Modern Romance May 2020 Books 5-8

He took her by the arm and led her out of the villa and into the passenger seat of his car.

Sasha took in the view of Athens as they came down from the hills and entered the ancient city. The view was helping to distract her from the proximity of Apollo’s all too masculine presence beside her.

The city was bustling, full of young people out on the streets, enjoying the weekend, laughing and enjoying life. She could see the Acropolis standing majestically over the city, like a sentinel. ‘Have I been to the Acropolis?’ she asked, as the thought occurred to her.

Apollo glanced at her, slowing to a stop at a set of lights. ‘No, you didn’t express an interest in seeing it.’

Sasha frowned. It was so disconcerting that someone else knew more about her than she did. Before long, they were driving into a wide leafy street with tall exclusive townhouses, and then through huge wrought-iron gates manned by serious-looking security men. They pulled up outside what could only be described as a neo-classical mansion.

Lots of people were milling around outside, then slowly making their way inside. Women dressed in long glittering dresses, men dressed like Apollo, in tuxedoes.

Nerves erupted like butterflies in her belly. Again, she regretted ever saying anything about coming. But the car had stopped and Apollo was uncoiling his tall body out of the car and handing the keys to a young man.

Then he was opening her door and holding out a hand. She took a deep breath and let him help her out. Not even her awareness of him was able to eclipse her nerves. Her palms were clammy. She didn’t belong in a place like this and she didn’t need to regain her memory to know that.

CHAPTER FOUR

APOLLO’S HAND WAS on Sasha’s elbow, guiding her through the throng. He noticed the looks from his peers. The widening eyes as they registered his wife by his side. He gritted his jaw. He’d never asked for this—to be married—but he’d been surprised at what a difference it had made. Much as he hated to admit it, Sasha had been right in her estimation of the worth of having a wife by your side.

It made his married colleagues less nervous. It kept predatory women at bay. And it had lent a more stable veneer to his business. A couple of business associates he’d been trying to meet with for years had finally agreed to meetings and Apollo had realised that it had been because they were family men and they hadn’t totally trusted him when he’d been a bachelor. He’d been seen as a rogue operator.

He looked down at Sasha to check how she was reacting and saw her expression. Genuinely awed, as if she’d never been in this kind of environment before. Certainly not how she’d reacted the first time he’d brought her to an event. Then she’d looked as entitled as everyone else here. Or, at least, she’d tried to.

Now she wore the kind of expression that one would never see in a place like this because everyone was too used to this level of luxury, or wouldn’t be caught dead admitting to being impressed. Or too cynical.

To his surprise, her reaction reminded him of how he’d felt when he’d first started being invited along to high society events: out of his depth and as if he didn’t belong.

He quickly quashed the sense of empathy. Sasha had led him a merry dance for months now, and she owed him. She seemed determined to act the part of his wife again and he’d be an idiot not to take advantage of that. After all, they wouldn’t be married for much longer—as soon as she had fully recuperated—

She interrupted his thoughts, asking, ‘What is this place?’

‘It’s the French Ambassador’s residence. He’s hosting this evening. His wife died of cancer some years ago and now he and his family host this ball every year.’

‘Oh, that’s sad.’

Apollo looked at her suspiciously. But she seemed genuinely concerned. A little frown between her eyes. Mouth turned down.

Sasha was unaware of the speculative look from her husband. She was too consumed and awed by her surroundings. She’d never seen such glittering opulence. The ceilings had elaborate frescoes and the walls seemed to be made out of gold.

Hundreds of candles and sparkling chandeliers imbued everything with a golden glow. It truly was another world. She was sure she’d never seen so many beautiful people in one place. Or maybe she had, if she’d been serving them drinks. But not like this...not as one of them.

Frustration bit at her insides. She hated this...not knowing. Being at the mercy of her mind choosing to reveal memories totally at random. When it chose to. Like when she’d seen Apollo in the tuxedo.

To distract herself, Sasha tried to tune into the conversation Apollo was having with some men, but she gave up as it was in Greek, or other languages she didn’t understand.

