The Antonides Marriage Deal

The Antonides Marriage Deal
Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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All about the author…
Anne McAllister

RITA^® Award winner ANNE MCALLISTER was born in California. She spent formative summer vacations on the beach near her home, on her grandparents’ small ranch in Colorado and visiting relatives in Montana. Studying the cowboys, the surfers and the beach volleyball players, she spent long hours developing her concept of “the perfect hero.” (Have you noticed a lack of hard-driving type A businessmen among them? Well, she promises to do one soon, just for a change!)

One thing she did do, early on, was develop a weakness for lean, dark-haired, handsome lone-wolf type of guys. When she finally found one, he was in the university library where she was working. She knew a good man when she saw one. They’ve now been sharing “happily ever afters” for over thirty years. They have four grown children, and a steadily increasing number of grandchildren. They also have three dogs, who keep her fit by taking her on long walks every day.

Quite a few years ago they moved to the Midwest, but they spend more and more time in Montana. And as Anne says, she lives there in her head most of the time anyway. She wishes a small town like her very own Elmer, Montana, existed. She’d move there in a minute. But she loves visiting big cities as well, and New York has always been her favorite.

Before she started writing romances, Anne taught Spanish, capped deodorant bottles copyedited textbooks, got a master’s degree in theology and ghostwrote sermons. Strange and varied, perhaps, but all grist for the writer’s mill, she says.

For Aunt Billie

with love forever

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

“YOUR father is on line six.”

Elias Antonides stared at the row of red lights blinking on his desk phone and thanked God he’d declined the ten-line option he’d been offered when he’d begun renovating and converting the riverside warehouse into the new Brooklyn-based home of Antonides Marine International nine months ago.

“Right,” he said. “Thanks, Rosie. Put him on hold.”

“He says it’s important,” his assistant informed him.

“If it’s important, he’ll wait,” Elias said, reasonably confident that he wouldn’t do anything of the sort.

Aeolus Antonides had the staying power of a fruit fly. Named for the god of the wind, according to him, and “the god of hot air,” in Elias’s view, Aeolus was as charming and feckless a man as had ever lived. As president of Antonides Marine, he enjoyed three-hour lunches and three olive martinis, playing golf with his cronies and taking them out in his sailboat, but he had no patience for day-to-day routine, for turning red ink into black, for anything that resembled a daily grind. He didn’t want to know that they would benefit from some ready cash or that Elias was contemplating the purchase of a small marine outfitter that would expand their holdings. Business bored him. Talking to his son bored him.

And chances were excellent today that, by the time Elias had dealt with the other five blinking lights, his father would have hung up and gone off to play another round of golf or out for a sail from his Hamptons home.

In fact, Elias was counting on it. He loved his father dearly, but he didn’t need the old man meddling in business matters. Whatever his father wanted, it would invariably complicate his life.

And he had enough complications already today—though it wasn’t much different from any other.

His sister Cristina, on line two, wanted him to help her set up the financing for a bead store.

“A bead store?” Elias thought he’d heard everything. Cristina had variously wanted to raise rabbits, tie-dye T-shirts and go to disk-jockey school. But the beads were new.

“So I can stay in New York,” she explained perfectly reasonably. “Mark’s in New York.”

Mark was her latest boyfriend. Elias didn’t think he’d be her last. Famous for racing speedboats and chasing women, Mark Batakis was as likely to be here today and gone tomorrow as Cristina’s bead-store aspirations.

“No, Cristina,” he said firmly.

“But—”

“No. You come up with a good business plan for something and we’ll talk. Until then, no.” And he hung up before she could reply.

His mother, on line three, was arranging a dinner party on the weekend. “Are you bringing a girlfriend?” she asked hopefully. “Or shall I arrange one.”

Elias gritted his teeth. “I don’t need you arranging dates for me, Mother,” he said evenly, knowing full well as he did so that his words fell on deaf ears.

Helena Antonides’s goal in life was to see him married and providing her with grandchildren. Inasmuch as he’d been married once disastrously and had no intention of ever being married again, Elias could have told her she was doomed to fail. She had other children, let them have the grandchildren she was so desperate for.

