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Those strong, lean features might have been carved out of granite, Maddie registered as she did as she’d been told—sat, because she felt weak and empty and keeping upright suddenly seemed beyond her.
‘So when did this—conversation—take place?’ He sank down beside her. Much too close. She was far too aware of his body heat, the signature scent of him, all male, and faintly, cleanly lemony. It was sheer torture.
What did that matter now? Numbly, she considered his question. He was obviously intent on prising every last detail from her, and she really didn’t want to talk about it any more. Why didn’t he just face the fact that he’d been found out? Admit it and start negotiations—involving money, of course—to try and persuade her to hand her child over willingly?
Drained, Maddie passed a hand over her forehead. The skin felt tight. He was waiting, watching her intently. ‘The meet-the-bride party you threw for your friends, remember?’ She answered at last with listless resignation. Even thinking about that encounter turned her stomach, and talking about it with the man who was the co-instigator of all her humiliation and misery was a thousand times worse.
‘Maddie—’ Lean fingers cupped her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. Shamefully, hers misted with tears. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He wasn’t denying it, she registered with helpless misery. Had she wanted him to? Wanted him to force her to believe him so that she could go on living in a fool’s paradise for just a little longer?
Appalled by her weakness, she twisted away from him, hauled herself together and admitted tersely, ‘I wish I had! I’d been out on the terrace, hiding from those of the guests who looked at me as if I were some kind of strange peasant who’d wandered into a royal gala occasion by mistake! I was on my way back in, all fired-up. I was going to ask you if it was true. But I bumped into Amanda and she told me to cool it. She said Irini was a spiteful, malicious bitch and jealous. We’d only just got married, and she said if I went in there and caused a scene it would embarrass you in front of your classy guests and make you think I didn’t trust you.’
Her fingers were pleating the white organza of her floaty skirt and, her head lowered, she muttered, ‘I took her advice. And then it was too late.’
‘Why?’ Feeling shell-shocked Dimitri knew that Maddie’s well-being, the reassurance he must give her, was the only thing stopping him marching out of there, dragging Irini back by the scruff of her neck and forcing her to get down on her knees and beg his darling’s forgiveness for such monstrous lies.
‘None of this rubbish is true,’ he hastened to tell her, desperately trying to smother the fear that it might, as she’d said, be too late, that the damage done was irreparable. Those telli
ng words too late echoed hollowly in his brain, and he took her restless hands in his.
‘Isn’t it?’ She answered his repudiation flatly, almost without interest, as if his denials were worthless, not worth listening to.
Her hands lay limply within his. She hadn’t the energy to drag them away, simply told him, ‘Your aunt lost no opportunity to remind me that I wasn’t fit to touch the ground you walked on. And between that and the way Irini took all your attention when she was around, and the way you’d insisted on a dead quiet wedding, as if you were ashamed of me, I lost all my self-confidence. It all seemed to add up—and that was really awful. So I couldn’t tell you what I knew, what Irini had said to me, because I wouldn’t be able to hide how very much you’d hurt me. I might not have your breeding, your social clout or your hefty bank balance. But I do have some pride!’
She gave a monumentally inelegant sniff, gathered herself and reminded him shakily, ‘That last morning I came down and you were speaking to Irini on the phone. You said you loved her. That you’d be with her in minutes. I knew the worst then. It wasn’t just a nasty niggle at the back of my mind. So I left. And how could I tell you why?’ she blurted, her eyes brimming. ‘Tell you how much I was hurting because I loved you to pieces and to you I was just a means to an end?’
By that admission she’d gone and betrayed herself, she recognised agonisingly. To make up for that too-telling slice of information, she blurted, ‘Then you forced me to come back to you with a lie! And went on about how many children we’d have. So, sucker-like, I swallowed it. I decided you’d put what you felt for Irini behind you and settled for me because I could give you the family you wanted, and perhaps you were even getting just a bit fond of me.’
‘Just a bit—’ Dimitri began, astounded, hurt by her hurt.
She snapped his words off with an anguished, ‘Shut up! I knew just what a fool I’d been because you went to her when I’d pleaded with you to stay with me. You point-blank refused. You went to her. And stayed with her. For two whole days. When I needed you!’
