The Cozakis Bride
Autore
Lynne Graham
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CHAPTER ONE
‘YOU have ruined your life just as your mother did,’ Spyros Manoulis condemned.
Olympia studied her Greek grandfather with shuttered eyes the colour of sea jade. She was sick with nerves but she had come on a begging mission. If venting his spleen put the older man into a better mood and made him look more sympathetically on her mother’s plight, she could stand the heat of any attack.
Well-built and fit, for all his seventy-plus years, the white-haired older man paced the lounge of his luxurious London hotel suite, his lined features forbidding. ‘Look at you, still single at the age of twenty-seven! No husband, no children,’ he cited grimly. ‘Ten years ago, I opened my home to you and I attempted to do my best for you…’
As he paused for a necessary breath, broad chest expanding, Olympia knew what was coming next. Beneath the mahogany hair she wore confined in a French plait, her pallor became pronounced.
‘And how was my generosity repaid?’ Spyros was working himself up into a rage at the memory. ‘You brought dishonour on the family name. You disgraced me, destroyed your own reputation and offered unforgivable insult to the Cozakis family—’
‘Yes…’ Olympia was desperate enough to own up to murder itself if it calmed her grandfather down and gave her the chance to plead her mother’s cause.
‘Such a marriage as I arranged for you…and very grateful you were to have Nikos Cozakis at the time! You wept when he gave you your betrothal ring. I remember the occasion well!’
Olympia clenched her teeth together: a necessary self-restraint. Hot, cringing humiliation was eating into her self-discipline.
‘Then you threw it all away in a wanton moment of madness,’ Spyros Manoulis ground out with bitter anger. ‘Shamed me, shamed yourself—’
Olympia whispered tautly, ‘Ten years is a long time—’
‘Not long enough to endow me with forgetfulness!’ her grandfather countered harshly. ‘I was curious to see you again. That’s why I agreed to this meeting when you wrote asking for it. But let me tell you now without further waste of time that you will receive no financial assistance from me.’
Olympia reddened. ‘I want nothing for me…but my mother, your daughter—’
Spyros interrupted her before she could mention her mother’s name. ‘Had my foolish daughter raised you to be a decent young woman, according to our Greek traditions, you would never have brought dishonour upon me!’
At that judgmental assurance, Olympia’s heart sank. So her innocent parent was still to suffer for her daughter’s sins. Squaring her slim shoulders, she lifted a chin every bit as determined as his own. ‘Please let me speak freely—’
‘No, I will not hear you!’ Spyros stalked over to the window. ‘I want you to go home and think about what you have lost for you and your mother. Had you married Nik Cozakis—’
‘I’d have castrated him!’ Olympia’s control over her temper slipped as the older man made it clear that their meeting was already at an end.
Her grandfather’s beetling brows rose almost as high as his hairline.
Olympia coloured. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘At least Nik would have taught you to keep a still tongue when a man is speaking to you!’
Olympia sucked in a deep, steadying breath. He was as mad as fire now. She had done nothing but add fuel to the flames. No doubt she ought to have arrived steeped in sackcloth and ashes and hung her head with anguished regret when he referred to her broken engagement.
Spyros Manoulis moved his hand in a gesture of finality. ‘You could only win my forgiveness by marrying Nik.’
Fierce disappointment filled Olympia to overflowing. ‘Why don’t you just throw in climbing Everest too?’
‘I see you get the picture,’ her grandfather said drily.
But there was a little red devil buzzing about now inside Olympia’s head. ‘If I could get him to marry me, would I still come dowered with the Manoulis empire?’
The older man dealt her a thunderous appraisal. ‘What are you suggesting? Get him to marry you? Nikos Cozakis, whom you insulted beyond belief, who could have any young woman he wanted—’
‘Few young women come with as large a dowry as you offered as a sweetener to the deal over me ten years ago.’
Spyros Manoulis was aghast at her bluntness. ‘Have you no shame?’
