CHAPTER ONE


ALESHA sat in stunned silence as the lawyer finished reading her late father’s will.

Surprise didn’t even begin to cut it.

What had Dimitri Karsouli been thinking in selling a twenty-five-per-cent share in the Karsouli Corporation to Loukas Andreou?

Worse…gifting Loukas a further twenty-five-per-cent share. Representing several hundred million dollars on today’s market.

Subject to marriage.

The breath caught in her throat as realization hit. Dear heaven. Her father had bought her a husband?

It was beyond comprehension.

Yet she was all too aware how her father’s mind worked; it didn’t take much to do the maths.

A year ago Alesha’s disastrous short-lived marriage had formally ended in divorce from a man who had professed to love her…only for her to discover to her cost that Seth Armitage’s main goal had been a stake in her father’s fortune and a free ride on the gravy train. It had devastated her and angered her father…more than she had known.

Dimitri, out of a sense of parental devotion, had clearly conspired to arrange what he perceived to be a fail-safe liaison for his daughter via marriage to a man who had his total approval. A man of integrity, trust, possessed of astute business nous, and a worthy companion.

Loukas Andreou, the inflexible omnipotent head of the Athens branch of the Andreou Corporation, whose financial interests included shipping and considerable ancillary assets worldwide.

Loukas, whose father Constantine had been Dimitri’s lifelong friend and associate…a man whose powerful image sprang so readily to Alesha’s mind, it was almost as if his presence became a tangible entity in the room.

In his late thirties, attractive, if one admired masculine warrior features, with the height, breadth of shoulder and facial bone structure that comprised angles and planes. Loukas had brilliant dark eyes and a mouth that promised much.

Sophisticated apparel did little to diminish an innate ruthlessness resting beneath the surface of his control.

It was utterly devastating for Alesha to even begin to imagine what had possessed Dimitri to revise his will to include a clause stipulating his bequest of the remaining fifty-per-cent share in the Karsouli Corporation to his only child, Alesha Eleni Karsouli. This bequest was conditional on a marriage taking place to Loukas Andreou within a month of Dimitri’s demise, thus ensuring a one-hundred-per-cent joint family ownership, thereby securing the corporation and ensuring it would continue into another generation.

‘A court of law could rule the marriage stipulation as invalid,’ Alesha voiced.

The lawyer regarded her thoughtfully. ‘While there would be a degree of sympathy regarding that specific clause, your father’s instructions were very clearly defined. I counselled him to reconsider, but he was adamant that clause should stand.’

Alesha stifled a startled curse beneath her breath.

Dimitri had known how much Karsouli meant to her, how she’d lived and breathed it for as long as she could remember. Absorbing every aspect, studying for degrees at university to ensure she acquired the relevant knowledge, the edge…aware the word nepotism didn’t exist in her father’s vocabulary.

He knew too the pride she’d taken in working her way from the ground up to her current position of authority.

It had been a foregone conclusion his only child would assume control upon Dimitri’s demise.

And he had, Alesha conceded, gifted her that…with strings attached. Conditions aimed to protect Karsouli, and her. Especially her.

To attempt to force her into a marriage she didn’t want was the ultimate manipulative act, and in that moment she could almost hate him for it.

Two days ago she’d weathered the funeral service at the chapel. Walked behind the hearse to the grave site. Stood in silent despair and grieved as the ritual played out.