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“It wouldn’t be against your will. You have a choice.”
“You disgust me!”
“Then go back inside. Call the nun over. She’s dying to be part of the conversation.”
Alysia glanced over her shoulder, spotted the nun and pressed her lips together. “You’re enjoying this.”
“It’s my wedding day. What’s not to enjoy?”
She took another step away, sinking onto a polished marble bench. He walked around the bench to face her. “Alysia, your father has sworn to leave you here until we exchange vows. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“No. You are not the first man I’ve refused, and dare I say, nor the last. I’ve been here nearly a year, and the sisters have been wonderful. Quite frankly, I’ve begun to think of the convent as home.”
The convent as home? He didn’t believe her, not for a minute. Despite her refined beauty—the high, fine cheekbones, the elegant curve of her brow—her eyes, those indigo-blue eyes, smoldered with secrets.
She did not belong in the convent’s simple brown smock any more than he belonged in priestly robes. And God knew he did not belong in priestly robes.
Christos felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her, but not enough to walk away from the playing table. No, he never walked away from the playing table, not that he played cards. He gambled in other ways. Daring, breathtaking power plays in the Greek shipping-industry which so far had resulted in staggering financial gain. He’d been wildly successful by anyone’s standards.
“Your home, Alysia, will be with me. I’ve picked you. You are part of my plan. And once I put a plan into action, I don’t give up. I never quit.”
“Those admirable traits would be better applied elsewhere.”
“There is no elsewhere. There is no other option. You, our marriage, is the future,” he said softly, as a warm breeze blew through the courtyard, loosening a tendril of hair from her demure bun. She didn’t attempt to smooth it and the golden-brown tendril floated light as a feather.
He liked the play of sunlight across her shoulders and face. The sun turned her hair to gold and copper. Flecks of aquamarine shimmered in her eyes.
“I know who you are, Mr. Pateras. I’m not ignorant of your success.” Her eyebrows arched. “Shall I tell you what I know?”
“Please. I enjoy my success story.”
“A full-blooded Greek, you were born and raised in a middle-class New York suburb. You attended public school, before being accepted to one of the prestigious American Ivy League colleges.”
“Yale,” he supplied.
“Which is quite good,” she agreed. “But why not Harvard? Harvard is supposed to be the best.”
“Harvard is for old money.”
“That’s right. Your father left Oinoussai broke and in disgrace.”
“Not disgraced. Just poor. Hopeful that there would a better life elsewhere.”
“Your father worked in the shipyards.”
“He was a welder,” Christos answered evenly, hiding the depth of his emotions. He was fiercely loyal to his parents, but particularly to his father. His father’s piety, unwavering morals and devotion to family had sustained them during times of great financial hardship. And there had been hardship, tremendous hardship, not to mention ostracism in the close-knit Greek-American community.
Quickly, before she could probe further, he turned the spotlight on her. “And your father, Alysia, inherited his millions. You’ve never lacked for anything. You have no idea what ‘poor’ means.”
“But you aren’t poor anymore, Mr. Pateras. You now own as many ships as Britain’s entire merchant fleet. Despite your humble origins, it shouldn’t be difficult to find a bride a…trifle…more eager to accept your proposal.”
“I can’t find another Darius Lemos.”
“So in reality you’re marrying my father.”
She was smart. He smiled faintly, again amused by the contradiction between her serene exterior and fiery interior. He found himself suddenly wondering what she’d be like in bed. Passionate as hell, probably.
He watched the shimmering golden-brown tendril dance across her cheek, caress her ear, and Christos felt a sudden urge to follow the tendril with his tongue, drawing the same tantalizing path from her cheekbone to her jaw, from her jaw to the hollow beneath her earlobe.
His body tightened, desire stirring. He’d enjoy being married to a woman like this. Procreation would be a pleasure.
Alysia leaned back on the bench, her brown shift outlining her small breasts, her dark lashes lowering to conceal her expression. “How well do you know my father?”
