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Rebecca Winters
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His Majesty’s Marriage (#3705)
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The Bridegroom’s Vow
Rebecca Winters
MILLS & BOON
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My story takes place in Greece, a country of incredible history and beauty. My favorite living artist, Thomas McKnight, fell in love with Greece, too.
He has created one masterpiece after another of Mykonos, Chora, Kalafati, the Aegean and much, much more. It is to him and his wife, Renate, that I dedicate this book.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
DIMITRIOS heard footsteps in the passage outside his door. It was the middle of the night. Curious to know what was going on, he flung his covers aside and hurried out into the hall.
“Leon?” he whispered when he saw his adored elder brother carrying a suitcase. “What’s happening?”
Leon spun around. “Go back to bed, Dimi.”
Ignoring the command, he rushed up to Leon. “Where are you going?”
“Lower your voice. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“But you can’t just leave!” He worshipped Leon who’d been father, brother and protector all rolled into one this last year. “Wherever you have to go, I’ll come with you. I can be ready in two minutes.”
“No, Dimi. You have to stay here with Uncle Spiros and our cousins. I should be back in a week.”
Tears filled his eyes. “The cousins aren’t fun like you, and Uncle Spiros is too strict.”
“Since our parents died, he’s been good to us in his own way, Dimi. It won’t be so bad.”
Panic-stricken, Dimitrios threw his arms around Leon, trying to prevent him from leaving. “Please let me come with you.”
“You can’t. You see, I’m getting married before the night’s out. It’s all been arranged.”
Married?
Dimitrios felt like his world had come to an end. “Which one of your girlfriends is it?”
“Ananke Paulos.”
“I’ve never heard of her. Will you bring her here?”
“No,” he said on a heavy sigh. “We’ll be living in our parents’ villa.”
“Then I’ll come and live with you. I can sleep in my old room like always.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dimi. A woman likes her own house.”
“But that means you and I’ll never live together again!”
“Hey—we’ll always be brothers. I’ll visit you every day, and you’ll come to visit us.”
The pain kept getting worse. “Do you love her more than me?” His voice wobbled.
Leon stared down at him with eyes full of anguish. Dimitrios didn’t know his brother could look like that. It terrified him.
“Not at all. In fact I would give anything in the world if I didn’t have to marry her. But she’s pregnant with my child.”
Dimitrios blinked in astonishment.
“She’s going to have your baby?”
“Yes.”
“You made a baby with a woman you don’t love?” He couldn’t comprehend such a thing.
“Oh, Dimi—listen to me. You’re only twelve, not quite old enough for a man’s feelings to have taken over inside you yet. When that day comes, your body will react when you see a beautiful woman. You’ll want to hold her, make love to her. The pleasure a woman can bring you is to die for.”
Dimitrios frowned through the tears. “To die for?”
A sound of frustration came out of Leon. “I only mean that when a man and a woman make love, it’s wonderful beyond your imagination.”
“Was it that way with Ananke?”
“Yes.”
“But if you don’t love her?”
“You can feel great desire for a woman without loving her. I would never have married her but for the baby. Now I have to do my duty as a Pandakis.”
“No, you don’t!” Dimitrios cried from the depths of his soul. “What kind of a woman would want to live with you if she knew you didn’t love her?”
A groan escaped Leon’s throat. “Dimi? There are other reasons she wants to marry me.”
“What reasons?”
“Money, status.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know our family has run a successful financial empire in Greece for generations. Our reputation is known throughout the corporate world. Uncle Spiros meets with important, influential people, just like our father did before he died.
“That’s the reason Ananke tricked me. She was hoping to have my baby so she could belong to our family. Now she’s going to get her wish, but it won’t be the wedding she imagined. We’re going to be married at the church by the priest with no one there but her grandmother to watch.”
“I hate her!” Dimitrios blurted in fresh pain.
“Don’t say that, Dimi. After tonight she’ll be part of our family.”
