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Adam’s eyebrows rose. She could just imagine what he was thinking. “If this is a game, you have to remember all games have some rules.”
“Okay, but remember, we’re supposed to be in love.”
“In public perhaps,” she agreed reluctantly. “In private, no.” The no-touching rule was important to her. Not because of what Adam might do, but because she couldn’t trust herself not to go up in flames if he did touch her.
“That’s all?” he asked with an amused grin that made her toes tingle.
“No.” She ignored his crooked smile. He might think their proposed arrangement was amusing, but she was serious. “If we’re going to make this look real, you have to meet my father and mother.”
The smile on Adam’s face disappeared. “I suppose I could do that. Anything more? Better get it all off your chest now, I wouldn’t want any surprises.”
Chest! Melina blushed at the unintentional reference to her breasts. If he kept this up, she would have to make up a few more rules to help her keep her distance.
“I can’t think of another rule right now,” she said, “but I’m sure I’ll have a few more as we go along.”
Adam shrugged. “All right. Just give me some advance notice when you do. So, are you sure about my having to meet your father?”
“Yes. I don’t know how they do it in your country, but in Greece a woman’s intended husband asks her father for permission to marry her.”
Melina’s stomach roiled as she pictured the look on her father’s face when she brought home an American. How would he react when she announced she was about to marry him?
Her father had made it clear from the time she’d entered her teens that the only man worthy of becoming his son-in-law was a Greek man, preferably from their village. The man would have to be old and wise enough to care for her. Just as her father had taken care of her mother, she could hear her father say. Privately, Melina knew just who had taken care of whom.
Since Melina had watched her mother raise three children, run a household, help with the family pistachio business and satisfy her husband, she knew better.
“You need your father’s approval before you marry?” Adam asked, sounding surprised. “You are over twenty-one aren’t you?”
Clearly the man didn’t understand Greek culture. Stung, Melina defended herself and her family’s dearly held tradition—even if she found it confining. “I am old enough. In the first place, twenty-first century or not, most Greek women are brought up to believe that their father as well as their priest speaks for God. In the second place, you did say we have to make our bargain look good. That includes meeting my father.”
Adam had the grace to blush.
“You also need to know my parents live in Nafplion, a small village outside of Athens. They are, what we call in Greek, horiatees, people who come from small villages. I suppose you could say they’re not very modern in their thinking.”
Melina’s gaze locked with Adam’s as she spoke. She knew without being told that something more than her traditional upbringing was bothering him. Maybe it wasn’t every day a man proposed marriage, but he’d been married before and thus had to have proposed to a woman at least once.
“I don’t need my father’s consent,” she went on, “but he has waited a long time to see me married. I owe him my respect. I can’t possibly marry you without at least introducing you. I also have to ask my mother to plan the wedding. It’s a family tradition.”
To her surprise, Adam suddenly choked on his last bite of baklava. She rounded the table in seconds and pounded him on his back. What could she have said that could have caused such a reaction? “Are you all right?”
“Er, I think so.” Adam reached for her iced tea, the only liquid on the table, took a deep swallow and cleared his throat. “We don’t have time to plan a wedding. I have to be back in the States early next week to pick up my daughter, Jamie.”
Disappointed, Melina gave up her childhood dream of a church wedding, of wearing her mother’s wedding gown and of her father walking her down the aisle. She consoled herself that at the moment her more pressing need was to get that green card. “I’ll talk it over with my mother…maybe she can talk to the priest and arrange for a small church wedding.”
“No time,” he said firmly. “We barely have time for a weekend honeymoon. I have to be home next Wednesday for Jamie.”
Melina sighed wistfully. “Your home is the United States. My home is here. That is, for now. It’s not easy to give up all of the traditions I grew up with. They are all I know.”
Melina watched mixed emotions pass over Adam’s face. Most women would have thought his plan to marry her just after meeting her was romantic, her friend Eleni With the Sixth Sense included. Unfortunately, Melina knew better. Their marriage agreement was a practical arrangement, with the added twist of a mutual physical attraction that wasn’t going to be satisfied. The problem would be to keep her distance from Adam and still act as if she was wildly in love with him in public.
