‘GET off me, you two-timing brute!’ she spat at him.
‘Well, that isn’t very nice,’ he drawled.
‘Where do you think you are taking me?’
‘You did not really think that I was going to let you sleep in any other bed than our own, did you? Foolish Isobel,’ he mocked as he lifted up a knee then swung her down onto another bed.
The knee stayed where it was, the rest of him straightened so he could remove his robe, his eyes glinted dark promises down at her, and because she was too busy trying to cover her dignity by tugging her ridden nightshirt over the shadowy cluster of golden curls at her thighs she missed her only chance to escape. He came down beside her in a long, lithe stretch of male determination. One hand slid beneath the fall of her hair while the other made a gliding stroke down her side from breast to slender thigh. Then it came back up, bringing her nightshirt with it.
He stripped it from her with an ease that left her gasping. She aimed a clenched fist at him, he caught it in his own hand, then his mouth was coming down to cover her mouth. She groaned out some kind of protest but it wasn’t enough to bring this to a halt. It was dark, it was warm and, as he subdued her, her senses were already beginning to fly. Seconds later she was lost in the hungry, driving intensity of the kiss.
Her fingers unclenched out of his grip on them, lifted then buried themselves in his hair. The kiss deepened. She could feel his heart pounding, felt the thick saturation of his laboured breath. Her body, her limbs, every sinew moved and stretched on wave after wave of desperate delight. He dragged his mouth away and looked down at her, no smile, no mockery, just heart-stunningly serious desire.
‘Did you go to her?’ she whispered painfully.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Was she there?’
His eyes darkened. ‘Yes.’
Her fingers tugged at his hair until he winced. ‘Did you speak to her—touch her?’
‘No,’ he grated. ‘I had no reason to.’
The black ferocity of his gaze insisted that she had to believe that. Her mouth slackened into a wretched quiver. ‘I imagined all sorts,’ she shakily confessed to him.
‘I am with the only woman who has ever done this for me,’ he answered harshly. ‘Why would I lust after less?’
‘Three years, Leandros,’ she reminded him painfully. ‘Three years can make a man accept less.’
‘Were you unfaithful?’ He threw the pain right back at her.
‘No—never.’
‘Then why are we talking about this?’
They didn’t talk any more, not after his mouth claimed hers again and his hands claimed the rest of her with a grim, dark, fierce concentration that robbed her of the will to do anything but feel with every single sense she possessed.
She was possessed, Isobel decided later, when she lay curled in the secure circle of his arms. Her cheek rested in the hollow of his shoulder, her fingers were toying with the whorls of hair on his chest. There wasn’t another place she would rather be, but knowing it made her feel so very vulnerable. She didn’t think she was any better equipped now than she had been three years ago to deal with what loving a man like Leandros meant.
She released a small sigh. The sigh aggravated the muscles controlling Leandros’s steady heartbeat. She might be lying here in his arms but he knew she had problems with it. Did he take a leap of faith and force those problems out into the open so they could attempt to sort them out?
He trapped his own sigh before it happened. He didn’t want to talk. His eyes were heavy, his body replete and content. Her hair lay spread across his shoulder, her soft breathing caressed his chest and the darkness soothed him towards sleep.
She moved just enough to place a kiss on his warm skin, then followed it up with another pensive sigh. Contentment flew out of the window. He moved onto his side and flipped her onto her back then came to lean over her with his head supported by his hand.
‘What?’ she said and she looked decidedly wary.
‘Why the melancholy sighs?’ he demanded.
‘They were not melancholy.’
He arched an eyebrow to mock that little lie. She lowered dusky eyelashes until they brushed against skin like porcelain. Her mouth looked small and cute when he knew that the last thing you could ever call Isobel was cute.
‘I have this urge to stand you up against the nearest wall and shine a bright light in your eyes,’ he murmured drily. ‘We have just made love. You cried out in my arms and clung to me as if I was the only thing stopping you from falling off the edge of the earth. You told me you loved me—’
‘I did not!’ The desire to deny that brought her lashes upwards.
