The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride

He turned back to Edward, who was watching him with growing curiosity, and smiled blandly.

‘How about some more coffee?’ he asked, and Edward’s own smile widened as he poured.

Althea had taken the bus from her father’s house in Kifissia to an upscale boutique on Tsakalof Street in Kolonaki. Her father gave her very little pocket money, and she was careful with what she had.

Now she sat on a leather-cushioned bench as Iolanthe tried on pair after pair of high-heeled sandals. ‘Everyone has these now,’ she said, twisting her ankles to catch a better view of the sandals’ gaudy beading. ‘Don’t you want some, Althea?’

Althea shrugged and eyed the pointed heels. ‘They look like a deathtrap for the dance floor.’

‘And you are a good dancer.’ Iolanthe met Althea’s eyes in the mirror and winked. ‘I saw you and Angelos last night.’

Althea remembered Angelos’s hands pulling on her hips, pulling her towards him, and suppressed a grimace. She stretched her arms along the railing behind her and shrugged. ‘You and everyone else at the club.’

‘He was telling everyone you ditched that man you left with to be with him. Is that true?’

Damn him, Althea thought, but she shrugged again. ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’

‘Who did you leave with? He looked…’ Iolanthe paused, her eyes flicking over her own appearance, the smooth, girlish curve of her cheek and shoulder, the sequined top and fringed skirt she wore. ‘Old,’ she finally said, and Althea laughed.

‘Oh, he’s old. At least thirty.’

‘Older than us,’ Iolanthe protested, andAlthea shrugged again.

Compared to Iolanthe, nineteen years old and determined to have fun, she felt old. Sometimes she felt ancient.

‘Anyway, you left him?’

‘After a while,’ Althea replied. ‘Now, are you going to buy those sandals or not? I’m hungry, and there’s a cafе right across the street.’

‘So you did go back with Angelos!’ Iolanthe kicked them off and a sales assistant came forward to replace them in the box.

‘Would madam like the sandals…?’

‘Yes, yes—ring it up.’ Iolanthe waved a hand and turned back to Althea. ‘Well?’

‘What do you think I did?’

‘Althea…!’ Iolanthe pouted. ‘You never tell me what you get up to. I have to hear it from some man—or, worse, the newspapers.’

‘The tabloids will print anything,’ Althea dismissed in a bored voice. ‘Now, let’s get a coffee.’

They sat outside, the sun hot despite the brisk breeze of early spring. A steady stream of shoppers moved by in a blur of colour and chatter, the trill of a dozen different mobile phones punctuating Iolanthe’s insistent pestering for details.

Althea took a sip of coffee and realised how tired she was. Tired of pretence, tired of everything, and she’d been tired for so long.

She sighed, smiled, and returned her attention to Iolanthe’s chatter. Her lifestyle had suited her for the last several years. It would continue to do so.

She didn’t really have any choice.

‘Hello, big brother.’

Demos closed the door of his loft apartment in Piraeus harbour and turned around slowly. Brianna sat sprawled on his sofa, grinning up at him as she lazily swung her feet.

Demos watched her, and a chill of apprehension crawled through him. He shook it off with determined force and moved to greet her. ‘Hello, Brianna. This is…a surprise.’ He didn’t think she’d ever been to his apartment before, and he wondered how she’d got in.

‘I got the key from the woman downstairs,’ Brianna said, in answer to his silent question. She smiled impishly. ‘She thought I was one of your women, but when I explained I was your sister…’

‘Of course.’ He forced himself to smile as he kissed her cheek, his gaze sweeping over her outfit—what there was of it. ‘Your skirt is too short.’

Brianna pouted, and Demos tried to smile again. His sister was looking at him with too much hope and fear in those wide, wistful eyes. Turning away, he went into the kitchen. Brianna scrambled up from the sofa to follow him.

‘You’re one to talk,’ she said, hands on her hips, and a smile tugged at Demos’s mouth despite his intention to remain stern and aloof with his littlest sister. He could never stay so for long; he’d given her bottles as a baby, had taught her to walk, had promised…

No. He wouldn’t think about that. He turned back to her, arching one eyebrow as he smiled playfully. ‘Am I? I don’t wear skirts.’

She giggled, a practised girlish trill that grated on his nerves, his memories. ‘Demos! I meant that the women you’re seen with do.’

An image of Althea in that scrap of a silver dress flashed through his mind. The defiant sparkle of those sea-coloured eyes, the sensual promise of her smile. He wondered yet again why she intrigued him so much. Why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. ‘What do you know about the women I’m seen with?’ he asked, and Brianna shrugged.

‘I see the papers.’

‘Mama lets you read those?’

‘Demos, I’m twenty-one! She can’t stop me!’

Demos frowned, once more taking in his sister’s painted face and tarty clothes. She was trying to look sophisticated, he supposed, and missing by a mile. ‘When are you going to settle down and marry a nice boy? Someone from the neighbourhood? That Antonios, the chemist’s son—he’s always been sweet on you.’

Brianna made a sound of disgust, her eyes sparking. ‘Antonios! He’s an oaf.’

‘A nice oaf,’ Demos countered mildly, although he observed her clenched fists and sparkling eyes with another chill. ‘He has a steady job—’

‘I want more than that!’ Brianna stood with her hands on her hips, her chin and chest thrust out aggressively. She looked so defiant, so determined, that Demos paused, the chill intensifying once more to a deep remembered dread. He recognised the glitter in Brianna’s eyes, the trembling of her lips.

For the last eight years he’d kept his distance—for her sake as well as his own. Because he’d believed it was the right thing to do. Brianna needed him too much, looked up to him too much. She always had—ever since he’d held her as a baby in his arms and she’d reached up and lovingly grabbed his chin. Sometimes it felt as if she’d never let go. She’d wanted him to be father, friend, saviour.

And he never could be.

Now, observing her desperate, defiant stance, Demos realised how those eight years had lulled him into a sense of security. Peace. Both began to crumble.

‘Brianna,’ he asked gently, ‘why are you here?’

He saw a flicker of uncertainty chase across her features and his dread deepened, pooled icily in his stomach. His only contact with Brianna had been his intermittent visits to where she lived with his mother and stepfather, Stavros. Only twenty minutes away, yet it was another part of the city entirely—another world. Working class, respectable, conservative. So unlike this spacious, airy apartment, positioned above Piraeus’s nightclubs and shipping offices, both businesses vying for space and trade in Athens’s ancient and busiest port.

Yet now she was here, visiting him. Needing him. Looking at him as if he could fix all her problems when he couldn’t.

He knew he couldn’t.

‘I wanted to see you. I never see you any more…’ she began, with a toss of her head, but he heard the tremble of need in her voice and something inside him crumbled and broke. Again.