Besides, wasn’t it enough that he was providing the financial support for the entire Antonides clan to live in the manner to which three generations of them had become accustomed? Apparently not.

“Well—” she sniffed, annoyed at him as usual “—you don’t seem to be doing a very good job yourself.”

“Thank you for sharing your opinion,” Elias said politely.

He never bluntly told his mother that he was not ever getting married again, because she would have argued with him, and as far as Elias was concerned, the matter wasn’t up for debate. He had been divorced for seven years, had purposely made no effort at all to find anyone to replace the duplicitous, avaricious Millicent, and had no intention of doing so.

Surely after seven years his mother should have noticed that.

“Don’t go all stuffy on me, Elias Antonides. I’ve got your best interests at heart. You should be grateful.”

As that didn’t call for an answer, Elias didn’t supply one. “I have to go, Mom, I have work to do.”

“You always have work to do.”

“Someone has to.”

There was a dead silence on the other end of the line. She couldn’t deny it, but she wouldn’t agree, either. At last Helena said firmly, “Just be here Sunday. I’ll provide the girl.” She was the one who hung up on him.

His sister, Martha, on line four, was brimming with ideas for her painting. Martha always had ideas—and rarely had the means to see them through.

“If you want me to do a good job on those murals,” she told him, “I really should go back to Greece.”

“What for?”

“Inspiration,” she said cheerfully.

“A vacation, you mean.” Elias knew his sister. Martha was a good artist. He wouldn’t have asked her to cover the wall of the foyer of his building, not to mention one in his office and the other in his bedroom if she were a hack. But he didn’t feel like subsidizing her summer holidays, either. “Forget it. I’ll send you some photos. You can work from them.”

Martha sighed. “You’re such a killjoy, Elias.”

“Everyone knows that,” he agreed. “Deal with it.”

On line five Martha’s twin, Lukas, didn’t want to deal with it. “What’s wrong with going to New Zealand?” Lukas wanted to know.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Elias said with more patience than he felt. “But I thought you were going to Greece?”

“I did. I’m in Greece,” Lukas informed him. “But it’s boring here. There’s nothing to do. I met some guys at the taverna last night. They’re heading to New Zealand. I thought I’d go, too. So do you know someone there—in Auckland, say—who might want to hire me for a while?”

“To do what?” It was a fair question. Lukas had graduated from college with a major in ancient languages. None of them was Maori.

“Doesn’t matter. Whatever,” Lukas said vaguely. “Or I could go to Australia. Maybe go walkabout?”

Which seemed to be pretty much what he was already doing, Elias thought, save for the fact that he wasn’t confining his wandering to Australia as their brother Peter had.

“You could come home and go to work for me,” Elias suggested not for the first time.

“No way,” Lukas said not for the first time, either. “I’ll give you a call when I get to Auckland to see if you have any ideas.”

Ted Corbett—on line one—the only legitimate caller as far as Elias was concerned, was fortunately still there.

“So, what do you think? Ready to take us over?” That was why he was still there. Corbett was eager to sell his marine outfitters business and just as eager for Elias to be the one to buy it.

“We’re thinking about it,” Elias said. “No decision yet. Paul has been doing some research, running the numbers.”

His projects manager loved ferreting out all the details that went into these decisions. Elias, who didn’t, left Paul to it. But ultimately Elias was going to have to make the final decision. All the decisions, in the end, were his.

“I want to come out and see the operation in person,” he said.

“Of course,” Corbett agreed. “Whenever you want.” He chattered on about the selling points, and Elias listened.

He deliberately took his time with Corbett, eyeing the red light on line six all the while. It stayed bright red. When he finally finished with Corbett it was still blinking. Probably the old man just walked off and left his phone on. That would be just like him. But Elias punched the button anyway.

“My, you’re a busy fellow,” Aeolus boomed in his ear.

Elias shut his eyes and mustered his patience. His father must have been doing the crossword to wait so long. “Actually, yes. I’ve been on the phone way too long, and now I’m late for a meeting. What’s up?”

“Me, actually. Came into the city to see a friend. Thought I’d stop by. Got something to discuss with you.”

The last thing Elias needed today was his father making a personal appearance. “I’m coming out on the weekend,” Elias said, hoping to forestall the visit. “We can talk then.”