“I will say it!” With tears streaming down his face, Dimitrios backed away from his brother. “Do you think our mother married our father because of his money?”
Dimitrios had to wait a long time to hear a response.
“Probably.”
Leon was always brutally honest. His answer crushed Dimitrios. Sick with grief over what his brother had just told him, he said, “Can’t a rich man find a woman who will love him for himself?”
“I don’t know the answer to that question. The point is, I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. Unfortunately that’s where you’ve got a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“One day you’ll be the head of the Pandakis Corporation because Uncle Spiros says you’ve got the smartest head on your shoulders of anyone in the family. You’re also better looking than all the Pandakis men put together.
“You’ll be able to have your pick of any woman in the world. They’ll throw themselves at you. You, little brother, will have to be more careful than most men to make certain no woman gets pregnant with your baby and tricks you into marriage.”
Dimitrios ground his teeth. “That will never happen to me.”
Leon gave him a sad smile. “How do you know that?”
“I won’t ever make love to a woman. Then I won’t have to worry.”
“Of course you will.” He tousled Dimitrios’s curly black hair. “We’ll continue this conversation next week when I take us hiking.”
Dimitrios watched his brother disappear around the corner of their uncle’s villa. It was just like the night a year ago when they learned that their parents had been killed. Dimitrios had wanted to die then, too.
Alexandra Hamilton didn’t trust anyone to dye her hair except Michael at the Z-Attitude hair salon in her home town of Paterson, New Jersey.
He was a genius at his craft. That went without saying. But more to the point, she trusted him with secrets the way she would a father confessor.
Today he was wearing his hair in blue spikes. Michael wasn’t a mere coiffeur par excellence. He entertained everyone who flocked to his busy salon. Women adored him, young and old.
Her green eyes met his in the huge mirror with its border of stage lights.
“When are you going to emerge from this boring brown chrysalis and reveal your natural blond mane to his wondrous gaze?”
“Not until he falls in love with me as I am.”
He meaning Dimitrios Pandakis, of course. Alex loved him with every fiber of her being.
“I hate to tell you this, but you’ve been saying that ever since you went to work for his company. Four years now, isn’t it?”
Alex stuck her tongue out at him.
“Sorry,” he said in the most unrepentant voice she’d ever heard.
Her softly rounded chin lifted a good inch. “I’m making progress.”
“You mean since you slipped a little poison into his private secretary’s coffee six months ago?”
“Michael! That’s not funny. She was a wonderful woman. I still miss her and know he does, too.”
“Just kidding. I thought the trip to China went without a hitch.”
“It did. He gave me another bonus.”
“That makes quite a few. He’d better be careful or he might just find himself on the losing end of a very clever takeover orchestrated by none other than his own Ms. Hamilton.” A devilish expression broke out on Michael’s face. “Are you still making him call you that?”
She tried to hide her smile. “Yes.”
“It gives you great pleasure, doesn’t it.”
“Extreme. I must be the only woman on seven continents who doesn’t fall all over him trying to get his attention.”
“Yes, and it shows.”
“What it does is make me different from all the other women,” she defended. “One day he’s going to take notice.”
“Let’s hope it happens before he marries one of his own kind to produce an heir who’ll inherit his fortune. He’s not getting any younger, you know.”
A familiar pain pierced her heart. “Thank you for playing on my greatest fear.”
“But you love me anyway for telling you the truth.”
She bit her lip. “He has a nephew he loves like a son. Mrs. Landau once told me Dimitrios’s brother died, so he took over the guardianship of his nephew. There’s this look he gets on his face whenever Leon calls him from Greece.”
“Well, then—” He fastened her hair in a secure twist. “I guess you have no worries he’s anxious to start a family of his own.”
“Oh, stop!”
He grinned, eyeing her from the darkened roots of her head to the matronly black shoes she wore on her feet.
“Only your hairdresser knows for sure. I must say I did a good job when I transformed you.”
