Bought By Her Husband

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The radio was blaring, the driver was singing, and worry-beads were swinging from the mirror with a little clatter. Outside, the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, but the sky was blue, and unwillingly Victoria remembered that this was the home of the Parthenon and the Acropolis, that this was where legend said the goddess Athena had invented the olive tree.

And she found herself wishing she were just an ordinary tourist—geared up to having a fabulous holiday in the sun—instead of going cap in hand to her wealthy ex.

It was stop-start most of the way, until the taxi stopped outside the impressive steel and glass tower of the Christou headquarters. Nervously, she over-tipped the driver, and could feel the palms of her hands growing clammy as she stepped inside the revolving doors which delivered her into a space-age foyer.

The air-conditioning hit her like an ice-cube. Tiny goosebumps began to appear on Victoria’s arms as the sleek brunette at Reception stared at her as if she had just landed from Mars.

The woman rattled off a question in Greek and then, as Victoria frowningly attempted to translate, she spoke again—this time in perfect fluent English.

‘Can I help you?’ she questioned, in a tone of voice which suggested that Victoria might be in the wrong building.

‘I’m here to see Kyrios Christou,’ said Victoria.

‘Kyrios Christou?’

‘Ne,’ agreed Victoria, dredging up a word in Greek from its dusty memory bank.

‘What is your name, please?’

‘It’s Victoria.’ She forced herself to smile at the unfriendly face. ‘Victoria Christou.’

Was it only her well-travelled appearance which made the brunette’s mouth fall open into a disbelieving ‘O’? Victoria wondered.

‘Christou?’ the woman repeated blankly.

‘Yes.’ Victoria nodded enthusiastically, seizing on the unexpectedly enjoyable moment—because she certainly wasn’t anticipating a lot of those during her visit. ‘I’m his wife. I believe he’s expecting me—though I didn’t give a precise time. You know what scheduled flights are like!’

‘He is expecting you?’ said the brunette again.

And suddenly Victoria’s social attennae were alerted to the fact that this response would hardly win prizes for professionalism. So was the woman just having an off-day, or did Alexei discourage callers by employing this rather attractive dragon to ward them off?

Unlike the brunette, she wasn’t wearing a designer linen dress—though how she could afford it on her salary, Victoria didn’t know—but surely she didn’t look that bad?

‘Perhaps you could just let him know I’m here?’ asked Victoria coolly.

The brunette laughed briefly, as if someone had just given her a piece of exceptionally good news. ‘It will be my pleasure,’ she said, as she picked up the phone and spoke rapidly into it, but the smile disappeared from her face when she was obviously given instructions to send Victoria straight up.

It was during the elevator ride that Victoria’s nerves came back to assail her—not helped by a peek at what she actually looked like. Unfortunately—or maybe that should have been fortunately—the lift was mirror-lined, which allowed her to see just how the journey had taken its toll. Perhaps the brunette’s incredulous reaction was understandable, after all. She tried telling herself that she wasn’t trying to wow Alexei, but even so there was a proud side to every woman who wanted her ex to still think she was drop-dead gorgeous.

Pulling a plastic pack of wipes from her handbag, she removed some of the grime from her face. Her hair was tied back, but she brushed out her fringe just as the lift pinged to a halt. No time for lipstick.

Oh, well.

A male assistant was waiting to greet her, and she followed him through a series of increasingly grand offices until finally he opened the door to one where a still, dark figure was standing with his back to her. Was that deliberate? she wondered. Of course it was!

He was looking out over the backdrop of Athens, and Victoria’s heart lurched as she saw the man she had once adored as much as life itself. The man who had taken her virginity. Who had told her he loved her and then shown her that love could break your heart. The man she’d married.

Alexei Christou.

Though the huge plate-glass windows were faintly tinted, the light still gleamed on his ebony-dark hair—worn just a fraction too long—so that instead of an heir to a billionaire shipping fortune he looked more like a sexy bandit. Or a very fit pool man … A rich woman’s fantasy lover.

And a poor one’s, too.

Victoria froze as he slowly turned his head, praying that her face and body were registering nothing other than …

What?

That was the trouble—what were the rules in a situation like this? How did you behave and react towards a man you hadn’t seen for seven years to whom you’d once been married? This was the man who had symbolised all her romantic hopes and dreams—and then had come to symbolise her own sense of failure and regret.

