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of course,’ she answered. She frowned slightly. Why had her uncle spoken to their host about it?

      She discovered, with a little stab of dismay, just why on her way back to Athens with Aristides.

      ‘He wants to take me to the concert? But I thought we were going?’

      ‘No, no,’ said Aristides airily. ‘Alas, I don’t have time to go to concerts.’

      But he does, thought Vicky. A strange sensation had settled over her and she didn’t like it. She also didn’t like the feeling that she had been stitched up—set up…

      With no room to manoeuvre.

      Well, she thought grimly now, that was how it had started—and how it had gone on. And even now, after everything that had happened, all the storm and stress, the rage and frustration, she still did not know how it had ended up the way it had. How she had gone from being escorted to a Mozart concert by a man whose company disturbed her so profoundly, to becoming—her mouth pressed together in a thin, self-condemning line—his wife.

      Mrs Theo Theakis.

      CHAPTER THREE

      HOW could I have done it?

      The question still burned in her head, just as it always had. How could she have gone and married Theo Theakis? She’d done it, in the end, for the best of reasons—and it had been the worst mistake of her life.

      She could still remember the moment when her uncle had dropped the thunderbolt at her feet. Informing her that Theo Theakis was requesting her hand in marriage, as if they were living in the middle of a Victorian novel.

      Aristides had beamed at her. ‘Every woman in Athens wants to marry him!’

      Well, every woman in Athens is welcome to him! thought Vicky, as she sat there, staring blankly at her uncle, disbelief taking over completely as he extolled the virtues of a man she barely knew—but knew enough to be very, very wary of. Since the Mozart concert she had seen Theo Theakis only a handful of times—and she could hardly have said he’d singled her out in any particular way. Apart from knowing that he was rich, disturbingly attractive, and, from the few conversations she’d had with him about any non-trivial subject, dauntingly and incisively intelligent, he was a complete stranger. Nothing more than an acquaintance of her uncle, and no one she wanted to get any closer to.

      In fact, he was someone, for all the reasons she was so disturbingly aware of, her preferred option would have been to avoid. It would have been much, much safer…

      And now, out of nowhere, her uncle was saying he wanted to marry her?

      It was unbelievable—quite, quite unbelievable.

      She wanted to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it, but as she stared at her uncle blindly she started to become aware of something behind the enthusiastic words. Something that dismayed her.

      He was serious—he was really, really serious. And more than serious.

      Vicky’s heart chilled.

      In her uncle’s face was the same tension she’d seen when she’d arrived in Athens. The tension that she’d been moved to ask about the evening she’d met Theo Theakis for the first time. And something more than tension—fear.

      It was shadowing his eyes, behind the eager smiles and the enthusiastic extolling of just why it would be so wonderful for her to be Mrs Theo Theakis. Behind her uncle’s glowing verbiage of how every woman would envy her for having Theo Theakis as a husband, she could hear a much more prosaic message.

      A dynastic marriage. Something quite unexceptional in the circles her uncle and aspiring bridegroom moved in. A marriage to link two wealthy families, two prominent Greek corporations.

      Oh, Aristides did not say it like that—he used terms like ‘so very suitable’—but Vicky could hear it all the same. And more. Vicky realised, with a sinking of her heart, that she could hear something much more anxious. Her uncle didn’t just want her to marry Theo Theakis—he needed her to…

      The chill around her heart intensified.

      She waited, feeling her nerves biting, until he had finally finished his peroration, and was looking at her with an anticipation that was not just hopeful but fearful, too. She picked her words with extreme care.

      ‘Uncle, would such a marriage be advantageous to you from a…a business point of view?’

      There was a flicker in Aristides’s eyes, and for a moment he looked hunted. Then he rallied, using the same tone of voice as he had when she had impulsively asked him whether everything was all right.

      ‘Well, as you know, sadly my wife was not blessed with children, and so it has always been a question—what will happen to Fournatos when I am gone? Knowing that you, my niece, are married to Theo Theakis—whose business interests do not run contrary to those of Fournatos—would answer that question.’

      Vicky frowned slightly. ‘Does that mean the two companies would merge?’

      A shuttered, almost evasive look came into Aristides’ face.

      ‘Perhaps, perhaps. Eventually. But—’ His tone changed, becoming bright, eager, and, Vicky could tell from familiarity, deliberately pitched to address a female of her age, who should not be concerning herself with such mundane things as corporate mergers. ‘This is not what a young woman thinks about when a man wants to marry her! And certainly not when the man is as handsome as Theo Theakis!’

      It was the signal that he would not be drawn any more from the fairy tale he was spinning for her in such glowing colours. Vicky could get no more out of her uncle regarding the real reason behind this unbelievable idea of Theo Theakis saying he wanted to marry her. It was only the anxiety she felt about what she had seen so briefly in her uncle’s face and respect for his kindness and generosity that stopped her telling him that she had never heard anything so absurd and walking straight out.

      With rigid self-control she managed to hear him out, and then, with all the verbal dexterity she could muster, she said, ‘I’m…I’m overwhelmed.’

      ‘Of course, of course!’ Aristides said hurriedly. ‘Such a wonderful thing is most momentous!’

      Vicky hung on to her self-control by a thread. Groping about for some excuse to go, she muttered something about a dress fitting she had to get to in the city and slipped out of the room. Her mind was in turmoil.

      What on earth was going on?

      Her mouth set. Her uncle might not give her any answers, but she knew someone who could.

      Even though he was the very last person she wanted to go and see.

      She made herself do it, though. She went and confronted her suitor.

      He did not seem surprised to see her. He received her in his executive suite in a gleaming new office block, getting up from a huge leather chair behind an even bigger desk. As he got to his feet, his business suit looking like a million euros all on its own, Vicky again felt that frisson go through her. Here, in his own corporate eyrie, the impression of power that emanated from him was more marked than ever.

      She braced her shoulders. Well, that was all to the good. Obviously sentiment—despite her uncle’s fairy-tale ramblings about how wonderful it would be for her to be married to so handsome and eligible a man as Theo Theakis—had nothing to do with why the man standing in front of her had informed Aristides Fournatos that he would be interested in marrying her.

      Even as she formed the thought in her head, she had to cut it out straight away. ‘Marriage’ and ‘Theo Theakis’ in one sentence was an oxymoron of the highest order.

      ‘Won’t you sit down?’

      The dark-timbred voice sent its usual uneasy frisson down her spine. She wished it wouldn’t do that. She also wished she wasn’t so ludicrously responsive to the damn man the whole time. It had been the same all the way through that Mozart concert he’d

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