OUT in the street Isobel hailed a passing taxi, gave the driver the name of her hotel then sank back in her seat with a shaking sigh. Maybe she should have waited for Lester Miles to join her but at this precise moment she didn’t want anyone witnessing the state she was in.
‘You OK, thespinis?’ the taxi driver questioned.
Glancing up, she saw the driver studying her through his rear-view mirror, his brown eyes clouded by concern.
Did she look that bad?
Yes, she looked that bad, she accepted. Inside she was a mass of shakes and tremors. Beneath her zipped-up jacket her blouse was still gaping open and there wasn’t an inch of flesh that wasn’t still wearing the hot imprint of a man’s knowing touch. Her hair was hanging around her pale face and her mouth was hot, swollen and quivering from the kind of assault that should have set her screaming for help but instead she just—
‘Yes—thank you,’ she replied and lowered her eyes so he wouldn’t see just how big a lie that was.
She felt like a whore. Her eyes filmed over. How could he do that to her? What had she ever done to him to make him believe he had the right to treat her that way?
You riled him into doing it is what happened, a deriding little voice in her head threw in. You went in there wanting to rip his unfaithful heart out and ended up with him ripping out yours!
She stared at the fingers of one hand as they rubbed anxiously at the empty place on another finger where her wedding ring had used to be, and tried to decide if she hurt more because of the way he had just treated her, or because she was still flailing around in the rotten discovery that she was still in love with the over-sexed brute!
It had hit her the moment Lester Miles had mentioned a future wife and Diantha Christophoros in the same, soul-destroying breath. Couldn’t he have come up with someone fresh instead of picking out his old love to replace her with?
He’d also been having her watched, she suddenly remembered. Had he been that desperate to find a solid reason to bring their marriage crashing down that he’d had to go to such extremes?
I hate him, she thought on a blistering wave of agony. And she did. The two opposing emotions of love and hatred were swilling around inside her in one gigantic, dizzying mix. The man was bad for her. He had always been bad for her. Three years on, she thought wretchedly, and her stupid heart had not learned anything!
The taxi pulled into the kerb outside her hotel. Fumbling in her purse, Isobel unearthed some money to pay the driver then climbed out into the heat of a midday sun. Within seconds she felt as if she was melting, which only made a further mockery of her sanity in coming here to Athens at all and wearing leather of all things in this city famous for the oppressive weight of its summer heat.
Her mother had been right; she’d been asking for trouble—and had certainly found it! Returning to her hotel room, she stripped off the wretched suit and walked into the bathroom to shower his touch from her skin.
Never again, she vowed as she scrubbed with a grim disregard for her skin’s fragile layers. By the time she had finished drying herself she was tingling all over for a different reason and her mood had altered from feeling destroyed to mulish. If she’d ever needed to be reminded why she left Leandros in the first place then that little scene in his boardroom had done it.
She didn’t need a man like him. Let him pour his money into his settlement, she invited, as she dressed in a pair of loose-fitting green cotton trousers and a matching T-shirt. Let him have his divorce so he can marry Diantha Christophoros and produce black-eyed, black-haired little thoroughbreds for his dynasty—
Was that it? Her head shot up, the brush she was using on her hair freezing as she struck at the heart of it. Had Leandros changed his mind about children and decided it was time he made an effort to produce the next Petronades heir?
What was it Lester Miles had said? She tried to remember as she brushed her hair into one long, thick, silken lock. Nikos was getting married. The lawyer called it an heir thing. Nikos might be three years younger than his brother but if Leandros wanted to keep the line of succession clear in his favour, then he needed to get in first with a son.
The tears came back. I would have given him a son. I would have given him a hundred babies if he’d only wanted them. But he didn’t, not with me for a mother. He wanted a black-haired Greek beauty with a name exalted enough to match his own.
I’m going to be sick, she thought and had to stand there for a few minutes, fighting the urge as a three-year-old scar ripped open in her chest.
