Kitabı oku: «His Shock Marriage In Greece»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A perfect day for a May wedding on the Greek Riviera.

The sky was an endless, azure blue with just a smattering of puffy white clouds. The sun reflected brightly off the thick walls of the villa’s tiny whitewashed chapel, glazing the tiled roof, while the Aegean Sea and the Temple of Poseidon shimmered in the background. The temperature was perfect as well, comfortable and warm, without being hot, or humid.

Ordinarily, a bride would be ecstatic at such perfect conditions, but Kassiani was no ordinary bride. She was not even supposed to be the bride.

Today was her sister’s wedding, with the ceremony and reception to take place at Damen’s historic seaside villa in Sounio, but early this morning Kristopher Dukas made the drastic decision to swap brides on the unsuspecting bridegroom, thus Kassiani now stood outside the villa chapel’s wooden door, waiting her cue to enter, while knots in her stomach exploded, turning into frantic butterflies.

There was a huge possibility this would not end well. She fully expected the groom to walk out on her in the middle of the service, abandoning her in the tiny church.

The bridegroom was not a fool.

The bridegroom was one of the most powerful men in the world, and he would not like being duped.

Kassiani was not in the habit of duping men, either.

She was the youngest Dukas. The least remarkable in every way. But when cornered by her father this morning, she’d agreed to his plan and would marry Damen Alexopoulos not because it would save her father’s hide, but it’d save hers, as well.

Marriage to Damen would be her way out. She’d escape her father’s house. She’d escape her father’s control. And she’d come into the trust her late aunt had established for her, a trust that would give her some measure of freedom and financial control.

It was worth noting, too, that the wedding today would mean she had actually accomplished something significant in her father’s eyes. Even if it meant she was giving up one controlling male for another, because at twenty-three, she was ready to do something, and be someone other than plain, dumpy, uninspiring Kassiani Dukas.

Marrying the fabulously wealthy shipping tycoon Damen Alexopoulos wouldn’t change the way she looked, but it would change the way people thought of her, and spoke of her. It would force them to recognize her as someone of consequence, pathetic as that was.

The harpist played within the church, and her father—short, stout, with thick salt-and-pepper hair—gestured impatiently for her. Kassiani suppressed a sigh. Her father really didn’t like her. As a little girl she’d never understood his coldness, because he absolutely doted on Elexis, but as she grew up and came to understand the world, she was able to put the pieces together.

Kristopher was not a handsome man, and he wanted to be liked. Respected. Having money was just one way to be respected. Having beautiful children was another. And while Elexis was their late mother’s clone—their mother, having been a successful model before she’d given up her career to marry the Greek American shipping magnate—Kassiani unfortunately favored her father, inheriting both his build and his strong jaw. Not what a woman wanted when her mother had been a famous model.

Kassiani exhaled in a depressing whoosh. These thoughts were not helping. Her self-esteem—never strong—was plummeting by the moment. And then her father snapped his fingers.

It seemed it was time.

The butterflies returned and her hand trembled as she took her father’s arm. He paused to adjust her heavy lace veil, better cloaking her face.

Kassiani felt utterly terrified, and yet also strangely calm. Once they stepped into the chapel, there would be no turning back. Elexis had let her father down. Elexis had let the entire family down. Kass would do no such thing.

For once she could do something to benefit her father’s vast shipping business. She’d wanted to work for Dukas Shipping since she was in second grade. She’d even studied business and international law at Stanford so she’d be of value, but her father had rebuffed her, refusing to hire her, or even listen to her ideas. He was painfully old-fashioned, believing a woman’s value was at home, producing heirs, and preferably male heirs.

After twenty-three years of being useless, after twenty-three years of being an embarrassment, she was aiding her father, significantly aiding him by saving him from bankruptcy and all the ensuing humiliation and shame.

Empowered, Kassiani drew a breath, lifted her chin and took her first step into the four-hundred-year-old Greek Orthodox church. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the cool, dark interior, and then she spotted the groom before her. It really was a tiny chapel, with just five rows of pews on either side of the narrow aisle.

Damen Michael Alexopoulos stood at the front, just before the altar and priest. Once Kassiani spotted her future husband, she couldn’t look away. Dressed in a severe black suit, he looked even more intimidating than he had yesterday in the villa suite. She didn’t know if it was his height, or the width of his shoulders, but there was a dangerous stillness about him now that made the air catch in her throat.

