Stranded With Her Greek Tycoon
Kandy Shepherd
One night to win back his wife!After her marriage fell apart, Hayley fled with a broken heart. Now she’s back to ask her husband, Cristos Theofanis, for a divorce – but he has other ideas! They’re stranded together by a storm, so Cristos has one night to tempt her back in his arms.
One night to win back his wife!
Can Hayley resist Cristos’s seductive charms?
After the demise of her marriage, Hayley fled to nurse her broken heart. Now she’s back to ask her husband, Cristos Theofanis, for a divorce—but he has other ideas! When a storm hits and they’re stranded together, Cristos has one night to prove himself. Can Hayley resist the temptation of Cristos’s kiss or will she find herself back in his arms?
KANDY SHEPHERD swapped a career as a magazine editor for a life writing romance. She lives on a small farm in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband, daughter, and lots of pets. She believes in love at first sight and real-life romance—they worked for her! Kandy loves to hear from her readers. Visit her at kandyshepherd.com (http://www.kandyshepherd.com).
Also by Kandy Shepherd
A Diamond in Her StockingFrom Paradise...to Pregnant!Hired by the Brooding BillionaireGreek Tycoon’s Mistletoe ProposalConveniently Wed to the Greek
Sydney Brides miniseries
Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding DressCrown Prince’s Chosen BrideThe Bridesmaid’s Baby Bump
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Stranded with Her Greek Tycoon
Kandy Shepherd
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07724-8
STRANDED WITH HER GREEK TYCOON
© 2018 Kandy Shepherd
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my dear friend Anne Yeates and her clever boys, for introducing me to the historic university town of Durham in Northern England—the inspiration for my hero and heroine’s past.
Contents
Cover (#uc1694f71-b921-5149-baa2-74b67a473a18)
Back Cover Text (#u81a8254d-5901-57f2-a1c6-bf7984471f9e)
About the Author (#u390be638-6474-5f6b-a71b-a46e989fa502)
Booklist (#u19f90b77-d2a2-5ec4-b1e6-d481e5ea71a6)
Title Page (#u6037dd90-8e1e-5b8e-a16b-7f812f0b9b03)
Copyright (#u6820ff12-484f-5f74-a980-4439a633b082)
Dedication (#uf37641fe-d1d2-5eba-a24a-66cca62c04eb)
CHAPTER ONE (#uac882a4a-8537-5e35-b077-c52672ef4f8d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u81aa33b8-71cb-53eb-b1fa-65cff5b8d89d)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5bc70e2b-73f8-582b-b1ec-21714386b5cf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_0063b0ff-eae2-539e-b436-62e177d6db88)
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.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b11b371b-1a14-50a7-ae31-4ad9ad10e631)
CRISTOS FISTED HIS hands by his sides. He could lie to himself all he liked but his indifference towards his wife was just another mask. Seeing Hayley again had stripped it away, leaving raw the ache for her he had never been able to suppress.
Call it desire, need, obsession—when she had first smiled at him across that crowded pub in Durham it had lodged in his heart like an arrow from Eros, the ancient Greek god of love and desire. He had found it impossible to wrench it out—even when he had tried to hate her for the way she had left him.
What he had felt for her defied logic, reason, common sense. But it hadn’t been enough to see them through the loss of their baby, a time that should have brought husband and wife closer together in a shared grief rather than driven them inexplicably apart. What had gone wrong? He needed answers. And he had to get them from Hayley before she took that boat back to Nidri.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Hayley had barricades up around her that might be impenetrable. But Cristos was an optimist. To be a successful gambler you had to be an optimist. And he was a gambler. His was not the kind of reckless, addictive gambling that had driven his late father to embezzlement and fraud and stints in prison. Not to mention unending shame for his mother’s family.
Cristos’s gambling took the form of calculated business risks that had led him to invest in start-up internet businesses—most of which had succeeded beyond all expectations. At not yet thirty, he was a multimillionaire. These days the wide spread of his investment portfolio ensured his fortune was secure—and kept growing. Yet he kept the gambler aspect of him a secret from his family. And had never shared it with Hayley.
His father had died when he’d been thirteen, followed six months later by the death of his mother. His grandparents had brought him back to Nidri, aged fourteen, to live with them. He’d been embraced with love by his grandparents and extended family. But he’d soon become uncomfortably aware of how closely he was scrutinised.
He looked so like his father that his family were terrified he had inherited his nature as well as his good looks. It felt as if they were always waiting to pounce and stamp out any undesirable traits. As soon as he’d realised that, he’d become adept at masking his feelings, hiding his true risk-taking self. It was allowed to come out only when he played football where a winner-takes-all attitude was encouraged.
