Michelle Reid - Greek Affairs - To Take a Bride - The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

She hadn’t. Andreas had, in his arrogant, pushy, dominant role. He had orchestrated her every thought and feeling and action and she had just let him have his way because.

There it was again, she thought on a sigh as she stepped beneath the shower spray, the because was still playing games with her head. Only, three days on from the first time she’d stuck on the word, she now had the answer.

She loved him —still loved him, and if it had not gone away before now then it was never, ever going to go away, was it? He was so much in her blood he was like a virus, unshakeable and tenacious.

And today the ferry came back.

Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped a towel around her then just sank onto the edge of the bath.

Decision time.

Did she catch the ferry and leave here or did she stay? With him.

On the wild off-chance and flimsy excuse that she might be carrying his child again?

Heaving in a deep breath, she let it back out because that excuse no longer had anything to do with what the two of them had been doing here. They hadn’t even discussed the subject of babies again, and Andreas had been very careful to protect her since that first crazy loss of control. In fact they had not discussed anything. He had not asked about her life in London. He had dropped the subject of Max. And their parents were never mentioned. He went quiet sometimes, distant, usually when he returned from the other villa and seemed to struggle to slip out of his businessman role. He even looked different then, distant and cool, as if he’d pulled on a hard outer casing she was not able to penetrate.

The tough tycoon playing the tough tycoon, she likened with a smile.

Then right out of nowhere he would just crash through that outer casing, gather her up and take her to bed, or if he found her lazing on the beach he would strip off, catch hold of her and stride with her into the sea in playful mood—then take her to bed.

The two faces of Andreas Markonos, she mused. The tough and the playful—both were too deliciously charismatic for her peace of mind.

None of which helped her to look beyond the moment when the ferry sailed back in. Getting up, she walked into the bedroom, only to pull to another stop when she saw her bags standing there still lined up against the wall, saying more about the temporary nature of what she was doing here than anything else did.

What happened when she picked up those bags to leave here?

An image of Andreas striding off in one direction while she walked off in the other sent a cold little shiver chasing down her spine. She huddled into the towel. Her life was in England. Andreas’s was in Greece. She was no longer the young girl she had used to be, willing to play the placid little wife while he shot off to do the important bread-winning stuff. She had a life, a job she loved and a sense of her own value that had come to mean a lot.

Frowning, she chose fresh clothes out of her now depleted selection, dressed and dried her hair. She’d just stepped into the kitchen when the sound of a jet-ski had her glancing outside to witness the flourishing way her brother guided the craft up the shingle beach.

Looking tall and tanned and rakishly sea-sprayed, he strode up to the house. ‘Hi,’ he said as he stepped into the kitchen, then sent a quick look around. ‘Where’s Andreas?'

‘Using the office at the other house,’ she answered casually.

‘Good. That makes it easier because he turns to stone when I mention your boss.'

‘You had no right to bring Max up at all,’ Louisa said crossly.

‘I know, but at the time I enjoyed watching him suffer.’ Jamie grinned, unrepentant. ‘Anyway, Max is why I’m here. He rang the hotel this morning looking for you. He was not pleased when I said where you were.’ Digging his hand into the pocket of his shorts, he pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to her. ‘He wants you to ring him pronto, something urgent.'

Looking down at the note, Louisa unfolded it. ‘Switch your damn mobile on!’ Jamie had scored with a flamboyant mimic of how Max must have relayed the message to him. ‘I have to speak to you—now!'

‘But he knows I switch off my phone when I come here.’ She frowned.

Jamie just shrugged. ‘He sounded very pushy.’

Still frowning, Louisa turned and walked back through the house to the bedroom, wondering what crisis could have erupted at work to put Max in such a bad mood? It wasn’t like him, Max thrived on crises. In the four years she’d worked for him he had never attempted to intrude on her vacations with hot little missives like this.

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