The Secret Behind the Greek's Return

by Michelle Smart

  The music stopped. Raul took the prepared microphone and called for everyone’s attention. The dance floor filled, their guests eager to hear what he had to say.

  He held her hand tightly. The feel of his skin on hers made her flesh crawl.

  ‘Thank you all for coming tonight and for your understanding at the postponement,’ he said. Their party should have been held two weeks before but the takedown of the cartel and the danger it had put Marisa and her family in had forced them to postpone. ‘It certainly wasn’t through choice but as you know, recent events took the decision out of our hands. This has been a difficult time for me and my future wife, and your support has been appreciated.’

  Marisa almost choked on her champagne. Luckily Raul was too busy basking in the applause to notice. She loved how he made it sound as if it had been a difficult time for them as a couple when the truth was the coward had hidden away until it was all over.

  ‘I ask you all to raise a glass to my fiancée. To Marisa.’

  But the crowd had fallen silent. Their attention had been taken by something that parted them like Moses and the Red Sea.

  Marisa followed the open-mouthed stares. In the newly created gangway stood a tall, solitary figure. He was looking directly at her.

  Heart suddenly racing, prickles ran up her spine and over her skin.

  Certain she was hallucinating, she blinked hard and tried to catch her breath, fought to keep her shaking legs from collapsing beneath her.

  It couldn’t be.

  The prickles infected her brain, reduced it to fuzzy mush. The room began to spin. Something distant smashed. She had only the faintest awareness it was the glass she’d been holding before the world went black.

  * * *

  Nikos cut through the stunned silence to bound up to the dais where that idiot Raul hovered over the prone Marisa, doing absolutely nothing.

  The complete shock at Nikos’s appearance meant no one was capable of stopping him from checking her pulse, satisfying himself that she was alive, then scooping her into his arms.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said as he carried her through the still-frozen crowd. ‘She needs air.’

  Her large brown eyes opened. Fixed on him. Widened. Blinked. Blinked again. She whimpered.

  A waitress opened the double doors so he could sweep a now struggling Marisa out of the room. Her hand pushed at his chest but her movements were too sluggish to be effective. The whimpering was growing. It cut through him. It was the sound a wounded puppy made.

  A member of the hotel’s concierge team hurried to them. ‘Can I call a doctor for you, sir?’

  ‘Not necessary. She fainted—a shock, nothing serious. Can you get the elevator for me?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  The concierge pressed the button and the elevator door opened.

  ‘Top floor,’ he commanded, stepping inside with her. Marisa had stopped struggling and gone limp. Her eyes were screwed tight like a child trying to make itself invisible to a monster.

  He’d never meant to scare her and neither had he intended to make such a grand entrance.

  When the birth certificate of his son had been presented to him earlier that day, Nikos had been collected and analytical in his response. The mental preparations he’d made for a positive result greatly aided this mindset. Remaining dead to Marisa was no longer an option. Allowing her engagement party to go ahead was not an option either, and he’d set off to Valencia immediately. He’d called the hotel on the drive to the airfield, certain all the rooms would be taken, and had been surprised to find the penthouse still available. Surely the happy couple would be spending the night in it?

  How happy were they? How happy was Marisa?

  He’d done his research on Marisa’s fiancé during the flight back to Valencia. A few phone calls with mutual acquaintances—explaining his return from the dead had been dealt with by giving promises that he would explain in person when he next saw them—and he’d learned Raul’s only attribute was that he was rich. One friend quoted him as ‘an untrustworthy snake’. That had been the most positive of the opinions.

  At the top floor he shifted her position to free a hand and pressed his thumb to the security box. Inside the suite he laid her loose body carefully on the sofa and took a step back to look at her properly for the first time in eighteen months.

  What on earth had possessed her to wear such an unflattering dress to her own engagement party? The Marisa he’d dated had a love of fashion. This dress was something the old women of Mykonos would wear. And where was the make-up she loved to wear? Whenever he’d told her she didn’t need it, she’d laugh, thank him, then trowel it on until every freckle was masked and her eyes, lips and cheeks shone with unnatural colour. Now, all her freckles, faint though they were, were on display, and his chest tightened to remember how he’d adored waking to this bare face.

  She didn’t move a muscle under his scrutiny. He suspected she was playing possum.

  Shock at his resurrection he’d learned in recent days meant varied extreme emotions. He’d give her a minute to compose herself.

  Truth was, he could do with a moment of composure too, and his suite’s bar was fully stocked.

  He selected an eighteen-year-old single malt, unscrewed the lid and poured a hefty measure into a crystal glass. As he took his first sip, he sensed movement behind him.

  Turning, he found Marisa only a foot from him.

  He took another, larger drink to burn through the lump that had formed in his throat and held her silent stare.

  Her head tilted slowly from side to side as she gazed at him through wild, wide brown eyes. Her plump lips were pulled in a straight line. She was breathing heavily through her pretty nose. With her golden-red tangled mass of frizzy curls—another curious thing: the Marisa he’d dated had used every product known to humanity to prevent frizz from forming—she had the look of someone sizing him up, someone...

  The word ‘rabid’ flashed through his mind.

