My Big Fake Green-Card Wedding

Adam’s eyebrows rose. She could just imagine what he was thinking. “If this is a game, you have to remember all games have some rules.”

“Okay, but remember, we’re supposed to be in love.”

“In public perhaps,” she agreed reluctantly. “In private, no.” The no-touching rule was important to her. Not because of what Adam might do, but because she couldn’t trust herself not to go up in flames if he did touch her.

“That’s all?” he asked with an amused grin that made her toes tingle.

“No.” She ignored his crooked smile. He might think their proposed arrangement was amusing, but she was serious. “If we’re going to make this look real, you have to meet my father and mother.”

The smile on Adam’s face disappeared. “I suppose I could do that. Anything more? Better get it all off your chest now, I wouldn’t want any surprises.”

Chest! Melina blushed at the unintentional reference to her breasts. If he kept this up, she would have to make up a few more rules to help her keep her distance.

“I can’t think of another rule right now,” she said, “but I’m sure I’ll have a few more as we go along.”

Adam shrugged. “All right. Just give me some advance notice when you do. So, are you sure about my having to meet your father?”

“Yes. I don’t know how they do it in your country, but in Greece a woman’s intended husband asks her father for permission to marry her.”

Melina’s stomach roiled as she pictured the look on her father’s face when she brought home an American. How would he react when she announced she was about to marry him?

Her father had made it clear from the time she’d entered her teens that the only man worthy of becoming his son-in-law was a Greek man, preferably from their village. The man would have to be old and wise enough to care for her. Just as her father had taken care of her mother, she could hear her father say. Privately, Melina knew just who had taken care of whom.

Since Melina had watched her mother raise three children, run a household, help with the family pistachio business and satisfy her husband, she knew better.

“You need your father’s approval before you marry?” Adam asked, sounding surprised. “You are over twenty-one aren’t you?”

Clearly the man didn’t understand Greek culture. Stung, Melina defended herself and her family’s dearly held tradition—even if she found it confining. “I am old enough. In the first place, twenty-first century or not, most Greek women are brought up to believe that their father as well as their priest speaks for God. In the second place, you did say we have to make our bargain look good. That includes meeting my father.”

Adam had the grace to blush.

“You also need to know my parents live in Nafplion, a small village outside of Athens. They are, what we call in Greek, horiatees, people who come from small villages. I suppose you could say they’re not very modern in their thinking.”

Melina’s gaze locked with Adam’s as she spoke. She knew without being told that something more than her traditional upbringing was bothering him. Maybe it wasn’t every day a man proposed marriage, but he’d been married before and thus had to have proposed to a woman at least once.

“I don’t need my father’s consent,” she went on, “but he has waited a long time to see me married. I owe him my respect. I can’t possibly marry you without at least introducing you. I also have to ask my mother to plan the wedding. It’s a family tradition.”

To her surprise, Adam suddenly choked on his last bite of baklava. She rounded the table in seconds and pounded him on his back. What could she have said that could have caused such a reaction? “Are you all right?”

“Er, I think so.” Adam reached for her iced tea, the only liquid on the table, took a deep swallow and cleared his throat. “We don’t have time to plan a wedding. I have to be back in the States early next week to pick up my daughter, Jamie.”

Disappointed, Melina gave up her childhood dream of a church wedding, of wearing her mother’s wedding gown and of her father walking her down the aisle. She consoled herself that at the moment her more pressing need was to get that green card. “I’ll talk it over with my mother…maybe she can talk to the priest and arrange for a small church wedding.”

“No time,” he said firmly. “We barely have time for a weekend honeymoon. I have to be home next Wednesday for Jamie.”

Melina sighed wistfully. “Your home is the United States. My home is here. That is, for now. It’s not easy to give up all of the traditions I grew up with. They are all I know.”

Melina watched mixed emotions pass over Adam’s face. Most women would have thought his plan to marry her just after meeting her was romantic, her friend Eleni With the Sixth Sense included. Unfortunately, Melina knew better. Their marriage agreement was a practical arrangement, with the added twist of a mutual physical attraction that wasn’t going to be satisfied. The problem would be to keep her distance from Adam and still act as if she was wildly in love with him in public.

