by Lucy Monroe
USA TODAY bestseller LUCY MONROE lives and writes in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest. While she loves her home, she delights in experiencing different cultures and places on her travels, which she happily shares with her readers through her books. A lifelong devotee of the romance genre, Lucy can’t imagine a more fulfilling career than writing the stories in her head for her readers to enjoy.
Also by Lucy Monroe
Million-Dollar Christmas Proposal
Kostas’s Convenient Bride
The Spaniard’s Pleasurable Vengeance
By His Royal Decree miniseries
One Night Heir
Prince of Secrets
Ruthless Russians miniseries
An Heiress for His Empire
A Virgin for His Prize
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
After the Billionaire’s Wedding Vows…
Lucy Monroe
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-0-008-91369-4
AFTER THE BILLIONAIRE’S WEDDING VOWS…
© 2021 Lucy Monroe
Published in Great Britain 2021
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Text to speech
For the love of my life.
Because you have made more than thirty years together feel like it will never be long enough, because when we hit bumps you launched your own bid and it was so worth working our way back to bliss.
I love you so very much and I always, always will!
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Extract
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
GREEK BILLIONAIRE AND societal icon Alexandros Kristalakis stepped into the hall, having wrapped up an international call with one of his business interests in America, unsurprised to find his wife waiting.
Unlike early in their marriage, Pollyanna was always punctual now.
Never late anymore, but neither was she spontaneous. Exuberant expressions of affection had disappeared along with her spontaneity. He’d believed, at first, that was the result of being pregnant the first time around, a difficult period for her emotionally and physically. But giving birth and early motherhood had not seen a reversion to the old habits he’d enjoyed so much.
He could not complain. Pollyanna had worked too hard to adjust to her new lifestyle as the wife of a billionaire Greek from an old and established family.
Coming from a far more relaxed background and a family that had none of the societal expectations of his own and the very different American culture, she’d naturally found it a challenge. But not a challenge his amazing and resilient wife could not meet.
Despite speaking almost no Greek to begin with, she had attended the necessary social functions and lent her newfound position to the support of worthy causes. With her naturally open nature and warm personality, she’d won over his friends and acquaintances, making a place for herself in Athens society not reliant wholly on her role as his wife.
Six months pregnant with their second child, the leggy brunette was more beautiful than the day they married.
Even if nowadays her warm personality was muted by a dignity more fitting to the name Anna his mother insisted she be called, rather than the more common Polly she used go by.
Her designer gown in the ice blue that had become known as her signature color clung to breasts that had grown at least a cup size since conception and fell in an elegant drape over her baby bump. His child growing inside his wife.
It gave him a sense of pride not even his most ruthlessly executed business deal ever had.
He gave her an openly appreciative look. “You look beautiful, yineka mou.”
“That’s what you pay the exorbitant fees to the stylists for.” She didn’t smile, or meet his eyes with her crystalline blue gaze.
She hardly ever did anymore. With him.
Other people still got the benefit of her warm nature, but he got the elegant wife who never spoke out of turn or reacted without thought. Except in the bedroom. There, she was still the passionate being he had known he could not live without.
He’d known she was something special the first time they went to bed together.
So he had asked her to marry him, instead of one of the many proper Greek heiresses his mother had been throwing at him since uni days.
And she had said yes. Of course she had. Why wouldn’t she?
He had been able to give Pollyanna a lifestyle she couldn’t even have dreamed of.
Nevertheless it wasn’t the expensive designer gown or glittering diamonds she’d opted to wear for the weekly family dinner, or even the silky chestnut hair swept up in an elegant twist, but the way she glowed with her pregnancy that had prompted his compliment.
Even looking a little tired, as she did now, she still took his breath away. “It is all you,” he assured her.
She gave him a barely there tilt of her lips, clearly unimpressed by his praise.
She used to smile when he told her how beautiful she was to him, her expression ope
n and full of delight at his appreciation. He did not know what had changed in that regard, but something had.
