The Cozakis Bride

by Lynne Graham

  Olympia was so shattered she could barely think straight. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant by him now, she kept on thinking dizzily, panic threatening. When she heard the whirring, clacking beat of a helicopter getting louder overhead, she had to force herself to leave the bedroom; their guests were ar­riving. As she went downstairs, she pressed a tremulous hand to her pounding brow. She breathed in very slowly and deeply. She had to get a hold of herself fast, because there was no way, absolutely no way, that she could confront Nik with other people around.

  Elegant in her peacock-blue shift dress, Olympia stared across the stone terrace at Nik as he approached the helipad to welcome the arrivals. In a lightweight suit the colour of honey, superbly tailored to outline his broad shoulders and long, long legs, Nik looked sensational. Her heart lurched. A male possessed of devastating attraction who might well have no more sensibility than an animal in the mating season when it came to satisfying his own sexual inclinations. Undersexed he wasn't. She knew that for herself. Her husband, her lover. Time she came back to the real world again, she decided numbly...

  Nik Cozakis was a Greek tycoon. One of a rarefied breed of very rich and powerful men, little given to the virtues of self-denial and fidelity. On the very day Nik had blackmailed her into agreeing to his marital terms he had said with cool satisfaction, 'I also get a wife who really knows how to be­have herself, a wife who never, ever questions where I go or what I do because we have a business deal, not a marriage.' Just when had she chosen to forget those horribly revealing words of warning? At what point had she chosen to ditch all memory of that ruthless blackmail and those threats?

  Her tummy tied itself into knots and her fingers closed in tightly on themselves. Only as Markos Stapoulos and his wife emerged from their helicopter did Olympia move forward to stand by Nik's side. Markos was a short, thickset cheerful bear of a man, already going grey, Samantha an effervescent Scottish redhead.

  Olympia was grateful for the other couple's enlivening presence. She needed time, time in which to get a grip on her flailing emotions. On several occasions she became con­scious of Nik's dark, questioning gaze on her and she cursed his perceptive powers. She couldn't bring herself to look at him, and no doubt he had noticed the brittle quality she could hear in her own voice as she endeavoured to respond appro­priately to Samantha's friendly chatter.

  After lunch, the two men vanished into Nik's office.

  'Business, everything is always business with Greek men!' Samantha shook her head in rueful acceptance.

  'How did you meet Markos?' Olympia asked, just a little of her highwire tension evaporating with Nik's removal from the scene.

  'I was a nurse in the London clinic where he had his ap­pendix out. Between you and me and the gatepost, he was terrified! That was three years ago.' Smiling, Samantha re­laxed back into her well-upholstered seat. 'You have no idea how much more comfortable I feel here now that Nik has a wife too.'

  'You must've met Gisele Bonner,' Olympia heard herself say, and it was as much of a shock to her to hear that com­ment escape as it was to her companion, who stilled in sur­prise. 'Please.. Just forget I said that. I really wasn't fishing.'' Olympia hastened to assert.

  'No, you can say anything to me. I do understand how you must feel.' With an air of ready sympathy which increased Olympia's embarrassment, Samantha leant forward and be­gan to talk in a confidential manner. 'Ex-girlfriends who look as stunning as Gisele and who continue to hog the headlines long after their sell-by date are hard to swallow. Of course you don't like that. The first time we met Gisele, Markos was mesmerised...I could have strangled him! I didn't speak to him for a week!'

  Olympia felt torn into two, both wanting and not wanting to hear more.

  'Gisele's clever, and very ambitious. She got her claws into Nik and hung on in there even when his attention strayed!' her companion divulged.

  Olympia nodded, wondering in dulled horror whether she was supposed to be cheered by the news that Nik hadn't been faithful to his mistress either.

  'Gisele knows how to please a man. That was the secret of her staying power.' Samantha pulled a face. 'Have you ever met a Greek male who didn't love having his ego stroked by a woman who hangs on his every word and treats him like a god?'

  Olympia shook her head and closely studied her tightly linked hands. 'You really shouldn't be worrying about her, Olympia.'

