‘I want to talk to you.’ A nerve jumped in his cheek. ‘Please,’ he added gruffly.
He had the benefit of superior height and strength and could overpower her easily if he chose to. She affected a careless shrug. ‘Fine, you can say what you have to and then leave.’
She parked the buggy in the hallway and left Loukas to finish his nap. Shrugging off her coat, she walked into the sitting room and threw another log into the wood-burning stove. The cottage was tiny and Andreas had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling beams. He had also removed his coat and his grey cashmere jumper was the colour of the stormy sky.
Pain tore through Isla. Andreas’s autocratic features gave no clue to his thoughts. He was a remote stranger and she wanted to weep for the closeness that she was sure she hadn’t imagined between them on Louloudi.
‘How dare you arrange a paternity test behind my back?’ she said in a choked voice. ‘I have never slept with any other man but you.’
His mouth gave an odd twist and he pulled an envelope out of his back pocket. ‘This contains the result of the paternity test. As you can see, it is unopened. The laboratory’s seal is unbroken.’
She stared at him as he walked over to the wood-burner and wrapped the cloth around his hand before he opened the metal door. The crackle and hiss of the fire sounded loud in the silent room.
‘Wait! What are you doing?’ she cried as he threw the envelope into the flames. ‘Don’t you want to know if Loukas is your son?’
Maybe he didn’t care. She could cope, just, with the knowledge that he did not want her, but it was agony to realise that he was rejecting his baby. She leapt forwards and tried to reach the letter but it was already blackened and curling at the edges as it caught light.
‘Careful, you’ll get burned.’ Andreas grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the fire. ‘I received the test result a couple of weeks ago but I didn’t bother to open the letter and I shoved it in a drawer in my desk.’ He turned her to face him and clasped her shoulders. ‘I know Loukas is mine, just as I know that you have never given yourself to anyone but me.’
She shook her head, stunned by the urgency in his voice and the fierce intensity of his gaze. His eyes were almost black but the terrible devastation in his expression couldn’t be real.
‘If you believed me, why did you arrange the test? It can only be because you don’t trust me. But why would you?’ Her voice cracked. ‘I mean nothing to you.’
‘That’s not true.’ His jaw tensed at her look of disbelief. He released her and raked his hand through his hair. ‘I forgot about the damned DNA test.’
‘You forgot about it?’
‘I knew Loukas was mine the instant I saw him. But three years ago an ex-lover told me she was pregnant with my baby. I knew she hadn’t only slept with me, and I asked for a paternity test. Instead Sadie sold a story to the tabloids saying that I was the father of her child but I had refused to support her and the baby. You can imagine the headlines,’ he said harshly. ‘Billionaire refuses to pay for his baby’s nappies was just one example.’
Andreas exhaled heavily. ‘By the time a legal ruling gave me permission to insist on a DNA test—which proved that Sadie had lied and her baby wasn’t mine—the damage had been done. My father was furious that the scandal reflected badly on Karelis Corp. Soon after the story broke I nearly lost my life in a motorbike race. If I hadn’t spent the next few months in Intensive Care I would have sued Sadie for defamation of my character.’
‘But why did she lie to the newspapers?’ Isla’s mind was reeling from Andreas’s revelation.
‘Money, of course,’ Andreas said grimly. ‘She knew the baby wasn’t mine but she sold the story for hundreds of thousands of pounds.’
‘If you had told me about Sadie, I would have understood why you wanted proof that Loukas is yours.’ She bit her lip. ‘Your lack of trust was hurtful. I thought we were friends but when I read the letter from the DNA clinic it made me realise that our relationship was hopeless.’
Andreas spun away from her and walked over to stare out of the window, as if he wanted to avoid her gaze, Isla thought. Looking past his big, powerful frame, she saw the skeleton of the apple tree in the garden, its branches stripped of their last few leaves by the autumn gale. Despite the cheery fire in the sitting room, she shivered.
‘I wanted you the second I saw you at my father’s house in Kensington,’ he said harshly. ‘If I’m honest, I assumed the chemistry between us would fizzle out fairly quickly. No other woman has ever held my interest for long. And I reminded myself why I didn’t want to get involved with you.’
He turned to face her, his eyes narrowing when she made a muffled sound that betrayed how badly he’d hurt her. ‘As a boy I had watched my mother sink into depression and a crazy obsession that ultimately destroyed her because she was unable to win my father’s love. I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of my parents’ marriage in our relationship.’
Isla had thought he couldn’t hurt her more than he already had, but she discovered she was wrong. ‘You were worried that I might be unhappy like your mother was—because I loved you but you didn’t feel the same way about me? God, Andreas,’ she choked, ‘do you enjoy humiliating me?’
He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed her by her shoulders, his fingers biting into her skin through her jumper. His eyes blazed in his tense face and his beautiful mouth twisted. ‘No, omorfia mou. I was terrified that if I admitted to myself that I love you—knowing that you don’t, that you can’t possibly love me, just as no one else ever has—then I would face a lifetime of pain, yearning for something that would never be mine. Yearning for your heart,’ he said thickly, in a voice so raw that Isla trembled.
