Stranded With Her Greek Tycoon

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.