‘Whatever you choose to call your presence here, I’ve agreed to play my part in it. Unless you’d rather pass on the whole thing?’ His expression was suddenly grim, his eyes hard and challenging.
It was an ultimatum. Her heart skipped an alarmed beat. What if he phoned her uncle and told him she was being uncooperative? After the plane trick, she wouldn’t put it past Thio to refuse to help sort out the accommodation mix-up. It occurred to her then that the bungled hotel booking mightn’t even be a mistake.
With limited money, and no way of paying for thirty nights at Sydney prices, she might very well be forced to beg for this man’s generosity.
With a sinking heart she realised this could be exactly what they’d planned. Her uncle’s words came back to her with a chilling significance.
‘The Nikostos are good people,’ Peri Giorgios had asserted before she’d woken up to his ploy. ‘They’ll look after you. I’m guessing they’ll have you out of that hotel and into the Nikosto family villa in no time.’
The Nikosto family villa. Except it wasn’t the Nikosto family. It was one member of it. One angry, ice-cold member.
Until she could talk to her uncle and aunt again, get a clearer idea of where she stood money-wise, perhaps her best option was to pretend to play along.
She met Sebastian Nikosto’s dark eyes and crushed down her pride. ‘No. No, look.’ The words were as ashes on her tongue. ‘I’m—really very grateful for your kindness.’ Her voice cracked on the last one.
His heavy black lashes lowered. The faintest flush tinged his cheek as he said brusquely, ‘All right, then. So—dinner this evening? I’ll pick you up here at seven.’ His eyes flickered to her mouth. ‘Might as well—make a start.
CHAPTER TWO
ARIADNE walked fast, up and down the hotel suite’s sitting room until she’d nearly worn a furrow in the carpet. Then she strode furiously around straightening the pictures, shifting lamps to more pleasing positions, realigning the chairs.
Her uncle’s scheme had placed her in an impossible situation with that icy, smouldering man. What had he been offered to marry her? No wonder he had such a low opinion of her, but why, oh, why had he agreed if it enraged him so much?
Maybe, if she could have despised him more, she wouldn’t feel so ashamed. Ashamed of her uncle. Ashamed of herself and the mess she’d fallen into by thinking she was in love with that smooth-talking liar, Demetri Spiros.
Imagine if Sebastian Nikosto heard about the wedding scandal. Her uncle’s words on the subject had rung in her ears all the way to Sydney. ‘There isn’t a man in Greece who would touch you now with a very long pole.’
Surely her uncle must know that if she did ever marry someone, even someone ‘bought’—she flushed again in memory of Sebastian’s stinging words—the man would have to be told about the scandal.
Other things Sebastian had said returned to her now with scathing significance. Some people choose to work, in case you haven’t heard. As if he’d assumed she had no professional qualifications of her own. Did she look as if she’d spent her life as a useless ornament?
She kept rephrasing the things she’d said to him and turning them into what she should have said. Next time she saw him…Tonight, if she could bear to face him tonight, she’d set him straight about what sort of woman she was. And if he thought for a second, for an instant, that she would ever be available to him…
When the storm had calmed a little, she sat on the bed and forced herself to reason. In Athens it would be morning. Her uncle would be on his way to his office, her aunt engaged in either her beauty routine or instructing the housekeeper. Thea Leni was always affectionate and easy to deal with, though her compliance in the subterfuge to trick Ariadne onto the plane had been a painful shock. The hurt felt more savage every time she thought of it. Her loving aunt must have believed in her husband’s solution to the ‘Ariadne problem’, at least a bit.
She put her head in her hands, still unable to believe all that had happened. Had they intended it as a punishment? She’d believed in their kindness absolutely, ever since, after the accident, they’d brought her as a seven-year-old to her uncle’s house on Naxos. Though quite a lot older than her parents, they’d done all they could to replace them. In their old-fashioned way they’d loved her, protected her, even to the point of making her feel quite suffocated by the time she reached eighteen.
Why hadn’t she woken up sooner to this holiday idea? When had Thio Peri ever wanted her to leave Greece without them in the past? Everything she’d done, every step she’d taken from the time she was seven, had been done under his care and protection, as if she were the most precious individual on the planet.