‘You sent me away,’ she whispered. It still hurt to remember how cold he had been when she’d met him at his office in Athens and told him of her pregnancy.
He nodded. ‘In the year that we were apart I convinced myself I’d dealt with my inexplicable fascination with you. But when I walked into the villa and saw a baby with blue eyes like mine, I lost it. You were the mother of my child and even more beautiful than my memories of you. Loukas gave me an excuse to force you back into my life.’
Isla swallowed. ‘You didn’t force me,’ she said with stark honesty, and watched a nerve flicker in Andreas’s cheek. ‘How many other women did you take to bed as a way of dealing with your alleged fascination with me?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘None.’ He stared into her eyes, his own unguarded, and the fierce emotion she saw in his brilliant gaze made her heart miss a beat. ‘You are the only woman I have ever made love to rather than have sex with, and I haven’t been with anyone since you gave me your virginity. I told myself it was nothing more than amazing chemistry, but desire is only a tiny fraction of what I feel for you.’
Isla took a swift breath, afraid to believe what Andreas seemed to be saying. ‘And what do you feel?’ she whispered.
Silence stretched between them and disappointment crushed her. Fool, she told herself. ‘If this is about Loukas, I won’t stop you seeing him. He needs you and we can work out a way for you to be part of his life.’
Andreas closed his eyes and when he opened them again Isla was stunned to see that his lashes were wet. ‘Your generosity after everything I have done wrong shames me. It’s not Loukas. He is my son and of course I love him and want to be with him. But I was wrong to insist that you marry me when I could see that it wasn’t what you wanted.’
‘I didn’t want a loveless marriage,’ Isla agreed.
‘What about a marriage filled with more love than you can imagine?’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders and wrapped his fingers around hers. ‘I found your engagement ring in the bedroom at the villa.’
She bit her lip, knowing he must have seen the ruined wedding dress. ‘The ring and the dress made a mockery of all I
had hoped for. I couldn’t marry you after I found that you didn’t trust me.’
‘I’d trust you with my life.’ He lifted her hands to his mouth and pressed his lips against her fingers. ‘Theos, when I discovered your ring and the damaged dress, I thought I had lost you for ever, and I knew it was no more than I deserved. I realised then that my life meant nothing without you. I had tried so hard not to love you because I am a coward,’ he said with savage self-derision. ‘What I should have done was try to win your love, and that is what I intend to spend the rest of my life doing, if you will let me.’
Isla’s heart was pounding with a mixture of fear that she had misunderstood what Andreas seemed to be saying, and burgeoning hope. ‘Why do you want to win me?’ she asked shakily.
‘Because I love you more than I believed it is possible to love. Because I can’t bear the thought of living without you in my life.’ He swallowed convulsively. ‘I want to see your face on the pillow beside me when I wake every morning and hold you in my arms every night. You have my heart and my soul, agapi mou. And if you will give me a chance, I will spend the rest of my life proving that I am worthy of you. If you will love me just a little.’
Tears slipped down her cheeks and he kissed them away with such heartbreaking gentleness that she felt as though she would burst with happiness. ‘I can’t love you a little.’ The sheer agony in Andreas’s eyes made her continue quickly. ‘My love for you is so huge that my heart overflows with it.’
She cradled his beloved face in her hands and reached up on her tiptoes to kiss his mouth. He allowed her to be in control of the kiss for a few moments before he groaned and wrapped his arms around her, hauling her up against his hard body and kissing her with a mastery and bone-shaking tenderness that convinced her his love would last for eternity, as her love for him would last to the end of days.
Their son’s cries made them reluctantly break off the kiss. ‘Loukas has bad timing,’ Isla murmured ruefully as Andreas dropped his hand from her breast and she tugged her jumper down.
‘There will be plenty of time for us, kardia mou. We have our whole lives to fill with love, laughter, family.’ The baby stopped crying and they heard him gurgling happily. Andreas smiled at Isla, his love for her there to see on his handsome face and in his eyes as blue as the diamond ring that he pulled from his pocket and slid onto her finger. ‘Will you marry me for no other reason than I love you more than anything in the world?’
She blinked away her tears of joy and smiled back at him. ‘I will.’
EPILOGUE
THEY WERE MARRIED in the little white church on Louloudi. The December sky was a vivid blue and the sun was surprisingly warm, gleaming on Andreas’s beloved Aegean Sea. Isla wore her wedding dress, which had been remade, and she carried a bouquet of white orchids and tiny blue freesias.
Loukas looked adorable in his navy blue outfit and smiled contentedly during the wedding ceremony, held in his Aunt Nefeli’s arms and watched over by his honorary grandmother, Toula. Andreas’s sister had quickly come round to the idea of her brother marrying Isla when she saw how happy he was, and she adored her little nephew.
Nefeli had been waiting outside the church when Isla arrived, escorted by a proud-looking Dinos. ‘I want to apologise for the awful things I said to you,’ the young Greek girl said ruefully.
