Kitabı oku: «Stranded With Her Greek Tycoon»

CHAPTER ONE

CRISTOS THEOFANIS HAD made such a monumental mess of his own marriage, he found it impossible to share in the joy as he watched his favourite cousin and his wife renew their wedding vows. Seeing their happiness in each other, the intimate smiles shared by a man and a woman deeply in love, made him fist his hands at the memories of what he had lost.

But he was careful to keep in place the mask he chose to present to the world—happy, without-a-care Cristos, unaffected by the losses that secretly haunted him. His pain was his own to keep all to himself.

The renewal ceremony had been held in the tiny white chapel perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the turquoise waters of the Ionian sea on his cousin’s privately owned island of Kosmimo. Now the happy couple was flocked by joyous well-wishers as they spilled out of the chapel. Cristos stood alone by a stunted cypress tree, marooned on his own black cloud of dark thoughts, his face aching from the effort of forcing smiles he didn’t feel.

Of course he wished his cousin well, but Cristos was haunted by memories of his own wedding five years ago in a register office in the medieval city of Durham in the north of England. He had looked down at Hayley, his bride, with pride and adoration and a wondering disbelief that such an amazing woman had agreed to share her life with him. In return, her eyes had shone with love and trust as she’d offered him both her body and, more importantly, her heart. A priceless gift. One that had been wrenched away from him.

Remorse tore through him like a physical pain. He had not seen his wife in more than two years. Two years and five months to be precise. He could probably estimate the time in hours, minutes even. For every second of that separation he had torn himself apart with self-recrimination and guilt. Now, he didn’t even know where Hayley lived, what she was doing. He had hurt her by not being there when she’d needed him. But she hadn’t given him a chance to make it up to her. With a ruthlessness he had not believed his sweet, gentle wife had possessed, she had left him and completely deleted him from her life.

As his cousin Alex and his wife Dell kissed to the sound of exuberant cheering, Cristos closed his eyes as he remembered the joy of kissing Hayley when the celebrant had told him he could claim his bride. They had been as happy as these two. Excited about the prospect of a lifetime together. Deliriously in love. Confident that all they’d needed was each other when the world had seemed against them.

‘We were once just like them.’ The words were no more than a broken murmur, as light and insubstantial as the breeze playing with the branches of the tree above him.

Cristos’s eyes flew open in shock at the wistful tones of a once familiar voice. Hayley. From somewhere below his shoulder, where she’d used to fit so neatly, he seemed to breathe in the elusive hint of her scent. Crazed by regret, he must be conjuring up a ghost from his past.

He turned his head. His heart jolted so hard against his ribs he gasped. She stood there beside him, looking straight ahead towards the church, not up at him, as if she couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. His wife.

He put out his hand to touch her, to make sure he was not hallucinating. Her cheek was soft and cool and very, very real. ‘It’s you, koukla mou,’ he said, his voice hoarse. He had not used that term of endearment for years—it belonged to her and her only.

Immediately he regretted his words. Drew back his hand. He had loved her unconditionally but she had thrown that love back at him. Yes, he had made mistakes he deeply regretted. But she had not given him the chance to remedy them. She had hurt him. Humiliated him. Put him through hell as he’d searched Europe for her. But she hadn’t wanted to be found.

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘I’m not your little doll or your gorgeous girl or whatever that word translates to. Not any more.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ he said tersely.

Her gaze flickered away from him and she bit her lower lip with her front teeth as she always did when she was nervous. Or dreading something. What was she doing here?

He stared at her, still scarcely able to believe she was real. Hungry, in spite of himself, for every detail of her appearance. She was wrapped against the late morning February chill in slim trousers and an elegant pale blue coat he had once bought for her from a designer in Milan. The coat, belted around her narrow waist, was the same but he was shocked to see Hayley was not. The image of her he had for so long held in his mind shimmered around the edges and reformed into a different version of his wife.

