Page 16 of The Greek Wedding She Never Had

Touching him wasn’t enough. She wanted to see him. She must have spoken her thoughts aloud because he gave a rough laugh and yanked his sweater over his head with clumsy haste rather than his usual grace.

Outside, the storm had cleared, leaving a white moon to cast a pearlescent gleam into the orangery and over Jace’s half-naked body. He could have been a sculpture by Michelangelo but, unlike cold marble, his skin felt warm to Eleanor’s lips when she kissed the place above where his heart thudded unevenly.

He growled something unintelligible and seized her in his arms once more, bringing his mouth down on hers and kissing her with untrammelled passion. His fingers deftly unfastened the buttons on her shirt and Eleanor felt a tiny stab of jealousy at the evidence of his expertise at undressing women. But when he parted the edges of the shirt and bared her breasts, setting her away from him so that he could look at her, his husky groan evoked a throb of desire between her legs.

‘Eísai ómorfi,’Jace said in a strained voice. He repeated in English, ‘You are beautiful.’

The hot gleam of desire in his eyes made Eleanorfeelbeautiful. Whatever had happened in the past,thisnow was real. The slight unsteadiness of Jace’s hand when he reached out and cupped her breast told her that it was not a calculated seduction. The chemistry smouldering between them was too strong for either of them to resist.

She caught her breath when he stroked his thumb across her nipple and brought it to a tingling, hard peak. With a soft sigh, she arched towards him and he claimed her lips once more in a shockingly sensual kiss that plundered her soul. Eleanor was conscious only of Jace, his mouth wreaking havoc and his caresses increasingly bold as he trailed his fingertips over her stomach, down to her knickers, where the lacy panel between her legs was damp with her arousal. Nothing mattered but that he should assuage the insistent ache there.

A sudden, shocking bright light replaced the pale gleam of the moon. Eleanor stiffened as Jace tore his lips from hers and cursed beneath his breath. He narrowed his eyes against the glare of the overhead light.

‘Is something wrong, Mamá?Do you feel ill?’

Iliana was standing in the doorway and looked embarrassed. But Eleanor was even more mortified and hastily tugged the shirt over her breasts.

‘Sygnómi,’his mother apologised. ‘I thought I had left my reading glasses in here and I did not want to disturb Anna. But I have disturbed you.’

‘You may as well hear our news, Mamá,’ Jace said softly. ‘We were going to tell you in the morning.’ He draped his arm around Eleanor’s shoulders and smiled down at her. The warning glint in his eyes jolted her back to reality and reminded her that once again he was only pretending to be in love with her. But this time she was part of the pretence and she gave him a saccharine-sweet smile.

He stared at her intently as if he were trying to read her mind. Let him try, she thought. A year ago she had worn her heart on her sleeve, but now she was wary and determined that he would not hurt her again.

‘Eleanor has agreed to be my wife,’ Jace told his mother. ‘We are going to be married. Not only that, but earlier today I finalised a deal which will return my father’s share of the Pangalos hotel to the Zagorakis family.’

Iliana looked stunned for a moment before her lined face broke into a joyous smile. ‘My prayers have been answered. Everything I hoped for has come true, and when I take my last breath I will be at peace.’ She clasped Eleanor’s hand. ‘I see tenderness in the way my son looks at you. And you love him, don’t you?’

Eleanor hesitated and her gaze flew to Jace’s inscrutable expression. She had a better understanding of why he had cold-heartedly seduced her a year ago. He had loved his father and now he wanted to make his mother happy before she died. Jace wasn’t completely heartless. Before they had been interrupted, his desire for her had been real. She’d felt the hard proof of his arousal against her hip. But he would never fall in love with Kostas Pangalos’s granddaughter and she must not forget it.

‘Jace knows how I feel about him,’ she murmured, and wondered why he frowned.

Bright sunshine on an English summer’s day poured through Eleanor’s office window at Francine’s hotel and set the enormous diamond on her finger ablaze.

‘That’s quite a rock.’ Her sister sounded envious.

Eleanor sighed. Her engagement ring was certainly eye-catching and must be worth a fortune. When Jace had returned the ring to her before she’d left Greece two weeks ago its sparkling brilliance had been a mocking reminder that the diamond solitaire held no emotional significance. The truth was that she would have preferred a less showy ring. Perhaps she was more like a brown sparrow than a peacock, as Jace had once described her, she thought ruefully.

‘You are a dark horse,’ Lissa said. ‘How did you manage to persuade one of the richest and sexiest men in Europe to marry you? I wasn’t aware that you knew Jace Zagorakis until I read the announcement of your engagement in the newspaper. You might have told me first.’

To Eleanor’s surprise her sister sounded hurt. ‘There wasn’t time,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘Jace wants us to marry as soon as possible because his mother is ill. He made the press announcement on the same day that notice of our marriage was published in a local Greek newspaper, which is the rule before we could apply for a wedding licence.’

She looked back at her computer screen, frowning when she thought of the amount of work she still had to do. Jace had tried to persuade her to stay at his house in Thessaloniki for the month leading up to their wedding, but she’d insisted on returning to Oxford. She had things to sort out, she’d told him. But the real reason was that she hadn’t trusted herself to live in close proximity to Jace. Their separation was a chance for her to build her defences against his charisma but, annoyingly, he invaded her dreams every night.

As well as a lack of sleep, Eleanor had been dealing with numerous issues at the Oxford hotel. A serious leak in one of the upstairs bathrooms had flooded two of the newly refurbished suites, which had incurred more expense. She’d had no time to prepare for her move to Greece, and hadn’t even bought a wedding dress yet.

‘I can’t believe that Craig has decided to relocate to Canada,’ she groaned. ‘I had intended to promote him to General Manager of Francine’s. I’ll keep my position as Vice President of Operations, but I will be living in Halkidiki and involved with running the Pangalos. I want to feel confident that I’m leaving Francine’s in good hands, but none of the applicants I’ve interviewed for the GM role have been right.’

‘You could give the position to me.’ Lissa grimaced when Eleanor stared at her. ‘I know you think that I spend my life going to parties but, as a matter of fact, I went to college in London and studied for a diploma in hotel management. For the last six months I’ve worked in a management role at the Bainbridge Hotel in Mayfair. It was only a junior position, but I’m capable of running Francine’s if you would give me the chance.’

‘But you were never interested in the hotel.’

‘I was always interested, but when I asked Pappoús if he would give me a trial job so that I could prove I was prepared to work hard, he refused. You were the chosen one,’ Lissa said bitterly. ‘Pappoús didn’t think much of me and Mark. It was always Eleanor with her business degree. Eleanor who never disagreed with him. You were his favourite because you reminded him of Mum.’

Eleanor thought of her beautiful, elegant mother. ‘I’m not a bit like her.’

Lissa nodded. ‘You have the same serene air that Mum had. And now that you’ve ditched those awful granny cardigans and got a new hairstyle you look amazing.’ She grinned at Eleanor’s shocked expression. ‘You look like a woman in love.’

Eleanor was tempted to confide to her sister the real reason why she was marrying Jace. She certainly wasn’t in love with him, she assured herself. But during his nightly phone calls he was charming and amusing and seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. She had found herself relaxing and opening up to him as she’d done when he had courted her fifteen months ago.

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