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would be Nick who put the crowns on Pieter and Selene’s heads and switched them back and forth three times to symbolize their union.
    Nick wanted no part of that. He couldn’t believe his brother even had the nerve to ask.
    â€œI have said no too many times to count, Mama.”
    She frowned. “I wish you would reconsider. He is your brother, Nick. Your only brother.”
    â€œPieter conveniently forgot that when he started seeing Selene behind my back.”
    â€œYou were gone, Nick. You went to America to start your business,” Thea reminded him unnecessarily. “You told Selene you understood when she said she did not want to move to New York, too.”
    What Nick understood was betrayal. Despite what he’d told Selene at the time, he’d held out hope that she would change her mind. In his heart, he’d believed that the two of them would marry eventually. Until Pieter.
    â€œI will not be his koumbaro. Be happy that I have agreed to attend the wedding at all.”
    â€œBe happy, be happy,” Yiayia chided with a shake of her head. “You would do well to listen to your own advice, my boy. You will not find a bride of your own if you do not look.”
    â€œI can assure you, I do not lack for female companionship.”
    â€œTake care how you speak around your grandmother,” George interjected gruffly.
    Nick recognized the tone. It was the same one his father had used when Nick stepped over the line as a boy. He was over the line now, too. And so he apologized.
    â€œI am merely trying to point out that if I wanted a wife I would have one.”
    He wouldn’t call himself the black sheep of the family, but his wool was definitely dyed a different shade than his brother’s, much to his mother’s and Yiayia’s regret. In addition to his Manhattan apartment, Nick kept a house just outside Athens near the Aegean. His whitewashed home was situated on a hillside and boasted panoramic views of a harbor that was dotted with yachts and fishing boats. His mother claimed the view soothed his restless nature. In some ways, watching all of those boats sail out into open waters only fed it.
    â€œThe women you know in Manhattan are not proper wife material,” his mother said.
    This was true enough, in part because at this point in his life, with a business to build and the related travel taking up so much of his time, he wasn’t ready to settle down.
    Still, he couldn’t resist asking, “How do you know this, Mama? You have not met any of the women I have been with since Selene.”
    â€œI do not need to meet them. I am your mother. I know.” Thea folded her arms.
    He loved his family. He loved Greece. But ever since he’d sold that first automobile to a collector living in the United States more than a decade earlier, he’d known that he would never settle for the quiet and predictable life he would have endured living here and working with his father.
    His family had never understood Nick’s obsession with classic cars and his desire to see them restored, much less the pleasure he took from connecting a collector with exactly what he or she sought. They were proud of him, certainly. Through hard work, shrewd investment and a little bit of luck, Nick had managed to turn his passion into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. They just wished he’d decided to base it in Athens rather than New York.
    â€œBesides, those women are not Greek,” Yiayia said.
    It boiled down to that for his grandmother. His mother, too, though she was less inclined to say so out loud. Both women wanted Nick to marry a nice Greek girl, preferably one from a family they knew, so that he would return home, buy a house nearby and settle in. It wasn’t going to happen, but that didn’t keep them from trying.
    Sure enough, his mother was saying, “I saw Maria Karapoulos at the market yesterday. Her daughter Danika was with her. She has