The Bride Said Never!

The Bride Said Never!
Sandra Marton

Three Brides, three grooms - and they all meet at THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR Damian Skouras thought he was allergic to marriage, and Laurel Bennett didn't make it to the church on time… . But, still, they collided as guests at the Wedding of the Year. Damian hadn't been looking for commitment, and Laurel didn't date macho Greek men… .But their mutual physical attraction was red-hot, and soon Damian was insisting that they have a wedding of their own! Between them, Laurel and Damian set of fireworks you'll long remember, especially when a night of wild passion leads to a marriage Laurel doesn't want - but Damian demands - in this, the first story in Sandra Marton's new trilogy!Presents Extravaganza 25 YEARS!

Dear Reader (#u5f006ded-73bc-5c70-98ba-b52306b937b4)Title Page (#uafa8c429-461b-5c77-b251-8494aa17c415)CHAPTER ONE (#u60a4d3fa-4f1f-5a46-938c-a40df1a4e53f)CHAPTER TWO (#u02097c50-1278-583b-86e6-451eeb0423f6)CHAPTER THREE (#u6ce4012a-b75b-5362-8543-0cb8fea8eb5c)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader,

I’m delighted to be part of the twenty-fifth birthday celebration of Harlequin Presents

! My very first Presents was published twelve years ago. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of you and of hearing from many others. You and I have a lot in common. We both love exciting heroes, strong heroines and stories that make us laugh and cry. My warmest thanks to you for enjoying my books, and my best wishes to Presents. May we all celebrate many more birthdays together!

With love,

Sandra Marton

P.S. Look out next month for The Divorcee Said Yes!, the second funny, tender and exciting tale in my new series of three terrific stories, THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR.

The Bride Said Never!

Sandra Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

DAMIAN SKOURAS did not like weddings.

A man and a woman, standing before clergy, friends and family while they pledged vows of love and fidelity no human being 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 triumphal march and a hundred people oohed and ahhed as a blushing bride made her way up the aisle toward him.

She was, he had to admit, quite beautiful, but he knew the old saying. 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 trembling hands, had an aura about her that made her more than beautiful. Her smile, just visible through her sheer, fingertip-length veil, was radiant as she reached the altar.

Her father kissed her. She smiled, let go of his arm, then looked lovingly into the eyes of her waiting groom, and Damian sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of his ancestors that it was not he.

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

Beside him, Nicholas gave a sudden, unsteady lurch. Damian looked at the young man who’d been his ward until three years ago. Nick’s handsome face was pale.

Damian frowned. “Are you all right?” he murmured.

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

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

That was what he’d said the night he’d come to Damian’s apartment to tell him that he and the girl he’d met not two months before were getting married.

Damian had been patient. He’d chosen his words carefully. He’d enumerated a dozen reasons why marrying so quickly and so young were mistakes. But Nick had a ready answer for every argument, and finally Damian had lost his temper.

“You damned young fool,” he’d growled, “what happened? Did you knock her up?”

Nick had slugged him. Damian almost smiled at the memory. It was more accurate to say that Nick had tried to slug 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 Damian held him at arm’s length. “I keep telling 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 almost told him so but by then he’d calmed down enough to realize that saying it would only result in another scuffle. Besides, he wasn’t a complete fool. All this arguing was only making the boy more and more determined to have things his own way.

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, from both of Dawn’s parents, and while that might be good advice for some, it had nothing to do with him or Dawn or what they felt for each other.

Damian, who had made his fortune by knowing 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’ marriage as anything but a farce, they were part of the dismal breakup statistics, too. Half the people here probably had severed marriages behind them including, for all he knew, the mealymouthed clergyman conducting this 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 matrimonial wars a dozen years ago had never felt like a real marriage. There’d been no hushed assembly of guests, no organ music or baskets overflowing with 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 impulsive flight to Vegas after a weekend spent celebrating his first big corporate takeover with too much sex and champagne and not enough common sense. Unfortunately he’d made that assessment twenty-four hours too late. The quickie marriage had led to a not-so-quickie divorce, once his avaricious bride and a retinue of overpriced attorneys had gotten involved.

So much for the lust Nick couldn’t imagine might masquerade as love.

A frown appeared between Damian’s ice-blue eyes. This was hardly the time to think about such things. Perhaps a miracle would occur and it would all work out. Perhaps, years from now, he’d look back and admit he’d been wrong.

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 marriage. That was why he’d agreed 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 who was one of the bridesmaids and treat her with all the kindness he could manage because, Nick had said, 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 disappointment at not having taught Nick well enough to protect him from the pain that surely lay ahead, and it would purge 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 him, she had tried marriage and found it not to her liking. Marriage was just another word for slavery, she’d said, early in their relationship...though lately, he’d sensed a change. She’d become less loving, 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 time stopped her from ordering 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.

Damian felt a twinge of regret. Perhaps it was time to move on. They’d had, what, almost six months together but when a woman got that look about her...

“Damian?”

Damian blinked. Nicholas was hissing at him out of the side of his mouth. Had the boy come to his senses and changed his mind?