“It doesn’t suit you to be modest, Michael. Why not admit you created a masterpiece.”
Thanks to his expertise in doing hair and makeup for a lot of his friends in the theater, he’d come up with a disguise that made her look like a nondescript secretary much older than her twenty-five years.
“Possibly,” he quipped. “However, I may have gone too far when I suggested those steel-rimmed glasses you wear. You could walk on the set of a World War Two film being produced as we speak and fit right in.”
“That’s been the idea all along. You know I’m indebted to you.” She handed him a hundred-dollar bill, which he refused.
“We worked out a deal, remember? In return for some free hair appointments, my friends and I get to stay free at your hotel suite in Thessalonica during the fair.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about it and have decided I’m getting the better end of that deal.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Do you even know how much a suite in that place costs for one night?”
“No.”
“I guess you don’t have to know when you’re the private secretary of Dimitrios Pandakis. Oh, if the rest of the world had any idea how you really live these days,” he said dramatically.
“You know I don’t care about that.”
His expression grew serious for a moment. “Is it really worth it to be the bridesmaid, but never the bride?”
He’d touched a painful nerve and knew it. “I can’t imagine not seeing him every day.”
“You’re hopeless, darling.”
“Tell me about it.” She got out of the chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “See you in Greece next week.”
“We’re coming as Mysian troubadours. Are you sure I can’t bring you a costume along with his? There’s this marvelous gold affair—Italian renaissance. I can borrow it from the opera company.”
She shook her head. “Ms. Hamilton doesn’t do costumes. It’s not in her character.”
“Pity.”
Alex chuckled. “Have a safe trip over, Michael.”
“You mean with three hundred of us on our charter flight squashed like Vienna sausages in the can? Lucky you, riding in the Pandakis private jet.”
“I’ll admit that part’s nice. Bye for now.”
She left the salon, grateful that the disguise Michael had created for her had worked perfectly during the four years she’d been in Dimitrios’s employ. She’d won the man’s confidence. But the thought that it was all she might ever win from him wasn’t to be considered.
As for her other fear, it was foolish to worry that when she arrived in Greece, Giorgio Pandakis might recognize her from the past. Not when Dimitrios had never shown any signs of remembering.
Nine years was too long a time for a man who’d been drunk to recall accosting an unsuspecting sixteen-year-old girl. Thankfully someone had been outside the silk museum in Paterson that night looking for him and had heard her screams.
Alex could still see her protector’s face as it had appeared in the shadowy moonlight. Like a dark, avenging prince, Dimitrios Pandakis himself had pulled his cousin off her before knocking him to the ground, unconscious.
Assisting her to her feet, he’d told her he would help her press charges if she wanted him to. Alex, who stood there on trembling legs thankful for deliverance, had been shocked that he would defend an anonymous teenage girl over his cousin.
Dimitrios didn’t accuse her of encouraging the situation. He didn’t try to pay her off. He showed no fear of the scandal that would naturally ensue once her father heard about it. With a name as famous as Pandakis, that kind of news would make headlines. Yet he’d been willing to put his family through embarrassment for her sake.
In that moment, she loved him.
Once her sobs began to subside, she assured him it wouldn’t be necessary to call in the police. He’d come to her rescue before things had gone too far. All she wanted was to forget it had ever happened.
After thanking him again for saving her, she ran off across the garden to her house, clutching the torn pieces of the silk blouse to her chest.
Just before she disappeared around the corner, she watched him throw his loathsome cousin over his shoulder with the ease only a tall, powerful man possessed.
Her green eyes stayed fastened on him until she couldn’t see the outline of his silhouette any longer. But even if he’d gone, the man was unforgettable.
By the time she climbed into bed that night she determined that one day, when she was older, they would meet again. It would be under vastly different circumstances, of course. And no matter what it took, she’d make certain he found her unforgettable, too.
