A Bride at His Bidding

by Michelle Smart

  Every shared conversation had committed to memory.

  Andreas Samaras’s fortune came about almost by accident, she wrote, her fingers almost flying off the keys as she wrote about the terrible time when his parents’ business had gone under and how it had been the spur he’d needed to work as hard as he could to save them from financial ruin.

  The more she wrote, the clearer it became, the clearer he became, emerging from a picture in her mind so he might as well be standing right there, in front of her. If she stretched out a hand she’d be able to touch him.

  His life. His selflessness.

  Everything he’d done had been for his family. His great wealth couldn’t insulate them from tragedy but it ensured his parents never had to worry and his niece could train as a doctor without the usual student encumbrances. His extended family had benefitted too, aunts, uncles, cousins, all either having their mortgages paid off or new homes bought for them.

  No member of the Samaras family would ever struggle financially while Andreas was alive.

  Five hours later, her hands cramped, hot pains shooting up her arms, she stopped, exhausted, and burst into tears.

  For the first time she admitted to herself what she had thrown away.

  She hadn’t meant to cast him in the same torrid light as those other rich men who had abused their power. She had been long past that, had long accepted Andreas was nothing like those men.

  His proposal, his idea they should marry for keeps, hadn’t just taken her by surprise but terrified her. She’d already been feeling raw after spilling her soul to him and had panicked.

  He’d never said that one word she’d longed to hear from his lips, the same word that also would probably have made her dive out of the window.

  At no point had he mentioned love.

  But she had never given him the chance. She had said no without even having to think.

  No, I will not marry you properly. No, I will not take the chance of us finding happiness together because I’m a big scared, distrustful baby who requires proof.

  What proof could he give her that their marriage would last and that he would never cheat or break her heart? None, because that proof didn’t exist! He had no crystal ball or time portal.

  And neither did she.

  All she could do was trust her instincts and her heart, and both were telling her—screaming at her—that she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Andreas had offered her his world but she’d been too scared to take it from him.

  And now it was too late.

  Shoving her laptop so hard it fell off her desk, Carrie buried her face in her hands and wept.

  It was too late.

  Too, too late.

  * * *

  Andreas banged hard on the blue front door for the third time.

  Still no response.

  Pushing the letterbox open, he crouched down. ‘Carrie? Please. Open the door. Please.’

  ‘She’s gone out.’

  He spun round to find an elderly woman walking a small dog up the neighbouring front path.

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  The woman shook her head as she rummaged in her pocket for her keys. ‘She went out when Trixie and I went for our walk. Half an hour ago or so.’

  ‘Did she say when she was coming back?’

  ‘No. She was all dressed up so I wouldn’t think she’ll be back soon.’ The woman opened her door then looked at him one last time. ‘If you’re thinking of robbing her place, I’d be very careful. She has a very noisy burglar alarm.’

  Despite the situation, he couldn’t help but grin. ‘Noted.’

  The door slammed shut.

  With a heavy, defeated sigh, he slumped down onto Carrie’s front door step and cradled his head in his hands.

  He would just have to wait until she came back from wherever she’d gone all dressed up.

  Carrie rarely dressed up. She was always, always elegant, but never noticeably dressed up. The only occasion she had properly dressed up for had been his cousin’s wedding, the day everything had imploded between them.

  That had been a week ago.

  He looked at his watch. Half past one. Their wedding was supposed to take place in half an hour...

  His brain began to tick.

  Had Carrie cancelled the registry office? Because he hadn’t...

  And just like that, he was on his feet, racing past his idling driver, pounding the ground to the nearest Tube station, racing down the stairs, yanking his bank card out and waving it at the turnstile, pausing only to check which line he needed to take before racing to the platform.

  People of all shapes and sizes were clambering onto a train and he joined the throng.

  He hadn’t used the Tube in years but this was one occasion where speed trumped luxury. He hardly noticed the people jostling into him. He certainly didn’t care.

  Four minutes later and he was in Chelsea, following his nose to the registry office, checking his watch constantly until, with five minutes to spare, he was there and racing up the stairs to the waiting room outside the room he’d booked for their service.

  The waiting room was empty.

  He doubled over, partly from exertion but mostly from grief.

  The cramp in his stomach spread to his chest and clenched around his heart.

  The pain was indescribable.

  What a fool he was.

  He’d allowed hope to override common sense. What on earth had he been thinking?

  Why would Carrie have come here? She’d made her feelings perfectly clear but he, egotistical fool that he was, had been unable to accept the truth and had...

  ‘Andreas?’

  He froze.

  Slowly he straightened before turning around.

  The door to the officiating room had opened. Standing at the threshold, clearly on her way out, stood Carrie, the registrar hovering behind her.

