium would be restored. She hadn’t thought for a minute it would become more unstable around him, an instability that seemed to increase with every moment spent with him.

She would keep it together. She would. She was a pro at it.

Getting to her feet, she grabbed the gold clutch bag off the dresser and strolled back into the living area. Christian was leaning against the dining table, doing something on his phone. As soon as he saw her, he pressed the button to turn the screen off and quickly put it in the inside pocket of his blazer.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

She mustn’t question. It was none of her business. None of her business.

Javier had always been secretive over his phone: hiding to answer calls; speaking in hushed tones so she couldn’t overhear him; telling her it was other private students who deserved his discretion. Naïve idiot that she was, she’d believed him, had never imagined for a moment that the reason his phone never left his person was because he was married to a woman who’d lived through one of his affairs before and checked on him constantly.

If Christian wanted to be secretive, then so be it. She had no emotional claim on him. He had no emotional claim on her.

She forced a smile. ‘I couldn’t remember where I’d left my bag.’ What was a white lie in the scheme of things? She couldn’t tell him his appearance had left her feeling so off-kilter she’d needed a moment to catch her breath and her thoughts.

‘Where are we eating?’ she asked, following him out of the door.

‘At Titos, a French restaurant near the Panathinaikos Stadium.’

‘French?’

‘It is considered the best restaurant in Athens.’

She raised her brows. ‘Can’t we go somewhere…Greek?’

‘This is the most exclusive restaurant in Greece. The waiting list is eighteen months long.’

She pulled a face. ‘I like fine dining as much as the next person but, truly, you can’t relax somewhere like that. Please, just for tonight, can’t we go somewhere normal? You live here—you must know the place that serves the best Greek food.’

Something flickered in his eyes.

‘You do know somewhere! Please, take me.’

‘It’s nothing special,’ he said, his voice guarded.

‘Good! Nothing special is exactly what I’m in the mood for. Plus, if we eat somewhere nondescript, the less chance we have of being spotted by the paparazzi.’ They would be circling the city looking for them. They were nothing if not tenacious.

After what seemed an age, Christian gave an abrupt nod. ‘I know a little taverna in Pangrati, a decent area of the city.’

She beamed. ‘Perfetto.’

They both nodded at the reception staff as they left the hotel and got into the waiting car.

‘Can we walk some of the way?’ she asked once they were enclosed in the back.

Christian stared at her, remembering how on their night in Milan she’d insisted they walk to the restaurant, happily tottering in the black stilettos that had displayed her slender yet shapely legs so well.

The dress she wore now showed them off too, golden thigh close to his…

He preferred to walk too. He’d especially enjoyed walking with Alessandra, the refreshing conversation, her obvious femininity without demureness. He’d enjoyed everything about that evening. He’d enjoyed everything about that night. Except for the guilt that had almost crippled him, especially the next morning.

It felt even worse now. Not only had he got her pregnant but he’d lost his friend. He could cope with that if he didn’t feel so damn responsible for Alessandra and Rocco’s estrangement. Even if he couldn’t fix his own relationship with Rocco, he was determined to fix theirs.

‘The driver can take us a little further in and then we’ll walk the rest.’

‘Eccellente. I want to see as much of your home city as I can.’

‘There’s plenty of time for that. In the meantime, how have you settled in? Do you have everything you need?’

‘I’m finding it all a little strange,’ she admitted. ‘I assumed the hotel would be bursting with guests.’

‘Usually it would be.’

‘Did you have all the other guests kicked out?’ She was only half-joking.

‘Not exactly. Alternative accommodation was found for them. Hotel Parthenon is for the exclusive use of our wedding party for the next week.’

‘However did you manage that?’

‘It wasn’t difficult. I own the place.’

Her brows knitted together in confusion. ‘Seriously?’

‘I assumed you knew.’

‘I thought your business revolved around finance.’

‘On the whole it does, but in Greece it’s different. Greece is my home. I love my country but its economy is a mess. Anything I can do to invest and bring money into it, I will.’ Hotel Parthenon had been an obvious place for him to start. He’d discovered it six years before, a shabby, run-down two-star hotel situated on a prime site. He’d paid over the odds for it then set about transforming it, employing local builders and architects to renovate it into the seven-star luxury hotel complete with heliport it was today. Its growing reputation meant it was fully booked all year round.

‘I like that,’ Alessandra said, nodding her approval. ‘I always think people are too keen to disregard their roots.’

‘That’s easy for someone like you to say.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were born with every advantage. Your roots are something for you to be proud of.’

‘You think?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Please, tell me, what advantage did I have when my very existence is the reason for my mother’s death?’

Shocked, he momentarily lost his voice. ‘You can’t believe that?’

Confusion flitted over her features as if she’d shocked herself with her own words. ‘It’s the truth,’ she whispered.

‘Ochi!’ No.

‘Si. My mother died so I could live. If I hadn’t been conceived, she would still be here.’

A coldness lodged in his stomach. ‘But you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be sitting here now. Our child wouldn’t be growing in your belly.’

Her eyes held his, a slight wobble in them, as if she were trying desperately not to let whatever driving emotion had caused her outburst to gain any further hold.

He could kick himself. ‘I apologise. When I said you were born with every advantage, I meant it in the respect that you were born a Mondelli.’

Alessandra swallowed back bile. She didn’t know where her outburst had come from. It was an outburst that had lived mutely on her tongue since she’d been a young girl made to feel as if she should be grateful for the privileges of her life. As if the fact she’d grown up with money could hide the circumstances of her birth and the knock-on effect that still echoed in Rocco’s and her lives. Their father’s life too, weak and spineless though he was. He’d effectively thrown his life away because he hadn’t been able to cope without his beloved Letizia. Nor forgetting her grandfather, her nonno, who’d spent the last twenty-five years of his life raising his grandchildren while his own son and heir drowned in bottles of alcohol.

All those ruined lives. Ruined dreams. Rocco ripped away from the mother he’d worshipped. And for what? For her? Was one life really a fair exchange for so much misery?

‘No, I’m the one who should apologise. You’re right. Being a Mondelli is a privilege. I’ve been given every material advantage.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply that you were spoilt. I appreciate the Mondelli name has been a mixed blessing for you.’

‘And the Markos name?’ she said, glad to be able to turn the conversation onto him. ‘Has that been a mixed blessing for you?’

He raised a shoulder. ‘The Markos name is nothing special. It doesn’t stand for anything.’

‘Yes, it does. It stands for hard work, determination and guts.’

‘Guts?’

‘Rocco told me you got into Columbia on a scholarship. That alone tells me how hard you’ve had to work to get where you are.’

‘We all have our crosses to bear, whatever background we’re born into,’ he said quietly. He tapped on the dividing window. Amidst a hail of tooting horns, the car came to a stop. ‘We will walk from here.’

The taverna was exactly what Alessandra had been hoping for. Set off the beaten track, its marble tables with checked paper table-cloths were crammed inside and out, every one of them taken. Inside, a man played an accordion, the music only just audible above the raucous noise of the patrons, while pictures of celebrities lined the walls in haphazard fashion above empty bottles of wine with melted candles rammed into them.