Even when they’d sent her to boarding school in England, either Thea Leni or Thio Pericles himself had come personally at every half-day and holiday to collect her. Long after she’d returned to Athens to attend university, she’d been told that one of the gardeners employed at the school had in reality been her own personal security guard. Thio Peri had never stopped worrying that she might be kidnapped and held to ransom.
How ironic. Once she’d been their jewel, but since she’d let them down and caused the scandal she must have lost her lustre. In their traditional way of thinking they still believed a large part of family honour depended on the marriages their sons and daughters made, the grandchildren they could boast of.
It wasn’t too hard to understand. They’d never stopped grieving over their own childless state. They’d pinned all their hopes on her, their ‘adopted’ daughter, to provide the nearest thing to grandchildren they could ever achieve.
‘You’ll like the Nikostos,’ Thio Peri had enthused on another occasion, determined to lure her into the trap. ‘They’re good people. They’ll look after you. My father and old Sebastian talked in the taverna every night for fifty years. They were the best of good friends. You will be taken care of there every step of the way.’
Thea Leni had hugged her so tightly. She should have seen then that it all felt like goodbye. ‘It will do you so much good, toula. It’s time you visited your own country.’
‘I thought Greece was my country now,’ Ariadne had put in, grateful they were at last moving on after the months of recriminations. And, face it, a little nervous to be venturing so far on her own at long last.
‘And so it is. But it’s important to see the land of your birth. Admit it. You’ve lost your job, you’ve lost your flat, people are whispering about you… You need the break.’
They needed the break. She could see that now. From her. From the embarrassment she’d brought them.
It wasn’t until she was on the plane buckling her seat belt that she’d woken up.
‘Sebastian will meet you at the airport and show you around Sydney,’ her aunt had said at the very last.
Her uncle’s hearty laugh had followed her down the embarkation corridor. ‘Don’t come back without a ring on your finger and a man in your suitcase.’
She should certainly have known then. Sebastian’s name had hardly been mentioned until that moment. Still, it wasn’t until the hostess was preparing to embark on the safety rigmarole that a shattering possibility had dawned. In a sudden panic, Ariadne had whipped out her mobile and dialled.
‘Thio. Oh, oh, Thio.’ Her voice shaking with a fearful certainty. ‘This isn’t some sort of matchmaking thing, is it? I mean, you haven’t set something up with this Sebastian Nikosto, have you?’
Guilt always made her uncle bluster. ‘You should be grateful your aunt and I have taken matters into our hands for you, Ariadne.’
‘What? How do you mean?’
His voice crackled down the phone. ‘Sebastian Nikosto is a good person. A fine man.’
‘What? No, no, Thio, no. You must be joking. You can’t do this. This isn’t my choice…’
‘Choice.’ His voice rose in her ear. ‘You’ve had choices, and look what you did with them. Look at yourself. You’re nearly twenty-four years old. There isn’t a man in G
reece—Europe—who will touch you. Now try to be a good girl and do the right thing. Be nice to Sebastian.’
‘But I don’t know him. And he’s old. You said he was old. This is a holiday. You promised—you said—’
Her tearful protests were interrupted.
‘Miss, miss.’ The flight attendant was hovering over her, something about turning off her mobile phone.
‘I can’t,’ she told the man. She, who had always hated a fuss and had turned herself inside out at times to avoid making trouble. ‘Sorry,’ she tried to explain to the anxious little guy. ‘I have to…’ She made a hurried gesture and turned back to the phone, her voice spiralling into a screech. ‘Thio Peri, this isn’t right. You can’t do this. This is against the law.’ Her uncle hung up on her and she tried furiously to redial.
‘Miss, please…’ The attendant held out his hand for the phone, insistence in his tone. Her neighbours were staring with avid interest. All heads were turned her way.
‘But this is an emergency,’ she said. Glancing around, she realised the plane was already taxiing. She panicked. ‘Oh, no, no. I have to get off.’
