by Sara Craven
When the door buzzer sounded, she flinched.
Neil, she thought. Again. Either to apologise, or to hand out more of the same, and whichever it was, she didn’t want to know. She was tempted not to answer the door, but then the buzzer went again, imperatively, and he might well be prepared to stand there for the duration unless she let him in.
She sighed, tightened the belt of her robe, and trailed down the short passage to the door.
‘Kalispera,’ Alex said shortly, and walked past her into the flat.
Gasping, she went after him into the living room. ‘What do you think you’re doing? What do you want?’
‘You,’ he said. ‘And I have crossed Europe to find you.’ He added with steely emphasis, ‘It has been an inconvenience.’
‘Then you could have saved yourself the trouble,’ Natasha retorted. ‘Because I came back here to get away from you.’ She wrapped her arms defensively round her body. ‘So will you go, please?’
‘Why? Are you expecting your previous visitor to return?’ There was a harsh note in his voice, and the dark eyes raked her, as if he’d reached out and dragged the robe from her body. ‘If so, I think you will be disappointed, agapi mou. He seemed in no mood to do so as he left.’
‘Can you blame him?’ she queried tautly. She held up the magazine. ‘Discovering that his girlfriend had been tagged as your Mystery Mistress?’
‘But you were never his, matia mou,’ Alex reminded her softly. ‘Only mine.’
‘Not any longer.’ She took a deep breath. ‘As we both know. So why are you here?’
‘To talk.’ He took off the jacket of the dark suit he was wearing, and tossed it across the arm of the sofa, before loosening his tie, and unfastening a couple of shirt buttons. ‘May I sit down?’
‘If you haven’t the decency to leave,’ she said. ‘How can I stop you?’
‘Will you sit with me?’ He patted the sofa cushion, and she winced inwardly with by mute anguish as she remembered all the evenings in the saloni curled up on his lap or beside him, her head on his shoulder.
‘No.’ The denial emerged more fiercely than she’d intended, and elicited a wry smile.
‘Even if I tell you there is nothing to fear,’ he asked. ‘That I have given my word of honour not to…molest you in any way.’
She answered him with silence, taking the small chair with wooden arms as far from the sofa as the room allowed, and tucking the skirts of her robe around her bare feet and ankles.
The silence lengthened, then he said quietly, ‘Why did you run away, matia mou? My father’s friends are kind people. They would have welcomed you. I told you so in my letter.’
Natasha bit her lip. ‘Not if they’d known what I really was,’ she returned. ‘I preferred to return to my own friends.’
‘Leaving poor Zeno distraught,’ he commented. ‘When you were not at the pharmacy, he called at every shop in town, searching for you. He even went to the hospital in case your headache had become heatstroke. It was only then that he remembered the ferry.
‘I had just disembarked from Selene with our visitors when he returned and told me you had gone.’
His mouth tightened. ‘And there was nothing I could do—not immediately. Having placated my father over our affair and promised my support for his future plans, I could not desert him just when I was most needed.
‘I could only pull a few strings and arrange for someone at Naxos Airport to contact me if you tried to get a plane.’ He added quietly, ‘The next forty-eight hours of silence were the worst of my life. I began to think you had gone for ever.’
‘A good thought,’ Natasha said stonily. ‘Hang on to it.’ Because you have no right to talk to me like this. ‘But I didn’t intend to distress Zeno. Please offer him my abject apologies when you see him next.’
‘Abject?’ Alex’s mouth twisted. ‘Not you. But why didn’t you wait until I could come to you? You knew the difficulties.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Those tricky negotiations. I hope they’ve been successfully completed.’
His shrug, his smile were rueful. ‘To some extent at least. And that is one of the reasons I am here, agapi mou—to invite you to a wedding.’
For a moment, Natasha was stunned into silence. Then she said hoarsely, ‘That is—unbearably cruel.’
‘Ah,’ he said quietly. ‘But you should be accustomed to that, according to our last meeting. So, may I have an answer, if you please?’
‘I already have a wedding to go to,’ she said. ‘I think one’s enough for the time being. So the answer is—no.’
He gave her a reflective look. ‘Kyria Theodosia will be much grieved if you stay away.’
‘I hardly think so. She wanted me out of the way while the marriage was being set up.’ She glared at him, glad that she could fight her pain with anger. ‘She and everyone else. Of course, there were Irini’s feelings to consider,’ she added raggedly. ‘But if you think she’ll have forgiven and forgotten anything that’s happened if I turn up at the wedding, think again. Because I can guarantee she won’t.’
She lifted her chin. ‘And on whose side would I sit? Or do they have a special corner in the church for the groom’s discarded mistresses? If so, I think it will be quite crowded enough without my presence.’
He said harshly, ‘You are being unfair, Natasha. My father has loved two women in his life. One was my mother, and the other is Theodosia Papadimos, the lady he intends to marry on Alyssos next month. As you well know.’
He saw her stunned expression, and his eyes narrowed. ‘What is wrong? My father gave you my letter, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘But I didn’t read it. I—I threw it away.’
‘In the name of God, why?’ His tone was incredulous.