But Aeolus was otherwise inclined. “This won’t take long. See you in a bit.” And the phone clicked in Elias’s ear.

Damn it! How typical of his father. It didn’t matter how busy you were, if he wanted your attention, Aeolus found a way to get it. Elias banged the phone down and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache gathering force back behind his eyes.

By the time his beaming father breezed straight past Rosie and into Elias’s office an hour later, Elias’s headache was raging full-bore.

“Guess what I did!” Aeolus kicked the door shut and did one of the little soft-shuffle steps that invariably followed his sinking a particularly tricky putt.

“Hit a hole in one?” Elias guessed. He stood up so he could meet his father head-on.

At the golf reference, Aeolus’s smile grew almost wistful. “I wish,” he murmured. He sighed, then brightened. “But, metaphorically speaking, I guess you could say that.”

Metaphorically speaking? Since when did Aeolus Antonides speak in metaphors? Elias raised his eyebrows and waited politely for his father’s news.

Aeolus rubbed his hands together and beamed. “I found us a business partner!”

“What!” Elias stared at his father, appalled. “What the hell do you mean, business partner? We don’t need a business partner!”

“You said we needed ready cash.”

Oh, hell. He had been listening. “I never said anything about a business partner! The business is doing fine!”

“Of course it is,” Aeolus nodded. “Couldn’t get a partner if it weren’t. No rats want to board sinking ships.”

Rats? Elias felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “What rats?”

“Nothing. No rats,” Aeolus said quickly. “Just a figure of speech.”

“Well, forget it.”

“No. You work too hard, Elias. I know I haven’t done my part. It’s just…it’s not in me. I—” Aeolus looked bleak.

“I know that, Dad.” Elias gave his father a sincere, sympathetic smile. “I understand.” Which was the truth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.”

Not now at least. Eight years ago it had cost him his marriage.

No, that wasn’t fair. His father’s lack of business acumen had been only one factor in the breakup with Millicent. It had begun when he’d toyed with quitting business school to start his own boat-building company, to do what his grandfather had done. Millicent had been appalled. She’d been passionate about him finishing school and stepping in at Antonides. But that was when she’d thought it was worth something. When she found out its books were redder than a sunset, she’d been appalled, and livid when Elias had insisted on staying and trying to salvage the firm.

No, his father’s business incompetence had only highlighted the problems between himself and Millicent. The truth was that he should have realized what Millicent’s priorities were and never married her in the first place. It was a case of extraordinary bad judgement and one Elias was not going to repeat.

“But I do worry,” his father went on. “We both do, your mother and I. You work so hard. Too hard.”

Elias had never spoken of the reasons for the divorce, but his parents weren’t fools. They knew Elias had worked almost 24/7 to salvage the business from the state it had slid to due to his father’s not-so-benign neglect. They knew that the financial reality of Antonides Marine did not meet the expectations of their son’s social-ladder climbing wife. They knew she had vanished not long after Elias dropped out of business school to work in the family firm. And within weeks of the divorce being final, Millicent had married the heir to a Napa Valley winery.

Of course no one mentioned any of this. For years no one had spoken her name, least of all Elias.

But shortly after Millicent’s marriage, the fretting began—and so had the parade of eligible women, as if getting Elias a new wife would make things better, make his father feel less guilty.

As far as Elias was concerned, his father had no need to feel guilty. Aeolus was who he was. Millicent was who she was. And Elias was who he was—a man who didn’t want a wife.

Or a business partner.

“No, Dad,” he said firmly now.

Aeolus shrugged. “Sorry. Too late. It’s done. I sold forty percent of Antonides Marine.”

Elias felt as if he’d been punched. “Sold it? You can’t do that!”

Aeolus’s whole demeanor changed in an instant. He was no longer the amiable, charming father Elias knew and loved. Drawing himself up sharply with almost military rigidity, he looked down his not inconsiderable nose at his furious son.

“Of course I can sell it,” Aeolus said stiffly, his tone infused with generations of Greek arrogance that even his customary amiable temperament couldn’t erase. “I own it.”

