Kandy Shepherd - Stranded With Her Greek Tycoon

Right now she had to be honest with herself—she needed to fight that physical attraction so she could free herself from him and move on. Sitting so close to him at the table for lunch, she was preternaturally aware of him—every nuance in his expression, every shift in his body. He had once been her world.

It wasn’t just his extraordinary good looks that were so compelling. It was also his effortless personal charisma. Switching between Greek and English, he had the entire table laughing at his story about a fishing expedition gone wrong. Yet when he turned to her, to translate a Greek phrase, his green eyes bright with laughter, it was as if she were the only person in the room who was of any importance to him. Once she had believed that to be true—before she’d had to share him with the rest of the world.

She forced a smile in response. He would know she was faking it but she hoped the others wouldn’t. This was Dell and Alex’s day and not to be marred by any antagonism between her and Cristos.

After the main course had been served, the guests on either side of both her and Cristos excused themselves from the table; those opposite were engrossed in conversation. Cristos picked up her left hand. ‘You still wear your wedding and engagement rings,’ he said in a low voice meant only for her.

‘Just to transport them safely back to you,’ she said. ‘They’re safer on my finger than in my handbag. I’ll give them back to you when we say goodbye.’

His face tightened, all traces of his earlier good humour extinguished. He released her hand. ‘There is no need for that. The rings are yours.’

‘What use are they to me?’ she said. ‘I’ll never wear them again. And I don’t want to be reminded of our marriage. I want to put all that behind me.’ She had been in the nebulous state of being separated for too long. Not a wife, yet not single either.

He swore in Greek under his breath. Hurt? Pain? Anger? It certainly didn’t sound like relief. She had agreed with Cristos not to disrupt the wedding renewal celebration. Now that she’d got to know Dell and Alex a little better she was glad she had stayed. But at what cost to her? And perhaps also to Cristos? She should never have come here.

‘Did you wear your rings in Australia?’ he asked abruptly.

She glanced down at the simple sapphire and diamond cluster set in white gold, the matching plain band. The stones in the engagement ring were tiny. When they’d got engaged Cristos couldn’t afford anything more than a ring from a chain of high-street jewellers. But she’d thought it was beautiful and Cristos had declared the stone was nowhere nearly as beautiful as the colour of her eyes. Later, when the money from his new career had started to flow, he’d wanted to buy her a more expensive ring but she’d refused. She’d cherished that ring. It had symbolised everything good about their love. If he wouldn’t take it back she would give it away.

‘No. I didn’t wear my rings in Sydney. And I didn’t go by my married name either. I used my maiden name, Hayley Clements. It was easier than explaining a Greek surname when I so obviously didn’t look Greek.’

Cristos slammed his right hand, where he wore his simple gold wedding band in the Greek tradition, on the table. ‘I have never taken mine off,’ he said.

Hayley swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. ‘You took it off many times for your modelling shoots.’

‘I was playing a role when I was working. Most often that role was not of a married man. I could not be seen to be wearing a wedding ring.’

‘I understood that. Of course I did. But then you started to leave it off all the time.’

‘You know why,’ he said, tight-lipped. He shifted in his seat. This wedding-ring thing had become an issue in their short marriage. One that had festered with her in their time apart.

‘Because it was seen as a disadvantage to your career to be married. A wife was a hindrance. “It would be better for your fans—both female and male—if you were seen to be single.” Don’t you remember your agent saying that?’ She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She’d been determined not to speak of their mutual past. No recriminations. No blame. Just a clean cut.

He frowned. ‘Of course I remember. We discussed it at the time—over and over. Then we agreed to take my agent’s advice. We needed the money too much to argue with him.’

She looked down at the table. Smoothed a barely visible crease in the white tablecloth. When she’d got engaged to Cristos her parents had cut off her allowance, stopped the rent on her accommodation. They’d both been students. To get extra money, he’d tutored kids studying Greek, she’d taught dancing. Neither pursuit had been lucrative. They’d struggled.

‘The idea was that we would still be together but not acknowledged as husband and wife,’ she said. That still stung—though it had made sense at the time and she’d gone into it with eyes well and truly open. ‘A girlfriend was acceptable. She was dispensable. That gave your fans hope that one day in their fantasies they might win you. The presence of a real-life wife ruined the fantasy.’

‘That’s how it was supposed to work,’ he said. ‘We both agreed I would take my wedding band off when I was in public. Then put it back on in private when I came home to you.’

Hayley couldn’t keep the sadness from her voice as she looked back up at him. ‘Until there were more and more times when you didn’t come home. When you were on shoots all over Europe. Then exotic, far-flung places like Morocco and Africa.’

‘Those jobs were the most lucrative,’ he said, his jaw set. ‘And the conditions weren’t as glamorous as they looked. You didn’t complain about the income they generated. I only did it for the money.’

Perhaps. But she would see the results of those shoots plastered all over billboards and in glossy magazines. More often than not they would feature Cristos, his body toned and buffed to perfection, wearing nothing more than swim-briefs or even underpants, with a gorgeous female model with next to nothing on draped all over him. She doubted even the most secure of wives wouldn’t help but feel threatened. And a wife who had to keep her presence hidden, who didn’t live up to the glamorous standards set by his new world, had found it difficult to deal with.

‘You know I asked could you come with me,’ he said. ‘Repeatedly. It just wasn’t done.’

The conversation was heading into territory Hayley had no wish to revisit. She picked up the little marble dish containing organic salt crystals from her place setting then put it down again. ‘I know you tried to include me. And I appreciated it.’

On one stomach-churning occasion she had overheard his agent’s reply when Cristos had asked could his beautiful wife perhaps join his agency as a model too. The agent had replied very quickly that it wasn’t a good idea. ‘She’s pretty enough. But she’s too short and too wide in the hips.’

His words had been so brutally dismissive. Even the word pretty had sounded like an insult. Was it then that she’d begun to believe that her husband’s new world would not have room for her?

* * *

Cristos realised there were several ways Hayley looked different from when they’d been husband and wife. The short hair for one. But it was in her eyes he saw a shadow of sadness that wrenched at him.

‘You’re thinking about that comment my agent made, aren’t you?’

Back then he had been furious at the insult to his wife and had wanted to walk out. He had cursed. He had fisted his hands by his sides to stop himself from punching the agent out.

But Hayley had swallowed the insult, had placated him and talked him into staying—for the sake of the money modelling had brought them. ‘It’s such an opportunity for us. How many people our age get that chance?’ she’d said. Her strategy had been to put everything they saved into the bank to give them a better start than many young couples starting off life together. He’d preferred a riskier, higher-yielding investment option—but he hadn’t told her that. Not then. Not ever.