Waiters came around offering champagne and canapés. Sasha was too afraid to eat in case she ruined her dress. Then they were led into another large and impressive room with round tables set around a small stage. They sat down and a charity auction took place. The items up for auction included cars, date nights with famous celebrities and even a small island off the coast of Ireland.

Sasha gasped when that lot was announced. ‘That’s outrageous!’

Apollo looked at her and his mouth twisted slightly. ‘That’s the super-rich.’

Then a lot came up for a luxury yacht. To her shock and surprise, Apollo started bidding on it. Within a few short minutes people were clapping him on the back and cheering. He’d paid an extortionate amount of money for it.

Sasha was in shock. ‘You just bought a yacht.’

He looked at her. ‘Well, I already have an island and an island isn’t much use without a yacht.’

He said that without any discernible sense of awe that he owned such fantastical things. In fact, he almost sounded...bored.

‘You don’t seem very excited to own such things.’

Apollo felt something hitch in his chest at Sasha’s comment and the way her blue eyes seemed to be looking right inside him, to the place where a sense of novelty had become something else. Something less novel. When had that happened?

He shrugged nonchalantly when he felt tight inside, not relaxed, ‘Like I said, an island needs a yacht.’

‘But will you use it?’

Apollo was surprised at the hollow feeling that seemed to spread outwards from his centre. He hadn’t even consciously bought the yacht with a view to using it. More as a reflex to do what was expected of him. But now he couldn’t help imagining the vessel bobbing in azure waters under a clear sky, and this woman laid out in all her slender, pale glory...red hair spread around her head—

The crowd seemed to stand en masse as the auction came to an end and Apollo seized the opportunity to divert Sasha’s attention. Since when had his wife had the ability to probe so insightfully and deeply with just a casual question?

He stood up and reached for her hand. ‘It’s time to move on.’

Sasha had a very keen sense that Apollo hadn’t appreciated her innocent questions. Clearly she’d hit on a nerve and maybe she was being spectacularly naive: in this world, islands and yachts were mere luxury trinkets to be added to a portfolio of even more luxury items.

There was just something about his lack of enthusiasm that struck at the heart of her, making her feel a little...sad.

The crowd was moving into yet another glorious room, even bigger. A ballroom. There was an orchestra and a singer singing sultry jazz songs. The lighting was dim and intimate. French doors were open, leading out to a terrace lined with flaming lanterns. Dusk was falling and the sky was a deep lavender colour. It was like a scene from a fairy-tale or a movie.

Her hand was still in Apollo’s and she was very conscious of his long fingers wrapped around hers, so much so that she didn’t even notice that he was leading her onto the dance floor. When she realised where they were, it was too late. He was drawing her in front of him and wrapping one arm across her back.

She went rigid in his arms from the impact of his body against hers as much because of where they were; in the middle of a dance floor. Around them, couples were moving sinuously to the music. Graceful and elegant. At ease.

Apollo started to move, taking Sasha with him, and she hissed, ‘I don’t even know if I can dance.’

‘Just follow my lead.’

After a few robotic moments, Apollo pulled her even closer to his body. Sasha couldn’t fight the force it took to remain rigid and so she softened against him.

She was surrounded by him, his steely strength. They were so close she could smell the sharp tang of his aftershave. Her heels put her even closer to his jaw and mouth. She wanted to press her lips there, taste his skin. Immediately she tensed again and he lowered his head, saying in her ear, ‘Relax. Just let me lead.’

After a few torturous seconds she allowed herself to soften again. She realised they were moving around the floor with relative grace. She looked up, avoiding looking at his jaw and the faint line of stubble.

‘Where did you learn to dance?’

She felt the tension come into his body. ‘My mother. She loved to dance, she used to dance with my father all the time.’

‘That’s romantic.’

He looked down at her, his expression anything but romantic. ‘It was, until he had the accident and couldn’t dance any more.’

Sasha thought of what he’d told her about getting revenge for his father’s death. She shivered slightly, thinking of how ruthless he must have been. Single-minded. But she remembered him being like that with her—until she’d agreed to go for a drink with him.

