The Greek Billionaire's Counterfeit Bride (7 page)

She would have to keep her mind on the plot—not on the feeling of Ari inside of her, the taste of his lips. She chuckled to herself as she left the hotel and headed back to her apartment; even if she’d felt insulted by Ari’s frank assessment of her life and erstwhile career, she had to admit that he had chosen his pretend-wife well. She had convinced businessmen of much more difficult sells on more than one occasion.
Just think of them like another set of marks,
she told herself, skipping down the steps to the subway.

Eva even thought—wryly—that the fact that she knew what Ari looked like naked, what it felt like to have sex with him, would work in her favor, as long as she didn’t let it distract her. It would, at least, lend some physical chemistry to their interactions.
You’re going to spend the entire week wishing you could go at it again,
Eva thought. She took a deep breath and stepped onto the Brooklyn-bound train, glancing around idly at the nearly empty car.
You need to be careful. Ari Christodoulou is your partner in a scheme; he’s not someone you can trust. Not really.
The thought sent a chill through her spine.

She knew that Ari wouldn’t do anything to harm her or even humiliate her—but she also knew that it would only be too easy to develop real feelings, at least of a temporary kind, while she was pretending to be in love with the man. She had to do whatever she could to keep things purely business, right up until the dinner; after that, she would probably never hear from Christodoulou again, and she could move on with her life.
Not that I have all that much to look forward to,
Eva thought, watching the lights flash past the window as the subway picked up speed. If nothing else, at least the scheme with Ari would fill some time before she had to figure out how to live without a job.

Chapter Eight

Eva looked around the entrance to Central Park, trying to suppress the rising sense of anxiety she felt as she waited for Ari to appear. If there was one thing that grift had taught her, it was that few people were truly to be trusted; even if she knew Ari’s motivation, even if she trusted that it was in his best interest to follow through with the plan, there was a little voice in the back of her mind that whispered that he would fall through. Something was going to go wrong: he wouldn’t take the preparation seriously enough, or he would slip up during the event itself, or she would forget some particular and end up flubbing an important fact about his life—and then the edifice of their lie would come tumbling down.
A week isn’t enough time. Not nearly enough. This is crazy.
And yet, she knew she had little choice; Eva had no doubt that the realtor would do her best to bring a suit against her, without intervention from Ari.

He had sent her a message that morning, telling her to meet him at noon at the park; Eva had wondered how a businessman like Ari Christodoulou was going to manage to spend the amount of time that their charade required, but apparently he was able to order his own time more or less how he liked. Eva glanced around her again, watching the people entering and leaving the park; Ari was going to be late if he didn’t show up soon.
We’ll see just how committed he is to this,
Eva thought, taking a deep breath.

Just when Eva was convinced that Ari was going to be late, she spotted him; he strode towards her, bags in his hands, and Eva frowned in confusion at the sight. The next moment, Ari saw her, and quickened his steps, smiling.

“I know—I was almost late,” Ari said as he approached. “But I thought that a little lunch was in order.” The markings on the bags were foreign to Eva’s eyes, but the scents that wafted up from them were appealing. “My favorite Greek place, about three blocks from the office,” Ari told her.

“Greek, of course,” Eva said with a smile. “I should have expected it.”

“I thought it would be apropos for our meeting,” Ari said with a shrug. “Let’s find somewhere quiet—if we can.”

They walked deep into the park, until they came to a secluded enclave buried far away from the screaming children, the Frisbee players, the musicians. Ari produced a blanket and they both sat down. “These are a few of my favorite things to eat,” Ari explained as he began to take containers out of the takeout bags. “Zucchini flowers, stuffed with cheese and herbs. This is eggplant dip, similar to baba ganoush.” Eva nodded, watching as Ari served out bits of the different things as he spoke. “These are fried smelts—doesn’t sound very appetizing, I know, but they’re actually delicious.” Eva laughed.

“If they’re a favorite food of anyone, I’d assume they can’t be bad,” she pointed out. Ari grinned.

“I also bought us some lamb—the story behind this dish, as my mom told it to me, was that the Klephts, a group of bandits with no flocks of their own, would steal lambs from the respectable herders. Since they didn’t want to be caught cooking stolen animals, they’d cook their meat in a sealed pit so there was no smoke to lead someone to them.” Eva grinned at the fanciful story.

“Did your mother cook?” Ari shrugged.

“She did when she wanted to—mostly she kept a woman to do the cooking.” Ari finished divvying up the first servings of the food, except for the dessert, and they began eating. Eva savored the different flavors, the richness and brightness of the food, the balance of the sweet and savory, the acidic and the bland.

“Let’s get started,” Eva suggested. “Tell me about your childhood—and remember: we need to know as many details as humanly possible about each other.” Ari chuckled and put his plate aside, taking a sip of his drink.

“I have three siblings,” Ari began. “Two sisters and a brother. My mother promised my father that she would give him two boys and two girls—and as soon as she had my younger brother, she informed him that either he could accept her getting her tubes tied, or she would divorce him.” Eva laughed.

“She was serious about that, it sounds like,” she pointed out. Ari smiled slightly, nodding.

“Her mother nearly died from having too many children too quickly—that’s what she told me,” he explained. “Greeks are used to living in large families, so she thought that at least giving my father four children was fair.”

“I have an older brother and a younger sister,” Eva volunteered. “I’m not really much in contact with them, though Jessica calls me from time to time. Alex always kept to himself anyway; I get the occasional Christmas or birthday card from him.”

“Eleni is two years younger than me,” Ari said. “Nico is my baby brother, six years younger than me, and Xanthe is three years younger than I am.”

“What was your childhood like?” Eva returned to her food, unable to quite resist the tempting flavors; Ari had been right about the fried smelt, as strange as it was for her to think of something like that being so tasty.