She dropped the phone, unbuckled her seat belt and tried to rise. Someone across the aisle dived for her phone.
The urgent voices. ‘Miss, sit down. Miss. Sit, please. You are endangering the passengers.’
People around her stared as she half stood, clinging to the seat in front of her, craning their necks to see the distressed woman. Then the plane accelerated for lift-off, and she plumped down involuntarily. She felt the wheels leave the ground, the air under the wings, and was flooded with despair. They would have to turn back. The pilot would have to be told.
When the white rooftops of Athens were falling away below two more attendants had arrived, concerned and more authoritative. ‘Is anything wrong, Miss Giorgias? Are you ill?’
‘It’s my—my uncle. He…’ Already they were out over the sea and heading up through clouds. ‘We have to go back. There’s been a mistake. Can you please tell the pilot?’
She took in their bemused expressions, the quick exchange of glances, and lurid images of the headlines flashed through her head. Ariadne Giorgias provokes airbus incident. Ariadne of Naxos in more trouble.
More scandal, more shame. More mockery of her name, using the coincidence of the ancient myth. She cringed from the thought of any further notoriety.
In the end she fastened her seat belt and apologised.
But she couldn’t just acquiesce. She might be stranded in a hotel room, in a strange city on the other side of the world with no one to turn to except a man who despised her, but she mustn’t give into panic. She had to keep her wits about her and find a solution.
First, though, she needed to be practical. She had expected many of her meals and all of her accommodation to have been paid in advance for the coming weeks, and her bank account was virtually empty except for the holiday money. Money for a little shopping, taxis, tips, day trips here and there. Holiday money. What a cruel laugh that was.
She took a deep, bracing breath and dialled Thea Leni’s private line at the Athens town house. This time she mustn’t lose control, as she had with the call from the plane.
‘Eleni Giorgias?’
Her aunt’s voice brought Ariadne a rush of emotion, but she controlled it. Thea sounded wary. Expecting the call, Ariadne guessed.
‘Thea. It’s me.’
‘Oh, toula, don’t… Don’t… Your uncle has arranged everything and it will be good. You will see. Are you…all right?’
Ariadne’s heart panged at the note of concern but she made herself ignore it. This wasn’t the time for tears. ‘There’s been a mistake in the hotel booking,’ she said in a low, rapid voice. ‘I find that I’m only booked for one night, and it hasn’t been paid for. The travel agent must have made an error. And when I met the tour director in the lobby my name wasn’t on his list. I thought Thio had paid in advance. And he was supposed to have paid the hotel for four weeks.’
There was a shocked silence. Then her aunt said, ‘Not paid for? But—but how…?’ Then her voice brightened. ‘Oh, I know what he’s thinking. Consider, toula, you won’t need to be in that hotel for long.’
The ruthlessness of the trick stabbed at Ariadne. Whatever had happened to chastity before marriage? ‘Oh, Thea, what are you asking me to do?’ This time there was no controlling her wail of anguish. ‘Are you expecting me to go straight into that man’s bed?’
Guilt, or perhaps shame, made her aunt’s voice shrill. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything except to give Sebastian a chance. He is a good man. He will marry you. He is rich, he has brains…Your uncle says he is a genius at what he does with the satellites.’
‘He doesn’t want to, Aunt. He doesn’t want to marry me.’ She wound up to a higher pitch. ‘I’m not even cut out to be a wife.’
A gasp came down the line loud and clear, all the way from Athens. ‘Never say that, Ariadne.’ Her aunt was shocked to the foundations. ‘Where is your gratitude?’ she wailed. ‘You had a bridegroom who was willing and you stood him up at the altar rails and dishonoured the entire Giorgias and Spiros families. Your uncle’s oldest friends.’
Emotion welled up in Ariadne’s throat. She understood. After they’d taken so much care to keep her pure for her husband, in the eyes of their traditional world she’d been deflowered, dishonoured, and still had no husband to show for it. And what else was a woman for, in her aunt’s old-fashioned view, except to be a wife and mother?
‘I told you, Thea. He was unfaithful. You know it. He had a lover.’
