Greek Affairs: To Take a Bride: The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

They’d had a fight via the telephone the day that Nikos had taken his fatal fall. Andreas had been telling her that he had to stay in Athens to attend an important board meeting. He’d insisted that he had no choice. She’d insisted that everyone had choices and that it was his choice to break his promise to spend the day on the beach with his son! Then she’d slammed down the phone and made her choice to take Nikos to the beach by herself.

As she lowered her head, her eyes turned dark like a bottomless ocean as she relived the moment that Nikos had broken free of her grasp and begun to run down the dusty track towards a herd of goats. She could still hear the way she had called out to him, ‘Nikos, take care!’ and still see the way one of the goats leapt from the embankment to land directly in his path.

‘You left because you blamed me for what happened,’ she whispered.

He spun around, a shaft of hard shock on his face. ‘I did not!'

Still, Louisa sent him a look of bleak disbelief. Why wouldn’t he blame her when she blamed herself?

‘I did not blame you.’ He grabbed her arm when she went to spin away from him. ‘It was an accident. Apportioning blame to such a tragedy is a weak fool’s way of dealing with it.'

Which was all very wise and grown-up, Louisa thought with a rueful twist of her mouth, but five years ago they had been neither wise nor grown-up, had they?

‘Where did you go when you left here?’ she questioned after yet another taut moment scrambled between them.

Letting go of her arm, he released a sigh. ‘I flew to the apartment in Athens and just stayed there. By the time I returned here to the island you had already left with your family.'

‘Two weeks later, Andreas,’ Louisa provided. ‘I waited two weeks for you to come back.'

His dark eyes were steady on her, not a hint of apology in them. ‘And you, agape mou, gave me only two weeks to come to my senses before deciding to go …'

It was the cool counter-challenge, Louisa recognised. It was the new tougher male with compromise spread very thin. She could have said more. She could have reminded him how he had not called her once while she’d been in England to ask how she was coping. She could even explain how she’d come back to the island six miserable weeks later, only to discover that he was not here. Or she could tell him how she’d flown to Athens and gone to their apartment, witnessed for herself what he had been doing to blot her out of his life.

But why bother when all of that was in the past and the consensus of opinion was that it was time to let the past go? It was over between them. It had been over for the last five years, which only made the lusty romp on the hill all the more shameful and what might come from it something she could repent at her leisure once she got back home.

Taking a blind glance at her watch, ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Jamie in ten minutes,’ she lied and walked away from him.

CHAPTER SIX

ANDREAS watched her go with his eyes narrowed and his chest feeling as if it was about to explode.

Blame her? He was still struggling to believe she had actually said that. How could she possibly think that he would blame her for anything when it had to be patently obvious that the only person he’d ever blamed for what had happened was himself?

Swinging away, he glared at the ocean. He should have been there. He should have been keeping his promise to his wife and his son instead of playing the big tycoon who found the alluring drug of power more important to him than them.

Well, he’d learnt that lesson in life the hardest way. She had accepted none of his calls to her parents’ house while she’d been in England. She’d switched off her mobile phone. When he’d flown to London to see her he’d been stonewalled by her cold-faced parents telling him that their daughter did not want to see him or speak to him. After that kick in the gut he’d flown back to Athens and spent the next few weeks stone-cold drunk.

Turning round, he saw she was in the process of squatting down and kissing her fingertips before gently pressing them to their son’s bright white marble headstone. His throat tightened, a whole gamut of aches raking through him as he watched her remain there like that with the hot sun beating down on her golden head and her fingers lingering where she had placed them.

So what next? he mused grimly. Where did the two of them go from here?

Not where that cold little look she’d sent him before she walked away said they were going anyway, he determined. This was not over yet by a long way and the sooner Louisa came to terms with that, the easier it was going to be for both of them.

By the time Louisa straightened up he was at her side again. ‘I will drive you back to the hotel.'

‘I can walk,’ she refused.