‘You thought it, then,’ he amended with a shrug meant to convey a sublime indifference to semantics. Then he reached out to gently comb her hair from her face, and was suddenly serious. ‘We need to talk, agape mou, about why we parted.’
Without the gentleness she might not have caught on to what he was actually daring to broach here. But he saw the light in her eyes change, saw them flood with horror then with tears. ‘No,’ she said, then was leaping out of the bed and racing from the room.
By the time he had grabbed his robe and gone after her she was standing in the other bedroom, huddled inside the blue robe. His chest ached at the sight of her, at the sight of that robe that said so many things about the real Isobel, like the look of pure anguish whitening her face.
‘Will you stop running?’ he ground at her. ‘Just stop running from this,’ he repeated almost pleadingly. ‘If we do not face the past together, how are we supposed to move on?’
Isobel stood and shook and remembered why she hated him. If she could take back the last mad day then she would. Her heart hurt, her throat hurt; just seeing him standing there looking as if he was experiencing the same things made her want to wound him as he had once almost fatally wounded her. How could she have forgotten what he had done to her? How could she have lain in his arms and let herself ignore the kind of man she knew him to be?
‘You didn’t want our baby,’ she breathed. ‘Is that facing it?’
He winced as if the tip of a whip had just lashed him. ‘That is not true …’
‘Yes, it is,’ she insisted. ‘By the time I was pregnant I don’t think you even wanted me!’
‘No …’ He denied that.
‘I was the irritation you just didn’t need, and you made sure I knew it.’ But he was right; she could not run from this! It had to be faced before they made the same mistakes a second time and turned lust into love, which then turned into regret filled with frustration and bitterness. ‘You married me when you didn’t need to, we both knew that—you’d already enjoyed what was on offer after all! You lifted me out of working-class drudgery into wealth and luxury beyond compare then expected me to show eternal gratitude. But how did I pay you back for this generosity and goodness? I refused to conform. I refused to smile weakly and say “Yes, thank you, Mama,” when your mother lectured me on how I should behave.’
‘She was attempting to advise you.’
‘She was cold and critical and so dismayed by me that I don’t know how she managed to stay in the same room with me half the time!’
‘So you played up to that criticism, is that it?’ he bit out. ‘Or should I say you played down to it just for the hell of watching her squirm?’
‘I stayed away from it!’ she corrected. ‘Or didn’t you notice?’ She was aching and throbbing as it all came rushing back. ‘I went out and found my own kind of people.’ Her hand stretched out to encompass the view of Athens lying beyond the window.
‘Like Vassilou.’
‘Did your mouth flatten like that in distaste, Leandros?’ she challenged the expression on his grim face. ‘If you can’t see the difference between “Do you really need to wear those terrible trousers, Isobel?” and “Ah, Kyria, you look so cool and fresh today!” well, I certainly can. Or—some babies are ill-judged and ill-timed, Isobel.’ Her eyes began to sting. She swallowed thickly. ‘Words like that when spoken by the mother of your husband rarely shore up an ailing marriage. They help to shatter it.’
‘My mother could not have said such a thing to you,’ he denied, but he’d gone pale. He knew she was telling the truth. ‘She would not be so—’
‘Cruel?’ she finished for him when the word became glued to his tight upper lip. ‘“Maybe it was for the best.”’ Hoarsely she quoted his own choice of words back at him.
‘“We were not ready for this.”’
He swung his back to her and walked over to stare out of the window. The desire to leap on that back and pummel it to the ground sang in her blood. If she shook any more fiercely she would have to sit down. He had lifted the lid on black memories, and now she was standing here being consumed by them.
‘I was ashamed of myself when I said that,’ he uttered.
‘Good,’ she commended. ‘I was ashamed of you too.’ With that she walked over to the chest of drawers and withdrew a fresh nightshirt then went into the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door because she was not running away this time. Not from this—not from anything ever again.
He came to stand in the doorway. With her back firmly to him she dropped the robe and replaced it with the clean nightshirt. ‘You were inconsolable and I did not know how to cope with your grief,’ he said huskily.