He had started investing in a small way in app developments by his fellow students at university but had kept both his successes and failures well hidden. Even though he saw himself as a canny businessman, he could never admit to his worried grandparents that he could be in any way like his father, the man they blamed for the death of his mother, their only daughter. The secrecy had become a habit, another mask he was beginning to weary of wearing.
But optimism was all he felt now as he looked down into Hayley’s face—a face he had doubted he would ever see again. It was difficult to stop himself from glancing at her every few seconds just to reassure himself she was really there. The sheen of her hair, the blue of her eyes, the curve of her mouth. She was here with him, in the same country, by his side. They were headed for divorce. But he intended to make the most of the hours ahead to get answers to the questions that had plagued him. Then he could put her firmly in the past and move on without being haunted by guilt or bitterness.
That was a much better position than he could have dreamed he’d be in when he’d thought back to their wedding this morning.
‘Alex is looking our way. Let’s go say hi,’ he said. It seemed natural to reach for her, to fold her much smaller hand in his for the first time in years. But she stiffened against him.
Did she hate him so much she couldn’t bear the most simple of touches?
‘You agreed to do this—we have to make it look believable,’ he said in a gruff undertone intended only for her.
He could tell the effort it took for her to release the tension from her body. ‘I guess so,’ she said, expelling a sigh.
She left her hand in his as he led her towards the chapel but there was no answering pressure, no entwining of her fingers through his. Their linked hands were purely for appearances’ sake. But it signalled they were together—for today at least. The fewer questions his family had about her sudden appearance, the better. They would take their cues from him. If he appeared unperturbed they would not question what Hayley was doing here.
His cousin and his wife had been posing for photos with their children but had now handed them over to their doting grandmothers. Cristos was glad. He would find it impossible to keep his mask in place if he had to watch Hayley react to the children, knowing how much she had wanted the baby they had lost that terrible night in Milan. The night that was branded on his memory for ever, to be brought out and poked and prodded in an agony of self-recrimination for failing her. But there had also been fault on her part. He had wanted the baby, but she had not allowed him to share her grief—let alone acknowledge his.
He’d been in a business meeting—a meeting that had turned out to be pivotal to his rapid rise to riches. The deal he’d done that night had been a major step up to the fortune he had sought as security for his wife and the family they had wanted to raise together. He’d had his phone turned off. When he had switched it on it had been to find a series of messages from Hayley, escalating in urgency until the last one had said she was being taken by ambulance to hospital.
When he’d got there it had been too late. She had lost the baby. And he had very quickly realised he had lost his wife.
Now Alex and Dell stepped forward from their crowd of well-wishers to greet him and Hayley. He could tell Dell was bubbling over with curiosity about this unexpected visit from the wife she had never met but had heard so much about. He had to tamp down on his own curiosity at what his lovely wife had been up to since their split. Who was the man who had prompted her to seek a divorce? Jealousy, dark and invasive, roiled in his gut. It was an emotion relatively new to him. He had always felt certain of Hayley’s fidelity. But he had spent the past two and a half years tormented by graphic imaginings of her in the arms of another man.
Alex gave Hayley a welcoming hug. But over Hayley’s shorn blonde head he questioned Cristos with his eyes: What’s going on? Alex had become as close as a brother. They shared secrets. Cristos knew the truth behind his cousin’s hasty marriage and Alex and Dell knew the extent of Cristos’s fortune. Alex would be as surprised as he was by his wife’s sudden reappearance.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ Alex asked Hayley, valiantly tiptoeing around the truth. Alex knew all about Cristos’s fruitless search for her.
‘Sydney,’ Hayley said after hesitating a moment too long.
Alex’s dark brows rose.
‘I was living there for—’
Auburn-haired Dell interrupted. ‘Sydney is my home town!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d love to hear what you got up to there. Not only that, of course—I’ve been longing to meet you. Unfortunately we now have to go share ourselves around the other guests. But I’ll seat you near us for lunch so we can chat.’
Her ebullient welcome defused the awkwardness of Hayley’s surprise visit and Cristos shot his cousin’s wife a glance of gratitude. He’d made friends with Dell when she had been working for Alex on Kosmimo, before there had been any romance between her and his cousin. There had been no one more delighted when they’d got married and he’d been their best man. If Hayley and Dell hit it off it would help make the rest of the day go smoothly.
‘I’ll look forward to that,’ Hayley said, returning Dell’s smile—her smile was pointedly not directed at him. Dell hugged Hayley before she turned to move away.
