Loe raamatut: «Wedding Party Collection: Here Comes The Groom»

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.

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.”