‘No, you were busy and had to be pulled out of an important meeting,’ she gave her own version of events. ‘And if it wasn’t bad enough that you didn’t want me to get pregnant in the first place, you then found yourself having to deal with an hysterical woman who didn’t appreciate ‘“Maybe it is for the best.”’
‘All right,’ he rasped. ‘So I did not want us to have a baby at that time!’
She swung round to look at his face as he dared to admit that! No wonder his skin looked grey!
‘We were both too young. Our marriage was in a mess! You were miserable; I was miserable! We had stopped communicating on any level—’
‘Especially between the sheets.’
‘Yes, between the bloody sheets!’ he grated, and suddenly he was swinging away from the door and gripping her upper arms. ‘I adored you. You fascinated me! You sparkled and sizzled and took on all-comers with a courage that took my breath away. When you were in my arms it was like holding something powerfully special. But our marriage had not had the time to grow beyond that all-consuming physical obsession before you were presenting me with a red stop light. I resented having to stop!’
‘I didn’t ask you to.’
‘You did not need to.’ His sigh took the anger out of him; dropping his hands, he moved away. ‘You did not see how fragile you looked, as if you would shatter if I so much as touched you.’
He walked back into the bedroom. This time it was Isobel that followed him. ‘Couldn’t you have just told me that instead of turning cold on me?’
‘Tell you that I was such a selfish swine that I did not want half a lover in my bed?’ He released a self-derogatory laugh. ‘Tell you that I did not want to share your body with anything?’ An oath was thrust out from the cavernous depths of his chest. ‘I despised myself. I did not know what was happening inside my own head! When you lost the baby I believed I had wished it to happen. I still believe that. My punishment was to lose you, and I was willing to take it. I was willing to take any punishment so long as I was not forced to face you with what I had done.’
‘So you let me walk away.’ She understood him now.
‘You tied me in so many knots I was relieved to see you go.’
‘And broke my heart all over again,’ she said with painful honesty. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I needed you to come for me?’
His shook his head; his shoulders were hunched, his gaze grimly fixed on his bare feet. ‘I despised myself. It was easy, therefore, to convince myself that you despised me too.’
‘I did.’
Silence fell. It came with a heavy thud. Isobel looked at the spacious bedroom with its cool floors and lavender walls and purple accessories, and wondered how silence could hurt so much.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she murmured eventually. ‘The baby, I mean,’ she added, then had to swallow tears when he lifted his dark head to send her an agonisingly unprotected look. ‘The statistics for losing a first baby in the first three months of pregnancy are high. It was simply bad luck.’
She tried a shrug to punctuate her absolute belief in that, but it didn’t quite come off and she had to turn away in the end, wrapping her arms across her body and clutching at her shoulders with tense fingers that shook. A pair of arms arrived to cover her arms; long fingers threaded tensely with hers. It was so good to feel him hold her that she couldn’t hold back the small sob.
‘I had my own guilt to deal with,’ she thickly confided. ‘I felt I had failed in every way a woman could. I had to leave because I couldn’t stand everyone’s pitying expressions and the knowledge that they thought the loss of our baby more or less summed up our disaster of a marriage.’
He remained silent but his arms tightened, offering comfort instead of words. On a small whimper she broke the double arm-lock so she could turn and give back some comfort by placing her arms around his shoulders and pressing her face into the warm strength of his neck.
‘Tomorrow we begin making a better job of this second chance we have given ourselves,’ he ordained gruffly.
She nodded.
‘We talk instead of fighting.’
She gave another nod.
‘When people say things you do not like you tell me about it and I listen.’
She agreed with another nod.
He shifted his stance. ‘Don’t go too meek on me, agape mou,’ he drawled lazily. ‘It makes me nervous.’
‘I’m not being meek,’ she informed him softly. ‘I’m just enjoying the feel of your voice vibrating against my cheek.’
With a growl, she was lifted up and kissed as punishment. The kiss led to other things, another room and a familiar bed. They slept in each other’s arms and awoke still together, showered together and only separated when Isobel had to go back to the other bedroom to find something to wear.
They met up again on the terrace. The first cloud that blocked out her sunlight came when she saw Leandros was dressed for the office in a dark suit, blue shirt and dark tie. Handsome and dynamic he may look, but she needed him to stay here with her.
