The Price Of A Bride

It was a painting of the most beautiful villa, set on the side of a hill and surrounded by trees. The walls were white, the roof terra-cotta and the garden a series of flowerstrewn terraces sweeping down to a tiny bay where a primitively constructed old wooden jetty protruded into deeper, darker waters and a simple fishing boat stood tied alongside it.

What really caught her interest was the tiny horseshoeshaped clearing in a cluster of trees to the left of the house. It seemed to be a graveyard. She could just make out the shapes of simple crosses amongst a blaze of colourful flowers.

A strange detail to put in such a pretty picture, she mused frowningly. Vision it was simply titled. Whose vision? she wondered. That of the man she was here to see or the artist who had painted it?

‘Miss Frazier?’

The slightly accented cool male voice brought her swinging round to discover in surprise that not only had the lift come to a stop without her realising it, but the doors had opened and she was now being spoken to by a tall, dark, olive-skinned stranger. A stranger who was eyeing her so coldly that she had to assume he knew exactly why she was here today.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, with a tilt of her chin that defied his right to judge her.

Something flashed in his eyes—surprise at her clear challenge? Or maybe it was more basic than that, she suggested to herself as she watched his dark eyes dip in a very male assessment of her whole body, as if he had some kind of right to check her out like a prime piece of saleable merchandise!

Which is exactly what you are, Mia reminded herself with her usual brutal honesty.

‘And you are?’ she countered in her crispest, coldest upper-class English, bringing those roving eyes flicking back up to clash with the clear green challenge reflected in her own.

His ears darkened. It was such a boyish response to being caught, blatantly staring, that she almost found it in her to laugh. Only... It suddenly hit her that there was something very familiar about this young man’s features.

‘I am Leonadis Doumas,’ he informed her. ‘My brother is this way, if you would follow me...’

Ah, the brother. She smiled a rueful smile. No wonder he looked familiar. The same eyes, the same physique—though without the same dynamic impact as his brother. Perhaps he was more handsome in a purely aesthetic way but, by the way his colour remained heightened as she followed him towards a pair of closed doors, she judged he lacked his brother’s cool sophistication.

Leonadis Doumas paused, then knocked lightly on one of the closed doors, before pushing it open, and Mia used that moment to take a deep breath to prepare herself for what was to come next.

It didn’t help much, and a fresh attack of nerves almost had her turning to run in the opposite direction before this thing was taken right out of her hands.

But, as she had told Alexander Doumas only yesterday, her father did not deal in uncertainties. He knew she would go ahead with this, just as he had known that Alexander Doumas would go ahead with it, no matter how much it made him despise himself.

Leonadis Doumas was murmuring something in Greek. Mia heard the now-familiar deep tones of his brother in reply before the younger man stepped aside to let her pass him.

She did so reluctantly, half expecting to find herself walking into a room full of grey-suited lawyers. Instead, she found herself facing the only other person present in the room. Alexander was sitting at his desk, with the light from the window catching the raven blackness of his neatly styled hair.

Behind her the door closed. She glanced back to find that Leonadis had gone. Mia’s stomach muscles clenched into a tight knot of tension as she turned back to face the man with whom—soon—she was going to have to lie and share the deepest intimacy.

‘Very businesslike,’ he drawled. ‘I believe it’s called power dressing. But I feel I should warn you that it’s lost on me.’

Startled by the unexpected choice of his first attack, Mia glanced down at her severely tailored suit, with its modestlength skirt and prim white blouse, and only then realised that he had completely misinterpreted why she was dressed like this.

Not that it mattered, she decided as her chin came back up and she levelled her cool green eyes on him. She had dressed like this because she was going on to Suzanna’s very strict boarding school directly from here, where straitlaced conservatism was insisted upon from family and pupils alike.

‘When you marry me,’ he went on, ‘I will expect something more ... womanly. I find females in masculine attire a real turn-off.’

‘If I marry you,’ Mia corrected, and made herself walk forward until only the width of his desk was separating them. ‘Your brother looks like you,’ she observed as a mere aside.

For some reason, the remark seemed to annoy him. ‘Wondering if your father tapped the wrong brother?’ he asked. ‘Leon is nine years younger than me, which places him just about in your own age group, I suppose. But he is also very much off-limits, as far as you are concerned,’ he added with a snap that made his words into a threat

‘I have no inclination to so much as touch him,’ she countered, smiling slightly because she knew then that big brother must have noticed and correctly interpreted the reason his younger brother was looking so warm about the ears. ‘Though, you never know,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘it may be worth my while to look into whether he would be a better bet than you before I commit myself.’