She gazed thoughtfully as Adam recovered from his coughing fit. She recalled her mother’s sage advice that marriage was a matter of compromises. There was a time and a place to get what she wanted, or to even win an argument with her husband, her mother would counsel with a wink. That place to compromise was in the bedroom whern two heads shared the same pillow, her mother always said while a dreamy smile graced her lips.

Too bad she wouldn’t have a chance to take advantage of her mother’s advice, Melina thought with a quick glance at the interesting cleft in Adam’s square chin. A cleft in a man’s chin was a sign of strength, her grandmother had told her. Maybe this would be one of those times to compromise, she thought as she gazed at the small piece of honeyed walnut pastry lingering at the corner of his mouth.

One thought led to another until it occurred to her that although Adam had proposed marriage, he had yet to hold her in his arms and kiss her. Her body warmed at the thought of how sweet his lips would have tasted. Of how wonderful it would feel to be held in his arms. Even if it would only be a charade.

This was too public a setting for a kiss to seal their bargain, she realized as she glanced around the roof garden. They were in full view of people on their lunch breaks. The windows of the adjoining Athens Hilton Hotel were only yards away. Close enough for anyone near a window to look out over the vine-covered trellis surrounding the embassy rooftop café. Even the trio of seagulls drawn by the fragrant scent of food seemed to be watching them.

Eleni and Arianna, who were sitting a few feet away, made no attempt to hide their interest in what was going on at her table.

Melina pondered how to play the game without appearing too daring. “My friends are watching,” she said uneasily. “Maybe we ought to do something to make things look real?”

“No problem.” Adam glanced over at her wide-eyed friends and winked. He took Melina’s hand in his and ran his thumb over her velvety skin. Under his breath, and with a wide smile for her friends’ benefit, he said, “Melina, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Melina managed a smile. If a kiss wasn’t forthcoming, at least he was holding her hand. She wondered if he knew that tiny electric shocks followed in the path of his large and finely shaped fingers. Or that flashes of erotic thoughts were beginning to turn her limbs to jelly.

“It was your idea to make things look real,” she finally choked. “I was only trying to help.”

How far? her inner voice asked eagerly.

Not far enough, her rational mind answered.

“I will take you home to meet my father,” she said. She disengaged her tingling hand and hid it in her lap. “I just hope my father doesn’t have that heart attack he keeps threatening whenever he doesn’t get his way.”

“Your father has a heart condition?”

“No, but I’m afraid he will once I bring you home. It’s not only you,” she hurried to explain. “It’s just that you’re my choice, not his. Besides, you’re not Greek.”

Adam still looked doubtful. “Are you sure I have to meet your father? I wouldn’t want to be the cause of a heart attack. Maybe we should call the whole thing off.”

Maybe, she debated for a brief moment, she should reconsider and let him off the hook. Only there was that green card she yearned for and the chance to be beyond her father’s controlling reach.

“As far as I’m concerned, we made an agreement,” Melina said firmly. “We have too much at stake to back out now.”

“We have?” Adam’s complexion paled.

Melina gathered her purse and prepared to go back to work. “Yes, we have. You said you needed a wife. I want a green card. I said I’ll marry you, and I will.”

“But your father!”

“Don’t worry about my father,” she said with a frown, “I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something to make it right with him.”

Her father was as healthy as only a man who regularly used virgin olive oil on his food to stay healthy could be. She’d grown up watching her father enjoy his weekly Sunday morning “medicinal” breakfast of cucumbers, nuts mixed with yogurt, doused with a liberal portion of Greece’s famous virgin olive oil. A man who could survive that kind of regime was surely healthy enough to survive meeting Adam.

Melina rose and waved goodbye to Eleni and Arianna. If she wanted things to look real, she had to wait for Adam to leave with her. “If you want to make things look real, maybe you ought to walk me back to my desk.”

Adam heard the plea in Melina’s voice as he rose from the table. Damn! The woman had taken him seriously when he’d only been kidding. He had a sinking feeling this was his last chance to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself. But how?

The light in Melina’s eyes deterred him from telling her so in public. Especially since Melina was a woman who was frank in her hopes and dreams and who trusted him.