‘When you tried to flog me off like one of your tankers, I lost my illusions and my sensitivity,’ his granddaughter asserted curtly. ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘But what is the point of a question that crazy?’ The older man flung both hands up in complete exasperation.
‘I’d just like to know.’
‘I would have signed control of Manoulis Industries over to Nik on your wedding day…and I would still gladly do so, were it possible!’ Weary now, his big shoulders slumping, Spyros vented an embittered laugh at what he saw as a total impossibility. ‘My only desire was to pass on the business I spent a lifetime building into capable hands. Was that so much to ask?’
Olympia’s generous mouth compressed. The longevity of his name in the business world meant so much more to her grandfather than family ties. But then to be fair that was not her gentle mother’s view. Irini Manoulis might long to be reconciled with her estranged father, but the older woman had never blamed him for turning his back on her. However, an increasing sense of despair was creeping over Olympia. Her grandfather was immovable. He had admitted to only seeing her out of curiosity. So why was she still hanging around where she wasn’t welcome?
Olympia walked stiff-backed to the door and then decided to make one last attempt to be heard. ‘My mother’s health is failing—’
Spyros growled something at her in outraged Greek, his refusal to listen instantaneous.
Olympia spun back, sea-jade eyes flashing like gems. ‘If she dies poor and miserable, as she is now, I hope your conscience haunts you to the grave and beyond, because that’s what you’ll deserve!’
For a second, Spyros Manoulis stared at her with expressionless dark eyes. Then he swung away, his broad back stiff as an iron bar.
Leaving her grandfather’s suite, Olympia got into the lift before she slumped. Minutes later, having got herself back under control, she crossed the busy hotel foyer back out into the open air. Maybe she should run really insane and kidnap Nik Cozakis, she thought with enormous bitterness. If she’d had the money she could have hired hitmen to snatch him out of his stretch limo. And she could have personally starved and tortured Nik in some dark, dank cellar with a completely clear conscience. After all, she hated him. She really, really hated him.
Although already wealthy beyond avarice, greed had led Nik at the age of nineteen into getting engaged to a plain, overweight girl who’d had no attraction for him but her value as the promised Manoulis heiress. Nik Cozakis had broken her heart, dragged her pride in the dirt and ultimately ensured that there was no prospect of Spyros ever forgiving either her or her mother.
But then maybe her mother had been born under an unlucky star, Olympia conceded, wincing at the hardness of the pavement beneath shoe soles worn thin as paper with overuse. For the first twenty-one years of her life Irini had been cocooned in a world of wealth and privilege. Then she had made the fatal mistake of falling in love with an Englishman. Meeting with heavy paternal opposition, Irini had fled to London to be with her boyfriend. But the day before their wedding was to take place Olympia’s father had crashed his motorbike and died.
Shortly afterwards, Irini had discovered that she was pregnant. From that point on there had been no turning back: she was expecting a child and she was unmarried. Her only talent a willingness to take any manual work available, Irini had raised Olympia alone. Throughout her childhood, Olympia could only recall her mother with a wan, exhausted face, for Irini Manoulis had never been strong. And the reality was that all those years of taxing physical labour had wrecked what health she did have and weakened her heart.
Once Olympia had been old enough to get a job of her own, matters had improved. For a few years, Olympia recalled with painful regret, they had been happy in a tiny flat which had seemed like a palace to them both. Then, eighteen months ago, the firm where Olympia had worked as a receptionist had gone bankrupt. Since then she had only managed to get temporary employment, and even that had been thin on the ground in recent months. They had had to give up the flat, and the savings which Olympia had painstakingly built up were long since gone.
The council had rehoused them in a tough inner city estate. Her mother was so terrified of the aggressive youths there that she no longer dared to venture out. Olympia had been forced to watch the mother she adored decline before her eyes, growing ever more thin and weak, her brave smiles of cheer pathetic to witness. It was as if Irini Manoulis had given up on life itself.