“Well enough to know what he is.”
She allowed herself a small smile, and Christos noticed the flash of dimple to the left of her full mouth. He’d taste that, too, after the wedding.
“My father must be quite pleased to have you in his back pocket. I can quite picture him, rubbing his hands together, chuckling gleefully.” Her head cocked, her lashes lifted, revealing the dark sapphire irises. “He did rub his hands after you made your deal, didn’t he?”
Her tone, her voice, her eyes. He wanted her.
Abruptly he leaned forward, captured the coil of hair at her nape in his hand. Her eyes widened as his fingers tightened in her hair seconds before he covered her mouth with his.
Alysia inhaled as his lips touched hers, and he traced the soft outline of her lips with his tongue. He didn’t miss her gasp, or the sudden softness in her mouth.
His own body hardened, blood surging. From the distance he heard a cough. The nun! Wouldn’t do to get thrown out of here just yet.
Slowly he released her. “You taste beautiful.”
Alysia paled and dragged the back of her hand across her soft mouth, as if to rub away the imprint of his lips. “Try that again and I shall send for the abbess!”
He placed his foot on the bench, on the outside of her thigh. He felt the tremor in her body. “And say what, sweet Alysia? That your husband kissed you?”
“We are not married! We’re not even engaged.”
“But soon shall be.” He gazed at her exposed collarbone and the rise of fabric at her breasts. “Do you like wagers?”
She visibly shuddered. “No. I never gamble.”
“That’s admirable. But I like bets, and I like these odds. You see, Alysia, I know more about you than you think.”
He caught her incredulous expression, and felt a stab of satisfaction. “You won an academic scholarship at seventeen to an art school in Paris. You lived in a garret with a dozen other want-to-be artists, a rather bohemian lifestyle with small children running underfoot. When money ran out, you, like the others, did odd jobs. One summer you worked as a housekeeper. You did a stint in a bakery. Your longest job was as a nanny for a designer and his family.”
“They were respectable jobs,” she said faintly, blood draining from her face.
“Very respectable, but quite a change from life with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
“Is there a point to this?”
His smile faded and he leaned forward, trapping her between his knee and chest. “You’ve spent eight years of your life trying to escape your father.”
Her lips parted but no sound came out.
He watched her closely, reading every flicker in her eyes. “For a while, you were free. You painted, you traveled, you enjoyed an interesting circle of friends. But then you became ill, and your obliging father placed you in a hospital in Bern. Since then, he’s owned you, body and soul.”
“Body, maybe, but not my soul. Never my soul!”
Again the fire, the spirited defiance. He felt a kinship with her that he felt with few women. He softened his tone, appealing to her intellect. “Think about it, Alysia. In Greece you’re powerless. Your father is the head of the household, the absolute authority. He has the right to choose your husband. He has the right to leave you locked up here. He has the right to make your life miserable.”
“I’m no prisoner here.”
“Then why don’t you leave?
She held her breath, exquisitely attentive, her eyes enormous, her lips compressed.
“Now, if I were your husband,” he concluded after the briefest hesitation, “you could leave. Today. Right away. You’d finally be free.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, studying him with the same intentness with which she listened. After a moment she exhaled. “Greek wives are never free!”
“No, maybe not the way you think of it. But I’d permit you to travel, to pursue hobbies that interested you, to make friends of your own choosing.” He shrugged. “You could even paint again.”
“I don’t paint anymore.”
“But you could. I’ve heard you were quite good.”
She suddenly laughed, her voice pitched low, her body nearly trembling with tension. She wrapped her arms across her chest, a makeshift cape, a protective embrace. “You must want my father’s ships very much!”
Christos felt a wave of bittersweet emotion, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He saw himself exactly as he was. Driven, calculating, proudly self-serving. And this woman, this lovely refined young woman, knew she mattered only in business terms. Her worth was her name. Her value lay in her dowry. For a split second he hated the system and he hated himself and then he ruthlessly pushed his objection aside.
He would have her.