As Dimitrios buttoned his shirt, he heard a rap on his bedroom door. Assuming it was Serilda, the housekeeper who’d been like a favorite aunt since he was a little boy, he told her to come in.
The door opened, but the usual burst of information about the weather and the state of the world wasn’t forthcoming.
Unless she’d sent a maid to him with coffee and rolls, it wouldn’t be anyone else but his nephew.
Dimitrios felt great love for the twenty-two-year old whose build and mannerisms were a constant reminder of Leonides Pandakis, Dimitrios’s deceased elder brother.
By some miracle, his pregnant bride survived the car crash that took Leonides’s life on their honeymoon. Their unborn child, christened Leon at birth, had also been spared.
Like his father, he was a happy boy with a friendly, outgoing nature. A typical teen with his share of problems, he’d survived those years and had grown into a fine young man who was halfway through his university studies and showed a healthy enthusiasm for life. Or so Dimitrios had thought.
But since Dimitrios’s return from China yesterday, he’d seen a big change in his nephew. Normally Leon sought his company at the slightest opportunity, giving him chapter and verse of anything and everything happening in his world.
This time he’d only greeted his uncle with a hug, then disappeared from the villa without a word of explanation. It was totally unlike him. Dimitrios had glimpsed shadows in the brown eyes he’d inherited from his mother.
Something was wrong, of course. He hoped it wasn’t serious. Maybe now he’d find out.
“You’re up early, Leon,” he called to him. “That’s good because I was about to come and find you. I’ve missed you and have been looking forward to one of our talks.”
After shrugging into his suit jacket, he emerged from his walk-in closet, hoping his nephew would reveal whatever had been troubling him. But when he discovered it was Ananke still in her nightgown and robe who’d crossed his threshold uninvited, revulsion rose like bile in his throat.
He’d always felt a natural antipathy toward the woman who’d tricked his brother into marriage, and never more than at this moment. Yet love for his brother’s son had tempered that destructive emotion enough for him to tolerate her presence in the villa while acting as guardian to young Leon.
Plastic surgery had removed all traces of the scars on her forehead left by the accident. Would that it could as easily erase the scars in Dimitrios’s heart. But nothing could take away the memory of a mercenary female who’d lured Leon to her bed for the express purpose of begetting a Pandakis. Because of her, his brother was dead.
Back then Ananke had been a precocious eighteen-year-old, aware of her assets and how to use them. Now she was a forty-one-year-old female, only six years older than Dimitrios. A woman most men found attractive, yet she showed no interest in them.
Not for the first time had he wondered if she was hoping to become his bride. Though she’d let it be known to family and friends that she refused to consider marriage until she saw her son settled down with a wife of his own, Dimitrios knew it was an excuse to stay on at the villa. No other man could offer her the Pandakis lifestyle.
At a recent family birthday party, his cousin Vaso had speculated with similar thoughts to him. Dimitrios’s eyes must have reflected his abhorrence of the subject because the eldest of Spiros Pandakis’s sons didn’t broach it again.
Unfortunately nothing seemed to slake Ananke’s ambition. Her temerity in seeking him out in a place as private as his own bedroom at seven in the morning gave him proof that she had few scruples left.
Out of love for his brother and nephew, he’d treated her with civility all these years. Regrettably this morning she’d stepped over a forbidden line and would know his wrath.
“You have no right to be in this part of the villa, Ananke.”
“Please don’t be angry with me. I have to talk to you before Leon finds you.” She looked like she’d been crying. “This is important.”
“Important enough to put false ideas in the minds of the staff, let alone my nephew?” he demanded in a quiet rage. “From here on out, if you have something to say to me in private, call me at my office.”
“Wait,” she cried as he swept past her and strode down the corridor toward the entrance to the villa, impervious to her pleading.
“Dimi!” She half-sobbed his nickname in an effort to detain him.
The use of the endearment only his parents and brother had ever called him had the effect of corrosive acid being poured into a wound that would never heal.
