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

A sigh feathered her as she leant against the ferry rail with the warm breeze gently blowing her silk gold hair back from her face. She’d been making this pilgrimage once a year for the last five years to visit her son’s resting place and not once in those five years had she stepped foot on Markonos land. It was as if, once she’d left Andreas, she’d severed almost all links with the Markonos name.

Coming here simply brought her back to her son.

‘OK?’ a gruff voice questioned beside her.

Turning her head to look up at the tall, dark, rather handsome young man who’d come to stand beside her, Louisa saw the anxious look in his eyes and smiled.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me, Jamie. I come back here too often for it to be a major stress to me.'

And time softens pain, she added silently as she turned to watch the set of car headlights disappear from view down the other side of the peninsula. It would be on its way to meet the ferry, she judged. By the time the ferry opened its doors, the tiny port would be swarming with activity, the café bars lining the waterfront alive with a festive atmosphere that traditionally hit the island once a week.

‘Do you remember any of this?’ she asked her younger brother.

He had been so young when they first came to this island, but now look at him, Louisa thought fondly as he dipped his long body so he could rest his forearms on the rail beside her own. The scrawny little boy with a thatch of blonde hair had grown into a male hunk—youthful-style. And his hair was no longer blonde but dark and cropped to suit the current fashion, his attractive face trying its best to shed the last of its baby softness that still lingered around his cheeks.

‘I remember standing right about here with you to watch as we rounded the hill,’ he murmured.

‘You mean you were hanging over the rail in excitement,’ Louisa teased him. ‘I was so scared you were going to topple over and fall in the water that I had a death grip on the waistband of your jeans.'

Jamie grinned, all flashing white teeth and man-boyish charm. ‘Mum and Dad were no use. They’d caught the holiday bug and were too busy canoodling further along the rail to notice if we both fell in the water.'

Louisa’s blue eyes widened. ‘You remember that?’

The grin changed to a grimace. ‘I remember too much about that time if you want the truth. Like you meeting Andreas and flipping your lid over him then all the craziness that followed which ended up with you being abandoned here.'

‘I was not abandoned!’ Louisa protested.

‘Our parents abandoned you, to the Greek family from hell.'

‘That’s just not true—’

‘Then Andreas abandoned you.’

‘Because he had to finish his degree,’ Louisa pointed out.

‘Because he got you pregnant,’ Jamie said bluntly, ‘was forced to marry you then ran away—the coward.'

‘Jamie!’ his sister gasped out. ‘I always thought you liked Andreas!'

‘I did,’ he shrugged, ‘until he messed you up then threw you out of his life.'

‘He did not throw me out of anything,’ Louisa denied, shocked that he was saying any of this. ‘I left Andreas of my own free will. And I would love to know, Jamie, why on earth you invited yourself along on this trip if you still feel so bad about what happened back then!'

Straightening away from the rail, her brother shoved his hands into the pockets of his low-slung baggy jeans. ‘For Nikos,’ he said. ‘I wanted to pay my respects to Nikos and I knew I wouldn’t get another chance for years once I go to uni and …’ he pulled in a deep breath ‘.and I’m looking forward to coming face to face with Andreas so I can punch him.'

Louisa couldn’t help it—she laughed. ‘He would kill you before you lifted your fist to him,’ she mocked. ‘Have you forgotten he’s six feet three inches tall and built like a tank?'

‘I’ve been working out,’ her brother said stiffly.

‘For this chance to punch Andreas?’

‘No,’ he shifted uncomfortably, knowing that his sister knew that he’d been working out purely and simply to impress the girls, ‘but I would still love the chance to have a go at him.'

‘Because you believe you have—what right?’

His chin thrust forwards. ‘The right of a brother who never did understand why Dad didn’t beat the hell out of Andreas years ago when he left you in the state you were in.’

Grief-stricken, in other words, Louisa recalled bleakly, so inconsolable Andreas had taken himself out of her presence to work out his own grief elsewhere. When she had finally given in to pressure and let her parents take her back to England with them, she’d expected Andreas to come and get her but he never had …

Shaking her head, she stopped herself from going down that particularly bumpy pathway. To recall how she’d eventually run back to him, only to discover how he had found his own form of consolation, was a fool’s game, she told herself.

‘Well, you are out of luck because Andreas won’t be here,’ she informed her brother. ‘His mother’s email said he’s in Thailand. And since this trip here is about Nikos not Andreas,’ she then added curtly, ‘I would prefer it if you kept your vengeful thoughts to yourself.'

With that she spun back to the ferry rail, frowning and wondering why she had bothered to defend Andreas when he had turned out to be such a rat, a wimp, a useless, faithless—

Beside her Jamie shifted his stance. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘Look,’ she said quietly, ‘we’re turning into the harbour …'

Sure enough, the ferry was nosing round the headland and the town, with its pretty whitewashed tumble of buildings hugging the curving hillside, was floating into view. Lights from the line of open-air café-bars glowed softly in the warm night and the sound of Greek music drifted across the still water, welcoming them in.

The warm breeze tried its best to soothe the savagery out of his face as Andreas drove down the hill into town, the gold strap to his watch glinting against his hair-roughened wrist as he passed beneath lamplights that lit the narrow streets. As he swung the car onto the road which ran alongside the harbour the familiar sound of Greek music floated towards him from the row of café-bars lining the other side of the street.

The ferry had beaten him in, he saw as he crawled at a snail’s pace, hunting for a parking space in a street lined nose-to-nose with every kind of vehicle imaginable. As luck would have it, an old truck pulled out of the line of parked vehicles and he shot into the vacant space, switched off the engine then just sat back in his seat with the brooding darkness of his gaze fixed on the flow of people trailing down the ferry companionway along with the usual offload of trucks and cars.

He did not know why he was still sitting here instead of heading for one of the bars as he had promised himself. He didn’t even know why he had come into the town at all. That blazing desire to find a bar and get drunk had been an impulse, he admitted, borne on the back of an old solution to memories he did not want to face. But it had been many years now since he’d drowned his sorrows in alcohol. These days he preferred to immerse himself in work and—

His thoughts suddenly ground to a standstill. His heart did the same thing, every muscle he possessed locking up tight as his eyes fixed on the young woman walking off the ferry with the warm breeze gently lifting the silk gold of her hair back from the softly pointed shape of her face.

A face he would not forget in two lifetimes. A face that had been haunting him for five long years.

It was Louisa. Louisa was walking off the ferry wearing loose white trousers and a pale blue T-shirt.

She’s come home, was the next thought to hit.

Jamie had taken charge of their two canvas holdalls. Having hitched her backpack onto her shoulders, Louisa had taken charge of her brother’s backpack then they’d joined the steady stream of people making their way off the boat.

It was good to reach solid land again but the smell of burning diesel fumes as the roll-on roll-off process went on around them made them hurry to reach cleaner air.

‘I need to put some credit on my mobile,’ Jamie announced as soon as they reached a clear patch of concrete close to the street. ‘Do you think one of those bars will sell top-ups?'

‘This might be a lazy backwater of a place but I think it knows about cell-phones,’ his sister said drily. ‘Try the bar opposite,’ she suggested. ‘But I thought you topped it up before we left England?'

Her brother suddenly looked truculent. ‘I’ve already used most of it up texting my friends.'

‘Dump the bags next to me,’ she told him. ‘Kostas hasn’t arrived to collect us yet, so I’ll wait for you here.'

‘Right.’ Placing the two heavy bags at her feet, her brother suddenly reached out to engulf her in a bruising bear hug. ‘Sorry about before. I didn’t mean to upset you.'