‘For a few hours only,’ he promised when he saw her expression, getting up to hold out a chair for her.
‘It is reality, I suppose.’ She smiled.
‘And some unfortunate timing,’ he added. ‘I have been back in Athens for only a few weeks after a long stay abroad. Nikos’s marriage is like a large juggernaught racing down a steep hill and taking everyone else along with it for the ride.’
Was he talking about his time in Spain as his long stay abroad? Isobel wondered. But didn’t want to think about that right now when she was trying hard not to think of anything even vaguely contentious.
‘So, when is the wedding?’ she asked brightly.
‘Next week.’ He grimaced as he sat down again. ‘In my father’s stead I have been slotted into the role of host for the many pre-wedding dinners my mother has arranged, and also as to escort her to those that the Santorini family are having. Hence my having to leave you last night.’ He paused to pour her a cup of coffee. ‘Tonight I must do the same—unless I can talk you into coming with me?’
Body language was one hell of a way to communicate, Leandros mused as he watched her smile disappear and her eyes hide from him while she hunted for an acceptable excuse to refuse.
It came in the shape of Silvia Cunningham, who appeared on the terrace then. She was walking with the aid of a metal frame, and even to him it was a worthy diversion.
He stood up and smiled. ‘What a delightful sight!’ he exclaimed warmly. ‘Ee pateria, those beautiful legs look so much better when viewed upright.’
‘Get away with you,’ Silvia scolded, but her cheeks warmed with pleasure at the compliment. ‘You know, I can’t make up my mind if it is the fierce heat or the relentless sunshine, but I feel so much stronger today.’
Isobel got up to greet her mother with a kiss then pulled out a chair for her and waited patiently while Silvia eased herself into it. As he watched, Leandros saw the tender, loving care and attention Silvia’s daughter paid to her comfort without making any kind of fuss.
He also noticed the look of relief on her face because their conversation had been interrupted. Stepping across the terrace to where the internal phone that gave a direct line to the kitchen sat, he ordered a pot of tea for Silvia then came to sit down again. He listened as mother and daughter discussed what kind of night Silvia had had while thoughts of his own began to form inside his head.
Allise arrived with the pot of tea. There was a small commotion as room was made on the table and an order for toast and orange juice was placed. Biding his time, he sipped at his coffee, watching narrowly as Isobel used every excuse she could so as not to look at him.
She was wearing the green trousers teamed with a white T-shirt today. The hair wasn’t up in a pony-tail, which had to mean that she was not about to run. But, beautiful though she undoubtedly was, fierce and prickly and always ready for a fight, she was also a terrible coward. It had taken him a long time to realise that, he acknowledged, as he watched her bright hair gleam in the sunlight, her green eyes sparkle as they smiled at Silvia and her very kissable mouth curve around her coffee-cup.
He waited until both ladies had put their cups safely down on their saucers before he went for broke. ‘Silvia,’ he aimed his loaded bet directly at Isobel’s weakest point, ‘Isobel and I must attend a party tonight. We would be very honoured if you would accompany us.’
He had chosen his bet well, for he could remember Silvia before her accident. She might have spent her working hours stuck behind the window as a teller in a high-street bank but her social life had used to be full and fun.
‘A party, you say?’ Eyes so like her daughter’s began to sparkle. ‘Oh, what fun! And you really don’t mind if I come along with you?’
From across the table, barbs began to impale him. He made eye contact with a brow-arching counter-challenge that gave no indication whatsoever to what was beginning to sizzle in his blood. This woman could excite him without trying to. She brought him alive.
‘We didn’t come to Athens equipped to attend parties,’ Isobel reminded both of them.
Silvia’s face dropped in disappointment. Isobel saw it happen and looked as if she had just whipped a sick cat.
‘No problem,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘It is an oversight that can be remedied within the hour.’
‘Of course!’ Silvia exclaimed delightedly. ‘We have time to shop, Isobel! It’s about time we treated ourselves to something new!’
I hate you, the other pair of eyes informed him. The sulky mouth simply looked more kissable.
‘Whose party is it?’