She wondered how on earth she’d caught his eye in London when they’d been surrounded by women as beautiful as the ones here tonight, in their peacock dresses and glittering jewels. Even though she was dressed like them now, she felt dowdy and colourless in comparison.

She noticed one dark brunette pass by in the arms of her partner, her voluptuous body poured into a silver sheath dress. She also noticed how she looked at Apollo, and then at Sasha, dismissing her with a flick of her hair. No competition.

The song came to an end and Sasha seized the opportunity to escape for a moment, hating this feeling of insecurity. Especially when she thought of how close she’d come last night to showing Apollo how much he affected her. When he clearly felt nothing similar. She pulled back from Apollo’s arms. ‘Excuse me, I just need to go to the bathroom.’

Apollo watched Sasha hurry from the dance floor. Her face had been the colour of milk. He couldn’t stop the spike of concern. Was she feeling ill? Was it her memory? Was she remembering more?

He cursed and made his way over to the bar. Concern for his wife was a novel and unwelcome sentiment. Also unwelcome was the raging arousal still lingering in his blood after that dance. Holding her so close, smelling her scent. The thin fabric of her dress doing little to hide how her slender curves had felt against his body...no other woman had ever had such an effect on him.

He took women he desired to bed. He told them up front that he wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Except her. Everything about his experience with her had been so novel, and that’s why he’d let his guard down momentarily. A moment she’d exploited when she’d come to him in London a month after their night together with her shock announcement.

But all of that was in danger of being forgotten with the rush of hot desire in his blood. Clouding his judgement. Blunting his control. Changing things. He should never have agreed to let her join him tonight. They weren’t a couple.

They never would have married if it hadn’t been for—

Apollo saw Sasha return to the room. Her head was turning left and right, clearly searching for him.

She looked vulnerable. Out of place. He saw more than one man look at her twice, caught by her fresh-faced beauty. She stood out in a crowd of rich and jaded cynics. And that’s why she’d appealed to him that very first night.

But it had all been a mirage. Her memory loss might very well be real, but underneath it lay the true Sasha Miller. A liar and a mercenary bitch. It wouldn’t be long before she showed her true colours again. At that moment, as if hearing his thoughts, she saw him and their eyes locked across the room. Apollo vowed not to forget who she really was.

The journey winding back up the hills to Apollo’s villa was taken in silence. Sasha was engrossed in her own thoughts. The questions buzzing in her brain were growing increasingly loud and hard to ignore. Especially after tonight when she’d gone out in public, pretending to the world that she was this man’s wife. When reality couldn’t be further from that truth.

Apollo parked the car at the foot of the steps leading up to the front door of the villa. Sasha turned to him in the gloom of the car. ‘Why did you let me come with you tonight?’

Apollo put his hands on the wheel. ‘Primarily because I didn’t expect you to be ready on time. You never were before.’

‘So that would have been your excuse for leaving me behind.’

He looked at her and shrugged minutely, unapologetic.

Sasha shook her head. ‘What happened, Apollo? Why are we like this? You liked me in London. You pursued me...asked me for a drink. Took me for dinner.’

Took me to bed?

She couldn’t remember those details but she sensed yes, because her body was attuned to his on a level that she couldn’t deny. And would a man like Apollo have married her without sleeping with her? He didn’t strike her as the traditional type.

Was she? Had she been a virgin?

‘You really want to get into this now?’

Once again she wasn’t sure. Did she want to know everything? But she heard herself say, ‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure you’re ready?’

Sasha swallowed the rising fear. ‘I need to know. I feel like I’m the only one left out of a secret.’

‘Very well. But not here—inside.’

A feeling of panic eclipsed the fear as Sasha followed Apollo inside the villa. Was she really ready for this? No. But she knew she couldn’t continue not knowing either.

It was quiet. The staff had gone home or were in bed. He led the way into one of the less formal drawing rooms, flicking on low lights.

