Kostas's Convenient Bride. Lucy Monroe

he could thumb his nose at Barnabas Georgas and prove that Andreas Kostas didn’t need his father’s money or his name, or anything else from the family that had hurt him so much.

      “Turn this cab around!” Andreas sounded as out of control as she’d ever heard him, his big body fairly vibrating with stress.

      “What do you mean?” The cabbie’s hand gestured wildly. “I can’t do no U-turn. This is a one-way street, buddy.”

      “Take us back to the hotel,” Andreas demanded in only slightly lower decibels.

      Kayla crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “I thought we were going out to dinner.”

      “We are not having this conversation in front of a room full of strangers.”

      “Sounds more like a fight from where I’m sitting,” the cabbie piped in.

      Andreas ignored him and shook his head at Kayla. “You don’t understand.”

      “On that we agree.”

      He didn’t look calmed by that acknowledgment. The silence between them on the ride back to the hotel seethed with resentment and things left unsaid.

      Kayla was terrified that after tonight the only person she’d considered family wouldn’t be anything but a bad memory. But if she was right, if her place in his life was what she thought it was, that was all he’d been for six years and she’d been fooling herself all along.