She gazed thoughtfully as Adam recovered from his coughing fit. She recalled her mother’s sage advice that marriage was a matter of compromises. There was a time and a place to get what she wanted, or to even win an argument with her husband, her mother would counsel with a wink. That place to compromise was in the bedroom whern two heads shared the same pillow, her mother always said while a dreamy smile graced her lips.
Too bad she wouldn’t have a chance to take advantage of her mother’s advice, Melina thought with a quick glance at the interesting cleft in Adam’s square chin. A cleft in a man’s chin was a sign of strength, her grandmother had told her. Maybe this would be one of those times to compromise, she thought as she gazed at the small piece of honeyed walnut pastry lingering at the corner of his mouth.
One thought led to another until it occurred to her that although Adam had proposed marriage, he had yet to hold her in his arms and kiss her. Her body warmed at the thought of how sweet his lips would have tasted. Of how wonderful it would feel to be held in his arms. Even if it would only be a charade.
This was too public a setting for a kiss to seal their bargain, she realized as she glanced around the roof garden. They were in full view of people on their lunch breaks. The windows of the adjoining Athens Hilton Hotel were only yards away. Close enough for anyone near a window to look out over the vine-covered trellis surrounding the embassy rooftop café. Even the trio of seagulls drawn by the fragrant scent of food seemed to be watching them.
Eleni and Arianna, who were sitting a few feet away, made no attempt to hide their interest in what was going on at her table.
Melina pondered how to play the game without appearing too daring. “My friends are watching,” she said uneasily. “Maybe we ought to do something to make things look real?”
“No problem.” Adam glanced over at her wide-eyed friends and winked. He took Melina’s hand in his and ran his thumb over her velvety skin. Under his breath, and with a wide smile for her friends’ benefit, he said, “Melina, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Melina managed a smile. If a kiss wasn’t forthcoming, at least he was holding her hand. She wondered if he knew that tiny electric shocks followed in the path of his large and finely shaped fingers. Or that flashes of erotic thoughts were beginning to turn her limbs to jelly.
“It was your idea to make things look real,” she finally choked. “I was only trying to help.”
How far? her inner voice asked eagerly.
Not far enough, her rational mind answered.
“I will take you home to meet my father,” she said. She disengaged her tingling hand and hid it in her lap. “I just hope my father doesn’t have that heart attack he keeps threatening whenever he doesn’t get his way.”
“Your father has a heart condition?”
“No, but I’m afraid he will once I bring you home. It’s not only you,” she hurried to explain. “It’s just that you’re my choice, not his. Besides, you’re not Greek.”
Adam still looked doubtful. “Are you sure I have to meet your father? I wouldn’t want to be the cause of a heart attack. Maybe we should call the whole thing off.”
Maybe, she debated for a brief moment, she should reconsider and let him off the hook. Only there was that green card she yearned for and the chance to be beyond her father’s controlling reach.
“As far as I’m concerned, we made an agreement,” Melina said firmly. “We have too much at stake to back out now.”
“We have?” Adam’s complexion paled.
Melina gathered her purse and prepared to go back to work. “Yes, we have. You said you needed a wife. I want a green card. I said I’ll marry you, and I will.”
“But your father!”
“Don’t worry about my father,” she said with a frown, “I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something to make it right with him.”
Her father was as healthy as only a man who regularly used virgin olive oil on his food to stay healthy could be. She’d grown up watching her father enjoy his weekly Sunday morning “medicinal” breakfast of cucumbers, nuts mixed with yogurt, doused with a liberal portion of Greece’s famous virgin olive oil. A man who could survive that kind of regime was surely healthy enough to survive meeting Adam.
Melina rose and waved goodbye to Eleni and Arianna. If she wanted things to look real, she had to wait for Adam to leave with her. “If you want to make things look real, maybe you ought to walk me back to my desk.”
Adam heard the plea in Melina’s voice as he rose from the table. Damn! The woman had taken him seriously when he’d only been kidding. He had a sinking feeling this was his last chance to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself. But how?
