The Volakis Vows: The Marriage Betrayal / Bride for Real

‘Eleni Ziakis, our hostess. Tally Spencer, my personal assistant,’ she announced chirpily.

A bunch of giggling young girls surged round Cosima in the echoing hall and it was left to Tally to follow the housekeeper upstairs. When Cosima joined them a moment later and saw Tally opening her weekend bag on one of the pair of single divan beds that furnished the bedroom, the younger woman turned to the housekeeper to say imperiously, ‘I can’t share a room with someone … I never share!’

An awkward few minutes followed while the older woman explained that all the guest rooms had already been allocated and Tally was forced to proclaim her willingness to sleep on bare boards if necessary. She was eventually shown up to another floor and put in a room already occupied by a member of the household staff who looked furious at the intrusion of a stranger. Taking the hint that her presence was unwelcome, Tally didn’t bother taking the time to unpack and quickly removed herself again to rejoin her sibling.

As she walked along the corridor on Cosima’s floor a tall broad-shouldered figure with a shock of damp spiky black hair appeared in a doorway. Unintentionally she froze and did a double take because the man wore only a towel wrapped round his lean brown hips. What wasn’t covered by the towel was buff enough to make even Tally stare. He stood over six feet in height and enjoyed the wide shoulders, muscular chest and corrugated six-pack stomach of an athlete. He was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous-looking guy she had ever seen with sculpted cheekbones, skin the colour of dulled gold and a beautifully shaped sensual mouth. The fact that he needed a shave and that black stubble accentuated his stubborn jaw line merely enhanced his masculine sex appeal. Tally was startled to discover that she literally couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘I’ve just flown in from abroad and I’m too hungry to wait for dinner. I’d like sandwiches and coffee,’ he announced, brilliant dark golden eyes arrowing over her expectantly and lingering, for he instantly noticed that she was an exceptionally pretty girl, even if she wasn’t quite in his usual style. ‘Would that be possible?’

‘I’m sure it would be, but …’

‘I can’t raise anyone on the house phone. I did try.’ A scorching smile slashed his handsome mouth, lending him more charismatic pull than any guy with his already stunning looks required.

‘I’m not on the staff here,’ Tally told him gently.

‘You’re not?’ Sander studied her and the longer he looked, the more he liked what he saw. She had a knockout quality of warmth and friendliness that he found hugely attractive.

Her mass of dark blonde corkscrew ringlets was very unusual. Her eyes were the colour of shamrocks, her nose was endearingly freckled and her lush sexy mouth looked as though it would be most at home laughing or smiling. Her skin was as flawless as newly whipped cream. She was very natural, not a word or a state he was used to attaching to the women he met, and that intrigued him. He could tell at a glance that she didn’t take herself too seriously because no woman of his acquaintance would have been caught dead in her ordinary jeans and khaki T-shirt combo. On the other hand, those unprepossessing garments encased a very shapely figure that went in at all the right places and came out wonderfully generously in others. His hooded dark gaze rested appreciatively on the ripe swell of her breasts below the fine cotton top. He liked a woman to look like a woman, not a skinny boy.

Beneath that speculative appraisal, Tally was getting breathless. ‘No, I’m not on the staff but I’m not exactly a guest either. I’m here to sort of look after one of the younger guests.’ Registering that her tongue was running on without the guidance of her brain, she fell silent and coloured hotly at the way in which his attention was locked onto her breasts. She hated it when men did that but somehow when he did it, it sent an arrow of heat shooting down into her pelvis and her nipples tightened and stiffened uncomfortably inside her bra.

‘Look, if I see a member of staff downstairs I’ll mention your request,’ Tally assured him.

‘I’m Sander Volakis,’ he informed her lazily, his keen eyes trained to her like a hawk on the hunt. She was different and he, having recently dispensed with his latest bed partner because of her strident demands for his attention, was definitely in the mood for something different in the female line. Someone more low-key and less spoiled, he reasoned, a woman who might appreciate his interest without endeavouring to turn a casual affair into the romance of the century. A woman who worked for a living in an ordinary capacity would make a refreshing change from the celebrity beauties and models he usually dated. If she had no interest in achieving her fifteen minutes of fame, she might also be more trustworthy and less likely to flog the story of their affair to some mucky tabloid publication, he reasoned broodingly, for he loathed that kind of exposure in his private life.

