Читать книгу Christos's Promise - Jane Porter - Страница 7

“YOU’D rather remain locked here in the convent than marry me?”

Disbelief echoed in Christos Pateras’s voice. How could this girl—woman, actually, although she didn’t look a bit like the twenty-five her father claimed she was—prefer living in the spartan convent over marrying him?

He was no barbarian. Compared to the Greek men she’d been raised with, he was downright civilized.

“You had my answer earlier,” Alysia Lemos retorted coolly. “You needn’t have wasted your time coming here.”

He turned his back on the anxious nun hovering in the background, intentionally making it harder for her to hear. The abbess might have insisted on providing Alysia with a chaperone, but that didn’t mean the sister needed to be privy to the conversation.

“You told your father no,” Christos answered, his tone mild, deceptively so. “You didn’t tell me no.” He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t need to. His size and authority generally were persuasive enough.

But Alysia Lemos’s fine dark eyebrows only arched higher. “Some women might find such persistence flattering. I don’t.”

“So, your answer is…?”

Alysia’s incredulous laughter contrasted sharply with the dark blaze in her eyes. “I know you’re an American, but surely you can’t be this much of an idiot!”

Her cutting dismissal might have crushed a man of lesser ego, but he wasn’t just any man, and Miss Lemos wasn’t just any woman. He needed her. He wasn’t going to leave Oinoussai without her. “You dislike Americans?”

“Not all.”

“Good. That should help ease the transition when we move to New York.”

Her eyes met his, the dark irises all the more arresting against her sudden pallor. “I’m not moving. And I’d never agree to an arranged marriage.”

He dismissed this along with her other protestations. “In case you’re worried, I consider myself Greek. My parents were born here, on Oinoussai. They still call this home.”

“Oh, happy people, they.”

He almost smiled. No wonder her father, Darius, was feeling desperate. She was not an eager bride-to-be. “I don’t know if they’ll be happy with you for a daughter-in-law, but they’ll adjust.”

Bands of color burned along the curve of her cheek. “I’m sure your mother dotes on you.”

“Endlessly. But then, most Greek mothers live for their sons.”

“While daughters are disposable.”

He gave no indication that he’d heard the hurt in her voice, the small wobble in her breath as she spat the bitter words. “Not mine. My daughters will be cherished.”

At thirty-seven, he needed a wife, and Darius Lemos needed a husband for his wayward daughter. This was no love match, but a match made in a bank in Switzerland. “I’m an only child, the last of the Pateras in my branch of the family. I’ve promised my parents a grandchild before my thirty-ninth birthday, and I shall deliver.”

“No, you hope I’ll deliver!”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “I stand corrected.”

Alysia’s hands balled. She longed to smack his smirk right off his gorgeous, arrogant face. She’d never met a man more sure of himself than he. Except for her father, that is.

She swallowed convulsively, her stomach heaving, as she struggled to understand why her father had reached across the Atlantic for a husband for her. Her father despised the new rich. Her father must be feeling desperate. Well, so was she. He was practically auctioning her off to the highest bidder, his sole heir up for grabs.

Hot tears rushed to her eyes but she held them back. Her mother would never have let her father do this.

“There are worse bridegrooms, Miss Lemos.”

She felt the irony but couldn’t even smile. “A husband is a husband, and I don’t want one.”

“Most women want to be married. It’s the desire of every Greek woman.”

“I’m not most women.”

He laughed almost unkindly. “So say you, but I’ve learned one woman is not so different from another. You all have agendas—”

“And you don’t?”

“Mine isn’t hidden. I want children. I need children.” He scrutinized her as though she were horseflesh. “You’re young. You’d be an excellent mother.”

She winced. “I don’t want to be a mother.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “We can marry today. Here. It’ll just be us. Your father is unavailable, I’m afraid.”

“What a shame.”

His mouth quirked faintly, revealing surprise, even intrigue. “You speak like a sailor.”

“The closest I’ve come to my father’s business.”

“You’re interested in business?”

“I’m interested in my competition.” The industry her father loved above all else. Nothing came between him and his ships. Nothing had ever been allowed to interfere with the great Lemos fortune. Not her mother. Certainly not herself.

