The Greek's Unwilling Bride (16 page)

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Authors: Sandra Marton

BOOK: The Greek's Unwilling Bride
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It was Damian, and he led not by command but by example.
She watched him as he took the boat through the narrow channel that led to the open sea. His dark, wind-tossed hair curled around his face. Sunlight glinted on the tiny stud in his ear and when the sun grew too hot, he pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it aside.
Laurel felt her breath catch. She'd blocked the memory of how he'd looked, naked, during the night they'd spent together. Now, she was confronted with his perfect masculinity. He was the elemental male, this stranger she'd married, strong, and powerful, and beautiful to see.
The breeze caught at her hair and whipped it free of the pins she'd carefully replaced during the drive from the airport. She put her hand up to catch the wild curls and suddenly Damian was there, beside her.
“Are you all right?”
Laurel nodded. He was so close to her that she could smell the sun and salt on his skin, and the musky aroma of his sweat. She imagined pressing her lips to his throat, tasting him with the tip of her tongue.
“Yes,” she said, “yes, I'm fine.”
His hand fell on her shoulder. “You'd tell me if you felt ill, wouldn't you?”
“Damian, really, I'm okay. The nausea is all gone, and you know that Dr. Glass man gave me a clean bill of health.”
“And the name of a physician on Crete,” he said, and smiled at Laurel's look of surprise. “I told her where I was taking you, and she approved.”
He wouldn't have taken her on this trip otherwise. Still, out here on the sea, with the wind blowing and the waves rising to slap against the hull, he was struck again by his bride's fine-boned delicacy.
“Go on,” she said, with a little smile that might almost have been real, “Sail your boat. I don't need watching.”
His lips curved in a smile. He bent his head and put his lips to her ear, and she shuddered as she felt the soft warmth of his breath.
“Ah,” he whispered, “you are wrong, my beautiful wife. Watching is exactly what you need, if a man is to feed his soul.”
She tilted her head back and looked at him and when she did, he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, bent his head and kissed her, hard, on the mouth.
“Leave your hair loose for me,” he said, and then he kissed her again before scrambling lithely back to the helm.
Laurel waited until her heartbeat steadied, then raised her head and found Damian looking at her. This was the way a flower must feel, she thought dazedly, as its tightly closed petals unfurl beneath the kiss of the sun.
His final words whispered through her head. Leave your hair loose, he'd said, just like the night they'd made love, just before he'd undressed her, with such slow, sweet care that her heart had almost stopped beating.
But that night was far behind them, and it had no meaning.
Her shoulders stiffened. Defiantly she raised her arms and began to pin up her hair again.
And then the wind gusted, and before she could prevent it, the pins sailed from her hand and disappeared into the sea.
CHAPTER NINE
T
HE ISLAND ROSE before them an hour later.
“Actos,” Damian said, coming up beside Laurel. She knew, from the way he said it that this was their destination.
She shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed over the narrowing strip of blue water that separated the
Circe
from a small, crescent-shaped harbor. No yachts bobbed at anchor here; the few boats moored were small, sturdy-looking fishing vessels. Square, whitewashed houses topped with red tile roofs stood clustered in the shadow of the sunbaked, rocky cliffs that rose behind them. Overhead, seabirds wheeled against the pale blue sky, their shrill cries echoing over the water.
All at once, Laurel thought of how she had wept last night, as she'd thought of the unknown days and years that lay ahead, and she shuddered.
Damian put his arm around her and drew her against his side.
“What is it? Are you ill?”
“No. No, I told you, I'm fine.”
He stepped in front of her, leaned back against the rail of the boat and drew her between his legs. His body felt hard and hot, and the faint male smell of his skin rose to her nostrils. Another tremor went through her. This man was her husband.
Her husband.
“You are ill! You're as white as a sheet.” His mouth twisted. “I should have realized. The motion of the boat...”
“Damian, really, I'm okay. It's just—too much sun, maybe.” She smiled brightly. “I'm used to the concrete canyons of New York, remember?”
“I wasn't thinking. We should have made this trip in two days instead of one.” The wind ruffled her hair and he caught a strand of it in his fingers. It felt silky, and warm, and he fought to keep from bringing it to his lips. “I should have considered your condition when I made these plans.”
His hand dropped to the curve of her shoulder and he stroked his thumb lightly against her neck. She had the sudden desire to close her eyes, lean into the gentle caress and give herself up to his touch.
The realization frightened her, and she gave herself up, instead, to a sharp response.
