ALLISE found Isobel sitting on the floor of the bathroom which lay just off the terrace, her cheek resting against the white porcelain toilet bowl. On a cry of dismay the housekeeper hurried forward. ‘Kyria, you are ill!’
It was a gross understatement. Isobel was dying inside and she didn’t think she was going to be able to stop it from happening.
‘I get the doctor—the kyrios.’
‘No!’ Isobel exploded on a thrust of frail energy. ‘No.’ She tried to calm her voice when Allise stood back and stared at her. ‘I’m all right,’ she insisted. ‘I just need to—lie down for a wh-while.’
Dragging herself to her feet, she had to steady herself at the washbasin before she could get her trembling legs to work. Stumbling out of the bathroom, she headed for the stairs, knew she would never make it up there and changed direction, making dizzily for the only sanctuary her instincts would offer up as an alternative—her mother’s room.
Back to the womb, she likened it starkly as she felt the housekeeper’s worried eyes watch her go. She was going to ring him; Isobel was sure of it. Allise would feel she had failed in her duty if she did not inform Leandros as to what she had seen.
But Leandros didn’t need informing. At about the time that Isobel received her envelope, he was receiving one himself. As he stared down at the all-too-damning photographs the phone began to ring. It was Diantha’s father; he had received an envelope too. Hot on that call came one from his mother, then an Athens newspaper with a hungry reputation for juicy gossip about the jet set. It did not take a genius to know what was unfolding here.
Leandros was on his way home even as Isobel paused at the table where the photographs lay amongst the scattered crockery. His mobile phone was ringing its cover off. With an act of bloody, blinding frustration he switched it off and tossed it onto the passenger seat with the envelope of photos. Whoever else had received copies could go to hell because if he was certain about anything, then it was that Isobel had to be looking at the same ugly evidence.
His car screeched to a halt in the driveway, kicking up clouds of dust in its wake. He left the engine running as he strode into the house. Watching him go, the gardener went to switch off the engine for him, his eyes filled with frowning puzzlement. Allise was standing in the hall with her ear to the telephone.
‘Where is my wife?’ he demanded and was already making for the stairs when the housekeeper stopped him.
‘Sh-she is in her mama’s rooms, kyrios.’
Changing direction, he headed down the hallway. He lost his jacket as he hit the terrace. His tie went and he was about to stride past the debacle that was the breakfast table and chairs, when he saw the envelope and scatter of photographs, felt sickness erupt in his stomach and anger follow it with a thunderous roar.
Pausing only long enough to gather up the evidence, he continued down the terrace and into the rooms allotted to his mother-in-law. He had not been in here since Silvia took up residence and was surprised how comfortable she had managed to make it, despite the clutter of Isobel’s photographic equipment still dotted around. Not that he cared about comfort right now, for across the room, lying curled on her mother’s bed like a foetus, was his target.
His heart tipped sideways on a moment of agony—then it grimly righted again. Snapping the top button of his shirt free with angry fingers, he approached the bed with a look upon his face that promised retribution for someone very soon.
‘Isobel.’ He called her name.
She gave no indication that she had even heard him. Was she waiting for him to go down on his knees to beg for understanding and forgiveness? Well, not this man, he thought angrily and tossed the photographs down beside her on the bed.
‘These are false,’ he announced. ‘And I expect you to believe it.’
It was a hard, tough, outright challenge. Still she did not even offer a deriding sob in response. It made him want to jump inside her skin so that she would know he could not have done this terrible thing.
‘Isobel!’ he rasped. ‘This is no time for dramatics. You are the trained photographer. I need you to tell me how they did it so I can strangle the culprit with their lies.’
‘Go away,’ she mumbled.
On a snap of impatience, he bent and caught hold of her by her waist, then lifted her bodily off the bed before firmly resettling her sitting on its edge. Going down on his haunches, he pushed the tumble of silken hair back from her face. She was as white as a sheet and her eyes looked as if someone had reached in and hollowed them out.
‘Now just listen,’ he insisted.
Her response was to launch an attack on him. He supposed she had the right, he acknowledged as he grimly held on to her until she had finally worn herself out. Eventually she sobbed out some terrible insult then tried scrambling backwards in an effort to get away. Her fingers made contact with the photographs. On a sob she picked them up.
‘You lied to me!’ she choked out thickly. ‘You said she meant nothing to you but—look—look!’ The photographs shook as she brandished them in his grim face. ‘You, standing on your yacht w-wearing nothing from what I can see, h-holding her in front of you while she’s just about covered by th-that excuse for a slip!’