For Alexei had left his own dark legacy in her life—creating an impossible act for another man to follow. It didn’t seem to matter if a man had stepped out of the ‘suitable partner’ section at Central Casting—when compared to Alexei Christou they all seemed as two-dimensional as a cardboard cutout.

Even now he had the power to throw her into a state of confusion. If only she could be sure of her true feelings towards him—because surely it would be easier if she hated him. But as she stared at him across the expanse of the room it wasn’t hate she was feeling. Far from it. She was smacked sideways by a sensation she most definitely did not want to experience.

Was it desire which made the blood begin to roar in her ears and her heart begin to leap and race beneath her breast? She felt dizzy. As if her body didn’t belong to her any more. It was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope—her world had reduced down to just the space of one face. His face.

And, oh, it was impossible not to drink in all its hard and arrogant beauty. The luminous olive skin and the lush mouth, with its curved and slightly full lower lip. Lips which had kissed every single bit of her body and taken her to paradise over and over again.

But it was the eyes that drew her in, more than the memory of those sensual pleasures. Black and glittering, they had once stared at her with love—but now they studied her with nothing more than contempt, their cold ebony light raking over her.

Her heart-rate only increased. How could it not? She could feel it crashing loudly against her ribs and was surprised he couldn’t hear it.

Alexei, she mouthed, though no sound came from her lips, and suddenly she was having difficulty focussing.

Her vision blurred and then became clear again—and her head spun as her mind wickedly played tricks on her, dragging her back into that painful place she had vowed never to visit again.

But sometimes you had no choice, because the past had a pulling power all of its own.

CHAPTER THREE (#u3b915d1b-3046-5481-b902-0a5261725689)

WHEN Alexei had first blazed into Victoria’s life she’d been just nineteen—an ordinary catering student living on a stingy grant, taking extra jobs whenever she could. When many girls her age had been out partying, she’d found herself putting prawns into hundreds of little pastry cases. Or sprinkling glistening little black caviar eggs onto smoked salmon—if it was a particularly upmarket party.

Very occasionally she’d be required as ‘front of house’, as a waitress—expected to tie her hair back and don a smart uniform, and waft around glorious rooms offering trays of canapeés to the great and the good and the extremely rich.

The night she’d met Alexei she’d had no idea what the party was for or who the guests were. It had been just another function in a golden ballroom in a glorious house overlooking St James’s Park. The central London location had been as fancy as you could find—and the guests had more than done it justice. There’d been lots of thin women wearing some serious jewellery, and very loud men who’d given a whole new meaning to the word ‘lecherous’.

Victoria had been so busy handing out champagne and blocking murmured innuendoes that she hadn’t even noticed the exotic-looking man with the exceptionally dark hair on the other side of the room.

Alexei had been bored. He’d been at the tail-end of a globe-trotting trip which was a reward from his father for his first-class degree from Harvard. He had recently travelled to Paris, Milan and Madrid—as well as Prague and Berlin. The achingly familiar taste of Europe had reminded him just how much he had missed it, but he couldn’t wait to get home. To Greece.

He hadn’t been sure at just what point the waitress had imprinted herself on his consciousness and set in motion all the complex factors which determined desire and sexual chemistry. She wasn’t particularly to his taste—she was fair, when he liked his women dark—but she’d moved with exquisite grace, despite the faintly old-fashioned silhouette of her hour-glass figure.

He’d watched her weaving her way in and out of the crowd, the way she’d managed to make the commonplace movement of offering a tray into some intricate, music-less dance. And the fact that every man in the room must want her—had that fuelled his determination to have her—he who could always have the pick of any woman he chose?

Come here, he’d willed her. And—as had happened during so much of a life which many called charmed—she’d chosen just that moment to obey his silent command.

Had the intent gaze fixed so unwaveringly in her direction made Victoria look up to find herself imprisoned in an enchanting ebony blaze? Had it been his height or his very foreignness which had made her own glance linger for a fraction longer than entirely necessary?

And she’d found herself blushing—stupidly and infuriatingly blushing. As if no man had ever looked at her like that.

Because no one had. Well, certainly not a man like that—not in a way which had made the breath catch in her throat and her stomach curl into a warm mush of pleasure.

