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‘It’s your wedding. Some would say it’s your absolute right to interfere,’ he said.
‘The organiser has been very accommodating, but I think I’m this close to earning myself a Bridezilla label,’ she murmured.
Sergios slid her a plate of sugar-coated snacks. ‘Nonsense. You have a kind heart, mikros. That is what I’ve always liked about you. But Ares is right. You have a right to see to it that your special day is exactly as you want, ne?’
She smiled at him, his words warming her as always. ‘Okay,’ she replied, and then her heart thudded harder as they both rose with her.
Together they approached the lawn where the stunning wedding arch had been constructed, the white and purple flowers she’d settled on expertly woven into the trellis. She’d known the end result would be any bride’s dream. And even if she wasn’t the dreamy bride, she couldn’t stop her heart fluttering at the knowledge that she was about to marry Ares Zanelis, the man of her deepest fantasies.
After which she’d be just a brood mare, forced to accept the trappings of marriage so Ares could ensure his bloodline and please his father.
‘It all looks perfect,’ she said, despite the vice tightening in her chest. She tagged on a smile for Sergios’s sake. Ares, she ignored, not risking a glance his way in case he caught her anguish.
Forcing herself to eat a few bites of the refreshments, she allowed the conversation between the two men to wash over her.
The reappearance of the housekeeper brought a hidden sigh of relief.
‘Demeter will show you to our suite,’ Ares told her. ‘We’ll have dinner early tonight.’
Her eyes widened at the ‘our’, but she couldn’t ask the question bubbling on her tongue. His pointed look answered her anyway. They would be sharing sleeping space for the foreseeable future. At the very least until he’d planted his seed in her womb.
She turned away, hoping he didn’t see her flush at the thought.
It turned out she needn’t have been so disturbed by the prospect of sharing a bed with Ares. The suite was vast, and as she followed Demeter into the sprawling space she realised there were two bedrooms, linked by a sumptuous private living area, a wraparound terrace and even a plunge pool that could easily accommodate a dozen people.
It was easy enough to identify Ares’s domain from the bold slate-grey and white colour scheme. And as Demeter showed her to where her things had been unpacked and neatly placed in the white and soft lilac themed dressing room that matched the second bedroom, she told herself that the hollow feeling in her belly had nothing to with the anti-climax of realising she wouldn’t be sharing a bed with Ares immediately.
That it was merely relief...
Starting as she meant to carry on, Odessa latched on to one excuse after another for the next twelve hours.
When Ares didn’t show up for dinner, a twinkly-eyed Sergios eagerly cited the fact that his son had decided to honour the tradition of not seeing his bride the night before the wedding.
Then, in the morning, she excused the butterflies in her belly as indigestion rather than pre-wedding jitters.
Even the tears that filled her eyes when the wedding couturier inserted the last diamond hairpin into the elaborate up-do, set the stylish veil on her head and finally allowed Odessa to catch the first glimpse of herself in her bridal gown, she excused as over-tiredness and the fraught situation.
Not the fact that the dress was plucked straight out of her dreams and had made her heart leap the first time she’d spotted it, its halter-neck silk overlaid with delicate lace that cinched in at the waist, moulded her hips and flared slightly at the knees to end in a short train.
Not the fact that underneath it she wore her mother’s locket and couldn’t help but yearn for her presence today.
And most definitely not the fact that the man whose name she would be taking an hour from now continued to be the only man her conscious and subconscious continued to conjure up every time she dared to dwell on who her ideal husband and the father of her children would be.
All that denial threatened to bubble over and explode when, finally ready, she stepped out of the suite and found Sergios waiting, looking nervous and hopeful and so endearing in his tuxedo, with a rosette of the same tiny flowers that were woven into her bouquet and hair inserted into his lapel.
His gaze swept over her, and Odessa was almost certain he blinked back tears.
Before she could speak, he grasped her hands. ‘I know this isn’t tradition, but it would be my honour to escort you down the aisle—if you’ll let me?’
Odessa swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘Are...are you sure?’
He squeezed her fingers, his voice gruff as he said, ‘Ne, mikros. Very much.’
Pressing her lips together to stop emotion bubbling free, and wishing her own father had taken a single leaf out of this man’s book when he’d been alive, she smiled shakily. ‘Thank you.’
That shakiness continued as they went down the stairs to the hall, to be flanked by smiling household staff, organisers and wait-staff, who murmured genial wishes, and then outside to join the small but impressive gathering of people she didn’t know, invited by Ares to witness his marriage.
Then every scrap of her attention was captured by the man who stood beneath the immaculate arch, his complete focus riveted on her, with not a single sign of the nerves eating her alive on his face.