‘It never—’
The photograph went lashing by his cheek, causing him to take avoiding action, and by the time he had recovered she was staring at the next one. ‘Look at you,’ she breathed in thick condemnation. ‘How can you lie there with her, sleeping like an innocent? I will never forgive you—’
She was about to send the images the way of the other when he snaked out a hand and took the rest from her.
‘You will believe me when I say these are not real!’ he insisted harshly.
Not real? Isobel stared at him through tear-glossed eyes and wondered how he dared say that when each picture was now branded on her brain!
‘I believed you when you said you hadn’t—’
‘Then continue to believe,’ he cut in. ‘And start thinking with your head instead of your heart.’
‘I don’t have a heart,’ she responded. ‘You ripped it out of my body and threw it away!’
‘Melodrama is not helping here, agape,’ he sighed, but she saw the hint of humour he was trying to keep from showing on his lips.
That humour was her complete undoing, and she began wriggling and squirming until he finally set her free to stand.
‘I’m leaving here,’ she told him as she swung to her feet.
‘Running again?’ he countered jeeringly. ‘Take care,’ he warned as he rose up also, ‘because I might just let you do it. For I will not live my life fearing the next time you are going to take to your feet and flee!’
Isobel stared at him, saw the sheer black fury darkening his face. ‘What are you angry with me for?’ she demanded bewilderedly.
‘I am not angry with you,’ he denied. ‘I am angry with—these.’ He waved a hand at the photographs. ‘You are not the only one to receive copies …’ Then he told her who else had. ‘This is serious, Isobel,’ he imparted grimly. ‘Someone is out to cause one hell of a scandal and I need your help here, not your contempt.’
With that he turned and began looking around the room with hard, impatient eyes. Spotting whatever it was he was searching for, he strode over to her old computer system and began checking that everything was plugged in. ‘You know how to do this better than I do,’ he said. ‘Show me what I need to do to bring this thing to life.’
‘It hasn’t been used for three years. It has probably died from lack of use.’
‘At least try!’ he rasped.
It was beginning to get through to her that he was deadly serious. Moving on trembling legs and with an attitude that told him she was not prepared to drop her guard, she went to stand beside him. With a flick of a couple of switches she then stood back to wait. It was quite a surprise to watch a whole array of neglected equipment burst into life.
‘Now what?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Scan those photographs into the relevant program,’ he instructed. ‘Blow them up—or whatever it is you do to them so we can study them in detail.’
‘I have already told you once. They are fakes.’
‘Sure?’
He swung on her furiously. ‘Yes, I am sure! And I would appreciate a bit of trust around here!’
‘If you shout at me once more I will walk,’ she threatened fiercely.
‘Then stop looking at me as if I am a snake; start using a bit of sense and believe me!’ Striding off, he recovered the photographs—yet again. Coming back, he set them down next to the computer screen.
‘Fakes, you say,’ she murmured.
‘Do your magic and prove me right or wrong.’
The outright challenge. Still without giving him the benefit of the doubt, she opened the lid on the flatbed scanner and prepared to work. Her mouth was tight, her eyes were cold, but with a few deft clicks of the mouse she began to carry out his instructions. If he was lying then he had to know she would find him out in a few minutes. If he was telling the truth then …
Her stomach began to churn. She was no longer sure which alternative she preferred. It was one thing believing that your estranged husband had been involved in an affair during your separation but it was something else entirely to know that someone was willing to go to such extremes to hurt other people.
‘Why is this happening?’ she questioned huskily. ‘Who do you think it is that took these? It needs a third party involved to take photographs like these, Leandros. Someone close enough to you to be in a position to catch you on film like this.’
He was standing to one side of her and she felt him stiffen; glancing up, she caught a glimpse of his bleak expression before he turned away. ‘Chloe, of course,’ he answered gruffly.
Chloe? ‘Oh, no.’ She didn’t want to believe that. Not Chloe, who adored her brother. ‘She has nothing to gain by hurting both you and her best friend!’
‘She gains what she’s always wanted,’ he countered tightly. ‘Work—work!’ he commanded as the first photograph appeared on the screen. Turning back, she clicked the mouse and the picture leapt to four times its original size. ‘All her childhood she fantasised about one of her brothers marrying her best friend,’ he continued darkly. ‘Nikos and I have ruined those fantasies, so now she is out for revenge.’
‘I don’t want to believe it.’
