Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4 - Линн Грэхем, Maisey Yates - Страница 16
ОглавлениеEVEN A FEW days before the wedding Lucy still couldn’t quite accept that she was getting married. She was very tense and stressed. Jax had insisted on picking up the bill for the hundreds of guests invited and her father had been dismayed to discover that he was only allowed to cover his daughter’s more personal expenses. In the same way Jax had organised the church and the venue for the reception.
And he had done all of that from a safe distance, leaving Lucy to handle her father’s hurt pride and angry complaints. Jax, after all, was the man who had never planned to marry and since the moment Lucy had agreed to marry him Jax had come no closer to the centre of bridal activity than a phone call because he had hired a wedding planner to take care of everything. Lucy had had the freedom to make her own choices but had relied heavily on the planner’s advice because she knew nothing about high-society weddings. Her brain was still stuffed, however, with the turmoil of selecting flowers, colour schemes and table arrangements from frighteningly long lists of options and having to discuss every possibility.
Iola had gone shopping with Lucy for a dress and Jax had been allowed no input there. Lucy had gone for lace and a fancy pleated train that would be removable if she was dancing and she had picked the sweetest little outfit for Bella.
It was ironic that Jax had pretty much vanished as soon as she’d accepted his proposal and that had really annoyed Lucy. He had said that he had too much work to get through and he had only visited the house once when she had insisted he come and meet her father and her stepmother. That had been a very awkward hour of stilted conversation, she recalled ruefully. Jax had been very cool and polite and her father had been stiff and formal. Iola and Lucy’s efforts to lighten the atmosphere had made little difference. It had been painfully obvious to Lucy that her father and her bridegroom didn’t much like the look of each other.
And then there was the troubling question of her future father-in-law, Heracles Antonakos.
Lucy had assumed that Jax’s father would want to meet her in advance but apparently not, and Jax did not seem to know whether or not his father would attend their wedding, an admission that had made her wince. Obviously, Heracles Antonakos was not impressed by his son’s decision to marry a waitress and he wanted nothing to do with the event. But Jax refused to be drawn on the sensitive subject and had urged her to be patient.
‘It’s a delivery...for you,’ Iola called up the stairs to Lucy.
Lucy clattered downstairs and signed for the package she was given, turning it over and back before walking into the kitchen to open it. She extracted a letter and a small jewellery box and frowned.
‘Is it a wedding present?’ Iola asked.
‘No...it’s from some woman called Polly, who says she’s one of my sisters,’ Lucy whispered in deep shock, reading the closely typed lines to learn that her mother had only passed away a few years before at a hospice and commenting on the fact to Iola.
‘I always assumed that Mum had died when I was a child...possibly during the three years I was adopted because of course I wouldn’t have been told about it then,’ Lucy confided. ‘But according to my sisters they too only found out about her death afterwards because she didn’t want to see any of us while she was so ill. But she left us all rings given to her by our fathers...and it was only then that my sisters found out that I existed.’
‘Strange,’ Iola commented. ‘But if she was very ill, possibly she wasn’t thinking very clearly. Is there a ring in that box?’
Lucy opened the box and extracted a small ruby ring with a smile. ‘It’s very pretty. I’ll wear it when I get married. It’s wonderful to have something that my mother actually wore,’ she murmured with a sad look in her eyes.
‘Read the rest of the letter,’ her stepmother urged. ‘Tell me about your sisters.’
Unfortunately Polly didn’t offer much information beyond the fact that she was married and had children just like Lucy’s other sister, Ellie, who was a doctor. What she did say was that she and Ellie very much wanted to meet Lucy and get to know her.
‘She couldn’t have chosen a worse time to contact me,’ Lucy mumbled, settling down to read the letter again. ‘She hasn’t given me an address or anything but she has given me a phone number, which I could use to talk to her.’
‘You could invite your sisters to your wedding,’ Iola suggested.
Lucy grimaced. ‘No. I don’t know them and I don’t think Polly knows I’m a mother as well either. It would all be too awkward for a first meeting and in any case they would need more warning than a few days to attend. I’ll call her as soon as we get back from our honeymoon. But my goodness, this is exciting,’ she muttered abstractedly. ‘I wonder what Polly and Ellie are like. Do I look like them? Do you think they have the same father?’