She had to get out of here. The need came with a sudden urgency that left her no room to think. Securing her hair into a simple pony-tail, she snatched up her camera case and slung the strap over her shoulder, slid a pair of sunglasses onto the top of her head then headed for the outer door.
It was only when she stepped out into the hotel corridor that she remembered her mother, and felt guilty because she didn’t want to see her right now while she was in this emotional mess. But in all fairness she could not just walk out of here without checking Silvia was back. With a deep breath for courage, she knocked on the door next to her own room. There was no answer. Silvia must still be out with Clive. Relief flicked through her. In the next minute she was riding the lift to the foyer, so eager to escape now that she could barely contain the urge long enough to leave a message for her mother at Reception to let her know what she was doing.
As luck would have it, she was about to step outside when Lester Miles strode in.
‘How quickly did they draw up the papers?’ she questioned tartly.
‘They didn’t.’ The lawyer frowned. ‘Mr Petronades left just after you did.’
To dance attendance on his future bride? Isobel wondered, and felt another burst of bitterness rend a hole in her chest.
‘So what happens now?’ she asked.
‘I am to wait further instruction,’ Lester Miles informed her.
‘Really?’ she drawled. At whose command—Leandros’s or Takis Konstantindou’s? ‘Well, since I am the one you are supposed to take instruction from, Mr Miles, take the afternoon off,’ she invited. ‘Enjoy a bit of sightseeing and forget about them.’
It was what she intended to do anyway.
‘But, Mrs Petronades,’ he protested, ‘we are due to fly home tomorrow evening. We really should discuss what it is you want from—’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she interrupted. ‘But if this thing can be finished by me accepting everything, then I will.’ End of subject, her tight voice intimated. ‘They will be back tomorrow with their proposed settlements,’ she predicted. ‘I’ll sign and we will catch our flight home.’
Never to return again, she vowed as she left the poor lawyer standing there looking both puzzled and frustrated. He’d been looking forward to a good fight. He’d had a taste of it and liked it; she’d recognised that in the Petronades boardroom today.
As she stepped outside, the full heat of the sun beat down upon her head. She paused for a moment to get her bearings before deciding to revisit some of her old haunts that did not remind her of Leandros. There were plenty of them, she mused cynically, as she flopped her sunglasses down over her eyes then walked off down the street. While Leandros had played the busy tycoon during her year here in Athens, she had learned to amuse herself by getting to know the city from her own perspective rather than the one her privileged Greek in-laws preferred.
Leandros had just managed to park his car when he saw Isobel step into the street. About to climb out of the vehicle, he paused to watch as she stood for a moment frowning fiercely at everything before she reached up to pull her sunglasses over her eyes, then walked off.
Where was she going? he mused grimly. Why wasn’t she sitting in her room sobbing her heart out—as he’d expected her to be?
A stupid notion, he then decided when he took in what she was wearing. It was what he had used to call her battledress. When the hair went up in a pony-tail and her camera swung from her shoulder, and those kinds of clothes came out of the closet, his aggravating wife was making a determined bid for escape. How many times had he watched the back of that fine, slender figure disappear into the distance without so much as a word to say where she was going or why she was going there?
His jaw clenched because he knew why she had used to disappear like this. It had usually occurred after a row, after she’d asked him for something and he’d snapped at her because he’d been too busy to listen properly, and thought the request petty in the extreme. Guilty conscience raked its sharp claws across his heart. He’d been hell to live with, he recognised that now. He’d done nothing but pick and gripe and shut her up with more satisfying methods. And had never seen how lonely she’d been as she had walked away.
Climbing out of his sleek red Ferrari, he paused long enough to remove his jacket and tie then lock them in the boot. Then he intended to go after her.
But Leandros remembered the lover, and stopped as a whole new set of emotions gripped. Was he still in the hotel? Had she just come from him? Was he receiving the same walk-away treatment because he hadn’t listened to what she had been trying to say? Had they rowed about the disaster this morning’s meeting had turned into? Had she told the lover that she’d almost made love with her husband on the boardroom table before she walked away? Had they made love just now, in there, in that shabby hotel that suited clandestine relationships?