The light in Melina’s eyes deterred him from telling her so in public. Especially since Melina was a woman who was frank in her hopes and dreams and who trusted him.
The idea of meeting her father, a traditional Greek man, left a hollow, sinking feeling in his chest. He had to make one last attempt to get her to back out of their agreement.
“Maybe we should elope,” he said suddenly. “Tomorrow is Friday. We can get married Saturday night, elope and go on a three-day honeymoon. By the time you tell your father we’re married, it’ll be too late for him to hassle you.”
No sooner had Adam suggested the elopement than he wanted to bite his tongue. Until now he’d prided himself on being honest and pragmatic and definitely a man in control of his life. He was thirty-four, and a successful businessman. And smart enough, he told himself as he glanced down at his “intended,” to handle a marriage of convenience, if it came to that, without any complications.
What was there about this beautiful, young Greek woman that had caused him to lose his usual self-discipline and to test his sanity? he mused as he followed her into the elevator.
Her smile? The charming way she looked at him under dark eyelashes? The gentle sway of her hips?
What was there in her walk that frankly interested him, when he had no right to be interested?
Her quaint Greek persona? He’d always had an interest in everything Greek, he mused as he tried to reason with himself, or he wouldn’t be in the business of importing commodities from Greece.
But a wife he couldn’t touch and who looked like Melina? The more he gazed at her, the more he had to smother a desire to take her in his arms and to kiss her senseless.
“Elope? Greek women do not elope!” Melina said, startled at Adam’s proposal. She’d been searching for a way to take her mother’s advice about compromise, considering Adam’s need for a quick marriage. But an elopement?
“Why not? You wanted to get married a moment ago?”
“A marriage, yes. An elopement, no,” she agreed, reluctant to let go of the idea of a traditional Greek wedding. Not in church, perhaps, but a wedding with Greek food and hauntingly lovely Greek music. “We have to consider tradition,” she sighed, debating the trade-off between settling for a quick wedding ceremony for the chance to realize her dreams. Evidently now was the time to make that compromise. “Okay, I’ll agree to the quick wedding, but first, I have to take you home to meet my parents. Would tonight be convenient for you?”
Adam smothered a sigh and reluctantly agreed. There was no use insisting they elope to get Melina to back out of their agreement. She wasn’t buying.
On the other hand, what if her father changed Melina’s mind for her? What had seemed like a good idea to get her to call off the marriage proposal suddenly turned into an odd sense of loss. To his surprise, he was actually looking forward to having this fascinating woman in his life. One way or another. Even if it meant going by her rules.
“PAPA, MAMMA,” Melina said later that night at the door to her family home. “I would like you to meet Adam Blake. Adam is the man I told you about over the telephone. Adam is the man I plan to marry.”
Mikis Kostos eyed him in a way that made Adam uneasy. The uncompromising message in the man’s eyes was clear: no man is going to date, let alone marry, my daughter without my approval. From the frown on the man’s face, it was also clear to Adam that the chances of his gaining this man’s acceptance were slim to none.
“I’m pleased to meet you, sir,” Adam said. He didn’t go so far as to try to extend his hand, not when Kostos’s fists were clenched at his side.
Melina’s mother edged closer to her husband. “Mikis?”
It was only after the quiet prompting by Melina’s mother that her father held open the door. “Come in, come in,” he said. “We don’t need to have neighbors watching me be embarrassed by my own daughter.”
Adam glanced around at the neighboring houses before he followed Melina into the house. If anyone was watching what was going on on the Kostos’s porch, they were either hiding behind bushes or the man was paranoid.
Maybe this visit hadn’t been a good idea, after all.
Inside the house, there wasn’t a single flat surface not covered with lace doilies and knickknacks of all sizes and shapes. The lamps were topped by upholstered shades with dangling beaded trim. Religious pictures hung on the walls. To Adam, it looked as if time had stood still here while the rest of the world had moved on. No wonder Melina wanted a taste of the twenty-first century before she settled down.
“So, young man, you wish to marry my daughter?”