Was he suspicious?

Had he already figured out she wasn’t the right bride?

Kass was so heavily veiled that she could barely see through the thick white lace, but he was no fool and it wouldn’t take much to assess her size and shape and realize that there was no way she was Elexis, of Instagram fame. Elexis was opposite Kass in every way imaginable. Even wearing treacherously high heels, Kassiani remained short, her plump figure wrapped in the tightest of undergarments, including the old-fashioned corset necessary to make Elexis’s dress fit, and that was after the dress had been altered to include additional panels and a dramatically shortened hem.

“He knows,” she said under her breath.

“He doesn’t,” her father gritted. “And it’s too late for second thoughts. You cannot fail me.”

A lump filled her throat. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

She clenched his arm and kept her chin high. The only way through challenging times was to go through them. There would be no retreat. There would be no panicking. She would make this work. She would find a way to please her husband. She would bring the two families together. And it would be her, Petra Kassiani, who did it, not Elexis, and not her playboy brother, Barnabas, who had so little familial love that he hadn’t even bothered to show up for the wedding.

She could do this. She could.

The real question was, would he?

* * *

Damen knew the moment Kristopher Dukas entered the chapel with his daughter that it was the wrong daughter.

He watched them process—portly Kristopher with his heavily veiled daughter teetering in her heels—unable to believe the American’s audacity.

It seemed that once again Kristopher took the easy way out. Instead of retrieving the wayward Elexis, Kristopher had simply swapped daughters, substituting the youngest for the eldest.

Who did that?

What kind of man treated his daughters like cattle?

Damen felt a jolt—shock, disbelief—as Kristopher placed his younger daughter’s hand in his, handing her over at the altar, clearly the sacrificial lamb. Even Damen, who was ruthless in business, knew the difference between dishonesty and betrayal. And this was a betrayal.

It’s not that he needed a beauty queen for a bride, but this younger daughter wasn’t Elexis and he’d chosen Elexis for a reason.

Gleaming, polished, ambitious Elexis Dukas suited him in looks and temperament. She’d hold her own socially, and she’d be an accomplished hostess, things he knew he needed in a wife because he detested social engagements and refused to be part of any dog and pony show. Elexis loved the spotlight. She loved attention. She could easily represent them at important functions and no one would miss him. Why would they, when they had her?

He felt no affection for Elexis, but she was the one he wanted, and he hadn’t proposed to her without knowing exactly what he was getting in a wife—both strengths and weaknesses. Elexis led an enviable lifestyle. She traveled with the jet set. She partied at all the best clubs. She wore the best clothes, sitting in the front rows of the biggest fashion shows. Her life was one photo opportunity after another, but he’d let her carry on as she always had during their engagement, aware that once she became his wife, she’d settle down and become a proper wife.

He needed a proper wife, one who understood her place in his world, and wouldn’t make emotional demands. He didn’t do emotions. And he didn’t tolerate demands.

But now Elexis was gone and there was a very different Dukas at his side and it suddenly crossed Damen’s mind that perhaps this had been Kristopher’s plan from the beginning. Perhaps Elexis had never intended to marry him? Perhaps Kristopher had never planned on giving his beloved Elexis to Damen?

Perhaps Kristopher had always intended on dumping his youngest, the one he casually referred to as the Dukas Ugly Duckling, on him.

He should walk out now.

And just when he was about to drop the Ugly Duckling’s hand, she lifted her face, her dark gaze finding his through her veil, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

* * *

They signed the registry in the chapel’s antechamber. Damen gritted his teeth, angry beyond measure as it struck him that the worst part of this—no, not the worst but yet another negative among negatives—was that he didn’t even know his new wife’s name. “So who have I married, if not Elexis?” he ground out as the priest handed him a pen.

Her long lace veil had been folded back on the top of her head and she glanced at him but looked away, unable to hold his furious gaze. He felt a tightness in his chest as her ridiculously long black lashes dropped, concealing her eyes.

“Kassiani,” she said huskily.

He felt angrier by the moment. His fingers itched to smash something hard—like the narrow table, or the nearest stone wall. “That wasn’t the name in the ceremony.”

