The Greek's Forbidden Bride

by Cathy Williams

  ‘My first visit to Santorini,’ Abby said coolly, averting her eyes and staring straight ahead, which was a far more calming view. ‘I’ve been to Athens. A few years ago.’

  ‘With your family?’ Theo asked.

  ‘No.’

  Since she obviously didn’t want to expand on her answer, he sat back and waited in silence. Sooner or later she would fill it. People were predictable. And, since he wanted to find out as much about her as he could in the limited time at his disposal, he would wait for her to supply the details that would eventually bury her.

  ‘I don’t have any family. At least not in England,’ Abby eventually said irritably. ‘My parents went to Australia to live seven years ago. We don’t see one another very often, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You went with friends, then?’ Theo prompted. ‘Athens is a beautiful city, but I’m surprised you would have chosen that as a destination with friends. It lacks the rampant night-life of some other places, like Ibiza. Isn’t that where most young English people go to have a good time?’

  ‘Most,’ Abby agreed, resisting the bait. Athens was just one of those things she had no intention of talking about. Actually, even thinking about that long weekend there made her feel slightly sick. It had been the last time that she had known complete, innocent happiness. She had been in love, or so she had thought, and the world had been a very rosy place. Looking back on the person she had been then was like looking back at a stranger.

  ‘So you don’t know much about our island.’ Theo could barely contain the impatience in his voice. ‘Or do you? Did Michael tell you anything about it? I can’t remember the last time he was here.’

  ‘Oh, no. He didn’t discuss it much. Just said that the villa was your grandfather’s holiday home and that he was having his birthday celebrations here.’

  ‘And has the villa lived up to your expectations?’ he enquired silkily.

  Abby stiffened. ‘I didn’t really think what to expect.’

  ‘Come now, surely that’s not true. Everyone has a vision in their mind when they’re heading off somewhere on a holiday.’ He omitted to mention the word free to describe her one week stay but it was on the tip of his tongue.

  ‘It’s a magnificent house,’ Abby said neutrally. She turned towards him and gave him a long, cool look. ‘Is that the right answer or is there something else I ought to say? I’m surprised by its size but only insofar as it seems big for one person to use as a holiday home.’

  She might look like a girl of nineteen, he thought, but there was nothing infantile about her mind. Had he really expected that there would be? Any gold-digger worth her salt would have the shrewdness of a fox and would be clever enough to know how and when to use it. Of course she wouldn’t have tried to squeeze too much information out of his brother about where they were going. That would lead to suspicions. Even his trusting brother would be wary of the third degree, no matter how skilfully handled.

  ‘It was built at a time where there were far more family members around to use it. My grandmother was still alive and all their children were still at home. Then, for a short while, there were grandchildren. Times have changed but my grandfather’s affection for the island is still the same and he still chooses to come here every so often so that he can appreciate the peace of the surroundings. Naturally, Santorini is far more touristy than it used to be, but he contents himself with staying in the house and has very little idea of the shops and boutiques and hotels that have gone up in the past couple of decades.’

  ‘Doesn’t he get lonely, coming here by himself to relax?’ Abby was drawn into the conversation against her will. It was safe enough, she supposed, and besides, like it or not, he had a mesmerising voice, dark and deep like velvet.

  ‘My mother accompanies him whenever she can and usually brings some of her friends.’ Theo sat back in the chair and gazed out towards the endless landscape. ‘My grandfather is old. It would be more stressful for him to start taking holidays in a hotel some place he didn’t know than to come back to what he knows. Timos and Maria, who look after the place when it’s empty, have been here for ever. They are almost as old as he is and they are as familiar with him as old friends. Often, if he is here by himself, he will share his meals with them.’

  ‘And do you ever come here on holiday?’ Abby asked curiously.

  ‘I don’t tend to have holidays,’ Theo informed her flatly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Why don’t you take holidays? Are you one of these people who thinks that relaxation is some kind of sin?’

  Theo looked at her incredulously. The way she addressed the question was very nearly bordering on insolent. Insolence was not a quality he ever encountered, not in the people he met in the line of work and especially not in the women with whom he came into contact. And the way she was looking at him, big brown eyes wide and steady and ever so slightly disdainful, made his pulse accelerate with anger.

  A gold-digger, he thought, a common little gold-digger daring to cross verbal swords with him!

  ‘I run a vast and complex empire, Miss Clinton, and, crazy though this may seem, rushing off on holiday every two weeks is not a key ingredient to my success.’

  ‘People always think they’re indispensable but they never are. Michael often says that he may have opened two restaurants and a nightclub, and they may be doing well, but the most important role he could play would be to ensure that they carried on running well even if he wasn’t around. A bit like having a child, I guess. You put everything into bringing them up and of course they need you, but in the end, if the parenting is halfway decent, they’re confident enough to spread their wings and find their own destiny.’

  ‘And what would you know about children?’

  Abby could have kicked herself. Theo Toyas was dangerous. She should have had her guard up instead of finding herself lulled into meaningful conversation. ‘I’m just saying that never looking up from the grindstone seems a pointless way of life.’ She shrugged, which sent his anger levels rising. To top it off, she actually turned away from him, dismissing him from her line of vision so that she could stare out towards the horizon.