“I think the business would bore you,” he said after a moment, jamming his hands into trouser pockets. “It’s talks. Contracts. Number crunching. Tedious stuff.”

“For my small brain?”

His eyes glimmered, her mocking tone had made him smile. “You shouldn’t listen to everything your father says,” he cheerfully drawled. “Only the good things about me.”

She could easily have slapped his cheeky face. She knew exactly why Christos Pateras was marrying her. He wanted her dowry. Her dowry and her father’s shipping interests. When Darius passed away, Christos would inherit Lemos’s empire. “You’re overly confident.”

“So say my critics.”

“You have many?”

“Legions.”

She offered him her profile, grinding her teeth together. This was a joke to him and he toyed with her like a cat with a mouse. She struggled to contain her temper, her smooth jaw tightening. “You’re mad if you think I’ll marry you.”

“Your father has already consented to the marriage. The dowry has changed hands—”

“Change it back!”

“Can’t do that. I need you too much.”

She turned her head, her brilliant gaze catching his. “Despite what you both think, I am neither mindless, nor spineless. Since you appear to have difficulty with your hearing, let me say it again. I will not marry you, Mr. Pateras. I will never marry you, Mr. Pateras. I’d rather grow old and gray in this convent than take your name, Mr. Pateras.”

Christos rocked back on his heels and fought his desire to smile. Her father said she was difficult but he hadn’t mentioned his daughter’s intelligence, or spirit. There was a difference between difficult and spirited. Difficult was unpleasant. Spirited was something a man quite enjoyed. Like a spirited horse, a spirited chase, a spirited game of tennis. But nothing was more appealing than a spirited woman. “Oh, I think I quite like you,” he murmured softly.

“The feeling isn’t mutual.”

His lips curved, and he watched as she threw her head back, dark eyes challenging him.

With the sunlight washing her face, he suddenly realized her eyes weren’t brown at all, but blue. A mysterious, dark blue. Like the sky at night. Like the Aegean Sea before a storm. Honey wheat hair and Aegean eyes. She looked remarkably like the pictures he’d seen of her half-English, half-Greek mother, a woman considered to be one of the great beauties of her time.

“Hopefully you’ll grow to tolerate me. It’d make conjugal life…bearable.”

A pulse beat wildly at the base of her throat. But her eyes splintered anger, passion, denial. She was going to fight him, tooth and nail. “I’d sooner let you put a bit in my mouth and saddle on my back.”

“Now that could be tempting.”

Her cheeks darkened to a dusky pink, her gorgeous coloring a result of the Greek-English heritage. Blue eyes, sun-streaked hair, a hint of gold in her complexion. He felt desire, and possession. She was his. She just didn’t know it yet.

Alysia fled to a distant corner of the walled garden, arms crossed over her chest, breasts rising and falling with her quick, shallow breathing.

He followed more slowly, not wanting to push her too hard. At least not yet. Furtively he touched the breast pocket of his coat, feeling the crisp edges of the morning’s newspaper. She wouldn’t like the press clipping. He was the first to admit it was a power play, and underhanded, but Christos wasn’t about to lose this deal.

He’d made a promise to his parents that he’d bring fortune to his beleaguered branch of the family, and every decision he’d made since then had been in the pursuit of that goal. Since he’d made that promise, the family fortunes had grown into a different league. Very different.

She must have felt him approach. “Have you no ethics?” Her low-pitched voice vibrated with emotion. “How can you marry a woman against her will?”

“It wouldn’t be against your will. You have a choice.”

“You disgust me!”

“Then go back inside. Call the nun over. She’s dying to be part of the conversation.”

Alysia glanced over her shoulder, spotted the nun and pressed her lips together. “You’re enjoying this.”

“It’s my wedding day. What’s not to enjoy?”

She took another step away, sinking onto a polished marble bench. He walked around the bench to face her. “Alysia, your father has sworn to leave you here until we exchange vows. Doesn’t that worry you?”

“No. You are not the first man I’ve refused, and dare I say, nor the last. I’ve been here nearly a year, and the sisters have been wonderful. Quite frankly, I’ve begun to think of the convent as home.”

