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Sidonie took the cup and moved away, taking a sip to hide her burning face.
* * *
Alexio gritted his jaw at how Sidonie moved so skittishly away from him, that golden hair looking so much shinier and thicker now, down and shielding her face from him. In the space of only a few days of rest and being well fed she was already looking so much better. The hollows of her cheeks were filling out.
He felt as if he was going to snap soon with the tension building inside him. With every second that passed he wanted to turn into a feral animal and strip Sidonie bare and take her, sating himself and drowning out the recriminatory voices in his head.
But he couldn’t. She was pregnant. And she hated his guts.
She looked incredibly young now, in leggings and a loose T-shirt. Of course she’d refused his offers to get her some clothes, so her Tante Josephine had brought her some.
When he could finally move his gaze up from those slim shapely legs and over her belly, hidden under the loose material, to her face, she was looking at him with that aquamarine gaze, something determined in their depths.
‘Why did you have me investigated?’
Alexio put down his coffee cup onto a nearby table. Sidonie had her hands wrapped tightly around her own mug.
He looked into her eyes. He owed her this.
‘Because what happened between us made me nervous. Because I’d never taken a woman to Santorini before. Because for my whole life I’ve been cynical and when I was with you I forgot to be. And it freaked me out enough to think that by investigating you I’d still be in control.’
CHAPTER NINE
SIDONIE BLINKED. SHE tried to take his words in. Her belly felt as if it was dropping from a height, and she felt unsteady. ‘I’m...you hadn’t taken a woman there before?’
He shook his head, eyes intent on her reaction.
She couldn’t even hide it. She thought of something. ‘But...the clothes...I assumed they had belonged to other women...’ Sidonie felt very gauche now.
Alexio frowned and then emitted a disgusted, ‘Theos. You think I would do that? Buy a wardrobe full of clothes and just hope that they would fit a stream of women?’
Sidonie glared back at him, stung with embarrassment. ‘Well, how would I know? I thought that was some lovers’ bolthole.’
Alexio ran a hand through his hair and said, half to himself, ‘No wonder you sounded funny...and yet you didn’t say anything.’
Now Sidonie was squirming. ‘I didn’t want to look stupid...or naïve. If you’d had lovers who were used to that kind of thing...’
The clothes had been bought for her alone. The knowledge made her reel. They hadn’t been cast-offs. Sidonie felt increasingly as if she wanted to claim fatigue and run away. But Alexio had a familiar stern look on his face now.
Sidonie went and sat down on a nearby couch, placing her cup on a table. She clasped her hands on her lap to stop them trembling.
Alexio walked away and stood at the window with his back to her for a long moment, as if he too had to gather himself. When he turned around he looked bleak.
‘My solicitor had rung me with what he’d learned about your past that day... I told him it had nothing to do with you. But then he told me about the fact that you’d taken on your aunt’s debts, and that put a question in my head as to why you hadn’t mentioned this—why you were acting as if you didn’t have this huge thing hanging over you.’
Sidonie replied, with a trace of bitterness, ‘Because I was escaping from it. I never had any intention of telling you about it. What did it have to do with anything? I knew we were only going to be together for a few days...it was only meant to be one night.’
That last came out almost accusingly as Sidonie recalled how persuasive he’d been and how easily she’d capitulated.
‘I knew my aunt was okay—she was on holiday with a group she travels with every year...’
Alexio’s voice was hard. ‘My solicitor put the seed of suspicion in my head. I refused to believe the worst, though. I told him that. I was angry with myself for even asking him to investigate you.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I went looking for you. I was going to confess what I’d done and ask you about it...and that’s when I overheard part of your conversation.’
Sidonie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her for a moment at hearing this. When she could speak she admitted, ‘I can appreciate how damning that conversation must have been to hear, but my aunt was in hysterics. Someone had fed her with horror stories of being repossessed and worse. I knew she wouldn’t feel placated with any reassurances that I’d be there to take her burden. You’ve met
her—you can see for yourself what she’s like. I knew she’d only understand something emphatic like someone else saving us. She wouldn’t have believed that I could get jobs and pay off the debts over time unless I was physically there to reassure her.’
Sidonie cringed when she thought of how she’d told her aunt He’s crazy about me and looked down.