  His plan to find out about her had well and truly back fired and if he wasn’t so stunned he would have been substantially angrier with her.

  He decided to postpone his inquisition for a little while longer. ‘Naturally I have highly dependable and talented people but I control the reins of my organisation. Call it doing things the Greek way.’ Her face, like her body, was neat. Small straight nose, sprinkling of freckles, surprisingly dark eyebrows for someone so blonde. He caught himself staring and gritted his teeth in exasperation.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay what?’ Theo grated.

  ‘Okay I’ll call it doing things the Greek way if it makes you feel better.’

  Theo controlled himself with difficulty. ‘Tell me, how long have you known my brother?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of years.’

  ‘A couple of years. You’ve been going out with my brother for a couple of years and your name has only managed to surface now? I find that very hard to believe. Michael calls our mother every week. He would have talked about you a lot sooner.’

  ‘I said that I’ve known him for a couple of years, and I have. We’ve been friends for a while.’ Abby could feel herself slipping into dangerous territory. She knew where he was going. Thinking about it, she had seen the drift of his suspicious little mind the minute she had clapped eyes on him and she couldn’t afford to antagonise him into digging any deeper. She had to convince him that everything was precisely as it seemed and getting under his skin was not the right way to set about the task.

  She turned to face him and smiled. Warmly, she hoped. ‘We clicked straight away. Michael’s got all the qualities I admire in a man. He’s kind and thoughtful and modest. You would think that in his line of work those are exactly the qualities that would let him down, but all his staff adore hi
m and so do I.’

  ‘And how did you two meet?’ He could hear the sincerity in her voice but he couldn’t abandon the suspicion that it was all a little too good to be true. People were never straightforward towards each other when it came to dealing with vast sums of money.

  ‘I worked for him,’ Abby said simply. ‘I was the accounts manager for his restaurants when they opened up. At first there was just me and a secretary, but as they’ve become more and more successful the team has grown. Now, there are ten of us and we work flat out. You’ve never been to Brighton to see Michael, have you?’

  ‘It is easier for my brother to travel to London to see me, usually for lunch, although lately we have not met as often as we might have hoped. We both have busy schedules.’

  ‘His restaurants are super,’ Abby enthused, eager to elaborate on a safe topic. ‘One is a pub-style restaurant. Lovely cosy place but with superb French food, and the other’s fancier, although the menu is really quite simple. We’ve found that most people don’t actually want to go out and be faced with a choice of weird things. They like their food to be tasty and fairly straightforward, so we do fantastic sausages and garlic mash, and slow-cooked shin of beef and other dishes along those lines. It’s very popular. In fact, at the moment there’s a two month waiting list for tables at both restaurants.’

  ‘What a charming eulogy to my brother’s culinary ventures,’ Theo drawled. ‘I’m sure he would have found such enthusiasm very inspiring when he was first starting out.’

  Abby tried not to show her intense dislike for the man sprawled in the chair next to her. Every inch of him spoke of arrogance. She had the unnerving sensation that he was circling her, taking his time, trying to find the chink in her storylines that would validate his low opinion.

  ‘I hope so,’ Abby said equably. ‘It’s a tough business starting out on your own. Other people’s support can be invaluable.’

  ‘And is this when my brother began appreciating your invaluable contribution to his life?’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t the only one who had confidence in his success.’

  But I bet you were the only one who had the added advantage of some seriously persuasive feminine wiles, Theo thought. Abigail Clinton might not have the immediate, obvious sex appeal of the full-busted hourglass centrefold, but he had to admit that there was something alluring about her.

  ‘You should get your swimsuit,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘The pool is lovely. Always at its best when no one else is in it.’

  ‘I haven’t brought one.’

  ‘You haven’t brought one?’

  Abby blushed and looked away. ‘I…I’m not that confident when it comes to swimming,’ she confessed grudgingly. ‘I did think about bringing one so that I could tan on a beach some time, but then I changed my mind.’

  For the first time hostility and apprehension gave way to simple embarrassment and she felt her skin begin to tingle uncomfortably under his piercing black stare.

  ‘It’s not that unusual,’ she snapped, scowling. ‘Lots of people can’t swim.’ She turned a deeper shade of pink as a slow smile of amusement curved his lips. ‘It’s all right for you—’ Abby flung herself into the ensuing silence, redolent with his silent laughter at her expense ‘—you grew up surrounded by swimming pools and sea! Some of us didn’t!’

  Theo was intrigued. He had wanted valuable information, information he could use to build up his case against her so that he could prevent a travesty of a marriage taking place, but this useless snippet was curiously engaging.

  ‘I didn’t think that you needed to be surrounded by swimming pools and sea in order to learn to swim,’ he said, staring at her flushed face. ‘I thought schools in England offered swimming lessons as part of the curriculum.’

  ‘They probably do!’ It was out before she had time to think. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out the next logical question to her outburst and she waited in gloomy silence for the inevitable.

  ‘You mean you didn’t go to school in England? Did you grow up in Australia? Is that why your parents returned there?’