His mind knew how to torment him, he noted, as he slammed the car boot shut.
Where was his mother-in-law while all of this was going on? Was she lying on her sickbed with no idea that her daughter was romping with the body-builder in the next room? Maybe he should go and talk to Silvia. Maybe he should tackle the lover while Isobel was out of the way.
But his mother-in-law was a dish best eaten cold, he recalled with a rueful half-grin at the memory of her blunt tongue. And he wasn’t cold right now, he was hot with jealousy and a desire to beat someone to a pulp.
Isobel disappeared around a corner; the decision about whom he was going to tackle first was made there and then. To hell with everyone else, he thought. This was between him and his wife.
It was good to walk. It was good to feel the tension leave her body the deeper she became lost in the tourist crowds. Isobel caught the metro into Piraeus, drank a can of Coke as she walked along the harbour, pausing now and again to snap photos of the local fishermen and their brightly painted boats. She even found her old sense of fun returning when they tossed pithy comments at her, which she returned with a warm grasp of Greek that made them grin in shocked surprise. Most people hated the busy port of Piraeus but she’d always loved it for its rich and varied tapestry of life.
An hour later she had walked to Zea Marina where the private yachts were berthed and ended up getting out of the heat of the sun in Mikrolimano beneath the awning of one of her favourite restaurants that edged the pretty crescent-shaped waterfront. She couldn’t eat. It seemed that her stomach was still plagued by a knot of tension even if the rest of her felt much more at peace. But she was content to sit there sipping the rich black Greek coffee while taking in the spectacular views across the Saronic Gulf to the scatter of tiny islands glinting in the sun.
Eventually Vassilou, the restaurant owner, came out to greet her with a warm cry of delight and a welcoming kiss to both cheeks. It was that time of the day when Athens was at its quietest because most people with any sense were taking a siesta. The restaurant had very few customers and Vassilou came to sit beside her with his coffee while he tested her Greek.
It seemed crazy now, that she’d learned the language down here with the real people of Athens and not up there in the rarefied air on Lykavittos Hill, or Kolonáki, where the wealthy Athenians lived in their luxury villas. No one up there had thought it worth coaching her in the Greek language. They spoke perfect English so where was the need?
The need was sitting right here beside her with his thick thatch of silver hair and craggy brown face and his gentle, caring eyes. Not many minutes later they were joined by a retired sea captain, who began telling her some of his old sea yarns. Soon the chairs at her small table had doubled along with the circle of men. The restaurant owner’s son brought coffee for them all and sat down himself.
Isobel was relaxed; she was content to sit and be entertained by these warm-hearted people. Despite her nightmare marriage to Leandros, she’d loved Athens—this Athens—and she’d missed it when she returned to London.
Suddenly she sensed someone come to stand behind her chair. Assuming it was another local, drawn to the little coffee-drinking group, she didn’t think to glance round. She simply continued to sit there on a rickety chair with her coffee-cup cradled between her fingers and her smile one of wicked amusement while she listened—until a hand settled on her shoulder.
His touch caused a jolt of instant recognition. Her body froze and she lost her smile. The old sea captain’s voice trailed into silence, and as each set of eyes rose to look at Leandros she had to watch the warmth die.
Not into frozen shock, she noted, but into looks of respect, the kind men gave to another when they recognised a superior man come down into their midst.
They also understood the gentle claim of possession when they saw it. These shrewd men of Greece understood the light, ‘Kalimera,’ when it was spoken with the smoothness of silk. ‘I understand now why my wife goes missing,’ Leandros drawled lazily. ‘She has other suitors with whom she prefers to spend the siesta hours.’
The words were spoken in Greek with the aim to compliment, and Isobel was not surprised when the grins reappeared. Men were always first and foremost men, after all. She sat forward to put down her coffee-cup, though ostensibly the movement was supposed to dislodge his hand. It didn’t happen; the long brown fingers merely shifted to curve her nape then he bent and she felt the warmth of his breath brush her jawbone just before the brush of his kiss on her cheek followed suit.