“It was interesting,” Ari said, smiling wryly. “We were always in competition; my mother wanted us to be the best.”

“Competition against each other, or against other kids?” Eva raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Ari said, his smile deepening.

“Both?” Eva tried to imagine growing up like that; she had known that Alex—as the only son—was her father’s favorite, even though both of her parents tried to make sure that all of their children felt loved. “That seems…” she shrugged.

“It definitely gave us plenty of motivation,” Ari said. He picked up his plate and ate a few bites of the zucchini flower meditatively. “Whoever got the best grades in school, whoever was the most on top of things, got the best gifts, the most attention, the most freedom.”

“Let me guess,” Eva said drily. “You were generally the best?” Ari chuckled.

“Not always, but often,” he admitted. “Though Eleni gave me a run for my money sometimes. She’s working as the CEO of one of my father’s subsidiary companies now.”

“Is it better that you were successful on your own, or did they hope for you to stick with the family business?” Ari shrugged.

“I think they still hope that I’ll come back at some point, take things over,” Ari said. He shrugged again. “Nico is doing a good job following in my father’s footsteps. I don’t see any reason to knock him off of the throne.”

“You must have argued a lot with your siblings,” Eva observed. “Being so competitive—I feel like I could never trust my own family if I was pitted against them like that.”

“I could trust them not to tell my parents certain things,” Ari said, looking off into space. “And they could trust me not to tattle. We knew that we needed the cover sometimes—all of us.”

“It seems kind of...cold,” Eva admitted. Ari took another sip of his drink.

“It was effective,” he pointed out. “Look how successful I am now; I can’t say that I would have been if I hadn’t been taught to consider my self-worth based on what I achieved.”

“I guess the only thing separating you and me is the fact that my parents wanted me to love myself no matter what,” Eva said tartly.

“And several billion dollars,” Ari told her. “I do have to acknowledge that if my parents hadn’t been rich, it would be difficult for me to have come here, and start my own business.” He paused and smiled slightly. “You might have met me at the call center instead of the open house.”

“Ouch,” Eva said, flinching from the assessment.

“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad,” Ari told her sharply. “There’s nothing bad about having an honest job.” Eva raised an eyebrow and Ari grinned. “Or a dishonest one, as long as you don’t get caught at it.” In spite of herself, Eva chuckled.

They finished off the food but continued to talk throughout the afternoon, comparing their education: Eva’s in public schools, and Ari’s in the most elite private schools that his parents could put him in throughout Europe. He’d spent years in Switzerland, in Germany, even in Denmark. He’d gone to Cambridge for university before moving to the United States. In comparison, Eva felt positively provincial. As the hours passed, Ari called his assistant to have the man deliver them both coffee in the park, barely taking a break from their conversation to take care of their flagging energies.

Eva filed away every detail that Ari told her, beginning to form a portrait of the man in her mind, above and beyond what she needed for the scam they planned to perpetuate. As she and Ari exchanged the details of their lives, she found herself more and more intrigued by him; in spite of the coldness of his upbringing, Ari seemed to have no problem being warm, even affectionate. He was charming.
Keep your head in the game,
she reminded herself more than once; it wouldn’t do to take his charm personally.

Eva sipped the coffee that Ari’s assistant brought and they quizzed each other on what they had learned that day, correcting the occasional error. “You’re a quick study,” Eva told Ari; he had remembered almost everything she’d told him, save for her brother’s name.

“So are you,” Ari said, smiling at her. Eva had needed a few tries to get the names of all of his cousins correctly, and it was impossible to remember all of the places where his family had estates.

“You don’t need to flatter me,” Eva countered.

“Not flattery,” Ari insisted. “There are a lot more details to my life story than yours, and half of them are in foreign languages. You’ve got the much harder job.” Eva was torn between frowning and smiling at his justification.

“I sound so boring next to you,” she observed. Ari laughed.

“Well, you’d sound less boring if we could tell them about your criminal career,” he pointed out. “But since that is out of the question, boring is good. Boring is easy to remember.”

“We can come up with a story about how we met tomorrow,” Eva suggested. “I think for right now my brain has taken in as much as it possibly can.” It wasn’t entirely the truth; she had bought flash cards for herself on the way to meet with Ari, and she fully intended to make use of them as soon as she got home. She would write out the important place names, the names of his cousins, the most relevant events in his life, and she would study them before she went to bed, every day that week.
“Proper preparation is the key to any successful operation,”
Jared had told her. He’d been proven right in his aphorism; the job that had gotten him and half of their phony consulting company arrested and convicted of fraud hadn’t been one of the ones they’d over-prepared for. It had been the one time when they’d thought they had a lock on the mark they were after with only a dozen or so hours of research.

As Eva took the train back to her apartment, she thought about Ari; it was easy to see why he would be a magnet to women of all kinds—not just those interested in his wealth. He was stunningly good-looking, and the easy charm of his demeanor, coupled with the accent in his voice, was enough to make any woman who hadn’t carefully schooled herself to be untouched melt. Even she had fallen for it at first. Eva pushed the memory of their tryst out of her mind; she had to stay focused. She had to keep on task.

That morning she’d gotten a call from the realtor’s lawyer, stating that they were interested in proceeding against her. She hadn’t mentioned it yet to Ari, but Eva told herself that she would mention it to him before they got into the meat of their next meeting. She reminded herself that even if the realtor were completely set on suing her, it would take much longer than a week.
You’re just assuming Ari’s as good as his word,
Eva thought grimly, listening for the announcement of the next stop. She shook her head and dismissed the idea of distrusting Ari.
If you can’t trust him you shouldn’t be in the plot with him,
she told herself, standing as her stop came up.