‘She has also been cleverer than I ever gave her credit for,’ he added cynically. ‘She damns me in your eyes. Damns both Diantha and me to Diantha’s father, who honoured me with his trust when he allowed her to stay on my yacht with me. I saw a man taking photographs of the yacht from the quay. This one,’ he flicked a finger at the screen, ‘Shows exactly how I was dressed that day.’
‘In nothing?’
‘I have a pair of shorts on, you sarcastic witch!’ He scowled. ‘He had to have been paid by someone. Scheming Chloe is the logical person. Her ultimate aim is to see you walking off with a divorce and me being forced into marrying Diantha to save her reputation!’
‘All of that is utterly nonsensical!’ Isobel protested. ‘No one goes to such drastic extremes on someone else’s behalf.’
‘Who else’s behalf?’ he challenged. ‘Diantha’s? She is being manipulated here just as ruthlessly as we are,’ he insisted. ‘Look at the evidence. Chloe sends Diantha in her stead to San Estéban. These photographs were taken there. I actually saw the guy taking this one!’
‘And the one in your bedroom?’ she prompted. ‘How did he get in there?’
He paused to frown at the question. Then the frown cleared. ‘He has to be a member of my crew,’ he decided.
‘He was too far away for me to recognise him.’
He thought he had an answer for everything. But Isobel was recalling a conversation with Eve Herakleides the night before, and suddenly she had a very different suspect to challenge Leandros’s claims.
Flattening her lips and concentrating her attention on the screen, she took only seconds to spot the first discrepancy. Within a few minutes she had circled many—a finger missing, a point on the yacht’s rail that did not quite fit. With the mouse flying busily, she copied then pasted each detail onto a separate frame, increased their size then sent them to print.
Through it all Leandros watched in silent fascination as the whole photograph was broken down and revealed for the fraud that it was. ‘Do you want me to do the same to the rest of them?’ she asked when she’d finished.
‘Not unless you need to assure yourself that they are all fakes,’ he responded coolly, gathering up his precious evidence.
It was a clean hit on her lack of trust. Isobel acknowledged it with a sigh. ‘I suppose you want me to eat humble pie now.’
‘Later,’ he replied. ‘Humble pie will not come cheap.’
But neither smiled as he said it. Fakes or not, the photographs had stolen something from them and Isobel had to ask herself if they were ever going to get it back again.
‘Leandros …’ He was striding for the door when she stopped him. ‘Chloe knows what I do for a living; remember that when you confront her.’
‘Meaning what?’ He glanced at her.
Isobel shrugged. ‘Just go there with an open mind, that’s all,’ she advised. It wasn’t up to her to shatter his faultless image of Diantha. And, anyway, she wasn’t sure enough of her own suspicions to make an issue out of it.
But she was as determined as he was to find out.
He had been gone for less than two minutes before she was printing off her second lot of copies. His car was only just turning off the driveway when she was calling a taxi for herself. The Christophoros mansion was much the same as most of the houses up here on the hill. She was greeted by a maid who showed her into a small reception room, then hurried off to get the daughter of the house.
Diantha took her time. Needing something to do, Isobel reached into her bag to search out a hair-band and snapped her hair into a pony-tail. Leandros would see this as her donning her tough-lady persona, but she didn’t feel tough. Her nerves were beginning to fray, her stomach dipping and diving on lingering nausea. She didn’t know if she had done the right thing by coming here, wasn’t even sure how she was going to tackle this—all she did know with any certainty was that Diantha had to be faced, whether guilty or innocent.
The door began to open and she swung round as Diantha appeared looking neat in a mid-blue dress and wearing a thoroughly bland expression that somehow did not suit the occasion, bearing in mind that Isobel could be a jealous wife come here to tear her limb from limb.
Indeed Diantha looked her over as if she were the marriage breaker in this room. ‘We will have to make this brief.’ There was a distinct chill to her tone. ‘My father is on his way home and he will not like to find you here.’ Then she really took the wind out of Isobel’s sails when she added smoothly, ‘Now you have seen the truth about Leandros and myself, can we hope that you will get out of our lives for good?’
Isobel’s fingers tightened on the shoulder strap to her bag. ‘So it was you who sent the photographs?’ she breathed.
Diantha’s cool nod confirmed it. It seemed a bit of a letdown that she was admitting it so easily. ‘Though I must add that anything I say to you here I will deny to anyone else,’ she made clear. ‘But you are in the way, and I am sick of being messed around by Leandros. Two weeks ago he was promising me he would divorce you and marry me, then I am being sidelined—for business reasons, of course; isn’t it always?’
