“You’d rather remain locked here in the convent then marry me?”

Disbelief echoed in Christos Pateras’ voice. How could this girl-woman, actually, although she didn’t look a bit like the twenty-five her father claimed she was — prefer living in the spartan convent over marrying him?

He was no barbarian. Compared to the Greek men she’d been raised with, he was downright civilized.

“You had my answer earlier,” Alysia Lemos retorted coolly. “You needn’t have wasted your time coming here.”

He turned his back on the anxious nun hovering in the background, intentionally making it harder for her to hear. The Abbess might have insisted on providing Alysia with a chaperone, but that didn’t mean the sister needed to be privy to the conversation.

“You told your father no,” Christos answered, his tone mild, deceptively so. “You didn’t tell me no.” He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t need to. His size and authority generally were persuasive enough.

But Alysia Lemos’ fine dark eyebrows only arched higher. “Some women might find such persistence flattering. I don’t.”

“So, your answer is…?”

Alysia’s incredulous laughter contrasted sharply with the dark blaze in her eyes.

“I know you’re an American, but surely you can’t be this much of an idiot!”

Her cutting dismissal might have crushed a man of lesser ego, but he wasn’t just any man, and Miss Lemos wasn’t just any woman. He needed her. He wasn’t going to leave Oinoussai without her. “You dislike Americans?”

“Not all.”

“Good. That should help ease the transition when we move to New York.”

Her eyes met his, the dark irises all the more arresting against her sudden pallor.

“I’m not moving. And I’d never agree to an arranged marriage.”

He dismissed this along with her other protestations. “In case you’re worried, I consider myself Greek. My parents were born here, on Oinoussai. They still call this home.”

“Oh, happy people, they.”

He almost smiled. No wonder her father, Darius, was feeling desperate. She was not an eager bride-to-be. “I don’t know if they’ll be happy with you for a daughter-in-law, but they’ll adjust.”

Classic Romance

Bands of color burned along the curve of her cheek. “I’m sure your mother dotes on you.”

“Endlessly. But then, most Greek mothers live for their sons.”

While daughters are disposable.”

He gave no indication that he’d heard the hurt in her voice, the small wobble in her breath as she spat the bitter words. “Not mine. My daughters will be cherished.”

At thirty-seven, he needed a wife and Darius Lemos needed a husband for his wayward daughter. This was no love match, but a match made in a bank in Switzerland. “I’m an only child, the last of the Pateras in my branch of the family.I’ve promised my parents a grandchild before my thirty-ninth birthday, and I shall deliver.”

“No, you hope I’ll deliver!”

“I stand corrected.”