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Mr. Petronides nodded knowingly. “I remember. Do you want to lie down?”
Did she? She could hide from her misery upstairs, or end up wallowing in it. She really didn’t want her own company right now. “I’d rather stay here with you.”
“Ah, kindness to an old man.”
“Not at all. I enjoy your company,” she replied truthfully.
“Then tell me about this job you had. I have never met a fashion model.”
She told him about her life as Xandra Fortune and ended up talking about how she had met Dimitri. Impossibly, she found herself laughing over memories of her life with Dimitri before she’d gotten pregnant.
She and Mr. Petronides had gone to the drawing room for coffee when Dimitri rejoined them. She was telling his grandfather about the first argument they’d ever had.
“I was doing a swimsuit cover. Dimitri came to the shoot on a whim.”
“I came back a day early and surprised her,” Dimitri inserted as he walked into the room.
Her head snapped around and she met his eyes briefly before her own gaze skated away. She didn’t know how she managed it, but she didn’t stand up and harangue him like a fishwife for once again withholding a crucial piece of information from her. For letting her believe he might be coming to love her when he’d been motivated by his personal sense of honor, not personal need.
Dimitri joined her on the brightly colored Mediterranean-style sofa. Her body tensed in response to his nearness. If only she could forget what he made her feel as easily as he conveniently forgot to tell her about his second promise.
She focused her attention on Mr. Petronides who was smiling benevolently at them. “He didn’t like the suit I was wearing for the shoot and demanded I go to the trailer and take it off.”
“So, being a reasonable woman and understanding the possessiveness of a traditional Greek male, you immediately changed, heh?” Mr. Petronides’s eyes twinkled mockingly.
Dimitri snorted. “She threatened to take it off right there in front of everyone if I didn’t shut up and go to the sidelines.” He still sounded chagrined by her tactics.
She allowed herself a brief glance at him, but it hurt too much to make full frontal contact so she looked back at his grandfather. “It worked.”
The older man roared with laughter and said something rapid to Dimitri in Greek that she didn’t catch. Dimitri scowled.
She smiled. Anything that made him frown made her happy, or so she told herself.
“She has led you a merry chase, has she not, Dimitrius?”
Dimitri laid his arm across her shoulders. “Yes, but I have her now and I’m not letting go.”
She wanted to cuddle into his side and kick him in the shin at the same time. Was she going crazy? She must be. And he was the one driving her there.
She jumped up. “I think I’ll go to bed.” She turned to Dimitri. “You needn’t feel obligated to join me. I’m sure you and your grandfather have a great deal to catch up on.” The words were stilted, but they were the best she could do.
Dimitri’s eyes narrowed and he stood. “I will see you upstairs.”
His grandfather stood as well, slowly coming to his feet, the expression on his face one of fatigue. It was the first time since she’d met him that he had shown a glimmer of the effects of his recent ill health. “Do not return downstairs for my sake, Dimitrius. Both the very old and the very young need their rest. I will find my bed.”
She gave the old man a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to go upstairs.
Dimitri stayed behind a few moments saying goodnight to his grandfather, but caught up with her before she had reached the top of the stairs. She allowed him to take her hand, but when he reached for her later in bed she told him she was too tired to make love.
He’d married her because of a promise to a sick relative. For the first time she felt an unwelcome weight around her heart because of her pregnancy. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, Dimitri would have let her go without a second thought.
Even if Phoebe had still ended up married to Spiros, Dimitri wouldn’t have gone looking for his discarded lover, Xandra Fortune.
Because his grandfather would not have extracted that second promise.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE next morning Alexandra came to consciousness alone in the bed. She cuddled Dimitri’s pillow, inhaling his scent, wishing his absence from their bed was not a physical ache in her heart. He had left for Athens two hours ago, but not before waking Alexandra with slow, tender caresses that had ended in such exquisite release she’d cried.
She’d gone to sleep determined not to make love with him. That determination hadn’t lasted past his first drugging kiss around dawn. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. There were no answers to her predicament in the white plaster.
A knock on the door heralded the arrival of a maid with the breakfast Dimitri had ordered for her. She scooted into a sitting position and allowed the maid to lay the breakfast tray over her legs. An unexpected smile tilted her lips when she saw the dry toast, fruit, eggs and single slice of bacon. He’d teased her about her tendency to order the same meal for breakfast every morning. He’d said pregnant women were supposed to crave pickles and ice cream, not dry toast and bacon.
The food was accompanied by the awful tasting herbal tea she’d taken to drinking in the morning to settle her nausea. She ignored it, grateful the stomach upset that had plagued her the night before was gone. She refused to contemplate the possibility Dimitri’s lovemaking had been more effective in making her feel better than all the herbal tea she’d drunk.
The maid opened the curtains letting in the bright Greek sun before leaving Alexandra to finish her breakfast alone.
She ate by rote, her thoughts casting back to the night before and then more recently to earlier that morning. She still tingled in places from her husband’s possession. Remembered pleasure caused an unwelcome throbbing in her lower body. If he were here now, she’d be hard pressed not to beg him to make love to her.
Huffing out a sigh of frustration at her body’s betrayal, she climbed out of bed. As she showered and dressed, she considered her situation pragmatically. What, after all, had changed? She’d known Dimitri didn’t love her when she agreed to marry him.
But she hadn’t known about the promise, her heart cried.
Did it matter?
Of course it mattered. It was humiliating to realize she’d been married for a reason totally unrelated to herself. She had her pride.
And it had been a cold companion for three long months in New York. She’d been miserable without him. She’d missed him like a wound in her soul every day they had been apart, even believing he had been married to another woman hadn’t dulled the unwanted desire to be back in his arms.
She walked over to the dresser and picked up the Lladro statue. It was so delicate. She could remember with absolute clarity her sense of joy and wonder when he had bought it for her. She ran her forefinger along the figurine’s head and the graceful lines of her dress. Then she lightly touched the kitten playing at the woman’s feet.
Dimitri had saved this reminder of a happier time between them. He had saved her clothes. He had brought her things here, to the family home, obviously believing she would live here as well one day. Of course he had believed it. He knew about his promise to his grandfather, her mind insidiously reminded her.
But he hadn’t had to save her things. She’d left them in an insulting pile on the floor, flouting his pride, condemning him with their presence and her absence.
She had a choice. She could fight the truth and make both Dimitri and herself miserable, or she could accept reality.
She and Dimitri would have the kind of marriage people in his world and her mother’s world excelled at…a marriage of convenience. After all, she was no longer Xandra Fortune, the nobody model he slept with, but Alexandra Petronides, his wife and a woman with a background he could be proud of.
Sharp slashes of pain cut at her heart at the last thought. She’d spent her whole life being accepted for the trappings of who she was. Her own mother had withheld her love and approval for the six long years Alexandra had spent as Xandra Fortune. Cecelia had been effusive in her approval the week before the wedding though. She had been thrilled her daughter had landed such a catch in the marriage market.
And she’d positively gushed her appreciation for her oldest daughter when Dimitri repurchased the Dupree Mansion.
Alexandra thought of the empty years ahead being nothing more than the traditional Greek wife, an adjunct in Dimitri’s life, not a major player. She determined then and there not to fall passively into that role. She’d married Dimitri as she’d said she would. Their son would be raised a Petronides.
Because she loved Dimitri, she would never leave him. But she wasn’t going to play doormat. He’d said she could have anything she wanted to make her happy. What would he say if she told him she wanted to go back to modeling after the baby was born? What would he say if she said that would make her happy?