That left just the two of them, standing apart from the other guests in the glorious but increasingly chilly grounds of the chapel. But Cristos didn’t even notice the view of the white-capped sea or the profusion of dark clouds rolling in. His senses could only register the presence of his wife. Hayley might be hostile but she was here. Before she got back on that boat to Nidri he would insist he got answers.
But his spirits dipped as he noticed his seventy-seven-year-old grandmother heading their way. Hayley noticed too. He heard her dismay in a hiss of indrawn breath and she tensed as if to flee. ‘I don’t think I can handle a confrontation with your grandmother,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t part of the deal.’
Cristos’s protective instinct kicked in. He’d kept his anger about the ugly way Hayley had ended their marriage to himself. He would not tolerate criticism of her from anyone else. Not even his beloved grandmother, who had rather an impressive track record in that regard.
He put his arm around Hayley and drew her close. She did not object, realising, perhaps, that it would be easier if they gave the appearance of being a couple. ‘Leave my grandmother to me,’ he said.
Dell called Penelope the purveyor of information for the extended family—kind terminology to describe an unashamed gossip and self-appointed matchmaker. His yia-yia had worked to get Alex and Dell together despite seemingly impossible odds. But she was convinced Cristos had made completely the wrong match in Hayley. She’d made that very clear to Hayley the one time they’d met when he’d brought Hayley home to introduce her.
The old woman’s journey towards them now was hindered by the other guests greeting her, but she would be with them in mere minutes. He could not allow old grievances to erupt that might make Hayley change her mind about staying for lunch. Not before he’d had time to thrash out the truth behind the reasons they had parted.
Hayley twisted within the protection of his arm to look up at him, her blue eyes clouded with concern. The wind lifted fine wisps of blonde hair that feathered around her face. He resisted the urge to smooth them into place. Such an intimate touch belonged to their past.
‘Your grandmother hated me before. What will she think of me now?’ she whispered.
‘Hate?’ He frowned. ‘That’s too strong a term. Penelope didn’t approve of you—or me at the time, for that matter—but I’m sure she didn’t hate you. We didn’t ask their permission and married without inviting them to the wedding. That meant we broke all sorts of Greek family rules.’
Her mouth turned down. ‘I didn’t make it any better by telling her that my own parents weren’t invited either. Your grandmother drew her own conclusions about that. Conclusions that didn’t reflect well on me.’
‘Remember your parents didn’t approve of me either. That was another reason we didn’t tell any family about the wedding until we were Mr and Mrs.’
Hayley didn’t deny it. ‘They thought I was too young to get married. Especially while I was still at uni. My father was so disappointed in me.’
There had been more to it than that. ‘They might have thought better of it if you’d married someone they approved of. Your mother was disappointed I was from humble origins.’ Her mother had had a particular sneer for him that had let him know she’d thought her daughter had married way beneath her.
‘That you were a foreigner was reason enough for her disapproval.’ Was that a glimmer of a smile of complicity from his estranged wife, as the memories danced across her face? ‘She saw it as an act of defiance on my part. To get married at the register office and have lunch afterwards at the pub with our friends. What a crime that was in “Surrey mother” circles.’
He smiled in return. ‘We got married exactly the way we wanted. Free from anyone’s expectations but our own. I never regretted that, in spite of the dramas it caused with my family.’
‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘No matter how it turned out in the end.’ Her gaze met his for a long moment. Then the shutters came down and she turned her face away. Why would she want to indulge in reminiscence about their wedding when she’d come seeking a divorce?
‘Penelope is heading our way,’ she said.
He felt a shiver run through her. ‘Cold?’ he asked. As the wind rose, the temperature was beginning to drop.
‘A little scared, to be honest. Your grandma is a formidable lady. She doesn’t look any less hostile than when she interrogated me the first time we met when we came to Greece on our honeymoon.’
‘Which is why we never came to the islands again.’ His family’s rejection of his wife had hurt Hayley so much he had decided to give his grandparents time to get used to the idea of his marriage before they met again. Then when the modelling career he had fallen into so reluctantly had taken off with such speed there hadn’t been the chance to come back, to try and mend bridges. Or, indeed, time to work on the cracks that had been appearing in his marriage that he had seen as hairline and Hayley as canyon-like crevices.
He’d eventually returned home without a wife. And given no explanations for her absence other than she had left him. And that he didn’t particularly care. He’d hidden his heartbreak behind that mask of indifference.
‘Now I’m wishing I’d never come here,’ Hayley said. ‘How can I face her?’
