Christos's Promise

“Oh, happy people, they.”

He almost smiled. No wonder her father, Darius, was feeling desperate. She was not an eager bride-to-be. “I don’t know if they’ll be happy with you for a daughter-in-law, but they’ll adjust.”

Bands of color burned along the curve of her cheek. “I’m sure your mother dotes on you.”

“Endlessly. But then, most Greek mothers live for their sons.”

“While daughters are disposable.”

He gave no indication that he’d heard the hurt in her voice, the small wobble in her breath as she spat the bitter words. “Not mine. My daughters will be cherished.”

At thirty-seven, he needed a wife, and Darius Lemos needed a husband for his wayward daughter. This was no love match, but a match made in a bank in Switzerland. “I’m an only child, the last of the Pateras in my branch of the family. I’ve promised my parents a grandchild before my thirty-ninth birthday, and I shall deliver.”

“No, you hope I’ll deliver!”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “I stand corrected.”

Alysia’s hands balled. She longed to smack his smirk right off his gorgeous, arrogant face. She’d never met a man more sure of himself than he. Except for her father, that is.

She swallowed convulsively, her stomach heaving, as she struggled to understand why her father had reached across the Atlantic for a husband for her. Her father despised the new rich. Her father must be feeling desperate. Well, so was she. He was practically auctioning her off to the highest bidder, his sole heir up for grabs.

Hot tears rushed to her eyes but she held them back. Her mother would never have let her father do this.

“There are worse bridegrooms, Miss Lemos.”

She felt the irony but couldn’t even smile. “A husband is a husband, and I don’t want one.”

“Most women want to be married. It’s the desire of every Greek woman.”

“I’m not most women.”

He laughed almost unkindly. “So say you, but I’ve learned one woman is not so different from another. You all have agendas—”

“And you don’t?”

“Mine isn’t hidden. I want children. I need children.” He scrutinized her as though she were horseflesh. “You’re young. You’d be an excellent mother.”

She winced. “I don’t want to be a mother.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “We can marry today. Here. It’ll just be us. Your father is unavailable, I’m afraid.”

“What a shame.”

His mouth quirked faintly, revealing surprise, even intrigue. “You speak like a sailor.”

“The closest I’ve come to my father’s business.”

“You’re interested in business?”

“I’m interested in my competition.” The industry her father loved above all else. Nothing came between him and his ships. Nothing had ever been allowed to interfere with the great Lemos fortune. Not her mother. Certainly not herself.

“I think the business would bore you,” he said after a moment, jamming his hands into trouser pockets. “It’s talks. Contracts. Number crunching. Tedious stuff.”

“For my small brain?”

His eyes glimmered, her mocking tone had made him smile. “You shouldn’t listen to everything your father says,” he cheerfully drawled. “Only the good things about me.”

She could easily have slapped his cheeky face. She knew exactly why Christos Pateras was marrying her. He wanted her dowry. Her dowry and her father’s shipping interests. When Darius passed away, Christos would inherit Lemos’s empire. “You’re overly confident.”

“So say my critics.”

“You have many?”

“Legions.”

She offered him her profile, grinding her teeth together. This was a joke to him and he toyed with her like a cat with a mouse. She struggled to contain her temper, her smooth jaw tightening. “You’re mad if you think I’ll marry you.”

“Your father has already consented to the marriage. The dowry has changed hands—”

“Change it back!”

“Can’t do that. I need you too much.”

She turned her head, her brilliant gaze catching his. “Despite what you both think, I am neither mindless, nor spineless. Since you appear to have difficulty with your hearing, let me say it again. I will not marry you, Mr. Pateras. I will never marry you, Mr. Pateras. I’d rather grow old and gray in this convent than take your name, Mr. Pateras.”

Christos rocked back on his heels and fought his desire to smile. Her father said she was difficult but he hadn’t mentioned his daughter’s intelligence, or spirit. There was a difference between difficult and spirited. Difficult was unpleasant. Spirited was something a man quite enjoyed. Like a spirited horse, a spirited chase, a spirited game of tennis. But nothing was more appealing than a spirited woman. “Oh, I think I quite like you,” he murmured softly.

“The feeling isn’t mutual.”

His lips curved, and he watched as she threw her head back, dark eyes challenging him.

With the sunlight washing her face, he suddenly realized her eyes weren’t brown at all, but blue. A mysterious, dark blue. Like the sky at night. Like the Aegean Sea before a storm. Honey wheat hair and Aegean eyes. She looked remarkably like the pictures he’d seen of her half-English, half-Greek mother, a woman considered to be one of the great beauties of her time.

“Hopefully you’ll grow to tolerate me. It’d make conjugal life…bearable.”

A pulse beat wildly at the base of her throat. But her eyes splintered anger, passion, denial. She was going to fight him, tooth and nail. “I’d sooner let you put a bit in my mouth and saddle on my back.”

“Now that could be tempting.”

Her cheeks darkened to a dusky pink, her gorgeous coloring a result of the Greek-English heritage. Blue eyes, sun-streaked hair, a hint of gold in her complexion. He felt desire, and possession. She was his. She just didn’t know it yet.

Alysia fled to a distant corner of the walled garden, arms crossed over her chest, breasts rising and falling with her quick, shallow breathing.

He followed more slowly, not wanting to push her too hard. At least not yet. Furtively he touched the breast pocket of his coat, feeling the crisp edges of the morning’s newspaper. She wouldn’t like the press clipping. He was the first to admit it was a power play, and underhanded, but Christos wasn’t about to lose this deal.

He’d made a promise to his parents that he’d bring fortune to his beleaguered branch of the family, and every decision he’d made since then had been in the pursuit of that goal. Since he’d made that promise, the family fortunes had grown into a different league. Very different.

She must have felt him approach. “Have you no ethics?” Her low-pitched voice vibrated with emotion. “How can you marry a woman against her will?”