Dreaming Of... Greece: The Millionaire's True Worth / A Wedding for the Greek Tycoon / Her Greek Doctor's Proposal

“There’ve been several women in your life over the years. Tell me something I don’t know. Are we talking about the woman on crutches?”

“Yes. This one is different.” Both brothers had led a bachelor life for so long, not even Akis believed what had happened to him since he’d seen Raina on the street.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Vasso exhaled sharply. “She feels the same way?”

His teeth snapped together. “After the way she kissed me back tonight, I’d stake my life on it.”

“But you only met her last evening.”

“I know. She looks like Aphrodite with lavender eyes.”

“I’ll admit she was a stunner.” Laughter burst out of Vasso. “But you sound like you still need to sleep off the champagne.”

“I swear I only had a sip.”

“Come on, Akis. Quit the teasing.”

“I’m not.” For the first time in his life Akis was swimming in uncharted waters where a woman was concerned.

A long silence ensued. “How old is she?”

“Twenty-six.”

“From Athens?”

“No. California.”

“She’s an American?”

“Yes. On the day of the wedding rehearsal, we almost bumped into each other on the sidewalk after I left Theo at the bank. I couldn’t get her out of my head. On the night of the reception, to my surprise she was sitting at a table in the back of the ballroom.

“When I asked her to dance, she didn’t understand because she said she didn’t speak Greek. But she couldn’t dance anyway because she was on crutches. I helped her out to the limo and took her to her hotel.”

“Just like that you spent the night with her? You’ve never done anything like that before. Wasn’t that awfully fast?”

“I didn’t stay with her and you don’t know all that happened. When I couldn’t find her at the hotel today and learned she’d checked out, I checked with Theo’s family. They hadn’t heard of her so I decided to go over to Chloe’s for help. When I went walked in, to my shock I found her relaxing at the side of the pool.”

“She was at Chloe’s?”

“Yes. It seems Chloe spent a school year with her back in high school on one of those exchange programs to learn English.”

“How come you’ve never heard of her?”

“I once remember Theo telling me that Chloe had an American friend she lived with in high school, but I never made the connection.”

“What’s her name?”

“Raina Maywood. But when she fell and sprained her ankle in our number four store, she gave Galen a different name before going to the ER. I had a devil of a time tracking her down.”

“Wait, wait—start over again. You’re not making sense.”

“Nothing has made sense since we first saw each other.”

“Akis? Are you still with me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your gut telling you?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed.

“Maybe she wanted to meet you. It wouldn’t be hard to connect the dots. After all, she knows the circles Chloe’s family runs in. Maybe when Chloe invited her to come to the wedding, she told her about Theo’s best man and promised to introduce you.”

“There’s a flaw in that thinking, Vasso, because it didn’t happen that way. By sheer chance I asked her to dance. Otherwise we would never have met. After I took her to her hotel, she made it close to impossible for me to find her.”

“But she did end up at Chloe’s, so it’s my guess she hoped you’d show up there at some point. Even if that part of the evening wasn’t planned, what if all along her agenda has been to come to the wedding and use Chloe’s parents to meet you? Is that what you’re afraid of? That she’s after your money?”

“Hell if I know.”

“It stands to reason Chloe would have told her all about Theo’s best man. There’s no sin in it, but the way things are moving so fast, don’t you think you need to take a step back until more time passes? Then you can see what’s real and what isn’t. Think about it.”

Akis was thinking. His big brother had touched on one of Akis’s deepest fears. The possibility that somehow she’d engineered their meeting like other women in the past had done tore him up inside. He wanted to believe that everything about their meeting and the unfolding of events had been entirely spontaneous.

But if Chloe had discussed him with Raina, then her comment about his background made a lot of sense. He and Vasso were the brothers who’d climbed out of poverty to make their way in the world. They lacked the essentials that other well-bred people took for granted—like monetary help from family, school scholarships, exposure to the world.

They’d been marked from birth as the brothers who’d come out of that class of poor people who would be lucky to survive. Whatever he and Vasso had achieved had come through sheer hard work.

Akis could hold his own, but he was aware of certain inadequacies that would never change.

If in the past the situation had warranted it, he and Vasso had always given each other good advice. But this one time he didn’t want to hear it even though he was the one who’d called his brother.

Akis didn’t want to think Raina might be like Althea who was looking for a husband who could keep her in the style of Chloe’s parents.

“Isn’t that why you phoned me, because you’re worried?” his brother prodded. “She’s seen the kind of wealth Chloe comes from. You remember how crazy Sofia and I were over each other when we lived on the island without a drachma to our name?”

“How could I forget?”

“But she turned down my wedding proposal because she said she could do better. It wasn’t until our business started to flourish that she started chasing me again and wouldn’t leave me alone. At that point I wasn’t interested in her anymore.”

“I remember everything,” Akis’s voice grated. Both he and Vasso had been through the painful experience of being used. It had made them wary of stronger attachments. A few years ago when they’d set up two charities to honor their parents, one of the women they’d hired as a secretary to deal with the paperwork had made a play for Vasso. But it turned out she wanted marriage rather than the job.