AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He acknowledged his own lie to himself.
His feelings for Carrie had been like a runaway train from the minute she’d stepped into his office. He’d thought it had been the same for her.
Had he really got it so wrong?
Had the closeness they’d developed really just been a figment of his imagination?
‘Six months of marriage where we live in London then you can relocate your headquarters to Athens and I stay put. That’s what we agreed,’ she said obstinately.
‘What if I were to offer to live permanently in London with you? For ever.’ He laid his challenge down.
‘The answer is still no. I do not want to marry you. Don’t you get that? I will pay my debt. I will do six months. And then I will leave.’
‘How can you be so cold?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘I am offering to give everything up for you and you…’
‘Cold?’ she interrupted. Suddenly she leapt from her perch on the seat and pushed him back so she was on top of him, pinning him down, her little hands holding his wrists above his head, her snarling face above his.
She’d moved so quickly he’d had no time for defence. If the situation were more humorous and less of a feeling that everything was fraying at the seams, he would have admired her ninja skills.
‘Don’t you call me cold!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t you dare! I have spent my life caring for the people that I love and losing them. I nursed my mother for six years and then she was gone. I have loved and cared for Violet her entire life and what good did that do? She’s gone too! She is lost to me. I would give my entire life to have them back so don’t you dare call me cold and don’t you dare ask me to commit the rest of my life to a man who’s been yearning for his freedom and would only break my heart. Yes, Andreas, you,’ she spat. ‘If our marriage was for real you would bore of me in months; that yearning for freedom would still be in you getting stronger and stronger and then what would happen? You’d get your chequebook out and pay me off like all rich men do when something nicer and newer grabs their attention.’
Andreas stared into her spitting eyes and felt the very coldness he’d accused her of creep into his veins.
Everything made sudden gut-aching sense.
He twisted his wrists easily from her hold and snatched her hands, pulling them together to hold her wrists in one hand while he levered himself up with his free hand.
Then they were staring at each other, enough hate and poison swirling between them to choke on.
He had been wrong about her. Prise her shell off and she was still just a poisonous viper of a journalist.
‘Oh. I get it,’ he said slowly. ‘You still think I’m just a rich bastard who is pre-programmed to cheat and treat women like dirt.’
Her eyes widened. Suddenly the fury went from them and she blinked rapidly, shaking her head. ‘No. No, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I know you’re not like other…’
‘You have said enough,’ he cut in icily, then he dropped her wrists and banged on the dividing window. ‘I’ll get out here. Take Miss Rivers back to the villa to collect her belongings and then take her to the airport.’
He turned back to stare at her now pale face for the last time. ‘I will arrange for my jet to take you back to London. Your debt to me is over.’
Then, without a word of goodbye, he got out of the car and strode through the other idle cars to his family.
Carrie watched him walk away, her heart in her mouth, loud drumbeats banging in her head. The scratchy panic that had torn her insides into pieces as Andreas had spoken of marriage had gone and all that was left was a numbness, as if she had been anaesthetised.
She rubbed her wrists, the look in his eyes as he’d let go of them, discarding them as if they were trash, right there in her mind.
Andreas had looked at her as if she were a toxin.
He merged into the merry crowd outside the pretty white church without once looking back.
A separate merry crowd had gathered together to push the broken-down car away. She watched them as if through a filter, seeing but not seeing, Andreas’s hateful look the only thing she could picture with clarity, as she sat there too numb to take anything else in.
He had never looked at her like that before. Not even when the truth had first unravelled itself.
She was barely aware of her own car moving until the driver made a slow U-turn in the space that had opened up before them and crunched away from the happy wedding party, just as Andreas had made a U-turn on their plans…
Their plans?
There were no plans now, she realised, her heart hammering more painfully than it had ever done.
Their relationship, such as it was, was over.