Again there was the hint of anger. ‘Leon is already very much married to a wonderful creature he adores,’ he said abruptly. ‘Which makes him of absolutely no use to you.’

‘Ah, married.’ She sighed. ‘Shame. Then it looks as if you will have to do.’

With that little ego-deflater, she lowered herself into a chair and waited for his next move.

To her surprise, his mouth twitched, appreciation for her riposte suddenly glinting in his eyes. He was no one’s fool. He knew without vanity that he was a better, more attractive, more sensually appealing man than his younger, less dynamic brother.

‘A contract my lawyers have drawn up this morning,’ he announced, reaching out with a long fingered hand for a document of several pages which he slid across the desk towards her. ‘I suggest you read that thoroughly before you sign it.’

‘I have every intention of doing so,’ she said, picking up the contract. She proceeded to ignore him while she immersed herself in its detail.

It was a comprehensive document, which set out point by point the guidelines by which this so-called marriage of theirs would proceed. In a way, Mia supposed the first part read more like a prenuptial agreement than a business contract, with its declarations on how small an allowance he would be giving her on a monthly basis and what little she could expect from him if the marriage came to an end—which was a pittance, though she wasn’t surprised by that.

The man believed she would be a wealthy woman in her own right once all this was over. It suited her to continue to let him go on thinking that way so she didn’t care that he was offering her nothing.

It was only on the third page that things began to get nasty. She would live where he wanted her to live, it stipulated. She would sleep where he wanted her to sleep. If she went out at all she would never do so without one of his designated people as a companion.

She would be available at all times for sex on his demand...

Mia felt his eyes on her, following, she was sure, line by line as she read. Her cheeks wanted to redden, but she refused to allow them to, her lips drawing in on themselves because it seemed so distasteful to add such a clause when, after all, they were only marrying because of the sex, which was necessary to make babies.

She would conduct herself at all times in a way which made her actions as his wife above reproach, she grimly read on. She would not remark on his own personal life outside their marriage, and she accepted totally that he intended to maintain a mistress...

The fact that several slick lawyers were privy to all of this, as well as the person who had typed it, made her want to cringe in horror.

In anticipation of her falling pregnant, she would not step off Greek soil without his permission during her pregnancy. The child must be born in Greece and registered as Greek. In the event of the marriage irretrievably breaking down, yes, she would get full custody of their child, she was relieved to read.

Then came his own proviso to that concession, and it made her heart sink. It had to be his decision that the marriage must end. If Mia walked out on the marriage of her own volition then she did so knowing she would be forfeiting full custody...

‘I can’t agree to that,’ she protested.

‘You are not being given a choice,’ he replied, leaning back in his chair yet reading with her word for word of the contract. ‘I did warn you that I would not relinquish control of my own son and heir. I have the right to safeguard myself against that contingency, just as you have the right to safeguard yourself against my walking out on you. So it is covered both ways by that particular clause.

‘If I decide I cannot bear having you as my wife any longer, then I get rid of you, knowing I will be relinquishing all rights to our child. If you decide the same thing then you, too, will relinquish all rights over him. I think that is fair, don’t you?’

Did she? She had a horrible feeling she was being scuppered here, though the logic of his argument gave her no clue as to where. And, in the end, did it matter? she then asked herself. She had no intention of marrying any man ever again after this. If Alexander Doumas wanted to tie himself to this wife for life, let him.

‘Is there anything else you want to add to this?’ he asked, once she’d read the contract to the end without further comment.

Mia shook her head. Whatever she felt she needed to safeguard for herself would be done privately with her own lawyer in the form of a last will and testament.

Getting to her feet, she picked up her handbag. ‘I’ll let my father look at this then get back to you,’ she informed him coolly.

‘No.’

In the act of turning towards the door Mia paused, her neat head twisting to let her eyes clash with his for the first time since this interview had begun. Her heart stopped beating for a moment and her porcelain-like skin chilled at the uncompromising grimness she saw in those dark eyes.

‘This is between you and me,’ he insisted. ‘Whatever is agreed between your father and myself—or even your father and yourself—will be kept completely separate from this contract. But you decide now and sign now or—to use your own words—the deal is off.’