Excerpt of The Antonides Marriage Deal by Anne McAllister

"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 any- thing that resembled a daily grind. He didn't want to know that they would benefit from some ready cash or that Elias was con- templating 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. What- ever 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 reason- ably. "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 mar- ried once disastrously and had no intention of ever being mar- ried 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? Ap- parently 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 ef- fort 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 wan- dering to Australia as their brother Peter had.

"You could come home and go to work for me," Elias sug- gested 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 chat- tered 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 fin- ished 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 per- sonal 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 be- hind 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 sink- ing 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, meta- phorically speaking, I guess you could say that."

Metaphorically speaking? Since when did Aeolus Antonides speak in metaphors? Elias raised his eyebrows and waited po- litely 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, sympa- thetic 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 be- gun 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 extraordi- nary 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 fa- ther's not-so-benign neglect. They knew that the financial real- ity 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 per- cent 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. Draw- ing 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 mar- riage, 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 al- ready been gasping. His knees felt weak. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to put his head between his knees and take deep des- perate 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 riv- erside warehouse Elias had bought and which until today his father had never seen.