  Marisa stared at the ghost before her, too scared to blink for fear he’d disappear.

  Since she’d woken from her faint, secure but so frightened in his arms, the only thought in her pounding head was that this couldn’t be real.

  Nikos was dead.

  Dead.

  She’d mourned and cried herself to sleep every night for eighteen months. She’d woken every morning with a throbbing ache in her heart that time hadn’t even begun to heal. She’d carried his child, given birth to his child, loved and raised his child without him.

  And all the time he’d been alive.

  Alive and so incredibly vital.

  That really was Nikos in front of her, a wary expression on the face that had lived as nothing but a memory for an agony of time.

  The emotions that flooded her were too hot and overwhelming to be contained a moment longer and they overflowed with a howl she had no control over as she leapt at him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NIKOS DIDN’T MOVE away or attempt to defend himself from the fists beating against his chest and the screamed indecipherable words. He kept his composure, his gaze fixed above her head, determined to remain dispassionate against the onslaught of Marisa’s rage.

  She’d always been his temperamental opposite. Where he was cool and analytical, she was warm and passionate. Even her fury, he was now discovering, was passionately delivered.

  But when the impact of her beating fists weakened and he sensed her purge was over, he looked down and his guts twisted.

  It wasn’t fury that had contorted her beautiful face and turned it into something red and swollen. And it wasn’t fury that dropped her to the floor with a thud, made her fall onto her side, pull her knees to her chin and weep in a rocking ball.

  Unprepared for such an emotional display, he rubbed his cheek and swallowed air through rapidly tightening lungs.

/>   A box of tissues sat on the suite’s bureau and, needing to do something, he strolled over and picked it up then placed it on the floor beside her before finishing his drink.

  Theos, he needed another one, and poured himself an even heftier measure, which he downed in one. His next measure was more sedate and he poured an equal amount in another glass before taking it to Marisa.

  Her sobs and the racking of her frame seemed to be lessening but he kept a cautious distance as he crouched down. ‘Here,’ he said quietly, speaking in English, a language they were both fluent in. ‘Drink this. It will help.’

  Marisa wanted to cover her ears and drown out his voice. Nikos’s voice. This was simply too much to take in.

  All those long nights she had dreamed of this, Nikos alive, the time that had passed since his death nothing but a vivid nightmare.

  Oh, God, he was alive.

  Dragging her trembling hands over her face and trying her hardest to catch a breath in a chest so bruised, she sat up. Not yet ready to look at him again, she took a handful of tissues and blew her nose.

  A glass was thrust in front of her face. Fine dark hairs poked out beneath the sleeve of his shirt around his wrist. It was enough to make fresh tears fall and she grabbed more tissues to wipe them away before taking the drink. She threw the liquid down her throat. Unused to neat spirits, she didn’t expect the fiery burn that followed but it helped, cutting through the fog of her brain and sharpening her senses.

  ‘Another?’ he asked.

  Still unable to look at him, she nodded.

  When the refilled glass held by the long, tapered fingers appeared before her again, she snatched it off him and downed it.

  ‘Better?’

  She blew out a short breath before daring to meet his stare.

  He was crouched on his haunches, light brown eyes studying her. ‘Ready to talk?’

  But her throat was too constricted to speak. Rising to her knees, overwhelmed with the need to touch him and assure herself that she hadn’t hallucinated him into life, that Nikos truly was here, mortal, breathing, she reached out a hand and pressed it to his cheek.

  Gazing into his intense eyes, she rubbed her thumb over his strong jaw, felt the unshaven dark bristles tickle against it, then gently skimmed it down to his mouth. The heat of his breath warmed her skin before she reached her other hand to his face and traced her fingers over it. The furrowed brow, the lines around his eyes, the long nose that bent a little to the left, the cleft in his chin, not a millimetre of skin left unexplored.

  He didn’t blink, not even when she brushed her fingers up to the widow’s peak of his hairline and dived them through the cropped dark brown hair to trace the contours of his head and down to his neck. Only when she felt the beat of the pulse beneath his ear and felt her own pulse beat in response did she drop her hands and sag back on her bottom.

  A beat of charged silence passed before he rose and walked his long, lean frame to the armchair.

  Nikos sat heavily and watched Marisa shuffle until her back rested against the base of the sofa opposite him. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them.

  He tried to gather his thoughts, a task made harder by the sensation dancing over his skin where her fingers had caressed. Theos, hers was the first real human touch he’d felt in eighteen months.

  Gritting his teeth, he forced himself back to the matter at hand. He’d composed what he would say to her on the flight over, had run over it many times in his head, had known much of the delivery would depend on her reaction to him. He’d guessed emotions would be involved—this was Marisa after all—but he’d never imagined those emotions would be so raw. So hard to witness.

  Their affair had lasted much longer than his previous relationships but it had never been serious. Nikos didn’t do serious, never had, never would. He liked the bachelor life and greatly disliked being answerable to anyone, a hangover from his teenage years. As he liked to tell people, if you want to watch an innate rebellious streak bloom in real time, send a wilful fourteen-year-old to a strict foreign boarding school.

