Anne McAllister - The Santorini Bride

“Keep reading,” Theo Savas advised.

“What’s your father got to do with our company?” she demanded, still reading, the words on the page swirling before her eyes.

“Your father sold him forty percent of it.”

Martha’s head jerked up. She opened her mouth to deny it, to insist that her father would do no such thing!

But the unfortunate truth was, her father might have.

In some horrible misguided effort to help Elias and to prove to his son that he wasn’t a complete disaster as a businessman, Aeolus Antonides might actually have done something as idiotic as that.

Now Martha’s jaw clenched and her fingers tightened on the paper so tightly that they were trembling.

“He lost the golf game,” she said through her teeth. It wasn’t a question. It was right there in black and white.

Theo Savas merely inclined his head. And waited.

Martha, feeling a muscle in her temple tick with tension, turned her attention back to the paper in her hand. The second part of the document was even odder. As if the golf game weren’t enough, this part had to do with a sailboat race—her father’s beloved Argo against Socrates Savas’s Penelope—and stipulated that the winner of said race got possession of the other’s island home.

“I won,” her dark-haired nemesis said unnecessarily.

Martha couldn’t breathe. She stood there, stunned and disbelieving. How could her father have bet their generations-old family home against some weekend cottage on a Maine island?

Furious, she thrust the paper back at the man smiling his smug superior smile at her. “It’s absurd!”

“Pretty much,” the annoying Theo Savas agreed. “But it’s legal. I won the race, therefore I won the house. So I think, Ms. Antonides,” he added pointedly, “that it’s you who needs to leave.”

Martha digested that. Considered it. And reached a conclusion. She hadn’t spent her last dime and traveled halfway around the world to get away from one pompous, idiotic male only to let another one push her around now.

She looked Theo Savas straight in the eye. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” He sounded as if no one had ever said the word to him in his entire life.

Well, it was time someone did.

Martha shrugged with all the indifference she could muster. “Which letter didn’t you understand? N? O? It’s a big house, Mr. Savas. I won’t bother you. Forget I’m here. I have every intention of forgetting you are!” So saying, she picked up her duffel bag, stepped neatly around him, then headed up the stairs.

“Wait a damn minute!” Footsteps pounded after her. He grabbed at her arm, but Martha twisted out of his grasp and kept right on going.

“You can’t stay here!”

“Of course I can.”

“I don’t want company,” he informed her, dogging her heels.

“Tough.” She reached the room that she had always shared with her sister, Cristina, pushed open the door, then turned to face him defiantly. “What are you going to do? Throw me out?”

The house might not belong to her family anymore, but it was her furniture in the bedroom, her childhood books on the shelves. She lifted her chin and dared him to lay a hand on her.

His fingers ball into fists. A muscle pulsed in his jaw and she could swear she heard his teeth grinding. But he didn’t touch her, just glared.

Martha glared back.

“Look,” he said after a moment, “there are tons of hotel rooms.”

“Can’t afford one.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“No way. I’m not having everyone on Santorini think I’m your kept woman.”

It was one thing to make up her mind to sleep with Julian. Idiot that she was, she’d believed she loved him. It was something else entirely to let a man pay for her room on the island. That might be fine for those who came on week-long holidays and then went home never to reappear. But she was enough of a local that she would scandalize all the gossipy old women.

“And they wouldn’t think that if you stayed here with me?” He arched a brow.

“Of course not. This is my house—was my house,” she corrected bitterly.

Theo Savas shrugged. “So, fine. Call your father, then. He can pay for a hotel room.”

“No!”

None of the family knew where she was—and Martha was determined to keep it that way. The last thing she wanted was to announce her humiliation to her parents and siblings.

“Suit yourself. But you’d better come up with an idea, sweetheart, because I don’t want you here.”

“But—”

“No.” He was adamant. “I’ve had it. No women. I’m sick to death of them.”

Martha blinked. “So you…prefer men?” Pity, actually, because from a “populating the earth” perspective, Theo Savas had gorgeous genes, definitely worth passing on.

“I do not prefer men!” Theo snapped, then scowled furiously and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m just sick to death of being badgered, of women turning up at all hours.”

Martha gave him another once-over and lied with dripping scorn, “Well, you’re not that gorgeous.”

He grimaced. “Never said I was. It was that damn magazine—all that drivel about ‘world’s sexiest this and world’s sexiest that!’”

Martha laughed in disbelief. “Oh? And you’re what? World’s sexiest pirate? Curmudgeon?” That she could believe.

“Sailor,” he muttered, making her brows arch in surprise. He shrugged irritably. “It’s crap. All of it. But tell that to all those stupid females who read it and think they’re the woman of your dreams!”

Martha grinned at his hunted look.

“So I damned sure don’t want some silly gooey-eyed teenager hanging around,” he said, effectively wiping the grin off her face.

“Gooey-eyed teenager?” Martha was outraged. “I’m twenty-four!”

“Wow.” Theo was clearly underwhelmed. “Like I said, a baby.”

Martha bristled, sick and tired of being dismissed as young. Everyone in her family, except Lukas, was always telling her she was too young, that she needed someone to look out for her.

“Trust me, Methuselah, I wouldn’t look at you if you were the last man on earth. Make that the second last,” she muttered grimly under her breath.

Theo obviously heard her. His brow lifted. His mouth quirked. “Ah, like that is it?”

Martha scowled. “Like what?”

“You’re running away from a man.”

“I am not running away from anyone!” she retorted hotly. “I just…needed a break. A vacation. I finished a job and I wanted a little R&R.” It was the truth, just not all of it. “Look,” she said wearily, “as much as I would love to stand here and chat with you, I’m really bushed. I don’t sleep well on planes and I’ve been up for over thirty-six hours. I need some sleep.”

And without waiting for his approval—in fact, half expecting him to grab her by the arm and haul her downstairs—Martha turned her back on him and headed for her bed, falling into its welcome softness and breathing deeply in relief.

Behind her there was silence.

And more silence.

And then finally Theo said, “Okay. You can sleep it off. Take a nap. I’m going out for a sail. But I’ll be back tonight, kiddo,” he warned. “And when I get here, you’d better be gone.”

Theo muttered as he left the house. He muttered all the way down the hill and in the dinghy as he rowed out to his sailboat. He’d just begun to breathe easier in the last few days, relieved that no one on Santorini seemed to know about that damned article. Women still flirted with him, which was fine. But these at least hadn’t been peering in his windows and rubbing up against him in bars.

He’d started to think he’d get his life back.

And now this!