“You should have considered a lot of things, Damian, but you didn't, and here we are.”
His hand fell away from her. “Yes,” he said, “and here we are.”
* * *
When Laurel had come to Greece before, it had been to do a cover for
Femme.
They'd shot it on a tiny island that had stunned her with its natural beauty.
Actos was not such a place.
If the island was beautiful, she was hard-pressed to see it. A rusted Ford station wagon was waiting for them at the dock, its mustachioed driver as ancient and gnarled as an olive tree. He and Damian greeted each other quietly, though she noticed that when they clasped hands, the men looked deep into each other's eyes and smiled.
The old man turned to her and took off his cap. He smiled, bowed and said something to Damian.
“Spiro says he is happy to meet you.”
“Tell Spiro I am glad to meet him, too.”
“He says you are more lovely than Aphrodite, and that I am a very fortunate man to have won you.”
“Tell him Aphrodite's an overworked image but that I thank him anyway for being such a charming liar, and that you are not fortunate, you are a scheming tyrant who blackmailed me into marriage.”
Damian laughed. “That would not upset Spiro. He still remembers the old days, when every man was a king who could as easily take a woman as ask for her.”
The old man leaned toward Damian and said something. Both men chuckled.
Laurel looked from one to the other. “What did he say now?”
“He said that your eyes are cool.”
“It is more than my eyes that are cool, Damian. And I fail to see why that should make the two of you smile.”
“Because,” he said, his smile tilting, “Spiro tells me there is a saying in the village of his birth. A woman who is cold in the day fills the night with heat.”
A flush rose in her cheeks. “It's amazing, how wrong an old saying can be.”
“Is it, my sweet wife?”
“Absolutely, my unwanted husband.”
Spiro muttered again and Laurel rolled her eyes.
“I feel like the straight man in a comedy act,” she snapped. “Now what?”
Damian moved closer to her. “He thinks there is more than coolness in your eyes,” he said softly. “He says you do not look like a happy woman.”
“A clever man, this Spiro.”
“It is, he says, my responsibility to make you happy.”
“Did you tell him you could have done that by leaving me alone?”
Damian's slow smile was a warning, but it came too late. His fingers threaded in her hair and he bent his head and kissed her.
“Kissing me to impress the old man is pathetic,” Laurel said, when he drew back. She spoke calmly and told herself that the erratic beat of her pulse was the result of weariness, and the sun.
Damian kissed her again, as gently as he had when she'd said ‘No' at their wedding.”
“I kiss you because I want to kiss you,” he said, very softly, and then he turned away and helped Spiro load their luggage into the old station wagon, while Laurel fought to still her racing heart.
* * *
A narrow dirt road wound its way up the cliffs, through groves of dark cypresses and between outcroppings of gray rock. They passed small houses that grew further and further apart as they climbed. After a while, there were no houses at all, only an occasional shepherd's hut. The heat was unrelenting, and a chorus of cicadas filled the air with sound.
The road grew even more narrow. Just when it seemed as if it would end among the clouds, a house came into view. It was made of white stone with a blue tile roof, and it stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea.
The house, and the setting, were starkly simple and wildly beautiful, and Laurel knew instantly that this was Damian's home.
A heavy silence, made more pronounced by the shrill of the cicadas and the distant pound of the surf, filled the car as Damian shut off the engine. Behind them, the car door creaked as Spiro got out. He spoke to Damian, who shook his head. The old man muttered in annoyance, doffed his cap to Laurel and set off briskly toward the house.
“What was that all about?”
Damian sighed. “He will be eighty-five soon, or perhaps even older. He's rather mysterious about his age.” He got out of the car, came around to Laurel's door and opened it. “Still, he pretends he is a young man. He wanted to take our luggage to the house. I told him not to be such an old fool.”
Laurel ignored Damian's outstretched hand and stepped onto the gravel driveway.
“So you told him to send someone else to get our things?”
Damian looked at her. “There is no one else at the house, except for Eleni.”
“Eleni?”
“My housekeeper.” He reached into the back of the wagon, picked up their suitcases and tossed them onto the grass, his muscles shifting and bunching under the thin cotton T-shirt. “Besides, why would I need anyone to do such a simple job as this?”
Her thoughts flashed back to Kirk, and the staff of ten who'd run his home. She'd never seen him carry anything heavier than his attaché case, and sometimes not even that.
“Well?” Damian's voice was rough. “What do you think? Can you survive a week alone with me, in this place?”
