The Silver Bride

I mean...I had a father who wouldn't even let my mother put his name on my birth certificate, a father who once walked past me Hi the street and pretended not to know me,' Stella confided tightly. 'And a mother who still worshipped the ground he walked on.'

Dragged with a vengeance from his brooding self—absorption, Dior frowned at her with frank incredulity. 'I had a major fight with my mother the day before she died,' Stella volunteered, her throat convulsing with the sickness of tears.

I was 16 teen. I loved her so much and I was worried sick about her. I was trying to snap her out of her depression, persuade her that there was a life worth living without my worthless creep of a father...' Dior had moved without her noticing.

He closed two arms round her and pulled her slight, shaking body close. Dimly it occurred to her that nothing was working quite the way she had imagined it working. Then the warm, intimate scent of him drenched her senses and she breathed in deep, loving the heat and stability of his big, powerful frame.

Without the slightest hesitation, Dior was the one asking questions now. And Stella told him about her mother. The only child of a prosperous widower, beautiful and sweet-natured Caroline had been cocooned from life tougher realities by a parent who had idolized her. At 22 year old, she had fallen in love and got engaged to Stella's father, Luis.

Then her father had gone bankrupt and the happy days had come to an end. 'Luis didn't want Mum without her father's money,' Stella confided. 'He broke off the engagement and not long afterward he married the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer.' 'So he ditched your mother when she was pregnant—?' 'No, it wasn't that simple.

A few weeks after he got married he went to Mum and told her that he'd made a dreadful mistake, that he still loved her. I was conceived the same day. She thought he would leave his wife.' 'Ah...' Dior whispered with expressive softness. 'But he had no such intention.'

Mum was as green as grass and still mad about him,' Stella conceded heavily, and then she sighed. 'I don't want to talk about them anymore.' 'No problem,' Dior told her huskily, letting his big hands slide down her taut spine to curve over her h.i.p.s and mold her against his lean, hard body.

Now it's your turn...' Stella muttered unevenly as she quivered, thought about pulling away, decided to do it, and then discovered that she didn't have that much will-power. 'My turn...?' Dior echoed thickly. 'Your turn,' she repeated unsteadily, a twist of heat snaking through her lower belly and tightening every tiny muscle she possessed.

My father told me it was time I got married. I said, No, I'm not ready yet...and he said, "I don't want to see you or speak to you until you are ready,"' Dior recited with raw-edged emphasis, half under his breath. Stella tipped back her head to frown up at him.

"That's your joky way of telling me to mind my own business...right?' 'Wrong.' 'You mean your father just expected you to get married when he said so?' Stella couldn't hide her astonishment.

My parents didn't just meet and date, Stella. They knew each other from childhood, grew up knowing what was expected of them, and when the time seemed right,' Dior specified in a taut undertone, 'their fathers got together to set the wedding date.'

For Lord sake, that's medieval!' 'To you, perhaps. But my parents were very happy together.' Dior smoothed her tousled hair back from her damp brow with incredibly gentle fingers, making her shiver and automatically curve closer, her legs increasingly wobbly supports.

'Marriage can still be very much a family affair in Greece.' 'I don't want to criticize your father...' Stella began hesitantly, turning the side of her face into his palm, like a sensuous cat begging to be stroked, and snatching in a fracturing breath as she struggled to concentrate. 'But I think he should've appreciated that times have changed.

You're a grown man and he treated you like—' 'He knew what was best for me,' Dior slotted in with velvet-soft finality. 'I may speak public school English, Stella, but I am Greek, and marriage is a very serious step.

The English rely on love and have a very high divorce rate—' 'Yes, but—' 'It's more important to pick a life partner with intelligence,' Dior stated, and then he rifted her high in his strong arms, as if he was tired of that particular subject, and sealed his sensual mouth with hungry mastery to hers. Stella's head spun, her heart jumping violently. He needed to talk.

This wasn't what she had planned; this wasn't what was supposed to happen. In another minute, she swore feverishly, she would pull back, stop this before it got out of hand. But somehow her arms had got round his neck and her fingers were already sliding into the thick luxuriance of his black hair.

A cloud of such debilitating weakness enveloped her that by the time she promised herself another thirty seconds she could no longer recall why that strange idea of a time-frame should come into her head.

"This was inevitable,' Dior growled, sweeping her right off her feet when she stumbled on her no longer reliable lower limbs and carrying her back into the beach house.