He must know that her expression did not welcome him, but he was trusting her not to reject him here in view of all of these interested eyes. And, oddly, she didn’t. Which troubled and confused her as she watched the sudden genial shift of bodies and listened to the light banter that involved excuses as the others left the lovers to themselves while they made a mass chair-scraping exodus to another table.
It took only seconds for her to know she’d been deserted. The reason for that desertion chose one of the vacated chairs and sat down. He didn’t look at her immediately but frowned slightly as he gazed into the distance with his mouth pressed into a sombre line and the length of his eyelashes hiding his thoughts. He had lost his jacket and tie, she noticed, and the top two buttons to his shirt had been tugged free. He looked different here in the humid weight of natural sunlight, less the hard-headed business tycoon and more the handsome golden-skinned man she had first fallen in love with.
Her heart gave an anxious little flutter. She converted the sensation into a sigh. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ she asked then added sardonically, ‘Still having me watched, Leandros? How quaint.’
The sarcasm made his dark head turn. Their eyes connected, the flutter dropped to her abdomen and she sank back in her chair in an effort to stop herself from being caught in the swirling depths of what those dark eyes could do to her if she let them.
‘You speak and understand my language,’ he said quietly.
It was not what she had been expecting him to say. But she hid her surprise behind a slight smile. ‘What’s the matter?’ she mocked. ‘Did you think your little wife too stupid to learn a bit of Greek?’
‘I have never thought you stupid.’
Her answering shrug dismissed his denial. ‘Inept and uninterested, then,’ which added up to the same thing.
He didn’t answer. He was studying her so intently that in the end she shifted tensely and found herself answering the dark question she could see burning in his eyes. ‘I have always had a natural aptitude for languages,’ she explained. ‘And this …’ her hand gave a gesture to encompass Piraeus in general ‘… was my classroom three years ago, where I learned Greek from the kind of people you’ve just scared off in your polite but esoteric way.’
‘Esoteric,’ he repeated. ‘You little hypocrite,’ he denounced. ‘I have yet to meet a more esoteric person than you, Isobel, and that is the truth. You lived right here in Athens as my wife for a year. You slept in my bed and ate at my table and circulated on a daily basis amongst my family and friends. Yet not once can I recall you ever mentioning your trips down here to your classroom or revealing to any one of those people who should have been important to you that you could understand them when they spoke in Greek.’
‘Oh, but I heard so many interesting titbits I would never have otherwise, if they’d known I understood,’ she drawled lightly.
‘Like what?’
Light altered to hard cynicism. ‘Like how much they disliked me and how deeply they wished poor Leandros would come to his senses and see the little hussy off.’
‘You didn’t want them to like you,’ he denounced that also. And his eyes threw back the cynical glint. ‘You made no attempt to integrate with anyone who mattered to me. You just got on with your own secret life, picking and choosing those people you condescended to like and holding in contempt those that you did not. If that isn’t bloody esoteric then I misunderstand the word.’
‘No, you just have a very selective memory,’ she replied. ‘Because I don’t recall a moment when any of those people you mention cared enough to show an interest in anything I said or did.’
‘Most of them were afraid of you.’
She laughed, that was so ridiculous. His expression hardened. The anger of this morning’s confrontation had gone, she noticed, but what had taken its place was worse somehow. It was a mood with no name, she mused, that hovered somewhere between contempt and dismay. ‘You slayed them with your fierce British independence,’ he continued grimly. ‘You sliced them up with your quick, sharp tongue. You mocked their conservative beliefs and attitudes and refused to make any concessions for the differences between your cultures and theirs. And you did it all from a lofty stance of stubborn superiority that only collapsed when you were in my bed and wrapped in my arms.’
Isobel just sat there and stared as each accusation was lanced at her. Did he really see her as he’d just described her? Did he truly believe everything he’d just said?
‘No wonder our marriage barely lasted a year,’ she murmured in shaken response to it all. ‘You thought no better of me than they did!’
