PROLOGUE
NIKOLOS ANGELIS STUDIED his father in rampant disbelief. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t be serious. We own one of the biggest companies in Greece!’
Symeon, a handsome man with silvering dark hair, was not looking his ebullient best. His complexion was grey and heavy lines of exhaustion marked his features. ‘I took a gamble and it didn’t pay off. In fact, it was a disaster. The company is overstretched and the bank is getting very nervous. They made me pledge everything we possess but they’re still not happy. If they pull the plug now, we’ll lose the lot!’
Nikolos said nothing. Everything? Even the family home? He was so angry that he did not trust himself to speak. His grandfather, Orestes, had taught him that a man should put the honour and security of his family first. While the old man had lived the family fortune had been in safe, protective hands. But Symeon Angelis didn’t operate that way. Even though he was in his fifties, he was still desperate to prove that he could wheel and deal as successfully as his legendary father and he had lost millions pursuing high-risk deals.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ Symeon muttered heavily, ‘you were right about the Arnott development being too good to be true.’
Nikolos swung round, stung beyond bearing by that admission. ‘You bought in even after the Kutras brothers warned you to stay clear?’
Symeon Angelis winced and gave his eldest son a rueful look. ‘I thought they were trying to corner all the action for themselves.’
Nikolos ground his even white teeth together in silence. He did not allow himself to look in his parent’s direction. He was ashamed of the fierce contempt he was feeling. Symeon was a good man, a good father, a good husband. He was universally well-liked and respected but his intellect was not powerful and he was a lousy entrepreneur. Nikolos, on the other hand, had devoted his spare time as a teenager to some highly profitable trading in stocks and shares that had made him a millionaire before he even left school. To stand by powerless and watch his less clever and shrewd father stumble and make stupid mistakes was, for Nikolos, a punishment of no mean order.
‘I’ll be frank with you. This may be our darkest hour but we have been offered an escape clause,’ the older man confided in a taut undertone. ‘It came from a surprising source. In fact, I was astonished…However, I said it couldn’t be done. It wouldn’t be right-’
Mastering his impatience, Nikolos rested grim eyes on Symeon. ‘What wouldn’t be right?’
His father seemed reluctant to meet his son’s enquiring scrutiny. ‘I can’t ask you to make such a sacrifice at your age. You’re only twenty-two-’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
Symeon Angelis expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘Theo Demakis approached me and offered to bail us out.’
Nikolos vented a startled laugh of incredulity. ‘Theo Demakis? Are you winding me up? Since when did we move in such exalted circles?’
‘It seems that we could move in those circles if we wanted to,’ Symeon murmured with the air of a man choosing his words with extreme care.
His son’s lean, bronzed face stayed unimpressed. ‘Demakis is as cold as a corpse. If you get into bed with him you’ll wake up with a knife stuck between your ribs.’
‘In other circumstances, that might have been my attitude as well. But Theo is offering a family connection rather than just a business transaction.’
At those words, Nikolos fell very still. ‘You can’t mean what I think you mean…’
The older man flushed a mottled pink. ‘I can see where Demakis is coming from-’
‘I think your view must be fogged-’
Refusing to be discouraged, Symeon pressed on. ‘Theo’s only son must be dead ten years now, he’s on his third wife and he still doesn’t have another child. He only has his English granddaughter. He wants Prudence to marry a Greek boy from a good background and that’s not surprising when she’s half-English and illegitimate into the bargain. Demakis is an old-fashioned man and he’s offering an old-fashioned deal.’
An appalled inability to credit what he was hearing kept Nikolos silent.
‘If you married her and there was a child, the world would be your oyster,’ Symeon breathed tightly. ‘Yes, it would save us, too, but you’re ambitious and she’d be the equivalent of a golden goose. To talk of such an arrangement in terms of cold, hard cash is vulgar but it is only right that I should draw your attention to the very obvious benefits.’
Nikolos closed his eyes, lashes long and black as silk fans momentarily hitting his high cheekbones. He was disgusted by his father’s willingness to consider such an arrangement. Prudence, whom his friends had christened Pudding for her love of baklava pastries, was to be his wife? He was shocked and outraged by the suggestion. He hardly knew her, although he had on several occasions intervened when he saw her being ignored and insulted at social events. Her lack of Greek and her trusting nature had made her a soft target, for no matter what was said to her she would assume it was pleasant and she would smile.
Her inability to defend herself had infuriated Nikolos. He hated bullies and would have done as much for any helpless creature too stupid to look after itself in a hostile world. But had those trivial displays of good manners, those minor acts of compassion on his part, led to the gruesome offer of Prudence’s hand in marriage? That daunting suspicion made his lean, strong face clench hard. When he walked into a room, she lit up like a Christmas tree. Had Prudence decided to tell her fabulously wealthy grandfather just how much she fancied Nikolos Angelis?
‘Papa…’ Nikolos’s sister Kosma’s distraught voice cut through the simmering silence from the French window that opened out onto the terrace. ‘I know I shouldn’t have been listening and I’ll die if we become poor but you can’t ask Nik to marry Theo Demakis’s granddaughter. She’s a fat cow and plain as a pig!’