  He’d lasted two terms before being expelled. He’d lasted a whole four months at the next one. He’d only avoided expulsion at the third because his grandfather had bribed him. If Nikos could survive the school year without as much as a sanction and pass his exams, he could finish his education and have fifty thousand from his trust fund. There had been other conditions attached but they’d been ignored the minute the money had hit his bank account. He’d been sixteen years old.

  Nineteen years later and Nikos still lived his life on his terms. Until his forced exile, life had been great. He’d loved making money and he’d loved spending money. He’d loved having the wealth that meant the world’s most beautiful women gravitated to him and allowed him to take his pick of the crop.

  Marisa had been the first woman he’d actively pursued. She’d been in the VIP section of his Ibiza nightclub when they’d met. Instantly attracted to her, he’d nonetheless assumed she was another vacuous socialite. His assumption that she’d willingly come to his villa for a night of no-strings fun had been swiftly disabused.

  Unused to female rejection, he’d gone all out to woo her. She’d agreed to meet him the next day for lunch by the pool at his villa...and had turned up with a gaggle of friends. It had taken a week of messages and calls for her to agree to a date. It had taken another month to get her into bed and then had come the next surprise—she’d been a virgin.

  He supposed that’s why their affair had lasted as long as it did. It had been impossible to get bored with someone who refused to play the usual games and constantly kept him on his toes. Marisa had her own life, one she’d been unable and unwilling to revolve around him. Her parents had been grooming her to take over the running of the family shipping business, something she’d taken very seriously.

  As he’d had more flexibility with his working hours, Nikos had found himself in the strange realm of being the one to make all the running. It had been worth it. Marisa had taken work seriously but outside office hours she had been excellent company; passionate, funny and witty, open-minded, as happy dining in a cheap café as she was in a Michelin-starred restaurant. That she was as sexy as sin had been the icing on the cake.

  She was also naturally affectionate. She would end a short phone call with a good friend saying she loved them. She told everyone she loved them. She’d told Nikos she loved him hundreds of times but for Marisa, they were just words, so to have witnessed such naked distress at his resurrection sat heavily in his guts.

  He didn’t see how it could be real. Even his grandfather hadn’t been this emotional at Nikos’s return.

  He was pretty sure his father hadn’t known he’d been missing. Even if he had, Nikos doubted he’d suffered more than a solitary pang. His father hadn’t cared for him as a child and cared even less for him as an adult.

  Swirling the remaining single malt in his glass he went straight to the subject that had brought him here. ‘You have a son.’

  Her brown eyes flickered. He read the surprise in them. He’d often thought how their eyes were mirrors of their personalities; Marisa’s dark and warm, his light and cold.

  ‘I saw you with him. Two days ago,’ he added when her mouth dropped open.

  Tears filled her eyes. He held his breath and warily waited for them to spill over and for her to fall to pieces again.

  It didn’t happen. She swallowed rapidly and nodded.

  ‘He’s mine?’

  She brushed a falling tear and nodded again.

  He took a large sip of his drink. He’d known it in his heart but having it confirmed still came as a rush.

  ‘You named him for me?’ He asked the question though he already knew the answer. He’d seen the birth certificate.

  Nikos Marco Lopez. Born eleven months ago weighing three kilograms. Born s
even months after he’d faked his own death.

  She let go of the hold around her knees and rested her head back against the base of the sofa. ‘Why...?’ Her husky voice broke.

  The sound of her anguish cut straight through him, and he filled the void of silence before she could find her voice again.

  ‘You must have many questions,’ he stated. ‘Let me explain as best I can. Anything I miss, ask when I’m finished. And then I will ask questions of you. Fair?’

  Her gaze searched his before she closed her eyes and inclined her head in agreement.

  He took a moment to put his thoughts in order. ‘As you must have guessed, I faked my death. It was not a decision I made lightly. An international drug cartel wanted to use my clubs to sell their goods.’ Her already ashen face paled even more and he leaned forward. ‘Yes. The same cartel.’

  She brought her knees back to her chest.

  ‘They would not accept no as an answer. You remember the firebomb in my London nightclub? That was them. What you don’t know is they made a bomb threat against my club in Ibiza. It was fake but I have no doubt they were capable and willing to do it for real. In the space of eight days, my French lawyer, the head of my Santorini security and my club manager in Madrid disappeared. I received a package that contained photos of my missing lawyer. I won’t describe them to you but it showed the depraved lengths they were willing to go to in order to force my hand. Among those pictures was a photo of you.’

  A whimper came from her tightly compressed lips. He ignored it, just as he ignored the violent churn in his stomach to remember his reaction to finding her photo nestled amid evidence of such cruel barbarity.

  ‘It was clear that no one associated with me would be safe until I gave in. But I would not submit. Drugs are an evil in this world and I will have nothing to do with them.’

  Nikos understood too well the inherent wickedness of drugs. His parents had been addicts with the unfortunate blessing of a substantial monthly allowance from a trust fund on his half-English mother’s side to feed it. One of his earliest memories was of going into the living room one morning and finding her semi-conscious on the sofa with a needle stuck in her arm.