Her father had never shown the least bit of interest in her, and why should he when he had everything he needed in his son and heir, Barnabas, and beautiful Elexis, who’d charmed him from birth with her big dark eyes and winsome pout?
Kass had never been a charming child. Family lore depicted her as silent and sullen, and impossibly stubborn. She reportedly scowled at guests, refusing to make small talk with her father’s important guests. She wouldn’t play the piano or sing, or bat her eyelashes at the visiting Greek dignitaries. Instead, Kass wanted to discuss politics with her father’s friends. Even at four and five she was fascinated by economics. She’d make predictions about the future of the shipping industry, and her audacity horrified her father. It didn’t matter that she read beyond her years. It didn’t matter that she excelled in math. Good Greek girls didn’t weigh in on national matters, or international policies and economics. Good Greek girls grew up and made good marriages with suitable Greek men and produced the next generation. That was their responsibility. That was their value. Nothing else.
It wasn’t long before Kassiani wasn’t included in the family parties. She wasn’t asked to dress up and come downstairs. She wasn’t invited to the dinners and weddings and reunions. She became the forgotten Dukas.
“I appreciate you coming straightaway,” Kristopher said, still smiling, but less broadly. “I hate disturbing you but we have a problem.”
Kassiani’s father was a shipping tycoon like Damen, but Greek American, having been born and raised in San Francisco. She knew he was nervous, but his voice didn’t betray it. If anything, he sounded positive and optimistic. She was glad. One couldn’t ever betray fear in contract negotiations, and the merger of Dukas Shipping with the Alexopoulos empire through marriage of Damen and Elexis was the ultimate business transaction. A transaction that was now in jeopardy.
Her stomach knotted and cramped. There was no way her father could ever pay Damen back for the money he’d invested in the Dukas ships and ports. Her father lacked the means. The business and family were perpetually cash-strapped. It was why her father had sought out the merger five years ago. Dukas Shipping would fold without an investor. Damen had been the investor. He’d upheld his end of the deal, but now Kristopher had to inform Damen that the Dukases hadn’t kept their side of the bargain.
Nauseous, Kassiani looked out the villa window, seeking the view beyond. The sun reflected brilliantly off the villa’s whitewashed walls and bounced in cheerful rays off the water, the Aegean Sea so much brighter—a vibrant liquid turquoise—than the murky blue of the Pacific Ocean near her home in San Francisco.
“I’m not certain I understand,” Damen answered just as pleasantly, both men employing the same friendly tone, but Kassiani knew this was just a prelude to battle.
Boxers touched gloves before a bout. Wrestlers bowed before a match. Soccer players shook hands.
Her father and Damen were already fencing.
She glanced from her father to Damen. No, he didn’t look like a tycoon. He was too fit, too physically imposing. His skin was bronzed, and he had the toned, taut look of a man who worked in the shipyards, not at a desk. But it was his profile that held her attention, his features as chiseled and hard as the rest of him, the forehead high, cheekbones prominent, nose decidedly thick at the bridge, as if broken more than once.
He was a fighter, she thought, and he wouldn’t take her father’s news sitting down, which only made Kassiani even more grateful she was seated, tucked into a corner sofa.
“Elexis is gone.” Kristopher delivered the news bluntly, before adding, “I’m hoping to have her back soon, we just need—”
“I’m sorry. I must stop you there, Dukas.” Damen’s voice dropped, the rasp softening into almost a caress. “We don’t have a problem. You have a problem.”
Kristopher held his position but his ashen complexion seemed to pale yet again. “I’m aware of that, but I thought we should notify guests while there is time.”
“There is no canceling the wedding. There will be no broken promises. There will be no public humiliation. Is that understood?”
“But—”
“You promised me the best daughter five years ago. I expect you to deliver.”
The best daughter. Kassiani’s eyes stung and she bit into her lower lip to hold back the hurt and shame.
She hadn’t thought she’d made a sound but suddenly Damen looked at her. His expression was shuttered, his black lashes framing intense, dark eyes. She could read nothing in his face and yet somehow that brief glance skewered her, intensifying her pain.
She was not the best daughter. She would never be the best daughter, not as long as she remained a Dukas.
Damen turned back to her father and his firm full lips curved ever so slightly at the corner, a contemptuous light in his gray eyes. “I will see you tomorrow at the church,” he said. “With my bride.”
And then he walked out.
IT WAS A perfect day for a May wedding on the Greek Riviera.
The sky was an endless, azure blue with just a smattering of puffy white clouds. The sun reflected brightly off the thick walls of the villa’s tiny whitewashed chapel, glazing the tiled roof, while the Aegean Sea and the Temple of Poseidon shimmered in the background. The temperature was perfect as well, comfortable and warm, without being hot, or humid.
Ordinarily, a bride would be ecstatic at such perfect conditions, but Kassiani was no ordinary bride. She was not even supposed to be the bride.
Today was her sister’s wedding, with the ceremony and reception to take place at Damen’s historic seaside villa in Sounio, but early this morning Kristopher Dukas made the drastic decision to swap brides on the unsuspecting bridegroom, thus Kassiani now stood outside the villa chapel’s wooden door, waiting her cue to enter, while knots in her stomach exploded, turning into frantic butterflies.
There was a huge possibility this would not end well. She fully expected the groom to walk out on her in the middle of the service, abandoning her in the tiny church.
The bridegroom was not a fool.
The bridegroom was one of the most powerful men in the world, and he would not like being duped.
Kassiani was not in the habit of duping men, either.
She was the youngest Dukas. The least remarkable in every way. But when cornered by her father this morning, she’d agreed to his plan and would marry Damen Alexopoulos not because it would save her father’s hide, but it’d save hers, as well.
Marriage to Damen would be her way out. She’d escape her father’s house. She’d escape her father’s control. And she’d come into the trust her late aunt had established for her, a trust that would give her some measure of freedom and financial control.
It was worth noting, too, that the wedding today would mean she had actually accomplished something significant in her father’s eyes. Even if it meant she was giving up one controlling male for another, because at twenty-three, she was ready to do something, and be someone other than plain, dumpy, uninspiring Kassiani Dukas.
Marrying the fabulously wealthy shipping tycoon Damen Alexopoulos wouldn’t change the way she looked, but it would change the way people thought of her, and spoke of her. It would force them to recognize her as someone of consequence, pathetic as that was.
The harpist played within the church, and her father—short, stout, with thick