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Maddie’s fingers clutched at the edges of the sheet. She met the golden glitter of his eyes with icy determination. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said flatly. ‘Since there’s no need to pussyfoot around now, I can tell you the truth. Your aunt’s hated and despised me since she first met me. But I won’t be around for her to be less than kind to, will I? Our marriage is over—remember?’
Not while he had breath in his body! Dimitri bit back that slice of information. For the next two or three weeks Maddie had to be soothed, not rendered over-emotional through arguments and recriminations.
Schooling his hard features into a mask that verged on indifference, he reminded her, ‘Nevertheless, I insist you return with me—home—where you can be guaranteed peace and quiet for the baby’s sake. Just until you regain your strength and we know there will be no further problems.’
And while that was happening, while he saw she was wrapped in cotton wool, was pampered, treated as if she were made of the most delicate spun glass, he would get to the bottom of the unholy mess they seemed to have created between them.
‘I have spoken to your doctor and he is sure everything will be fine now—provided you take things easily for the next few weeks. That I can guarantee. You are to be discharged this evening into my care. I will collect you at six,’ he added, with measured cool.
He turned then, congratulating himself that he had handled that without even a hint of an emotion that might have set her off into a frenzy of telling him that she would go nowhere with him because their marriage was dead as a dodo.
But there was little joy in that achievement, and not even the sternest self-lecture could stop him turning back at the door, his voice riven with painful regret as he announced, ‘Had I had the slightest idea that a miscarriage threatened I would have told Irini in no uncertain terms to sort her own problems out. I would not have left your side for one moment!’
She had done the right thing for her unborn child, Maddie assured herself for the umpteenth time. Not for her own sake, because seeing him, being around him, nearly tore her in two.
But haring back to England the moment she was discharged from hospital would have been an irresponsible thing to do the way things were. Hadn’t she been told by the best gynaecologist money could buy that she needed regular check-ups, but most of all, rest and tranquillity?
She was getting rest in spades. But tranquillity?
For the last two weeks she’d been doing her best to achieve that enviable state.
Dimitri, too, seemed to be doing his best in that regard, she acknowledged, with a dismaying lack of satisfaction.
On her return from hospital he had flatly relayed the news that his aunt was now living with Irini’s parents while she looked for a suitable apartment in town and engaged a companion. Other than that there had been nothing personal, nothing that touched on their past or their future.
She saw very little of him. He appeared briefly each morning while she breakfasted, to politely ask how she was feeling. Then again at the evening meal, which they shared, imparting snippets of general information—innocuous stuff, mostly, about his friends and business colleagues, which went in one ear and out of the other because, inevitably, she itched to discuss the future, to get her life sorted, fix the date of her departure for England.
But he had made sure that didn’t happen, and she knew why. He was anxious for their baby. And all that talk of making their marriage work, the future children they might have together, had to have been a con trick to make her feel secure enough to stay with him until the birth, when he would have put his cruel plan into action.
The coming child and Irini came first with him, and always would. She was simply a disposable and distant second. He had said he wouldn’t have dropped everything to be with that wretched woman, had he had the benefit of hindsight, but she wasn’t about to believe that. When Irini called he would go, no matter what! Otherwise he would do anything, say anything, to make sure Maddie didn’t get in a state of agitation and thereby, in his mind, threaten the wellbeing of their baby.
As if she could help it!
Because although she saw so little of him, was stuck in an uncomfortable limbo, his hand was everywhere—and it churned her up!
There in the parcel of English novels by her favourite authors which had appeared as if by magic, in the gorgeous bouquets of flowers that graced the suite they had once shared, the bowls of fresh fruit and posies of blossoms that found their way to wherever in the house or gardens she opted to settle.
This morning, restless, she had walked the perimeter of the huge grounds. The weather was pleasantly cooler now, and the emphatic expert opinion, after her latest check-up the day before, was that everything was going along just fine, absolutely as it should. She was to get on with her life as normal. That made her unaccountably edgy. Almost as i
f she didn’t want to leave him. When she knew darn well she did!
What had been totally unexpected had been Dimitri’s reaction to the welcome news. He had stared at the doctor as if hearing something deeply unpalatable, his features assuming a chilling distance, and he had barely exchanged a word with her on the drive home, engrossed in private thoughts. And last night he hadn’t dined with her as usual. The housekeeper had imparted the information that he had been unavoidably detained and that she wasn’t to wait for him.
So what? She shrugged slim shoulders in an effort to put him right out of her mind as she came full circle, back to the terrace. She had the all-clear. There was now nothing to stop her leaving, making flight arrangements to take her back to England and away from him, making a new life for herself and her baby, leaving him to his obsessive passion for the stick insect!
Opting to rest on one of the loungers instead of going inside the house, she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.
Eleni with her tray! No doubt the staff had instructions to keep an eye on her. One of the gardeners would have relayed the information that she was back at base! Dimitri’s orders, naturally. He wouldn’t want her doing a disappearing act with her precious cargo.
Hearing footfalls, Maddie let her mouth curve in a smile. She had grown fond of the young Greek girl, and they had tentatively begun teaching each other their own languages. It could be hilarious, and provided a more than welcome respite from her tangled emotions where Dimitri was concerned.
Turning her head in the young girl’s direction, Maddie opened her eyes—and her heart bumped to a standstill, then thundered on.
Him!
She never laid eyes on him between breakfast and the evening meal. And not always then. And now, as ever, his stupendous sexiness set off a totally unwanted leap of sensation deep in her pelvis, almost pulverising her with longing.
Hoisting herself up on her elbows, all thoughts of relaxation flying, she watched as he put a tray on a small glass-topped table within easy reach.
