Andreas turned on his million-wattage smile as he pulled off his sunglasses and shook his head. ‘Sadly no, it is a hire car,’ and the boys’ faces dropped. ‘But I have one much better than this back on Santorini,’ and they wowed again and positively drooled as they circled the car like a couple of sharks.
‘I’ll give you a ride a little later,’ he said. ‘That is, if you like.’ Their eyes lit up on their combined, ‘Awesome!’ Cleo laughed and wondered how he could read children so well when he’d had so little to do with them. Maybe he’d make a pretty good father, she figured, if his reaction to her half-brothers was any indication. Maybe having his babies wouldn’t be such a hardship.
Making them, she already knew, would be nothing but sheer pleasure.
Her cheeks colouring into a blush she suspected she shouldn’t be brandishing when she was about to introduce the man she loved to her family, she slipped her hand in his and led him to where her mother stood, her eyes as wide as her expanding stomach, while Nanna’s watched on keen and interested. ‘Mum, Nanna, I’d like you to meet Andreas Xenides, the man I love, and the man I intend to marry.’
‘That is,’ Andreas added, turning on his dazzling smile again and bowing as he took first her mother’s and then her nanna’s hand in greeting, ‘if you permit me your daughter’s hand in marriage.’
‘Oh, my,’ her mother said, the concerned look she’d had on her face when they’d driven up transforming into her own wide smile. ‘Jack!’ she called as the screen door slammed and her husband emerged from the house. ‘Jack, come and meet Andreas. Cleo’s getting married!’
Jack didn’t rush. He took his own sweet time, Cleo thought, as he let his laid-back stride carry him closer, his beefy arms swinging loosely by his sides and his eyes narrowed by the sun and still drinking in the scene, missing nothing. He pulled up a metre shy and the two men faced each other off, the Greek billionaire in the white shirt, with money clearly at his fingertips, and Jack in his moleskins, his sandy hair for once not flattened by his hat, and who clearly felt that out here, even being the dirt-poor farmer he was, he was king.
He nodded, extending a wary hand. ‘Mr Xenides, Jack Carter.’
‘Call me Andreas, Mr Carter.’
He nodded. ‘Andreas, it is. And just plain Jack is fine with me. I hear you made quite a ruckus in town with your fancy car. And now, I hear, you want to marry Cleo.’
Beside her Andreas smiled. ‘That’s about the size of it, if you’ll allow me to, that is.’
And Jack turned to Cleo. ‘And is this what you want, lovey?’
Cleo beamed at the endearment. ‘It’s everything I want, but only on one condition.’
Her stepfather’s face turned dark and he looked ready to take Andreas on, in case he took issue. ‘And what’s that?’
‘That you walk me down the aisle and give me away.’
And she could have sworn her sun-hardened stepfather melted right there before her eyes.
‘Well,’ said her mum with a tear in her eyes, wiping her hands on her apron and looking for something to fill in the stunned-mullet silence from her husband, ‘you will both be staying for lunch? I’ve got a lamb roast on.’
And they did stay, and afterwards Andreas rang his mother while his new family were busy with dessert, knowing it was morning now in Athens. ‘I have a surprise for you,’ he told her.
‘You’re marrying the Australian woman after all?’
And he did a double take. ‘You knew?’
She laughed. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Sometimes you don’t know what’s right there under your nose until it’s gone.’
Andreas laughed then too. ‘You did,’ he told her, wondering if somehow she hadn’t known all along but still not understanding how.
Then after dessert he took the twins for a spin in the car, after which they put their own two and two together.
‘You’re leaving again?’ they asked Cleo, almost simultaneously, sounding disappointed that with Andreas gone they might be deprived of an occasional ride in a sports car.
And their nanna nodded wisely, as always. ‘But look at the bright side, boys, you’ll be able to visit Cleo and Andreas on Santorini and have a ride in his sports car there. Isn’t that right, Andreas?’ And Andreas nodded and Cleo laughed and knew
right then and there she could stop looking for her own bright side, because she’d found it.
Love.
There was no brighter side.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2009
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Trish Morey 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4089-1862-3