The Greek Tycoon's Bride. Helen Brooks
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is to me.’ She raised her chin, her soft mouth tightening as he continued to study her with what Sophy considered to be intrusive intensity. ‘The only answer you’re getting.’
‘You’re very defensive about your sister’s marriage,’ he said at last, his body inclining slightly towards her as he spoke.
Was she? She didn’t think she was, but certainly there was something about Andreas which made her uptight and on edge. ‘No, I’m not,’ she said sharply, moving her body irritably. ‘But I happen to think their relationship was their own business.’
‘I agree absolutely,’ he said with silky composure, ‘but if I remember rightly it was your attitude towards Theodore I was remarking on.’ He smiled what Sophy considered a supercilious smile.
‘And as you’ve only met me today and haven’t seen your long-lost brother for years, I would suggest any remarks of that nature are extremely presumptuous,’ she shot back quickly. Game, set and match.
He settled back in his seat, shifting his large frame more comfortably, and her senses registered the movement with acute sensitivity even as she steeled herself not to reveal a thing to the lethal grey eyes. He was very foreign, very alien somehow—far more than Theodore had been—but she didn’t think it was altogether his Greek blood that made her feel that way. It was the intimidating nature of his masculinity, his bigness, the muscled strength which padded his shoulders and chest and the severe quality to his good looks. There was no softness anywhere, and in spite of herself she recognised such overwhelming maleness fascinated even as it threatened.
He looked cynical and hard and ruthless, but sexy too, very sexy. She bet he would be dynamite in bed.
The thought was such a shock that it literally brought her upright in her seat. She couldn’t believe she’d thought it about him.
‘What is it?’ The grey gaze hadn’t missed a thing.
‘Nothing.’ She forced her voice to sound cool and remote. ‘But I would prefer to get back to the house now, if you don’t mind.’ She eyed him firmly, sensing what his answer would be.
‘I do.’ His voice was very smooth. ‘There are still the cars to see, if you remember?’
‘It’s Michael who’s interested in cars, not me,’ Sophy said sharply, ‘as you very well know. I don’t want to see them.’
He stared at her with an enigmatic smile which didn’t reach the cold intent eyes. ‘That is a pity,’ he drawled easily, ‘because you are going to see them.’
‘I see.’ She was glaring again, she thought angrily, but she just couldn’t match his irritating composure. ‘Hospitality and putting a guest at ease aren’t your strong points, are they, Mr Karydis?’ Each word was coated in sheer ice.
He stiffened at her words and then laughed quietly, his face hard. ‘Would you be offended if I said it depended on the guest?’ he said with insulting politeness. ‘Or that women like you make me think my countrymen were right to wait until 1952 before they gave the female sex the right to vote?’
‘Oh, how very chauvinistic of you, Mr Karydis,’ she said cuttingly. ‘I gather you are one of those rather pathetic males who feel threatened by any woman who has a mind of her own and isn’t afraid to use it? What’s your view of the female sex? But no, let me guess. Our destiny is to be kept pregnant and barefoot, is that it? We’re all supposed to fall into your strong male arms and beg you to make love to us?’
‘If that is a subtle invitation, Sophy, you should wait to be asked,’ he said reprovingly.
She knew it was a calculated jibe to get under her skin but in spite of that she couldn’t disguise the furious anger his cool baiting had produced. It turned her cheeks scarlet and her eyes fiery as she spluttered, ‘You, you—’
‘Male chauvinist pig normally fits the description but you have already used that one,’ he said calmly. ‘However, being such a woman of the world I am sure you can find a more original definition if you try.’
He was laughing at her! It was there in the barely concealed curve of his lips and the glitter of amusement in the dark eyes, and Sophy would have given the world to be able to slap the smirk off his handsome face. But there was Michael just a few yards away, and it wouldn’t do the little boy any good at all if his aunt suddenly attacked his new uncle, Sophy cautioned herself desperately. Although it would certainly relieve her stress levels.
And as though he had read her mind, Andreas added softly, ‘Now, please, Sophy Fearn, do not force me to carry you kicking and screaming to the garages. It might upset the family.’
‘And of course the family is everything,’ she snapped hotly.
‘Just so.’ The grey eyes narrowed ominously. ‘I care very much for my parents and I am sure you care about your sister, so let us at least put on a facade of being civil, yes? It is only for two weeks, after all.’
Sophy drew on every little bit of will power she possessed and took a deep hidden breath. She had never met anyone she had disliked more—or so instantly. He was a brute, an arrogant brute, and she loathed and detested him, but this visit was not about her or her feelings. She had come to Greece to look after Jill and Michael and make things as easy as she could for them, and a feud with Theodore’s brother simply wasn’t an option in the circumstances.
She raised her chin a little higher, forced her voice into neutral and said flatly, ‘I can manage two weeks if you can.’
‘Excellent.’ He rose to his feet and held out his hand to her. ‘So, we will take Michael to see the cars and then return to the bosom of the family, yes? Smiling and calm.’
Sophy gritted her teeth as she ignored his hand and stood up. Thank goodness, thank goodness Andreas didn’t live with his parents. With all the best intentions in the world, she didn’t think she could have stood two weeks of seeing this man every day.
She looked at him as he walked across to Michael after a mocking smile, her senses noting the comfortable, almost animal-like prowl with which he moved. She felt shaky inside and that made her angry with herself. He had wound her up to screaming point and it was the first time she had allowed anyone to do that.
Unbidden, her mother’s wedding photograph suddenly flashed onto the screen of her mind. She had found it one day when she was about eleven or twelve, hidden in the attic where she and Jill had been rummaging about when their mother had been at work. Their mother had spent nearly every waking hour working in an endeavour to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, and although they had never wanted for anything on a material level the two girls had virtually brought themselves up.
From the time they had first asked questions about their father their mother had refused to discuss the man who had let her down so badly, but her bitter silence had spoken for itself. The twins had never dared to press the matter and they had assumed their mother had destroyed any photographs that might have been taken, so when they had discovered the picture of the handsome smiling man and his radiant happy bride they had pored over it for hours.
Their mother’s fragile fairness had seemed even more delicate beside the tall dark man at her side, and she had been looking up at her handsome husband so adoringly, so reverently, it was clear to anyone how much she had loved him.
Their father had not been looking at his new wife but straight into the camera, his stance confident and self-assured and his handsome face wearing an expression of cool self-satisfaction which had bordered on the arrogant.
It had somehow fitted exactly the bare facts they knew—that their father had run off with a local beauty queen just a couple of months after they had been born, and had never bothered with them from that day on or even spoken to his wife again.
Jill had seemed to take the photograph in her stride but somehow, and Sophy couldn’t have explained why, it had eaten into her soul like a canker. Their father had been aggressively handsome, very masculine and dark with a magnetism which had