  'I'm not.' Olympia was beyond worrying. Having learnt the secret of Gisele's success, she knew her marriage was over. The chances of her treating Nik like a god in the near future were slim to none.

  'Nik lives very much in the limelight and Gisele adored sharing it with him. It did a lot for her career. I bet she was behind that ridiculous story printed in that downmarket tab­loid last month,' the other woman continued with visible dis­taste. 'But who on earth would believe that Nik was with her when you and Nik had only just gone off on your honey­moon?'

  'Who?' Olympia echoed with a sickly smile. Yet that was exactly what Nik had done. After one night, he had aban­doned his bride in favour of his mistress. A tiny tremor ran through her tense frame.

  'That kind of horrible lie appearing in newsprint makes me grateful that Markos and I aren't glitzy enough to be a target for the paparazzi.' Samantha sighed.

  At that point Nik strode in through the doors standing wide on the stone terrace. Olympia jerked in dismay and liquid spilled from the glass in her hand, staining her dress. 'Oh, heck...' she mumbled, rising hurriedly from her seat with averted eyes. 'Excuse me, I'll have to change.'

  'We've all been invited to join a wedding party in the village,' Nik imparted.

  'I'd love that,' Samantha responded warmly. 'But did Mar­kos mention that we have to leave by seven?'

  Slipping quietly from the room, Olympia breathed in deep. A wedding? For a dangerous split-second, the crushing pres­sure of the emotional turmoil she was struggling to contain threatened to break its boundaries. Like a living nightmare, she saw warning flashes of what might happen if she lost control. She would shout, she would scream, she would break things. In response to the rising level of her distress, she felt violent. Angry, bitter, outraged. Why couldn't he love her? Why couldn't he love her the way she loved him? Would this day, this enforced pretence of harmony for the benefit of their guests never end? she wondered wretchedly. Upstairs, she wrenched an elaborate backless black cock­tail dress with a bolero jacket from a hanger, knowing that she would be expected to dress up for such an occasion. Having been welcomed ashore by a party of villagers when they arrived the night before, Olympia was under no illusions as to Nik's status on the island of Kritos. If Gisele treated Nik Cozakis like a god, the islanders treated him like their king!

  He had made island life viable for another generation. He had rebuilt the school, brought in an extra teacher, dredged the silted-up harbour and persuaded a doctor to take up res­idence in the state-of-the-art surgery he had supplied as a lure. He had also allowed the development of a small exclu­sive resort on the other side of the island, which was provid­ing employment for many of the younger people. He had done more for Kritos in five years than his father had done in his entire lifetime. And, in true heroic tradition, Olympia thought bitterly, Nik had personally told her none of those things. Markos Stapoulos had let those facts drop over lunch. But then Markos had always hugely admired Nik.

  'Olympia...'

  Olympia froze and slowly turned. Nik leant back against the bedroom door to close it. His lean, strong face taut, black eyes chillingly intent, he surveyed her. 'What the hell is the matter with you?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Don't be facetious!' Nik countered with biting derision. 'You can't treat me like the invisible man without making our guests uncomfortable. Hospitality is a serious matter to all Greeks, a service we undertake with pride and pleasure. I can only be ashamed of a wife behaving like a sulky little brat!'

  Olympia shivered and clenched her teeth together.

  'And don't you dare give me that
little fishwife look!' Nik growled, incensed.

  Burning colour mantling her cheeks, her hands coiled into tight, hurting fists, Olympia murmured thickly, 'Maybe you should have asked Gisele Bonner to be your hostess instead.'

  'You have a point. Gisele never let me down in front of my friends,' Nik responded, without a second of hesitation.

  'That was really low, Nik...' Olympia whispered unstead­ily, shaken even in the mood she was in by that smooth retaliation.

  His stubborn jawline hardened. 'No woman treats me as you have today. We had a stupid argument and I apologised sincerely for my part in it. I have no time and even less patience for the way you're behaving now!'

  Stiff-backed, Olympia spun away to lift the bolero lying on the bed. 'Go to hell...' she said succinctly.