Her beautiful blonde hair that had tumbled around her shoulders in lush waves was gone, shorn into an abbreviated pixie cut. Like a boy was his first dismayed thought. He had loved her long hair, loved running his hands through it, tugging it back to tilt her head up for his kiss. But a deeper inspection made him appreciate how intensely feminine the new style was, feathered around her face, clinging to the slender column of her neck. Her features seemed to come into sharper focus, her cheekbones appeared more sculpted, her chin more determined. Her youthful English rose prettiness that had so attracted him had, at twenty-seven, bloomed into an even more enticing beauty.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here after all this time?’

She met his gaze. ‘To see you. What else?’

Hope that she might be there to—at last—explain why she had abandoned their marriage roared to life only to be beaten back down by the cool indifference of her blue eyes, the tight set of her mouth. He wanted to demand that she explain herself. She was still his legal wife. But there was a barely restrained skittishness about her that made him hold back. He couldn’t risk her running away from him again. He wanted answers.

She looked over to the gathering outside the church and then back to him. ‘I didn’t know your entire family would be here or I certainly wouldn’t have come to this island,’ she said.

There was something different about her voice. A trace of some kind of accent blurring the precise Englishness of her words. He was fluent in English and Italian, with passable French and Spanish, but he couldn’t place it. Where had she been?

‘This is a private function.’

‘I would never have been on the guest list,’ she said, a bitter undertone to her voice.

He was unable to refute the truth of her words. His family—in particular the grandmother who had raised him since he was fourteen—had disapproved of his marriage to Hayley and made no secret of it. For Yia-yia Penelope their union had been too rushed, too impulsive, too reminiscent of his own parents’ hasty marriage that had brought the family so much grief.

‘I want to know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘The last time we met you told me you hated me. And then nothing.’

He didn’t hate her, though there had been moments when he had wanted to. Since that day in the hospital in Milan when she had turned away from him, her face as pale as the hospital pillow, his emotions had gone from guilt for his neglect, to terror for her safety, through smouldering anger that she had thought so little of their marriage—of him—to wipe him without explanation from her life. Finally his anger had mellowed to a determined indifference.

Hayley made no reply. She placed great store on honesty. A shudder of foreboding made Cristos think her unexpected visit was not something he should be glad about.

‘How did you get here?’ Kosmimo was only accessible by boat. Or the helicopters of the wealthy guests who frequented the luxury retreat spa his hotelier cousin Alex had established on the island.

‘I’d heard you were back in Nidri, staying with your grandparents.’ His grandparents ran a tourist villa complex in the port town on the nearby island of Lefkada. ‘Their maid told me you were here. I hired a man and his boat to bring me over.’

There’d been storms and the water was choppy. ‘What man?’ he said too quickly, too possessively. He wouldn’t trust his wife to just anyone on these waters. Mentally he slammed a fist against his forehead. She was no longer his concern. Who knew what risks she’d taken in the last two years and five months without him to look out for her? More to the point, why should he care?

Her eyes narrowed at his tone. But she named a local boatman he knew well. ‘Good choice,’ he said.

Why had he doubted her ability to choose a safe boat ride? Hayley had always been practical, seeing a problem and finding a solution. Then she’d seen him as a problem and the solution as leaving him.

He looked over her shoulder, aware they had become the target of curious glances. Most of the people gathered here for the ceremony had never met Hayley. But he sensed their interest like a current buzzing through the congregation. Those in ignorance would very soon be made aware that this lovely blonde woman was Cristos’s estranged wife. The one who had humiliated a Greek husband in a way a Greek husband should never be humiliated.

He shifted his body to shield her from curious gazes. That was all he’d ever wanted to do—protect her and look after her. Yet when she’d really needed him, he’d let her down so badly she had been unable to forgive him. Deep down, he had been unable to forgive himself.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he said, keeping his voice low.

‘I wanted to see you face to face. But I wasn’t sure you’d welcome me if I warned you.’

Banked up from years of frustration his words flooded out. ‘Of course I’d want to see you. I need to know what happened. You left the hospital without telling me where you were going. I tried to find you. Your parents wouldn’t tell me where you were. Or your friends. Your sister slammed the door in my face.’

She put her hand up to stop him. He noticed it wasn’t quite steady. ‘Stop. Not here. Not with an audience. What I have to say should be said in private. It’s why I had to see you in person rather than—’

‘Just say it,’ he said through gritted teeth.

