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She pushed her mussed hair back from her face and sat up, trying not to focus on the powerful thrust of his thighs, which were distractingly close. ‘What time is it?’
‘Seven o’clock. You’ve been asleep for a while.’ He studied her rumpled appearance. ‘Do you want to get changed for dinner?’
Of course she did, even though the fact that he had been the one to suggest it made her want to rebel. He’d grown up in the kind of world where even families changed for dinner and ate formally. The first time she’d met his mother she’d mistakenly thought that, because they were all on a relaxed Greek island, it might be okay for her to wear a denim skirt and a T-shirt to dinner. Big mistake. Her mother-in-law had been decked in silk and pearls, her disapproval freezing the warm Greek air as she had studied the laid-back appearance of her new daughter-in-law.
Lexi glared at him, realising that she was going to be subjected to that level of disapproval all over again. His mother had been frosty enough towards her when they’d been newly-weds. What was her attitude likely to be towards a wife who had left her precious son? ‘I’d like to know what the plan is,’ she said. ‘When are we going to Rhodes?’
‘Eager to get there, are you, Lex?’ His blue eyes mocked her.
‘Not really. But the sooner it’s done, then the sooner I can erase this whole ghastly incident from my mind.’ She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wondering if her words carried the lack of conviction she felt inside. Walking over to the dressing table, she picked up a hairbrush. ‘I can’t believe I’m back in this damned house,’ she muttered as she stared at her pinched reflection in the mirror.
‘Can’t you?’ Xenon watched as she began to pull a brush through the tumble of her hair and suddenly he realised he had missed this indefinable intimacy of married life. Watching his wife get dressed—an experience almost as erotic as seeing the whole process later completed in reverse.
He’d missed the shared look which could convey the meaning of an entire sentence in a single glance. He had missed that easy shorthand more than he’d ever imagined. Perhaps that was why his next words came out in a rush, for he had not planned to say them. ‘I thought you might consider giving our marriage another go. Didn’t you ever think you might do that, Lex?’
Lexi’s hand stilled, mid-stroke. It was an unusually candid question and one she was tempted to brush off with a glib response. But something in the brilliance of his reflected blue gaze melted away her intention. She realised that she mustn’t allow pride to skew her judgement. Just because their marriage hadn’t worked out, didn’t mean that she had to devalue it completely, did it? Because once she had loved him. She had loved him so much that she’d walked around with the biggest, stupidest smile on her face. She had felt dizzy with it, as if she’d been struck down by a mystery malady for which there was no known cure.
But it was hard to see things in a balanced way once you started looking at them from a distance. She’d got out of the habit of remembering the good times and that had been intentional. You could never move on if you allowed yourself to wallow in something which you were never going to have again.
‘No, I didn’t think about that,’ she said. ‘Even though I did find life hard without you. For quite a long time, actually. You’re a big enough personality for the world to feel quite empty without you—and it did. But our marriage wasn’t working, Xenon. You know it wasn’t.’
He stared at her and his next words seemed to come from some dark and unknown place deep inside him. ‘Because of the baby.’ There. He’d said it. He’d confronted something which had been too unbearable to confront at the time. Two long years had passed since it had happened and he had thought that time would have blunted the impact—but he was unprepared for the wave of pain which hit him with the force of a tsunami.
Lexi saw him flinch and she felt distress clawing away inside her as the hairbrush slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered onto the dressing table. That old and familiar feeling of powerlessness swept over her and became all tangled up with her grief. She still felt guilty for the pain she had caused him by her inability to carry a child to term.
Thanks to her chronic insecurity and Xenon’s demanding work schedule, communication between them had broken down. The first miscarriage had left an emptiness deep inside her and the second seemed to have brought everything to a head. She would never forget the bleakness etched on his face when he’d finally arrived at the hospital, once it was all over. The way he’d found it difficult to look her in the eye as he’d sat stiff and unmoving beside her bed.