  A hand like an iron vice closed over her taut shoulder and turned her back. Nik gazed down at her with eyes as hot as golden flames. 'Christos...do you have a death wish?' he grated incredulously. 'Or is it just that you don't like your own sex? Am I getting the big freeze because Samantha was bantering with me over lunch?'

  Olympia was trembling. Nik was emanating rage in siz­zling waves. '1 don't know what you're talking about—'

  'You couldn't make even a polite pretence of forgiving Katerina either! Was that because she once had a crush on me?' Nik demanded. 'I want to know what the problem is. Is it jealousy that makes you act like this?'

  Olympia dredged her eyes from his and focused on his caramel silk tie. 'You'd better go downstairs and join our guests again—'

  'Markos knows I'm mad with you. Theos mou...I will go nowhere until you tell me what is the matter with you!' Nik swore in a savage undertone, sliding long fingers into the glossy fall of her hair and tipping up her face to his when she would have looked away. 'This morning you were smil­ing, laughing... happy!'

  The tension in the atmosphere pulsed like a ticking time bomb. Against her will, she met scorching dark golden eyes and her heartbeat accelerated, her breathing quickening. She read the blunt masculine bewilderment in his angry gaze and something twisted inside her, filling her with wild despair and pain. 'Let...go...of...me,' she framed jerkily.

  'I don't think so, yineka mou,' Nik breathed, lowering his arrogant dark head and prying her lips apart with the driving force of his mouth.

  It was the very last thing Olympia had expected. She wasn't prepared. She had no time to muster her defences. The fierce turmoil inside her ignited as if he had thrown a match into a bale of hay. Shock flashed through her, and then suddenly she found that her hands were biting into his shoul­ders and she was kissing him back in a devastating melding of fury and hatred and hunger.

  Tipping her back on to the bed, Nik pinned her arms to the mattress and plundered the tender interior of her mouth with an erotic urgency that drove her halfway out of her mind. She couldn't think. Her pent-up feelings were finding vent in a primal passion that smashed all boundaries, leaving her at the mercy of what felt like an uncontrollable need.

  'You are mine...' Nik rasped, jack-knifing back from her to thrust up the skirt of her dress and hook his fingers to the waistband of her panties. He wrenched her out of them with unashamed impatience.

  And she lay there quivering, every nerve-ending crying out for the satisfaction only he could give. Nothing else mattered, nothing but the desperate craving which had tightened her nipples to distended points and set up an agonising throbbing ache between her thighs.

  'You understand this OK...' Nik gritted, running his burn­ing, intent gaze over her, his scorching hunger hot as fire licking at her super-sensitive skin.

  He came back to her with a driving kiss that consumed her. He was rough, and she had never known him rough before, and he excited her beyond belief. She was out of control, but so was he and she loved that. It answered the wildness leaping through her. He was hard and hot and full, and he sank into her tender welcoming flesh with a forceful maleness that made her sob out his name in ecstasy. Her back arched as the blinding excitement peaked on a shivering storming tide of mindless pleasure.

  In the aftermath, she opened her eyes and blinked.

  For a split-second, as Nik stared down at her, she saw a shell-shocked look in his stunning dark deep-set eyes that could only have mirrored her own. Rolling off her without a word, he headed for the bathroom. She lay there immobile, struggling to breathe again, feeling ravished, feeling the sweet, heavy satiation of her own body with shattered rec­ognition. She tottered upright and smoothed down her dress with unsteady hands.

  Tossing the towel he had dried his face with on the floor, Nik studied her from the bathroom doorway. 'Come here...' he urged raggedly, opening his arms with pure Greek expansiveness.

  'You don't need to say sorry...I liked it,' Olympia admitted, half under her breath, her voice wobbling.

  He crossed the room, curved an arm round her and bent his dark head to brush his mouth sensually across one fever­ishly flushed cheekbone. 'Sometimes you make me so angry I could self-destruct. I can handle that...but I can't handle what I don't understand,' he murmured in a raw-edged un­dertone, his accent very thick.

