The Markonos Bride. Michelle Reid

      All about the author…

       Michelle Reid

      Reading has been an important part of MICHELLE REID’s life as far back as she can remember, and it was encouraged by her mother, who made the twice-weekly bus trip to the nearest library to keep feeding this particular hunger in all five of her children. In fact, one of Michelle’s most abiding memories from those days is coming home from school to find a newly borrowed selection of books stacked on the kitchen table just waiting to be delved into.

      There has not been a day since that she hasn’t had at least two books lying open somewhere in the house ready to be picked up and continued whenever she has a quiet moment.

      Her love of romance fiction has always been strong, though she feels she was quite late in discovering the riches Harlequin has to offer. It wasn’t long after making this discovery that she made the daring decision to try her hand at writing a Presents book for herself, never expecting it to become such an important part of her life.

      Now she shares her time between her large, close, lively family and writing. She lives with her husband in a tiny white-stoned cottage in the English Lake District. It is both a romantic haven and the perfect base to go walking through some of the most beautiful scenery in England.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE atmosphere in the Markonos summer villa could not grow any cooler if an ice storm had swept down from the Arctic and in through the open terrace doors.

      Eyeing his father across the width of the dinner table, Andreas Markonos delivered a cold, clipped, ‘No,’ with an economy that brought the shutters slamming down on his hard, handsome face.

      His father ripped out a sigh of frustration. ‘I do not understand you!’ he muttered. ‘You tell me you are ready to take full control from me and here I sit ready to hand that control over to you! So what is your problem—?’

      The problem was simple in Andreas’s estimation. ‘I will not respond to blackmail.’

      ‘It is not blackmail but good business sense!’ the older man rapped out. ‘If a man wishes to succeed in our world he must have stability in his personal life! Think about it,’ he insisted. ‘We make snap decisions by mobile telephone, we throw our weight around by electronic mail—we can even look our victims directly in the eye via satellite technology. There is a real danger of becoming drunk on one’s own power!’

      ‘Are you suggesting that I am drunk on power?’ Andreas demanded.

      ‘Ah—’ the flick of his father’s hand was dismissive ‘—you know very well that you shock and impress everyone with your ability to think at the speed of light,’ he conceded. ‘But I have been there before you, Andreas. I know how it feels to fly so high you are in danger of singeing your wings! I keep you grounded to some extent at present but who will do so when I retire?’

      ‘Myself?’

      It was like waving a red rag at a cantankerous old bull. Orestes Markonos lurched forward in his seat, his seventy-year-old world-toughened expression pinning his son with a ferocious look. ‘Don’t use that sarcastic tone on me, Andreas,’ he warned thinly. ‘You know what it is I am talking about. I had your mother and my beloved children to keep me firmly tethered to God’s good earth. You merely have some very loose ties to some very loose women. It is not good enough!’

      ‘I still will not marry again to please you,’ Andreas returned coolly.

      ‘You did not marry to please me the first time!’ his father hit back. ‘And Louisa was a mistake, you confessed as much yourself.’

      A sudden stillness grabbed hold of Andreas, he felt it freeze the muscles in his face. Raising the heavy arc of his glossy black eyelashes, ‘Never,’ he incised very softly, ‘have I ever said that Louisa was a mistake.’

      ‘You were both too young and impetuous then,’ growled Orestes, going for the compromise while clearly resenting doing it. It showed how much of his bluster was just a cover-up for his waning power in the face of his son’s growing potent mental strength.

      Which was why Andreas rarely allowed it to show like this. He respected the old man too much to want to make him feel the pinch of his ageing weaknesses.

      This, however, was different. This subject was forbidden territory and his father knew it. No one spoke Louisa’s name in his presence without feeling the icy whip of his response to it. And nobody mentioned his defunct marriage!

      A hard sigh had him tossing aside his napkin and climbing to his feet. Turning, he strode across the room towards the drinks cabinet, with his lean body clenched inside the formal black dinner suit his mother always insisted her men wore when they sat down to eat dinner at home.

      Home, he mused, slicing a glance around the elegant dining room belonging to an island villa that had been in the family in one form or another for as long as a Markonos had existed on this earth.

      An island home he rarely visited these days. A place his father had been forced to issue what amounted to a royal summons to get him to come to at all! He’d understood what the summons had been about, of course, or he would have found a pressing excuse to be elsewhere. He had understood why his mother had politely excused herself after dinner and left the two of them alone.

      His