‘How dare you hide behind the door and eavesdrop on a private conversation?’ Embarrassment made Symeon Angelis leap up in a wrathful response that his much-indulged daughter had rarely witnessed. ‘Leave us-’
‘But it’s true,’ the pretty teenager wailed, standing her ground and defying his authority. ‘Nikolos would have to put a paper bag over her head to eat at the same table, never mind anything more personal. She’s ugly and he’s so handsome-’
‘Get out,’ Nikolos told his kid sister with ferocious, cutting cool.
The older man watched his daughter retreat tearfully at her big brother’s bidding and released a regretful sigh. ‘Of course, I’ve never seen the girl. If she’s that bad, Kosma would have a point. I couldn’t ask you to marry her.’
Nikolos bit back a sardonic laugh. That this was the only objection his parent could see to such a revoltingly mercenary proposition spoke volumes for his father’s state of mind. Symeon Angelis was fighting despair and ready to clutch at any straw that might drag him back from the abyss of financial ruin. Nikolos asked himself how he could stand back and allow that to happen to his parents and his four siblings.
Yet at twenty-two years old, he felt that his own life had barely begun. He was no innocent though, he conceded grudging
ly. Even though he was still at university, he had acquired a reputation as a womaniser. It was true that he pursued pleasure with single-minded zeal. He worked hard and he played hard and he rarely slept alone. He didn’t do long-term and he didn’t do faithful. He had yet to meet a girl who would not accept those conditions. But he still could not begin to contemplate the prospect of becoming a husband or, worse still, a father. Indeed, the very concept of being forced into such a heavy commitment for his family’s benefit filled him with seething anger and bitterness. But he also knew that his grandfather, Orestes, would have laid down his own life to protect his nearest and dearest…
‘You remind me of my late son and his mother.’ Theo Demakis studied his granddaughter with cold derision. ‘You have the same puppy-dog eyes, the same scared smile. You’ve got no backbone and weakness disgusts me.’
‘If I was weak, I would have gone home the day after I arrived.’ Prudence tilted her chin, her soft blue eyes staying steady while beneath her loose cotton shirt she could feel her heart beating so fast with fear that she felt sick.
His unpleasantness continually appalled her. It was three weeks since she had come to stay on the older man’s magnificent estate and every day had been an ordeal. Having flown out to Greece with naïve hopes of getting to know and love the grandfather she had never met, she had instead been forced to accept that he was a cold, malevolent man with not an atom of affection for her and a vicious tongue.
Theo Demakis laughed at her attempt to stand up to him. ‘Do you take me for a fool? Why do you think I invited you to visit me? You’ve taken everything I’ve thrown at you because your mother’s on the booze again and the bailiffs are back at the door!’
Dismay peeling away the composure she was struggling to maintain, Prudence could no longer hold his derisive gaze. As she dropped her head in shame-faced embarrassment, a curtain of chestnut-brown hair fell forward to screen her rounded profile and she looked very much her nineteen years.
‘Am I right?’ the older man sneered.
‘Yes…’ The admission almost choked Prudence, for she would have loved to tell him that he was wrong and that her mother, Trixie, had cleaned up her act and turned her life around. Sadly, that wasn’t possible and her grandfather’s contemptuous satisfaction made the humiliation of her mother’s frailties sting even more. She suspected that he was congratulating himself on his foresight almost two decades earlier when he had told his son to ditch his pregnant girlfriend.
‘What a winner Apollo picked to father my only grandchild with! He had the pick of the world’s heiresses. He could have brought a royal princess home as his bride,’ Theo Demakis growled in disgust. ‘Even then I was rich as Midas and money is the equal of any fancy pedigree. But my son wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, was he? He picked a woman who was a lush, a spendthrift and a whore-’
Her face flaming, Prudence surged upright. ‘I won’t sit here listening to you talking about my mother like that!’
The older man surveyed her with ironic amusement. ‘What choice do you have? You need my money to dig her out of trouble.’
At that blunt declaration, Prudence lost colour. She lowered her head and swallowed hard on her angry pain. Slowly, heavily, she sank back down in her seat again. As she had learned at an early age, penury and dignity rarely went hand in hand. In any case, Theo Demakis was right and the truth was not very pleasant: she did need his money. Her mother was deeply in debt, drinking heavily and currently facing court action over unpaid bills. But Prudence was convinced that if the stress of the older woman’s financial problems was removed, Trixie could be persuaded to enter a clinic and go through rehab again. Painful as it was to accept, Prudence reflected with a sinking sensation in her tummy, Demakis money could well make the difference between her mother living or dying. Years of alcohol abuse had dangerously weakened Trixie’s health.
The older man dealt his silent granddaughter a harsh look of impatience. ‘I brought you to Greece only because I believe you can be of use to me. It’ll be interesting to see if you have the brains to recognise a lucky break when it’s on the table in front of you. ‘
Her brow indented, Prudence was bewildered by that statement.
