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Emmie’s heart was pounding. She tried to remember why she was doing this, binding her life forever to a man she barely knew—
Because as she looked up at her groom, she didn’t see Harold’s pale blue gaze but someone else’s, dangerous and black. She trembled, remembering the darkness. The heat—
“If anyone can show just cause why this couple may not be lawfully joined,” the minister intoned, “speak now or forever—”
“Stop. Now.”
The low growl of a man’s deep voice caused the stone floor to shake beneath her feet. Sucking in her breath, Emmie turned.
A powerful man stood at the back of the church, clothed in darkness, those same fierce black eyes she’d remembered now piercing her soul.
Theo.
He’d come for her!
Theo Katrakis knew the morning he woke up in bed with Emmie Swenson in Rio that he’d made a big mistake.
But so what? His life was strewn with mistakes. He shrugged them off and moved on. Mistakes hadn’t prevented him from becoming successful. Indeed, Theo often thought they made himmoreso.
Everyone talked about the necessity of a balanced life, filled with some work, yes, but also friends and family, small pleasures and hobbies, taking care of one’s neighbors, and love—love to last a lifetime, love most of all.
But that was no way to build a billion-dollar fortune. The way to dothatwas exactly the opposite: to ignore everything else and focus obsessively on one thing every single day for sixteen or eighteen or twenty hours, then snatch up some sleep. Then wake up and do it again. And again and again.
Friends were not necessary, nor small pleasures, nor hobbies. He’d never met any neighbors in his Manhattan high-rise. His other grand properties around the world were all comfortingly isolated by thick walls and security guards. As an orphan, he luckily had no family to worry about. And love, love to last a lifetime?
That was the least desirable thing of all.
There was a reason Theo had reached the age of thirty-nine without a wife or child. He had better things to do. He’d been an orphan living rough on the streets of Athens when, at sixteen, his father’s brother brought him to live in Upstate New York. After his uncle died, Theo had thrown himself into building his small property-development company, taking it national by the time Theo was twenty-five and global by thirty.
Work was what mattered. Work brought power and money, and those made a man bulletproof.
So when Emmie had quit without notice, calling from New York after her mother’s funeral, just days after their night together, Theo told himself he’d survive. It was a damned inconvenience to be sure, but he’d find another new secretary and move on.
And he had. He’d moved so fast and so far he hadn’t been back to New York City in the last seven months. It wasn’t that he was avoiding her. That would be ridiculous. It had just happened that for the last seven months, he’d been unusually busy making deals overseas.
Then his friend Nico had called him yesterday.
And Theo suddenly realized that the mistake he’d made sleeping with his secretary seven months before was even bigger than he’d ever imagined. One that would permanently change his life.
He’d been on his yacht when he’d gotten the call, en route to the pleasurable endeavor of destroying his new property on the small island of Lyra. Then, as the red sun set over the dark sapphire Aegean, he’d learned his former secretary was getting married. Because she was pregnant.
His friend Nico had snorted. “You didn’t know? You really have been out of touch. She told Honora she had a one-night stand in Rio. I guess she hooked up with a stranger at a bar and never learned his name.”
Emmie, pregnant from a one-night stand in Rio. Theo felt his body flash hot, then cold. “Impossible.”
“I can barely believe it myself. Emmie’s always seemed so quiet and sensible.” He paused. “It must have happened right before her mother died. Her last days working for you. I don’t suppose you ever saw a man hanging around her?”
“No.” Theo remembered the tremble of her lips when he’d embraced her, the awkwardness of her movements, her uncertainty. She hadn’t known what to do. She’d been a virgin, at her age. She hadn’t even known how to kiss.
Then the morning after their night together, she’d gotten the awful call about her mother’s death. There was no way Theo could believe, after she rushed back to New York for the funeral, surrounded by her grieving family, she’d suddenly flung herself into the arms of some other man. No.
The baby had to be Theo’s.
And she’d never told him.
“She’s marrying some old man in Queens,” Nico said. “Some friend of her father’s. Even Honora can’t understand why. We offered to help, but she won’t take charity. I thought maybe you could offer Emmie her old job back, just in case she’s marrying under financial duress.”
Marrying under duress.