‘I loved you,’ he stated harshly.
‘In that bed you just mentioned,’ she agreed in an acid-tipped barb. ‘Out of it? It’s no darn wonder I came looking for my own world down here where I belonged!’
‘I was about to add that unfortunately love is not always blind.’ He got in his own sharp dig. ‘I watched you cling to your desire to shock everyone. I watched you take on all-comers with the fierce flash of your eyes. But do you know what made all of that rather sad, Isobel? You were no more comfortable with your defiant stance than anyone else was.’
He was right; she’d hated every minute of it. Inside she had been miserable and frightened and terribly insecure. But if he thought that by telling her he knew all of this gave him some high moral stance over her then he was mistaken. Because all it did was prove how little he’d cared when he’d known and had done nothing to help make things easier for her!
Love? He didn’t know the meaning of the word. She had loved. She had worshipped, adored and grown weaker with each small slight he’d paid to her, with his I’m too busy for this and Can you not even attempt to take the hand of friendship offered to you? What hand of friendship? Why had he always had something more important to do than to take some small notice of her? Hadn’t he seen how unhappy she was? Had he even cared? Not that she could recall, unless the rows had taken place in their bed at night. Then he’d cared because it had messed with that other important thing in his life—his over-active desire for sex! If she’d sulked, he’d thrown deriding names at her. If she’d said no, he’d taught her how quickly no could be turned into a trembling, gasping yes!
‘Talk, instead of sitting there just thinking it!’ he rasped at her suddenly.
She looked at him, saw the glint of impatience, detected the pulsing desire to crawl inside her head. Well, too late, she thought bitterly. He should have tried crawling in there three years ago!
‘What do you want, Leandros?’ she demanded coldly. ‘I presume you must have a specific reason for tracking me down—other than to slay my character, of course.’
‘I was not trying to slay anything. I was attempting to …’ He stopped, his mouth snapping shut over what he had been about to say. ‘I wanted to apologise for this morning,’ he said eventually.
‘Apology accepted.’ But as far as Isobel was concerned, that was it. He could go now and good riddance.
He surprised her with a short laugh, shook his dark head then relaxed into his chair. ‘Bitch,’ he murmured drily.
It was not meant to insult, and oddly she didn’t try and turn the remark into one.
Maybe this was a good time for Vassilou to bring them both fresh cups of coffee. He smiled, murmured a few polite pass-the-time-of-day phrases to which Leandros replied. Then, as he was about to leave, he turned back to send Isobel a teasing look. ‘You never mentioned your handsome husband to me. Shame on you, pethi mou,’ he scolded. ‘Now see what you have done to my son? His hopes are dashed!’
With that he walked away, leaving her alone to deal with Leandros’s new expression. ‘Never?’ he quizzed.
‘For what purpose?’ She shrugged. ‘Our relationship had no place here.’
‘You mean I had no place here—other than to keep eager young waiters at bay, of course,’ he added silkily.
Without thinking what she was about to do, Isobel lifted her left hand up with the intention of flashing her wedding ring, which to her made the statement he was looking for without the need of words.
Only the ring wasn’t there. Tension sprang up, her ribcage suddenly felt too tight. No ring, no marriage soon, she thought and tugged the hand back onto her lap as an unwanted lump of tears tried to clog up her throat. Leandros looked on with his eyes faintly narrowed and his expression perfectly blank.
‘Vassilou was making a joke.’ Impatiently she tried to cover up the error.
‘I know it was a joke,’ he answered quietly.
‘Then why have you narrowed your eyes like that?’ she flashed back.
‘Because the young waiter in question has been unable to take his eyes from you since you sat down at this table.’
‘You’ve been watching for that long, have you? What did you do, hide behind a pillar and take snapshots every time he smiled at me?’
‘He smiled a lot.’
She sat forward, suddenly too tense to sit still. She was beginning to fizz inside again, beginning to want to throw things at this super-controlled, super-slick swine! ‘Why don’t you just go now that you’ve made your apology?’ she snapped, and picked up her coffee-cup.
