The Greek's Convenient Cinderella - Lynne Graham Page 0,1

backing out now because I do value your friendship and I don’t want to lose that as well.

‘No, don’t say anything,’ Althea muttered in a wobbly undertone as he studied her with a troubled frown, his wide, sensual mouth compressing at that explanation. ‘I’m doing the right thing for both of us and you know it. You’re never going to feel anything more for me than you do now. I killed all that when I slept with your best friend. And now I’m leaving you in a hell of a mess and Dad’s going to go crazy about the wedding costs I’ve incurred.’

‘I’ll cover the expenses,’ Jude interposed, reaching for her hand.

‘You can’t, not when I’m the one backing out of our agreement,’ Althea protested, tugging her hand gently from his. ‘I’m always screwing up, Jude.’

‘No, you can blame me for this. I should never have told you what my grandfather was threatening to do in the first place.’

‘We’re friends. I offered, you didn’t ask for my help,’ Althea reminded him ruefully. ‘No, this is on me. Blame it on my never quite getting over you and craving the kudos of walking down the aisle with you. That appealed to my vanity and I’m ashamed of it. You’re not a trophy to be shown off.’

Registering that her reasons for not marrying him were not reasons he could argue with, Jude expelled his breath in a sharp hiss of grudging acceptance. ‘Let’s go back in and deal with the fallout.’

‘But what are you going to do now?’ Althea demanded, searching his face with a more calculating light in her gaze.

‘Find me a wife…one without the finer sensibilities that persuaded you to back out on me,’ he murmured wryly while fiercely resisting the urge to remonstrate with her about the feelings she was insisting she still cherished for him.

‘You won’t find anyone at this late stage,’ Althea countered. ‘You’d be wiser rethinking what you’re willing to offer me.’

Jude almost groaned out loud because he had already offered Althea everything he was prepared to offer. Unfortunately, she was still on the rebound from a bad marriage, and fanciful. She ignored the reality that seven years earlier she would never have slept with another man in the first place had she genuinely loved him and that in any case these days they were no longer the boy and girl they had once been. She had been his first love, his only love, but fidelity was a hard limit for Jude and, although he had forgiven her as a friend, she had annihilated the deeper feelings he had once had for her. She didn’t understand that, couldn’t accept that bottom line, but then that was Althea, always wanting most what she couldn’t have, always believing that a pretty gesture or the right words could work a miracle. Jude had always had a tougher and less idealistic outlook because his dysfunctional background had stolen his innocence when he was still very young.

His earliest memory was of his parents fighting over his father’s extramarital affairs. He remembered his father’s arrogant defiance and his mother’s agonised hurt and hysterical recriminations. He was the unfortunate baby who had been christened Judas in the cradle by his embittered mother because she had first caught his father in another woman’s bed shortly before she gave birth. In that moment, Jude had become the symbol of everything his mother had suffered, and he suspected that even now she had yet to manage to forgive him for it. His grandfather had despised his daughter-in-law and had renamed his grandson Jude and when, inevitably, there was a divorce, the older man had moved heaven and earth to ensure that Jude’s father was awarded full custody of his son and that his mother saw as little as possible of her child as he grew up.

‘You’re an Alexandris male,’ Clio had told Jude during one of her brief visits. ‘It’s written in your genes that you’ll lie and cheat with women just like your father. You won’t be able to help yourself.’

But, Jude was a natural rebel. As soon as he’d been told that, he had sworn that he would not repeat his father’s mistakes. After all, he had grown up with the consequences of his father’s inability to maintain a stable relationship with any woman. He had had several stepmothers and his absentee father had taken countless lovers as well. Ironically, his father had never loved any woman the way he had loved Jude’s mother,