‘Does it matter?’ he replied. ‘You won’t have to see my grandmother again after today. Or me. But for now, let’s present a united front. To keep the peace for Dell and Alex’s sake.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, slowly. ‘They’re really nice people.’ To his relief, she stayed by his side.
* * *
Hayley braced herself. The last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene with Cristos’s grandmother. But she wasn’t twenty-two any more. Twenty-two and desperate to impress her new husband’s family. Back then she might as well have festooned herself with signs begging them to like her. Now she had learned not to take rubbish from anyone, no matter their age. She had wanted approval and acceptance from Penelope, instead she had been crushed by rejection for no real reason that she could see.
Cristos’s grandmother’s shrewd black eyes flitted from Hayley to her grandson and back again. In spite of her resolve to stand up for herself, Hayley couldn’t help but feel intimidated by the elderly Greek matriarch in full sail. She took a deep breath.
‘It’s always a surprise to see you, Hayley,’ Penelope said in her charmingly accented English, with a smile that didn’t reach those eyes. The surprise of their marriage had not been welcomed by Cristos’s clan. Her surprise visit this time obviously wasn’t either.
Before she could think of a suitable reply, Cristos spoke. ‘A wonderful surprise, Yia-yia, that Hayley could join us for Alex and Dell’s celebration.’
‘Is that why you came here?’ Penelope addressed her question to Hayley.
Hayley wasn’t good at lying; she had to think about her reply. ‘A loving marriage is an excellent thing to celebrate,’ she said.
The old lady’s eyes narrowed until they were mere slits in the wrinkles of her face. ‘And your own marriage? Have you come back to be with your husband?’
‘That’s between Cristos and me,’ Hayley said without hesitation.
‘Hayley is right, Yia-yia.’ Cristos’s tone was kind—she knew how much he loved and respected his grandmother—but firm. His grip around Hayley’s shoulder tightened and she automatically leaned in closer to him. Accepting his protection was something she had always done. Until she’d had to deal with the biggest crisis of her life without him.
Again Penelope addressed Hayley. ‘You’ve put my grandson through hell, young lady. And if you—’
‘There are always two sides to the story,’ Hayley retorted. ‘I—’
‘Our seeing each other again really is our business,’ said Cristos smoothly. ‘While we appreciate your concern, you need to let us handle it in our own way.’ He turned to Hayley. ‘Isn’t that right?’
Hayley nodded. ‘It most certainly is.’
Penelope muttered something in Greek under her breath. Hayley had made an effort to learn Greek when she’d fallen in love with Cristos. She’d let it lapse with the end of their marriage; she didn’t have the heart to speak Greek if it wasn’t to her husband. But she knew enough to know that whatever Penelope had said wasn’t polite. Hayley gritted her teeth. She did not want to get into an argument with Cristos’s formidable grandmother. What would be the point? Their paths would not cross again after today. She looked up to him in mute appeal.
In response, Cristos looked deep into her eyes and smoothed the flyaway hair from her forehead with gentle fingers. Her breath caught at his touch, so familiar and yet so startlingly new, and she could not break her gaze from the deep green of his. ‘I am so happy to have my wife back with me,’ he murmured in that deep, rich, lightly accented voice that had always thrilled her.
Hayley knew he didn’t mean that. It was a message for his grandmother—a subtle way of defusing the situation. But it felt anything but subtle to her as shivers of awareness rippled through her. Her body had not forgotten the pleasure his touch could bring.
It had been so long.
She lifted her face and closed her eyes to better savour the sensation as he made the act of smoothing her hair into a caress. She was so lost in the feeling she was totally unprepared when he kissed her.
Oh!
His mouth firm and warm on hers, the roughness of his chin, his scent, spicy and male. Her own lips soft and yielding under his. His hands sliding around her waist, pulling her closer. This felt so good. Too good. Her eyes flew open.
She didn’t want this. Not this languorous warmth overtaking her. Not this feeling of being lost in his possession. Not this surge of awakening when she’d worked so hard to suppress her longing for him. She didn’t want him. The marriage had been all on his terms—and in loving him so desperately she had lost herself.
She tried to pull away. ‘We have to make this look believable,’ he murmured against her mouth.
Why? She had agreed to play along with the charade of reconciliation so as not to disrupt his cousin’s festivities. Not to kiss Cristos. She did not welcome the whoosh of long-banked-down embers igniting into flames. Because of a kiss. A simple—you could almost call it chaste—kiss.