She played with the strap of her designer handbag—another gift from him—twisting it until he thought it would snap. Then she looked up at him. ‘I want a divorce.’

He glared at her. ‘The sooner the better,’ he said.

* * *

Hayley took a step back and looked up at her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Why, oh, why had she come here? She’d thought she could handle seeing Cristos again. In light of the love they’d once shared, surely it was the right thing to deliver the divorce papers in person rather than have them served on him by her lawyer?

But the moment she’d seen him standing under that tree in his dark coat staring moodily out to sea, she’d known it was a mistake. She’d been slammed by her impossible attraction to him with such force she’d had to plant her booted feet on the ground to keep herself steady. Dry-mouthed, heart pounding, she’d been unable to do anything but stare at him, stricken with hopeless longing.

He was now twenty-nine, and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Perhaps beautiful wasn’t the right word. But handsome, good-looking, striking, even gorgeous were not adjectives enough. Not for this man. Not for six feet two of broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped masculine perfection. Not for thick black hair, smooth olive skin that was a delight under a woman’s stroking fingers, the surprise of pure green eyes.

Cristos could have modelled for the marble statues of the ancient Greek gods she had admired in Athens on their honeymoon. Instead just six months later, on a weekend break in London, he’d been scouted by an international model agency. As a macho Greek male, he’d scorned the idea. But they’d needed money badly and she’d talked him into at least trying it. He’d been booked for a prestigious job the first day he’d reluctantly signed the agency contract.

That was when she’d begun to lose him, Hayley reflected now, when he’d started to slip slowly away into a world that’d had no place for her. Pushing him into it was the stupidest thing she’d ever done. She had become the insignificant peahen to the glorious peacock of her magnificent husband. And he had allowed it to happen. He had left her alone to tend the nest while he strode with masculine insouciance the catwalks of the fashion capitals of Europe, shot advertising campaigns and commercials, all the while hobnobbing with the wealthy and well-connected. Every time she’d questioned him, he’d told her everything he did was for her and their financial security. For a while she’d believed him. Before she began to doubt him.

She gritted her teeth. The longing that surged through her wasn’t for this Cristos. It was for the Cristos she’d fallen in love with as a student back in that pub in Durham when she’d been barely twenty-two. After her gap year, she was a year older than most of the people in her class and something about the group of older students had caught her attention. He’d been laughing with some fellow exchange students. The flash of his white teeth against his olive skin, the humour in those amazing green eyes had caught her attention then mesmerised her. He’d looked across to her and their gazes had connected. For a long moment there had been nothing—no one—else but him. The sounds of the pub had receded, the chatter and the clinking of glasses, until it had just been her and him, drinking in each other’s eyes, their souls connecting. Or that was how it had seemed. Then his brow had furrowed in a quizzical frown. He’d put down his glass and left his friends behind to make his way to her side.

Even back then he’d been good at masking his feelings—she hadn’t known for days he’d been as instantly smitten by her as she’d been by him. It was an attribute that had served him well in his unexpected new career. He’d easily been able to slip into the varied persona required of him as a successful male model. Smouldering and sophisticated in a tuxedo, or sporty and athletic on a yacht, he’d always looked the part on billboards all over Europe.

He’d got so good at donning those masks that towards the end she’d begun to wonder had she ever seen the true Cristos. But at the word divorce his mask slipped and the raw anguish that momentarily darkened his eyes made her heart skip a beat. But it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it.

‘Nothing about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing—all you want to do is demand a divorce,’ he said in a forced, neutral tone. But the tension in his jaw, the shadow in his eyes told her he wasn’t as cool about it as he appeared.

She swallowed hard. ‘It can’t come as a surprise. We’ve been separated for two and a half years. That’s more than enough grounds to dissolve our marriage.’

‘So my lawyer told me when I instructed him to instigate proceedings two years after your desertion. The separation was proof the marriage had irretrievably broken down. That’s all that’s required.’