‘Business reasons?’ Isobel prompted curiously.
‘The lack of a pre-nuptial agreement between the two of you put Leandros in an impossible situation.’
It was like being in the presence of some deadly force, Isobel thought with a shiver. Diantha was calm, her voice was level and Isobel could already feel herself being manipulated by the gentle insertion of the word pre-nuptial. Before she knew it Lester Miles’ warnings about the power of her own position came back to haunt her. She was seeing Leandros’s sudden change from a man ready to sever a marriage to a man eager to hang on to that marriage.
‘I have to say that I am seriously displeased at being forced to lie about our relationship while he sorts out this mess,’ Diantha continued. ‘But a man with his wealth cannot allow himself to be ripped off by a greedy wife. Nor can he afford to risk our two family names being thrown into the public arena with a scandal you will cause if you wish to turn your divorce ugly. But you mark my words, Kyria Petronades, a contract will appear before very soon, mapping out the details of any settlements in the event of your marriage reaching a second impasse.’
‘But you couldn’t wait that long,’ Isobel inserted. ‘So you decided to cause the feared scandal and get it out of the way?’
‘I am sick of having to lie to everyone,’ she announced. ‘It is time that people knew the truth.’
‘About your affair in Spain with my husband,’ Isobel prompted.
‘A relationship that began long before you left him, if you must know the truth.’ Her chin came up. ‘He visited me in Washington, DC.’
Isobel remembered the Washington trips all too well.
‘Our two weeks spent in Spain were not the first stolen weeks we managed to share together. I have no wish to hurt your feelings with this, but he was with me only yesterday, during siesta. We have an apartment in Athens where we meet most days of the week.’
‘No photographic evidence of these meetings?’ Isobel challenged.
‘It can be arranged.’
‘Oh, I am sure that it can.’ And she removed the printouts from her handbag and placed them down on the table that stood between them. Believing she knew exactly what she was being presented with, Diantha didn’t even deign to look.
‘You are nothing but a lying, conniving bitch, Diantha,’ Isobel informed her. ‘You manipulate people and adore doing it. Chloe was manipulated to get you to Spain. My mother-in-law has been beautifully manipulated by your ever-so-gentle eagerness to please and offer her up an easier alternative to me as the daughter-in-law from hell.’
‘You said it,’ Diantha responded, revealing the first hint that a steel-trap mind functioned behind the bland front.
Isobel laughed. ‘Leandros extols you for your great organisational skills—not a very appetising compliment to the woman he loves, is it?’ she added when Diantha’s spine made a revealing shift. ‘Apparently you know how to put together a great party.’ She dug her claws in. ‘As for me, well, I struggle to organise anything, but he calls me a witch and a hellion and claims I have barbs for teeth. When we make love he falls apart in my arms and afterwards he sleeps wrapped around me. Not like this.’ She stabbed a finger at the photograph. ‘Not with him occupying one side of the bed while I occupy the other.’
Black eyelashes flickered downwards, her face kept firmly under control. Now she had drawn her attention to the photographs, Isobel slid out the other one, and its enlarged partners in crime. ‘Thankfully, Leandros still has all his fingers.’ She stabbed one of her own fingers on the missing one splayed across Diantha’s stomach. ‘If he stood behind you like this, the top of your head would reach no higher than his chest, not his chin. You are short in stature, Diantha—let’s call a spade a spade here, since you wish to talk bluntly. You are not quite this slim or this curvaceous. And when you cut, shave and paste with a computer mouse it is always advisable to make sure you fill in the gaps you make, like the yacht rail here, which seems to stop for no apparent reason. A good manipulator should always be sure of all her facts and you forgot to check one small detail. This is my job.’ She stabbed at the printouts. ‘I am a professional photographer. I dealt with computer photography almost every day of my working life. So I know without even bothering to enlarge the bedroom scene that the folds of the sheet don’t quite follow a natural line.
The slight shrug of Diantha’s shoulders and indifferent expression surprised Isobel because she should have been feeling the pinch of her own culpability by now. But she just smiled. ‘You are such a fool, Isobel,’ she told her. ‘I have always known what you do for a living, and these photographs were always meant to be exposed as fakes. Indeed it is essential that I did so to allay a scandal. I merely intended to expose them myself for what they are, then suggest that you probably did these yourself as a way of increasing your power in a divorce settlement. For who else is better qualified?’
