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For a moment there was silence but for the sound of their footfalls on the paved area beyond the flowerjewelled grass. Then, ‘It is generally believed that we are enjoying the honeymoon you were denied three months ago.’ If he sounded sour, he couldn’t help it. He’d been working all hours towards getting a new business regime on track, towards freeing him up to surprise her with a three-month honeymoon—anywhere in the world she fancied, her choice. This— this confrontation over her wish to end their marriage—was the last thing he’d wanted.
The scornful objection she would have lobbed at him died in her throat as she lanced a glare at him. There was a gritty edginess to his unforgettable features, tension in the line of his mouth betraying inner turmoil.
Did he dislike the situation as much as she did? Was his plan to get her pregnant, provide him with the heir he needed, beginning to sicken him, too? To his dynastic way of thinking an heir was all-important. During their short and head-spinning courtship he had often spoken of his desire to have a family—a desire she had matched back then with a retrospectively cringe-making enthusiasm.
Was there yet another side to this need of his? A long entrenched, driving need for a family of his own because from an early age he hadn’t had one? Losing both his parents at such an early age and being brought up by his aunt Alexandra wouldn’t have been a bed of roses. As far as Maddie could tell, and backed up by what Cristos had said to Amanda, the old lady didn’t have an affectionate or compassionate bone in her body.
The odd shift in her mood kept her silent while he escorted her through the house. The cool tiled rooms with vaulted high ceilings contrasted with the heat outside, and the wide white marble staircase with its delicate cast-iron banisters soared up to airy corridors and the room the honeymooning couple would share.
The suitcases had been unpacked, and Xanthe was putting the last of the garments in a vast hanging cupboard, full of smiles, bobs and many words as she made her exit. Not giving the room even a cursory glance, Maddie waited until the door had closed behind the caretaker, then said, ‘I know we need to talk—about the divorce.’ Her face reddened beneath the chilling impassivity of his gaze but she struggled on, disadvantaged by his seeming indifference to what she was trying to say. It made her feel like a low-grade employee asking for a rise in wages she had done nothing to earn. ‘But we could have done it in Athens without putting on this farce.’
‘So we could. If there were any question of an immediate divorce.’
He was closing that door. Again. The word immediate induced panic. She would get her divorce when it suited him. When she had given him an heir. And if he pulled out all the stops to make it happen, then manufactured evidence to prove she was an unfit mother, a feckless wife, she would lose her child, her sense of self-worth, and in all probability her parents and two of her brothers would lose their home and their livelihood. Because if he were as unprincipled and callous as to hoodwink her into a short-term, no pain no gain marriage he wouldn’t think twice about pulling the rug from under her family’s feet once the need for blackmail was over.
Her feeling of sympathy for his loveless upbringing, his lack of close family, vanished like a snowflake falling on hot coals. He had strolled over to open the louvres on one of the tall windows that marched down the length of the room. As insouciant as all-get-out, he turned to face her, his hands in the pockets of his chinos, pulling the fabric tight against his hips.
Giving her a glinting look she couldn’t read, he drawled, ‘Tell me, why do you want a divorce?’
Her face crawling with colour, because that stance shouted animal magnetism and she wanted to be immune but wasn’t, she shot back, ‘Because I don’t want to be married to you! Haven’t I made that plain?’
‘I think not. I think you don’t entirely know what you do want.’
He had moved closer now. Golden eyes smouldered, transfixing her like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming car.
‘I think—’ And the thought had only just occurred to him, making him feel as if he’d received a hefty thump in the gut. Had she been in two minds when she’d left him? Half wanting to get her greedy hands on a handsome slice of alimony, the other half regretting the unlimited sex she’d so obviously enjoyed as his wife?
Even now she was giving off provocative vibes. Those emminently kissable lips were parted, her eyes a sultry gleam of sapphire beneath dense dark lashes, the dampened fabric of her T-shirt was clinging to her spectacular breasts—
Theos!
His hard, lean features rigid, Dimitri blanked off that train of thought. The little witch could turn him on without even trying! Pushing his thoughts into less troubled waters, he let his eyes meet hers with controlled intensity. ‘You were a virgin when we married. Having sex with me opened up a whole new unguessed-at world of sensation. Sensation you were always eager to indulge in.’
Maddie clasped her hands behind her back to stop herself from hitting him. ‘Are you trying to make some sort of point?’ she flung at him, loathing him for making her sound like a budding nymphomaniac, and caught her breath in outrage as he gave her another slice of his twisted mind.
‘In the process of trying to see inside your pretty head, I am merely stating facts and my suppositions arising from them, since you refuse to tell me why you ran out on our
marriage, leaving me trying to make sense of it. You married me. Why? For the life of luxury you knew I could give you? And then, after you experienced it, for the sex?’
Mortified beyond belief, Maddie couldn’t speak—couldn’t say a word in her own defence. Not only a gold-digger but a nymphomaniac, too!
And there was more. A grim cast to his mouth, he queried flatly, ‘Did you make your wedding vows already scheming to sue for divorce after a few months? To secure yourself a slice of alimony that would enable you to lead a life of luxury? And when the time came to carry it out did you realise that you would miss the only other thing you valued in our marriage? The sex.’
‘You are so sick!’ Maddie spat out in immediate and instinctive repudiation, struggling to understand why he was doing this. Shouldn’t he be doing what she had most feared? Sweet-talking her, coaxing her back into the marital bed and trying to convince her that their marriage was viable, instead of accusing her of the most horrible things?
Her throat convulsed, and to her shame she felt hot tears sting the back of her eyes. Was she so inexcusably weak where he was concerned that she actually—in the secret centre of her heart—wanted him to try to coax her, convince her?
Her mind in turmoil, Maddie simply stared at him as she grappled with a thought that was far too uncomfortable to be lived with. Of course it wasn’t true. Why on earth would she want him to—to coax her?
‘And you still want me,’ Dimitri countered. His brilliant golden gaze rested explicitly on her mouth, making her bones turn to water and her breasts stir in instinctive response so that she just knew the engorged peaks would be plainly visible beneath the thin, sweat-dampened fabric of her top—a sensation so well remembered and now so unwanted that she scrambled for what was left of her wits and threw back at him, ‘If I still wanted to share your bed, as well as enjoy a life of spoiled-rotten luxury, I wouldn’t have left you, would I? You’re talking rubbish!’
‘Am I?’ He moved closer, so close that to her extreme distress Maddie felt her own vastly annoying body strain against her will—strain to close that small distance and melt into the hard, dominating maleness of him. ‘Correct me if for once in my life I’m wrong,’ he asserted, with an arrogance she could have killed him for, ‘but I believe that if you weren’t in two minds, had truly wanted to end our marriage, you would have made sure you weren’t so easy to find. Headed for some place other than the glaringly obvious.’ A sardonic fly-away black brow rose. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
Floored by his truly incorrect deduction, Maddie quivered helplessly. She hadn’t looked on her flight from their marriage in that light; she simply hadn’t taken his Greek pride into account—the pride that would force him to track her down, demand answers.
All she’d wanted was the comfort of the familiar, the people who really loved her, somewhere sympathetic to lick her raw wounds. She’d been ridiculously easy to track down. He’d even arrived at her destination before her! Made sure she returned with him!
‘That being so,’ he continued, as if she’d humbly agreed with his assessment of the situation, ‘I believe that the larger part of you, deep down, prefers your assured lifestyle as my wife because it has the added bonus of great sex on tap, rather than the insecurity of not knowing how great or small a settlement your lawyer could squeeze out of mine, and the bother of finding some other stud to satisfy your sexual needs.’