She was dying, Olympia reflected sickly, dying inch by inch, always talking about the distant past now, because the unlovely present was too much for her weakened spirit to handle. A rundown apartment they couldn’t afford to heat, no telephone, no television, noisy, threatening neighbours and surroundings bereft of all beauty. Nothing, nothing whatsoever to look forward to with the smallest anticipation.
If only Olympia had had the benefit of a crystal ball ten years ago…if only! Would she have made the same decision as she had made then? A despairing laugh was dredged from Olympia. Guilt and all the regret her grandfather could ever had wished on her washed over her now. She would have been married to a billionaire! Long before her health had failed her mother would once again have enjoyed security and comfort. Now, with bitter, realistic hindsight, Olympia knew that had she had the benefit of a crystal ball at the age of seventeen she would have married a monster for her mother’s sake!
So what if Nik had been snogging the face off a gorgeous Italian model not ten feet from her?
So what if Nik had confided in his second cousin, Katerina, that Olympia was, ‘Fat and stupid and sexless, but literally worth her weight in gold!’?
So what if he would have been continually unfaithful throughout their marriage and a total arrogant, loathsome pig to live with?
So what if he had said to her face, without scruple, conscience or decency, the morning after that dreadful night, ‘You’re a slapper! And I, Nik Cozakis, refuse to marry another man’s leavings!’?
Gripped by those painfully degrading recollections, Olympia hovered by a shop window. She knew that right now Nik was sure to be over in London for the same reason as her grandfather was. It had featured in the newspapers: a meeting of powerful Greek tycoons with shared interests in British business. And, unlike Spyros Manoulis, Nik had a massive office headquarters in the City of London, where he very likely was this very minute…
What did she have to lose? He was still single. And Spyros Manoulis never joked about money. Spyros would happily pay millions and millions of pounds to marry her off to Nik Cozakis. Personalities didn’t come into it: primarily it would be the linking of two enormous business empires. And with that size of a dowry still available, even a plain Jane slapper ought to have the gumption to put a late offer on the table! Was she crazy? No, she owed a huge debt to her mother. Irini Manoulis had sacrificed so much to bring her into the world and raise her to adulthood. What had she ever given back?
Olympia squinted at her reflection in the shop window. A dark-haired woman of five foot five inches, clad in a grey skirt and jacket shabby with age. Even on a restricted diet she was never going to be thin. Her shape was lush—horribly, embarrassingly lush. She must have inherited such generous curves from her father’s side, because her mother was slim and slight. Well, she was worth her weight in gold, she reminded herself bracingly. And if there was one thing Nik Cozakis reputedly excelled at, it was ruthlessly exploiting any proposition likely to enrich his already overflowing coffers…
* * *
Nik was planning a major deal.
All calls were on hold, with only the direst emergency excuse for an interruption of any kind. So when even the softest of knocks sounded hesitantly on the door of his office his dark head came up, well-defined black brows rising in exasperated enquiry. His British PA, Gerry, hurried to the door, where a whispered exchange took place.
Gerry moved back to his powerful employer’s side. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s a woman asking to see you urgently, sir.’
‘No interruptions, particularly not of the female variety,’ Nik cut in with harsh impatience.
‘She says she’s Spyros Manoulis’s granddaughter, Olympia. But the receptionist isn’t convinced of her identity. I gather the woman doesn’t look like someone you would be acquainted with, sir.’
Olympia Manoulis? Arrested into tangible stillness, Nik Cozakis frowned in silent disbelief. Olympia Manoulis. Rooted deep in his subconscious lurked a tender spot still raw with a rage that had yet to dim. How dared that whore enter his office block and have the effrontery to ask to see him? He plunged upright, startling his staff so much that everybody jumped, and one unfortunate dropped several files.
