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CHAPTER ONE

DAMIAN SKOURAS did not like weddings

A y, friends and faed vows of love and fidelity no hu could possibly keep, was the impossible stuff of weepy women’s novels and fairy tales

It was surely not reality

And yet, here he was, standing in front of a flower-bedecked altar while the church organ shook the rafters with Mendelssohn’s triu bride made her way up the aisle toward him

She was, he had to ad All brides were beautiful Still, this one, regal in an old-fashioned gown of white satin and lace and clutching a bouquet of tiny purple and white orchids in her tre hands, had an aura about her that h her sheer, fingertip-length veil, was radiant as she reached the altar

Her father kissed her She sly into the eyes of her waiting grooods of his ancestors that it was not he

It was just too damned bad that it was Nicholas, instead

Beside hiave a sudden, unsteady lurch Da o Nick’s handsome face was pale

Daht?” he murmured

Nick’s adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he sed “Sure”

It’s not too late, boy, Damian wanted to say, but he knew better Nick enty-one; he wasn’t a boy any longer And it was too late, because he fancied himself in love

That hat he’d said the night he’d coirl he’dmarried

Damian had been patient He’d chosen his words carefully He’d enu were ument, and finally Damian had lost his temper

“You darowled, “what happened? Did you knock her up?”

Nick had slugged him Damian almost smiled at the me him but at six foot two, Damian was taller than the boy, and faster on his feet, even if Nicholas was seventeen years younger The hard lessons he’d learned on the streets of Athens in his boyhood had never quite deserted him

“She’s not pregnant,” Nick had said furiously, as Da you, we’re in love”

“Love,” Damian had said with disdain, and the boy’s eyes had darkened with anger

“That’s right Love Dammit, Damian, can’t you understand that?”

He’d understood, all right Nick was in lust, not love; he’d alh to realize that saying it would only result in another scuffle Besides, he wasn’t a co the boy s his oay

So he’d spoken calmly, the way he assumed his sister and her husband would have done if they’d lived He talked about Responsibility and Maturity and the value in Waiting a Few Years, and when he’d finished, Nick had grinned and said yeah, he’d heard that stuff already, froood advice for so to do with him or Dawn or what they felt for each other

Da not just when to be aggressive but when to yield, had gritted his teeth, accepted the inevitable and said in that case, he wished Nick well

Still, he’d kept hoping that either Dawn or Nick would come to their senses But they hadn’t, and now here they all were, listening to a soft-voiced clergyman drone on and on about life and love while a bunch of silly women, the bride’s mother included, wept quietly into their hankies And for what reason? She had been divorced Hell, he had been divorced, and if you wanted to go back a generation and be foolish enough to consider his parents’but a farce, they were part of the dismal breakup statistics, too Half the people here probably had severed , for all he knew, thethis pallid, non-Greek ceremony

All this pomp and circumstance, and for what? It was nonsense

At least his own memorable and mercifully brief foray into the o had never felt like a real anwith flowers There’d been no words chanted in Greek nor even the vapid sighing of a minister like this one

His wedding had been what the tabloids called a quickie, an i his first big corporate takeover with too h common sense Unfortunately he’d made that assesse had led to a not-so-quickie divorce, once his avaricious bride and a retinue of overpriced attorneys had gotten involved

So ht masquerade as love

A frown appeared between Damian’s ice-blue eyes This was hardly the tis Perhaps a miracle would occur and it would all work out Perhaps, years fro

Lord, he hoped so

He loved Nick as if he were his own flesh and blood The boy was the son he’d never had and probably never would have, given the realities of reed to stand here and pretend to be interested in the mumbo jumbo of the ceremony, to smile at Nick and even to dance with the plump child as one of the bridese because, Nick had sa

id, she was Dawn’s best friend and not just overweight but shy, too, and desperately afraid of being a wallflower at the reception afterward

Oh, yes, he would do all the things a surrogate father was supposed to do And when the day ended, he’d drive to the inn on the lake where he and Gabriella had stayed the night before and take her to bed

It would be the best possible way to get over his disappointh to protect hie his mind of all this useless, sentimental claptrap

Damian looked at his current mistress, seated in a pew in the third row Gabriella wasn’t taken in by any of it Like hi Marriage was just another word for slavery, she’d said, early in their relationshipthough lately, he’d sensed a change She’d beco, more proprietorial “Where have you been, Damian?” she’d say, when a day passed without a phone call She’d taken his move to a new apartment personally, too; he’d only just in ti furniture for him as a “surprise”

She hadn’t liked that Her reaction had been sharp and angry; there’d been a brittleness to her he’d never seen before—though today, she was all sweetness and light

Even last night, during the rehearsal, there’d been a suspicious glint in her dark brown eyes She’d looked up and smiled at him It had been a tremulous smile And, as he’d watched, she’d touched a lace handkerchief to her eyes

Daret Perhaps it was tiether but when a woot that look about her

“Damian?”

Da at him out of the side of his ed his mind?

“The ring, Damian!”

The ring Of course The besthis pockets frantically, but he wouldn’t find it Nick had asked Daotten to hand it over

He dug in his pocket, pulled out the siold band and dropped it into Nick’s outstretched hand Across the narrow aisle, the maid of honor choked back a sob; the bride’sdown her cheeks, reached for her ex-husband’s hand, clutched it tightly, then dropped it like a hot potato