With the smoothness of a born gambler, he turned his attention to his mother-in-law and explained about his younger brother Nikos’s wedding next week and how tonight’s party was being held at Nikos’s future in-laws’ home, which was a half-hour’s drive out of the city towards Corinth.
‘You don’t play fair,’ Isobel told him in flat-toned Greek. ‘You know I don’t want to go.’
‘What did you say?’ her mother demanded.
‘She said she didn’t think it was fair to expect you to shop and spend the evening partying,’ he lied smoothly.
‘So we will solve the problem the rich man’s way, and I will have a selection of evening gowns sent out here for you to peruse at your leisure.’
The rich man part was said to tease yet another smile from Silvia. The daughter didn’t smile. But he did get a flashing vision of retribution to come. ‘Try anything stupid just to get back at me, and I will retaliate,’ he warned in Greek.
‘What did he say?’ Silvia wanted to know.
‘He said choose something outrageously daring,’ Isobel responded defiantly.
He laughed. What else could he do? He knew he had asked for that. It was fun having a wife that spoke his language, he decided.
But it was also time to cut and run, before she decided to corner him somewhere private and he did not get any work done today. Rising to his feet, he bid Silvia farewell and stepped round the table to kiss his wife’s stiff cheek, then strode away, still feeling those wonderful barbs that had launched themselves at him.
‘Don’t you want to go to this party, Isobel?’ her mother asked when she saw the way she glared at Leandros’s retreating back.
Isobel turned her head to look at her mother, who had known about her problems with Leandros three years ago, but who had never been told about the problems Isobel had had with his family. ‘I’m just a bit nervous about meeting people again,’ she answered. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘When you fall off a horse the best thing to do is get right back on it,’ was her mother’s blunt advice—while thoroughly ignoring the fact that mounting the dreaded horse had come about three years too late. ‘And if I can see that you two looked so happy you have to be right for each other, then give other people the chance to make the same discovery,’ she added sagely.
Isobel was about to open her mouth and tell her mother the hard facts about those other people, then changed her mind, because what was the use in stirring up trouble before it arrived? She was here—though she still wasn’t sure how it had happened. She was staying—though she wished it didn’t fill her with such a nagging ache of uncertainty.
Silvia sat back in her chair and released a happy sigh. ‘Gosh, I feel reborn today,’ she said. ‘It makes me want to sing.’
She did sing—all morning. She loved every gown that arrived—within the hour—complete with every accessory she could require. By the time Silvia went off for her afternoon siesta, Isobel was glad to escape to her room and wilt. But she couldn’t wilt completely because she was expecting Leandros to walk in at any moment and she wanted to be ready for him.
However Leandros was running late. The few hours he had intended to spend at work had gone smoothly enough. Time began to get away from him when he went to the boot of his car to put away the briefcase he had left in his office the day before, and discovered that the jacket he had been wearing still lay where he had placed it before chasing after Isobel. He saw the edge of the envelope straight away. It was sticking out of one of the pockets but it was only when he reached down to slide it free that he remembered what it contained.
Two minutes later he was heading into the city, not out of it. A few minutes after that and he was striding into the bank with his wife’s safety deposit box key and her letter authorising him to open the box. His curiosity was fully engaged as to what Isobel’s idea of family heirlooms actually consisted of …
By the time he did eventually arrive home it was to find Isobel sitting cross-legged upon the bed, wearing what looked like one of his own white T-shirts—and nothing else from what he could see. She must have just come from the shower. Her hair was wet, and she was sitting with her head thrown forward while she combed the silken pelt with slow, smooth strokes, allowing the excess water to fall onto a white towel she had laid out in front of her.
‘If you want a shower, I suggest you use a different bathroom,’ she advised without lifting her head. ‘Otherwise I might decide to murder you while you’re naked and vulnerable in this one.’
He started to grin as he stood leaning in the doorway. In truth, after the trick he’d pulled this morning he had expected her to show her protest by refusing to come near this room.
‘Not you, my sweet angel,’ he denied lazily. ‘You would see my quick death as being too kind to me.’
‘Don’t bank on it.’