She believes she has everyone tied up in knots, Isobel realised in gaping incredulity. She is so supremely confident of her own powers of manipulation that she has stopped seeing the wood for the trees!
‘There is only one small problem with your plan, Diantha,’ Isobel said narrowly. ‘These photographs may be fakes, but I have no reason to want a divorce.’
‘But does he want you or is Leandros merely protecting his business interests?’
‘Oh, yes, I want her,’ a smooth, deep voice replied.
The two women glanced up, saw Leandros standing there and looking as if he had been for quite a long time.
‘Every minute of every waking moment,’ he added smoothly. ‘Every minute of every moment I spend lost in my dreams. You have a serious problem with your dreams, Diantha,’ he told her sombrely, then without waiting for a reply he looked at Isobel. ‘Shall we go?’
She didn’t even hesitate, walking towards this man who was her life, with her eyes loving him and his loving her by return.
But Diantha was not about to give up so easily. ‘Just because these photographs are not real, it does not mean we did not sleep together,’ she threaded in stealthily. ‘Tell her, Leandros, how we spent the nights upon your yacht. Tell her how your mama thinks she is a tart and your sister Chloe despises every breath that she takes. Tell her,’ she persisted, ‘how your whole family knew she was having an affair with some man while she was here last, and how you tried to discover who he was and even believed the child she was carrying belonged to this other lover!’
Isobel’s feet came to a shuddering standstill. Her eyes clouded as she searched his. She was looking for sorrow, for a weary shake of the head to deny what Diantha was saying! For goodness’ sake, she begged him; give me anything to say that she’s still manipulating me here!
But he’d gone as pale as she’d ever seen him. His fingers trembled as he lifted them up to run through his hair. Most damning of all, he lowered his eyes from her. ‘Come on,’ he said huskily. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Someone else was standing just behind him, and as Leandros moved Isobel saw Chloe looking white-faced. ‘Diantha, stop this,’ Chloe pleaded unsteadily. ‘I don’t understand why you—’
‘You don’t understand.’ Diantha turned on her scathingly. ‘What has it got to do with you? Your brothers used me and I will not be used!’
Brothers? Each one of them looked at her when she said this. She was no longer calm and collected, Isobel noticed. The veils of control had been ripped away and suddenly Diantha was showing her true cold and bitter self.
‘All my life I had to watch you, Chloe, being worshipped by your family of men. You have no idea what it is like to be unloved and rejected by anyone. My father rejected me because I was not a desired son. Your brother rejected me because I was not what he wanted any more.’
‘Diantha, I never—’
‘Not you,’ she flashed at Leandros. ‘Nikos! Nikos rejected me four years ago! He said we were too young to know what love was and he did not even want to know! But I knew love. I waited and waited in Washington for him to come for me. But he didn’t,’ she said bitterly. ‘You came instead, offering me those pleasant messages from home and not one from Nikos! So I came back here to Athens to make him love me! But when I arrived he was planning to marry Carlotta. I was out in the cold and there you were, Leandros, hiding in Spain with your broken heart! Well, why should we not mend together? You were thinking about it, I know you were. You can lie to her all you like, but I know that it was for me that you told Uncle Takis to begin divorce proceedings with her!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘So Takis has been talking out of line,’ he murmured silkily.
‘No!’ she denied that. ‘I have discussed this with no one.’
‘Then how did you know there was no pre-nuptial agreement?’ Isobel inserted sharply.
Diantha floundered, her mouth hovering on lies she could not find.
‘I think this has gone far enough,’ yet another voice intruded. It was Diantha’s father. ‘You have managed to stop the photographs being printed in the newspaper, Leandros?’ he enquired. At Leandros’s grim nod, he nodded also. ‘Then please leave my house and take your family with you.’
Mr Christophoros had clearly decided that his daughter had hurt enough people for one day.
The journey away was completed in near silence. Chloe sat sharing the passenger seat in Leandros’s Ferrari with Isobel, her face drawn with shock and dismay. Leandros took his sister home first, pulling up outside a house that was three times the size of his own. As she climbed out of the car, she turned back to Isobel.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered urgently. ‘I never meant—’
‘Later, Chloe,’ her brother interrupted. ‘We will all talk later but now Isobel and I have to go.’
‘But most of this is my fault!’ she cried out painfully. ‘I encouraged her to believe that she was meant for one of my brothers—’
‘Childhood stuff,’ Leandros said dismissively.