His words sounded so grim, so final. The excitement and passion of their early years together had disintegrated into disillusionment. Yet now, just looking at her husband made her remember exactly why she’d defied her family to marry him, given up her own dreams to let him follow his. But that was yesterday. She had to be strong. Good sex and fun weren’t enough to build a lifetime on. She’d learned that on a heart-wrenching night in Milan two and a half years ago, alone in a hospital in a country where she didn’t speak the language as she’d miscarried in pain and anguish, tears streaming down her face for all she had lost.

She cleared her throat. Although she’d practised the words over and over, they didn’t come easily. ‘I want to be free, to perhaps marry again one day.’

His mouth set in a tight line. ‘Is there someone else?’

‘He’s just a friend at this stage.’

Steady, reliable Tim, as different from Cristos as it was possible for a man to be. There had not been one word of romance expressed between them but Hayley had sensed Tim wanted to grow the friendship into something more. She wanted security, stability, not the tumult her life with Cristos had been.

‘Where did you meet this man?’

‘In Sydney. But he’s not—’

‘You’ve been living in Australia?’ He hissed a string of curse words in Greek. During their time together she’d worked to learn his language, but he’d refused to teach her the curses—such language was not befitting his wife. If he only knew it was nothing to what she heard in her job as a mechanical engineer—a woman in what was still essentially a man’s world.

‘I didn’t think to look for you in Australia, of all places,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘It was as far away from you as I believed I could get. I have an aunt there. My parents arranged it.’

He was silent for a long moment as he looked down at her, searching her face. ‘Did I hurt you that badly?’ His voice was low and hoarse.

She nodded, too choked to risk attempting to speak.

His words sounded as though they were being torn from him. ‘So many times I’ve regretted the way I left you alone that day, that I wasn’t there when you needed me. I—’

Hayley had tried to block that final scene with him from her memory; it was too painful to revisit. She put up her hand to stop him. ‘I don’t want to hear this,’ she said.

His dark brows drew together. ‘Like you didn’t want to hear it then. You wouldn’t let me explain or try to make it up to you. You were hurting but so was I and you kicked me to the kerb. Then left me and ran so far away I couldn’t find you. After all we’d gone through together you did that. Now you show up out of the blue, crash my family’s party and—’

‘Please. I don’t want to go there. It’s over.’ Her voice broke. ‘I just want a divorce. That’s the only reason I’m here.’

‘You could have had divorce papers served on me from Australia. Notified me where you were so my lawyer could be in touch with yours. You shouldn’t be here, Hayley.’

He turned from her, slanted his broad shoulders away so she once more could see the happy gathering outside the church doors.

‘I hope I’m not intruding on a special family occasion,’ she said a little stiffly. His family had hardly been what you would call welcoming to Cristos’s young English bride the one and only time she had met them. His cousin Alex had been the exception.

‘Alex and his Australian wife, Dell, are renewing their wedding vows. It’s a special day for them, a gathering only for family and close friends.’ His tone let her know she was now pointedly excluded from those categories.

‘Your grandmother’s maid told me. She said they’d only been married two years ago. I’m glad he found someone after the horror he went through.’

Alex’s then fiancée had been killed in a hostage situation. It had made the news all around the world. ‘We’re all grateful to Dell,’ Cristos said. The wife who had been accepted by the family, as opposed to Hayley, the unwelcome one.

She knew she didn’t have the right to access his family news but she was curious. ‘Why are they renewing their vows so soon? Isn’t it usually older people who do that?’

‘They had to get married in a hurry because their daughter Litza was on the way. Dell wanted to affirm their vows in a more relaxed manner.’

She looked towards the couple. ‘Oh. That must be their little girl with Alex.’ The red-haired cherub was gurgling with laughter. ‘And Dell has a baby in her arms who looks just like a tiny Alex.’ Hayley forced her voice into neutral. She didn’t trust it not to quiver when she talked about babies. Especially to Cristos.

Hayley actually knew quite a lot about Alex and Dell. She’d been dismayed when she’d got all the way to Sydney to find even there she couldn’t escape Cristos’s family. Alex had been Australian born and a hospitality tycoon. His relocating to Greece after his tragic loss and finding happiness with Dell was ongoing fodder for the press.