‘Because you were going to marry Irini. I heard it from your father, but—I couldn’t bear to see it in black and white.’ She was on her feet suddenly, white-faced, her voice raw. ‘I needed somehow to pretend it wasn’t happening. Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you satisfied now?’
‘Natasha mou,’ he said gently. ‘Even you must know that marriage between brother and sister is illegal.’
‘Brother and sister.’ She pronounced the words slowly and carefully as if she’d never heard them before. ‘What are you talking about?’
He held out a hand. ‘Sit with me,’ he invited quietly, ‘while I tell you what was in my letter—how the feud began.’
She walked slowly to the sofa, and sat beside him. Careful to keep her distance.
The dark eyes held hers. ‘Think of a man and a woman,’ he said. ‘Already friends. He, a widower, she, a neglected and lonely wife. They fall in love in a place that has become a sanctuary for them both, and wish to spend the rest of their lives together, if her husband, with whom she shares little but a roof, will give her a divorce.
‘But he refuses, telling her, among other threats, she will never see her two young sons again if she humiliates him by leaving.
‘Instead, he demands that she return to him, even though she is carrying her lover’s child.’
Natasha whispered, ‘Oh, God, this can’t be true. It can’t…’
‘Believe it,’ he said. ‘She refuses, saying that her lover will fight beside her for the custody of her children. But on his way to her, her man’s car is involved in a serious collision with a hit-and-run driver, and he is badly injured.
‘At the same time, the house where she knew happiness is totally destroyed, as if it never existed. Leaving her with little choice but to return to what passed for a home.’
She said in a stifled voice, ‘You mean—you’re saying it was Thio Basilis who did…all that? Those terrible things? Oh, no. Please—no. It—it’s too horrible.’
He said levelly, ‘If you doubt me, matia mou, Madame Papadimos herself will confirm all that I have told you.’
Natasha was silent, staring down at her fists clenched in her lap. At last, she sighed. ‘I—I don’t
need to do that. Everything you’ve told me explains so much that I didn’t understand. Things that I felt were wrong, but didn’t examine too deeply, because he—Thio Basilis—was so kind to me.’
‘You took the place of a daughter he could not love, pedhi mou.’
She said bitterly, ‘No wonder Irini hates me.’
‘She will not always do so.’ He took her hands in his, gently stroking her fingers. ‘Although the truth has been a great shock to her, and her immediate reaction was everything we had most feared. And that is why, having witnessed her past behaviour to you, I needed to get you away. I told my father I would not allow you to be subjected again to that kind of abuse or worse.’
He added drily, ‘Papa now fully understands my caution. At one point she was like a wild thing, threatening violence—to herself and everyone around her. Even her mother. But she is already becoming calmer, as she comes to realise that she now has a father who loves and wants her.’
She said quietly, ‘Also a brother who will be kind to her. And your father and Thia Theodosia have found each other again too. Which is—wonderful.’ She swallowed. ‘Do Stavros and Andonis know the truth—about the feud?’
‘Kyria Theodosia says her husband spared her that final humiliation, and they still believe it was a business quarrel, as I did myself until a few years ago.’
He paused. ‘Irini will keep their family name, and, to the world, Papa will be no more than a caring and affectionate stepfather.’
He smiled a little. ‘When Irini has learned to control her temper and her tongue, he will find her a good man to warm her bed and her heart.’
She withdrew her hand from his clasp. ‘So her fate is already sealed.’ She tried to speak lightly. ‘And, unlike me, she has no means of escape.’
‘Is that what you want, pedhi mou? To escape?’ There was an odd note in his voice.
‘Of course. That’s why I’m here, back to my own life, and my real world.’
‘But not to your boyfriend, it seems,’ he said. ‘Or your best friend, either. Won’t you find it lonely?’
Not as lonely, she wanted to cry out, as loving you, without hope of return.
She shrugged. ‘Independence has other advantages.’
‘If Iorgos had been driving you,’ he said softly, ‘you might not have found escape so easy.’
It was not easy now, when he’d moved closer, making her aware of the warm, evocative scent of his skin. When she’d only have to reach out a hand to free the remaining buttons on his shirt.
She hurried back into speech. ‘Is he waiting outside for you now?’
‘No, he is in Athens, with a new job at one of our companies. I have managed at last to persuade my father that I no longer needed a watchdog.’
She looked away. ‘Mac said you’d received threats at one time.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was three years ago, just after I had seen you at an embassy party, and defied my father’s anger by writing to Kyrios Papadimos requesting his permission to call on you formally to court you as my wife.’
She stared at him, her eyes widening. ‘You—asked Thio Basilis—for me?’ She shook her head. ‘But why?’
‘Because I looked at you, agapi mou, and fell in love. It was that incredible—that simple—and I was lost forever.
‘I went home after the party in a daze, and told Papa I had found the only girl in the world I would ever want to marry, and he smiled. I told him who you were, and he stopped smiling, and forbade me to think of you again.
