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Dusk had fallen and Jace was surprised that there were no lights on in the villa. It occurred to him that Eleanor might be working late in her office at the hotel. But when he strode down the hall and saw a thin gleam beneath the bedroom door his heart gave a jolt which mocked his belief that he was in control of his emotions.
‘Hey...’ His voice trailed off. The spurt of pleasure he felt when he saw Eleanor quickly turned to confusion as he watched her walk from the wardrobe over to the bed and dump a pile of clothes into a suitcase.
She froze at the sound of his voice and gave him a startled glance before she turned her back on him. At the end of their honeymoon in Africa he had been amused watching her pack with military preciseness, but now she threw shoes and clothes randomly into the case.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Jace asked her softly. He was aware of his heart beating painfully hard, and he felt the same sense of dread that he remembered feeling when he’d clambered down the cliff, following a trail of blood, and had seen his father’s body lying in a twisted heap on the ground below.
‘I’m leaving you.’ Eleanor did not look at him, but Jace noticed that her hands shook as she rolled a silk blouse into a ball and shoved it into the suitcase. With an effort he dampened down his temper, sensing that her emotions were balanced on a knife-edge.
‘Care to tell me why?’
‘Well, I wonder, Jace.’She whirled round to face him, all semblance of cool gone, her eyes darkening from hazel to the sullen green of a stormy sea. ‘Perhaps it has something to do with this.’
She snatched up a piece of paper from the bed and held it out to him. He took it from her, and his brows snapped together when he skimmed his eyes down the page. ‘How did you get this?’
‘It was tucked away amongst the paperwork you sent your lawyer to get me to sign. Don’t fake innocence,’ she hissed when he shook his head. ‘You are a lying, cheating bastard.’ Her voice shook. ‘Unluckily for you, Pappoús taught me never to trust anyone, even lawyers—especially lawyers.’
‘Funny that, when it was Kostas’s own corrupt lawyers who paved the way for him to cheat my father out of his rightful share of the Pangalos.’ Jace exhaled heavily, remorse tugging on his conscience when Eleanor paled. ‘I did not instruct Vangelis to ask you to sign this document.’
She gave him a disbelieving look. ‘It wasn’t Vangelis who came to see me. It was a younger man, Orestis... I’ve forgotten his other name.’
‘Barkas. He recently joined my legal team, but after a mistake like this he can start looking for another job.’
‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ she said wryly. ‘Whether or not the junior lawyer was meant to show me the document, the fact is that it exists, and you must have had it drawn up so that you could seize total ownership of the Pangalos.’
Eleanor shook her head. ‘I was such a fool to trust you for a second time. You keep telling me how terribly my grandfather behaved towards your father, but look in the mirror, Jace. You are no better than Kostas.’
His jaw clenched. But Jace could not refute Eleanor’s accusation. ‘I admit that immediately after you agreed to marry me in return for my promise to clear your brother’s debts, I asked my lawyer to set out terms of our divorce which would give me one hundred per cent of the Pangalos. But by the time of the wedding I had got to know you better, and I instructed Vangelis to write a different prenuptial agreement giving both of us fifty per cent. That was what you signed before we married, and this—’ he threw the document onto the bed ‘—should have been destroyed.’
Jace took a step towards her and cursed beneath his breath when she shrank away from him. ‘Pouláki mou, I am telling you the truth. I swear I did not attempt to cheat you out of your share of the Pangalos.’
She turned away from him and shoved more clothes into the suitcase. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t care,’ she said dully. ‘This morning I did a pregnancy test. I’d been feeling weird for a while, and my period was late. The test was positive.’
There was a buzzing sound in Jace’s ears. He heard Eleanor speak but the words that came out of her mouth did not make any sense. His shock rapidly turned to comprehension. No wonder she was behaving oddly, and her body was so tense that she looked as if she might snap. A million thoughts zoomed around in his head, but the question of how it had happened after she’d assured him that she was protected against pregnancy was not important.
‘I told you on our wedding day that if you became pregnant our marriage would no longer be a temporary arrangement,’ he said. ‘A child needs and deserves to grow up with both its parents if possible.’ Something fiercely possessive swept through Jace when he stared at his beautiful wife, and the mother of his child.
‘Are you saying you would want to stay married to me if I had your baby?’ Eleanor was clearly shocked. But the more Jace thought about it, the more he found himself liking the idea of making their relationship permanent.
‘Absolutely. Divorce is now out of the question.’
‘There isn’t a baby,’ she burst out. ‘After the lawyer’s visit I discovered that I was bleeding, and I’d miscarried.’
‘Theé mou!’The tightness in Jace’s chest felt as though his lungs were being crushed. ‘Did it happen because you were upset after reading the original prenuptial agreement?’
‘No, I don’t believe so.’ She released a shaky breath. ‘I’d had backache all morning and if I hadn’t done the pregnancy test I would just have assumed that my period had started late.’
Jace raked his fingers through his hair. His logical brain told him he should feel relieved that Eleanor was not pregnant, but he was thrown off-guard by her latest revelation. Why had he been so eager to seize the excuse of a baby to alter the terms of their marriage? Was it because hewantedto remain married to Eleanor?
Rocked by this astounding thought, he stared at her lovely face and felt his heart contract when he saw tears in her eyes. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, comfort her, but he instinctively knew she did not want that from him. The damning document that he’d forgotten about these past months had driven a chasm between them and he did not know how to bridge it.
‘How do you feel about...?’ He balked at sayingthe failed pregnancyorthe baby, when there was no baby, and settled for, ‘The situation?’
‘I didn’t believe I could be pregnant. The test result was a big shock,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘I hadn’t got my head around the idea of having a baby, but then I wasn’t.’
Jace watched her close the zip on the suitcase. She lifted the case off the bed, and he put his hand on her arm. ‘I realise that you are upset,’ he said carefully. ‘But don’t be too hasty to dismiss what we have,matia mou.’
She shook her head so that her dark blonde hair swirled around her shoulders in a fragrant cloud and Jace’s body clenched.