Kreon walked in and Lucy handed him the letter straight away to read. He stared down at the ring on the table and then he lifted it. ‘I gave this to Annabel as an engagement ring. It’s not a real ruby, you know, but it looks well. It was all I could afford at the time—’
Lucy laughed and removed it from his hand. ‘I will still wear it with pride, Dad.’
‘You have your mother’s bright and beautiful smile,’ Kreon told her fondly. ‘But you have a kindness as well, which she never had.’
‘Maybe I inherited that from you,’ Lucy replied, watching her daughter hug her grandfather’s knees and raise her arms to be lifted with all the confidence of a child who knew she could always expect a welcome.
Lucy couldn’t sleep that night. Jax phoned and she told him about Polly’s letter. It shook her that her most driving instinct was to share that very private news with Jax even when he wasn’t around. But then Jax knew better than most about complex family divisions, she reasoned, shying away from the inner awareness that she trusted Jax more and wanted to share everything with him more than she was willing to admit.
Jax urged her to do nothing until he had checked out her sisters and she got cross with him then and told him to mind his own business. Not that he could do anything else, she conceded, when there wasn’t enough personal information in that letter to allow Lucy or indeed Jax to identify either of her sisters or even work out where they lived. Polly had kept the letter short and sweet as a first approach and Lucy’s mind buzzed with conjecture about the siblings she had never met.
Some of her excitement gradually subsided, however, when she thought about Ellie being an actual doctor. Ellie was obviously very well-educated and clever and possibly Polly was as well. Lucy could well be the odd one out, the lesser sister, the oddball who didn’t fit in. That idea troubled Lucy because it seemed to her that that was the story of her entire life: never quite fitting in anywhere. Not with her mother, not in the foster homes, not even in the short-lived adoption she had enjoyed until her adoptive parents died in a car crash and she was sent back into care. And she hadn’t fitted in with Jax either, had she? He had dumped her and walked away without a backward glance. Yet now, he was marrying her. How did that make sense?
He was only marrying her for Bella’s benefit, she reminded herself, feeling her pride sting and her heart sink at that awareness. Could their desire to do well by their daughter be enough to sustain a marriage? Lucy didn’t want make-believe and she didn’t believe in perfect. She believed that she had realistic expectations. But she did desperately want to have a real marriage and be part of a proper family. It was what she had dreamt of all her life and never managed to achieve. Now that Jax was offering her that opportunity she planned to make the most of it.
The morning of the wedding dawned bright and sunny and, having done her hair and her make-up for herself, Lucy donned her gown. It was a perfect fit, swirling round her in delicate shimmering white lace. As a mother she had felt self-conscious about wearing white but she hadn’t felt the need to make a statement either by choosing another colour. In any case she was marrying the man who had become her first lover and the father of her daughter and she wasn’t ashamed of either fact.
A heaving bunch of paparazzi waited behind crash barriers outside the vast Metropolitan Cathedral in the city where the Greek Orthodox ceremony was being held. Lucy was unnerved by the questions shouted and the flash of cameras and she gripped her father’s arm tightly as they negotiated the shallow steps and moved below the arches into the church.
‘Royalty once got married here,’ Kreon murmured with satisfaction. ‘I never dreamt that one day I would see my own child taking her vows below this roof.’
The comment lightened Lucy’s tension as nothing else could have done. ‘Glad I’ve finally done something to make you proud but why are the paparazzi so interested?’
‘You are about to become a member of one of the foremost families in Greece. Naturally, the public want to know who has captured the notorious playboy, Jax Antonakos—’
‘I wouldn’t say captured is the right word,’ Lucy muttered uncomfortably as they paused at the end of the aisle and her father shook out her small train for her and offered his arm to her again with a proud smile.
‘He’s a very fortunate man. I hope he appreciates that. You look really beautiful,’ the older man declared with satisfaction.
Tears stung the backs of Lucy’s eyes because she was touched by her father’s faith in her. She watched Jax turn his handsome dark head and look at her and the ability to breathe died in her throat. The closer she drew to him on their slow walk down the aisle, the more gorgeous he appeared, his dramatic green eyes welded to her approach. Colour warmed her cheeks and tingling heat surged low in her pelvis. She felt as if all her dreams were coming true in that moment and she scolded herself for being too emotional and sentimental. Jax was neither sentimental nor romantic. He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him, she reminded herself firmly, but they had Bella to bind them and, in time, maybe they would find that more than their daughter kept them together.
