AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sophie.” She stared at the kitchen bench as though it were suddenly the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.
“Sophie,” his word was a haunting reminder of how things had once been for them.
She swallowed but her throat was lined with razors. Nothing brought relief from the pain.
And what could he say, anyway? She bit down on her lower lip and shook her head slowly. “I just came down to get something to eat,” her words were a husk. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I can’t talk to you yet. I don’t know what to say.”
He was right behind her. She felt him before he spoke. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and that now-familiar frisson of need began to bubble in her gut.
She couldn’t tell if she turned to face him with reluctance or anticipation, only that she did spin in his arms. His face, at least, reflected some of her trepidation. He scanned her features with slow, deliberate curiosity and then wrapped his hands around her wrists. He lifted them and subjected them to the same steady study.
“Did I hurt you?”
Yes, she wanted to shout. Her heart had been smashed into a billion tiny pieces. But she knew that wasn’t what he meant. She dropped her eyes and shook her head. The truth was, she’d never been more intensely satisfied than that night, and that terrified her.
“Sophie,” it was a plea, torn from his body.
She lifted her eyes to his face again, uncertainty making her slow to speak.
“Are you looking for me to say that it doesn’t matter? Or to somehow absolve you for what happened last night?”
He closed his eyes briefly. “No.”
“Good.” She pulled her wrists away and turned her back to him. She was starving, but the idea of staying in the kitchen was anathema to her. She pulled a banana from the fruit bowl and side-stepped away from him. “I don’t know what happened, and I have nothing I can say to you right now.”
He watched her move towards the door, and the words he’d been thinking all night were locked in his mind. I was angry because you are cheating on me. Because you and Eric are involved and Helena and I deserve better. But he couldn’t say them. Pride and resentment held him quiet.
And so, when she was almost out of the kitchen he said instead, “I am leaving again today.”
Only the fact that she stopped walking showed that Sophie had heard him. She nodded without turning back. “Okay.” He suspected tears had softened the word. He swore softly under his breath and dragged a hand through his hair. She was taking the piece of fruit and walking out of the villa, toward the terrace that overlooked the sea. Too late he thought of the flowers he’d discarded in the middle of the night.
They were there, and of course she saw them. The flowers lay in scattered disarray by the door. From the shade of the decked area, her eyes kept drifting to them. They were a perfect symbol of the strangely broken state they found themselves in. A graphic representation of her dashed hopes and ridiculous-seeming enthusiasm.
But was it so ridiculous? Married for a week, and separated for nights, she had missed him with an entirely appropriate intensity. They had parted with warmth; they had married out of love. So what had happened?
The more Sophie thought about it, the more she realised that she was missing something incredibly important. People didn’t just switch their emotions like that. It wasn’t possible.
She thought back to all the beautiful memories she had of their early acquaintance and a smile touched her lips. He did love her. Their marriage was founded on the kind of heart-scoring intensity that made it brightly real and overpowering.
The hateful flowers were mocking her. She moved further from the house, down the steep side garden that led to the ocean. A large rock was beneath a tree; she sat on it so that she could brood in comfort.
For Alex to have reverberated with such cold anger the night before must surely have meant that something had happened.
But what?
For the life of her, Sophie couldn’t imagine … until she could. Realisation dawned with the most sublimely perfect clarity that she startled.
He knew about Helena.
She dropped her head forward and gasped.
He knew about Helena, and what was more, she’d bet her last penny that he knew she and Eric had kept it from him.
Sophie stood abruptly and walked quickly back towards the house.
“Alex?” She almost ran down the hallway, and with each step she took, she became more and more convinced that she was right.
“Alex?” She stood very still and waited to hear noise. But the house was silent. Only Alena, out washing the walls near the pool, was moving in the midst of apparent calm. Sophie moved to her on autopilot. “Excuse me, Alena, have you seen Mr Petrides.”