  Abby looked at him with a hunted expression. ‘No, I didn’t grow up in Australia. I had an unusual upbringing,’ she eventually muttered.

  ‘How unusual?’ He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and continued to look at her with what she thought was an unhealthy level of interest.

  Couldn’t the man see that she was uncomfortable? Yes, she thought waspishly, of course he could, which would be no reason for him to back away from the subject. Well this, at least, was no great secret, was it?

  ‘My parents were…a bit unorthodox. They travelled a lot.’

  ‘You mean they were gypsies?’

  ‘Of course they weren’t gypsies! Not that I have anything against gypsies, as it happens! But do I look like a gypsy to you? Do I? With this hair?’ She yanked off the hat and extended one long handful of her amazing hair towards him. Theo realised that he was thoroughly enjoying this surreal turn in the conversation. He took the proffered hair and made a show of examining it carefully.

  ‘Could be dyed,’ was his comment as she snatched it out of his fingers.

  ‘I’ve never dyed my hair in my life.’

  ‘So explain.’

  ‘Okay. If you really must know, my parents were…were…sort of…hippyish.’ There. It was out. She waited for the roar of laughter and the immediate attack. Instead he was looking at her with real interest. ‘They didn’t believe in material possessions or settling down. When I was older, Mum told me that life was one long adventure and what was adventurous about settling down with a mortgage and a job at the bank? So they travelled. Course, I did go to school but never anywhere for very long, not long enough to…’

  ‘Take swimming lessons? Make friends?’

  ‘Of course I made friends! Lots of them over the years.’ But they had come and gone and her parents had never understood that whilst they saw that ever-changing parade of people entering and leaving her life as exciting, she found it very hard to deal with. She had never really even had the opportunity to have boyfriends in the normal way. What would have been the point? They would have been short-lived anyway. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, had made her a walking target for being hurt, because when her parents left for Australia and she could finally impose stability on her life, she just didn’t have the accumulated experience to spot the cad. Oliver James had been charming and persistent and she had fallen for him hook, line and sinker, never spotting all the inaccuracies in his behaviour that most other girls would have seen a mile off.

  That, she thought, was something Theo Toyas would never learn about!

  ‘That was incredibly selfish of your parents. Why did they decide to go to Australia?’

  ‘More space to wander.’ Abby grinned sheepishly. ‘Although they tell me that they’ve now opened a shop in Melbourne, selling organic food and ethnic ornaments. They’ve even bought themselves a small house and they’re planning on coming to England next year for a three month holiday.’

  ‘I’d like to meet them,’ Theo surprised himself by saying. He was picturing her as a girl, trekking in the wake of her parents from one place to another, longing for stability so that she could be like everyone else.

  Then he reminded himself that really this was just the sort of background that would encourage her to go after a man with money, a man who could promise her the security she craved.

  ‘I don’t often meet nomads in my day-to-day life,’ he amended, backtracking on that fleeting impulse that had seen him wrapped up in her life story, hanging on like a kid listening to a riveting bedtime yarn. Touching though her little tale had been, it had nothing to do with the reality he needed to deal with. He gave her a brisk, cool smile and vaulted to his feet. ‘I’m going to have one last swim before I go inside for breakfast. In case you don’t know the routine, breakfast tends to be a buffet affair. Everyone’s going to be busy getting ready for tonight, so I shouldn’t expect to be
waited on hand and foot if I were you.’

  With that he turned his back and sauntered towards the pool, leaving her to simmer at the pointed dig in his remark. She was sorely tempted to throw her book at the back of that arrogant head of his, especially as it was a hardback, but no, giving in to emotion was a bad idea. Instead she glowered and removed herself from the lounger and headed back towards the villa.

  For a minute there she had very nearly forgotten how dislikeable he was and that wasn’t going to do. For Michael’s sake, she had to be on her guard.

  The object of her protectiveness was still asleep and Abby nudged him with one finger until he rolled over and looked at her blearily. ‘You can’t spend all day in bed,’ she informed him without preamble and Michael smiled at her drowsily.

  ‘You sound like a wife.’

  ‘Michael, be serious.’

  ‘I am being serious.’ He grinned. ‘Where have you been, anyway?’

  ‘By the pool.’

  ‘You can’t swim.’

  ‘I know that, Michael. I was by the pool with your brother and I’m beginning to think that this engagement business wasn’t a very good idea.’

  That had him sitting up abruptly. Michael had a range of silk pyjamas. It was his only sartorial weakness. Today’s number was a deep blue and beige Paisley. Abby fleetingly wondered whether his brother had a similar taste in pyjamas and concluded that the man probably didn’t sleep in any at all. He didn’t strike her as a pyjama-wearing type. She immediately squashed any follow-up to that line of thinking and focused on her partner, who was looking at her with a worried expression.

  ‘Of course it’s a good idea. You’re not going to back out on me now, are you? Are you?’

  ‘I just didn’t think it through,’ Abby mumbled. ‘I can see why you wanted it, really I can, but now that I’m actually here, I don’t like deceiving your mother. And your grandfather, for that matter. They’re nice people.’