The convent as home? He didn’t believe her, not for a minute. Despite her refined beauty—the high, fine cheekbones, the elegant curve of her brow—her eyes, those indigo-blue eyes, smoldered with secrets.

She did not belong in the convent’s simple brown smock any more than he belonged in priestly robes. And God knew he did not belong in priestly robes.

Christos felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her, but not enough to walk away from the playing table. No, he never walked away from the playing table, not that he played cards. He gambled in other ways. Daring, breathtaking power plays in the Greek shipping-industry which so far had resulted in staggering financial gain. He’d been wildly successful by anyone’s standards.

“Your home, Alysia, will be with me. I’ve picked you. You are part of my plan. And once I put a plan into action, I don’t give up. I never quit.”

“Those admirable traits would be better applied elsewhere.”

“There is no elsewhere. There is no other option. You, our marriage, is the future,” he said softly, as a warm breeze blew through the courtyard, loosening a tendril of hair from her demure bun. She didn’t attempt to smooth it and the golden-brown tendril floated light as a feather.

He liked the play of sunlight across her shoulders and face. The sun turned her hair to gold and copper. Flecks of aquamarine shimmered in her eyes.

“I know who you are, Mr. Pateras. I’m not ignorant of your success.” Her eyebrows arched. “Shall I tell you what I know?”

“Please. I enjoy my success story.”

“A full-blooded Greek, you were born and raised in a middle-class New York suburb. You attended public school, before being accepted to one of the prestigious American Ivy League colleges.”

“Yale,” he supplied.

“Which is quite good,” she agreed. “But why not Harvard? Harvard is supposed to be the best.”

“Harvard is for old money.”

“That’s right. Your father left Oinoussai broke and in disgrace.”

“Not disgraced. Just poor. Hopeful that there would a better life elsewhere.”

“Your father worked in the shipyards.”

“He was a welder,” Christos answered evenly, hiding the depth of his emotions. He was fiercely loyal to his parents, but particularly to his father. His father’s piety, unwavering morals and devotion to family had sustained them during times of great financial hardship. And there had been hardship, tremendous hardship, not to mention ostracism in the close-knit Greek-American community.

Quickly, before she could probe further, he turned the spotlight on her. “And your father, Alysia, inherited his millions. You’ve never lacked for anything. You have no idea what ‘poor’ means.”

“But you aren’t poor anymore, Mr. Pateras. You now own as many ships as Britain’s entire merchant fleet. Despite your humble origins, it shouldn’t be difficult to find a bride a…trifle…more eager to accept your proposal.”

“I can’t find another Darius Lemos.”

“So in reality you’re marrying my father.”

She was smart. He smiled faintly, again amused by the contradiction between her serene exterior and fiery interior. He found himself suddenly wondering what she’d be like in bed. Passionate as hell, probably.

He watched the shimmering golden-brown tendril dance across her cheek, caress her ear, and Christos felt a sudden urge to follow the tendril with his tongue, drawing the same tantalizing path from her cheekbone to her jaw, from her jaw to the hollow beneath her earlobe.

His body tightened, desire stirring. He’d enjoy being married to a woman like this. Procreation would be a pleasure.

Alysia leaned back on the bench, her brown shift outlining her small breasts, her dark lashes lowering to conceal her expression. “How well do you know my father?”

“Well enough to know what he is.”

She allowed herself a small smile, and Christos noticed the flash of dimple to the left of her full mouth. He’d taste that, too, after the wedding.

“My father must be quite pleased to have you in his back pocket. I can quite picture him, rubbing his hands together, chuckling gleefully.” Her head cocked, her lashes lifted, revealing the dark sapphire irises. “He did rub his hands after you made your deal, didn’t he?”

Her tone, her voice, her eyes. He wanted her.

Abruptly he leaned forward, captured the coil of hair at her nape in his hand. Her eyes widened as his fingers tightened in her hair seconds before he covered her mouth with his.

Alysia inhaled as his lips touched hers, and he traced the soft outline of her lips with his tongue. He didn’t miss her gasp, or the sudden softness in her mouth.

