Pandora nodded, her interest caught despite her resolve not to be sucked in by his explanations. “Orestes Kyriakos married a wealthy Russian princess and used some of her funds to rebuild the Kyriakos Shipping fleet.”
“That’s right. After the Suez Canal was opened, Orestes followed in the footsteps of Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos and built his first supertanker to transport crude oil. When my grandfather, Socrates, took over Kyriakos Shipping, he continued to commission more supertankers. And by the time the oil crisis hit in the early seventies, Socrates had gone into the production of crude oil. He established three refineries and he left those to my cousin, Tariq, whose mother—my aunt—married the Emir of Zayed.”
“I didn’t realise that.”
“Socrates’s remaining grandson, Angelo, inherited three islands and a string of resorts that Socrates owned.” He paused. “But I digress. My father lacked the magic Kyriakos touch—he lost more money than he ever managed to make. My grandfather called him an idle playboy and took me out of his care when I was six years old. Said he didn’t want my father’s sloth rubbing off on me. He considered my father a disgrace to the Kyriakos name and disinherited him in his will. He raised me, didn’t want me to be the failure my father was.”
“Didn’t your mother object when he took you away?”
Zac glanced at her sideways. “My mother had an addictive personality. She was in and out of rehab—she had enough alcohol problems without worrying about me. She was hardly more than a child when she married my father at seventeen and fell pregnant with me soon after.”
Pandora’s heart went out to the little boy he’d once been. But when she started to say something, Zac interrupted, “With the exception of my father, the Kyriakos men have always been associated with wealth and acumen. And beautiful women.” He shot her a hooded look and Pandora bit back her instant derogatory response. “Orestes was rumoured to have rescued his princess from the Bolshevik revolution, although there were some who said he stole her from her father—she brought a fortune in jewels as her dowry.”
“She was beautiful.” Pandora had seen the painting that hung in the entrance hall to Zac’s house.
“Before that there was an English heiress and a shah’s daughter, as well as—”
“And were all these beautiful paragons virgins?” Pandora interrupted.
Zac gave her a long look. “Yes. It was their innocence that initially attracted a Kyriakos male and their purity of spirit that kept him faithful all the years of their marriage.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s true,” he insisted. “Kyriakos men do not stray from the marriage bed.”
“What about your playboy father?”
“He was an aberration. A disgrace to the Kyriakos name and my grandfather disowned him. But even my father never dared divorce my mother and he failed to live up to the family name. There is no divorce. Ever. The sacredness of the marriage lies at the heart of the prophecy. A woman pure of body and spirit means a faithful man, sufficient heirs and wealth forever.”
“You believe all this?”
His eyes flickered. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe it. It’s the legend. It is what is expected. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that no Kyriakos heir worthy of the name has seen fit to disturb for nearly a thousand years since the Fourth Crusade. That was when the first documentation appeared about the legend—in the journal of an ancestor who rescued the daughter of a silk merchant, a woman who was reputed to be as innocent as a lamb, more beautiful than Helen of Troy and more wealthy than Croesus.”
“What happened to your ancestor during the Fourth Crusade?” Despite herself, Pandora’s interest was tagged.
“He came to live in Athens—on the same piece of land where my home stands. Byzantium did not take part in the crusades. There were issues with Rome.” Zac’s jaw was tight. “War is a cynical business, and the lure of instant wealth in Byzantium caused a few of the Venetian nobleman to end their crusade long before they reached Syria. The pickings were easy, the people less fierce and the rewards didn’t mean facing an army. My ancestor saved the young woman from a marauding Venetian knight who treated her as little more than a slave—her only use to him was for ransom.”
“So your ancestor stole her for her maidenhead and her wealth. What makes you think she grew to love him?”
“When he settled in Athens—a village then compared to Constantinople—he built her a castle. And beside the castle had a church erected. The castle no longer exists, but the church that he built for her in 1205, according to the family journal, still stands. It’s now a national monument. And an inscription in the church records their love for each other.”
Infuriated, Pandora cut across him. “And because your Kyriakos ancestors abducted their brides you think that gives you justification to kidnap me? Guess what? You’re dead wrong about that. You had no right—”
“Pandora …” He moved to sit on the couch beside her. “You’re right. This is not about my ancestors. We need to talk about us.”
She froze as he came closer. Shaking her head so that her pale, long hair flew around her face, she said, “No, I don’t want to talk about us. And it is about who you are, where you come from.”
“Hell.” He raked a hand through his hair and leaned back. “You make me sound like an alien from another universe.”
“Perhaps you are.” Annoyed and frustrated, she frowned at him. “I need to understand why a modern man gives credence to ancient superstition and waits years to find a virgin bride.”
“I would never have married you if you weren’t also—”
“Tell me one thing, Zac,” Pandora interrupted him as she perched on the edge of the sofa, tension humming through her as she scanned his features. “Would I ever have merited a second look if I hadn’t been a virgin?”
There was silence. “No.” His reply was subdued. “I heard about this heiress who lived at the end of the world who was beautiful and innocent and I hoped—”
“That’s why you came down to New Zealand instead of sending a minion? Not to see my father to broker some business deal?” Pandora could hear her voice rising again and she forced herself to speak calmly. “To look me over?”
Another hesitation. “I came to meet you, to get to know you.”
“Oh, God!”
“But I would never have taken it to the next level, asked you to marry me, if I hadn’t been sure—”
“I can’t believe this!” Pandora threw her hands into the air. “It’s the twenty-first century. Most people marry because they want to get married. For love, to have children—for a whole host of reasons. And I manage to find the one guy on earth who’s not after love. He’s searching for a virgin bride because that’s what his forebears did. You know what? It’s downright archaic!”
“Stop.” Zac held up a hand and straightened beside her.
Stop? She hadn’t even begun. She opened her mouth to protest his high-handedness. “I—”
“Stop right there,” he cut across her. “Let’s talk about why you think I don’t love you.”
“Oh, come on, Zac.” She pushed up off the sofa and took a couple of steps away. “There’s no need to pretend anymore.”
“Isn’t there?” he asked enigmatically, watching her through half-closed eyes, his legs stretched out in front of him.
“No.” She threw him an assessing look from under her eyelashes. Straight talk? It was now or never. He’d have no choice but to let her