‘I let her know how much I disliked Isobel!’
Isobel’s chin went down on her chest. Chloe released a choking sob. ‘I confided everything to her and she took it all away and plotted with it. I can’t tell you how bad that makes me feel.’
Isobel could see it all. The two girls sighing over Leandros’s broken heart—as Diantha had called it. The two of them wishing that Isobel had never been born.
‘But I never knew a thing about her and Nikos,’ Chloe inserted in stifled disbelief.
‘It was nothing,’ her brother declared. ‘They dated a couple of times while you were away at college, but Nikos was made wary by her tendency towards possessiveness. He told her so and she took it badly. He was relieved when her family went to live in Washington—and I would prefer you not to mention this to him, Chloe,’ he then warned very seriously. ‘He will not appreciate the reminder at this time.’
He was talking about Nikos’s coming marriage. Chloe nodded then swallowed and tentatively touched Isobel’s arm. ‘Please,’ she murmured, ‘can you and I make a fresh start?’
A fresh start, Isobel repeated inwardly, and her eyes glazed over. Everyone wanted to make fresh starts, but how many more ugly skeletons were going to creep out of the dark cupboard before she felt safe enough to trust any one of them?
She lifted her face though, and smiled for Chloe. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. But the way her voice shook had Leandros slamming the car into gear and gunning the engine. His sister stepped back, her face pale and anxious. Isobel barely managed to get the car door shut before he was speeding away with a hissing spin of gravel-flecked tyres.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she lashed out in reaction.
‘If you are going to cry, then you will do it where I can damn well get at you,’ he thrust back roughly.
‘I am not going to cry.’
‘Tell that to someone who cannot see beyond the tough outer layer.’ He lanced her a look that almost seared off her skin. ‘I did not sleep with her—ever!’ he rasped, turned his eyes back to the road and rammed the car through its gears with a hand that resembled a white-knuckled fist. ‘I liked her! But she has poison in her soul and now I can feel it poisoning me.’ His voice suddenly turned hoarse. ‘Did I give her reason to believe what she does about me? Did I offer encouragement without realising it?’
His hand left the wheel to run taut fingers through his hair. It was instinctive for Isobel to reach across and grab the wheel.
‘You don’t need to do that,’ he gritted. ‘I am not about to drive us into a wall.’
‘Then stop acting like it.’
The car stopped with a screech of brakes. Isobel had not put on her seat belt because Chloe had been sharing her seat and the momentum took her head dangerously close to the windscreen before an arm shot out and halted the imminent clash with a fierce clenching of male muscle.
Emotions were flying about in all directions. Stress—distress! Anger—frustration. He threw open his door, climbed out and walked away a few long strides, leaving Isobel sitting there in a state of blank bewilderment as to what it was that was the matter with him.
It was her place to be this upset, surely? She had been the one who’d had to place her trust on the line ever since she came back here! She got out of the car, turned and gave the beautiful, glossy red door a very expressive slam. He spun on his heel. She glared at him across the glossy red bonnet. They were within sight of their own driveway but neither seemed to care.
‘Just who the hell do you think you are, Leandros?’ she spat at him furiously. She was still responding to the shock of almost having her head smacked up against the windscreen; her insides were crawling with all kinds of throbs and flurries. He was pale—she was pale! The sun was beating down upon them and if she could have she would have reached up and grabbed it then thrown it at his bloody selfish head! ‘What do you think her poison is doing to me? You want a divorce then you don’t want a divorce. Rumour has it that you have your next wife already picked out and waiting in the wings. Pre-nuptial agreements are suddenly the all-important topic on everyone’s lips! And I am expected to trust your word! Then I am expected to trust your word again when those photographs turn up. I even face the bitch with her so-called lies!’
‘They are lies, you know that—’
‘All I know for certain at this precise moment is that you have been working me like a puppet on a string!’ she tossed at him furiously. ‘I’ve been insulted in your boardroom—stalked around Athens—which appears is not the first time! I’ve been seduced at every available opportunity, teased over family heirlooms, paraded out in front of Athens’ finest like a trophy that was not much of a prize!’
He laughed, but it was thick and tense. She almost climbed over the car bonnet to get her claws into him! ‘Then I am forced to stare at those wr-wretched ph-photographs.’ Her throat began to work; grimly she swallowed the threatening tears. ‘Do you think because I could prove them to be fakes that they lost the power to hurt?’
‘No.’ He took a step towards the bonnet.