Compared to the sound of his ever-lengthening footsteps, the rapid patter of her sandals while she tried to catch up with him made the odd cadence on the marble tiles. To his relief, the patter finally faded.
He’d just shut the front door and had headed for the parking area around the side of the villa when Leon called to him.
Dimitrios wheeled around, surprised to discover his nephew following him.
“Uncle.” He ran up. “I need to talk to you. Alone,” he added in a confiding voice. “Would you let me drive you to the office?”
For a fleeting moment Dimitrios felt guilty for dismissing Ananke. She had obviously been trying to alert him to something. But when he considered her reckless actions, which would be misconstrued by his staff no matter how loyal they were to him, he wasn’t sorry he’d cut her off.
Years ago Leonides had married Ananke to do the honorable thing and give his child the Pandakis name. After his brother died, Dimitrios determined no breath of scandal would ever touch his nephew if he could help it.
Of course Leon was a free agent, capable of getting into trouble on his own—if that were the case. Under the circumstances, Dimitrios knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on business until he’d learned what was plaguing his nephew.
“Work can wait. Why don’t we take a drive and stop somewhere for lunch. I’ll call Stavros and tell him I won’t be in until afternoon.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather spend time with one of your women friends now that you’re back from China?”
“No woman is more important than you, Leon.”
“Are you sure? When I was at Elektra the other night, Ionna went out of her way to ask me when you were coming home. She said it was urgent that she talk to you. She even asked me for your cell phone number, but I told her I didn’t remember it.”
Dimitrios shook his head. “If she was that forward with you, then she has written her own death sentence.”
His nephew eyed him steadily. “She’s very beautiful.”
“I agree, but you know my rule, Leon. When a woman starts to take the initiative, I move on.”
“I think it’s a good rule. I’ve been using it, too, and I must say it works.”
For some strange reason, the admission didn’t sit well with Dimitrios. It sounded too cynical for Leon.
“To be frank, I’m glad you’d rather be with me this morning,” came the emotional response.
Dimitrios gave his nephew a hug. Minutes later their car was headed into the hills of Thessalonica overlooking the bay. While Leon drove, Dimitrios checked in with his assistant.
“Stavros? Can you spare me for a few hours longer?”
“The truth?”
His question surprised Dimitrios.
“Always.”
“Ms. Hamilton and I may work an ocean apart, but since she became your private secretary, I’ve begun to feel superfluous.”
“You’re indispensable to the company, Stavros. You know that,” he rushed to assure him. The sixty-six-year-old man had kept the Greek end of the Pandakis Corporation running smoothly for decades.
Ms. Hamilton, the understudy of his former private secretary in New York until Mrs. Landau’s unexpected passing, was a six-month-old enigma, still in her infancy. Yet Dimitrios could understand why Stavros made the remark.
In a word, she was a renaissance woman. Brilliant. Creative. A combination of a workaholic and efficiency expert who, though she was no great beauty, happened to be blessed with a pleasant nature. She was many things—too many, in fact, to put a label on her. Mrs. Landau had known what she was doing when she’d hired her.
Before their trip to China, Dimitrios had wondered how he’d ever gotten along without her. During their week’s stay in Beijing while he’d watched her weave her magic before their inscrutable colleagues with the finesse of a statesman, he finally figured it out.
She had a woman’s mind for detail, but she thought like a man. Best of all for Dimitrios, she had no interest in him.
“Ms. Hamilton brings her own genius to the company, just as you brought yours many years ago and tutored me, Stavros. I’m looking forward to next week when the two of you meet for the first time. She holds you in great reverence, you know.”
“I, too, shall enjoy making the acquaintance of this American paragon. Spring greets Winter.”
“Since she’s in her late thirties, it would be more accurate to say summer, and you’re sounding uncharacteristically maudlin, Stavros.”
“You have to allow me the vicissitudes of my age.”