Just as somewhere along the way he’d lost the privilege of using the term agape mou. Oh, she never told him not to call her his love. She didn’t do that anymore, make demands, or argue. She just winced every time he used the words, so he’d stopped doing it. She didn’t seem to mind yineka mou, referring to her as his wife, his woman seemed acceptable. So, he found himself using that instead.
They made the helicopter trip to his childhood home in silence, which was not unexpected. Unless they wore headsets, hearing one another above the sound of the rotors was impossible without shouting. There had been a time she would have curled into his side, and they would have communicated with their eyes, if not their bodies. He did not remember the last time she’d offered that kind of open affection outside the bedroom.
Married friends had warned him that things changed naturally as a marriage settled into life’s routines. He’d thought his would be immune, but even being wrong did not make him regret making this woman his wife.
Their ride from the helipad on top of the Kristalakis Building to the home where he’d grown up in the northern Athens suburb of Ekali went without incident and they arrived spot on time. Of course.
His mother greeted them both with the traditional kiss to both cheeks, though she showed respect for Pollyanna’s makeup by kissing the air. Pollyanna returned the gesture, her expression perfectly contained. Not like the hothead he’d first married, who’d had a terrible time not showing the antipathy she’d developed for his mother on her expressive features.
Those features were never anything but serene now.
Except in bed.
In bed, Pollyanna still showed all the passion she ever had, with one exception. She never reached for him first.
He didn’t recall when that changed, wasn’t sure he would have noticed right away. Why should he? She always responded so beautifully to him when he initiated intimacy, but at some point he had become aware that she did not turn to him in the night. She did not reach across the bed to touch. She never kissed him with great enthusiasm and little concern for where they were as she’d used to do.
He’d accepted that kind of exuberance couldn’t last in marriage. Her lack of enthusiasm was only in initiation, not the act, so he had nothing to complain about.
So, why did he still feel the loss so deeply?
“I see you’re still making use of the stylist I suggested,” his mother said to Pollyanna, in what should have been approval. So why did her words sound like a criticism?
Or was it that telltale wince that was barely there and then gone from his wife’s lovely face?
“As you see,” Pollyanna said in quiet self-deprecation.
Corrina, his new sister-in-law, who was usually all sunshine and smiles, was frowning at his mother, her expression not at all approving. “Polly doesn’t need a stylist. Her natural style is perfect as it is.”
His mother drew herself up in obvious affront, probably as much at the gentle rebuke as Corrina’s use of Polly, which his mother thought far too common and had refused to use from their first meeting. Everyone called her Anna now, even him.
Though sometimes in bed, he still chanted Polly, when he was climaxing. The name he’d first come to know her by.
Alexandros looked to his brother, expecting him to subtly rein his wife in.
But Petros was smiling at Corrina in nothing less than approval. “As always, you are quite right, agape mou. She has never needed the stylists my brother insists on paying for.”
The look Corrina gave Petros was nothing short of adoration. There was something about that look that bothered Alexandros, but he could not put his finger on what it was. It was a good thing that his newly married sister-in-law looked at her husband like he was a superhero. That was as it should be.
So why did Alexandros get a strange, unpleasant feeling every time he noticed it? He looked sideways at his own wife. She was not returning his regard.
No surprise there. She never looked at him unless good manners dictated she do so. She stood now, removed from the conversation like a statue in a museum.
“I do not expect to be taken to task in my own home,” his mother said in freezing tones.
That didn’t seem to impact Corrina at all.
Petros, on the other hand, wasn’t so calm. Displeasure turned his expression dark and he snapped, “Giving Polly a compliment is not taking you to task. My wife is allowed to have a different opinion from you, and if you are not mature enough to accept that, perhaps we need to rethink these family dinners.”
“Petros, how dare you talk to me that way?” their mother demanded, sounding utterly shocked.
“Oh, Mama, don’t take on so,” their younger, and unashamedly spoiled sister butted in. “You know how protective Petros is of his beloved wife. It’s the way of the Kristalakis male. You remember how Papa used to be?”