He went over to a drinks cabinet, tugging at the bow-tie around his neck. He looked back at her, ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Will I need one?’ Sasha joked, but it felt hollow.

He arched a brow and she said, ‘A small brandy, please.’ She wasn’t even sure if she’d ever had brandy before but felt like it might be necessary.

Apollo poured a drink for himself and brought her over a small tumbler. She took a sniff and wrinkled her nose at the strong smell. She took a tentative sip and the liquid slid down her throat and into her stomach, leaving a trail of fire and a lingering afterglow of heat. It wasn’t unpleasant.

Apollo shrugged off his jacket and Sasha wished he hadn’t because now she could see the play of muscles under the thin material of his shirt. He faced her. ‘What do you want to know?

Everything.

She swallowed. Where to start? ‘Did we sleep together?’

‘Yes. We spent one night together.’

An instant flush of heat landed in Sasha’s belly that had nothing to do with the alcohol. Her instinct had been right. She’d slept with this man.

That was why her body remembered.

But she didn’t.

She swallowed. ‘The night we had dinner in... The Shard?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, then you came back to my apartment.’

Ridiculously she almost felt like apologising for not being able to remember. Instinctively she felt that it had been memorable, and that a man like Apollo wasn’t easily forgotten.

Her hand gripped the glass. ‘Was I...? Was it my first time?’

His jaw clenched. ‘I believed it was, yes. But since then...let’s just say that I can’t be sure you didn’t make it seem that way.’

Sasha felt something like shame creep up inside her. ‘Why would I lie about being a virgin?’

He looked at her and she couldn’t escape that green gaze or the clear admonishment. ‘To make yourself appear more innocent than you were. Because you thought it would appeal to me, a jaded cynic? Who knows?’

‘I didn’t tell you beforehand?’

He shook his head. ‘You said you were afraid that if I’d known how inexperienced you were, I wouldn’t want you.’

Sasha sat down on a seat behind her, her legs feeling distinctly wobbly.

‘What happened then?’

Apollo drank the contents of his glass and put it down carefully. He faced her and folded his arms across his chest. He looked like a warrior, preparing for battle. All sinew and muscle. Not an inch of softness.

‘After that night we went our separate ways.’

Sasha absorbed that. Had it been a mutual decision? She shied away from asking that question now. It was enough to absorb that he’d been her first lover.

Or had he?

She felt an instinctive need to reject his claim that she might not have been innocent. But how could she defend herself when she didn’t know for sure?

She took another sip of the fiery drink, her hand not quite steady. ‘If we went our separate ways...then how...did we end up here, married?’

For a second her heart palpitated. Maybe he’d come after her? Maybe one night hadn’t been enough?

He paused for a moment and then he said, ‘Because a month after that night, you came to my offices in London and you told me that you were pregnant with my child.’

Sasha stood up slowly, there was a roaring sound in her ears and she had to shake her head to clear it. ‘I’m sorry... I what?’

He spoke slowly. ‘You told me that you were pregnant with my child.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE WORD SANK into Sasha’s head but didn’t make sense. Pregnant. She put a hand to her belly but it was flat. Something occurred to her and she felt her blood drain south. The glass fell out of nerveless fingers but she barely noticed Apollo stride forward to pick it up and take her arm, pushing her gently back into the chair.

She looked up at him. ‘Did I lose it?’

How could she not know if she’d lost her own baby? Was that why Apollo hated her? For losing their baby?

Both hands were on her belly now as if that could help her to remember something so huge...so cataclysmic.

But Apollo was shaking his head. ‘No. You didn’t lose it, because you were never pregnant in the first place. You deliberately lied about being pregnant to get me to marry you, Sasha.’

She hadn’t been pregnant.

In the midst of the relief that she hadn’t forgotten such a seismic event, Apollo’s words sank in.

‘You deliberately lied. To get me to marry you.’

Sasha’s first reaction was denial. Rejection. She shook her head. ‘No... I wouldn’t have said that. I couldn’t have done something like that...’

‘But you did,’ Apollo countered curtly.