“Yes, I know that. But—” But it was true. Aeolus did own Antonides Marine. Or fifty percent of it anyway. Elias owned ten percent. Forty percent was in trust for his four siblings. It was a family company. Always had been. No one whose name was not Antonides had ever owned any of it.

Elias stared at his father, feeling poleaxed. Gutted. Betrayed. He swallowed. “Sold it?” he echoed hollowly. Which meant what? That his work of the past eight years was, like his marriage, gone in the stroke of a pen?

“Not all of it,” Aeolus assured him. “Just enough to give you a little capital. You said you needed money. All last Sunday at your mother’s dinner party you were on the phone talking to someone about raising capital to buy some outfitter.”

“And I was doing it.” Elias ground out.

“Well, now I’ve done it instead.” His father rubbed his hands together briskly. “So you don’t have to work so hard. You have breathing room.”

“Breathing room?” Elias would have laughed if he hadn’t already been gasping. His knees felt weak. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to put his head between his knees and take deep desperate breaths. But instead he stood rigid, his fingers balled into fists, and stared at his father in impotent fury, none of which he allowed to show on his face.

“You didn’t need to sell,” he said at last in measured tones that he congratulated himself did not betray the rage he felt. “It would have been all right.”

“Oh, yes? Then why did we move here?” Aeolus wrinkled his nose as he looked around the newly renovated offices in the riverside warehouse Elias had bought and which until today his father had never seen.

“To get back to our roots,” Elias said through his teeth. There was no reason at all to pay midtown Manhattan prices when his business could be better conducted from Brooklyn. “This is where Papu had his first offices.” His grandfather had never wanted to be far from water.

Aeolus didn’t seem convinced. “Well, it’s obvious that things aren’t what they used to be,” he said with a look around. “I wanted to help.”

Help? Dear God! Elias took a wild, shuddering breath, raked a hand through his hair. With help like this he might as well throw in the towel.

Of course, he wouldn’t.

Antonides Marine was his life. Since he’d shelved his dream of building his own boats, since Millicent had walked out, it was the only thing he’d focused on. She would have said, of course, that it was the only thing he’d focused on before she’d left him. But that wasn’t true. And he’d done it in the first place for her, to try to give her the life she’d wanted. How was he to know she’d just been looking for an excuse to walk out?

Now it was all he had. All he lived for. He was determined to restore it to the glory his great-grandfather and his grandfather had achieved. And he was almost there.

But it hadn’t been an easy road so far, and he shouldn’t expect it would start now. Deliberately he straightened his tie and pasted a smile on his face and told himself it would be all right.

This was just one more bump in the road. There had been plenty of bumps—and potholes—and potential disasters in the road since he’d taken over running Antonides Marine.

With luck he could even work out a deal to buy the shares Aeolus had sold away. Yes. That was a good idea. Then there would be no more opportunity for his father to do something foolish behind his back.

Elias flexed his shoulders, worked to ease the tension in them, took another, calmer breath and then turned to his father, prepared to make the best of it.

“Sold it to whom?” he asked politely.

“Socrates Savas.”

“The hell you say!”

So much for calm. So much for polite. So much for making the best of it!

“Socrates Savas is a pirate. A scavenger! He buys up failing companies, guts them, then sells off what’s left for scrap!” Elias was yelling. He knew he was yelling. He couldn’t help it.

“He does have a certain reputation,” Aeolus admitted, the characteristic smile not in evidence now.

“An entirely deserved reputation,” Elias snarled. He stalked around the room. He wanted to punch the walls. Wanted to punch his father. “Damn it to hell! Antonides Marine is not failing!”

“So I hear. Socrates said it was doing very well indeed. He had to give me a pile for it,” Aeolus reflected with considerable satisfaction. “So much that he complained about it. Said he should have bought it five years ago. Said it was too bad he hadn’t known about it then.”

Which had been the whole point. One look at the Antonides Marine’s books eight years ago, and Elias had known their days as a company were numbered unless he could drag them back into the black.

He’d done it. But it had meant long long hours and cost-cutting and streamlining and reorganization and doing all of it without allowing the company to look as if it were in any trouble at all. He’d spent years trying to stay under Socrates Savas’s radar. For all the good it had done him.