Jax studied Lucy with heavily lidded eyes, his attention roaming over every exquisite shapely inch of her petite body. The gown was a triumph, a delicate lace affair of simple design that enhanced her slight stature and gave her elegance. He didn’t look to see how his father was reacting. Only minutes earlier he had noticed his father’s absorption in Bella where she sat on Iola’s knee across the aisle. Heracles longed for grandchildren, and the knowledge that he had a little granddaughter he had yet to meet had at the very last minute made him decide to attend the wedding. True, Jax wasn’t expecting his father to be in a party mood because Heracles hated Kreon Thiarkis and hated that his son was marrying Kreon’s daughter, but Jax was relieved that Heracles had put family first and shelved his reservations to share their day.
Some of the ceremony went over Lucy’s head, for which she blamed Jax, who had said he was too busy to attend a rehearsal at the cathedral when the services of an interpreter had been available. She concentrated on the simple Greek words that she knew and smiled nervously up at Jax when he slid the ring onto her finger. Their eyes met and the burn inside her spread like wild fire. It was utterly inappropriate but she had never wanted so badly to be kissed. Jax angled his arrogant dark head back and gave her a teasing smile of naked challenge and she went for it as she had always gone for it when he egged her on. She stretched up awkwardly in her very high heels, her hands clutching at his arms to steady herself, and still she wasn’t tall enough.
With a husky sound of sensual amusement, Jax gathered her up and raised her to his level to taste her lush parted lips for himself. And for a split second, Lucy forgot everything. She forgot that she was in public, she forgot the guests shifting in their seats and the imposing robed Archbishop who had conducted the service. The taste of Jax’s mouth was like a shaft of sunlight bursting inside her after a long winter. It charged her up, rendered her helpless with longing, and the plunge of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth only multiplied the explosive effect of that kiss on her body. Her heart hammered, her pulses raced as Jax slowly slid her down his lean, powerful frame to stand on her own feet again.
She caught a glimpse of Iola’s grin and just as suddenly appreciated that she was still in public view. A swoosh of mortified pink lit up her heart-shaped face as Jax closed his hand over hers and walked her back down the aisle.
Jax was amazed that he felt so relaxed. He had expected to loathe every minute of the wedding. Knowing he was protecting his father was one thing, doing what had to be done when it went against his own instincts was another. But that hot little taste of Lucy’s passion assuaged those feelings. She wanted him, she wanted him just as much as he wanted her, and for the moment that was as much consolation for his sacrifice of freedom as he needed.
He had struggled against anger, resentment and bitterness throughout the two weeks it had taken to set up the wedding. He had kept his distance from Lucy because he was afraid that she would guess that he was not the enthusiastic bridegroom he was purporting to be. Deception of any kind had always been a challenge for Jax. He was very talented at keeping his feelings to himself but he was very bad at faking anything. He had found the drinks engagement with Kreon and Iola extremely uncomfortable and Lucy’s demands for his opinion on the colour of the bridal flowers and such nonsense had simply exasperated him. For two solid weeks, Jax had rigorously reminded himself that he was acquiring Lucy and his daughter and protecting his father by getting married. But even that couldn’t disperse the sour flavour of having to do what he had always sworn he would not do and take a wife.
Outside the cathedral the paparazzi went into a frenzy of excitement when the bride and groom appeared. Jax’s father stalked silently from cathedral to limousine without pause. It was ironic that Heracles was furious with his son for marrying Lucy. Only after Jax had pointed out that he had had a daughter with Lucy had Heracles gone from raging to dark muttering, finally accepting that a waitress, who was also the daughter of an obnoxious criminal, was entering the Antonakos family. And having learned about that criminal record, Jax had not argued in his father-in-law’s favour. Agreeing that Kreon was obnoxious had somewhat soothed his father’s ire.
Jax had been tempted to bring up the file he had been given on Lucy two years earlier but he had decided to take a rain check on that line of enquiry until after the wedding. Getting information about Kreon Thiarkis had been surprisingly easy but getting information on Lucy was proving deeply problematic. She had lived in so many different places and had even been adopted at one stage when her name had been changed. Indeed the discovery of just how grim Lucy’s growing years had been had saddened Jax. Some years after the adoption she had gone back to using the name she had been given at birth. But Lucy’s frequent childhood moves read like a depressing indictment of social services care and the investigator striving to trace her movements during her adolescence was currently at an admitted standstill.