  She stared at him as if she’d seen a ghost.

  The neighbour had been right that she’d been dressed up. She wore a knee-length summery cream dress and a soft cream leather jacket. On her feet were cream heels.

  The only colour on her were her eyes. They were red raw.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he countered, not trusting what his eyes were telling him.

  Silence hung over them as they gazed at each other, Carrie drinking in the tall figure she had resigned herself to never seeing again.

  She’d told herself she was running a fool’s errand but that hadn’t stopped her rifling through her wardrobe for the most bridal-type clothing she could find.

  She’d fallen into bed, utterly exhausted, at six in the morning and after three hours’ fitful sleep had woken with a cast-iron certainty that she had to get herself to the registry office.

  Even now, with what looked and sounded like Andreas standing in front of her, she couldn’t say where this certainty had come from. It had been a compulsion that had taken over her.

  She’d made it to the registry office well before the appointed time and had watched one happy couple and two dozen happy guests pile into the room, then pile out twenty minutes later.

  During those twenty minutes she had waited on her own.

  When the last guest had gone and her reality had come crashing back down on her, she had burst into fresh tears. The registrar had been sympathy itself, taking her into the room and making her a cup of tea, giving her the time she needed to gather herself together in privacy rather than have her humiliated should anyone come into the waiting room while she was wailing.

  And now, as she looked at the ghost before her, a scent played under her nose, a fresh, tangy cologne that had her bruised heart battering against her ribs.

  She gazed into the light brown eyes she loved so much, saw them narrow with the same disbelief that must have been ringing in hers then saw the truth hit him at the exact same moment it hit her.

 
In seconds, he’d hauled her into his arms and was kissing her fiercely as she clung to him, inhaling his scent, more tears spilling from her eyes and splashing onto his face.

  It was him! Andreas was there! He had come.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she cried, raining kisses all over his face, hungrily inhaling more of his scent, tasting his skin...

  It really was him.

  Eventually he disentangled their clinging bodies to take her face in his hands and stare at her.

  There was a wonder in his face. ‘You are here. Oh, matia mou, you are here. I didn’t dare believe...’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, tears falling over the fingers cradling her face with such tenderness.

  ‘No, my love, it is I who is sorry. My pride—my ego—never let me say what was in my heart.’ His words came in a rush. ‘I want to marry you for ever because my heart will not accept anything less. I love you. You are the bravest, most loyal and loving woman I have ever met. You are stubborn and sexy and I love everything about you. The only freedom I want is the freedom to wake next to your face every day for the rest of my life, so please, I beg you, marry me. I love you. I can’t be without you.’

  Carrie covered his hands with her own feeling as if her heart could burst. If it did, glitter and starlight would explode over them.

  ‘I love you, Andreas, and I’m so sorry for...’ she raised her shoulders helplessly ‘...everything. You are the best person I know. You’re sexy and funny...the way you have taken care of your family... I should never have... I was scared.’

  ‘I know.’ He covered her mouth with his. ‘I need to learn patience. You know what I’m like. I want something and I want it now. You need to think things through. I have to accept our brains work differently.’

  She laughed softly into his lips. ‘I’ll teach you patience if you’ll teach me spontaneity.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  Their kiss to seal their deal was broken by a loud cough.

  They broke apart to find the registrar looking at his watch, a faint smile on his lips. ‘If we’re going to marry you we will have to do it now, I’m afraid. We have another wedding party due any minute and my colleagues who are supposed to be acting as your witnesses have other duties to attend to.’

  Andreas looked at Carrie. ‘Well? Do you want to do it?’

  She kissed him. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  The brightest, most dazzling grin she had ever seen broke out on his handsome face. ‘Then let’s do it.’

  So they did.

  And neither of them ever regretted it.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘YOUR VEIL IS falling off!’ Natalia screeched as Carrie attempted to get out of the limousine.

  ‘I don’t know why I agreed to wear the stupid thing,’ she said in a mock grumble.

  ‘Because you want to make an old woman happy... Violet, can you hold your side still for me?’

  Between them, Carrie’s two bridesmaids fixed her veil then both inspected her face one last time before the door swung open and her father was there to help them all out, bemused to be wearing a fitted tuxedo, a beaming smile on his craggy, weather-beaten face, delighted to be there, as proud as punch of his only child.

  As soon as they were all standing, Agon’s glorious spring sun shining on them, the girls fussed with her dress, making sure there were no wrinkles around her protruding bump.

  Carrie was six months pregnant. It was a year to the day since she and Andreas had exchanged their vows in the Chelsea registry office with two strangers acting as their witnesses.