‘Their son, Georgios. He was born just a year after Litza.’

Hayley couldn’t meet his eyes. The tension between them must be palpable. Their baby would have been just a little older than the little girl being proudly held by Alex if she hadn’t miscarried that terrible night. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t talk about that. Strained silence from Cristos told her he couldn’t either.

The breeze had picked up. She shivered and huddled deeper into her coat—the beautiful, expensive coat Cristos had given her out of guilt for one of his lengthy absences. ‘I’ve come from a hot Sydney summer. It’s freezing here. Not at all how I imagined an idyllic Greek island. I mean, it’s beautiful but so chilly. Why did they choose to renew their vows in winter?’

‘Alex and Dell wanted to have the ceremony here in the chapel where they got married. The resort is fully booked out all through the warmer months. In summer they would not have had the privacy they wanted.’

She looked over to the group outside the chapel. ‘I’m happy for them,’ she said. ‘I liked Alex when I met him and Dell looks lovely.’

‘You weren’t invited but he’ll be glad to see you. And Dell must be dying to be introduced.’

Hayley took an abrupt step back. ‘No! I’ve come to talk to you about the divorce and then go. The boat is waiting to take me back to Nidri.’

Cristos closed the gap between them with one long stride. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘What do you mean?’ He was too close. This close she was too aware of his warmth, his scent, his strength.

‘I can’t allow you to disrupt this special day.’

‘That was not my intention,’ she said. ‘I just—’

He spoke over her, his tone low and urgent. ‘Alex and Dell have been through more than you know. Allow them their day of celebrating their commitment to each other. Your abrupt departure would cause even more speculation than your arrival and put the focus on us instead of them. That wouldn’t be fair. You’ve turned up here uninvited. But you are still legally my wife. Despite our separation, it would be expected that you would greet Alex and Dell and congratulate them. I’m asking you to do the right thing.’

Why did he have to put it like that—appealing to her innate sense of justice? ‘I suppose I could say hello,’ she said tentatively. Although it would take a monumental effort to congratulate the happy couple on their successful marriage while her own was in its death throes. ‘It wouldn’t take long to chat with them and then slip away to the boat.’

Cristos shook his head. ‘That would cause even more disruption than if you left right now. There is to be a lunch at the resort. Stay here for that. Surely we can be civil to each other. But don’t mention the divorce to anyone. It’s none of their business. Let people think we are discussing reconciliation. Just until the party is over and you can leave with the other guests.’

She frowned. ‘You mean pretend I’m still your wife?’

He shrugged. ‘If you put it that way. Just for a few hours. Legally you are still my wife.’

‘You mean I’d have to act loving and—?’ Her breath started to come in tight gasps at the thought of it and she had to put her hand to her chest.

‘Just civil would do, if you find the thought of pretending an affection you no longer feel so distressing,’ he said. ‘Just keep it dignified. You’ve caused me enough humiliation.’

‘I don’t know that I could face explanations and—’

‘No explanations would be required. I have told my family nothing of what happened between us.’

And, no doubt, his relatives had assigned all the blame for the end of their union to her. Slowly, she shook her head, forced her breathing to return to something resembling normality. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t do it.’ Such a charade would bring back old memories, old feelings she had fought so hard to put behind her.

He frowned his displeasure. ‘Do it for my cousin’s sake who liked you and stood up for you. Don’t let us ruin this day for them.’

Us. How thrilled she’d been when they’d become a couple. How she’d loved to drop those magical words we and us into the conversation, preferably while flashing her engagement ring at the same time. Now Cristos used the word in such a different context it made her shudder. Us united in a charade of dishonesty. Although, she was forced to admit, it would be with the best of intentions and just for a few hours. She sighed out loud. He still knew which of her buttons to press. The last thing she’d ever want to do was ruin someone else’s hard-won happiness. Everyone in Sydney knew the tragedy Alex had gone through.

She looked up at Cristos. At that handsome, handsome face that had once been so beloved. ‘I’ll do it. Then after lunch I’m out of here. With the divorce papers signed.’

And she would say goodbye to her husband for the very last time.