Alysia slipped from beneath his arm, taking several steps away. She walked to the edge of the herb garden and knelt at the flowering lavender. “Ships,” she whispered, breaking off a purple stalk. “I hate them.”
She carried the tuft of lavender to her nose, smelling it.
“And I love them,” he answered, thinking she should have been a painting.
The bend of her neck, the creamy nape, the shimmering coil of hair the color of wild honey, the sun’s golden caress.
He wanted this woman. Deal or no.
She crumpled the lavender stalk in her fist. “Mr. Pateras, has it crossed your mind to ask why a man as wealthy as my father must give away his fortune in order to get his daughter off his hands?”
The sunlight shone warm and gold on her head. The breeze loosened yet another shimmering tendril.
“I’m damaged goods, Mr. Pateras. My father couldn’t give me away to a local Greek suitor, even if he tried.”
More damaged than he’d ever know, Alysia acknowledged bleakly, clutching the broken lavender stalk in her palm. Unwillingly memories of the Swiss sanatorium came to mind. She’d spent nearly fourteen months there, all of her twenty-first year, before her mother came, rescuing her and helping her find a small flat in Geneva.
Alysia had liked Geneva. No bad memories there.
And for nearly two years she’d lived quietly, happily, content with her job in a small clothing shop, finding safety in her simple flat. Weekly she rang up her mother in Oinoussai and they chatted about inconsequential matters, the kind of conversation that doesn’t challenge but soothes.
Her mother never discussed the sanatorium with her, nor Paris. Alysia never asked about her father. But they understood each other and knew the other’s pain.
Alysia would never have returned to Greece, or her father’s house, if it hadn’t been for her mother’s cancer.
The mournful toll of bells stirred Alysia, and she tensed, lashes lowering, mouth compressing, finding the bells an intolerable reminder of her mother’s death and funeral.
The bells continued to ring, their tolling like nails scratching down a blackboard, sharp, grating. Oh, how she hated it here! The sisters had done everything they could to comfort her, and befriend her, but Alysia couldn’t bear another day of bells and prayers and silence.
She didn’t want to be reminded of her losses. She wanted to just get on with the living.
Sister Elena, a dour-faced nun with a heart of gold, signaled it was time to return inside.
Alysia felt a swell of panic, desperation making her light-headed. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to leave the garden, or the promise of freedom.
As if sensing her reluctance, Christos extended a hand in her direction. “You don’t have to go in. You could leave with me instead.”
It was almost as if he could feel her weakening, sense her confusion. His tone gentled yet again. “Leave with me today and you’ll have a fresh start, lead a different life. Everything would be exciting and new.”
He was teasing her, toying with her, and she longed for the freedom even as she shrank from the bargain.
She could leave the convent if she went as his wife.
She could escape her father if she bound herself to this stranger.
“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked, turning from Sister Elena’s worried gaze to the darkly handsome American Greek standing just a foot away.
“Should I be?”
“I know my father must have mentioned my…health.” She gritted against the sting of the words, each like a drop of poison on her tongue. Unwilling tears burned at the back of her eyes.
“He mentioned you hadn’t been well a few years ago, but he assured me you’re well now. And you look well. Quite well, if rather too thin, as a matter of fact.”
Her lips curved into a small, cold self-mocking smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”
Christos Pateras shrugged. “My first seven ships were damaged. I stripped them to the hull, refurbished each from bow to stern. Within a year my ships made me my first million. It’s been ten years. They’re still the workhorses of my fleet.”
She envisioned him stripping her bare and attempting to make something of her. The vivid picture shocked and frightened her. It’d been years and years since she’d been intimate with a man, and this man, was nothing like her teenage lovers.
Hating the flush creeping through her cheeks, she lifted her chin. “I won’t make you any millions.”
“You already have.”
Stung by his ruthless assessment, she tensed, her slender spine stiffening. “You’ll have to give it back. I told you already, I shall never marry.”
“Again, you mean. You’ll never marry again.”