His own body hardened, blood surging. From the distance he heard a cough. The nun! Wouldn’t do to get thrown out of here just yet.

Slowly he released her. “You taste beautiful.”

Alysia paled and dragged the back of her hand across her soft mouth, as if to rub away the imprint of his lips. “Try that again and I shall send for the abbess!”

He placed his foot on the bench, on the outside of her thigh. He felt the tremor in her body. “And say what, sweet Alysia? That your husband kissed you?”

“We are not married! We’re not even engaged.”

“But soon shall be.” He gazed at her exposed collarbone and the rise of fabric at her breasts. “Do you like wagers?”

She visibly shuddered. “No. I never gamble.”

“That’s admirable. But I like bets, and I like these odds. You see, Alysia, I know more about you than you think.”

He caught her incredulous expression, and felt a stab of satisfaction. “You won an academic scholarship at seventeen to an art school in Paris. You lived in a garret with a dozen other want-to-be artists, a rather bohemian lifestyle with small children running underfoot. When money ran out, you, like the others, did odd jobs. One summer you worked as a housekeeper. You did a stint in a bakery. Your longest job was as a nanny for a designer and his family.”

“They were respectable jobs,” she said faintly, blood draining from her face.

“Very respectable, but quite a change from life with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

“Is there a point to this?”

His smile faded and he leaned forward, trapping her between his knee and chest. “You’ve spent eight years of your life trying to escape your father.”

Her lips parted but no sound came out.

He watched her closely, reading every flicker in her eyes. “For a while, you were free. You painted, you traveled, you enjoyed an interesting circle of friends. But then you became ill, and your obliging father placed you in a hospital in Bern. Since then, he’s owned you, body and soul.”

“Body, maybe, but not my soul. Never my soul!”

Again the fire, the spirited defiance. He felt a kinship with her that he felt with few women. He softened his tone, appealing to her intellect. “Think about it, Alysia. In Greece you’re powerless. Your father is the head of the household, the absolute authority. He has the right to choose your husband. He has the right to leave you locked up here. He has the right to make your life miserable.”

“I’m no prisoner here.”

“Then why don’t you leave?

She held her breath, exquisitely attentive, her eyes enormous, her lips compressed.

“Now, if I were your husband,” he concluded after the briefest hesitation, “you could leave. Today. Right away. You’d finally be free.”

She didn’t speak for a moment, studying him with the same intentness with which she listened. After a moment she exhaled. “Greek wives are never free!”

“No, maybe not the way you think of it. But I’d permit you to travel, to pursue hobbies that interested you, to make friends of your own choosing.” He shrugged. “You could even paint again.”

“I don’t paint anymore.”

“But you could. I’ve heard you were quite good.”

She suddenly laughed, her voice pitched low, her body nearly trembling with tension. She wrapped her arms across her chest, a makeshift cape, a protective embrace. “You must want my father’s ships very much!”

Christos felt a wave of bittersweet emotion, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He saw himself exactly as he was. Driven, calculating, proudly self-serving. And this woman, this lovely refined young woman, knew she mattered only in business terms. Her worth was her name. Her value lay in her dowry. For a split second he hated the system and he hated himself and then he ruthlessly pushed his objection aside.

He would have her.

Alysia slipped from beneath his arm, taking several steps away. She walked to the edge of the herb garden and knelt at the flowering lavender. “Ships,” she whispered, breaking off a purple stalk. “I hate them.”

She carried the tuft of lavender to her nose, smelling it.

“And I love them,” he answered, thinking she should have been a painting.

The bend of her neck, the creamy nape, the shimmering coil of hair the color of wild honey, the sun’s golden caress.

He wanted this woman. Deal or no.

She crumpled the lavender stalk in her fist. “Mr. Pateras, has it crossed your mind to ask why a man as wealthy as my father must give away his fortune in order to get his daughter off his hands?”

The sunlight shone warm and gold on her head. The breeze loosened yet another shimmering tendril.

“I’m damaged goods, Mr. Pateras. My father couldn’t give me away to a local Greek suitor, even if he tried.”