Those luxurious lashes of his lowered to the cup; he knew what was going through her head. She’d done it before and thrown things at him when he’d driven her to it. Punishment usually followed in the shape of a bed.
But not this time, because she was not going to give him any more excuses to jump on her, she vowed, and took a sip at her coffee. It was hot and she’d forgotten to put the sachet of sugar in that she found necessary when drinking the thick, dark brew the Greeks so liked.
‘Where is the lover?’
‘What …?’ Her head came up, green eyes ablaze because she was at war.
With herself. With him. She didn’t know any more what was going on inside. She wished he would go. She didn’t want to look at him. She did not want to soak in the way his head and shoulders were in a shaft of sunlight that seeped in through a gap in the striped awning above. She didn’t want to see strength in those smooth golden features, or the leashed power in those wide shoulders.
He was gorgeous. A big, dark Latin-hot lover, with a tightly packed body lurking beneath his white shirt that could turn her senses to quivering dust. She could see a hint of black hair curling over the gap where he’d undone the top few buttons of the shirt. She knew how those crisp, curling hairs covered a major part of his lean torso. His rich brown skin was gleaming in the golden sunlight, and the sheen of sweat at his throat beneath the tough jut of his chin was making the juices flow across her tongue.
He was a man whom you wanted taste. To touch all over. A man whom you wanted to touch you. His hands were elegant, strong, long-fingered and aware of what they could do for you. Even now as they rested at ease between the spread of his thighs they were making a statement about his masculinity that sent desire coursing through her blood. His mouth could kiss, his eyes could seduce, his arms could support you while you flailed in the wash of rolling ecstasy the rest of him could give to you.
In other words he was a dark, sensual lover and she suspected one did not need personal experience of that to know it. A few weeks spent on his yacht in Spain and Diantha Christophoros must know it by osmosis. He was not the kind of man to hold back from something he wanted—as she knew from experience.
‘The blond hunk with the lazy smile,’ he prompted. ‘Where is he?’
She blinked again and lowered her eyes. Oh, the temptation, she mused, as she stared at her coffee. Oh, the desire to say what was hovering right on the end of her tongue. ‘His name is Clive and he’s a physiotherapist.’ She managed to control the urge to draw verbal pictures of Clive left sleeping off an hour’s wild sex.
But her heart was still hammering out the temptation. She heard Leandros utter a soft, mocking little laugh. ‘That cost you,’ he taunted softly. ‘But you had the sense to weigh up the odds of my response.’
‘How is Diantha?’ she could not resist that one.
Touché, his grimacing nod reflected. ‘I have changed my mind about the divorce,’ he hit back without warning.
‘Well, I haven’t!’ she responded.
‘I was not aware that I gave you a choice.’
‘I don’t think you have much control over my choice, Leandros,’ she drawled witheringly. ‘Why have you changed your mind?’
‘Simple.’ He shrugged, and with a bold lack of conscience lifted his hands enough for her to see what he was talking about. Pure shock sent a whole tidal wave of sensations washing through her.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ she gasped in stunned reaction as heat poured into her cheeks.
He grimaced as if he agreed. ‘I cannot seem to help it. I have been like this since you walked into my boardroom today. So, no divorce,’ he explained. ‘And definitely no other lovers until I get this problem sorted out.’
The problem being her and his desire for her, Isobel realised with a choke and incredulous disbelief that this was even happening.
‘You are so excitingly beautiful,’ he murmured as if that justified everything.
‘But a bitch,’ she reminded him.
‘I like the bitch. I always did. It is part of your attraction I find such an irresistible challenge. Like the warning-red hair and the defy-me green eyes and the sulky little mouth that threatens to bite when I step out of line.’
