AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She struggled to understand. ‘But presumably as the mother I would have had custody.’
Apollo shook his head. ‘In the pre-nuptial agreement you signed away your right to full custody. You agreed to an arrangement where I would have full custody and I would set you up somewhere close enough for you to see the child on a regular basis.’
Sasha stood up. She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I would have signed away full rights to my own baby.’
Apollo’s lip curled. ‘Don’t forget there was no baby. I should have guessed something was amiss when you agreed so quickly to that, and when you were more interested in the alimony you would receive in the event of a divorce.’
Sasha remembered what he’d told her last night about how she’d tried to seduce him. To try and get pregnant. She felt sick. And even sicker when she thought of how he’d found her in such a debauched state. Taking drugs.
She forced herself to look at him. ‘That’s when you initiated the divorce, after the party, when you knew I wasn’t pregnant.’
He no
dded.
‘Why didn’t you just throw me out, once you knew?’ She would have thrown her out. She felt angry at herself.
‘I considered it. I wanted to. I never wanted to see you again. You disgusted me.’
Sasha felt every word like a little sharp knife to her heart. ‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because we are married. I couldn’t trust you. I didn’t know what you would do. You could have gone to the papers with some sob story and I have a reputation to maintain. The last thing I needed was adverse press attention.’
‘And then I had the accident.’
He nodded. ‘A few days later, you took one of the cars and disappeared for hours. When you hadn’t returned by dinner-time, Rhea called me and a search was started. You eventually appeared by the side of a road not far from here, further up into the hills.’
Sasha felt cold. ‘This marriage never had a chance.’
Apollo faltered for a moment when he thought of that first night he’d met Sasha. How easily she’d caught him with her fresh-faced beauty. How novel it had been to meet someone unjaded. Open. Joyful. But it hadn’t been real. He forced the memory out. ‘No.’
Sasha looked bewildered. ‘Why did you agree to marry me at all? Why did you believe me?’
Feeling almost defensive now, he said, ‘You had a note from a doctor confirming the pregnancy. And I consulted my legal team. We came to the conclusion that once you agreed to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, marrying you would offer me the best chance of custody and securing my child’s future. There was a clause to say that if anything happened to the pregnancy or if the baby proved not to be mine after a DNA test, you would get nothing. Obviously you’d decided that the risk of marriage was worth it, even though you weren’t pregnant. Hence your attempts to try and seduce me once we were married. Attempts that didn’t work.’
Sasha winced at that. ‘Why did you bring me back here after the accident? Why not just kick me out of your life for good now that you can?’
Why not indeed? mocked a little voice in Apollo’s head. He could have done exactly that. He could have taken advantage of her amnesia to get her to sign the divorce papers and set her up in an apartment in Athens with a small allowance and a nurse to attend to her needs until the divorce was through.
But no matter how much he’d hated her for what she’d done, the way she’d looked after the accident—so pale and defenceless on that hospital bed—it had caught at him. And then she’d woken up and looked at him and it had been as if the previous months had fallen away and all he could remember was that night they’d met.
Her memory loss had only complicated things further. Changing her. Reminding him of that first impression she’d made. Re-igniting his desire.
He said now, ‘I’m not letting you go anywhere until we sign the divorce papers. I don’t trust that you won’t do something to exploit the power you have as my wife.’
He went on, ‘I don’t know why you took the car on the day you disappeared or where you went to...and until you regain your memory and you can tell me, you won’t be going anywhere. For all I know, you took your wedding rings off because you have a lover, perhaps someone you were hoping to turn to because I hadn’t fallen under your spell.’
A memory of that kiss last night blasted into Apollo’s head, mocking him. He was under her spell again whether he liked it or not.
Sasha held up the sheaf of papers. She was pale. They were trembling lightly in her hand and that evidence of her emotions caught at him, making him feel an urge to protect her. He rejected it.
She said, ‘So why don’t we just sign the papers now and be done with it?’
To his disgust, his immediate emotion wasn’t one of relief that she was showing a willingness to put all this behind them and get out of his life. It was something much more ambiguous and disturbing. Reluctance to let her go.
He said, ‘It’s the weekend, my offices won’t be open. And next Monday is a national holiday. In any case I’ve made plans to go and inspect the site on Krisakis. We will stick to this arrangement and sign the papers when we return to Athens in a week. We’ll be out of each other’s lives within a month. And perhaps Krisakis will help jog your memory.’
Sasha felt winded. ‘Once we sign the papers, it can happen that quickly?’ The thought of never seeing Apollo again made her feel panicky. She told herself it was because he was the only familiar thing in her life, not because he’d come to mean anything to her. Clearly there had been little love lost between them.