More damaged than he’d ever know, Alysia acknowledged bleakly, clutching the broken lavender stalk in her palm. Unwillingly memories of the Swiss sanatorium came to mind. She’d spent nearly fourteen months there, all of her twenty-first year, before her mother came, rescuing her and helping her find a small flat in Geneva.

Alysia had liked Geneva. No bad memories there.

And for nearly two years she’d lived quietly, happily, content with her job in a small clothing shop, finding safety in her simple flat. Weekly she rang up her mother in Oinoussai and they chatted about inconsequential matters, the kind of conversation that doesn’t challenge but soothes.

Her mother never discussed the sanatorium with her, nor Paris. Alysia never asked about her father. But they understood each other and knew the other’s pain.

Alysia would never have returned to Greece, or her father’s house, if it hadn’t been for her mother’s cancer.

The mournful toll of bells stirred Alysia, and she tensed, lashes lowering, mouth compressing, finding the bells an intolerable reminder of her mother’s death and funeral.

The bells continued to ring, their tolling like nails scratching down a blackboard, sharp, grating. Oh, how she hated it here! The sisters had done everything they could to comfort her, and befriend her, but Alysia couldn’t bear another day of bells and prayers and silence.

She didn’t want to be reminded of her losses. She wanted to just get on with the living.

Sister Elena, a dour-faced nun with a heart of gold, signaled it was time to return inside.

Alysia felt a swell of panic, desperation making her light-headed. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to leave the garden, or the promise of freedom.

As if sensing her reluctance, Christos extended a hand in her direction. “You don’t have to go in. You could leave with me instead.”

It was almost as if he could feel her weakening, sense her confusion. His tone gentled yet again. “Leave with me today and you’ll have a fresh start, lead a different life. Everything would be exciting and new.”

He was teasing her, toying with her, and she longed for the freedom even as she shrank from the bargain.

She could leave the convent if she went as his wife.

She could escape her father if she bound herself to this stranger.

“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked, turning from Sister Elena’s worried gaze to the darkly handsome American Greek standing just a foot away.

“Should I be?”

“I know my father must have mentioned my…health.” She gritted against the sting of the words, each like a drop of poison on her tongue. Unwilling tears burned at the back of her eyes.

“He mentioned you hadn’t been well a few years ago, but he assured me you’re well now. And you look well. Quite well, if rather too thin, as a matter of fact.”

Her lips curved into a small, cold self-mocking smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”

Christos Pateras shrugged. “My first seven ships were damaged. I stripped them to the hull, refurbished each from bow to stern. Within a year my ships made me my first million. It’s been ten years. They’re still the workhorses of my fleet.”

She envisioned him stripping her bare and attempting to make something of her. The vivid picture shocked and frightened her. It’d been years and years since she’d been intimate with a man, and this man, was nothing like her teenage lovers.

Hating the flush creeping through her cheeks, she lifted her chin. “I won’t make you any millions.”

“You already have.”

Stung by his ruthless assessment, she tensed, her slender spine stiffening. “You’ll have to give it back. I told you already, I shall never marry.”

“Again, you mean. You’ll never marry again.”

She froze where she stood, at the edge of the herb garden, her gaze fixed on the ancient sun dial.

He knew?

“You were married before, when you were still in your teens. He was English, and six years older than you. I believe you met in Paris. Wasn’t he a painter, too?”

She turned her head slowly, wide-eyed, torn between horror and fascination at the details of her past. How much more did he know? What else had he been told?

“I won’t discuss him, or the marriage, with you,” she answered huskily. Marrying Jeremy had been a tragic mistake.

“Your father said he was after your fortune.”

“And you’re not?”

Lights glinted in his dark eyes. It struck her that this man would not be easily managed.

He circled her and she had to tilt her head back to see his expression. Butterflies flitted in her stomach, heightening her anxiety. He was tall, much taller than most men she’d known, and solid, a broad deep chest and muscular arms that filled the sleeves of his suit jacket.

Her nerves were on edge. She felt distinctly at a disadvantage and searched for something, anything, to give her the upperhand—again. “Good Greek men don’t want to be the second husbands.”

“We’ve already established I’m not your traditional Greek man. I do what I want, and I do it my way.”