“Good thing for us Socrates didn’t notice it then,” Aeolus reflected, as if it had just occurred to him.

“Good thing,” Elias agreed sarcastically, for once taking no pains to spare his father’s feelings.

Aeolus looked momentarily chagrined, but then brightened again and looked at his son approvingly. “You should be proud. You pulled us out of the abyss, Socrates says. Though I don’t know as I’d have called it an abyss,” he reflected.

“I would’ve,” Elias muttered.

Obviously Savas had had his eye on the business for a while whether Elias had known it or not. Circling like a vulture, no doubt. Not that he’d ever given any indication. But he was a past master at spotting prey, waiting for the right moment, then snapping up a floundering company.

For the past year Elias had dared to breathe easier knowing that Antonides Marine wasn’t floundering anymore. And now his father had sold the blackguard forty percent of it anyway?

Damnation!

So what did Savas intend to do with it? The possibilities sent chills down Elias’s spine. He wouldn’t let himself imagine. And he certainly wouldn’t hang around to watch. Knowing he couldn’t bear it gave him the resolve to say words he never ever thought he’d say.

“Fine,” he said, looking his father in the eye. “He can have it. I quit.”

His father gaped at him, his normally rosy countenance going suddenly, starkly white. “Quit? Quit? But…but, Elias…you can’t quit!”

“Of course I can.” Elias had been blessed with his own share of the Antonides arrogance and hauteur, and if Aeolus could sell the business that his son had rescued from the scrap pile without so much as a nod in his direction, then by God, Elias could certainly quit without looking back!

“But…” Aeolus shook his head helplessly, his hands waving in futility. “You can’t.” His words were almost a whisper, his face still ashen. There was a pleading note in his voice.

Elias frowned. He had expected sturm und drang, not a death mask.

“Why can’t I?” he asked with studied politeness, a hint of a not very pleasant smile on his lips.

“Because—” Aeolus’s hands fluttered “—because it’s…it’s written in the contract that you’ll stay on.”

“You can’t sell me with the company, Dad. That’s slavery. There’re laws against it. So, I guess the contract is null and void?” Elias smiled a real smile now. “All’s well that ends well,” he added, managing—barely—to restrain himself from rubbing his hands together.

But Aeolus didn’t look pleased and his color hadn’t returned. His fingers knotted and twisted. His gaze dropped. He didn’t look at his son. He looked at the floor without a word.

“What is it?” Elias said warily in the silence.

Still nothing. Not for a long, long time. Then, at last, his father lifted his head. “We’ll lose the house.”

Elias scowled. “What do you mean, you’ll lose the house? What house? The house on Long Island?”

His father gave an almost imperceptible negative shake of his head.

No? Not the Long Island house?

Then that meant…

“Our house?”

The family home on Santorini? The one his great-grandfather, also called Elias, had built with his bare hands? The one each succeeding generation of Antonides men and women had added to, so that it was home to not only their bodies but their history, their memories, their accomplishments?

Of course, they’d had the house on Long Island for years. They’d had flats in London, in Sydney and in Hong Kong.

But they only had one home.

But his father couldn’t mean that. The house on Santorini had nothing to do with the business! Never had. It belonged to his father now as it had belonged to his father and his father’s father before him. For four generations the house had gone from eldest son to eldest son.

It would be Elias’s someday. And, though he’d saved the company and all its holdings, none of them mattered to him as much as that single house. It held memories of his childhood, of summer days spent working building boats with his grandfather, of the dreams of youth that were pure and untarnished, though life was anything but. The house on Santorini was their strength, their refuge—the physical heart of the Antonides family.

It was the only thing Elias loved.

His fingers curled into fists. It was the only way he could keep from grabbing his father by the front of his emerald-green polo shirt and shaking him. “What have you done to our house?”

“Nothing,” Aeolus said quickly. “Well, nothing if you stay on at Antonides.” He shot Elias a quick, hopeful glance that skittered away at once in the face of his son’s burning black fury. He wrung his hands. “It was just a small bet. A sailboat race. A bet I made with Socrates. Which boat—his or mine—could sail to Montauk and back faster. I’m a better sailor than Socrates Savas!”