Of course, you could simply ask her for the details, Jax reminded himself wryly. Could he trust her answers? Or would she lie to mislead him, hoping to cover up conduct she might now be ashamed of? Jax needed the confidence of knowing that he had the whole truth. Naturally he expected her to deny the drugs offences but, so far, no official record of any such offences had been found. Was it possible that the detective agency his father had used had confused Lucy’s identity with someone else’s? Was it even remotely possible that she was innocent of the charges in that file? But then hadn’t he been equally shocked when he’d seen her with that man in the alleyway? Lucy didn’t wear her sins or her flaws on her lovely face.
With the ease of long practice Jax buried the memory of Lucy’s betrayal deep where he didn’t have to think about it. If he thought about it, he mused grimly, it would drive him off the edge, the way it had two years ago when he had tried to find solace in the bottom of a bottle: the aftershocks of giving up Lucy had been little short of terrifying for a male who needed to stay in emotional control. For a short while he had been overpowered by his conflicting feelings, not something he was willing to recall or relive. In fact even remembering that made him flinch.
They arrived at the hotel and settled down with Bella in a private room set aside for their use to drink champagne and await the arrival of their guests. Poised by the window, Jax tensed. ‘That’s my father’s car arriving. Come on. I want to introduce you and Bella.’
By the time Jax and Lucy reached the grand foyer, however, Iola and Kreon were already greeting Heracles. And then there was one of those strange little moments of absolute stillness as Kreon said something and Heracles backed up and then suddenly lurched forward and punched the younger man with angry ferocity. Lucy was aghast when the fight broke out. Her father responded, lurching clumsily after Heracles to return that punch and then receiving yet another for his pains, for Heracles was very fit and fast on his feet for his age. Further violence was only forestalled by the Antonakos bodyguards who stood between the two men to keep them apart. Heracles let out an angry roar of frustration.
‘Stay back,’ Jax warned Lucy, striding in to intervene and grip his father by both his arms to restrain him, since it was obvious that none of their staff had the nerve to lay actual hands on their irate employer.
All red in the face and still patently desperate for a fight, Heracles roared something angry in Greek. Jax stole a glimpse at the guests piling through the entrance doors and then stopping dead to stare at the spectacle and he suppressed a groan. He said something to his father and shepherded him over to a door of the private room. Pushing open the door, he gestured to Lucy’s father to follow him. Looking reluctant but red-faced and more than a little embarrassed, Kreon finally did so. Jax was trying to sort the argument out, Lucy recognised ruefully while wondering what Heracles Antonakos had against her father that had so overpowered his manners.
‘Men!’ Iola proclaimed dramatically at her elbow, making Lucy emit a startled laugh. ‘Thank heaven, Jax got them out of sight.’
‘What sparked off that punch?’ Lucy demanded in bewilderment.
‘Apparently Kreon and Jax’s father have some past history. Kreon didn’t go into detail but it’s obvious that Jax’s father hates him and almost didn’t come to his son’s wedding because he knew Kreon would be here.’ Iola rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t let it spoil your day.’
‘I shan’t,’ Lucy responded, stroking Bella’s curls distractedly while thinking that family relations promised to be taxing with their fathers at odds.
With Iola by her side, Lucy welcomed guests and chatted until she saw Heracles and Kreon emerge again together with drinks in their hands and actually speaking to each other. But when Jax strode back to join her, raw tension was still stamped on his lean, darkly handsome features.
‘Evidently you’re quite successful in the peacemaker stakes,’ Lucy remarked as he steered her into the function room to take their seats, mercifully moving her right before she had to greet Kat Valtinos, who looked ravishing in a cutaway emerald dress teamed with feathers in her hair.
‘No, they achieved that without any help from me. I only stayed to ensure that hostilities didn’t break out again,’ Jax admitted. ‘You still haven’t met my father and I need to explain what happened out there.’
‘Don’t break the habit of a lifetime and tell me something,’ Lucy urged with helpless sarcasm.
‘It’s not something I want to talk about but I must,’ Jax breathed stiffly. ‘However, it’s old history and nothing to do with us. No doubt you’re wondering why my father went for yours...’
‘Kreon does seem to be an acquired taste with some people.’
‘This is not a teasing matter,’ Jax censured.