‘Don’t kiss me again,’ she murmured back against his mouth. His grandmother, watching intently, might take it for sweet talk. She stepped back with a shaky little laugh that sounded fake to her own ears but might fool the grandmother. The smile he gave her in return seemed equally fake, though ragged at the edges. And as soon as his grandmother headed away from them she shrugged herself free, making a play of smoothing down her coat.
‘We should follow the others to lunch,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6eb60125-8ca1-507b-abc7-37fa417ea9ad)
HAYLEY FOLLOWED CRISTOS into the dining area of the resort where some forty guests were gathering for an early lunch. In spite of all her resolve, she could not help but admire the splendour of the view of his back. His immaculately cut dark charcoal jacket—no doubt from the collection of his favourite Italian designer—worn with equally well tailored tapered trousers. The suit emphasised his broad shoulders and perfect behind, his long, leanly muscled legs. Cristos wore his clothes with effortless, masculine grace. No wonder he’d been such an instant hit as an international model.
Did he sense her gaze on him? He paused, turned back to her and reached out his hand. His eyes urged her to take it, for appearances’ sake.
Her first instinct was to pull back from any further physical contact, even such a simple act as holding hands. It aroused too many memories of happier times. Times when she’d felt a surge of joy as Cristos’s much larger hand had closed over hers. She had felt safe, protected and proud to let the world know that the extraordinarily handsome man by her side was hers. Then there were the memories of those skilful, loving hands on her body...
She shook her head to rid herself of unwanted thoughts. She especially didn’t want to think about how she had reacted to his kiss back there in front of his grandmother. Those feelings should be firmly relegated to the past. She could not lose control of her life again. Since she had left him she had learned to be herself instead of the support act to her handsome, glamorous husband. She wanted it to stay that way.
But some kind of show of togetherness would be expected of a husband and wife having a civilised meeting and she didn’t want to draw unwanted whispers from the people she knew were observing them. So she let her hand stay in his and made appropriate small talk about the resort as she walked by his side. It was just an act, she told herself, on his part as well as hers. He’d made steps towards divorce too. She could endure it for a few hours.
‘You’re not seeing the island at its best,’ he said in a casual, conversational tone that anyone could overhear and think nothing of. She was grateful to him for that; she was aware that many ears in the room were tuned into their conversation hoping for a hint of what was going on between Cristos and the wife who had left him. Even if they could lip-read they wouldn’t catch anything titillating. ‘We’re having an unusually cold winter,’ he added.
The weather was always a useful standby but in this case it was a topic of genuine interest. The breeze that had outside played havoc with her hair had turned into something much stronger, buffeting the windows that looked out to the sea. The view was magnificent, the deep turquoise sea whipped up to whitecaps, grey clouds scudding across the sky.
‘It must be breathtaking here in summer,’ she said. ‘But I can see the place has its own wild winter beauty too.’
‘Kosmimo is special at any time of the year,’ he said with an air of possession that surprised her. As far as she knew, his cousin Alex owned the island. But then his family were very close—perhaps what belonged to one belonged to the others. Who knew? She had an older sister but they weren’t particularly close.
Hayley didn’t have to fake how impressed she was by her surroundings. The resort building was white and elegant in its simplicity as it stepped down the side of the slope to the sea and the single jetty that served the private island. As she had approached it by boat earlier in the day she had admired the way the structure sat so perfectly in the landscape.
The interiors exceeded all expectations—strikingly stylish with pale marble floors, whitewashed woodwork, large shuttered windows and wide balconies facing the incredible view of the sea to the front and the forested hills to the back. It seemed serene, she thought, but with a subtle air of energy as well, fitting for a holistic resort where the guests came to rest and recharge. She was not surprised when Cristos told her the fit out had won design awards.
‘Why is the resort called Pevezzo Athina?’ she asked Cristos as he led her to their table.
‘Pevezzo in the local dialect means safe haven. Athina is after our family-run taverna on the island of Prasinos not far from here. It’s also the name of the restaurant my great-uncle, Alex’s grandfather, started in Sydney.’
‘So the name is a tradition,’ she said. Once she had realised the connection to his family, she had not gone anywhere near that Sydney restaurant.
He nodded. ‘Tradition is important to my family.’
When she had met him in Durham they had both been strangers away from home. His English had been near perfect, just slight differences in inflexion giving away that he was not a native speaker. They had been lovers and partners and husband and wife. The fact he was Greek and she was English hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t until they had visited Greece on their honeymoon that she had appreciated how Greek he was and how important his culture and traditions were to him.
‘A safe haven.’ She nodded slowly as she looked around her. ‘I can see that. And the way the wind is starting to lash around the windows I want to feel safe.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Do you think it will be okay for you to take me back to Nidri in your boat after lunch?’
