Redeemed By Her Innocence

‘Poor man, nothing. Rich man. He’s worth a fortune now,’ said her father.

‘He’s just lost his wife,’ her mother chided. ‘Money can’t take away that pain, no matter what you say. He must have really loved her. Just look at him.’

Jacquelyn sipped her tea. She knew what love was. Every fibre of her being pulsed with it for Tim, her childhood sweetheart. Love was going to school with him, listening to music. He was her best friend, boyfriend and soon-to-be husband.

Love was them agreeing to save themselves for their wedding night, no matter how tempting, because there was nothing more important than that. Their secret pact, their complicit agreement. Their bond of trust.

There was no other option. Because that was what good girls did. Although it was never shown in public, Nonna Ariana was sniffy about the girls who wore white when they should be wearing ivory.

‘If this is the most important day of their life, then they should act like it. It isn’t just a fancy dress, it’s real. They should know better, bringing shame on their families!’

So Jacquelyn was steadfast. She was determined. And Tim was too, because it was all going to be worth it. It was all leading to a rosy future. It was the rest of their lives. What did a few more months matter?

So no, Nikos Karellis had meant nothing to her then.

And unlike every other woman here, he meant nothing to her now. She wouldn’t waste a moment talking to someone whose interest in women was superficial.

It was Martin Lopez she needed to find, and fast. She couldn’t bear it if this whole night passed without a chance to give him her pitch.

‘It’s him. Here he is.’

She started, like a deer at the burst of a gun, but it was just the hotshot Australian that had entered.

‘Wow, isn’t he amazing?’

Despite herself, her head swivelled to the front of the stage to see.

Well, physically—there was no doubt about that. Was it the height of him, the breadth of his shoulders, or the gleaming white shirt and midnight-blue tux? Was it the short-cropped dark hair and dark stubble, the trademark tattoo that snaked from below his left ear and disappeared under the shirt collar?

Whatever, he was devilishly dark and handsome, and like every other woman in the room she found herself unable to stop staring. One by one, people crossed over to say hello, gushing and scraping before him—people that Jacquelyn knew to be supremely confident in business, acting star-struck and silly.

‘Are you coming over to meet him?’ said the woman next to her.

‘No, thank you. I don’t want to be caught in the crush of groupies,’ she said, a little unkindly.

‘Suit yourself,’ said her companion, and stood up.

Jacquelyn turned to watch her shimmy her way across the floor, still trying desperately to catch a glimpse of Martin, but the crowd around Nikos Karellis was thick now and totally obscured the table.

And then she saw him seated beside Nikos. He was older than she remembered. Streaks of silver in his dark hair, but still a handsome man, and, she hoped, still a gentleman.

Her stomach turned a somersault and her hands dampened. She tried to wipe them on the tablecloth discreetly as she stood up.

Please, please, please remember me, she thought, and began to make her way across the floor towards him.

* * *

Nikos’s patience had almost completely run dry. His smile was still fixed in place but he’d chatted and shaken hands with people all evening, in the bar and now here at the table. He hated the side effects of fame. The people who wanted to say hello were nice enough but they had no idea who he was—or where he’d come from. They were only seeing some airbrushed version of reality, as fake as the whole wedding industry itself.

He glanced down at Martin with a raised brow.

‘How much more of this?’ he said, leaning over.

Martin shrugged and smiled.

‘The awards start in five minutes. After that we’ll disappear off to my suite and talk properly.’

Nikos nodded and straightened up, trying to remember the name of the woman to his right who’d just introduced herself, but when he turned around, it wasn’t a plump old lady who was right in front of him, it was a beautiful young woman.

She was tall, toned and blonde, and with a practised sweep he took her all in—from the stunning cerulean-blue floor-length gown that held her feminine curves to perfection, and all the way up past the graceful curve of her shoulders, to the top of her elegant topknot.

She wasn’t overtly sexual, but something about the shape of her hips and the neat swell of her breasts made his body react violently. And he noted with some pleasure that he hadn’t felt such a reaction for a long time.

Suddenly the night was looking up, and even as he reached out his hand to shake hers, he made a mental calculation of how long he would be occupied with Martin before he could properly get to know her.

But she didn’t take his hand.

She didn’t even look in his direction. Instead she sailed right past him and stopped, as Martin looked up and got to his feet.

‘Jacquelyn. It is you! I saw you coming across the floor and I wondered if it was. I thought I might see you tonight.’

Jacquelyn? Nikos quickly noted her name and watched, wondering how this exchange was going to play out. By the warmth in the way Martin was leaning towards her, lingering as he kissed each proffered cheek, he was clearly fond of her. But he had to be at least twice her age...

And the way she was holding herself was interesting: she was transmitting anxiety, with her spine so rigid, shoulders tense; and that smile, beaming a bit too bright.

‘And this is my brother-in-law, Nikos Karellis. Nikos, Jacquelyn Jones—owner of Ariana Bridal. Her father Joseph and I were at school together.’

So, Martin really was old enough to be her father. That was helpful.

She turned her flawless face and keen blue eyes to Nikos. The smile she’d given Martin slipped slightly, he noted, and her spine tightened a notch more too. She blinked and with a long stretch of her arm she permitted her hand to be shaken.

Which he did and he read in that tense-fingered, quickly retracted handshake that he’d just been judged and dismissed. She didn’t like him.

Well, it did happen. Not often, but he wasn’t every woman’s cup of tea. Particularly the ones who thought they were a bit above him. Even with all his money, he never forgot where he’d come from. And nor, it seemed, did they.

He knew the type. They saw his tattoos, his warpaint as his mother called it. The sensual ones saw brutality and found it fascinating. The repressed ones didn’t get him. They saw brutality and found it disgusting.

The truth, of course, was that he had left brutal back in Sydney at the side of the road. Bikers were brutal; his dad was brutal. His entire childhood had been brutalised beyond what any of these lovely people could understand. They had no idea that his mother suffered brain injury as a result of a beating from his father. Or that he had run drugs for him as an after-school chore.

The fact was that he’d made it his life’s work to be free of every trace of violence and aggression. He’d severed ties with everyone except his mother, and poured millions into projects for delinquent kids.

So to be judged as ‘less than’ pressed his buttons, just a little.

He stood tall, squared his shoulders, one hand on his hip, in a gesture that called out her condescension.

‘Former brother-in-law. My wife passed away five years ago.’

She dropped her gaze completely, and when she swept her perfectly oval lids open again there was a tiny flash of recognition.