‘We—quarrelled, but I wrote my letter anyway, and the reply came back the following day. I have it still. Kyrios Papadimos warned me that if I—the womanising scum my father had spawned—ever turned my degraded eyes in the direction of his innocent child again, he, Basilis, would ensure that I would first be beaten unconscious, and then damaged so badly that I would never again be able to satisfy a woman in bed or father children.’
‘He said that?’ Natasha repeated numbly. ‘Oh, God, how could he?’
Alex grimaced. ‘There was worse. He also added that what had happened to my father would be nothing by comparison. Letting me know that Papa’s car crash had been no accident, and that he had been deliberately driven off the road. Taunting me with it.’
Natasha pressed a hand to her trembling mouth. She said again, ‘Oh, God…’
‘It was clear there was more to this than mere business rivalry,’ Alex went on. ‘So I showed my father the letter, and it was then that he confessed to me about his affair with Theodosia Papadimos, and told me there had been a child—a daughter he had never seen. And in telling me, he made it clear that you were lost to me forever. That no girl was worth such a risk, and I must forget you.’
He shook his head. ‘I went a little crazy, I think. I could think only that he had robbed me of my one chance of happiness with the girl I loved. I told him that I hated him—that I would never forgive him.
‘And he looked at me with tears in his eyes, and said, “Do you think I shall ever forgive myself, Alexandros mou?”’
He paused. ‘Since that time, Iorgos has been my shadow. It was only after Kyrios Papadimos died that I allowed myself to think of you again. To wonder. I knew that you had gone back to England, but had a nominal place on the Papadimos board. As your brothers were already experiencing commercial and financial difficulties, it seemed possible that I might see you again.
‘When it was suggested that any deal between our organisations should be sealed by marriage, I felt as if I had been given the world. I wanted you so badly, I forgot to be cautious. I ordered an immediate refit of Selene for our honeymoon, and extended the work already being done at the house on Alyssos. I told myself we could spend our weekends there, at first, and extend our visits once our children came.
‘I could think of nothing but the dream of my heart which was coming true at last. My dream of you, Natasha mou, my moonlight goddess.’
He paused, then added flatly, ‘Then I received the second letter, and all dreaming stopped. I was destroyed—sick to my stomach. It was as if I’d lost you a second time, and this time it would be forever.
‘I also knew by then that your brothers intended to renege on any deal made between us, so I was angry, as well as hurt. I thought of you naked by the pool, and decided to take the sexual favours you were offering, and enjoy them for as long as it suited me.
‘Instead I found innocence, and, though I hated myself for what I had done, I could not let you go. And when I came to you that first night on Selene and found you waiting for me, all in white, I could only think of the adorable bride on our wedding night I had longed for. It was like coming home. As if an empty space in my life had been filled at last. So, what could I do but ask you to be my wife?’
‘But you didn’t say that.’ Her voice shook. ‘You just talked about…making amends, and the possibility I could be pregnant. And you told me later you didn’t want me or any of your other women to fall in love with you.’
His smile was wry. ‘Self-protection, pedhi mou. I thought you hated me. Every time I tried to get close, you pushed me away. Even when we were so happy on the island, I thought it was just my lovemaking that you wanted, and not my love. And when you said that being with me had been unbearable, I almost gave up all hope.’
She said huskily, ‘For three years, I remembered the way you’d looked at me. Thought of you, and dreamed too, but never knew why. I was so afraid that I would never be more to you than another willing body in bed. Just one more among so many. That’s what I couldn’t bear.’
‘I am no saint, matia mou,’ Alex said gently. ‘But I can swear I have been more selective than you might think.’
He slipped off the sofa and knelt beside her. He said slowly, ‘I was yours since that first night, Natasha, and you have always been mine. My woman, my wife and the only love of my heart. Now, and for all time.’ His hands trembled as they closed round hers. The dark eyes pleaded. ‘So, will you take me as your husband, my dearest one,
and let us heal the hurt of the past?’
‘Alex,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve been so unhappy without you. And I love you so much—more than you could ever believe.’
He got to his feet, pulling her up with him, holding her for one endless moment. He said softly, ‘You will find I have infinite faith, my sweet one.’ Then kissed her, his mouth warm and ineffably tender as it caressed hers.
At last he put her from him, sighing reluctantly. ‘And now you must get dressed, agapi mou. I have promised Madame Papadimos that I would take you to her.’
She gasped. ‘Thia Theodosia’s here in London?’
‘She is here to buy her wedding dress, and, if God was good, to help you choose yours too. Also to act as your chaperone,’ he added pensively. ‘She and my father are prepared to forgive my past behaviour with you, only on condition that I now behave with suitable restraint until our wedding night. So you will have your formal wooing after all, agapi mou.’
She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips, swiftly and mischievously. ‘Formal, and very short, I hope, Kyrios Alexandros.’
He laughed. ‘Shamefully brief, Kyria Natasha, I give you my word. And once I have you,’ he added with sudden fierceness, ‘I shall keep you safe forever.’
‘I know,’ she said, and her smile was misty. ‘My dearest love—I know.’
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4986-2
THE INNOCENT’S SURRENDER
First North American Publication 2010.
Copyright © 2009 by Sara Craven.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.