CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS A perfect day for a May wedding on the Greek Riviera.

      The sky was an endless, azure blue with just a smattering of puffy white clouds. The sun reflected brightly off the thick walls of the villa’s tiny whitewashed chapel, glazing the tiled roof, while the Aegean Sea and the Temple of Poseidon shimmered in the background. The temperature was perfect as well, comfortable and warm, without being hot, or humid.

      Ordinarily, a bride would be ecstatic at such perfect conditions, but Kassiani was no ordinary bride. She was not even supposed to be the bride.

      Today was her sister’s wedding, with the ceremony and reception to take place at Damen’s historic seaside villa in Sounio, but early this morning Kristopher Dukas made the drastic decision to swap brides on the unsuspecting bridegroom, thus Kassiani now stood outside the villa chapel’s wooden door, waiting her cue to enter, while knots in her stomach exploded, turning into frantic butterflies.

      There was a huge possibility this would not end well. She fully expected the groom to walk out on her in the middle of the service, abandoning her in the tiny church.

      The bridegroom was not a fool.

      The bridegroom was one of the most powerful men in the world, and he would not like being duped.

      Kassiani was not in the habit of duping men, either.

      She was the youngest Dukas. The least remarkable in every way. But when cornered by her father this morning, she’d agreed to his plan and would marry Damen Alexopoulos not because it would save her father’s hide, but it’d save hers, as well.

      Marriage to Damen would be her way out. She’d escape her father’s house. She’d escape her father’s control. And she’d come into the trust her late aunt had established for her, a trust that would give her some measure of freedom and financial control.

      It was worth noting, too, that the wedding today would mean she had actually accomplished something significant in her father’s eyes. Even if it meant she was giving up one controlling male for another, because at twenty-three, she was ready to do something, and be someone other than plain, dumpy, uninspiring Kassiani Dukas.

      Marrying the fabulously wealthy shipping tycoon Damen Alexopoulos wouldn’t change the way she looked, but it would change the way people thought of her, and spoke of her. It would force them to recognize her as someone of consequence, pathetic as that was.

      The harpist played within the church, and her father—short, stout, with thick salt-and-pepper hair—gestured impatiently for her. Kassiani suppressed a sigh. Her father really didn’t like her. As a little girl she’d never understood his coldness, because he absolutely doted on Elexis, but as she grew up and came to understand the world, she was able to put the pieces together.

      Kristopher was not a handsome man, and he wanted to be liked. Respected. Having money was just one way to be respected. Having beautiful children was another. And while Elexis was their late mother’s clone—their mother, having been a successful model before she’d given up her career to marry the Greek American shipping magnate—Kassiani unfortunately favored her father, inheriting both his build and his strong jaw. Not what a woman wanted when her mother had been a famous model.

      Kassiani exhaled in a depressing whoosh. These thoughts were not helping. Her self-esteem—never strong—was plummeting by the moment. And then her father snapped his fingers.

      It seemed it was time.

      The butterflies returned and her hand trembled as she took her father’s arm. He paused to adjust her heavy lace veil, better cloaking her face.

      Kassiani felt utterly terrified, and yet also strangely calm. Once they stepped into the chapel, there would be no turning back. Elexis had let her father down. Elexis had let the entire family down. Kass would do no such thing.

      For once she could do something to benefit her father’s vast shipping business. She’d wanted to work for Dukas Shipping since she was in second grade. She’d even studied business and international law at Stanford so she’d be of value, but her father had rebuffed her, refusing to hire her, or even listen to her ideas. He was painfully old-fashioned, believing a woman’s value was at home, producing heirs, and preferably male heirs.

      After twenty-three years of being useless, after twenty-three years of being an embarrassment, she was aiding her father, significantly aiding him by saving him from bankruptcy and all the ensuing humiliation and shame.

      Empowered, Kassiani drew a breath, lifted her chin and took her first step into the four-hundred-year-old Greek Orthodox church. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the cool, dark interior, and then she spotted the groom before her. It really was a tiny chapel, with just five rows of pews on either side of the narrow aisle.

      Damen Michael Alexopoulos stood at the front, just before the altar and priest. Once Kassiani spotted her future husband, she couldn’t look away. Dressed in a severe black suit, he looked even more intimidating than he had yesterday in the villa suite. She didn’t know if it was his height, or the width of his shoulders, but there was a dangerous stillness about him now that made the air catch in her throat.

      Was he suspicious?

      Had he already figured out she wasn’t the right bride?

      Kass was so heavily veiled that she could barely see through the thick white lace, but he was no fool and it wouldn’t take much to assess her size and shape and realize that there was no way she was Elexis, of Instagram fame. Elexis was opposite Kass in every way imaginable. Even wearing treacherously high heels, Kassiani remained short, her plump figure wrapped in the tightest of undergarments, including the old-fashioned corset necessary to make Elexis’s dress fit, and that was after the dress had been altered to include additional panels and a dramatically shortened hem.

      “He knows,” she said under her breath.

      “He doesn’t,” her father gritted. “And it’s too late for second thoughts. You cannot fail me.”

      A lump filled her throat. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

      She clenched his arm and kept her chin high. The only way through challenging times was to go through them. There would be no retreat. There would be no panicking. She would make this work. She would find a way to please her husband. She would bring the two families together.