‘OK. I will live dangerously, then.’ With that he levered away from the doorframe, came into the room and closed the door.
She still did not deign to lift her head as he walked across the room and placed two black velvet jewellery cases into the top drawer of a chest. Studying her as he removed his jacket and tie, he tried to decide whether to simply jump on her and give her no chance to defend herself, or whether to annoy her by ignoring her as she was ignoring him.
The former was tempting, but the latter should win since the shower seemed the best venue for the both of them. Her hair was wet already. The T-shirt belonged to him, and, having issued the threat, she would not, he knew, be able to remain sitting there passively without being drawn to carry out it out.
With a click and a scrape he undid his trousers and heeled off his shoes. Isobel’s comb continued its smooth strokes while he removed his socks, then his under-shorts, which left only his shirt to conceal the fact that he was already very much aroused by this little game. He needed a shave so he strode into the danger-zone of the bathroom, paused long enough to reach in and spring the showerhead to life before he picked up his electric razor and began using it.
She arrived at the door as he had predicted, looked disconcerted to find him standing by the bathroom mirror, then mulish when she realised she had been outwitted by him.
‘Choose your weapon,’ he invited without allowing his eyes to leave the mirror, where his own reflection showed him a man who had changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Gone were the harsh lines of cynicism he had watched increase over the previous three years. Now he saw a pretty good-looking guy with a decent pair of shoulders and sexily provoking promise about him.
She did this for him, he acknowledged. This moody woman with the slicked-back wet hair and the sensationally smooth white skin.
She leapt without warning. Dropping the razor into the washbasin, he swung round in time to catch her against his chest. Green eyes glittered, her mouth quivered, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
‘I don’t want to go tonight!’ she cried out plaintively.
She chose her weapon well. Anger he could deal with—a physical attack. But true tears and fear were different things entirely. ‘Don’t cry, agape mou. That isn’t fair.’
‘Can’t we wait a few days before you toss me to the wolves again—please?’ she begged.
The please almost unmanned him. He recovered while carrying her back to the bed. ‘If anyone so much as glances at you wrongly I will strike them down, I promise you.’
‘They can still think what they like about me, Andros!’
Andros; she was the only person to ever get away with calling him that, so when she did it, it turned his senses over, it tied possessive ropes around his heart. Vulnerable, cowardly, beautiful Isobel—the Isobel she let no one else ever see.
With grim intent he sat down on the bed then, as she still clung to him, he rolled them both backwards until they lay on their sides. ‘Do you truly believe that we two are the only ones to regret what happened before?’ he demanded. ‘My mother had to watch me go to pieces. Within the year after you left I left here also and rarely ever came back again.’
‘Where did you go?’ She was diverted. He almost laughed at the irony. He revealed weakness and she suddenly became the strong one! ‘To Spain,’ he replied. ‘To a place called San Estéban. I ran my companies from a stateroom on my yacht and learned to live with myself by pretending Athens didn’t exist.’
‘You should have come to me!’ Her fist made contact with his shoulder. He trapped her beneath him on the bed. Her legs still clung though. She was not letting go of him and she was wearing nothing beneath the T-shirt.
‘I did come to you,’ he growled. ‘Every night in my dreams!’
‘Not good enough.’
‘Then we have a lot of time to make up for,’ he gritted and entered her—no preliminaries. Her cry was one of pleasure because she was ready to receive him. She clutched his head and brought his mouth crashing down onto hers. They rode the hot wind of raging passion. When it was over and he felt his strength return to him he got up as still she clung and walked them both beneath the shower, where he began the whole exhilarating ride all over again.
Getting ready to go out was not easy when he was feeling laid-back and slumberous. Fortunately, Isobel had wisely disappeared to the other bedroom so at least the temptation to forget tonight’s party and remain lost in her was removed—in part. He was all too aware of that soft, pulsing sense of continued possession. He had only to think of her and he could imagine her crawling all over him in her desire to lay claim to every exquisitely receptive inch of his skin.
He grimaced as he retrieved the black jewellery cases from the chest of drawers, then went to find his red-haired tormentor. If she launched another attack on his defences, they would not be going anywhere, he promised his impatient senses.