Adam was taken aback at the speed with which Mikis Kostos cut to the chase. Prompted by Melina’s elbow in his ribs, he nodded. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“Are you Greek?”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not. I’m an American.”
“Your father perhaps is Greek?”
“No, sir. Dad’s family came to the United States from England before he was born.”
“Your mother is Greek?”
Adam felt as if the walls were beginning to close in on him. It sounded as if Melina’s father was about to insist she marry a Greek man loud and long enough for Melina to change her mind about marrying him. “No sir, my mother’s family is Irish. In fact, my parents have recently retired to Ireland.”
Kostos frowned and looked as if he couldn’t find a redeeming branch on Adam’s family tree. In the man’s mind, Adam was clearly a mongrel. “So tell me, why do you want to marry my Greek daughter?”
Adam glanced at Melina. Now that he’d seen her father, he sympathized with her need for independence. For her sake, he had to find his way through this minefield of a marriage charade without getting married and without hurting Melina.
Melina held up a hand before Adam could answer. “It doesn’t matter if Adam isn’t Greek, Papa. We’ve made our decision. Adam has asked me to marry him and I have said yes.”
Kostos glowered. “And how does he intend to take care of you?”
It was time for Adam to make a decision, but his pride came first. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his business card. “I have my own import/export business, Mr. Kostos. I import Greek wine, olive oil and other Greek products to the United States. Successfully, I might add.”
“Why from Greece? You can get olive oil and wine in Italy, too. Of course—” Kostos huffed his pride “—no one produces virgin olive oil like ours. And my pistachio nuts are the best in the world, too.”
“You’re right, sir,” Adam agreed. Not only because he imported the pistachio nuts, but because he would have agreed to almost anything to end the interview. Before Melina got hurt, he told himself. And, now that he listened to her father, maybe even for his own sake.
“Ah!” Kostos finally nodded approvingly. “It is a good thing you know this. Our women are the most beautiful in the world, too,” he said proudly. “No wonder you want to marry my daughter.”
With Melina’s father’s approval of Adam’s ability to take care of a wife, Adam realized he was getting too close to becoming a married man again. He glanced over at Melina’s mother, Anna. She, to his surprise, was smiling.
“We will talk about a wedding after we have a chance to know you better,” Kostos said expansively. “There is plenty of time. My wife and I were neighbors and knew each other for five years before her father consented to our marriage. Now, tell me. When did you and my daughter meet?” he added as he peered at Adam.
Adam was almost speechless. How could he tell Kostos he’d only met the man’s daughter today? He looked at Melina for help.
“Peter Stakis introduced us when he visited the embassy,” Melina answered, with a fond look at Adam. He knew the look was part of the pretense but it sent his senses spinning anyway. Warning bells rang. “Oh, and by the way, Peter sends you his regards, Papa,” she added. “He said to tell you he will visit you soon.”
Melina’s father appeared to be mollified by the mention of Peter. “Come back for dinner tomorrow, and bring your young man, daughter. We will speak more of this.” He glanced at Melina and heaved a deep sigh. “Since Melina is getting older, maybe I will wait only a month or two to give you my answer…”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Adam said, afraid it was his last chance to back out of a misguided joke. One failed marriage was enough for him. “We won’t be able to come back next Friday. I have to return to the United States next Wednesday.”
“To the United States!” The frown reappeared on Kostos’s forehead. “Where in the United States?”
“My home and my business are in San Francisco. It’s a large city in northern California,” Adam said as he took a step backward at the change that came over the man’s face.
“The wedding is off!” Melina’s father thundered, waving his hands in the air. Before his fists could fly, her mother rushed to grab her husband by the arm.
“Mikis, no!”
“I do not give you my Greek daughter for you to take away halfway across the world,” Kostos said. He glared at Melina. “Of all my children, why is it is you who continues to defy me!”
Because I am the one most like you, she wanted to reply. “I’m not defying you, Papa,” she retorted. “You said you wanted me to marry and I am. Only to a man of my choice!”
“You go too far,” Kostos shouted. “How would I be able to see my grandchildren if you do not live in Greece? Unless,” he peered at her, “you are already expecting a baby and do not want me to know.”
