The Greek's Stolen Bride (2 page)

"Ah. Ariana." Miles Leotokos turned to her with a shark-like smile as she stood on the threshold of the same room she’d seen Theo in earlier. Now he was dressed in a charcoal grey suit, the only splash of color a crimson tie. She felt herself, incredibly and ridiculously, start to blush.

Had his cheekbones always looked so sharp, his eyes so dark, the twist of his mouth so sardonic? She was being absurd. The last thing she wanted to do was develop some kind of schoolgirl crush on this man. He was her possible means to an end, nothing more.

Belatedly she realized she’d been too busy considering the hard angles of his face to pay attention to the introductions being made. Theo arched an eyebrow, inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"I didn’t know you had a daughter, Miles."

"She’s very precious to me," Miles replied. "I make sure she is protected."

That was a rather innocuous way of referring to her imprisonment, Ariana thought wryly. She refused to give in to the dark bitterness that always lapped at the fringes of her mind, the edges of her soul. She would not let her father steal her spirit.

Theo raised his glass to his lips, his gaze resting thoughtfully on her. "A wise decision, I’m sure," he murmured, and she knew he was wondering why she’d sought him out earlier. Let him wonder. She would use this evening to decide if he was a worthy savior; only then would she tell him her intentions. Lifting her chin, she met Theo Atrikes's assessing gaze with a hard stare of her own, and yet she could not keep a shiver of awareness from stealing through her when, his eyes glinting, he slowly smiled back.

CHAPTER TWO

Theo watched Ariana sit at the opulent table laid, apparently, for his benefit. Leotokos had clearly spared no expense in preparing for his guest--or victim, as the odious man most likely thought of him. With his paunchy middle, wet lips, and darkly flashing eyes, Miles Leotokos reminded Theo of a fat spider crouching eagerly in wait to entomb his victim in sticky threads.

He had no intention of being so ensnared.

A blank-faced servant entered with the first course, slices of succulent melon artfully arranged with paper-thin slivers of prosciutto.

"So, Atrikes," Miles began, leaning back in his chair as he eyed Theo speculatively. "What made you decide to take my challenge?"

"Who can resist a challenge?" Theo replied blandly. It took a surprising amount of self-control to remain bland, even uninterested. Just the sight of Miles Leotokos in all his gluttonous avarice made Theo want to curl his hands into fists or even swing one of them right into that pouchy jaw. This was the man who had ruined his father, and sent Theo and his mother into stark and grinding poverty.

"A first in computer science at Cambridge and CEO of your own IT firm," Leotokos said thoughtfully. "You certainly seem as if you might be up to the challenge."

"I hope so."

"I wonder, though, why you'd want to work for me?" Miles's eyes had narrowed, and Theo felt himself tense. He didn't want the wily old bastard suspecting him already.

"Like I said, I enjoy a challenge. Once I solve your little puzzle, we can work out the employment details."

Leotokos chuckled, the sound rasping and uncomfortably sinister. "You have confidence. I like that." Theo inclined his head in acknowledgement. "You know six have failed?"

Theo let his gaze rest briefly on Ariana; she was staring straight back at him with narrowed, assessing eyes. What did she want from him? Because he knew it was something. Her lithe body was as taut as a bow.

"Someone apprised me of that fact," he replied and let his gaze rest on Ariana for one more knowing beat before he turned back to the oily Leotokos. He also knew, although Leotokos had buried the evidence, that he'd ruined the careers of the six young men who had attempted to disarm the virus. A few well-placed phone calls and insidious, whispered rumors and they'd become virtually unemployable, all in their early twenties. One had attempted suicide as a result.

"And yet you feel you are up to it?"

"Like I said, I like a challenge." He smiled, meaning to put an end to this ridiculous baiting. "What about you, Ariana? Do you like challenges?" He turned back to her, let his gaze sweep over her slowly this time, from the crown of her shining dark hair, caught up on top of her head, to the delicate point of her chin, her lush curves hidden by a silvery sheath dress that Theo supposed was meant to be modest but made her look all the more enticing.

"Not particularly." Her voice, he noted, was low, cultured, as attractive as everything else about her. Yet she almost seemed angry, as if she wished he hadn't brought her to the table's attention.

"As I said before, Ariana has been sheltered," Leotokos said, and even though his tone was oilily jocular Theo heard a note of repressiveness, even of warning. "She wouldn't know a challenge if she saw one."

He thought of how tall and straight and proud she'd seemed, confronting him in the sitting room earlier, and doubted that Leotokos knew his daughter at all.

Glancing back at Ariana, her veiled gaze now firmly on her food, Theo doubted she wanted to be known... at least by her father. Perhaps by anyone.

"And what about you, Mrs. Leotokos?" He turned to the pale, silent woman who sat at the other end of the table and had offered not a word of conversation beyond a murmured greeting when he arrived. "Do you enjoy a challenge?"

She shook her head, stared at her plate. Theo felt a stab of sympathy. He'd never seen a more frightened, browbeaten woman in his life.

"And what about you?" Theo met the shrewd gaze of Miles Leotokos with as much equanimity as he could muster. How he hated the man. He'd never met him before tonight, but he'd despised him for years for ruining his father, an honest man, if a tragically weak one.

Leotokos leaned back in his seat. "What about me?"

"Do you enjoy a challenge? Creating a virus that no one seems able to destroy must have offered you a fair one."

Leotokos laughed, the sound reverberating through the stillness of the dining room. "Some things," he said, his manner irritatingly patronizing, "are really amazingly easy."

"Are they." Theo had intended to use this dinner as a way to ferret out more information from Leotokos, but he found he no longer had the stomach. He wasn't sure how long he could remain in the same room as the oily, arrogant man without punching him.