There was a short pause followed by one of those impatient shifts of his body, then his voice arrived so close to her ear it wove words around her like silk. ‘Perhaps I should tell you that Father Lukas is standing by the chapel entrance watching us,’ he murmured. ‘Do you want to give him fresh gossip to spread about us while we have yet another argument right here across our son’s grave?'

It was the ‘our son’s grave’ part that reached her, the sheer irreverence of arguing here at all. Taking a quick glance from beneath the shelter of her eyelashes to check that what he was saying about the priest was true, ‘OK,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘I will accept the lift.'

‘Thank you,’ he drawled drily, then made her muscles stiffen as one of his hands slipped around her slender waist as he bent across her and reached out with his other hand to straighten the already perfectly straight little toy car on its ledge.

The warm, tangy scent of him swirled around her senses, the hot sun picked out the blackness of his hair and the rich golden colour of his skin. She tried to relax in his light grasp, tried not to notice the way his fingers lingered on the white marble ledge for a few more seconds before he slid them away and straightened up again. But the sudden sting gathering in her eyes and her throat was the sting of thick tears because she knew that his lingering touch on the toy car meant the same to a Greek male who did not show his emotions in public as the tender farewell kiss she’d just pressed to the marble stone.

‘Let’s go,’ he said gruffly and turned her towards the gap in the wall which led to the car park.

‘W-we should go and speak to Father Lukas,’ she managed to mumble across the threatening tears.

‘He will not want to intrude on our privacy today of all days,’ Andreas said quietly. ‘Unless, of course,’ he then added smoothly, ‘you want me to ask him how quickly he can arrange the renewal of our marriage vows.'

That totally unexpected, truly sardonic comment sent Louisa lurching from hot tears into a bristling fury she had to fight to keep down if she didn’t want Father Lukas to see her blow up.

‘I’m going to pretend that you never said that,’ she whispered hotly. ‘That way you won’t get blood on your fancy suit!'

‘I take it that renewing our vows is not to your liking, then?’ Andreas responded lightly.

‘Being near you at all is not to my liking!’ Louisa flung back.

‘Shame you did not think about that the other night.’

Louisa gave up trying to behave and went to wrench free of him. ‘I don’t know where you get the flat arrogance to believe you can joke about it!'

‘No joke.’ Long fingers pinned her right where she was.

‘Well, you’re mad, then, if you’re daring to think I actually want to stay married to you!'

‘Well, no child of mine will be born out of wedlock,’ he informed her. ‘So divorce is out, which leaves us with—what option left?'

Divorce …?

With that one casually uttered word he shattered her. It was like driving at full speed into a brick wall. For all the long hours she’d battled with letting go of their past, the crazily logical solution of divorce had not so much as entered her head!

Why hadn’t it?

She pulled to a shuddering stop in the dusty car park. Divorce, she repeated to herself. The final solution. It was sensible. It brought proper closure to everything—freed them both to get on with the rest of their lives.

So why was she feeling as if she was being turned inside out?

Andreas twisted to stand in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, his voice a low, husky rasp. ‘Stop trembling,’ he muttered. ‘It isn’t as if we.’ He ground to a stop suddenly, the black bars of his eyebrows pulling together across the bridge of his nose as his fingers lightly tested the heat in her skin. ‘How long have you been sitting out here in the sun?’ he demanded.

Dusky eyelashes flickering away from turbulent blue eyes, she barely heard what he had said. ‘I’m not pregnant,’ she whispered.

‘I thought you had more sense than to sit in the sun without shelter,’ he muttered. ‘Now your lovely skin is so hot it—'

‘Andreas—I am not pregnant!’ she choked out.

His fingers stilled on her burning shoulders, a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. He looked into her eyes, her wide, blue, anxious eyes. ‘But you are seriously concerned that you could be,’ he said, ‘or you would not have spent several minutes standing outside the pharmacy the other morning fighting with yourself before deciding that you could not do it.'