Liv, keep me posted on your plans. Would love to see you in Greece if you can make it. Ava, we need to talk more about Cris. I’ll call you later in the week. Love you girls. x
10 August, 06.32 am
From: Olivia
To: Ava, Sophie
You go marry that gorgeous billionaire, Soph!! Have a champas for me and I’ll see you soon. You’re going to be a gorgeous bride.
“It’s paradise,” she said honestly.
“And yet you are quiet.”
She bit down on her lip, her eyes following the coastline beneath Alex’s enormous villa. “A little.”
“What is it?” He lowered the spaghetti straps of her travelling dress and ran his hands over her bare shoulders. She was warmed from the sun and when he kissed her, he tasted sunshine mingled with perspiration and sunscreen.
“It’s … the boys,” she said finally. “I can’t help thinking about their little faces when we drove off.”
Alex compressed his lips. No. Nor could he. Nor could he stop seeing Eric’s slightly panicked expression as they stepped into the limousine. Only Helena had been truly happy. Relieved, even.
He pushed aside those thoughts. He was here now, with Sophie. His wife.
“Are you disappointed your sisters were not there?”
“Disappointed? Of course not.” She spun around in the circle of his arms and smiled up at him. It was a convincing smile. He could genuinely believe that she loved him. “We hardly gave them time to make the trip, after all.”
Two weeks! Who would have thought it could be arranged so swiftly? She stifled a perplexed sigh.
Alessandros Petrides could accomplish anything in the world, even a super-rushed wedding.
“Still, family is family. Perhaps we should have waited …”
“Is that really what you would have wanted?” She teased, for his impatient streak had become a running joke between them.
“No. In fact, I would have dispatched my jet to collect them and refused to take no for an answer. I am pleased you are not sad they missed things.”
“We’ll see them soon. Ava’s … flat out on the … vineyard at the moment.” The small omission came surprisingly easily to her. Her husband would, one day, learn the truth about Ava, but the secret they’d all kept for so long was a habit Sophie wasn’t yet ready to break. She skimmed over the statement; it was something she would discuss with him later. It wasn’t a big deal anyway, to anyone but Ava, and the sisters who had helped her through the crisis of finding herself pregnant and alone. But with Cristiano’s return to the vineyard on the horizon, Sophie couldn’t help but feel a sense of worry as to how it would all work out.
“And Olivia’s on one of her hair-brained trips.”
“Hair-brained trips?” He prompted, already understanding the dynamic between the sisters despite having never so much as spoken to them.
“Liv likes to take off a few times a year. She’s got a horde of equally crazy girlfriends and she chooses whomever is at a loose end at the same time and off they go. Travel on a shoe-string budget, live like a local. She’ll write a guide book one day.”
“Perhaps one of her next trips will be to Greece.”
“She said the very same thing,” Sophie agreed, wrinkling her nose. “But she’s just as likely to change her mind tomorrow. She’s a free spirit.”
Alex nodded slowly. “I hope she makes the time for you. I would like to meet her, Mrs Petrides.”
The wedding had passed in a blur. A beautiful intimate ceremony, followed by dinner at a phenomenal restaurant Sophie had only read about in Vogue and Harpers and Queen. And then this. An escape to his divine Greek mansion.
“This place is a palace,” she said with a small smile.
“Your palace,” he murmured, and her heart turned over. His expression was difficult to comprehend; it was as though he was waiting for her to say something. She shifted uncomfortably.
After all, she’d have done anything to have successfully avoided falling in love with a man with money and this kind of property at his fingertips. A man like her father had been.