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As if he sensed what was coming, Petros shook his head and narrowed his eyes at their intruder. ‘You claim to know this man. Tell me what he was wearing the last time you saw him,’ he demanded, unfamiliar hostility stiffening his shoulders.
‘He was wearing a sea-green shirt with long sleeves and light brown cargo pants. He also had a thin leather bracelet with a titanium clasp but that could’ve been lost.’
Petros exhaled in defeat and the fire went out of him. Because the description was accurate, even if the state of those clothes had been beyond rescue. The leather bracelet had deteriorated within weeks, and Yiannis had had to dispose of it after intense examination showed it bore no signs of who he was.
Regret scythed through him as he glanced at Petros. ‘I’m sorry, old friend.’I need to know.
The older man’s features clenched, possibly from being addressed as friend instead of thepaterashe’d been urging Yiannis to call him lately. Or possibly because he, too, knew the time had come.
Most of their guests were at the window now, and he was a little thankful for it, because it gave him the privacy he needed.
But staring into Thea’s face, he smiled wryly at the faint relief in her eyes.
No, she wasn’t over her dead fiancé. And she proved it with how easily she accepted his decision when she stepped back from him, into her father’s waiting arms.
Yiannis...Zephyr—if this stranger was to be believed—turned and faced the woman who’d fallen silent after making the bold announcement.
Now he was free, he was even more taken aback by the punch of hot attraction in his gut, by the rise of his manhood after ten long months of disinterest in carnal pleasure. This woman—his wife—was his.
His to kiss. To touch.To claim.
But first... ‘If this turns out to be an elaborate joke, Miss Callahan, be assured that you will live to regret it.’
CHAPTER TWO
IMOGENKEPTHERgaze on the horizon and away from the man who had refused to take a seat on the launch transporting them to the fast-approaching yacht and instead stood with feet planted apart, one hand braced on the side of the sleek vessel.
The man whose piercing, narrow-eyed gaze swung metronomically between the yacht and her face, oftentimes staying for several nerve-tingling seconds before retreating.
She didn’t know if whatever information he was seeking had been evident in her face. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Her emotions were still twanging wildly from what had taken place in that church. And, goodness, what had taken place after had been equally astonishing.
Once Zephyr had decided he would investigate her claims for himself, nothing would sway him from it.
His departure hadn’t been without distress for those left behind. For Petros especially. She hadn’t needed to understand Greek to know the old man had implored Zeph to reconsider, nor did she need a body-language expert to decipher the scathing looks he’d thrown Imogen while he did so. The elderly woman had wept quietly, and she’d been the one Zeph had spent most time with, speaking gently but firmly to her until she’d pressed a hand to his hard cheek in forgiving understanding.
As for the woman he’d intended to marry, she’d only worn a solemn, worried expression mostly directed at her father and the old woman Imogen guessed was her grandmother. The looks she’d cast Zeph weren’t filled with censure or heartbreak, making Immie wonder—with something eerily akin to relief she didn’t want to fully explore—whether their intended marriage had been one of convenience just as hers was.
All in all, it’d taken less than an hour for Zephyr to cut ties with the life he’d known for ten months. Immie couldn’t say she was surprised. The man she’d had no choice but to be tied to was nothing if not ruthlessly efficient.
He hadn’t spoken a word since they left Efemia—and his almost-bride and her family—behind.
The whole trip took less than five minutes, but by the time that gaze pinned her one more time and he held out his hand to help her off the boat, Imogen was a bag of nerves. Enough for her to hesitate before she slid her hand into his. Enough to suppress a wild gasp that shook into her throat at the first true and meaningful contact she’d had with her husband since he slid that cold diamond onto her finger in that sterile room in Athens almost two years ago.
Then, she’d been too distraught by the circumstances of how she’d become the sacrificial lamb for her family to accommodate the electrifying effect he seemed to effortlessly conjure out of her.
Sure, she’d been aware of the devastatingly handsome Zephyr Diamandis, the man who’d dated more than a handful of the most beautiful women in the world. Which had also begged the question, why her? The answer had been too glaringly obvious to dismiss—revenge. That knowledge had pushed everything else into the background.
Now she’d seen him again, solid and alive and, hell,thriving, the recollection of why this man hated her bubbled forth now.
Revenge born of the age-old demon that often sprang from the wells of thwarted regard or respect. In their families’ case—and in Zephyr Diamandis’s eyes—it’d been disregard for fairness.
Her grandfather and father’s blithe disregard for the deal they’d struck with Zeph’s grandfather had driven his family into bankruptcy, a fact Imogen’s father still refused to fully accept responsibility for even now. Even after offering her, his only child, as penance to savehimselffrom destitution.
But she’d done her homework, enough to know the shocking consequences her family’s actions had produced.
The Diamandises had lost everything after her father and grandfather failed to honour the terms of the shipping deal Zeph’s family had sunk their every last euro into.
Overnight, they’d gone from being on the brink of indecent wealth to being destitute. Pariahs who’d been vilified in Athens. His grandfather had suffered a heart attack very soon after that. And one by one, his father, then his mother had also been lost, working themselves into an early death while attempting to salvage what little they’d been left with, leaving an embittered young boy behind. A boy who’d been thrown into the foster-care system and effectively left to bring himself up, steeped in the knowledge that one family—the Callahans—had been responsible for the drastic course his life had taken.
