Heiress Bride

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"SOONER or later, you will surely choose to marrysomeone," Sander Christoulakis pointed out, his emphasis of that last word reluctant. "Why not Ione Gakis?" Alexio made no response. On one level, he could not believe that this peculiar conversation was actually taking place. Once he would have laughed in his father's face at the very idea of an arranged marriage. But, for almost two years, Alexio had been living in a hell of grief from which he only escaped when he buried himself in work. In a desperate attempt to obliterate the yawning emptiness inside him, he had flung himself into a series of wild affairs but no miracle recovery had followed. Indeed, if anything, those shallow sexual entanglements had left him with a sour taste in his mouth. "It is an honour that Minos Gakis should have approached our family with the offer of his daughter," Sander continued with quiet persistence, watching his volatile son with hopeful measuring eyes for his reaction. "He has a very high regard for your business acumen and his health has been troubling him. Heneedsa son-in-law whom he can trust." Alexio was grimly amused by that clever speech, which suggested that a marriage arranged between families rather than by the young people concerned was as common an event as it had once been in Greecefor it was anything but. He was also marvelling at how the attention of one of the world's richest men appeared to have blinded his astute father to less palatable truths. "Minos Gakis is an evil bastard and a thug. You know it and I know it." "Nevertheless, his daughter, Ione,isa well brought-up and decent young woman," Sander continued with determination, convinced that only such a marriage would have the power to remove his son from the partying, headlinegrabbing lifestyle that was currently breaking his adoring mother's heart. "I see no reason whygiven timeyou shouldn't find happiness with her." No reason? Bitterness hardened Alexio's lean, powerful face, his brilliant eyes darkening. He could no longer imagine being happy with any woman. But Crystal, the woman he had loved beyond any other, was undeniablygone. But then the issue of his late fiancÉe was not a subject his father would care to tackle, for the older man was no hypocrite. Alexio's conservative Greek parents had hated Crystal and had refused to accept her as a bride for their only son. Her wild-child reputation and chequered past had offended their sensibilities. When he had put an engagement ring on her finger, his father had been outraged and his mother had wept, and for months afterwards Alexio had cut his parents out of his life. Only in the wake of Crystal's death had the divisions begun to heal and, even then, only because he had initially been in such a haze of despair that he had been incapable of rousing himself to the effort of rejecting his family. Yet since then every business deal he had touched had turned to solid gold. He was now infinitely richer than his father had ever been for, while Sander had inherited his shipping fortune and merely conserved it, Alexio had gone into venture capital and software development, taking risks that his more cautious father would never have countenanced. It was ironic that only his own massive monetary gains in recent months could have put him in a position where the billionaire tycoon, Minos Gakis, would consider him as a potential son-in-law. "I have never even met Gakis's daughter,"Alexio said drily. "Youhave," Sander contradicted immediately, his brows pleating. "According to Minos, you met her when you spent the night on Lexos." In his turn, Alexio frowned, but even more darkly. A couple of months back, his yacht had run into difficulty in rough seas off the coast of the island of Lexos and he had radioed for permission to dock there, for Gakis was notorious for the brute henchmen he employed to guard his private is