His eyes were dark on her, his tone serious, the fact that he had already stepped out of line all part of what was beginning to burn between them. ‘Everything about you I find an outright irresistible challenge,’ he continued in a smooth, calm tone that could have been describing the weather, not what turned him on. ‘When you walked into my boardroom this morning wearing leather, of all things, and it is thirty degrees out here, it was a challenge. When you sat there spitting hatred at me I don’t know how I remained in my chair as long as I did before I leapt. I surprised myself,’ he confessed. ‘Now you sit here in military-style trousers and a T-shirt with your hair stuck in that pony-tail and you challenge me to crack the tough-nut you are pretending to be.’
‘It’s no pretence. I am tough,’ she declared.
‘So am I. And you can leap on me and try scratching my eyes out if you want to, but what I want will be the end result.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you want!’ Isobel sliced back at him. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea where you think you are going with this!’
‘I want you, right at this moment,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘I thought I had made that absolutely clear. I want to close my mouth around one of those tight button breasts I can see pushing against your tough-lady top and simply enjoy myself,’ he informed her outrageously. ‘Though I would not protest if you dropped to your knees, unzipped my trousers and enjoyed yourself by taking me into your mouth—only I don’t think the setting is quite right for either fantasy.’
‘I think you’re right, and I’ve had enough of this.’ She got to her feet. ‘Go to hell with your fantasies, Leandros.’ She turned to leave.
As he’d done once before today, he moved with a silent swiftness that gave her no room to react. His hand curled around her wrist and with the simplest tug he brought her toppling down onto his lap. Her stifled cry of surprise slithered through the humid air and had a table of interested witnesses turning their way.
To them it must look as if she’d dived on Leandros rather than been pulled there, she realised, even as his eyes told her what was coming next.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she tried to say but it was already too late. His mouth crushed the refusal, then began offering an alternative to both his fantasies with the help of his tongue.
It lasted short seconds, yet still she was too lost to understand what was happening when he broke the kiss, then quite brutally sat her back on her own chair again. Dizzy and dazed, flushed and shaken, she watched as he climbed to his feet. For a horrible moment she thought it was him who was going to walk away now and leave her to the humiliating glances.
Was that why he’d come here, tracked her down like this and said what he had just said, just to pay her back for the way she had walked out on him this morning?
His hand dipped into his trouser pocket then came out again. Something landed on the table with a metallic ping. Money. She began to feel as if she had walked into hell without realising it. Had he thrown money down on the table to pay for the pleasure of treating her like this?
Stinging eyes dropped to stare and took long seconds to comprehend what it was they were staring at. Leandros sat down again. She couldn’t breathe or think. Lifting her eyes, she just stared at him, her mouth still pulsing from the pressure of his kiss and her heart beating thickly in her throat.
Yes, Leandros thought with a grim lack of humour as he watched her flounder somewhere between this stunning moment and the kiss. You might be in shock, and you might be unable to believe I’ve just done what I did in broad daylight and in public view of anyone wanting to watch. But just keep watching this space, my beautiful wife, because I haven’t even begun to shock you.
I should have done it years ago. I should have taken you by the scruff of your beautiful, stubborn, tough, slender neck and dragged you back into my life.
He was angry. Why was he angry? he asked himself. And knew the answer even before he asked the question. Every time he touched her she fell apart at the very seams with her need for him. Each time their eyes clashed he could see the hurt burning in hers because she was still so in love with him.
Which all added up to three empty, wasted years. Because if he’d faced her with their problems three years ago they would not be sitting here like two damned fools fighting old battles with new words. They would be in a bed somewhere enjoying each other in the traditional Greek way. There could even have been another child to replace the one they’d lost, sleeping safely in a room close by.
And she would certainly not have let another man touch her! How could she do that anyway? he extended furiously.
‘Put it back on,’ he instructed, even though he knew she was incapable of doing anything right now.
‘I don’t—’
‘Not your choice.’ He was back to choices. ‘While you are married to me you will wear my ring.’
‘We are about to end our marriage,’ she protested. ‘What use is a wedding ring in a divorce?’
