LYNNE GRAHAM: The Heiress Bride

His apology surprised her but she immediately sensed that he wanted to know more about Yannis, was indeed expecting and inviting her to respond with further details. Angry defiance stirred in her and only with the greatest difficulty did she resist the temptation to ask if he wanted to tell her about his lost love. Instead she simply nodded agreement in silence.

Even though she had thwarted him, grudging admiration assailed Alexio. His wide, sensual mouth slashed into a wolfish smile of acknowledgement that exuded such innate masculine power over her that she found herself smiling dizzily back at him without even thinking about it.

‘I brought you this…’ He drew a ring from the pocket of his beautifully tailored jacket. ‘It’s the Christoulakis betrothal ring, but if you don’t like it it’s not a problem. You can choose your own ring if you prefer to do so. I will admit upfront that my own mother considered it too old-fashioned for her taste.’

Attacked by sudden discomfiture, Ione studied the diamonds that glittered below the gallery lights. A family betrothal ring, an heirloom. A stab of guilt pierced her for, whatever she might think of his motives, he was on the level about their marriage and she was not. ‘It’s beautiful…’ she muttered and she made herself extend her hand in acceptance lest she betray herself.

Alexio reached for her hand and threaded the ring onto her wedding finger. ‘I may not love you but I will do everything in my power to be a good husband,’ he asserted.

In receipt of that little speech, Ione gritted her teeth together. Well, it was just as well that she had no intention of hanging around to test him out on that unlikely promise! Like any other woman, she deserved to be loved and she intended to be loved by someone one day. In the meantime, she would be playing the field with loads of different boyfriends. Well, if she could get one to start with, she conceded, climbing down from her mental soapbox to allow that until she had tested herself out on the dating scene she had no idea how much man appeal she might possess.

Although a boyfriend who kissed as Alexio did would be a very good start, she acknowledged. Without a doubt, his sexual expertise had roused her own much too enthusiastic response. However, seeking to deny him that small intimacy would have been a major mistake on all fronts. And it had only been her hormones that had got carried away, she told herself in consolation. Since she had been deprived of almost all the natural learning experiences that she should have had with men, she might even qualify as being sex-starved. So, why should she be ashamed of the wild excitement she had felt beneath that hard, hungry mouth of his? There had really been nothing at all personal in her response to him.

‘Ione…’ Alexio began, studying the smooth perfection of her shuttered face and yet far-away gaze and endeavouring to fathom what had stolen her attention from him yet again.

‘Alexio…how are you? Ione should have brought you to me immediately,’ a coy female voice shrilled from the entrance to the gallery.

Sprung from her introspection by the sight of Kalliope heading for Alexio with a delighted smile on her thin face, Ione breathed in deep. She need have no further concern as to how to occupy Alexio, for her aunt, who adored young, handsome men, was more than equal to the task. And over the following hour, while he endured Kalliope’s voluble enquiries about every single member of his family near and far, Alexio demonstrated the most perfect manners, patience and courtesy.

‘You don’t deserve a husband from a good family.’ Kalliope shot her niece a look of angry resentment as the two women walked back to their own wing of the villa to change for dinner. ‘If Alexio Christoulakis knew the truth about your background, nothing would persuade him to marry a girl from the gutter!’

For once, in receipt of her aunt’s venom, Ione felt only a weary compassion. Her mother had once told her that, twenty years earlier, Kalliope had fallen in love with one of her brother’s executives, but Minos Gakis had reacted in fury and had refused his permission for them to marry. Kalliope had dutifully accepted his decision and now she was in her fifties, still unmarried and bitter over the lot life had dealt her.

But at least her aunt still had her life, Ione reasoned with a superstitious shiver as she selected another dull dark dress from her wardrobe. Cosmas had not been so fortunate. The night that her brother had crashed his plane, he had been under enormous stress and his resulting lack of concentration had killed him. If anything, Cosmas had been even more afraid of their father than she was.

Cosmas had had the Gakis head for business laced with their mother’s sensitivity. Her eyes stinging as she thought about the big brother she still missed a great deal, Ione promised herself that, no matter what it took and regardless of what deception might be involved, she would do what Cosmas had been too scared to do: she would break free, she would escape before her self-will was crushed as his had been.

The first course of the lavish dinner had been served when Minos Gakis announced that the wedding would have to take place within two weeks as business commitments would keep him out of the country during the following month. Ione’s startled gaze shot to Alexio, who seemed to be absorbing the news with a lot less surprise than she was. His lean, strong face was not even tense. Indeed, he shot her a long, lingering glance from heavily lidded dark golden eyes that burned hot colour into her cheeks and made her hurriedly look away.

‘The ceremony will, of course, take place here on the island,’ Minos decreed and he turned to study Alexio with a half-smile. ‘I see no reason why you and Ione should not then take up residence here.’

Shock powered through Ione and her fork fell from her nerveless fingers with a clatter.

‘In her own home, my daughter would have the company of her aunt while you are abroad and she would also enjoy the continued security of a full protection team.’

‘No…no!’ Ione gasped in horror, driven into defiance by the stricken conviction that such an arrangement could only have been planned from the outset.

Even as her dismayed aunt dug warning nails into her thigh below the table, Ione’s red-faced father was flying out of his chair like a jet-propelled steamroller and raising a punishing fist as he roared down at his daughter in a rage, ‘What did you say to me?’

Mutely awaiting the blow about to descend and white as milk, Ione jerked as the crash of a chair falling backward sounded from the other side of the table.

‘If you lay one finger on her, I swear I’ll kill you!’ Alexio thundered with a raw aggression more than equal to his host’s.

A silence beyond any silence that had ever fallen in the Gakis household fell at that point. Nobody had ever challenged Minos Gakis like that. Sheer disbelief had paralysed the older man’s heavy features as he slowly turned his big greying head to focus on his challenger. Ione wanted to throw herself across the table and stuff the tablecloth in Alexio’s big, stupid macho mouth before he got himself beaten up. What madness had come over him? Where were his much-vaunted brains when he most needed them? Her father had said that he needed Alexio but her father would still throw him off the island and destroy him sooner than swallow such an insult.

Minos surveyed the younger man with outraged dark eyes and hissed. ‘So you think she’s your property now…eh?’

‘Yes.’ His lean, powerful face rigid, the surge of pure black rage that had powered Alexio was still in the ascendant.

With an abruptness that made his female relatives flinch, Minos Gakis threw back his head and laughed with a derisive appreciation that curdled Ione’s quivering tummy. She would call the police. No matter what it cost her, if he let his henchmen hurt Alexio, she knew that this time she would call the police and inform on her own father.