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“You are determined not to mellow an inch, are you not?”
Andreas continued. “I am cast into the role of wicked philanderer, making it easier for you to ignore the truth,” he stated flatly.
“The truth?” Sophy asked warily, wondering what was coming.
“The truth your body recognized from the first moment we met, that we are compatible sexually in a way that happens with few couples.” He looked at her, daring her to deny it.
“We’re not a couple,” she pointed out swiftly, hot color burning her cheeks, “and you can’t possibly say that considering we’ve never even—slept together.”
“I am more than willing to put my theory to the test,” Andreas offered helpfully.
They’re the men who have everything—except a bride…
Wealth, power, charm—what else could a heart-stoppingly handsome tycoon need? In the GREEK TYCOONS miniseries you have already been introduced to some gorgeous Greek multimillionaires who are in need of wives.
Now it’s the turn of favorite Presents® author Helen Brooks, with her attention-grabbing romance THE GREEK TYCOON’S BRIDE
This tycoon has met his match, and he’s decided he has to have her…whatever that takes!
The Greek Tycoon’s Bride
Helen Brooks
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ONE
‘YOU’RE not seriously telling me you’re actually considering going to Greece, Jill? You can’t, you just can’t.’ Sophy tried very hard not to glare as she looked at the small, slim girl sitting opposite her but it was hard. ‘You don’t owe Theodore’s family a thing and you know it. Michael is seven years old now and they have never so much as acknowledged his existence.’
‘Well, they didn’t know about it for the first couple of years,’ Jill said reasonably.
‘And when they found out? You’d have expected some sort of contact—a letter, a phone call, something.’
‘According to Christos, the family did try to write but they never received an answer to any of their letters.’
‘And you believe that?’ Sophy’s voice was scornful, her violet-blue eyes expressing her opinion of Jill’s in-laws as forcefully as her voice.
‘It is possible, Sophy.’ Jill gazed miserably at her twin, her own violet-blue eyes dark and tragic and her face very white. ‘Theodore was a very proud man, excessively so—you know that. He said he would never forgive them and he meant it. He…he could be implacable when he made up his mind about anything.’
‘But he would have talked to you about it,’ Sophy pressed urgently. ‘At least to tell you he’d received some correspondence?’
‘No.’ Jill turned away, busying herself folding some washing she had just brought indoors. ‘Not necessarily, not if he’d already made up his mind. When we got married he told me I was his family from that point on and that he had no other, and he meant it. I wasn’t allowed to even discuss them, if you want to know the truth.’
Sophy stared at her sister’s bent head and not for the first time wondered how happy Jill’s marriage had really been. But that was irrelevant now anyway. Six weeks ago Theodore had been killed in a freak accident when the car he had been driving had been crushed by a falling tree at the height of a bad storm.
With that in mind, Sophy now said gently, ‘But the funeral, Jill? They never even came to Theodore’s funeral.’
‘Christos told them it had been Theodore’s wishes.’ And at Sophy’s loud snort of disbelief, Jill raised her blonde head and looked straight at her sister. ‘It was true, Sophy. There were letters which Theodore had placed in Christos’s safe-keeping some years ago. I didn’t even know anything about them until Theodore died and then Christos felt he ought to tell me before he sent them to Greece. I think he suspected what they contained.’
‘Letters?’ Sophy took a quick gulp of coffee as she watched Jill continue to fold the washing in the big wicker laundry basket on the kitchen table. ‘Letters to whom, exactly?’
‘To his family. In…in the event of his illness or death. Of course he didn’t expect it would happen so soon or suddenly—’ Jill stopped abruptly, taking a deep breath before she continued, ‘Anyway, Christos and I made the decision to open the letters and read them before we sent them, the day after the accident, and then…then we destroyed them. But Christos felt he had to phone the family and just say Theodore had left instructions he didn’t want them there.’
Jill now stopped speaking, laying her head on the edge of the laundry basket in front of her and bursting into tears. Sophy jumped to her feet, rushing to her twin’s side and putting her arm round Jill’s shaking shoulders as she said urgently, ‘Oh, love, what is it? Come on, everything will be all right.’
‘They were awful, Sophy.’ As Jill raised streaming eyes, she was choking on the sobs she was trying to stifle. ‘Really awful. So bitter and hard and cold. I…I couldn’t send them. Not to his mother and everyone. Think how they’d feel after what has happened to Theodore. So—’ she reached into the laundry basket and extracted a newly dried handkerchief from the pile of sweet-smelling washing ‘—so I burnt them. I burnt them all. Do you think that was wrong of me?’
She raised haunted eyes to her sister’s face and Sophy stared at her, her blue eyes reflecting her concern for her beloved twin. ‘Of course not,’ she said softly, smoothing back a lock of fine, ash-blonde hair from Jill’s brow. ‘What good would it do to just perpetuate all the misery? Heartache breeds heartache.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Jill dabbed at her eyes as she said, ‘Christos said the decision had to be mine and mine alone, and once I’d made it he said he agreed with me, but it’s been like a lead weight round my heart ever since. Theodore gave those letters to Christos, believing Christos would do what he wanted, and I…I burnt them. He would never forgive me if he knew.’
It seemed to her that Jill’s husband had majored in unforgiveness, Sophy thought grimly. She had always had reservations about Theodore and the two of them had never hit it off, something Sophy knew Jill had sensed from the first time she had introduced them. Consequently Jill had been guarded in anything she said about Theodore and for the first time the two girls had had an area in their lives in which they were less than totally frank with each other, although neither of them had acknowledged it.
It had been less of a problem than it might have been, owing to the fact that within three months of Jill meeting Theodore—just after the two girls had finished university— Sophy had been offered a wonderful opportunity on the strength of her degree in Maths and Business Studies to work in London as a trainee buyer for one of the top fashion companies.
She had left Cambridge—her home town—within the month, just days before Jill had discovered she was pregnant with Michael, necessitating a hasty register office wedding which Sophy had attended before shooting off back to the capital. From that point the twins’ lives had gone in very different directions—Jill looking after her family and helping