‘I haven’t finished!’ she thrust at him thickly, and the glinting green bolts coming from her eyes pinned him still. ‘I faced the poison—while you went chasing off to the wrong place!’ she declared hotly. ‘I listened to her say all of those things about you and still believed in you. My God,’ she choked. ‘Why was that, do you think, when we only have to look back three years to see that we were heading right down the same road again?’
‘It is not the same!’ he blasted at her.
‘It has the same nasty taste!’ she cried. ‘Your mother is prepared to try and like me for your sake and now your sister is prepared to do the same. Do I care if they like me?’ Yes, I do, she thought painfully. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said out loud. ‘I don’t think I care for you any more,’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘You don’t mean that—’
She flicked his tight features a glance and wished to hell that she did mean it. ‘Tell me about the pre-nuptial thing,’ she challenged. ‘Then go on to explain about this other man I am supposed to have fathered my child to. And then,’ she continued when he opened his mouth to answer, ‘explain to me why I have just had to listen to you bemoaning the poison that wretched woman has fed into you!’
Silence reigned. He looked totally stunned by the final question. A silver Mercedes came down the road. It stopped beside Isobel. ‘Is something wrong?’ a voice said. ‘Can we be of assistance?’
Isobel turned to stare at Theron Herakleides. Beside him in the passenger seat, her mother was bending over to peer out curiously. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can give me a lift.’ With that, she climbed into the back of the Mercedes.
‘What about Leand—?’
‘Just drive,’ she snapped. Theron looked at her in blank astonishment. He had probably never been spoken to like this before in his life! Then she put a trembling hand up to cover her equally tremulous mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, and tears began to burn her eyes.
‘Drive, Theron,’ her mother murmured quietly. Without another word, Theron did as he was told, his glance shifting to his rear-view mirror, where he saw his nephew left standing by his car looking like a man who had just been hit by a car.
Watching his uncle Theron drive away with Isobel, Leandros was feeling as if he had been hit—by an absolute hellion with a torrent that poured from her mouth.
How had she done it? How had she managed to leave him standing here, feeling like the most selfish bastard alive on this planet?
Because you are, a voice in his head told him. Because there was not a word she’d said that did not ring true.
Ah. He spun around to stare blankly at his native city spread out beneath him and shimmering in a late-morning haze, and instead saw a jigsaw of words come to dance in front of his eyes. Words like, insulted, stalked, seduced—trophy. He uttered the same tense, half-amused laugh then wasn’t laughing at all because she believed it to be the truth.
Just as she believed that he suspected their baby could have belonged to another man. His heart came to a stop, thudding as it landed at the base of his stomach as he joined that new belief with her old belief that he was glad when she miscarried. And what had he done? He’d sat beside her in his car and voiced concerns about his behaviour towards Diantha.
Was he mad? He turned around. Did she accuse him of possessing the sensitivity of a flea? Because if she did not then she should have done. Where the hell had his head been? he asked himself furiously.
What was he doing standing here when there was every chance she was packing to leave him right now?
Damn, he cursed, and climbed into his car. The engine fired; he pushed it in gear. If her suitcase was out then he was in deep trouble, he accepted as he covered the fifty yards to his driveway at breakneck speed.
Theron’s car was already parked outside the front door and empty of its passengers. Striding into the house, he didn’t think twice about where to look for her and took the stairs three at a time, arriving outside their bedroom before he paused then diverted to the room next door.
Thrusting the door open, he stepped inside. His instincts had not let him down. She was standing by the window, facing into the room with her arms folded.
Waiting for him, he noted with grim satisfaction, and closed the door. ‘I did not believe you had been unfaithful to me,’ he stated as he strode forward. ‘The only marriage contract that you and I will ever have will have to be written in my blood on my deathbed since I have no intention of letting you go before I die. I do not think of you as a trophy, a puppet or a thing of mockery. And I don’t stalk you, I follow you like some bloody faithful pet dog who does not want to be anywhere else but where you are.’
He came to a stop in front of her. Her eyes were dark, her mouth small and her hair was stuck in a pony-tail. She was wearing combat trousers and a tough-lady vest top but there were tears sliding down both smooth cheeks.
‘If I loved you any more than I do already they would have to put me away because I would be dangerous,’ he continued huskily. ‘And if I sounded bloody insensitive back there then that is because I was hurt by those photographs too.’
She stifled a small sob. He refused to reach for her. He would answer all charges and then he would touch.
