you, to make friends of your own choosing.” He shrugged. “You could even paint again.”
“I don’t paint anymore.”
“But you could. I’ve heard you were quite good.”
She suddenly laughed, her voice pitched low, her body nearly trembling with tension. She wrapped her arms across her chest, a makeshift cape, a protective embrace. “You must want my father’s ships very much!”
Christos felt a wave of bittersweet emotion, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He saw himself exactly as he was. Driven, calculating, proudly self-serving. And this woman, this lovely refined young woman, knew she mattered only in business terms. Her worth was her name. Her value lay in her dowry. For a split second he hated the system and he hated himself and then he ruthlessly pushed his objection aside.
He would have her.
Alysia slipped from beneath his arm, taking several steps away. She walked to the edge of the herb garden and knelt at the flowering lavender. “Ships,” she whispered, breaking off a purple stalk. “I hate them.”
She carried the tuft of lavender to her nose, smelling it.
“And I love them,” he answered, thinking she should have been a painting.
The bend of her neck, the creamy nape, the shimmering coil of hair the color of wild honey, the sun’s golden caress.
He wanted this woman. Deal or no.
She crumpled the lavender stalk in her fist. “Mr. Pateras, has it crossed your mind to ask why a man as wealthy as my father must give away his fortune in order to get his daughter off his hands?”
The sunlight shone warm and gold on her head. The breeze loosened yet another shimmering tendril.
“I’m damaged goods, Mr. Pateras. My father couldn’t give me away to a local Greek suitor, even if he tried.”
More damaged than he’d ever know, Alysia acknowledged bleakly, clutching the broken lavender stalk in her palm. Unwillingly memories of the Swiss sanatorium came to mind. She’d spent nearly fourteen months there, all of her twenty-first year, before her mother came, rescuing her and helping her find a small flat in Geneva.
Alysia had liked Geneva. No bad memories there.
And for nearly two years she’d lived quietly, happily, content with her job in a small clothing shop, finding safety in her simple flat. Weekly she rang up her mother in Oinoussai and they chatted about inconsequential matters, the kind of conversation that doesn’t challenge but soothes.
Her mother never discussed the sanatorium with her, nor Paris. Alysia never asked about her father. But they understood each other and knew the other’s pain.
Alysia would never have returned to Greece, or her father’s house, if it hadn’t been for her mother’s cancer.
The mournful toll of bells stirred Alysia, and she tensed, lashes lowering, mouth compressing, finding the bells an intolerable reminder of her mother’s death and funeral.
The bells continued to ring, their tolling like nails scratching down a blackboard, sharp, grating. Oh, how she hated it here! The sisters had done everything they could to comfort her, and befriend her, but Alysia couldn’t bear another day of bells and prayers and silence.
She didn’t want to be reminded of her losses. She wanted to just get on with the living.
Sister Elena, a dour-faced nun with a heart of gold, signaled it was time to return inside.
Alysia felt a swell of panic, desperation making her light-headed. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to leave the garden, or the promise of freedom.
As if sensing her reluctance, Christos extended a hand in her direction. “You don’t have to go in. You could leave with me instead.”
It was almost as if he could feel her weakening, sense her confusion. His tone gentled yet again. “Leave with me today and you’ll have a fresh start, lead a different life. Everything would be exciting and new.”
He was teasing her, toying with her, and she longed for the freedom even as she shrank from the bargain.
She could leave the convent if she went as his wife.
She could escape her father if she bound herself to this stranger.
“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked, turning from Sister Elena’s worried gaze to the darkly handsome American Greek standing just a foot away.
“Should I be?”
“I know my father must have mentioned my…health.” She gritted against the sting of the words, each like a drop of poison on her tongue. Unwilling tears burned at the back of her eyes.
“He mentioned you hadn’t been well a few years ago, but he assured me you’re well now. And you look well. Quite well, if rather too thin, as a matter of fact.”
Her lips curved into a small, cold self-mocking smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”
Christos Pateras shrugged. “My first seven ships were damaged. I stripped them to the hull, refurbished each from bow to stern. Within a year my ships made me my first million. It’s been ten years. They’re still the workhorses of my fleet.”
She envisioned him stripping her bare and attempting to make something of her. The vivid picture shocked and frightened her. It’d been years and years since she’d been intimate with a man, and this man, was nothing like her teenage lovers.
Hating the flush creeping through her cheeks, she lifted her chin. “I won’t make you any millions.”
“You already have.”
Stung by his ruthless assessment, she tensed, her slender spine stiffening. “You’ll have to give it back. I told you already, I shall never marry.”
“Again, you mean. You’ll never marry again.”
She froze where she stood, at the edge of the herb garden, her gaze fixed on the ancient sun dial.
He knew?
“You were married before, when you were still in your teens. He was English, and six years older than you. I believe you met in Paris. Wasn’t he a painter, too?”
She turned her head slowly, wide-eyed, torn between horror and fascination at the details of her past. How much more did he know? What else had he been told?
“I won’t discuss him, or the marriage, with you,” she answered huskily. Marrying Jeremy had been a tragic mistake.
“Your father said he was after your fortune.”
“And you’re not?”
Lights glinted in his dark eyes. It struck her that this man would not be easily managed.
He circled her and she had to tilt her head back to see his expression. Butterflies flitted in her stomach, heightening her anxiety. He was tall, much taller than most men she’d
