Christos's Promise

Christos's Promise
Jane Porter

The first time Christos Pateras laid eyes on Alysia, he promised he would make her his. Ten years later, Christos seized the chance to realize his vow: Alysia's father was offering his daughter's hand in marriage, in exchange for Christos's financial support.But on their wedding night, Christos discovered that though Alysia might be his bride by arrangement, she was not his willing wife.

“This is a marriage of convenience, yes?”

“Marriages of convenience don’t produce children. I need children.” Before she could speak he continued. “I’ll do my best to ensure you’re satisfied. I want you to be happy. It’s important we’re both fulfilled. Sex is a natural part of life. It should be natural between us.”

Blood surged to her face, heating her cheeks, creating a frisson of warmth through her limbs. “We hardly know each other, Mr. Pateras.”

“Which is why I won’t force myself on you. I’m content to wait until some of the newness wears off and we’ve grown more…comfortable with each other before becoming intimate.”

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Christos’s Promise

Jane Porter

For my husband, Joe. You are my miracle.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU’D rather remain locked here in the convent than marry me?”

Disbelief echoed in Christos Pateras’s voice. How could this girl—woman, actually, although she didn’t look a bit like the twenty-five her father claimed she was—prefer living in the spartan convent over marrying him?

He was no barbarian. Compared to the Greek men she’d been raised with, he was downright civilized.

“You had my answer earlier,” Alysia Lemos retorted coolly. “You needn’t have wasted your time coming here.”

He turned his back on the anxious nun hovering in the background, intentionally making it harder for her to hear. The abbess might have insisted on providing Alysia with a chaperone, but that didn’t mean the sister needed to be privy to the conversation.

“You told your father no,” Christos answered, his tone mild, deceptively so. “You didn’t tell me no.” He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t need to. His size and authority generally were persuasive enough.

But Alysia Lemos’s fine dark eyebrows only arched higher. “Some women might find such persistence flattering. I don’t.”

“So, your answer is…?”

Alysia’s incredulous laughter contrasted sharply with the dark blaze in her eyes. “I know you’re an American, but surely you can’t be this much of an idiot!”

Her cutting dismissal might have crushed a man of lesser ego, but he wasn’t just any man, and Miss Lemos wasn’t just any woman. He needed her. He wasn’t going to leave Oinoussai without her. “You dislike Americans?”

“Not all.”

“Good. That should help ease the transition when we move to New York.”

Her eyes met his, the dark irises all the more arresting against her sudden pallor. “I’m not moving. And I’d never agree to an arranged marriage.”

He dismissed this along with her other protestations. “In case you’re worried, I consider myself Greek. My parents were born here, on Oinoussai. They still call this home.”