But even as she made that bitter statement he could see his kiss still clinging to the swollen fullness of her lips. The tip of her tongue could not resist making a sensual swipe across them in an effort to cool their pulsing heat. He mimicked the action with his own tongue, saw her breath shorten and her throat move convulsively. The old vibrations came to dance between them. The air became filled with the heady promise of sex. They had been here before, felt this before. Only then they had been eager to follow where those senses led them.
Now …?
‘It means nothing any more,’ she said and broke eye contact.
Was she referring to the ring or the sexual pull? he mused, and decided to deal with the former because the latter, he knew, was going to take care of itself in the not too distant future.
Leaning forward, he brought his forearms to rest on the top of the small wooden table, forcing a wary glance from her because she wasn’t sure what was coming next. Once he had her gaze, he drew it down with the slow lowering of his lashes and let her watch as he worked his own ring free from his finger then placed it next to hers.
She was so very still he knew she understood what he was doing. The pulse in his throat began to pound. The two rings lay side by side in the sunlight, one large, one small, both an exact match to the other, with their gloss smooth outer surface and the inner circle marked by an inscription that said My heart is here.
How could he have forgotten that when he’d stood upon the deck of his yacht in San Estéban complacently making plans to finish their marriage? How could she have forgotten it when she tossed her ring back at him with such contempt earlier today? They had done this together. They had chosen these rings with their arms around each other, and hadn’t cared how soft and stupidly romantic they must have appeared as they’d made the decision to have those words inscribed in those inner circles so they would always rest next to their skins!
‘Now tell me it means nothing.’ He laid down the rasping challenge as he watched her face grow pale. ‘If you can bear to walk away and leave your ring on this table, then I will do the same. If you cannot bear to do that, put it back on your finger and we will talk about where we can go from here.’
Her tongue made a foray of her lips again. His teeth came together with a snap to stop him from moving close enough so his own tongue could follow in its wake. She was his, and the sooner she came to accept that the sooner they could work out their problems.
‘The divorce—’
‘The ring,’ he prompted firmly.
She swallowed tensely. The mood began to sizzle with the threat of his challenge and her defiant need to get up and walk away.
But she could not do it. In the end and with a lightning flash of fury, she reached out, snatched her ring up and pushed it back onto her finger.
It went on easily because it belonged there. The next lightning bolt came his way. ‘Now what? Do we go back to your office and talk divorce settlements again?’
Her waspish tone didn’t hide anything. She was shaking all over and almost on the point of tears. She wanted him. She could not let him go. His ring was back where it belonged and he’d never felt so good about anything in a long time. Picking up his own ring, he slid it back where it belonged then sat back with a sigh.
‘No,’ he answered her question. ‘We go somewhere more private where we can talk.’
Her look poured scorn all over that lying suggestion. She knew what he was intending. She was no fool. ‘Try again, Leandros,’ she murmured bitterly.
‘Dinner, then. Tonight,’ he came back. ‘We will drive out of the city to that place you like in the mountains. Eat good food, drink champagne and reminisce over the good points in our marriage.’
His mockery flicked her temper to life, and he was pleased to see it happen because it was just the mood he was pushing for. Put Isobel in a rage and you had yourself an easy target, because as one guard fell the others quickly followed. So he relaxed back and waited for the sarcastic, What good points? to come slashing back at him. But what he actually got threw him completely.
‘Sorry, my darling,’ she drawled. ‘But I already have a date tonight.’
Just like that it was his own temper deserted him. The lion inside him roared. He retaliated with swift and cruelly cutting incision. ‘And there I was about to break my date with Diantha for you. But—no matter, you may bring your lover; we will make it a foursome. Maybe we will go home with different partners. Who knows?’ He added a casual shrug. ‘Maybe I will ache like this for Diantha and all my problems will be solved.’
He knew the moment he had shut his mouth that he had made some terrible tactical mistake. She’d gone so white he thought she might be going to faint away on him and her eyes stood out like two deep green pits of pain. She was standing up, not in anger, but on legs that did not wish to support her.
‘I was referring to my mother,’ she breathed, and this time she did walk away.