Dimitrios chuckled, but beneath the banter he could sense his assistant’s vulnerability. Perhaps a word in Ms. Hamilton’s ear that she leave something important for Stavros to handle for the fair would help.
“Just so we understand each other, I won’t allow you to retire until I do. See you later this afternoon.”
“What’s wrong with Stavros?” his nephew asked as he clicked off the phone.
Putting his head back to relax, Dimitrios murmured, “He’s suddenly aware of growing older.”
“I know how he feels.”
Dimitrios would have laughed if Leon hadn’t sounded so serious. “You said you wanted to talk. Since you brought up Ionna, I have to wonder if you’re not about to tell me you’ve fallen for a girl your mother doesn’t like.”
Leon shook his head. “That’s not why we argued. I told her I dislike my business classes and want to drop out of the university. It’s only September. I can still withdraw without penalty before the fall semester starts in three weeks.”
Dimitrios schooled himself not to react. “To feel that strongly, you must have a very good reason.”
“My heart isn’t in it!” he cried. “I don’t think it ever was. Mother’s always had this vision of me taking my place in the family corporation. She says I owe it to my father’s memory. But business doesn’t appeal to me. Do you think that makes me some sort of traitor?” he asked in an anxious voice.
“Of course not,” Dimitrios scoffed.
At this point he could have told his nephew a few home truths. Like the fact that Leon’s father hadn’t been interested in the family business, either.
There was information Leon didn’t know about his mother that would shed more light on her determination to make certain he held onto his birthright.
But Dimitrios’s hands were tied, because telling his nephew the truth about the past would hurt him more than it would help.
“What do you want to do with your life, or do you even know yet?”
His nephew heaved a sigh. “It’s just an idea, but it’s grown stronger with every visit to Mount Athos.”
Mount Athos.
“You took me there the first time. Remember? We did a walking tour, and ate and slept at the various monasteries.”
Yes. He remembered. Especially his nephew’s fascination with the monks…
Dimitrios straightened in the seat.
Like a revelation he knew what Leon was going to say before he said it.
“Uncle? Last night I told mother I’m thinking of entering an order. That’s when she ran out of my bedroom in hysterics. I’ve never seen her react like that to anything. Would you talk to her about it? You’re the only person she’ll listen to.”
Lord.
Was it possible that Leon’s hero-worship of him had caused his nephew to dismiss a woman’s love as unimportant?
Ananke’s unprecedented visit to his bedroom this morning was beginning to make sense in a brand-new way.
Since the death of Leonides she’d lived on sufferance under Uncle Spiros’s roof until his passing, then under the protection of Dimitrios.
If her son renounced all his worldly goods and went to live on a mountain, Ananke wouldn’t only have lost a son to the church, she would have no choice but to move into a house Dimitrios would provide for her. A comfortable enough pied-à-terre befitting the widow of Leonides. All her dreams smashed.
“Before I say anything to your mother, I’d like to hear more about how you feel.”
“As I said, I’m only thinking about it.”
“Our trip to Mount Athos took place ten years ago. That’s a long time to give a young man to think.”
Leon blushed. The reaction tugged at Dimitrios’s heart. Perhaps his brother’s son truly did have a vocation for the religious life. If it was the path he was meant to travel, far be it from Dimitrios to try to dissuade him.
Then again, like greener pastures, the monastic life might sound good to him because he was still young and lost.
Dimitrios had never questioned what direction his own life would go. He couldn’t relate to Leon in that regard, but he was his guardian. As such, he felt it incumbent to listen as his nephew poured out his heart.
Afterward he would point out the ramifications of a decision that a twenty-two-year-old mind wasn’t capable of envisioning yet. For one thing, it would break his mother’s heart. Ananke might be many things, but she loved her son.
For another, it would destroy something inside Dimitrios if he thought his own tormented past had anything to do with the drastic step his nephew was contemplating.
Suddenly Dimitrios felt older than Stavros.
