Margaret Barker - Greek Doctor Claims His Bride

‘It’s such a relief that we got here in time,’ Manolis said, taking her hand again in what seemed to have become a natural instinct. ‘It could have been otherwise.’

In the moonlight she could see his eyes shining with happiness as he looked down at her. ‘We could be such a good team you and I—I’m talking professionally, you understand,’ he added quickly. ‘It felt so right working together just now. We seemed to sense that…’

‘Yes, I felt the rapport between us was…natural,’ she said quietly.

He lowered his head and kissed her gently on the mouth.

Oh, those lips—those sexy, wonderful lips. She’d never thought she would ever feel them on hers again. She’d cried with frustration when she’d realised how much she wanted him, and he was never coming back.

But here he was.

Margaret Barkerhas enjoyed a variety of interesting careers. A State Registered Nurse and qualified teacher, she holds a degree in French and Linguistics, and is a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music. As a full-time writer, Margaret says, ‘Writing is my most interesting career, because it fits perfectly into family life. Sadly, my husband died of cancer in 2006, but I still live in our idyllic sixteenth-century house near the East Anglian coast. Our grown-up children have flown the nest, but they often fly back again, bringing their own young families with them for wonderful weekend and holiday reunions.’

Greek Doctor Claims His Bride

Margaret Barker

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

TANYA hurled the mop with the spider still clinging to it straight out of the window. It was a trick she’d learned from her grandmother when she had been very small and absolutely petrified of the giant spiders that had scurried along the floor of her bedroom.

“Just pick up a mop, dangle it over the spider and it will cling on, thinking it’s found a friend,” Grandmother Katerina had told her all those years ago, and it was still a good solution.

“Ouch!”

The sound of a deep masculine voice muttering a few choice Greek expletives rose up from the courtyard below her window. Tanya leaned out so that she could see the swarthy man beneath her and for a brief moment she thought she might be dreaming. It couldn’t be…no, the low evening sunshine was playing tricks with her eyes…Manolis Stangos was in London, not here on the island…wasn’t he?

“Tanya?”

“Manolis?”

“For a moment I thought you were Grandmother Katerina moving back into her old house.”

He was speaking rapidly in Greek as if to a stranger, none of the smooth, silky tones he’d used when they had been together all those years ago. Tanya ran a hand over her long auburn hair. She was sure her afternoon cleaning session had done nothing to help her jet-lagged appearance. A cobweb was still clinging to her hand but thankfully the large scary spider was now scuttling away across the courtyard.

“Thanks very much! I know it’s a long time since you saw me but I can’t have aged all that much. Anyway…” Tanya swallowed hard as she rubbed a dusty hand over her moist eyes “…Grandmother—Katerina—died a few months ago…”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you were the last person I expected to see here.”

His voice was softer now. Tanya took a deep breath as she tried to remain calm. This unexpected encounter was playing havoc with her emotions.

“Considering it’s now my house, I feel I’ve every right to be here.”

“I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you. Aren’t you going to come down and check if you’ve fractured my skull with that mop, Dr Tanya?”

He smiled, and she could see the flash of his strong white teeth in his dark, rugged face.

“News filtered through to me in London that you’d qualified. I always knew you would in spite of…in spite of everything that might have stopped you.”

She looked down at Manolis and found herself relaxing.

“I’ll come down and check you out, although you could surely do that yourself, Dr Manolis,” she said as she turned away from the window, taking her time to negotiate the narrow wooden staircase.

By the time she’d reached the tiny, low-beamed kitchen, Manolis had come in through the open door. Nobody ever closed their doors on this idyllic island of Ceres where she’d been born. Doors were closed when you went out. That was to make sure a stray goat or donkey didn’t wander in and help itself to the food in the larder, but the key to the house was always left in the lock on the outside so that friends and neighbours would be able to get in if they needed to.

Meeting up with Manolis again after six long years had almost taken her breath away. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. Eight years older than her, he must be…what? Quick mathematical moment…thirty-six, because she was twenty-eight.

She remembered them celebrating her twenty-second birthday together. She’d just told him she was pregnant. She remembered how shocked he’d looked, how confused she’d felt.

“OK, are you going to check whether you’ve cracked my skull?”

“Sit down, Manolis. You’re too tall for me to check it when you’re towering above me, and you make me nervous.”

“Nervous?” Manolis laughed. “When were you ever nervous of me?”

He pulled a chair out from under the check-clothed table and sank down, spreading his long legs out in front of him. She remembered that as a child when the impossibly tall Manolis had come into her grandmother’s tiny kitchen he’d seemed to fill the whole room. She’d tried so hard to get his attention in those far-off days but he’d barely seemed to notice her.

“Keep still, will you?”

Her fingers were actually trembling as she smoothed back the thick black hair that framed his dark, rugged face. How many times had she run her fingers through his hair? And yet her reaction had always been the same. That sexy frisson she got from simply touching him. It travelled all the way down through her body and before she knew it her legs were turning into jelly, and as for her insides—well, that was almost impossible to cope with at such close quarters.

She sat down quickly on a chair. Her eyes were almost level with his.

“I can’t see anything wrong with your forehead. Not a mark on it. You’re just making a fuss about nothing.”

If she continued using her bantering tone she could cover up the fact that she was so deeply moved she wanted to give in to her impossible desire. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She wished she could turn the clock back to the time when they’d been so deliriously happy, so madly in love.

Manolis stirred on the small hard chair, unable to believe that he was so close to Tanya again. He had to clench his hands to stop himself reaching out and pulling her into his arms. Desire was rising up inside him, that familiar stirring in his loins that wouldn’t cease until they’d made love again. But that would never happen. He’d known when she’d turned down his proposal of marriage for the second time that he would never try again. She was lost to him for ever and they couldn’t go back.

“I think you’ll live,” Tanya said as she resisted the temptation to place her lips on his forehead in the pretence that she was kissing it better.

For a moment she wondered how he would react if she gave in to temptation. She could try…but he had a hard look on his face now. The moment had passed.