by Julia James
He paused, looking down at her, gathering her hands against his heart.
'Come back to me, Andrea, and be the wife of my heart, for I love you more than I can bear.'
The tears were spilling down her cheeks now.
'Yes!' she uttered as he kissed her tears away, and then his mouth closed over hers, and what was the gentle, soft touch of homage became a salutation to the future they would have together.
He released her, and turned to face Kim. Andrea could see the tears shining in her mother's eyes.
'Have we your blessing?' Nikos asked her quietly.
For a moment her mother could not speak. And then, with a broken cry, she answered.
'Oh, yes! Oh, yes!’
EPILOGUE
'If it is a boy, then Andreas. If a girl, then Kim.'
Andrea smiled. 'Kim isn't very Greek.'
Her husband brushed this unimportant objection inside. His hand moved over the rounded contour of her belly.
'He kicked!' Nikos's voice was full of wonder—and astonishment
'Or she,' pointed out Andrea. Her hand closed over Nikos's. She leant her head back against his shoulder, her gaze stretching out over the azure Aegean that spread all around them, feeling the familiar swell of the sea beneath the hull. 'How can I be so happy?' she asked.
With his free hand Nikos stroked her hair.
'Because you deserve it,' he said.
Andrea reached up to kiss him. 'And you do too.'
It seemed to her still such a miracle—to be so happy together. Since that magical, miraculous evening, when Nikos had come to claim her heart for his own, her life had turned upside down all over again. And she rejoiced in it totally!
Nikos had whisked them both off to Greece, sweeping Kim with them as well, and settled them in a hired villa on a private island.
'I don't want you exposed to what will happen now,' he had told Andrea. 'It will be very ugly.'
Then he had gone to Athens, to face Yiorgos Coustakis. His denouncement had been merciless—and so had the press coverage that had ensued. The scandal of the way one of the richest men in Greece had behaved to his own granddaughter had shocked the nation. That, and the cancellation of the expected merger with Vassilis Inc, had caused a steep plunge in the Coustakis share price, had precipitated the normally cowed board of Coustakis Industries into drastic action. Yiorgos had been deposed as chairman, forced to retire, a social pariah.
The seizure that had killed him a month later had moved few to pity a man who had had no pity in him for anyone else, no kindness in his hard, selfish heart.
His entire fortune had passed to Ms despised granddaughter, for in Ms rage at his new son-in-law he had destroyed the will that had left his wealth to his future great-grandson, and Andrea had become, by default, the Coustakis heiress after all. It was a troubling inheritance.
'Nikos—are you sure, very sure, about what you want me to do?' Her voice was anxious as she stood in the circle of his arms, looking out over the shining Aegean sea. He turned her round to face him.
'Completely sure.' His answer came unhesitatingly. 'The Andreas Coustakis Foundation will be a fine and fitting monument to your father—and your mother is in agreement as well. After all,' he went on, 'all three of us know what it is to be poor, Andrea mou. The foundation will give a chance to so many children blighted by their families' poverty.'
Her eyes were still troubled. 'But we could keep the Coustakis shares, and you could run the company as you always intended...'
He shook his head decisively. 'No. We have more than enough money, Andrea—we will never be poor. To me, Yiorgos's wealth is tainted. His neglect of you proves it. Let it be put to good use now.' His mouth twisted. 'Perhaps if we use Ms wealth to some good end, people might have something pleasant to remember him by.'
'He was so vile to Mum, so needlessly cruel and offensive, and yet...' her voice sounded strained '...it was a miserable end for him—collapsing and dying alone, with not a soul to care about him.'
'But then, he did not care for anyone except himself,' Nikos answered soberly. 'You and your mother were not the only ones he injured—there were many victims of Yiorgos Coustakis. When the newspapers ran the story of his shameful treatment of you and your mother other stories came out too, showing his brutality, Ms ruthlessness, his absolute disregard for anyone else.'
He took her hand. 'And now the Coustakis fortune is yours. Let it do some good for others, for a change—as Yiorgos Coustakis never did. Come,' he said, starting to stroll down the deck with her, 'we might as well make the most of our farewell cruise on tMs floating monument to execrable interior yacht design!'
Andrea laughed. 'I'm sure some billionaire somewhere will love it—and that hideously gilded house he lived in as well! The sale of both will boost the coffers of the foundation handsomely!'
'Indeed. However,' Nikos mused, 'I think perhaps we ought to see if we can persuade Captain Petrachos not to leave us— I'm sure we can find some way of tempting him to stay. He was saying over dinner last night that he would be happy to help with the seamanship aspects of the youth training programme for the foundation.'
Andrea exchanged glances with him. 'Funnily enough,' she commented dryly, 'that was the very thing Mum said she was keenest on helping to set up. A striking coincidence, wouldn't you say?' Her voice changed. 'Oh, I do so hope that something might come of them being together! I always dreamed of Mum meeting someone else—I know she was so in love with my father, but if she could find companionship, at least, it would be so wonderful for her!'
Nikos smiled. 'Let us wish them well—for we have happiness and enough to spare, ne, Andrea mou?’
She wound her arm around him.
'I do love you, Nikos,’ she said, 'so very much.'
He stopped, and turned her in Ms arms, and kissed her.
'And I love you, Andrea mou. Through all the years we have.'
The future, as bright and golden as the sun pouring over the Aegean sea, beckoned to them, and they walked towards it together.
Scanned and reviewed by Shahrazad (SCZ)
January 22, 2007