Review: The Greek's Chosen Wife

The Greek's Chosen Wife by Lynne Graham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Theo’s only son must be dead ten years now, he’s on his third wife and he still doesn’t have another child. He only has his English granddaughter. He wants Prudence to marry a Greek boy from a good background and that’s not surprising when she’s half-English and illegitimate into the bargain. Demakis is an old-fashioned man and he’s offering an old-fashioned deal.’

Prudence, whom his friends had christened Pudding for her love of baklava pastries, was to be his wife? He was shocked and outraged by the suggestion.

‘I know I shouldn’t have been listening and I’ll die if we become poor but you can’t ask Nik to marry Theo Demakis’s granddaughter. She’s a fat cow and plain as a pig!’

Even though he was still at university, he had acquired a reputation as a womaniser.

He worked hard and he played hard and he rarely slept alone. He didn’t do long-term and he didn’t do faithful.

‘You have the same puppy-dog eyes, the same scared smile. You’ve got no backbone and weakness disgusts me.’

‘This is crazy,’ she muttered frantically. ‘Nikolos would never agree to marry me in a million years! For goodness’ sake, he’s dating Cassia Morikis…’

Prudence had found them silly and superficial and the females had been horribly bitchy to her.

The girls in his set mobbed him, hung on his every word, flirted like mad with him, fought over him—in short, acted like sex-starved tarts.

In true Demakis style, she had not grown up but out and she barely reached the top of his chest; she was small and dumpy. She wore drab layers like an old lady:

‘Pudding…’ he breathed with uncharacteristic awkwardness. ‘Do you mind if I call you that?’

Within hours, her happiness would be destroyed and her trust shattered.

‘I CAN’T MAKE it to your party,’ Nikolos told the woman reclining on the bed, pulling on the jacket of his suit with the fluid grace that distinguished all his movements.
‘Please…pretty please…’ Naked but for a turquoise silk wrap, Tania Benson leapt up and curled her arms round his neck,
He only saw Tania when he was in Paris or Brussels.

To complement her position in his life, he enjoyed the company of an Icelandic blonde in New York and a sultry Russian model in London.

Once, Nikolos conceded grimly, he had been a lot less considerate about the level of public interest his way of life could attract.
After all, he had been married for almost eight years and had lived apart from his wife for most of that period.

Even though she saw him only a handful of times a year, Nikolos had been the centre of her world.

Nourishing a morbid interest in Nik’s taste in other women and cherishing a girlish flame of unrequited love was doing her no favours. Having finally come to terms with those facts, she had sunk her energy into the animal sanctuary.

‘I’m not and I have never been Nik’s wife—’

Some would say that accepting an arranged marriage for family reasons was incredibly medieval but he did it. He also runs a stable of mistresses but still has no problem regarding you as his wife—’

She was five feet two inches tall with a big bosom and generous hips.

She was more interested in animal welfare and her garden than in men. With the exception of himself, of course.

When a guy kept three mistresses he had loads of opportunities to practise his womanising charm.

‘When I saw you, you were wrapped round each other like Romeo and Juliet and it didn’t look quite so innocent.’
‘You were kissing her!’

His arrested attention was claimed by tabloid cuttings, magazine articles and picture after picture of him with other women. He felt sick. ‘You put this together?’

Nik was an old-style Greek tycoon. An unrepentant womaniser with double standards.

She gasped and shivered violently, her legs suddenly behaving like bendy twigs.

‘I had no right to expect or even to hope…but that you are a virgin will mean a great deal to me,’ he swore, speaking half in English, half in Greek.

‘I was just thinking how good you are at all this stuff…now I finally know what all the fuss is about—’

‘Sharing a bed with me doesn’t make me your wife. It just makes me one more in a long line of women!’

‘And you’re not exactly exclusive, are you?’

Nik needed a wife who would be content with a superficial show of marital togetherness and turn a blind eye to his mistresses.

He was a bred-in-the-bone womaniser with a taste for gorgeous supermodels whom no average woman could ever hope to rival. He would be unfaithful and she would not be able to bear it.

Three mistresses in three different countries, Prudence reflected in a passion of painful resentment.

She had just learnt the hard way that, when it came to getting what he wanted, Nik was as ruthless and cold-blooded as his reputation implied.

How can a woman with your moral views try being married to a bloke with three mistresses?’

An unfaithful husband, who broke her heart and humiliated her, would never make her happy, she acknowledged ruefully.

Prudence turned white with raging humiliation. ‘So, in essence, you did think that my grandfather had bought me a husband. That I was so desperate I would take you on any terms!’

When Chantal Donnington came to greet them, Prudence tensed. She immediately recognised her hostess as one of Nik’s exes.

Unless she was very much mistaken, and Prudence did not think her memory was at fault, she was about to meet another two of Nik’s former lovers. The feminine antagonism in the air made the skin prickle at the nape of her neck.

‘I’m Jenna Marsden,’ the brunette announced tautly.
‘Zoe Amberley,’ the blonde supplied with a challenging smile. ‘You may not be aware of the fact but we all have something in common.’
‘Yes, he certainly lives up to his legendary reputation.’ Chantal rested spiteful green eyes on Prudence.
‘Any other woman would have divorced him long ago,’ Zoe sneered.

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