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But even before she’d gotten sick, Margie had always been dreamy-eyed. At twelve, Emmie had taken charge of balancing her checking account and paying the bills so the power wouldn’t get turned off. By fifteen, she managed accounts receivable for her father’s plumbing business. Her father was excellent at getting customers to pay what was owed but not so good at keeping track of it.
Everyone in their Queens neighborhood knew not to mess with Karl or his four sons. Broad-shouldered and quick-tempered, her four younger brothers, spanning in age from nineteen to twenty-six, were protective of their only sister.
Theo didn’t seem worried. Arrogant in his own physical strength, he only looked at Emmie.
“Tell me,” he said quietly. “I want to hear you say it.”
She looked up at Theo’s darkly beautiful face, his penetrating black eyes and the sharp lines of his cheekbones and shadowed jawline. His aquiline nose was slightly crooked between the eyes, broken in some long-ago fight and never set quite right. Her gaze fell to his cruelly sensual lips that she could still feel against her skin, kissing and caressing every inch of her virgin body.
The light from stained-glass windows left a whirl of red and purple and blue against her white satin skirts. Emmie closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered. “He’s yours.”
“He?” Theo had a sharp intake of breath. “A boy?”
“Yes,” Emmie’s father growled. “And you’re going to give my grandson a name and marry my daughterright now.”
Emmie’s eyes flew open in horror. “No, Dad—”
“Or else.”
“Or else,”her brothers chorused behind him, clenching their hands.
Emmie flung a terrified glance at Theo, knowing he’d respond with a sarcastic insult that would make her father lose his mind. Any moment, the blows would fly, and someone she loved would be hurt. She spread her arms, trying to create a wall between him and her family. “Please, I promise you, Theo, I don’t evenwantto marry—”
Theo gently pushed her aside. Tilting his head, he gave Karl Swenson a hard nod. “Deal.”
“You’ll marry her?” her father responded suspiciously.
Theo held out his hand. “Agreed.”
Her father brightened. “Well, then.”
The two men shook hands, as if they’d just agreed to the sale of a used plumber’s torch at cut-rate prices or maybe a truck-mounted sewer jetter with barely a touch of rust.
Looking between the two men, Emmie’s forehead creased. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Theo glanced pointedly at the minister, the guests, the church, and lifted his eyebrow as he inquired sardonically, “Do I look like I’m joking?”
Whispers and gasps sizzled through the crowd. By now, many wedding guests were holding up cell phones, because otherwise how would anyone believe it, that a plain, twenty-eight-year-old spinster like their Emmie had managed to entice a handsome Greek billionaire into bed—and into marriage?
Reaching out, Theo took her hand. Slowly, he pulled Harold’s engagement ring off her finger. She trembled feeling his fingers slide down her hand. Then he turned back to the elderly man.
“Thank you for standing in,” he said gravely, giving him the ring. “I’ll take it from here.” Holding Emmie’s hand, Theo turned to the minister. “Go ahead.”
Go ahead?
Emmie tried to pull back her hand. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “I’m not suddenly going to switch grooms!”
“Why?” he asked coolly, as ifshewere the one being unreasonable.
Emmie didn’t know why he seemed as if he wanted to marry her, but after a year and a half as his secretary, she knew Theo Katrakis always got what he wanted, when he wanted it.
But not this time. Oh, no. Not this time.
Yanking her hand away, Emmie said, “We don’t have a license. Or a ring! And, oh, yeah—we don’t love each other!”
Theo’s dark eyes slanted sharply to Harold in the front row with Luly Olsen in her big pink hat. He lifted an eyebrow skeptically. The meaning was clear.