Cristos had suggested she cancel the return trip she had booked with the boatman and let him take her back along with other guests in his bigger boat. Looking through the windows at how angry the sea had turned, she thought it had been a wise decision for her to agree.
He followed her gaze and frowned. ‘We checked all the weather forecasts for this day when we were planning the celebration, but they didn’t predict this. Hopefully it will blow over. Most of the guests need to leave after lunch. I’ll check the reports again.’
From the time she had met him until the time she had left him, Hayley had leaned on Cristos. It was something she was determined never to do again. But checking weather forecasts in Greek was something she was happy to leave to him.
She knew she was gawking as she looked around her. The place really was extraordinary and she wasn’t used to such high-end luxury. She earned a reasonable salary as a mechanical engineer, but a resort like this would be way out of her reach, the stuff of dream vacations. Cristos had coerced her into staying for lunch—she was determined to lap up the luxury and enjoy it.
True to her word, Dell had seated her at the round table where she was already waiting with Alex. Hayley returned Dell’s big smile. Dell was one of those people she had liked on sight. Under different circumstances she felt they would be friends.
‘Kalos eerthes,’ Dell said to her and Cristos. ‘Welcome.’ She introduced Hayley to the other guests at the table: cousins from Athens and two sets of parents, Dell’s and Alex’s, who had flown from Australia. The family connections were all too much for Hayley to take in, though she recognised some of the names from long-ago conversations with Cristos.
She was seated next to Cristos as was her due as his legally wed wife. It was surreal to be treated again as a couple, to be swept back into something that was once so everyday. Hayley and Cristos. They’d once been an entity. How much did his cousin and his wife know of their history? Hayley certainly didn’t intend to mention anything of their future. The divorce was hers and Cristos’s business alone.
However, she suspected Dell and Alex might have guessed not all was what it seemed between her and Cristos, the way they steered the conversation strictly to neutral territory. Alex explained the history of the island, how it had long ago been owned by Cristos’s and Alex’s family, more recently by a Greek magnate, then the Russian billionaire who had sold it back to Alex. He and Dell had developed the resort, building around an existing unfinished building.
Then there was chit-chat about the food. The meal was certainly conversation worthy. Mezze platters with a selection of Greek appetisers to start, followed by lamb and chicken cooked with lemon and Greek herbs, accompanied by seasonal vegetable dishes made with artichokes, beets and spinach.
‘Most of what we’re eating is grown on the island,’ Cristos explained. ‘Even the olive oil and the honey. The cheeses come from the milk from their herd of goats, and eggs from the chickens kept here.’
Hayley was surprised at his depth of knowledge about the resort and the island. Perhaps he had been working here for his cousin. As far as she knew he had stopped the lucrative modelling. She wondered what he had been doing since to earn a living. Her lawyer wanted to find out but Hayley had instructed him that there was no need to investigate Cristos’s finances. She didn’t want to make any financial claim on him. A complete severing of ties was all that was required.
‘It’s fantastic to be practically self-sufficient for food,’ she said. ‘I saw water tanks and solar panels too.’
‘The island is self-sufficient for power,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised you noticed. You were always interested in alternative energy sources.’
‘I’m working for a solar-panel development company in Sydney,’ she said, then immediately regretted letting slip the information. Her life in Sydney was hers; her independence had been hard won. She didn’t want to share the details of her new life with Cristos. When she went back she wanted to forget she had ever been married.
‘Lots of sunshine in Australia, I guess,’ was all he said. His eyes narrowed. She was grateful for the semi-public forum they found themselves in so he didn’t press for details. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care what she’d been doing with her life since she’d left him.
The placement of the chairs around the table was close—perhaps because they’d had to accommodate her as an extra guest. But it meant she was sitting very close to Cristos. Too close. Whatever she did—reach for condiments, lean aside to give access to the waiters—meant her shoulder brushed against his arm, his thigh nudged hers. She was as aware of the slightest contact as if there were a jolt of current connecting them. But it would appear too obvious to jump back from the contact.
She found the proximity disconcerting. Cristos seemed to take it in his stride. In front of a table of people he knew well, he played the role of husband with aplomb, always taking pains to include her in the conversation. Perhaps more so because he must be aware the other guests were dying to know the truth about the sudden reappearance of his English wife.
But this whole fake reunion thing was messing with her head. Particularly disconcerting had been her reaction to his kiss back at the chapel. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could she have reacted like that when she was so determined to put him in her past?