Even from a hemisphere away she could hear her aunt’s world-weary sigh. ‘Oh, grow up, Ariadne. If you want to bear children you have to compromise, and put up with—things. Anyway, there is no use in all this arguing. Your uncle won’t change his mind.’
‘He has made a mistake, Aunt. This man won’t take an unwilling wife. If you met him you’d know. He’s not… He’s an Australian. He will walk away. Could you please…please, Thea, transfer enough money into my account for the hotel bill?’
She could hear tears in her aunt’s voice. ‘Toula, if it were up to me…of course I would. Listen, when you’re married all your money will be settled on you. Your uncle loves you. He thinks this is right. He only wants the best for you.’
‘He always thinks he knows best, and this isn’t best,’ she said fiercely. ‘And I won’t do it. Tell him there’s no way anyone will force Sebastian Nikosto to go through with marrying an unwilling woman.’
Her aunt was silent for a second. Then she said in a dry voice, ‘Oh, yes, he will. He certainly will go through with it. As I understand it, there’s nothing he wants more.’
‘What are you saying?’ Ariadne said, seized by an icy foreboding. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Oh…’ Her aunt’s voice sounded weary, more distant somehow. ‘You know I don’t know about business, Ariadne. Your uncle says Sebastian knows he has everything to gain from this marriage, and everything to lose if he doesn’t choose it. His company will fail if he doesn’t marry you. Celestrial. Isn’t that what it’s called?’
Sebastian rang the bell of his parents’ house, then strode straight in. He should have been back in his office, combing through the departments for more ways to cut costs to avoid cutting people, but events had wrenched his unwilling attention in another direction.
Before he took another false step, he needed to do some research. There had to be some explanation of why he of all the eligible Greeks on the planet had been chosen as bridegroom to the niece of Peri Giorgias.
When Giorgias had thrown in that extra clause at the time the contract was all but finalised, the completed designs on the table, at first it had seemed nothing more than a bizarre joke. The cunning old fox had chosen his moment well. With Celestrial suddenly adrift in the recession, the market dwindling, the sly operator must have known if he pulled out then, Celestrial would make a significant loss in terms of the precious resources a
lready used to develop the bid.
In the gut-wrenching moment when Sebastian had understood that the eccentric old magnate’s demand was deadly serious, he was faced with a grim choice. Accept the woman and save his company, guarantee the livelihoods of his workforce, or walk away and face the possible ruin of all he’d built.
But why him? Why not some rich lothario back in Hellas?
Angelika, his mother, and Danae, his married sister, were ensconced in the kitchen, arguing with the cook over the best method of preparing some delicacy. Angelika interrupted her tirade with hugs, and a multitude of solicitous enquiries concerning his diet and sleep patterns. Danae listened to all of it with an amused expression and an occasional solemn nod.
Sebastian shot his sister a glance. She might have been amused, but he was willing to bet she was soaking up the technique so she’d know how to suffocate her own sons when the time came for them to escape from her control.
‘Look at how thin you are,’ his mother wailed like a Greek mother. ‘What you need is a really good dinner. Maria, set him a place. I have a moussaka in the fridge I was saving for tomorrow’s lunch, but this is the bigger emergency. Danae, put it in a box and he can take it home with him. Show that woman how to feed a man.’
He held up his hand. ‘No, thanks, Maria.’ A really good dinner was his mother’s inevitable cure for any disorder from flu to insomnia. ‘I’m not staying.’ He waved away the proffered dish. ‘Put it back. I do have a full-time housekeeper, you know. And Agnes is very touchy about her cooking.’
His mother snorted her contempt. ‘Cooking? What cooking? The trouble with you, my son, you are too wrapped up in your satellites to see what’s in front of your nose.’
His nephews caught sight of him then and came running with a thousand urgent things they needed to tell him at once.
Sebastian listened as patiently as time would allow to all the recent details of their exuberant young lives, while Danae looked on, beaming with maternal pride.
Eventually, he detached himself with a laugh. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, ruffling the two four-year-old heads. He waited for a brief respite in the voluble trio of voices, then jumped in with a query of his own. ‘Is Yiayia here?’
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