And that would certainly ruin both their evening, as well as make the job he'd come here to do all the more difficult. He forced himself to relax, and he felt Ariana's gaze on him. When he looked up she saw she was frowning slightly. He directed a smile at her.

"Do you live on this island paradise, Miss Leotokos?"

"Yes." Her lips pursed and her eyes flashed. She was certainly prickly.

"Ariana is to be married in the autumn," Leotokos said.

Theo watched as she tensed, one hand curling into an elegant fist. Not a happy match, then. "May I offer my congratulations," he said formally. "Who is the lucky man?"

"My second in command, Dion Paranoussis."

Theo knew the man vaguely. He was hard and ambitious, a thoroughly unpleasant character if flashily handsome. What did he offer Ariana? Or was her father putting pressure on her to wed? It seemed unlikely in this day and age, yet knowing the extent of Leotokos' power and corruption, Theo wondered.

"Congratulations," he said again. "I wish you both happiness."

Ariana's mouth thinned and she said nothing. Leotokos reached for his wine.

This dinner, Theo thought, was going to be utterly interminable. Discreetly he checked his watch. He thought of making his excuses but he didn't want to raise Leotokos's suspicions. He leaned back in his chair, surveyed the increasingly tense Ariana.

"And where will you live, once you are married?"

"She'll stay here," Leotokos answered for his daughter. "I'm building the happy couple a villa on the other side of the island."

Theo raised his eyebrows. "It's a rather long commute for Paranoussis."

"He'll keep his apartment in Athens," Leotokos  answered with a shrug and Ariana still said nothing.

It sounded, Theo thought, like a hellish marriage. Prison, essentially, for a woman he already sensed was strong and proud and most unwilling to be contained. He wondered again why she had agreed.

The courses dragged on, and Theo felt himself getting more and more tense--as tense as the woman seated across from him. He could not stand exchanging pleasantries with Miles Leotokos for one more minute. This man was his enemy, had been his enemy since he'd gazed into his father's ravaged face and asked him who had done this to him.

Spiro had been near death, death by his own desperate hand because his business was bankrupt, his reputation ruined, and all because one man had coveted what he had had.

Miles Leotokos
, his father had whispered, and Theo's destiny had been sealed. He would avenge his father's death. He would ruin Leotokos.

He glanced up from his reverie and saw Ariana looking at him again, her eyes narrowed in something like suspicion. He suspected she bore no deep affection for her father, but he had no intention of letting her guess his real purpose here. Smiling blandly, he reached once more for his wine.

Ariana rose from the table with her mother while her father ushered Theo Atrikes into the study for the usual glass of ouzo and a bit of a man-to-man chat after dinner. Her father did so love baiting these willing young victims of his, yet Theo had seemed to take it all in knowing stride.

Yet what would tomorrow hold?

She glanced at the pale face of her mother, her eyes depressingly blank. Her mother, Ariana knew, had given up on life a long time ago. She simply existed now, drifting through the days, as empty as one of the shells that washed up on the beach.

And tonight might be the last time Ariana ever saw her.

"Let me help you to your room," Ariana said and with a shrug of indifferent assent Sofia Leotokos let her take her arm and guide her up to her bedroom, separate from Miles's. Ariana helped her mother undress, plumped her pillows and pulled the covers over her as if she were a sickly child.

Regret pulled at her as she knelt by the side of the bed and took her mother's cold hands in hers. "Mama..." She hesitated, because as much as she loved her mother, she did not trust her to be strong enough to keep a secret.

Sofia looked up, her faded gaze taking in her daughter's. "You don't need to say anything, Ariana," she said softly and with an icy flash of realization Ariana knew her mother already knew what she planned.

How...?

"You could come with me," she whispered, her voice so low she didn't know if her mother had heard those dangerous words.

Sofia shook her head. "I do not have the strength. And I would not keep you back, not for anything." She leaned back against the pillows. "You were always stronger than I, Ariana. I pray you will remain so."

Ariana blinked back sudden tears. She nodded, her throat tight, everything in her aching. "Goodnight, Mama," she said, and with one last squeeze of her mother's hands she left the room.

The villa stretched silently all around her, although Ariana knew her father possessed far too many spies. No servant could be trusted, no secret kept. Her heart thundered in her chest when she considered what she would have to do tonight, how much she would risk by setting her plan in motion.

Yet her life--her very soul--depended on it, for she could not remain here and marry Dion Paranoussis. She would, Ariana acknowledged bleakly, rather die.

The hours passed slowly. A maid came into her bedroom to turn down the bed and Ariana changed into her nightgown, slid under the cool sheets as if this were a night like any other. The maid left, and she waited. One hour, then another. Midnight was not late enough; her father could still be working. She strained to hear the creak of a stair, the sound of footsteps as her father finally retired. A door clicked shut in the distance, and she finally relaxed, if only a little.

It was nearing two o'clock in the morning when she finally stole from her room, her dressing gown wrapped around her, her hair streaming down her back--and her heart thudding so loudly she feared it might wake the house. Blood roared in her ears as she crept down the hall towards the wing of the villa that housed the guest bedrooms... that housed Theo Atrikes.

She'd gone there earlier today to see which room was being prepared and knew it was the third door on the left, the one facing the sea. It seemed to take an age to make her way down that corridor, the slap of her bare feet on the tiled floor uncommonly loud. Finally her hand curled around the door knob and she held her breath, everything in her straining, as she turned it.

In the next moment someone's hand curled around her wrist and she was yanked inside the room, pressed against a wall. Theo Atrikes's eyes glittered inches from her own.

"We meet again, Miss Leotokos."

CHAPTER THREE

Theo stared down at the pale, shocked face of Ariana Leotokos. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, her mouth slightly parted. He could feel her lush curves pressed enticingly against him, and his libido stirred.