With a heartfelt groan Dimitri ground out, ‘I will never forgive myself for that, chrysi mou! I can only plead ignorance of the facts!’ Sweeping aside any objection she might make, he lifted her in his arms and strode through the vast house as if burdened with no more than a feather, bellowing for the housekeeper, issuing to that startled personage instructions for chilled fruit juice to be brought to their suite.
‘I have much to explain—my case to plead,’ he imparted briskly as he closed the door to the master bedroom with an Italian-crafted-leather-shod foot. ‘And you, my sweetest delight, are overwrought when you must be calm,’ he stated firmly, as he tenderly laid her stunned-into-compliance form on the bed, arranged pillows behind her head and removed her shoes.
Watching the assured movements of that perfectly honed body as he strode back to the door, flung it open and just stood there, waiting, clicking his fingers with an impatience which boded no good at all for any tardiness, Maddie decided she might as well stay just where she was. She was too emotionally wrung out to dredge up the strength to do anything else.
Taking the tray, dismissing the breathless housekeeper, Dimitri carried it to the bed-table, set it down, and poured chilled fruit juice into a tall glass.
His heart clenched with the pain of all that bitch had put Maddie through. The reason he’d misguidedly attributed to her desire to leave their marriage was contemptibly way off the mark.
She was lying where he’d left her, her soft mouth still mutinous. But her huge eyes were lost, haunted and hollow, the tissue-thin skin stretched tightly over her cheekbones, strain showing in her pallor.
He swallowed around the tightness in his throat. ‘Drink this.’ She was slow to react, but eventually she took the glass, took a mouthful, her teeth chattering against the glass, and handed it back. Sitting beside her, he fought the instinct to take her in his arms. Too soon. He needed all the patience at his command.
‘Let me explain about Irini. You overheard me say I loved her. I do. Or did. After what you’ve told me I think I despise her.’ Briefly, his long mouth compressed. ‘As a child, after the deaths of my parents, Irini was the only playmate I was allowed to have. I came to look on her as a sister. Loved her as a sister. Nothing more. As she grew into her teens she seemed to rely on me more and more. I became the recipient of all her troubles—which were, as I told her, either of her own making or in her imagination.’
His brows drew down. ‘With hindsight, I should have seen the growing problem. But I didn’t. Her neediness brought out a half-exasperated protectiveness in me. I looked on her as the little sister I’d never had, remember?’ He sighed, touched her hand just briefly with his. ‘And now I will break a promise for the first time in my life, because you, your happiness, are far more important.’
Expression flickered in the blue depths of her eyes for the first time since he’d carried her up here. The beginnings of belief in him? He hoped so.
He captured both her unresistant hands. ‘Irini has a drugs and drink problem. When I discovered this, I was appalled. I made her face up to the damage she was doing to herself, persuaded her to seek professional help. I booked her into a clinic here in Greece. In return she made me swear I would tell no one. Not her parents, and certainly not Aunt Alexandra, who has always doted on her and from whom she expects to inherit a large fortune,’ he added drily. ‘The phone call you overheard—well, that was a shock to me. She’d walked out of the clinic, was back in Athens and threatening to take an overdose. She was weeping, asking me if I loved her. I said I did—but as an exasperating and worrying little sister. I had no option but to try to reassure her, to go to her, persuade her to return to the clinic. I saw her into a taxi, then called into the office. I came home and you’d gone.’
‘She was here when you brought me back from England. All over you like a second skin,’ Maddie reminded him thinly.
Heartened by the first tangible sign that she’d been listening to a word he’d been saying, Dimitri agreed. ‘So she was. And no one could have been more annoyed than I! But because of the state I knew she was in I had to treat her with kid gloves. Apparently she’d instructed the driver to bring her straight back to Athens, had arrived here and obviously heard from Aunt that you’d left me. It was what she wanted—though I had not the slightest inkling of that then. I knew something had to be settled. With her adamant hysterical refusal to let her parents know what was happening, the responsibility fell on me—even though it was the last thing I wanted or needed at that time. All I wanted, needed, was to put our marriage back on track.’
