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

Conspiracies. She shivered. Their marriage had been cunningly manipulated by two families who’d conspired to make it come to an end. Even her visits back to this island had been carefully coordinated to ensure that she and Andreas did not meet.

‘What you said about my brother.’ Andreas prompted darkly.

‘I used to tell you about Alex bating me and you used to just brush it off as sibling jealousy. And you know what?’ she said starkly. ‘I think you were right. At least Alex was open about what he thought about me, while.’ while the rest of them smiled nicely as they stabbed us in the back. ‘I knew you blamed me f-for what happened to Nikos—'

‘Will you stop staying that?’ Andreas sighed. ‘I did not blame you!'

‘Why not, when I blamed myself?’ she choked out. ‘And it was my own guilt that they worked on, wasn’t it? They used it to let me go on believing that you …'

She couldn’t say any more because the tears really were threatening now.

‘I have to go and deal with this.’ The way he suddenly burst out of his stillness left Louisa blinking as he strode through the archway like a man about to—

Leaping up from her chair, she ran after him. ‘Andreas—!'

He was halfway up the steps that led to the lobby when she called him. He stopped but he didn’t turn, the full length of his frame stiff with anger.

‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘Don’t go off angry like you used to do when you didn’t like something!’ ‘You’re upset.’

‘Of course I’m upset. So are you! But think about it,’ she pleaded. ‘Charging off to slay them all isn’t going to change anything now!'

‘They stole five years from us,’ he roughed out hoarsely.

‘Yes.’ Her voice quivered. But it wasn’t only them who’d done that. She was thinking about the woman she’d seen him with—the one part of their conversation earlier he had oh, so carefully edited out!

His wide shoulders flexed inside the blue shirting. ‘They reduced us both to complete failures as a husband or wife in our own eyes …'

Louisa had to cover her unsteady mouth.

‘And to sitting alone at our son’s graveside when we should have been sitting there together …'

Oh, it was all so unforgivably cruel when put like that. ‘I suppose they believed it was the best thing for both of us at the time or—'

‘You believe that?’ He swung round to blister a burning look at her.

‘Yes—no!’ She gave a helpless shake of her head. ‘I don’t know what to think—I’m still reeling too much from the shock to think!'

‘Well, I am not reeling, so you can leave me to deal with it.’ He turned away again.

‘By climbing onto your jet plane and flying to England so you can have my parents lined up and shot?’ she cried out. ‘Well, don’t go fighting my battles for me, Andreas. I don’t need you to do anything for me any more!'

Wrong thing to say.

Louisa knew it the moment that his shoulders racked up and the air began to crackle. When he turned around, one glance at his face and she knew all the anger inside him and the monstrous feelings of hurt had made a switch to something else.

‘I think we have strayed away from the main plot a little,’ he murmured, coming back down the steps.

‘Meaning what?’ she asked warily.

‘Meaning that this started out as a discussion about you and me enjoying the exciting wonders of unprotected sex on a hill.'

‘Are we about to have another fight about whether I’m pregnant or not?’ she sighed out. ‘For goodness’ sake, one mistake does not automatically make a baby!'

Her half-shrieked words echoed off painted walls but he didn’t even blink. ‘It did with Nikos. One time without protection. One beautiful boy exquisitely conceived. One marriage hastily arranged.'

Louisa closed her eyes and tried to keep a grip on her temper because she knew where this was leading. ‘I am not taking up the role of your wife again on the wild off-chance that we’ve done the same thing again!'

‘Wild does not cover it.’

He sounded so close suddenly that she flicked her eyes open, her insides tumbling when she saw just how close he had come. Looking up into his face was like putting your fingers too close to a burning flame—dangerous, she likened as his sheer height and breadth and muscled strength snatched away her breath. Pure self-defence made her ease back from him, her breasts fluttering on an unsteady breath when she found her spine flattened up against the wall.

He followed—lazily, a wide shoulder coming to rest on the wall to one side of her, a long arm stretching across her to brace the flat of his palm on the wall on her other side, the whole manoeuvre aimed to trap her inside a circle of that oh-so-macho web of leashed power.

‘Let us deal with this issue once and for all,’ he murmured ever so softly, ‘and keep looking at me while we talk, agape mou,’ he instructed when she shut her eyes again to block it all out. ‘I want you to see in my face that I am not playing around here.'

Louisa knew that already. She knew it with every slowly shredding nerve in her body that this was no game. She tried for some air that would help keep her head clear, couldn’t help moistening her suddenly dry lips as she lifted her chin and slowly opened her eyes. This close up he was without doubt the most frighteningly gorgeous man she had ever encountered—or ever wanted to encounter, she extended helplessly. One Andreas had always been more than enough for her.

‘All right,’ wrapping her arms across her breasts, she tried for a careless shrug, ‘say what you want to say.'

‘You don’t want to see blood spilt and I do. So I will make a deal with you.'

‘What kind of deal?’

‘Be my wife again, in every sense, and I will attempt to control my desire to spill blood.'

‘This is silly,’ she shot out. ‘Why talk about this now when we will know one way or another in a couple of weeks if it even needs discussing at all? Once I’m back in England and can buy a testing kit without causing another Markonos scandal to erupt here, of course.’ She could not resist the sarcastic tag-on.

‘Because it isn’t just about the pregnancy now. I want more than that.’ He ignored her sarcasm. ‘I want my lost five years back.'

Her folded arms tightened. ‘You can’t have them back, Andreas.'

‘Then someone has to pay for their loss.’

‘Oh, stop being so disgustingly primitive,’ she snapped crossly. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—I thought it was the Greeks who pulled the rest of us out of the Dark Ages!'

He smiled at that. ‘Quick,’ he commended. ‘But you will not change my mind. You come back to me or our two families will pay the price.'

Her sensitive stomach turned queasy again. ‘I’ll give you an answer in a couple of weeks.'

‘I can do a lot of damage in a couple of weeks, agape mou.‘

Her chin shot up. ‘Stop calling me your darling when you’re standing here trying to intimidate and blackmail me!'

‘You would prefer me to use other incentives …?’

Eyes spiralling into a darker shade of blue, Louisa didn’t need to ask what those other incentives would be. ‘I should have known you would bring this right down to its most basic function,’ she muttered.

‘Sex,’ he dared to name it, ‘now, in one of the furnished bedrooms,’ he offered. ‘Think about it,’ he urged. ‘You and me coupling like we used to do, driving each other mad for hours and hours.’ Bringing up a hand he gently touched the telling burn in one of her cheeks. ‘We could enjoy a whole afternoon of glorious unprotected sex with no interruptions from—'