Which Elias had no doubt was true. “So what happened?”

“The bet was about the boats,” his father said heavily.

“I know. You raced the boats. So?”

Aeolus shot him an exasperated look. “I’m a better sailor than Socrates Savas. I don’t hold a candle to his son Theo!”

Elias whistled. “Theo Savas is Socrates’s son?”

Even Elias had heard of Theo Savas. Anyone who knew anything about sailing knew Theo Savas. He had sailed for Greece in the Olympics. He had crewed in several America’s Cup races. He had done windsurfing and solo sailing voyages that caught the hearts and minds of armchair adventurers everywhere. He was also lean, muscular and handsome, a playboy without equal and, naturally—according to Elias’s sisters—the ideal of Greek manhood.

No matter that he had been raised in Queens.

“Theo won,” Aeolus said, filling his cheeks with air, then exhaling sharply and shaking his head. “And he gets clear title to the house—unless you agree to stay on as managing director of Antonides Marine for two years.”

“Two years!”

“It’s not much!” Aeolus protested. “Hardly a life sentence.”

It might as well be. Elias couldn’t believe it. His father was asking him to simply sit here and watch as Socrates Savas gutted the company he had worked so hard to save!

“What the hell did I ever do to him?” Elias demanded.

“Do to him? Why, nothing at all. What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” There was no reason to take it personally. Socrates Savas did this sort of thing all the time. Still Elias ground his teeth. He felt the pulse pound in his temple and deliberately unclenched his jaw and took a deep, calculated breath.

Two years. It was a price he could pay. He’d paid far bigger ones. And this wasn’t just about his life, it was the life of his whole family.

He’d done everything else. How could he not do this?

“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll stay.”

His father beamed, breathed again, pounded him on the back. “I knew you would!”

“But I’m not answering to Socrates Savas. He’s not running things!”

“Of course not!” His father said, relieved beyond belief. “His daughter is!”

The new president of Antonides Marine International hadn’t slept a wink all night.

Tallie had lain awake, grinning ear to ear, her mind whirling with glorious possibilities and the satisfaction of knowing that her father was finally acknowledging she was good at what she did.

She knew it wasn’t easy for him. Socrates Savas was as traditional as a stubborn, opinionated Greek father could be—even though he was two generations removed from the old country.

In her father’s mind, his four sons were the ones who were supposed to follow his footsteps into the family business. His only daughter, Thalia, ought to stay at home, mend clothes and cook meals and eventually marry a nice, hardworking Greek man and have lots of lovely little dark-haired, dark-eyed Greek grandchildren for Socrates to dandle on his knee.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Oh, she would have married. If Lieutenant Brian O’Malley’s plane had not crashed seven years ago, she certainly would have married him. Life would have been a lot different.

But since Brian’s death she’d never met anyone who’d even tempted her. And not for her father’s lack of trying. Sometimes she thought he’d introduced her to every eligible Greek on the East Coast.

“Go pester the boys,” she told him. “Go find them wives.”

But Socrates just muttered and grumbled about his four sons. They were even more of a mystery to him than Tallie was. If she desperately wanted to follow him into business, Theo, George, Demetrios and Yiannis, had absolutely no interest in their father’s footsteps—or his business—at all.

Theo, the eldest, was a world-class open-ocean sailor. Tie him to an office or even stick him in a city and he would die. Socrates wasn’t sympathetic. He considered that his oldest son just “mucked about in boats.”

George was a brilliant physicist. He was unraveling the universe, one strand at a time. Socrates couldn’t believe people actually had theories about strings.

Demetrios was a well-known television actor with an action-adventure series of his own. His face—and a whole lot of his bare, sculpted torso—had recently been on a billboard in Times Square. Socrates had averted his eyes and muttered, “What next?”

But he wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told him.

Yiannis, the youngest of Tallie’s four older brothers, who was as city-born and -bred as the rest of them, had, five years ago, finished a master’s degree in forestry and was living and working at the top of a Montana mountain!

It was Tallie who had always been determined to follow in her father’s footsteps. She was the one with the head for business. She was the one who had worked in stockrooms and storerooms, in warehouses and shipping offices, doing everything she could to learn how things worked from the ground up.