The physical attraction between them when they’d met had been instant and magnetic. In the first blissful months of their marriage they had not been able to get enough of each other. Even when things had started to sour as he’d gone from business student to the hot man of the moment, any argument had ended up in bed. But physical attraction was not enough. Great sex was not enough.
She’d been so naïve when she’d met him. Maybe she’d been not just old-fashioned but misguided to insist on staying a virgin until marriage. Then she might not have rushed into marriage. That overwhelming hunger for him had blinded her to other issues that had in the end unravelled. Like trust. And honesty.
Right now she had to be honest with herself—she needed to fight that physical attraction so she could free herself from him and move on. Sitting so close to him at the table for lunch, she was preternaturally aware of him—every nuance in his expression, every shift in his body. He had once been her world.
It wasn’t just his extraordinary good looks that were so compelling. It was also his effortless personal charisma. Switching between Greek and English, he had the entire table laughing at his story about a fishing expedition gone wrong. Yet when he turned to her, to translate a Greek phrase, his green eyes bright with laughter, it was as if she were the only person in the room who was of any importance to him. Once she had believed that to be true—before she’d had to share him with the rest of the world.
She forced a smile in response. He would know she was faking it but she hoped the others wouldn’t. This was Dell and Alex’s day and not to be marred by any antagonism between her and Cristos.
After the main course had been served, the guests on either side of both her and Cristos excused themselves from the table; those opposite were engrossed in conversation. Cristos picked up her left hand. ‘You still wear your wedding and engagement rings,’ he said in a low voice meant only for her.
‘Just to transport them safely back to you,’ she said. ‘They’re safer on my finger than in my handbag. I’ll give them back to you when we say goodbye.’
His face tightened, all traces of his earlier good humour extinguished. He released her hand. ‘There is no need for that. The rings are yours.’
‘What use are they to me?’ she said. ‘I’ll never wear them again. And I don’t want to be reminded of our marriage. I want to put all that behind me.’ She had been in the nebulous state of being separated for too long. Not a wife, yet not single either.
He swore in Greek under his breath. Hurt? Pain? Anger? It certainly didn’t sound like relief. She had agreed with Cristos not to disrupt the wedding renewal celebration. Now that she’d got to know Dell and Alex a little better she was glad she had stayed. But at what cost to her? And perhaps also to Cristos? She should never have come here.
‘Did you wear your rings in Australia?’ he asked abruptly.
She glanced down at the simple sapphire and diamond cluster set in white gold, the matching plain band. The stones in the engagement ring were tiny. When they’d got engaged Cristos couldn’t afford anything more than a ring from a chain of high-street jewellers. But she’d thought it was beautiful and Cristos had declared the stone was nowhere nearly as beautiful as the colour of her eyes. Later, when the money from his new career had started to flow, he’d wanted to buy her a more expensive ring but she’d refused. She’d cherished that ring. It had symbolised everything good about their love. If he wouldn’t take it back she would give it away.
‘No. I didn’t wear my rings in Sydney. And I didn’t go by my married name either. I used my maiden name, Hayley Clements. It was easier than explaining a Greek surname when I so obviously didn’t look Greek.’
Cristos slammed his right hand, where he wore his simple gold wedding band in the Greek tradition, on the table. ‘I have never taken mine off,’ he said.
Hayley swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. ‘You took it off many times for your modelling shoots.’
‘I was playing a role when I was working. Most often that role was not of a married man. I could not be seen to be wearing a wedding ring.’
‘I understood that. Of course I did. But then you started to leave it off all the time.’
‘You know why,’ he said, tight-lipped. He shifted in his seat. This wedding-ring thing had become an issue in their short marriage. One that had festered with her in their time apart.
‘Because it was seen as a disadvantage to your career to be married. A wife was a hindrance. “It would be better for your fans—both female and male—if you were seen to be single.” Don’t you remember your agent saying that?’ She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She’d been determined not to speak of their mutual past. No recriminations. No blame. Just a clean cut.
He frowned. ‘Of course I remember. We discussed it at the time—over and over. Then we agreed to take my agent’s advice. We needed the money too much to argue with him.’
She looked down at the table. Smoothed a barely visible crease in the white tablecloth. When she’d got engaged to Cristos her parents had cut off her allowance, stopped the rent on her accommodation. They’d both been students. To get extra money, he’d tutored kids studying Greek, she’d taught dancing. Neither pursuit had been lucrative. They’d struggled.
‘The idea was that we would still be together but not acknowledged as husband and wife,’ she said. That still stung—though it had made sense at the time and she’d gone into it with eyes well and truly open. ‘A girlfriend was acceptable. She was dispensable. That gave your fans hope that one day in their fantasies they might win you. The presence of a real-life wife ruined the fantasy.’