  When they had gone to visit his parents to share their happy news, his mother had promptly burst into tears. Those tears were only pacified when Andreas had promised they would do it all over again, properly. And by properly he meant a full church wedding with his entire family in attendance, everyone congregating to the same hotel afterwards and everyone then meeting the happy couple for breakfast.

  As Carrie had taken an instant shine to both of his parents she had been happy to go along with the plans for them but then, as the date neared, found herself excited for hers and Andreas’s own sake.

  A big white wedding, surrounded by friends and family, the people who loved them, everyone wishing them well...

  It had been a strange experience, being embraced into the bosom of the Samaras family, especially as her own was so small. She hadn’t properly appreciated what a close-knit family they all were, not until she and Andreas had moved to Agon permanently a few months ago and found their villa under constant siege from aunts, uncles and cousins all inviting themselves round for a holiday. Anyone would think they weren’t all scattered on varying Greek islands with their own beautiful beaches a short walk away. Andreas had since bought the neighbouring villa for his family to use so they could have some privacy. Their only real houseguests now were his parents, Violet and Natalia.

  Her sister and his niece were tentatively rekindling their old friendship. Both were doing well. Violet had decided to stay in California permanently. She was still clean. Every day was still a battle but, she had assured Carrie, it was a battle that was getting easier. She wanted to stay clean. She wanted to live a long, healthy life. Her words were music to Carrie’s ears.

  As for Carrie, she’d handed her notice in when they moved to Agon. She had come to love their home there, loved the life, the sunshine, everything about it. Somewhere along the way she had lost her drive for investigative journalism and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she could go undercover any more when she was half of a famous couple. Her exclusive feature on Andreas—he had loved it—had been a huge hit and the features editor had offered her freelance work, interviewing business leaders and politicians. With Andreas’s encouragement, Carrie had been delighted to accept.dpg!

  The church doors swung open, the organ started to play and, her arm securely in her father’s hold, her free hand resting on her kicking baby, she began the slow walk to her husband to repeat the vows they had made in private to the rest of the world.

  Andreas stood at the top of the aisle next to his father, who was acting as his best man. The two Samaras men had identical beaming grins.

  Her heart skipped to see him.

  Her heart always skipped to see him.

  She had never believed heaven existed.

  With Andreas she had found it.

  * * * * *

  Coming soon

  BOUND TO THE SICILIAN’S BED

  Sharon Kendrick

  Rocco was going to kiss her and after everything she’d just said, Nicole knew she needed to stop him. But suddenly she found herself governed by a much deeper need than preserving her sanity, or her pride. A need and a hunger which swept over her with the speed of a bush fire. As Rocco’s shadowed face lowered towards her she found past and present fusing, so that for a disconcerting moment she forgot everything except the urgent hunger in her body. Because hadn’t her Sicilian husband always been able to do this—to captivate her with the lightest touch and to tantalise her with that smouldering look of promise? And hadn’t there been many nights since they’d separated when she’d woken up, still half fuddled with sleep, and found herself yearning for the taste of his lips on hers just one more time? And now she had it.

  One more time.

  She opened her mouth—though afterwards she would try to convince herself she’d been intending to resist him—but Rocco used the opportunity to fasten his mouth over hers in the most perfects of fits. And Nicole felt instantly helpless—caught up in the powerful snare of a sexual mastery which wiped out everything else. She gave a gasp of pleasure because it had been so long since she had done this.

  Since they’d been apart Nicole had felt like a living statue—as if she were made from marble—as if the flesh and blood part of her were some kind of half-forgotten dream. Slowly but surely she had withdrawn from the sensual side of her nature, until she’d convinced herself she was dead and unfeeling inside. But here came Rocco to wake her d
ormant sexuality with nothing more than a single kiss. It was like some stupid fairy story. It was scary and powerful. She didn’t want to want him, and yet…

  She wanted him.

  Her lips opened wider as his tongue slid inside her mouth—eagerly granting him that intimacy as if preparing the way for another. She began to shiver as his hands started to explore her—rediscovering her body with an impatient hunger, as if it were the first time he’d ever touched her.

  ‘Nicole,’ he said unevenly and she’d never heard him say her name like that before.

  Her arms were locked behind his neck as again he circled his hips in unmistakable invitation and, somewhere in the back of her mind, Nicole could hear the small voice of reason imploring her to take control of the situation. It was urging her to pull back from him and call a halt to what they were doing. But once again she ignored it. Against the powerful tide of passion, that little voice was drowned out and she allowed pleasure to shimmer over her skin.

  Continue reading

  BOUND TO THE SICILIAN’S BED

  Sharon Kendrick

  Available next month

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Copyright ©2018 Sharon Kendrick