“No, the priest used my legal first name, Petra, but no one calls me Petra. I’m either Kass or Kassiani.”

He ground his teeth together, not just upset with her, but with himself for not having walked out of the service when he could. Why had he let her apology sway him? Why had her whispered words kept him from leaving her there at the altar?

He didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, and he wasn’t in the frame of mind to sort it out. “Do not think this is over,” he said curtly after signing his name and handing the pen to her.

She looked up at him as she accepted the pen, a faint line between her arched eyebrows, expression troubled. “I don’t.”

“Was this always the plan, to swap sisters on the unsuspecting groom?”

Color suffused her pale cheeks. “No.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t want you.”

The pink color swiftly faded from her face. Her full lips compressed as she drew a slow breath and then she managed an unsteady laugh. “Understood.”

“I’m not trying to be offensive.”

She lifted her chin and met his gaze then, her eyes locking with his. “No offense taken.”

In any other circumstances, he thought he would have liked her. She was direct and smart and articulate. But this wasn’t a casual conversation. He’d just been played and he wasn’t in the most charitable frame of mind. “I’m not one to forgive and forget.”

* * *

He saw a shadow pass across her face, and he almost felt sorry for her, but then the shadow disappeared, leaving her expression calm and composed. “And as you can see, I’m not one to pass up a slice of cake, or a bit of a chocolate.” Then she leaned over the registry and added her name, her long lace veil spilling across her shoulder in a waterfall of white. When she’d finished, she straightened and squared her shoulders and handed back the pen. “It seems we all have our crosses to bear.”

He didn’t know if it was her words, or her ridiculous bravado, but he felt a rush of intense emotion—emotion he didn’t welcome—and drew her hard against him, tilting her chin back with one hand before covering her mouth, capturing it with his. She was petite, barely reaching his shoulder, and impossibly warm and soft, which made his kiss harder, and fiercer. It wasn’t the kiss a man should give his young bride, but nothing about this wedding was right.

* * *

Upstairs in the luxurious villa bedroom Kassiani had dressed in earlier, she walked back and forth, chewing on a knuckle, trying to calm herself.

He didn’t want her, and he didn’t like her, and she had a feeling this could all still fall apart any moment.

The vows wouldn’t hold, not unless the marriage was consummated, and she couldn’t imagine him taking her to his bed right now. Quite frankly, she didn’t want to be in his bed, either, and she shuddered remembering his coldness as he’d told her he didn’t forgive and forget.

She didn’t doubt him.

Which was why she was here in the bedroom, hiding. She’d lost her nerve. Somehow she’d found the necessary courage this morning to take Elexis’s place for the ceremony, but that courage was gone.

Thank God the ceremony had been small and private. No one but the immediate family attended. However, the reception was large, with hundreds of guests flying in from all over the world to witness the marriage of Elexis Dukas and Damen Alexopoulos.

Kassiani stopped pacing to double over, wanting to throw up as she imagined appearing at the reception. The guests would laugh when they saw her. It was one thing to be Elexis in private, hidden beneath layers of thick lace. It was another to be Elexis in front of those who knew her sister best.

Kass couldn’t imagine joining Damen on the terrace for dinner, or dancing, or cutting of the cake. She’d convinced herself she could do this—but she’d thought only about the ceremony and vows. She hadn’t taken in the terror of appearing in public as his new wife.

His wife.

Kassiani’s legs buckled and she dropped onto the edge of the bed, her full skirts billowing up around her, her feet aching from her stupid shoes.

What had she done?

She was wiping away tears when her bedroom door suddenly opened and Damen entered her room.

He hadn’t even knocked. He’d simply barged in.

Her head jerked up, her lips parting in surprise, but she uttered no protest. His fierce expression silenced anything she might have said.

She waited for him to speak.

He didn’t.

He simply stared at her, and the silence was unbearable. A tremor coursed through her.

Time slowed to a crawl. The seconds felt like minutes. She tried to meet his gaze but his scathing look of contempt was more than she could endure in that moment. “Please say something,” she finally murmured.

“Our guests have been waiting.”

Again she pictured the stone terrace filled with linen-draped tables and gleaming candelabras. The reception was a sophisticated palette of cream, bisque and white and Kassiani did not belong there. It wasn’t her wedding. They weren’t her guests. This wasn’t her party. “I couldn’t go down.”