The Markonos Bride

She did not want to be standing here with Andreas. She did not want to look at him at all! She had been so very careful over the years to make sure that it didn’t happen, now she felt awkward and vulnerable and…

Oh, where was Jamie? Where was Kostas? Tugging in a tense breath, she took a quick look around.

‘Your lover is having to queue,’ Andreas said harshly.

Swinging her gaze back to him, she caught the full icy blast of his anger. Her own anger snapped to the fore. ‘He’s not my lover,’ she denied, ‘and if you just let me—’

‘Whoever he is, you had no right to bring him here.’

So loftily stated—a Markonos declaration in every which way she wanted to take it because they always did believe they were the ruling gods here.

‘Your family does not own this island, Andreas,’ Louisa hit back furiously. ‘I can visit here with whomsoever I please! And if you just let me finish what I keep trying to tell you then you would know by now how stupid you are going to feel when I—’

‘Your navel is showing.’

As a brain-stopper it worked like a dream. Beginning to feel very confused and a little disoriented, much as though she’d stepped off the ferry straight into a nightmare, Louisa glanced down.

The sizzling spit of his anger held Andreas imprisoned as he followed her gaze to the narrow band of creamy, smooth flesh left bare by the low-cut style of her trousers. When his mouth began to moisten he tightened his lips back against his teeth, further infuriated that his memory bank seemed perfectly happy to feed him the sensation of tasting the perfect oval laid bare for anyone to see!

She hitched up the low-cut trousers.

He could not stop himself from making a taut, restless shift of his stance. Mad feelings were running riot inside him—the residue of shock from seeing her walk off the ferry, a gut-stirring awareness of how breathtakingly beautiful she still was. How had he managed to let himself forget that? How the hell had he gone five long years without his head reminding him of what it was about her that had driven him crazy over her in the first place?

He did not have the answer but for those first few shock-rolling seconds as he’d followed her progress off the ferry he’d sat behind the wheel of his car and been tossed right back into an eight-year-old pot of hot, bubbling lust! Until he’d noticed the man walking behind her, seen the ease with which she’d disappeared into his arms before the guy had shot off across the street.

His wife—his wife, cavorting in public with another man right here on his island, where everyone knew who she was and what had happened between them.

His gut ripped him in two and he swung his back to her at the same time that she swung away from him. Tension sang between them, anger, a bright, burning antagonism that made even less sense than everything else he was feeling right now.

‘Much you know about backwaters,’ a new voice intruded on the grinding atmosphere. ‘They don’t do top-ups in the bars over there, so I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow to find a bank or a hole-in-the-wall and…’

Jamie’s dry tone slid into silence when he saw Andreas. Louisa watched helplessly as her brother’s face closed up like a drum. After the words they’d exchanged on the ferry she had no idea how he was going to react once the shock had worn off at having his main target standing right here.

‘S-say hello to Andreas, Jamie,’ she prompted warily.

What he did was stiffen up like a soldier.

‘Jamie…?’ Andreas swung round. Surprise hit his lean features then he pushed out a laugh. ‘Mou theos, so it is!’

Andreas stepped forward to offer her brother a friendly hand in greeting. Louisa caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she waited for Jamie to respond. He didn’t take the hand but shifted his gaze from her face to Andreas. A different kind of tension suddenly pulsed in the warm evening air. She saw the slight stiffening in Andreas’s long spine as he stood there with his hand still determinedly outstretched and she knew he’d caught on to Jamie’s frame of mind. Fresh silence sang like an out-of-tune melody and Louisa felt her heart begin to pound. The last thing she needed right now was for her brother to turn macho and try to carry out his threat.

‘Jamie,’ she breathed helplessly.

With a reluctance she felt creep all over her skin like a shiver, Jamie finally found some stiff manners and took the offered hand. For the next few minutes Andreas joined the younger man in conversation, forcing answers to the questions he put to him with a smooth aplomb that showed up the differences in maturity between them.

When Jamie eventually excused himself to go and stash his wallet in his backpack, Andreas turned to her. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said gruffly.

‘Not really.’ She sent him a brief tense smile. ‘He has changed an awful lot since you saw him last.’

The fact that she was letting him off for being so downright arrogant and loathsome to her didn’t seem to impress him much because he flattened his mouth into that thin, flat line again.

Then he changed the subject. ‘Presumably you are staying with my parents at the villa,’ he said briskly, only to add grimly, ‘It is a shame they did not see fit to warn me you were coming then maybe this—’

‘We’re not—’

‘Not what?’ He frowned down at her.

‘We’re not staying at the villa,’ she provided, saw a complete lack of comprehension stamp itself onto his lean, hard features and struggled to hold back a sigh.

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she slid her eyes away from him and tried to decide what the heck she was supposed to say next. She was in no doubt that Andreas had been as surprised to see her standing here as she had been to see him, which had to mean that his mother had not been possessed with a sudden urge to confess her complicity in keeping her trips here a secret from her son. And if Isabella was maintaining her silence then Louisa had no wish to drop her mother-in-law in it by blurting out any stupid hints.

It was then that she saw Kostas standing by the silver Mercedes now parked a few car spaces down from where they stood. Her heart kicked out of rhythm. The old family retainer’s expression was guarded to say the least. Kostas wasn’t sure what to do next. Well, join the club, she thought drily.

‘We thought you were in Thailand,’ her cool-toned brother announced.

‘Thailand,’ Andreas repeated, his eyes narrowing on Jamie. ‘An—interesting mistake to make,’ he murmured ever so softly.

Louisa closed her eyes on a silent curse because that silken tone told her things she did not want to hear. One thing she could never call Andreas was slow on the uptake once all the clues started falling into place—Thailand had just become a very big clue.

When she opened her eyes again Andreas was looking directly at her and his eyes had narrowed even more. A tight flutter took up residence in her chest and she swerved her attention to Jamie.

‘Kostas has arrived,’ she murmured, waving a horribly shaky hand towards the old man standing by the silver Mercedes. ‘W-will you stash our things in the car?’

It was like balancing on a knife-edge, she thought. Flashing glimpses of steely expressions kept lancing her way. Jamie was reluctant to move and leave her alone with Andreas. Andreas had swung round to look at the old family retainer, now he was looking back at her and his expression had turned cold. Tension zipped around all three of them and on a hot Greek summer evening she suddenly felt so chilled her flesh grew goose-pimples.

Then her brother bent and with a jerk he picked the bags up. There was no missing his mood, no misunderstanding the look he flicked at Andreas before he strode away. She and Andreas both watched in thrumming silence until Jamie reached Kostas.

Then, ‘Would you like to explain to me what is going on?’ Andreas drawled.

‘Not really.’ With a rueful honesty she knew didn’t help the situation one tiny bit, Louisa ended up adding another sigh then straightened her shoulders and made herself look up at him. ‘I’m here to visit Nikos.’

Hearing their son’s name spoken between them for the first time in five years locked the muscles in his dark golden features so tightly a thick lump formed in her throat so she couldn’t breathe.

They both broke eye contact at the same time.

‘I had already gathered that,’ he returned without any noticeable inflexion in his voice. ‘While I was supposed to be safely out of the way in—Thailand, I think your brother said?’

‘You know he did,’ she responded edgily.

‘Which, to hazard a rough guess, brings my parents into this.’

Irritated now, ‘You don’t have to be sarcastic about it,’ she snapped back at him.

‘I have been set up. I will be as sarcastic as I want to be.’

He’d been set up? ‘Why aren’t you in Thailand?’ Louisa demanded.

‘Because I was summoned here obviously,’ he replied. ‘How often have you come here without my knowledge?’