As always, mention of her dead spouse brought a fragile smile to his mother’s face, and she unbent enough to nod. “I suppose, but still, Petros, I am your mother.”
His mother had fallen apart after his father’s death. After losing both her parents only a year prior, he maybe should have expected her broken response to further loss. But he hadn’t, and things had gotten very bad before Alexandros had taken action.
For a time, he had worried they would lose her to grief. They nearly had. She’d stopped bathing, stopped going out. In desperation, he had booked her into a luxury rest facility.
It had worked and she’d returned to the villa more herself, but Alexandros never forgot those dark days and how fragile of spirit his mother was under her society grande dame facade.
“And Corrina is my wife.”
There could be no doubt in that room which woman came first in Petros’s estimation. His mother looked furious again, and Stacia glared at their brother. “No one is denying that. We all love Corrina.” Then Stacia shook her head, put an arm around her mother and said, “You can’t be angry you raised him to be so much like Papa.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Stacia smiled. “Corrina and Anna are the luckiest women alive, being married to Kristalakis men. I’m sure no one will ever measure up for me. They are the most protective and considerate men on the planet. Right, Anna?”
Alexandros was surprised when his sister tried to bring his wife into the conversation. Even after five years, Stacia hadn’t warmed up completely to his American bride. But he was shocked stupid by Anna’s response.
“I wouldn’t know, Stacia. I never knew your father.” Pollyanna moved to take a seat in one of the armchairs, precluding him sitting beside her. She didn’t use to do that either. Another barely there wince worried him. Was she having pain in her back and pelvis again with this pregnancy? “But Alexandros has never been the protective and considerate husband to me that Petros is to Corrina.”
The words were so shocking that for a moment, his usually facile brain froze in trying to understand them. She had not just said that his brother was a better husband than him.
Pollyanna’s reply to his sister had been incomprehensible enough, but the tone in which she said it even more so. His wife did not sound angry. She did not even sound resigned. Pollyanna sounded like she simply didn’t care that he, Alexandros Theos Kristalakis, did not measure up to his younger brother in the husband stakes.
Worse was yet to come as he took in the reactions of his family.
Stacia managed to look both offended and satisfied at the same time. His mother’s expression showed offence and concern, but it was Corrina’s reaction that struck him like a blow to his ego. She looked at Pollyanna with undisguised pity. And his brother?
Petros wasn’t looking at Pollyanna at all; he was looking at Alexandros, and his expression was equal parts anger and disappointment.
>
It was not the type of look Alexandros was accustomed to receiving from any member of his family, but especially his younger brother.
Alexandros had a realization so stunning, it nearly took him out at the knees. His brother and his brother’s wife thought he was a poor husband. Even more staggering, the flat tone of his wife, the absolute belief that tone imbued to her own words said she thought the same thing.
A discussion he’d had with his brother before Petros’s marriage to Corrina came back to Alexandros now.
Alexandros gave his brother, Petros, a stern glance over the coffee they shared after a productive meeting with their top-level executives. “Is it really so much to ask that you put your honeymoon off for one week so you can attend this gala? You know how important it is to our mother.”
“Yes.” Petros’s glare was more than stern; it showed a stubborn resolve Alexandros was not used to his brother turning on him. “If you think I’m making the same choices in my marriage you’ve made in yours, then you are wrong. I know Mama had a hard time after Papa died, but her feelings are not more important than the woman I have chosen to spend the rest of my life with. I will never put her desires ahead of Corrina’s.”
“Family requires sacrifice. We balance the needs of our wives with those of the rest of our family.” It hadn’t been easy for Alexandros to watch his mother and wife jockey for position in his life.
But ultimately he’d never doubted Polly’s ability to hold her own and stand up for herself when it mattered.
There was no humor in Petros’s laugh. “You mean like you balance your wife’s needs against that of our mother and sister?”
“Precisely.”
“No thank you. I would like my wife to still be in love with me five years from now.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I am not putting off my honeymoon to make our mother happy.”
At the time, Alexandros had dismissed the dramatic implication of his brother’s words. But they came back to haunt the eldest brother now.