The Marakaios Marriage

Antonios had propelled her forward, one hand on her elbow, and she’d gone, her vision already starting to tunnel as her chest constricted and the panic took over.

She hadn’t felt panic like that since she’d been a little girl, her mother’s hand hard on her lower back, shoving her into a room full of academics.

Come on, Lindsay. Recite something for us.

Sometimes she’d managed to stumble through a poem her mother had made her memorize, and sometimes her brain had blanked and, with her mouth tightening in disappointment, her mother had dismissed her from the room.

After too many of those disappointments, she’d dismissed her from her life.

This isn’t what I expected.

And, standing there in the glare of Greek sunshine, Lindsay had felt it all come rushing back. The panic. The shortness of breath. The horrible, horrible feeling of every eye on her, every person finding her wanting. And she’d blacked out.

She’d come to consciousness inside the house, lying on a sofa, a cool cloth pressed to her head and a white-haired woman smiling kindly down at her.

‘It’s the sun, I’m sure,’ Daphne Marakaios had said as she’d pressed the cloth to Lindsay’s head. ‘It’s so strong here in the mountains.’

‘Yes,’ Lindsay had whispered. ‘The sun.’

Now, as she slid into the passenger seat of Antonios’s rugged SUV, having cleared customs and collected their luggage, she wondered if he even remembered how she’d fainted. He’d certainly been quick to accept it as her reaction to the sun, and she’d been too overwhelmed and shell-shocked to say any differently.

And she’d have to face his family again in just three hours. How on earth was she going to cope?

They drove out of Athens, inching through a mid-morning snarl of traffic, and then headed north on the National Highway towards Amfissa, the nearest town to Antonios’s estate in the mountains.

With each mile they drove, Lindsay’s panic increased. This time she knew what she was facing, and it would be so much worse. Now everyone would be suspicious, maybe even hostile. She could picture his sister Parthenope eyeing her with cool curiosity, her husband by her side and dark-haired, liquid-eyed little Timon clinging to her legs; Leonidas, Antonios’s younger brother, giving her one of his sardonic looks; Ava and Xanthe, his younger sisters, eyeing her with sceptical curiosity, as if they’d already decided she didn’t belong. And the questions...she would have to answer so many questions...

‘Antonios,’ she said, his name little more than a croak, and he glanced at her briefly before snapping his gaze back to the road.

‘What is it?’

She focused on her breathing, tried to keep it even. ‘Would it...would it be possible for me to come to the villa quietly? I mean, not have everyone waiting and...I’d rather not see anyone at first.’ In. Out. In. Out. With effort she kept her breathing measured and her heart rate started to slow. She could do this. She’d managed to control her anxiety for most of her life. She could do it now. She had to.

‘The point,’ Antonios returned, ‘is for you to see people and be seen. No one thinks anything is wrong between us, Lindsay.’

But they would have guessed. Of course they would have guessed. His siblings weren’t stupid, and neither was Daphne. Lindsay had been gone for six whole months and then Antonios had come all the way to New York to fetch her. Everyone would be wondering just what had gone wrong between them.

‘I understand,’ Lindsay said, her eyes closed as she pressed back against the seat and kept concentrating on those deep, even breaths. ‘But I’d rather not have everyone there when we arrive.’

‘What am I meant to do? Send them away?’

She opened her eyes as she tried to suppress a stab of irritation or even anger, wondering if he was deliberately being difficult. Or was he just obstinately obtuse, as usual? ‘No, of course not. I just don’t want them all lined up in front of the villa, waiting to welcome me.’ Or not welcome, as the case well might be.

Antonios was silent for a moment, his gaze narrowed on the road in front of them, the sun glinting off the tarmac. ‘You mean like last time.’

‘Yes.’

‘You fainted,’ Antonios recalled slowly. ‘When you got out of the car.’

So he had remembered. Just. ‘Yes.’

Antonios’s expression tightened and he turned back to the road. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, and they didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.

Two hours later they’d left the highway for the narrow, twisting lane that curved its way between the mountains of Giona and Parnassus. They came around a bend and Villa Marakaios lay before them, nestled in a valley between the mountains, its many whitewashed buildings gleaming brightly under the afternoon sun.

Antonios drove down the twisting road towards the villa, his eyes narrowed against the sun, his mouth a hard, grim line.

As they drove through the gates he turned to the left, surprising her, for the front of the villa, with its many gleaming steps and impressive portico, was before them. Instead, Antonios drove around the back of the complex to a small whitewashed house with an enclosed courtyard and latticed shutters painted a cheerful blue. It looked, Lindsay thought in weary bemusement, like the villa she’d once imagined in her naive daydreams. A honeymoon house.

‘We can stay here,’ Antonios said tersely, and he killed the engine. ‘It’s used as a guesthouse, but it’s empty now.’

‘What?’ Lindsay stared at him in surprise. Last time they’d stayed in the main villa with all the family and staff; only Leonidas had his own place. Since his father’s death, Antonios had been appointed the CEO of Marakaios Enterprises and essentially lord of the manor.

Now he shrugged and got out of the car. ‘It will make it easier for us to maintain the pretence if we are not so much in the public eye.’ He went around to the boot of the car for their cases, not looking at her as he added, ‘And perhaps it will be easier for you.’

Lindsay stared at him, his dark head bent as he hefted their suitcases and then started walking towards the villa. He was being thoughtful, she realized. And he’d given credence to what she’d told him, if just a little.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured and with a wary, uncertain hope burgeoning inside her she followed him into the villa.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d7fddfcf-f880-5117-893e-eb51b974875a)

ANTONIOS PUT THE suitcases in the villa’s one bedroom, tension knotting between his shoulders. Coming back to Villa Marakaios always gave him a sense of impending responsibility and pressure, the needs and concerns of the family and business descending on him like a shroud the moment he drove through the gates. But it was a shroud he wore willingly and a duty he accepted with pride, no matter what the cost.

He could hear Lindsay moving behind him, walking with the quiet grace and dignity she’d always possessed.

‘Why don’t you rest?’ he said as he turned around. Lindsay stood in the doorway, her pale hair floating around her face in a silvery-golden cloud, her eyes wide and clear, yet also troubled. ‘Everyone is coming for dinner tonight,’ he continued. ‘I need to see to some business. I’ll come back before we have to leave. But I suppose you don’t mind me working all hours now, do you?’

The less they saw each other, the better. Yet he still couldn’t keep a feeling of bitterness or maybe even hurt from needling him when she nodded, and wordlessly he walked past her and out of the villa.

He walked across the property to the offices housed separately from the family’s living quarters, in a rambling whitewashed building overlooking the Marakaios groves that stretched to the horizon, rows upon rows of stately olive trees with their gnarled branches, each neatly pruned and tended, now just coming into flower.

He paused for a moment on the threshold of the building, steeling himself for the demands that would assail him the moment he walked in the door. Ten years after his father had told him of the extent of Marakaios Enterprises’ debt, he’d finally brought the business to an even keel—but it had taken just about everything he had, both emotionally and physically.