A week? Alone, here, with Damian? She didn't dare tell him what she really thought, that if he had set out to separate her from everything safe and familiar, he had succeeded.
“Well,” she said coolly, “it's not Southampton. But I suppose there's hot water, and electricity, at least.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Damian's jaw tighten. Good, she thought with bitter satisfaction. What had he expected? Tears? Pleas? A fervent demand he take her somewhere civilized? If that was what he'd hoped for, he'd made an error. She wasn't going to beg, or grovel.
“I know it would please you if I said no.” His smile was curt as he stepped past her, hoisted their suitcases and set off for the house. “But we have all the amenities you wish for, my dear wife. I know it spoils things for you, but I am not quite the savage you imagine.”
The house was almost glacial, after the heat of the sunbaked hillside. White marble floors stretched to meet white painted walls. Ceiling fans whirred lazily overhead.
Damian dumped the suitcases on the floor and put his hands on his hips.
“Eleni,” he roared.
A door slammed in the distance and a slender, middle-aged woman with eyes as dark as her hair came hurrying toward them. She was smiling broadly, but her smile vanished when she saw Damian's stern face. He said a few words to her, in Greek, and then he looked at Laurel.
“Eleni speaks no English, so don't waste your time trying to win her to your cause. She will show you to your room and tend to your needs.”
The housekeeper, and not Damian. It was another small victory, Laurel thought, as he strode past her.
Eleni led the way up the stairs to a large, handsome bedroom with an adjoining bath.
Laurel nodded.
“Thank you,” she said,
“efcharistó.”
It was the only word of Greek she remembered from her prior trip. Eleni smiled her appreciation and Laurel smiled back at her, but when the door had shut and she was, at last, alone, her smile faded.
She had set out to irritate Damian and somehow, she'd ended up wounding him. It was more of a victory than she'd ever have hoped.
Why, then, did it feel so hollow?
* * *
The cypresses were casting long shadows over the hillside. Soon, it would be night.
Damian stood on the brick terrace and gazed at the sea. He knew he ought to feel exhausted. It had been a long day. An endless day, following hard on the heels of an endless week—a week that had begun with him thinking he'd never see Laurel again and ending with his taking her as his wife.
His wife.
His jaw knotted, and he lifted the glass of chilled
ouzo
to his lips and drank. The anise-flavored liquid slipped easily down his throat, one of the few pleasurable experiences in the entire damned day.
It still didn't seem possible. A little while ago, his life had been set on a fixed course with his business empire as its center. Now, in the blink of an eye, he had a wife, and a child on the way—a wife who treated him, and everything that was his, with such frigid distaste that it made his blood pressure rumble like the volcanos that were at the heart of these islands.
So she didn't like this house. Hell, why should she? He knew what it was, an isolated aerie on the edge of nowhere, and that he'd been less than forthright about its amenities, which began, and just about ended, with little more than electricity and hot water. She was a woman accustomed to luxury, and to the city. Her idea of paradise wasn't likely to include a house on top of a rocky hill overlooking the Aegean, where she was about to spend seven of the longest days of her life trapped with the fool who'd forced her into marriage.
Damian frowned and tossed back the rest of the
ouzo.
What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her here? God knew this wasn't the setting for a honeymoon—not that this was going to be one. Spiro, that sly old fox, had slapped him on the back and said that it was about time he'd married. Damian had told him to mind his own business.
This wasn't a marriage, it was an arrangement...and maybe that was the best way to think about it. Marriage, under the best of circumstances, was never about love, not once you scratched the surface. It was about lust, or loneliness, or procreation. Well, in that sense, he and Laurel were ahead of the game. There was no pretense in their relationship, no pretending that anything but necessity had brought them to this point in the road.
Damian refilled his glass and took a sip. Viewed ressonably, he really had no cause to complain. Not about having a child, at least. The more he'd thought about it the past week, the more pleased he'd been at the prospect of fatherhood. He'd enjoyed raising Nicholas, but the boy had come into his life almost full-grown. There'd be a special pleasure in holding an infant in his arms, knowing that it carried his name and his genes, that it would be his to mold and nurture.
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. And, despite all the advances of modern science, you still needed a woman to have a baby. A wife if you wanted to do it right, and as wives went, Laurel would be eminently suitable.
She was beautiful, bright and sophisticated. She'd spent her life rubbing elbows with the rich and famous; to some degree, she was one of them herself. She'd be at ease as the hostess of the parties and dinners his work demanded, and he had no doubt that she'd be a good mother to their child.

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