Tally nodded, not recognising the name but liking the fracturing edge of the foreign accent that roughened his deep dark drawl.

‘And you are?’ he prompted, noting her lack of response to his name and encouraged by the tantalising suspicion that she might know nothing about him. No preset expectations would make for a more laid-back affair.

Tally blinked in surprise at the question. ‘Tally … Tally Spencer.’

‘And Tally is short for?’

People didn’t usually bother to ask and with reluctance Tally admitted, inwardly squirming, ‘Tallulah.’

Sander grinned, his amusement unhidden. ‘Lysander,’ he traded mockingly as he withdrew into his room again. ‘What were our parents thinking of?’

So preoccupied was Tally after that tantalising encounter that she almost walked head first into a pillar on the imposing landing that lay several yards further on. Blinking rapidly to clear her head, she descended the stairs and laughed at the recollection of the way her brain had gone walkabout and she had gawped at him as if he had magically dropped down from the sky. Evidently she was more susceptible to a good-looking guy than she had ever had reason to suspect. She was less amused by the recollection of her body’s hormonal reaction to him—that just embarrassed and irritated her. No man had ever made her feel silly and all hot and shivery in his presence before. Lysander Volakis, Greek, named for a Spartan general and built like one, her brain added with defiant force. She passed on his request for sandwiches to a maid passing through the hall.

Tally found Cosima in a girlie, giggly huddle in one corner of a gracious reception room and it didn’t take her teenaged sister’s warning look for Tally to decide that she was too mature to join the group without casting a dampener over their mood. There were drinks glasses on the table but there was no way of knowing who was drinking what in such a gathering. But Tally wondered anxiously if her sibling was consuming alcohol and if her father turned a blind eye to his daughter doing it a year short of the legal age limit. Determined not to get on the wrong side of her sister, however, she went off to explore the house and grounds.

Eleni Ziakis, his late brother’s former fiancée, delivered Sander’s sandwiches and coffee to his bedroom with her own fair hands and then she lingered as if her legs had turned to stone. Indeed so intent was the talkative brunette on ensuring his comfort, hanging on his every word and assuring him of how very welcome he was in her home, that she killed his appetite. It was steadily turning into the weekend from hell, Sander decided grimly when he finally saw her off. Eleni’s parents were not present to act as hosts, there was a bunch of teenyboppers running about the place with Eleni’s kid sister, Kyra, and Sander had walked into two of his ex-girlfriends within minutes of his arrival. One he was quite happy to catch up with, but the other—Birgit Marceau—was a less welcome sight. Birgit, the moody and tempestuous daughter of a French construction magnate, had taken their brief affair the year before way too seriously and had dealt badly with the break-up. Although Sander knew that he had done nothing wrong, he always felt uncomfortable when Birgit’s limpid brown eyes followed him mournfully round the room.

Tally wiled away an hour or so exploring the grounds before she ended up at the stable block, meeting and greeting the various mounts. Offered the chance to ride a friendly mare the following morning, she had to pass because she had never learned. She would once she was earning enough money to cover lessons, she told herself firmly. Crystal had insisted on her daughter attending ballet classes that she hated for years, but had refused to allow a little girl she already saw as worryingly tomboyish take horse-riding lessons.

Having little interest in clothes, money and men, Tally had not much in common with her mother. Her determination to live within her financial means and her dream of some day running her own interior design business were foreign to Crystal, who hated budgets and expected the man in her life to keep her. Tally’s enthusiasm for life and new experiences and her sheer energy were equally strange to her indolent mother.

‘Where have you been?’ Cosima demanded when Tally walked back into the big front hall.

‘Out seeing the horses,’ Tally confided.

Drawing closer, Cosima wrinkled her dainty little nose with distaste. ‘I can smell them on you!’

‘I’ll take a shower before dinner,’ Tally said cheerfully and she headed for the stairs just as Sander strolled down them, looking impossibly cool in well cut chinos and an open shirt.

‘Tally, you’ve been out doors,’ Sander noted, registering that her hair had been whipped into a gloriously wild tangle of streaming curls and her cheeks had been stung pink by the breeze. She looked more vibrant, sensual and kissable than ever. He loved the fact that she wasn’t fussing with her appearance or trying to duck his notice because her appearance was less than perfect. He could not recall when a woman had last been so real in his radius and it was a powerful attractant.