She was glad she was sitting down because she was pretty sure she would have collapsed otherwise. ‘I... I told you I was pregnant. But I wasn’t?’

He nodded. His face was impossibly grim.

She tried to make sense of it all, and also the gut-wrenching knowledge that he hadn’t come after her, because she’d been the one to go to him in the end. ‘But why would I do such a thing?’

His mouth went thin. ‘You really have to ask that question? We slept together and you saw an opportunity.’

He indicated with a hand. ‘Look around you. You hungered for a better life and you were going to use me to get it.’

A moment ago Sasha had felt as if her legs wouldn’t support her but now she stood again, too agitated to keep sitting. She paced back and forth. ‘But that’s...’ She stopped. ‘That’s an awful thing to do.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed.

She struggled to recall any hint of what might have led her to do such a drastic thing but her mind stayed annoyingly blank.

‘Maybe I believed I was pregnant? Did we...use protection?’

His whole body bristled. ‘Of course. I would never be so lax. But I will admit that I didn’t check afterwards. There’s always a possibility of failure and you capitalised on that, sowing the seed of doubt in my mind.’

‘But how were you so sure I’d lied about the pregnancy?’

‘I had my suspicions when you showed no signs of pregnancy and then after an...incident you admitted it was a lie.’

‘An incident...?’

He nodded and paced away from her, turned back. ‘I was in London on business and came back after a panicked call from Rhea. You were hosting a party with some new-found friends.’

The way Apollo’s lip curled on friends told her what he’d thought of them. ‘I found you snorting cocaine and drinking. When you’d sobered up you admitted it had been a lie to trap me.’

Sasha went back to the chair and sat down again. Reeling. She felt cold and wrapped her arms around herself.

She forced herself to look at Apollo. She felt deep in her bones that she wouldn’t have done such heinous things—lying about being pregnant, taking drugs—couldn’t have. And yet why would he lie? This explained his antipathy and also the way Rhea and Kara had looked at her like an unexploded bomb on her return from the hospital.

She went even colder as she absorbed the full extent of everything he’d told her. ‘You didn’t want to marry me.’

His jaw tightened. ‘No.’ Just that. No.

Why not? trembled on her lips but she didn’t have to ask that question. He hadn’t been interested in her after their night together in London. Her innocence must have been a huge turn-off.

Desperately trying to salvage something positive, she said, ‘But in London you took me for dinner...to your apartment... You liked me then?’ She hated how insecure she sounded.

A sense of exposure hit Apollo again. His voice was taut with self-recrimination. ‘You captivated me. Briefly. You were different.’

‘Different from what?’

Sasha looked so guileless. Pale. Eyes huge.

Was she really faking this amnesia? Was it too convenient that she was remembering snippets but not everything? Was she laughing at him? Forcing him to articulate why he’d wanted her?

But something uneasy in his gut told him that she couldn’t be faking it. She looked too tortured.

He said, ‘Different from everyone else. Other women.’

Twin flags of pink made her cheeks flush and for a moment Apollo was rewarded with a flashback to watching her face flush with pleasure as she’d moved under him, around him.

She said tightly, ‘You mean I wasn’t as sophisticated.’

Apollo had to use every atom of his control to counter the rush of desire. Damn her. ‘You caught my eye. You were refreshingly unaffected. Open. Friendly. But it was all a lie.’

Sasha remembered feeling invisible that night. Until he’d looked directly at her, and the flash of pure heat that had gone through her body. Her tray of drinks had wobbled precariously and he’d stepped forward and steadied it. His lazy, charming smile.

‘Promise to meet me for a drink and I’ll give the tray back.’

She couldn’t remember sleeping with him or the aftermath, but she could imagine all too easily how he would have laid it out. Telling her not to expect more. A man like this would have been used to such scenarios with women. Had she been so desperate that she’d begged for more? She felt ashamed for herself.

In a way now Sasha was glad she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. This was humiliating enough without recalling in excruciating detail how banal the experience must have been for a man of the world like him. To sleep with a virgin. She’d obviously been a novelty for a jaded billionaire and her appeal hadn’t lasted long.