THE GREEK'S BARGAIN VIRGIN BRIDE

Chapter one

'Please don't go in there, Bryony,' Glenys Mercer told her daughter tremulously. 'Your father has an important... er... visitor with him.'
         Bryony's hand fell away from the doorknob of the main study as she turned to look at her mother, standing in the great hulking shadow of the grandfather clock that had kept time at the Mercer country estate for six generations.
       'Who is it?' she asked.
   Her mother's drawn features seemed to visibly age before Bryony's clear blue gaze.
      'I'm not sure years your father would like me to tell you.'
Glenys Mercer twisted her hands together. 'You know how he is about those sorts of things.'
      Bryony did know.
      She moved closer to her mother, her light footsteps on the polished floorboards echoing throughout the huge foyer, reminding her yet again of the emptiness of the grand old house since her brother's death.
       Ever since Austin had died almost ten years ago the house had seemed to grieve along with the rest of the family. Every window, room, corner and shadowed doorway held a memory of a young man's life cut short, even the creaking of the staircase every time she went up or down seemed to be crying out for the tread of his steps,not hers.
        'What's going on, Mum?' she asked, her voice dropping to an undertone.
         Glenys couldn't hold her daughter's questioning gaze and turned away to inspect the intricately craved woodwork on the banister.
      'Mum?'
      'Please, Bryony, don't make a fuss. My nerve will never stand it.'
   Bryony suppressed a heartful sigh. Her mother's nerve were something else she knew all about.
   There was a sound behind her and she turned to see her father come out of the study, his usually florid face pale.
    'Bryony...I thought I heard you come in.' He wiped his receding hairline with a scrunched-up handkerchief, the action of his hand jerky and uncoordinated.
       'Is something wrong?' She took a step towards him but came up short when a tall figure appeared in the study doorway just behind him.
      Cold dread leaked into every cell of her body as she met the dark unreadable gaze of Kane Kaproulias, her dead brother's sworn enemy.
        She opened and closed her mouth but couldn't locate her voice. Her fingertips went numb, her legs trembled and her heart hammered behind the wall of her chest as her eyes took in his forbidding presence.
   He was much taller than she remembered, but then, she thought, ten years was a long time.
   He brown-black eyes even seemed darker than they had been before, the straight brows above them giving his arresting features a touch of haughtiness.
   Her eyes automatically dipped to his mouth as they had done every time since the day she'd put that jagged scar on his top lip.
    It was still there...
    'Hello, Bryony.'