‘Saying hello to the horses,’ Tally confided with her ready smile, colliding with dark golden eyes fringed by sooty black lashes and feeling positively dizzy. Close up he was absolutely breathtaking and her mouth ran dry and her knees felt weak.

‘Maybe now that you’ve had a break you could take care of Cosima’s ironing. I’m afraid the staff are very busy this evening,’ another female voice interposed loudly.

Tally turned in some surprise to regard her hostess, Eleni Ziakis. ‘I’m sorry but why would I do Cosima’s ironing? I’m not her maid.’

‘No, she’s not,’ Cosima was quick to agree, her discomfiture patent in the face of Tally’s polite bewilderment.

Sander recognised with impatience that Eleni had spotted his interest in Tally and he strode off before his presence could trigger any further baiting from that source. Women, he thought in exasperation; can’t live with them, can’t live without them. His keen gaze was welded by libidinous male instinct to the voluptuous sway of Tally’s beautifully rounded backside as she climbed the stairs and the ready pulse of arousal at his groin let him know that he had gone without sex long enough to be getting uncomfortable. Her exuberant smile had informed him, should he ever have doubted the fact, that his interest was reciprocated. He would not be sleeping alone that night, he decided hungrily.

‘When the heck did you get to know Sander Volakis?’ Cosima gasped in disbelief, curiosity having sent her upstairs in her half-sister’s wake.

‘I ran into him earlier and he introduced himself … it’s no big deal,’ Tally fielded lightly.

‘The way Eleni was watching the two of you, it was a very big deal to her!’ Cosima laughed. ‘She used to be engaged to Sander’s older brother, Titos, but he was killed in a car crash last winter. I think Eleni’s trying to keep her interest in the family but she’ll have her work cut out. Sander is a real womaniser!’

In the midst of struggling to conceal her interest in those titbits of information, Tally was betrayed into turning right round and saying, ‘Is he?’

‘He has a new woman every month. Don’t waste your time, Tally,’ Cosima warned her. ‘Everybody dreams of pulling Sander but you’ll never make the grade.’

Tally flushed, her freckles standing out clearly against her fair complexion. ‘I have no desire to make the grade,’ she lied, and the very fact that she knew she was lying affronted her as she had always believed that she had more sense than to be attracted to the sort of arrogant guy who scored women like goals on the football pitch and marked a notch his bed post accordingly.

‘I’m not trying to put you down but you’re so not his type. He goes for really beautiful women … models, actresses,’ Cosima told her, her brown eyes scanning Tally’s unconsciously disappointed face with a touch of condescending amusement. ‘He’s got quite a reputation …’

‘I’m not interested in Sander Volakis!’ Tally proclaimed in a tone of annoyance.

Cosima made no attempt to hide her amusement. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say no if I got the chance and Dad would back me all the way—Sander is what is known as “eligible”, which basically means that the girl who gets him to the altar will have done very, very well for herself indeed!’

‘I gather he’s rich,’ Tally remarked, irritating herself, for while pride made her want to drop the subject, the curiosity that needled her and drove her on was stronger still.

‘I heard he made his first million before he even left school and even before you take his business interests into account you have to consider the family fortune,’ Cosima responded in a suitably lowered tone, an avaricious gleam in her gaze. ‘They made it in shipping and business is thriving.’

Tally actually found herself feeling sorry for Sander Volakis. Evidently his wealth and his family’s made him a target for ambitious socialites and gold-diggers. It struck her as ironic that Cosima, who had never ever had to worry about the cost of anything, should be so very obsessed with what everyone was worth, but that was how it was. Her half-sister measured people and their importance purely in terms of cash and Tally was very much aware that her own lack of money increased her lowly status in Cosima’s eyes.

However, when Cosima showed off her pathetically crumpled evening outfit Tally took pity on the younger girl. Cosima had never wielded an iron in her life but was forced to agree to try when Tally offered to teach her how it was done. For the first time Tally felt like a real sister and the two young women ended up in paroxysms of giggles over Cosima’s clumsy amateurish efforts at the ironing board.

‘What are you wearing?’ Cosima finally thought to ask.

‘Nothing very exciting.’

‘I’d loan you something but …’ Cosima glanced at their combined reflections in the wardrobe mirror and nothing more needed to be said. Cosima was tall and very slim while Tally was small and curvy. They would never be able to share clothes.