The Greek’s Chosen Wife

Lynne Graham The Greek’s Chosen Wife

A book in the Mediterranean Marriage series, 2006

PROLOGUE

NIKOLOS ANGELIS STUDIED his father in rampant disbelief. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t be serious. We own one of the biggest companies in Greece!’

Symeon, a handsome man with silvering dark hair, was not looking his ebullient best. His complexion was grey and heavy lines of exhaustion marked his features. ‘I took a gamble and it didn’t pay off. In fact, it was a disaster. The company is overstretched and the bank is getting very nervous. They made me pledge everything we possess but they’re still not happy. If they pull the plug now, we’ll lose the lot!’

Nikolos said nothing. Everything? Even the family home? He was so angry that he did not trust himself to speak. His grandfather, Orestes, had taught him that a man should put the honour and security of his family first. While the old man had lived the family fortune had been in safe, protective hands. But Symeon Angelis didn’t operate that way. Even though he was in his fifties, he was still desperate to prove that he could wheel and deal as successfully as his legendary father and he had lost millions pursuing high-risk deals.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Symeon muttered heavily, ‘you were right about the Arnott development being too good to be true.’

Nikolos swung round, stung beyond bearing by that admission. ‘You bought in even after the Kutras brothers warned you to stay clear?’

Symeon Angelis winced and gave his eldest son a rueful look. ‘I thought they were trying to corner all the action for themselves.’

Nikolos ground his even white teeth together in silence. He did not allow himself to look in his parent’s direction. He was ashamed of the fierce contempt he was feeling. Symeon was a good man, a good father, a good husband. He was universally well-liked and respected but his intellect was not powerful and he was a lousy entrepreneur. Nikolos, on the other hand, had devoted his spare time as a teenager to some highly profitable trading in stocks and shares that had made him a millionaire before he even left school. To stand by powerless and watch his less clever and shrewd father stumble and make stupid mistakes was, for Nikolos, a punishment of no mean order.

‘I’ll be frank with you. This may be our darkest hour but we have been offered an escape clause,’ the older man confided in a taut undertone. ‘It came from a surprising source. In fact, I was astonished…However, I said it couldn’t be done. It wouldn’t be right-’

Mastering his impatience, Nikolos rested grim eyes on Symeon. ‘What wouldn’t be right?’

His father seemed reluctant to meet his son’s enquiring scrutiny. ‘I can’t ask you to make such a sacrifice at your age. You’re only twenty-two-’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Symeon Angelis expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘Theo Demakis approached me and offered to bail us out.’

Nikolos vented a startled laugh of incredulity. ‘Theo Demakis? Are you winding me up? Since when did we move in such exalted circles?’

‘It seems that we could move in those circles if we wanted to,’ Symeon murmured with the air of a man choosing his words with extreme care.

His son’s lean, bronzed face stayed unimpressed. ‘Demakis is as cold as a corpse. If you get into bed with him you’ll wake up with a knife stuck between your ribs.’

‘In other circumstances, that might have been my attitude as well. But Theo is offering a family connection rather than just a business transaction.’

At those words, Nikolos fell very still. ‘You can’t mean what I think you mean…’

The older man flushed a mottled pink. ‘I can see where Demakis is coming from-’

‘I think your view must be fogged-’

Refusing to be discouraged, Symeon pressed on. ‘Theo’s only son must be dead ten years now, he’s on his third wife and he still doesn’t have another child. He only has his English granddaughter. He wants Prudence to marry a Greek boy from a good background and that’s not surprising when she’s half-English and illegitimate into the bargain. Demakis is an old-fashioned man and he’s offering an old-fashioned deal.’

An appalled inability to credit what he was hearing kept Nikolos silent.

‘If you married her and there was a child, the world would be your oyster,’ Symeon breathed tightly. ‘Yes, it would save us, too, but you’re ambitious and she’d be the equivalent of a golden goose. To talk of such an arrangement in terms of cold, hard cash is vulgar but it is only right that I should draw your attention to the very obvious benefits.’

Nikolos closed his eyes, lashes long and black as silk fans momentarily hitting his high cheekbones. He was disgusted by his father’s willingness to consider such an arrangement. Prudence, whom his friends had christened Pudding for her love of baklava pastries, was to be his wife? He was shocked and outraged by the suggestion. He hardly knew her, although he had on several occasions intervened when he saw her being ignored and insulted at social events. Her lack of Greek and her trusting nature had made her a soft target, for no matter what was said to her she would assume it was pleasant and she would smile.

Her inability to defend herself had infuriated Nikolos. He hated bullies and would have done as much for any helpless creature too stupid to look after itself in a hostile world. But had those trivial displays of good manners, those minor acts of compassion on his part, led to the gruesome offer of Prudence’s hand in marriage? That daunting suspicion made his lean, strong face clench hard. When he walked into a room, she lit up like a Christmas tree. Had Prudence decided to tell her fabulously wealthy grandfather just how much she fancied Nikolos Angelis?

‘Papa…’ Nikolos’s sister Kosma’s distraught voice cut through the simmering silence from the French window that opened out onto the terrace. ‘I know I shouldn’t have been listening and I’ll die if we become poor but you can’t ask Nik to marry Theo Demakis’s granddaughter. She’s a fat cow and plain as a pig!’

‘How dare you hide behind the door and eavesdrop on a private conversation?’ Embarrassment made Symeon Angelis leap up in a wrathful response that his much-indulged daughter had rarely witnessed. ‘Leave us-’

‘But it’s true,’ the pretty teenager wailed, standing her ground and defying his authority. ‘Nikolos would have to put a paper bag over her head to eat at the same table, never mind anything more personal. She’s ugly and he’s so handsome-’

‘Get out,’ Nikolos told his kid sister with ferocious, cutting cool.

The older man watched his daughter retreat tearfully at her big brother’s bidding and released a regretful sigh. ‘Of course, I’ve never seen the girl. If she’s that bad, Kosma would have a point. I couldn’t ask you to marry her.’

Nikolos bit back a sardonic laugh. That this was the only objection his parent could see to such a revoltingly mercenary proposition spoke volumes for his father’s state of mind. Symeon Angelis was fighting despair and ready to clutch at any straw that might drag him back from the abyss of financial ruin. Nikolos asked himself how he could stand back and allow that to happen to his parents and his four siblings.

Yet at twenty-two years old, he felt that his own life had barely begun. He was no innocent though, he conceded grudgingly. Even though he was still at university, he had acquired a reputation as a womaniser. It was true that he pursued pleasure with single-minded zeal. He worked hard and he played hard and he rarely slept alone. He didn’t do long-term and he didn’t do faithful. He had yet to meet a girl who would not accept those conditions. But he still could not begin to contemplate the prospect of becoming a husband or, worse still, a father. Indeed, the very concept of being forced into such a heavy commitment for his family’s benefit filled him with