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‘He was raw with desire for you,’ he growled close to her earlobe.
‘Whereas she only wants you for the prestige of your money and your exalted name.’
His low laugh of appreciation brought his lips into contact with her skin, at which point she was about to turn, deciding that braving eye contact had to be easier to deal with than the assault Leandros was waging on other parts. But a noise beyond the window caught her attention. Leandros straightened when he heard it too, and both of them watched a van come trundling down the drive bearing the name of the Apollo Hotel on its side.
Her luggage was about to arrive. Her heart began to thud. It was decision time. Did she stay or did she go?
‘I stayed, agape mou,’ Leandros said gruffly. ‘Despite the suspicions I still have about you and the Adonis, I am still here and fighting for what I want. Don’t you think it is about time that you stood still and fought for what you want?’
Fight the mistress? She did turn and look at him. ‘Are you challenging me to go and throw her out of this house?’
A sleek black eyebrow arched in counter-challenge. ‘Will it make you feel better about her if you did?’
No, it wouldn’t, she thought bleakly, because throwing Diantha out of this house would not be to throw her far enough. ‘You hurt her once before by marrying me in her place. Are you really prepared to do that to her again, Leandros?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He frowned.
Isobel’s sigh of irritation was smothered by the sound of the van coming to a shuddering stop outside the window. ‘I do know about your old romance with her,’ she told him heavily. ‘If an ordinary high-street lawyer like Lester Miles can find out about your present relationship, then we are talking about a serious breach of Greek family ethics here, of which—’
‘Just a minute,’ he cut in, and the frown had darkened. ‘Back up a little, if you please. What old romance am I being accused of having with Diantha?’
He was going to make her spell it out. ‘The way your sister Chloe told it, you virtually jilted Diantha at the altar when you married me.’
‘Chloe?’
‘Yes, Chloe,’ she confirmed and could not stand still a moment longer looking into the clever face of confusion. Stepping round him, she put some distance between them. Outside a van door gave a rattling slam. ‘Within days of you producing me as your wife, Diantha’s family were shipping her off to Washington, DC and away from the humiliation you caused her.’
He was following her tense movements with increasingly glowering eyes. ‘And my sister Chloe told you this?’ he demanded. Her shrug confirmed it. ‘When—when did she relay these things to you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, it matters!’ he snapped. ‘Because it is not true! Nor is this—rumour, which seems to be everyone else’s property but mine, that I am about to divorce you to marry her! I do not know who began it, and I can positively tell you that Diantha has received no encouragement from me—at either time—to believe that I have a marriage between her and me in mind!’
‘Are you saying you have never considered marrying her?’ Her challenge was etched in disbelief. But when he released a hard sigh then turned his back to her, Isobel knew the truth.
‘Stop playing with people, Leandros,’ she snapped and walked towards the door.
‘I am likely to do a lot more than play, Isobel, if you try to walk through that door before we have finished this line of discussion.’
A threat. She stopped. Somewhere beyond these four sizzling walls a doorbell gave a couple of rings. She turned to face him. He was furious, she saw. Well, so was she! ‘It was one thing playing the interloper here four years ago but to hell with you if you think I am going to go through all of that again!’
Her eyes were bright, her mouth trembling. If he dared to, he would go over there and…
And what? Leandros asked himself angrily. Force her to believe that which he could not deny outright? ‘I had no such relationship with any other woman before I met you,’ he announced thinly. ‘Diantha did not leave Athens nursing a heart broken by me,’ though he could tell who had broken her heart. ‘Before Diantha arrived on my yacht in Spain as a hurried substitute for Chloe, who was needed here by my mother, I had not set eyes upon her in four years. During the two weeks Diantha stayed with me, we neither kissed nor slept together and very rarely touched. But I did find her easy company to be with,’ he admitted. ‘And on an act of pure arrogance I made a decision that maybe—just maybe—she would eventually make a wife for me. The one I had did not, by that time, have much use for me, after all!’
‘So it’s my fault that you gave everyone the impression that you were divorcing me to marry her. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I am saying that I was arrogant, but only within my own head!’
‘But she uses this house as if she belongs here because she is arrogant.’ If Isobel fizzed any more she was going to pop like a champagne cork, Leandros noted frustratedly.
‘She is a friend—that is all,’ he gritted. ‘A good friend, who has been helping me out by liaising between myself and my mother, who is a neurotic mess because of Nikos’s big wedding next week!’
‘Liaising,’ she scoffed. ‘That’s a good one, Leandros. Now I’m hearing repea
ted lies!’
Oh, to hell with it, he thought, and began striding towards her. Someone rattled the handle on the door. It flew inwards, forcing Isobel to leap out of its way and bringing him to a stop almost within reach of his aggravating target.
