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‘Does she know? Sofia, I mean,’ she persisted, paying absolutely no attention to her surroundings. ‘Who around here is aware that I’m your wife, Theo?’
He turned around to meet a stubborn expression he didn’t recognise, forcing him to acknowledge she had changed. They had both changed, he realised. ‘Very few people know.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A failed marriage isn’t something I tend to boast about. I prefer to focus on my successes, not my failures.’
‘What about my grandfather’s staff?’
‘There is nobody left there who knows you.’
‘Nobody at all?’ she questioned, with a frown. ‘Not even Elena, or Christos?’
‘They have all gone,’ he said coolly. ‘His life is very different now, Mia. When he first became ill, he withdrew from everything he knew. In many ways he adopted the life of a hermit. Against my advice, he dismissed all his permanent employees and now a skeleton of temporary staff keep him and the place ticking over—just about.’ His gaze became narrowed. ‘My own staff have been acquired within the last five years, and, to all intents and purposes, regard me as a single man.’
There was a pause. ‘And do you behave like a single man, Theo?’ she said quietly.
It was a question he hadn’t been expecting and Theo felt himself tense. A pulse began to beat at his temple, and somewhere else, too. He was hard now, just as he’d been hard when he’d seen her in London. He shifted his weight. ‘Are you asking me whether I’ve had sex with other women since we’ve been apart, Mia?’ he queried huskily. ‘Because, to echo your own words, that’s really none of your business.’
‘Of course I’m not,’ she answered hastily. ‘I just wanted to know...’
As her words tailed off Theo thought of all the questions she could have asked him. Things like: had he ever really loved her, or had he just done it for the money? Or, even more crucially, had he ever regretted never having consummated their relationship? Which, of course, he had, more times than he cared to remember. Questions she’d never asked at the time but which he had little appetite to answer now, because surely they were as inconsequential as the leaves which fell from the autumn trees before drying to dust on the ground.
As was she.
But suddenly she didn’t seem so inconsequential. Not when she was here, in his house, and his long-repressed fantasy of having her alone in a bedroom was actually being realised. The breath had caught in his throat and suddenly he was having to steel himself against the powerful impact she was having on his senses.
His throat dried as his hungry gaze drank her in. Those big blue eyes and the coppery tangle of her curls. And her body. How could he have forgotten that voluptuous body, which he had denied himself for reasons which now seemed like insanity?
He could see the sudden tremble of her lips and read the desire which was darkening her eyes. A desire as heavy as the atmosphere just before the storm which had broken when he’d left her room in London, leaving his shirt and jacket saturated with rain and clinging to his chest.
He could hear the thunder of his heart and he was so caught up with the idea of having sex with her that his words became a taunt, intended more as a provocation than because he was particularly interested in hearing the answer.
‘What do you want to know, Mia?’ he demanded softly. ‘Ask me anything you want and I’ll tell you.’
She tilted her chin, but not—as he had hoped—as a silent invitation to kiss her. No, her mouth had tightened, not softened, and her bald words shattered the sensual bubble which had surrounded him.
‘Why have you never asked me for a divorce?’
His lips hardened into a cynical smile. Why did she think? That he was a sentimentalist, who believed in the sanctity of marriage above all else? Or that he was holding out hope that she might return to him, so that they could start a family of their own?
‘Interesting you should say that,’ he mused, dampening down the tumult of his thoughts and replacing them with the cool logic which had given him such a formidable reputation in the boardroom. ‘When I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. Because you are the one who has everything to gain from a legal termination of our marriage, Mia.’ He paused. ‘So why haveyounever asked for a divorce?’
CHAPTER THREE
MIAGAVEAclick of irritation as Theo’s lips twisted into a hard smile, because healwaysdid this. She had asked him a question and he had turned it back on her. He used language not as a form of communication but as a barrier—and a weapon. And he did it in five different languages! He was too clever for his own good, she thought resentfully.
Yet hadn’t that always been one of the things she had so admired about him—the way he’d embraced learning so eagerly, even though he had started so much later than anyone else? He had behaved as if education was a privilege and an honour, not a right or a burden. He had seemed to know everything, while she had known nothing—or so it had seemed at the time.
Meeting the dark gleam of his eyes, she attempted to answer his question without giving too much away. Because somehow that was important. As if revealing how badly he had hurt her would make her feel vulnerable, all over again.
‘There was no reason for me to seek a divorce,’ she explained.
‘Really?’ He raised his brows. ‘Even though your life is far more humble than your beginnings must have prepared you for? The man you married is now a billionaire, Mia—’
‘Would you like a quick round of applause?’
‘Which means any judge would award you the kind of settlement which would keep you more than comfortable for the rest of your life,’ he continued, unperturbed, though he gave a flicker of a smile as his gaze travelled over her flushed face. ‘You wouldn’t have to work in a hotel and live in a room not much bigger than a cloakroom.’
‘You think that money is the answer to everything?’ she demanded. ‘Is that the god you worship?’ She turned away to look out of the window—not because she wanted to appreciate the sapphire slash of the sea, or the creamy froth of the distant citrus orchard, but because she didn’t want him to see the prick of tears in her eyes. How annoying that he could cut right through her defences, almost without trying. Quickly, she blinked them away, waiting until she had composed herself, before turning to face him again. ‘I suppose you must do, since you were prepared to marry me in order to get your hands on the stuff!’
But he didn’t rise to the insult.
