AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She despised herself for her body’s unmanageable response to him. She knew what he was. Cruel enough to make her love him and then toss that love back in her face as if it were something of no value whatsoever. So why did she crave him like a forbidden drug? She would never have described herself as weak, lacking will power, but she obviously was, and the knowledge flayed her.
As if sensing her distress, he stepped away from her, his strong jaw set, golden eyes uncompromisingly grim as he told her, ‘Rest now. I shall be working in the study at the far end of the old wing should you need me. And, Maddie—’ His voice faltered momentarily, then incised on. ‘Please accept my apologies for my earlier despicable behaviour. Such a thing will never happen again,
I promise on my life. I quite understand why you felt the need to run from the house. From me.’
Turning with his inherent grace, he left the room. Stunned, Maddie plopped down on the bed and just sat there. Shaking.
The arrogant, domineering Greek male had actually apologised! The moon must have turned blue and she hadn’t noticed!
Unused to putting a foot wrong in his world-spanning business dealings, or in his relationships with friends and colleagues, he had actually admitted being in the wrong. Why? Unaccustomed humility? Or an integral part of his cynical kiss-and-make-up scenario?
But there wouldn’t be any kissing, would there?
She was safely pregnant. There was no longer any need for him to grit his teeth, take her to bed and think of Irini!
Curling up on the tumbled sheets, she buried her face in a pillow and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep, wondering why that obvious conclusion didn’t bring her the deep relief it should.
It was cooler when she woke. The searing midday heat had been replaced by a soft, balmy warmth that drifted through the open windows, fluttering the delicate muslin drapes. Her eyes felt gritty, her mouth parched, her brain fuzzy. She would have to freshen up, she decided vaguely. Get out of the dress she’d fallen asleep in, move herself. Then the hateful reality of her situation hit her like a sledgehammer and enfolded her.
Staunchly telling herself that she was going to have to get used to it or lose her sanity, she firmed her soft mouth and swung her feet to the floor, her eyes lighting on the jug of orange juice and the single tall crystal glass on the bedside table.
Dimitri? Had to be. Schooling the sudden and unwelcome mush out of her heart and replacing it with cold reality was easy. He hadn’t provided the freshly squeezed juice because he cared about her. He cared about the welfare of the coming baby. He would cosset her, wrap her in cotton wool until her child was born. Then get rid of her.
She would take his plans and reduce them to ashes. Even if it did mean having to grit her teeth and play him at his own devious game for a few more weeks.
She hated him! Nevertheless, she poured and drank gratefully, noting that the ice cubes hadn’t begun to melt. So he must have come to the room in the past few minutes. Was that what had woken her? Was she that aware of him, attuned to him, even in sleep?
It was a shattering thought. She didn’t want it to be like that. She had to learn to be indifferent to him. Had to.
Starting with doing her own thing.
Hoping he’d gone back to his study and intended to stay there, she stripped off the now crumpled and wilted sundress she’d put on for the doctor’s arrival and got into a sleek white one-piece swimsuit, bemoaning the fact that, sleek as it might be, it did nothing to disguise the curve of her breasts and well-rounded hips.
Not for the first time she wondered how he could have brought himself to make love to her, preferring, as he obviously did, the ultra-sophisticated stick-insect type such as his beloved Irini.
Dimitri had mentioned a swimming pool, so she was going to find it and enjoy the cool waters and continue the long haul of not only acting but actually being indifferent to him. To knock firmly on the head the sneaky wish that her husband truly loved her, only her, and that their time here in romantic seclusion really was a belated honeymoon.
In a hollow beyond a sweeping stone terrace lay the immense oval pool, surrounded by slender cypress trees, blue water lazy, limpid, inviting.
The gentle breeze caressed her exposed skin, carrying the scents of sea, dried grasses and aromatic herbs. Dropping the fluffy jade-green towel she’d brought with her onto the cool marble surround, Maddie took a deep breath and dived in at the deep end, determined to forget her situation and the shameful fact that she’d been too stupid to smell a rat when the super-eligible Dimitri Kouvaris, charismatic and absolutely gorgeous, and a millionaire many times over, had proposed marriage to an insignificant grubber-around-in-the-soil-nobody like her, after such a remarkably short acquaintance.
She would relax, do a few gentle lengths, empty her mind to everything but the perfection of the early evening, the soft caress of the water, and find tranquility—because bad thoughts and a brain
that was in knots couldn’t be good for the baby inside her.
And she was doing just fine in that respect when a splash at the opposite end of the pool, the deep end, had her feet finding the bottom in a flurry, her eyes widening, sparking blue fire, as Dimitri scythed through the water towards her in a powerful crawl.
Did he have to spoil everything? Even her relaxing half hour in the swimming pool—not to mention her whole life!
With water lapping her waist she was too stricken to move until he got close. Then, galvanised, she hauled herself out of the pool in a shower of water droplets and headed like a bullet to where she’d left the towel.
But he was there before her, blocking her way. Thankfully, she was able to keep her instinctive groan internal as his honeyed drawl sent shivers right down to her toes. She wanted to drag her eyes from him but couldn’t as he said, ‘Slow down! Honeymoons on secluded Greek islands are meant to be slow and lazy. Relaxed. I will help you to learn that much.’
Her toes curled in reaction to his nearness, to the bronzed body glistening with moisture, tempting her to touch and go on touching, to slide her hands over the muscular strength of his chest, the skin like oiled silk and just as sensuous. Her fingers would glide lower, over the washboard-flat stomach, to the top of the black briefs that did nothing at all to modestly disguise his manhood—
Smartly clasping her hands behind her back to stop them straying of their own volition, she countered on a rasp of breath, and with no pretence of the rapprochement he’d earlier suggested, ‘I was perfectly relaxed until you showed up!’
She bent to retrieve the towel and cover herself up, because he was no one’s fool and would have no trouble working out why her wretched breasts were pushing at the clinging fabric of her swimsuit as if hedonistically eager for the touch of his hands, his mouth.
