Lynne Graham - The Cozakis Bride

Olympia walked stiff-backed to the door and then decided to make one last attempt to be heard. ‘My mother’s health is failing—’

Spyros growled something at her in outraged Greek, his refusal to listen instantaneous.

Olympia spun back, sea-jade eyes flashing like gems. ‘If she dies poor and miserable, as she is now, I hope your conscience haunts you to the grave and beyond, because that’s what you’ll deserve!’

For a second, Spyros Manoulis stared at her with expressionless dark eyes. Then he swung away, his broad back stiff as an iron bar.

Leaving her grandfather’s suite, Olympia got into the lift before she slumped. Minutes later, having got herself back under control, she crossed the busy hotel foyer back out into the open air. Maybe she should run really insane and kidnap Nik Cozakis, she thought with enormous bitterness. If she’d had the money she could have hired hitmen to snatch him out of his stretch limo. And she could have personally starved and tortured Nik in some dark, dank cellar with a completely clear conscience. After all, she hated him. She really, really hated him.

Although already wealthy beyond avarice, greed had led Nik at the age of nineteen into getting engaged to a plain, overweight girl who’d had no attraction for him but her value as the promised Manoulis heiress. Nik Cozakis had broken her heart, dragged her pride in the dirt and ultimately ensured that there was no prospect of Spyros ever forgiving either her or her mother.

But then maybe her mother had been born under an unlucky star, Olympia conceded, wincing at the hardness of the pavement beneath shoe soles worn thin as paper with overuse. For the first twenty-one years of her life Irini had been cocooned in a world of wealth and privilege. Then she had made the fatal mistake of falling in love with an Englishman. Meeting with heavy paternal opposition, Irini had fled to London to be with her boyfriend. But the day before their wedding was to take place Olympia’s father had crashed his motorbike and died.

Shortly afterwards, Irini had discovered that she was pregnant. From that point on there had been no turning back: she was expecting a child and she was unmarried. Her only talent a willingness to take any manual work available, Irini had raised Olympia alone. Throughout her childhood, Olympia could only recall her mother with a wan, exhausted face, for Irini Manoulis had never been strong. And the reality was that all those years of taxing physical labour had wrecked what health she did have and weakened her heart.

Once Olympia had been old enough to get a job of her own, matters had improved. For a few years, Olympia recalled with painful regret, they had been happy in a tiny flat which had seemed like a palace to them both. Then, eighteen months ago, the firm where Olympia had worked as a receptionist had gone bankrupt. Since then she had only managed to get temporary employment, and even that had been thin on the ground in recent months. They had had to give up the flat, and the savings which Olympia had painstakingly built up were long since gone.

The council had rehoused them in a tough inner city estate. Her mother was so terrified of the aggressive youths there that she no longer dared to venture out. Olympia had been forced to watch the mother she adored decline before her eyes, growing ever more thin and weak, her brave smiles of cheer pathetic to witness. It was as if Irini Manoulis had given up on life itself.

She was dying, Olympia reflected sickly, dying inch by inch, always talking about the distant past now, because the unlovely present was too much for her weakened spirit to handle. A rundown apartment they couldn’t afford to heat, no telephone, no television, noisy, threatening neighbours and surroundings bereft of all beauty. Nothing, nothing whatsoever to look forward to with the smallest anticipation.

If only Olympia had had the benefit of a crystal ball ten years ago…if only! Would she have made the same decision as she had made then? A despairing laugh was dredged from Olympia. Guilt and all the regret her grandfather could ever had wished on her washed over her now. She would have been married to a billionaire! Long before her health had failed her mother would once again have enjoyed security and comfort. Now, with bitter, realistic hindsight, Olympia knew that had she had the benefit of a crystal ball at the age of seventeen she would have married a monster for her mother’s sake!

So what if Nik had been snogging the face off a gorgeous Italian model not ten feet from her?

So what if Nik had confided in his second cousin, Katerina, that Olympia was, ‘Fat and stupid and sexless, but literally worth her weight in gold!’?

So what if he would have been continually unfaithful throughout their marriage and a total arrogant, loathsome pig to live with?

So what if he had said to her face, without scruple, conscience or decency, the morning after that dreadful night, ‘You’re a slapper! And I, Nik Cozakis, refuse to marry another man’s leavings!’?

Gripped by those painfully degrading recollections, Olympia hovered by a shop window. She knew that right now Nik was sure to be over in London for the same reason as her grandfather was. It had featured in the newspapers: a meeting of powerful Greek tycoons with shared interests in British business. And, unlike Spyros Manoulis, Nik had a massive office headquarters in the City of London, where he very likely was this very minute…

What did she have to lose? He was still single. And Spyros Manoulis never joked about money. Spyros would happily pay millions and millions of pounds to marry her off to Nik Cozakis. Personalities didn’t come into it: primarily it would be the linking of two enormous business empires. And with that size of a dowry still available, even a plain Jane slapper ought to have the gumption to put a late offer on the table! Was she crazy? No, she owed a huge debt to her mother. Irini Manoulis had sacrificed so much to bring her into the world and raise her to adulthood. What had she ever given back?

Olympia squinted at her reflection in the shop window. A dark-haired woman of five foot five inches, clad in a grey skirt and jacket shabby with age. Even on a restricted diet she was never going to be thin. Her shape was lush—horribly, embarrassingly lush. She must have inherited such generous curves from her father’s side, because her mother was slim and slight. Well, she was worth her weight in gold, she reminded herself bracingly. And if there was one thing Nik Cozakis reputedly excelled at, it was ruthlessly exploiting any proposition likely to enrich his already overflowing coffers…

Nik was planning a major deal.

All calls were on hold, with only the direst emergency excuse for an interruption of any kind. So when even the softest of knocks sounded hesitantly on the door of his office his dark head came up, well-defined black brows rising in exasperated enquiry. His British PA, Gerry, hurried to the door, where a whispered exchange took place.

Gerry moved back to his powerful employer’s side. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s a woman asking to see you urgently, sir.’

‘No interruptions, particularly not of the female variety,’ Nik cut in with harsh impatience.

‘She says she’s Spyros Manoulis’s granddaughter, Olympia. But the receptionist isn’t convinced of her identity. I gather the woman doesn’t look like someone you would be acquainted with, sir.’

Olympia Manoulis? Arrested into tangible stillness, Nik Cozakis frowned in silent disbelief. Olympia Manoulis. Rooted deep in his subconscious lurked a tender spot still raw with a rage that had yet to dim. How dared that whore enter his office block and have the effrontery to ask to see him? He plunged upright, startling his staff so much that everybody jumped, and one unfortunate dropped several files.