But she’d deliberately turned away—and that had been the necessary reaction to him. Because Victoria had long ago accepted the unrealistically romantic side to her nature, which she reined in as if it were a dangerous animal for fear of what havoc it could cause were it released.

For Alexei, the back turned on him—with the fold of fair hair pleated against a long, slender neck—had been tantalising. The very gesture of rejection had been as appealing as the woman herself. Later—much later—he would reflect on the significance of this, but for now his hormones were raging around his bloodstream in a torrent of longing.

He had waited for her to come to him—as come she must. Not simply because she was there to provide a service for the hosts, but because he had compelled her to do so. And it was working. It always worked.

Her face had been flushed and almost defiant as she’d drawn near.

‘At last,’ he murmured.

‘Canapé, sir?’

He waved he plate away impatiently. ‘What time do you finish?’

‘That’s a very impertinent question, sir.’

‘I’m a very impertinent man,’ he breathed, and smiled a smile which would have been perfectly at home on the face of one of his forebears—those gods of myth and legend. ‘If I promise to behave like a … gentleman—’ his black eyes mocked her ‘—and to deliver you home before the break of dawn, will that make a difference?’

Victoria hesitated, sensing he was trouble, and yet …

‘Nine o’clock,’ she said crisply. And she turned and walked away, telling herself that he wouldn’t bother turning up and that it was probably a party game he played to pass the time—seeing how many women would agree to meet him.

But he was waiting for her at the staff entrance, looking sombre and yet enticingly dependable in a dark overcoat with its collar turned up against the unseasonably chill wind.

‘Shall we eat something?’ he questioned. ‘Or does working with food spoil your enjoyment of it?’

It was a perceptive question, which naturally only added to his appeal. ‘Sometimes. But I’m not hungry,’ she said.

‘Me neither.’ Well, not for food. But you couldn’t tell a woman whose name you didn’t even know that the only thing you wanted to eat was her.

It had none of the ingredients for a suitable romance—certainly not from Alexei’s point of view. She was English, and poor, and not particularly well educated. On the plus side she was very beautiful—and still a virgin. But that incredulous discovery carried with it the burden of responsibility. To his astonishment and annoyance, he discovered a nagging conscience—realising that he could not simply bed her and then abandon her! In fact, she had none of the qualities he was looking for in a partner—and he wasn’t even looking for a partner!

But Alexei was failing to take into account something he hadn’t thought could happen to him—for emotion wasn’t high on his list of priorities. And when it did finally happen, he didn’t recognise it. He tried to deny it. Until his denials sounded hollow—even to his own ears.

He had fallen in love.

The most overwhelming feeling of his life—passion which defied description. And—perhaps because he had always been cynical about its existence—it hit him harder than most. He was too much in its thrall—and hers—to even try to fight it.

One night he buried his face in her scented hair as she clung to him, both of them aching and frustrated as they broke off from kissing.

He knew that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her—and he knew what he had to tell her before that happened.

‘I love you, Victoria, agape mou.’

Her heart gave a wild leap of joy, but she looked up at him crossly. ‘You don’t have to tell me that just because you want to go to bed with me! I’m going to sleep with you anyway.’

‘Are you?’ he murmured.

‘You know I am.’

He dipped his head and his lips tingled as he brushed them provocatively against hers. ‘Then perhaps I will make you wait.’

‘Wait?’ Flagrantly, she pressed her body against his, freed by his declaration to start to explore her sexuality properly. ‘Wait for what?’

‘Until I make you my wife,’ he said a little unsteadily—not sounding like himself at all—and Victoria stared at him with hope and disbelief. Afterwards she would realise that he hadn’t actually asked her to marry him, and that he had used the word wife possessively—but at that moment she was too shocked and thrilled and in love to care.

‘Your wife?’

He felt compelled by some primitive desire to tell her—some need which ran bone-deep. He had discovered the powerful lure of love and romance and its novelty made him want to plunder it to its very depths. ‘Yes. We must,’ he said simply. ‘For it is rare for two people to feel this way—of that I am certain.’

His parents tried to stop the marriage—they summoned him home—but he resolutely ignored their demands. Even Victoria’s own mother was against the union. Her proud trip to Cornwall to show him off had ended with a tearful tussle between mother and daughter after Alexei had been dispatched to buy a bottle of champagne.