  'It's OK...' And she meant it, but not in the way she knew he would read it. She loved him more than she had ever loved anything or anybody. But she also knew at that moment that she would never live with him again, never let him touch her again, that there had never been any big decision to make. Only her own weak and fearful reluctance to confront reality had allowed her to spend a few hours in a turmoil of indecision.

  'It's not like I...like I don't care about you,' Nik said gruffly, after a long silence which had screeched with his tension, his struggle to find something he could bear to say. 'You're my wife.'

  He hovered for a moment, as if he hoped that statement would dredge some response from her. When it didn't, he left the room.

  Olympia studied her panties where they lay on the carpet. She wasn't shocked by that wild bout of sex they had just shared. She had wanted him, needed him, and had briefly found an outlet for an agony beyond what she could bear.

  And Nik? Nik was terrific at handing out orders and read­ing the riot act, marvellous at sticking to the light and charm­ing in conversation, but when serious communication beck­oned Nik Cozakis was almost as inarticulate as a toddler. So grabbing her and kissing her like Neanderthal man and vent­ing his emotions in a purely physical way had provided a necessary escape route. Odd, she reflected, that he should be so attuned to her that he had seen right through her efforts to behave normally. By rights, Nik should have been easily taken in.

  But he didn't hate her anymore. A shaken laugh escaped Olympia as she restored her appearance to one of respecta­bility. She thought of her baby, the baby that Nik had ensured she conceived. She pressed her hand protectively against her stomach. No wonder Nik had spent four whole weeks living with her! Had he marooned her in separate accommodation and only made flying visits to her bed, getting her pregnant might well have taken months. But all that was over now. The deed was done. She would love her baby, she would look after her baby, but she would not give house-room to a husband who had slept with another woman.

  Before she went downstairs, she marvelled at the strange tranquillity of acceptance which now enfolded her. She found the housekeeper in the kitchen and gave her clear and concise instructions; Nik would hate her again by the end of the eve­ning.

  They drove down to the village taverna, where the wed­ding festivities were in full swing, in a Toyota Landcruiser with Nik at the wheel. Settled at a large table in the seat of honour, Nik found his attention much in demand, and Markos swiftly became involved too, in what was an overwhelmingly male-dominated dialogue.

  Beside Olympia, Samantha released a little gurgle of laughter.

  Olympia glanced at her.

  Samantha's eyes danced with amusement. 'Do you know what I was just thinking? What an awful shame it is that Gisele can't see how Nik acts around you! But then I doubt if she's ever heard your story—'

 
; 'My story?' Olympia repeated.

  'Yours and Nik's. What you were like together as teen­agers. Markos told me Nik was like...totally overboard in the way he went for you...and I just couldn't imagine Nik like that with a woman. Since I've known him he's always been very cool and casual in the emotion department,' the redhead confessed, shaking her head in apparent wonder­ment. 'But around you he's a different guy...he's really in­tense, locked on to your every move.'

  Olympia forced a smile. 'Really, Samantha...'

  'No, I'm loving seeing him like this,' Samantha asserted with an only slightly guilty grin. 'Your Nik's broken plenty of hearts in his time. I'm quite transfixed, watching him surge forward to open car doors and pull out chairs for you, and you just take it all as your due.'

  Olympia nodded without comprehension or indeed much interest. She liked Samantha, wished she had met her under other circumstances, but reckoned she would never meet her again. The day had been one of interminable strain and she could not wait for its end. Furthermore, Nik had always opened car doors and pulled out chairs for her, and she could not see anything worthy of comment in the fact. 'He has very good manners.'

  Samantha sighed. 'Oh, why don't you put him out of his misery and make up with him, Olympia? I've never seen Nik as on edge as he is today.'

  Olympia flushed with discomfiture. 'So it was obvious we'd had a row—'

  'Oh, it wasn't you who gave it away, it was him.' Saman­tha patted Olympia's hand soothingly. 'Don't worry about it. Markos and I had several major blow-ups the first few months we were married. Getting used to living together takes time. Greek men can be incredibly bossy.'