‘Diantha has been a part of my family since she and Chloe were giggling schoolgirls. I believed Nikos had hurt her four years ago, I thought he had deliberately set out to turn her head and when she became serious left her flat. I even felt sorry for her so I visited whenever I was in Washington. But Nikos now tells me that he recognised her need to manipulate even then. I was wrong about her and now I am sorry—and don’t think those tears are going to save you,’ he added, ‘because they are not.’
‘Save me from what?’
‘Retribution,’ he answered. ‘For daring to believe I could question the parentage of our child.’
‘Your face—’
‘My face was pained, I know,’ he admitted. ‘There is only one person who could have put such a filthy idea in her head and that is Takis. And how do I know that? Because he once dared to suggest such a thing to me.’
‘Takis …?’ Her eyelashes fluttered, tear-tipped and sparkling.
He rasped out a sigh that fell between anger and hurt. ‘I was miserable, you were miserable,’ he reminded her. ‘We were living within a vacuum where we did not communicate. Takis was the closest thing I had to a father back then. He asked about our marriage, and when I stupidly said in a weak moment that I was worried about you because you were forever going missing he suggested that maybe I should find out where you go.’
He clamped his mouth shut over the rest of that conversation. What it contained did not matter here. What did was that his most trusted friend and employer had been passing on confidential information. ‘Now I find he has been disclosing confidential information about pre-nuptial contracts and the lack of.’
‘Did he set up the photographer too?’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘I am hoping he did not. I am hoping that the photographs were all Diantha’s idea. Has it occurred to you that she had taken those things before she knew that you and I would get back together? Which means she always planned to use them whether or not you were still on the scene. A safeguard,’ he called it. ‘In case I did not come through with the marriage proposal. How do you think it makes me feel to know I was open to such manipulation?’
‘An idiot, I guess.’ She offered him a shrug that said she believed he deserved it. Insolence did not begin to cover the expression on her beautiful face.
His eyes narrowed. Challenge was suddenly back in the air. Then without warning she issued a thick sob then fell into his arms—because she belonged there.
‘I’ve had a h-horrible day,’ she sobbed against him.
‘I can change that,’ he promised, picked her up and took her to the bed. They could make love—why not? It was the most effective cleanser of poison that he knew of.
Afterwards they went downstairs to find their home overrun by people who wanted to make amends for all the ugliness. His mother was there, his sister, Chloe, even Nikos had come with Carlotta pinned possessively to his side. Silvia and Theron were looking shell-shocked because someone had run the whole sequence of events by them.
No Takis Konstantindou though, he noticed, and felt a short wave of anger-cum-regret flood his mind. Takis was out, and he probably knew it by now. Diantha’s father would have seen to it. He was a man of honour despite what his daughter was.
Eve arrived with Ethan Hayes, carrying a crate of champagne. ‘To welcome Isobel back into the fold,’ Eve announced, but they all knew that she’d heard about today’s events too.
‘You don’t need jungle drums up here,’ Isobel whispered to Leandros. ‘The rumours get round on a current of air!’
But her cheeks were flushed and she was happy. The doorbell sounded and two minutes later another visitor stepped onto the sunny terrace. ‘My God, I don’t believe it,’ Leandros gasped in warm surprise—while everyone else was thrown into silence by the sight of the dauntingly aloof Felipe Vazquez, while he appeared taken aback by so many curious faces. ‘When did you get into town?’
‘My apologies for the intrusion,’ he murmured stiffly.
‘No intrusion at all,’ Leandros assured and took him to meet his beautiful wife, who stared up at his friend as if what she was seeing lit a vision in her head.
Leandros grinned as he watched it happen. ‘No,’ he bent to murmur close to her ear. ‘Felipe is Spanish, not Venezuelan.’
‘Oh,’ she pouted up at him. ‘What a terrible shame.’
The afternoon took on a festive quality. By the time everyone drifted away again, Isobel was looking just a little bewildered. ‘We seem to have become very popular all of a sudden,’ she said.
‘Too popular,’ he answered. ‘After Nikos’s wedding you and I are flying to the Caribbean to gatecrash his honeymoon,’ he said decisively.
‘But we can’t do that!’ Isobel protested.
‘Why not?’ he countered. ‘He intends to cruise on my yacht. I intend that we stay so stationary that it will be an effort to move from the bed to the terrace. But for now,’ he began to stalk her, ‘you owe me something I am about to collect.’
‘Owe you what?’ she demanded.
‘Humble pie?’ he softly reminded her.