‘What do you think of Nikolos Angelis?’ Theo asked with the teeth-baring smile that sent a shiver down most people’s backs.
The disconcerting sound of that particular name shattered Prudence’s composure. Blushing like mad in her confusion, she averted her attention from her grandfather without even noticing the chilling curl of his thin mouth. ‘He’s…he’s kind,’ she framed finally, biting back a whole host of other, more enthusiastic words which she felt would have exposed her to the older man’s derision.
How could she possibly speak freely about Nikolos without revealing the depth of her feelings for him? She was in love for the first time in her life but that was her secret and she had no intention of sharing it with anyone. After all, Nikolos had the dark, dangerous beauty of a fallen angel and she was overweight and plain. It was a hopeless passion and she knew it.
‘How do you think Nikolos will handle poverty? At this very moment, the Angelis family are facing financial ruin. They’ll lose their homes, their cars, they’ll have to take the younger children out of their fancy schools and that will just be the beginning of their sufferings. After more than a century of wealth and ease, his parents will find it very difficult to adapt to such heavy losses.’ Theo watched the surprise and immediate concern blossoming in her expressive eyes. ‘But you have it within your power to save them all from that unhappy fate.’
‘How could I help them?’ Prudence exclaimed, shaken by the picture he had drawn.
‘By helping me. If you agree to marry the Angelis boy I’ll rescue his family and also take care of all your mother’s little problems. I will be very generous to all parties concerned and I am not a generous man as a rule.’
Prudence stared back at him in wide-eyed astonishment. As he spoke, her soft full mouth had parted several times as though she intended to break into speech but each time innate caution had made her hold back. ‘Me…agree to marry Nikolos Angelis? How on earth could that come about? It sounds totally mad…and I don’t understand how that would be helping you,’ she framed shakily.
‘There’s method in my madness.’ The portly older man poured a measure of brandy into a crystal glass. ‘I want a male heir, but with the exception of your father my own efforts in that direction have been unsuccessful. However, you’re young and healthy and so is the Angelis boy. If even half of the rumours about his virility are true, it shouldn’t take him very long to achieve the required result.’
His coarse laugh made agonised colour well up below his granddaughter’s skin. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this,’ she protested. ‘For goodness’ sake, Nikolos wouldn’t marry me…he wouldn’t want me-’
‘It’s not a matter of wanting, which is just as well, isn’t it? You’re no beauty,’ her grandfather pointed out with a casual cruelty that turned her white. ‘But, believe me, given the choice between marrying you and watching his precious family lose everything, Nikolos Angelis will take you as his bride-’
‘No…’ she muttered sickly, her hands tightly clenched in on themselves, for she was humiliated beyond bearing by his taunts.
‘He will. He is not a fool like his father. He’s strong and very loyal to his family. As for you, you do have Demakis blood in your veins and I’m giving you both a wonderful opportunity.’
‘That’s not how I see it…you’re talking about blackmailing Nikolos into marrying me!’
The older man fixed his steely gaze on her. ‘I dislike wild accusations. There is no blackmail,’ he specified with cold clarity. ‘I’m offering a helping hand in return for a favour. Turn your back on my generosity if you wish.’
‘It’s not a question of me doing that. Just please help me help my mother,’ she begged him in desperation.
‘Accept that I don’t care whether your mo
ther goes to prison or drinks herself to death,’ Theo Demakis fielded drily. ‘Why would I care? What is she to me?’
‘Trixie might not be in the mess she’s in now if she hadn’t had such a battle to survive when I was a kid!’
His scorn unconcealed, Theo Demakis checked his watch. ‘Look out of the window…’
After a moment’s hesitation, Prudence scrambled up and stared down at the pristine gardens. She wondered what she was supposed to see when her mind was in so much turmoil that she was incapable of concentration. Belatedly she noticed the taxi waiting by the imposing front door.
‘That taxi is waiting to take you to the airport.’
Prudence was as startled by that announcement as he could have wished. ‘Now…you want me to leave?’
‘Your luggage has already been packed. If you say no to marrying the Angelis boy, I will send you home to the UK immediately and you will never hear from me again. Make your mind up and do it quickly.’
A sense of panic gripped Prudence. ‘Can’t you be reasonable about this? It’s so unfair to spring this on me and demand-’
The older man vented a cruel laugh of disagreement. ‘I think it unfair that you should show no appreciation for the fabulous future I am prepared to buy for you. You have your choice. Run back to your mother and see how grateful she is when she learns that you could have made her financially secure for life!’
Prudence flinched at that crack, for she knew that Trixie would consider such a reward her due after the sacrifices her single parenthood had entailed. In fact she clearly saw what her grandfather was doing and recognised the pressure he was bringing to bear on her. She considered herself strong and resilient, but the certainty of his cold, unforgiving malice frightened her and plunged her into despair. She knew that he meant what he said. He really didn’t care what happened to her and he would not give her the funds she needed to support her mother unless she did as he asked.