Anyway, it hadn’t needed his arm possessively around Rosalie to show all his friends the convincing proof that Ariadne was history and why. They’d all been able to see how blown away he was by Rosalie—and not just because of her stunning beauty, or the way he only had to look at her to want to sweep her off to bed.
I enjoy her company.
He’d known that from the start, he realised—even before he’d claimed her for his own. She was easy to be with...enjoyable to be with. Good to be with. Good to spend time with.
They’d done a lot of that over the weekend. Spending time together. On the Saturday, the day after the birthday bash, they’d piled into his car and taken off across the Corinth Canal into the Peloponnese, down past the ancient sites of Mycenae and Epidaurus.
Rosalie’s eyes had widened as he’d told her the tales and the history he’d grown up with, which she hungered for to make up for her missing birthright.
They’d spent the night in Naphlion, Greece’s first capital after regaining its modern independence, and Rosalie had been enchanted by the graceful old houses and peaceful squares there. It had been good—very good—to wander with her, hand in hand, exploring the narrow streets and byways, taking their time, taking their ease, enjoying it all...
He wished he could look forward to taking her sightseeing the whole of the coming weekend. But that wasn’t going to be possible. Not because he would be tied to his desk, working on the merger, but because his mother had invited them to lunch on Saturday.
He knew he couldn’t get out of it. His mother needed to meet Rosalie—if for no other reason than to forestall any potential gossip that she was ostracising her new daughter-in-law. To stop any rumours that she wasn’t meeting Rosalie because she expected the marriage to be of short duration. That must definitely not get back to Stavros!
Xandros gave a resigned sigh. He hoped his mother would go easy on Rosalie...not make her preference for Ariadne too obvious. Had she heard from Rosalie’s sister yet? he wondered, and then put the question aside. Ariadne would surface when she was good and ready, and he wished her well. But between her and Rosalie there was no comparison. None at all.
How could he ever have seriously contemplated marrying Ariadne? It seemed absurd now. Now that he had Rosalie...
While he had her...
Without his being aware of it, the frown had come back to his eyes...even before his secretary had put her head around his door to tell him that the Coustakis accounts he’d been so impatient for had still not arrived.
Stavros’s delays were not all that displeased him...
Rosalie’s eyes widened as Xandros nosed his car down the long drive and his mother’s home came into sight. This was not a house—it was a mansion! More like the Greek equivalent of an English stately home. The large three-storey edifice was set in equally spacious grounds, deep in the countryside to the north of Athens. Tall cypresses flanked it on either side, and a large stone ornamental pond with a trickling fountain fronted it as they crunched along the gravel drive.
‘It was built in the nineteenth century,’ Xandros was telling her, ‘by my great-great-grandfather, after the creation of the modern Greek state. I grew up here.’ He paused. ‘I was very fortunate to be able to do so,’ he went on.
His voice had changed, Rosalie could hear, and she looked at him questioningly.
He caught her look and gave her a faint smile as he drew up in front of the grand front entrance. ‘It very nearly had to be sold,’ he said. He switched off the car’s engine, looking at her. ‘My grandfather lived very extravagantly, and it was my father who had to battle to save the family fortune. It was touch-and-go all my boyhood. He succeeded, but...’ His expression tightened. ‘It shortened his life...all the stress he was under for so long. That is why, you see, I’m so very keen on making this merger with your father happen. I never want the kind of financial worry I grew up with to affect my family again.’
His expression changed again, and his voice became apologetic.
‘I know that probably sounds...well, insulting to you, given what you and your poor mother had to put up with all your lives—’
She shook her head. ‘No...’ she answered slowly. ‘I think it explains why you’ve been so kind to me—why you don’t want me to be poor again.’
It did, she realised. In his own way he felt a degree of similarity between them, vastly different though their backgrounds had been. And, she thought—and it was a strange thought, given that vast difference—it also made her understand how similarly driven he was, how dogged his determination to achieve the merger he sought by whatever means necessary.
Just as I was determined to lift myself out of poverty by whatever means necessary. Whether that was by working my guts out as a cleaner to fund my studies or by marrying...
Her expression flickered. Was that why she’d married Xandros? The only reason? Truly the only reason...?
The question hovered and she was unwilling to seek an answer. Was grateful that he was now giving a rueful smile to her response.
‘Well, it is kind of you to say so,’ he replied. ‘And I hope you can be as forbearing with my mother.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I need to tell you that Ariadne’s mother was a good friend of hers, and for that reason my mother shared your father’s enthusiasm for my marrying your half-sister. She accepts that Ariadne did not share that enthusiasm, but—’
He broke off. The grand front door was opening, and a butler—or so Rosalie surmised—was emerging. Xandros got out, greeted the stately personage and came round to open Rosalie’s door.
She got out, nerves pinching. This was an ancestral home, by any standards, but it was strange to think of what Xandros had just disclosed—that the wealth he so obviously enjoyed had not always been guaranteed. Strange, too—and more disturbing—to think that Xandros’s mother had wanted Xandros to marry Ariadne, just as her father had, even though Xandros and Ariadne had clearly had no intention of going along with either parent’s wishes.
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. It wasn’t going to make it any easier to cope with the forthcoming meeting. But at least she had the comfort of knowing that Xandros’s mother knew just how artificial their marriage was.
She was glad she had dressed with extreme care, in a modestly styled dress, and had applied equally modest make-up. And she was glad when Xandros gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as the stately butler showed them in to a drawing room whose elegance matched the grand house.
The woman greeting them was equally elegant.
‘My dear...’ Kyria Lakaris said faintly, her smile even fainter, and then she smiled far more warmly at her son when Xandros kissed her cheek.
He made most of the conversation during the visit, sticking to anodyne subjects such as their recent venture into the Peloponnese, and Rosalie was thankful. Though he kept mostly to English, his mother very often replied in Greek.