As she settled down beside him at the top table Lucy was watching Heracles Antonakos make their daughter’s acquaintance. Bella was fearless and she stared up at the older man and handed him her stuffed rabbit. Heracles’s craggy face broke into a sudden unexpected smile and he sat down with Iola by his side and accepted the rabbit to make it walk across the seat beside him. Bella started to giggle and clutched at the leg of his trousers to stay upright.
‘He likes Bella,’ Lucy noted with satisfaction, willing to overlook and forgive a great deal if her daughter was accepted and appreciated.
‘He loves children.’ Jax fell broodingly silent and she glanced curiously at his lean, taut profile, helplessly admiring the classic perfection of it. ‘My father discovered after my brother, Argo, died that he could not have been his child. Argo needed a transfusion after the attack and I suspect it was discovered in the minutes before he died that he did not share my father’s or my rare blood group.’
Lucy’s eyes widened because she was completely disconcerted by that bombshell. ‘My goodness, Heracles must have been devastated to find that out—’
‘Particularly as he idolised his first wife and despised my mother...and me...for my mother’s infidelity. When he found out that he hadn’t fathered Argo he immediately suspected your father because of the close friendship Kreon had had with Sofia.’
Lucy winced. ‘I honestly don’t think it was that sort of friendship.’
‘It wasn’t. Kreon saw Sofia as a little sister. His mother, your grandmother on Kreon’s side, was Sofia’s nanny and as children Kreon and Sofia spent a lot of time together,’ Jax told her. ‘Unfortunately having married Sofia my father distrusted their friendship and became jealous.’
‘In other words, your father is an old dinosaur who can’t credit that a man and a woman can have a platonic friendship,’ Lucy commented, still watching Heracles as he lifted Bella onto his knee with careful hands.
‘I wouldn’t appreciate my wife being that friendly with another man either,’ Jax admitted.
‘Sadly I don’t currently have any close male friends to torment you with.’ Lucy sighed with unhidden regret on that score.
‘You’re a little witch,’ Jax growled, running his forefinger along the lush line of her full lower lip. ‘Why does that make me want to kiss you again?’
‘You love a challenge?’ Lucy whispered unevenly, meeting those stunning green eyes in a head-on clash and feeling more than a little dizzy with excitement, her lips parting.
‘But I don’t enjoy an audience,’ Jax countered, running a finger back and forth across the delicate bones of her wrist below the level of the table.
Lucy was breathing in rapid shallow little gusts, insanely conscious of her body responding to him on every level. She could feel her breasts full and constricted within the bodice of her dress, her distended nipples pushing hard against the scratchy lace of her bra and then there was the tight locked-down tension and heat between her thighs, not to mention the dulled little throb there that made her ache and stiffen her posture.
‘It’s showtime—but not for what we want,’ Jax murmured drily as Iola took a seat beside him and Heracles settled down beside Lucy with Bella still on his knee.
‘She’s very cute,’ Heracles said of her daughter. ‘She knows what she wants.’
‘Mum... Mum,’ Bella framed, lurching straight off Jax’s father into her mother’s arms and flopping down sleepily.
‘She needs a nap,’ Lucy sighed.
‘Where’s the nanny I hired for the day?’ Jax asked.
The older woman was already approaching Lucy, ready to take the tired toddler off her hands, but Lucy stood up. ‘I’ll come upstairs with you and get her settled.’
‘Your bride doesn’t take hints, does she?’ Heracles remarked with some amusement to his son. ‘You’ll have your hands full with the two of them.’
Jax, who very much wanted to follow his bride upstairs and have her settle him down, grimaced. ‘I know it.’
‘Well, you can’t make worse choices than I did. I won’t say anything more,’ his father declared piously. ‘With my track record, I can’t afford to preach, can I?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘Three marriages ending in one death and two divorces and your mother was almost as bad. We didn’t set you much of an example, did we?’ Heracles sighed heavily. ‘By the way, I’ve set up the island for your honeymoon—’
Thoroughly taken aback, Jax frowned. ‘But you live on Tifnos,’ Jax objected, because he had been planning to take Lucy cruising round the Mediterranean on the yacht.
‘Tifnos is yours now that you’re a father. It was built to be a family home and I’m tired of living there alone in that great barn of a house. I’ve signed it over to you and I’m in the process of buying an estate outside Athens,’ the older man told him in a tone of finality. ‘It’s time for me to step back and make room for the next generation.’