Striding over to the tall tinted windows like a leopard on the prowl for fresh meat, Nik stilled again. Spyros had sworn he would never forgive her. Spyros was a man of his word. And Nik still pitied the older man, whose deep shame over his erring granddaughter’s behaviour had been painful to witness. His only son had drowned in a yacht race and his daughter had become an unwed mother. Bad blood in that family, Nik’s own father had decided, implying that his headstrong son had had a narrow escape.
Yet still Nik simmered like a boiling cauldron when he recalled the humiliation of being publicly confronted with the fact that his fiancée, his doe-eyed supposedly virginal bride-to-be, had gone out to his car with a drunken friend and had sex with him. It was disgusting; it was filthy. In fact, just thinking about that degrading, utterly inexcusable episode still had the power to make Nik regret that he had never had the opportunity to punish Olympia Manoulis as she had so definitely deserved.
The atmosphere was so explosive that the silence was absolute. His staff exchanged uncertain glances. Gerry Marsden waited, and then slowly breathed in. ‘Sir…?’
Nik wheeled back. ‘Let her wait…’
His PA concealed his surprise with difficulty. ‘At what time will I tell your secretary that you will see her?’
‘No time.’ His eyes cold enough to light the way to Hades, Nik threw back his proud dark head. ‘Let her wait.’
* * *
As the hours crept past into the lunch hour, and then on into the late afternoon, Olympia was conscious that quite a few people seemed to pass suspiciously slowly through the impressive reception area and steal a covert glance in her direction.
She held her head high, neck aching from that determined show of indifference. She had her foot in the door, she told herself bracingly. Nik hadn’t had her escorted off the premises. Nik had not flatly refused to see her. And if he was very, very busy, that was only what she had expected, and she could not hope for any favours. Curiosity would eventually penetrate that arrogant, macho and bone-deep stubborn skull of his. Even Nik Cozakis had to be that human.
Despair was the mother of invention, she conceded. Nik Cozakis was literally her last hope. And why should her fierce pride hurt? No false pride had held her mother back from scrubbing other people’s floors so that she could feed and clothe her daughter.
Just before five o’clock, the receptionist rose from behind her desk. ‘Mr Cozakis has left the building, Miss Manoulis.’
Olympia paled to the colour of milk. Then she straightened her stiff shoulders and stood up. She stepped into the lift and let it carry her back down to the ground floor. She would be back tomorrow to keep the same vigil, she told herself doggedly. She would not be embarrassed into retreat by such tactics. But, even so, she was as badly shaken as if she had run into a hard brick wall.
As she stood on the bus that would eventually bring her within walking distance of home, she realised that she had read the situation wrong. Nik was no longer the teenager she had once been so pathetically infatuated with: impatient and hot-tempered, with not a lot in the way of self-control. The eldest son of two adoring parents, he had been the natural leader in his sophisticated social set of bored but gilded youth.
And so beautiful, so heartachingly, savagely beautiful that it must have seemed like a crime to his unlovely friends that he should be matched with an unattractive, plump and charmless bride-to-be…
But now Nik was a fully grown adult male. A Greek male, subtly different from others of his sex. Like her grandfather, he saw no need to justify his own behaviour. There had been no quiet announcement that he was unavailable. He had let her wait and cherish hope. That had been cruel, but she should have been better prepared for that tack.
The scent of cooking greeted Olympia’s return to the flat she shared with her mother. She hurried into the tiny kitchen and watched her mother gather her spare frame and turn with a determined smile to greet her. Her heart turned over sickly at the grey pallor of the older woman’s worn face.
“I thought we agreed that I do all the cooking, Mum.’
‘You’ve been out looking for a job all day. It’s the least that I can do,’ Irini Manoulis protested.
Later, as Olympia climbed into bed, she was consumed by guilt for the evasions she had utilised with her mother. But how could she have told the older woman what she had really been doing all day? Irini would have been upset by the knowledge that her daughter had secretly got in touch with her grandfather, but unsurprised by the outcome. However, an admission that Olympia had tried to see Nik Cozakis would have left her mother bereft of breath and a frank explanation of why her daughter had sought that meeting would have appalled her quiet and dignified parent.