‘Why don’t we start again, as friends as well as sisters-in-law?’ Isla murmured.
‘I’ve never seen my brother looking nervous,’ Nefeli told her. ‘If he paces up and down the church much more he’ll wear a hole in the floor. He loves you, you know.’
‘I do know.’ Isla was smiling as she walked down the aisle towards the man she loved with all her heart. Andreas looked breathtakingly handsome in a black tuxedo. No longer austere and remote, his expression softened as he waited for his bride to join him in front of the altar, and pride blazed in his blue eyes when they made their vows and the priest pronounced them husband and wife.
‘Well, Kyria Karelis, you’re stuck with me now,’ he whispered in Isla’s ear as they posed on the church steps for the photographer.
‘For ever, my darling love,’ she replied softly, lifting her face for his kiss.
The family’s lawyer, John Sabanis, strolled over and handed them an envelope. ‘Stelios asked me to give you this on your wedding day,’ he said.
‘But how on earth could he have known that we would get married?’ Isla was puzzled as she looked at the wedding card Andreas had opened. He read out what Stelios had written.
To my dearest son Andreas and his beautiful wife Isla.
I knew the first time you met each other that you would fall in love, and on this day, the joyous occasion of your wedding, I wish you all the happiness that you both deserve.
‘I wonder how your father guessed that we would fall for each other,’ Isla mused later that night when she and Andreas were lying naked in each other’s arms. He propped himself up on his elbow and bent his head to claim her mouth in a lingering kiss.
‘Stelios was watching my expression when he introduced us in London and he saw what I couldn’t hide.’
She tenderly stroked a lock of dark hair off her new husband’s brow. ‘What did he see?’
‘The look of love,’ Andreas told her softly. ‘Always and for ever.’
* * *
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The Greek’s Duty-Bound Royal Bride
by Julia James
CHAPTER ONE
LEON DUKARIS GLANCED at the invoice on his desk and then, with an indifferent shrug of one broad shoulder, initialled the hefty sum for payment.
The Viscari St James was one of London’s most expensive and exclusive hotels, and the coup that had ejected Mikal of Karylya from his Grand Duchy in the heart of central Europe had happened with lightning speed less than two weeks ago, so it was not surprising that the Grand Duke was finding it difficult to adjust his royal lifestyle to that of impoverished former ruler, with none of the wealth of his small but highly prosperous fiefdom at his disposal any longer.
It was a difficulty that suited Leon—bankrolling the Grand Duke’s exile was not largesse on his part in the slightest. He gave a tight smile, accentuating the strong planes of his face and indenting the deep lines around his well-shaped mouth, sharpening the gold flecks in his eyes. It was, rather, an investment.
One that he fully intended to pay out handsomely.
His eyes darkened. Suddenly he was not seeing the expensively furnished office, towering over the City of London far below, the private domain of a billionaire and his working environment. His vision went way beyond that—way back into the past. The bitter, impoverished past...
The line for the soup kitchen in the bleak Athens winter, holes in the soles of his shoes, shivering in the cold, queuing for hot food to take back to the cramped lodging where he and his mother had to live now they’d been evicted from their spacious apartment for non-payment of rent. He is all his mother has now—the husband who professed to love her for all eternity has run out on her, abandoning her and him, their young teenage son, to the worst that the collapse of the Greek economy in the great recession
over a dozen years ago can do to them...
And the worst had been bad—very bad—leaving them in an abject poverty that Leon had vowed he would escape, however long it took him.
And he had escaped. His success, doggedly pursued, his focus on nothing else, had lifted him rung by rung up the ladder of financial success. He had taken risks that had always paid off, even if he’d had to steel his nerves with every speculative gamble he pulled off. It had been a relentless pursuit of wealth that had seen him become a financial speculator extraordinaire, spotting multi-million-euro opportunities before others did and seizing them, each one taking him further up into the stratosphere of billionairedom.
But now he wanted his money to achieve something else for him. His smile widened into a tight line of satisfaction. Something that had now come within his reach, thanks to the coup in Karylya that had ousted its sovereign.
The gold glint in Leon’s night-dark eyes came again at the thought. A princess bride to set the seal on his dizzying ascent from the lines for the soup kitchen.
Grand Duke Mikal’s daughter.
* * *
‘Ellie! There is news about your father! Bad news!’
In her head, Ellie could hear the alarm in her mother’s voice, echoing still as she emerged from the tube station at Piccadilly Circus, hurrying down St James’s and into the Hotel Viscari.
A stone’s throw from St James’s Palace, Clarence House and Buckingham Palace itself, it was often frequented by diplomats, foreign politicians and even visiting royalty.
Including deposed visiting royalty.
Deposed.
The word rang chill in Ellie’s head and she felt her stomach clench. The coup causing her father and his family to flee their fairy-tale palace in Karylya had turned the Grand Duke into nothing more than a former sovereign in exile. Ellie’s glance swept the Edwardian opulence of the Viscari’s marbled lobby. Albeit a very luxurious exile...
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