‘That’s how it was supposed to work,’ he said. ‘We both agreed I would take my wedding band off when I was in public. Then put it back on in private when I came home to you.’
Hayley couldn’t keep the sadness from her voice as she looked back up at him. ‘Until there were more and more times when you didn’t come home. When you were on shoots all over Europe. Then exotic, far-flung places like Morocco and Africa.’
‘Those jobs were the most lucrative,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘And the conditions weren’t as glamorous as they looked. You didn’t complain about the income they generated. I only did it for the money.’
Perhaps. But she would see the results of those shoots plastered all over billboards and in glossy magazines. More often than not they would feature Cristos, his body toned and buffed to perfection, wearing nothing more than swim-briefs or even underpants, with a gorgeous female model with next to nothing on draped all over him. She doubted even the most secure of wives wouldn’t help but feel threatened. And a wife who had to keep her presence hidden, who didn’t live up to the glamorous standards set by his new world, had found it difficult to deal with.
‘You know I asked could you come with me,’ he said. ‘Repeatedly. It just wasn’t done.’
The conversation was heading into territory Hayley had no wish to revisit. She picked up the little marble dish containing organic salt crystals from her place setting then put it down again. ‘I know you tried to include me. And I appreciated it.’
On one stomach-churning occasion she had overheard his agent’s reply when Cristos had asked could his beautiful wife perhaps join his agency as a model too. The agent had replied very quickly that it wasn’t a good idea. ‘She’s pretty enough. But she’s too short and too wide in the hips.’
His words had been so brutally dismissive. Even the word pretty had sounded like an insult. Was it then that she’d begun to believe that her husband’s new world would not have room for her?
* * *
Cristos realised there were several ways Hayley looked different from when they’d been husband and wife. The short hair for one. But it was in her eyes he saw a shadow of sadness that wrenched at him.
‘You’re thinking about that comment my agent made, aren’t you?’
Back then he had been furious at the insult to his wife and had wanted to walk out. He had cursed. He had fisted his hands by his sides to stop himself from punching the agent out.
But Hayley had swallowed the insult, had placated him and talked him into staying—for the sake of the money modelling had brought them. ‘It’s such an opportunity for us. How many people our age get that chance?’ she’d said. Her strategy had been to put everything they saved into the bank to give them a better start than many young couples starting off life together. He’d preferred a riskier, higher-yielding investment option—but he hadn’t told her that. Not then. Not ever.
Now she waved his comment away with a flick of her wrist. ‘I can laugh at that awful guy now,’ she said. Cristos doubted that was true. ‘I got used to people like him treating others like commodities, where the length of a woman’s legs or the shape of a man’s nose made them marketable or not.’
‘Yeah. It could be brutal,’ he said. In Cristos’s eyes, Hayley had been the most beautiful woman in the world. His agent had seen her differently. If a woman wasn’t fit for purpose then she had no use. Or a man. That was an inescapable reality of the business. And one he’d ultimately walked away from. He’d only endured it for her sake. When they’d discovered she was pregnant he had worked even longer hours for financial security for his wife and child.
It wasn’t a business Cristos had signed up for intentionally. Six months after they’d married, when he had finished his master’s degree in business and Hayley still had a term to go to finish her degree in engineering, they’d taken the train down to London for a mini-break. Cristos’s patience for shopping was limited. While Hayley had looked through every dress on the rack in a boutique in Covent Garden, Cristos had leaned against a wall outside and waited for her. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black jacket, he’d been happy to watch the world go by. London and the people from all around the world who flocked to it had fascinated him.
When the very fashionably dressed middle-aged man had approached him and asked him had he ever considered being a model, he’d brushed him off. Less politely the second time. Cristos had never lacked female attention, and often male attention too. He hadn’t wanted to insult the guy but he’d made it clear in no uncertain terms that whatever pick-up line the older man chose to use it would not work on him. He was a happily married man.
Cristos had taken the man’s card just to get him off his back. It had indeed been from a talent agency but anyone could print off a business card and make it say whatever they wanted. He’d put it in his pocket and forgotten about it.
Later at lunch in an Italian restaurant off Leicester Square he’d remembered and pulled the card out of his pocket to show Hayley. Her eyes had widened. ‘If that guy was genuine, this is one of the biggest model agencies in the world. I think you should follow it up.’
‘Me? A model?’ he’d scoffed. He’d thought himself way too macho to even consider it. In his world, modelling wasn’t a serious man’s profession. ‘No way. Never.’
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