But how much more shattered would her trusting mother have been had Olympia ever told her the whole dreadful truth of what had happened in Athens a decade earlier? Olympia had never told that story, and her awareness of that fact still disturbed her. Then, as now, Olympia had kept her own counsel to protect her mother from needless distress…
* * *
The next morning, Olympia took up position in the waiting area on the top floor of the Cozakis building three minutes after nine o’clock.
She made the same request to see Nik as she had made the day before. The receptionist avoided eye contact. Olympia wondered if this would be the day that Nik lost patience and had her thrown out of the building.
At ten minutes past nine, after a mutually mystified consultation with another senior member of staff, Gerry Marsden approached Nik, who had started work as usual at eight that morning. ‘Miss Manoulis is here again today, sir.’
Almost imperceptibly the Greek tycoon tensed and the silence thickened.
‘Have you the Tenco file?’ Nik then enquired, as if the younger man hadn’t spoken.
The day wore on, with Olympia praying that a pretence of quiet, uncomplaining humility would ultimately persuade Nik to spare her just five minutes of his time. By the end of that day, when the receptionist apologetically announced that Mr Cozakis had again left the building, Olympia experienced such a violent surge of bitter frustration that she could have screamed.
* * *
On the third day, Olympia felt hugely conspicuous as she stepped out of the lift on to the top floor.
Before leaving home she would have liked to have filled a vacuum flask and made herself some sandwiches, but to have done so would have roused her mother’s suspicions and her concern. Since Olympia had yet to admit to her mother that their slender resources were now stretched unbearably tight. Irini fondly imagined that her daughter bought lunch for herself while she was out supposedly seeking employment.
However, at noon, when Olympia returned from a visit to the enviably luxurious cloakroom on the top floor, she found a cup of tea and three biscuits awaiting her. Her strained face softened with her smile. The receptionist gave her a decidedly conspiratorial glance in return. By then, Olympia was convinced that just about every person of importance in the building had traversed the reception area to take a peek at her. Sympathy was now softening the discomfiture her initial vigil had inspired. Not that it was going to do her much good, she conceded heavily, when Nik obviously had an alternative exit from his office.
At three that afternoon, when the last of her patience had worn away, her desperation started to mount. Nik would soon be on his way back to Greece and even more out of her reach. Olympia reached a sudden decision and got up swiftly from her seat. Hurrying past the reception desk that she had previously respected as a barrier, she started down the wide corridor that had to lead to Nik’s inner sanctum.
‘Miss Manoulis, you can’t go down there!’ the young receptionist exclaimed in dismay.
She would be a loser now whatever she did, Olympia reflected with despairing bitterness. Forcing a confrontation with Nik was the wrong line to take. No Greek male appreciated an in-your-face female challenge. He would react like a caveman, every aggressive primal cell outraged by such boldness.
As she headed for the door at the foot of the corridor, a set of male hands whipped round her forearms from behind and stopped her dead in her tracks.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Manoulis, but nobody goes in there without the boss’s say-so,’ an accented Greek voice spelt out tautly.
‘Damianos…’ Even after ten years Olympia recognised that gravelly voice, and her rigid shoulders bowed in defeat. Nik’s bodyguard, who was built like a tank. ‘Couldn’t you have looked the other way just once?’
‘For your grandfather’s sake, go home,’ Damianos urged in a fierce undertone. ‘Please go home, before you are eaten alive.’
Olympia trembled as the older man’s fingers loosened their hold. But that reluctance on his part to treat her like any other unwanted visitor was Damianos’s mistake. Breaking free without hesitation, she literally flung herself the last ten feet and burst through that door.
There was a blur of movement from behind the desk: Nik rising with startled abruptness at so explosive an interruption.
In the split second that she knew was all she had at her disposal before Damianos intervened again, with greater effect, Olympia parted her lips and breathed rawly, ‘Are you a man or a mouse that you won’t face one woman?’
