A Passionate Marriage

Yes, he confirmed. Diantha was good for him. She refocused his mind on those things that should matter, like the meeting he should be attending right now.

‘You’re asking for trouble dressed like that,’ Silvia Cunningham announced in her usual blunt manner.

Isobel took a step back to view herself in the mirror. ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ All she saw was a perfectly acceptable brown tailored suit with a skirt that lightly hugged her hips and thighs to finish at a respectable length just below her slender knees. The plain-cut zip-up jacket stopped at her waist and beneath it she wore a staunchly conventional button-through cream blouse. Her hair was neat, caught up in a twist and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. She was wearing an unremarkable flesh-coloured lipstick, a light dusting of eye-shadow and some black mascara, but that was all.

In fact she could not look more conservative if she tried to be, she informed that hint of a defiant glint she could see burning in her green eyes.

‘What’s wrong with that suit is that it’s an outright provocation,’ her mother said. ‘The wretched man never could keep his hands off you at the worst of times. What do you think he’s going to want to do when you turn up wearing a suit with a definite slink about it?’

‘I can’t help my figure!’ Isobel flashed back defensively. ‘It’s the one you gave to me, along with the hair and the eyes.’

‘And the temper,’ Silvia nodded. ‘And the wilful desire to let him see what it is he’s passing up.’

‘Passing up?’ Those green eyes flashed. ‘Do I have to remind you that I was the one who left him three years ago?’

‘And he was the one who did not bother to come and drag you back again.’

Rub it in, why don’t you? Isobel thought. ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said and began searching for her handbag. ‘I have a meeting to go to.’

‘You shouldn’t be going to this meeting at all!’

‘Please don’t start again.’ Isobel sighed. They had already been through this a hundred times.

‘I agree that it is time to end your marriage, Isobel,’ her mother persisted none the less, ‘and I am even prepared to admit that the letter from Leandros’s lawyer brought the best news I’d heard in two long years!’

Looking at the way her mother was struggling to stand with the aid of her walking frame, Isobel understood where she was coming from when she said that.

‘But I still think you should have conducted this business through a third party,’ she continued, ‘and, looking at the way you’ve dressed yourself up, I am now absolutely positive that coming face to face with him is a mistake!’

‘Sit down—please,’ Isobel begged. ‘Your arms are shaking. You know what they said about overdoing it.’

‘I will sit when you stop being so pig-stubborn about this!’

A grin suddenly flashed across Isobel’s face. ‘Pot calling the kettle black,’ she said.

Her mother’s mouth twitched. If Isobel ever wanted to know where she got her stubbornness from then she only had to look at Silvia Cunningham. The hair, the eyes, even her strength of will came from this very determined woman. Though all of those features in her mother had taken a severe battering over the last two years since a dreadful car accident. Silvia was recovering slowly, but the damage to her spine had been devastating. Fortunately—and her mother was one for counting her blessings—her mind was still as bright as a polished button and unwaveringly determined to get her full mobility back.

But Sylvia had a tendency to overdo it. Only a few weeks ago she had taken a bad fall. She hadn’t broken anything but she’d bruised herself and severely shaken her confidence. It had also shaken Isobel’s confidence about leaving her alone throughout the day while she was at work. Then Leandros’s letter had arrived to make life even more complicated. It had been easier to just bring Silvia with her than to leave her behind then worry sick for every minute she was away from her.

On a tut of impatience Isobel went to catch up the nearest chair and settled it behind her mother’s legs. Silvia lowered herself into it without protest, which said a lot about how difficult she’d been finding it to stand. But that was her mother, Isobel thought as she bent to kiss her smooth cheek. She was a fighter. The fact that she was still of this world and able to hold her own in an argument was proof of it.

‘Look,’ Isobel said, coming down to her mother’s level and moving the walking frame out of the way so that she could claim her hands. ‘All right, I confess that I’ve dressed like this for a reason. But it has nothing to do with trying to make Leandros regret this divorce.’ It went much deeper than that, and her darkened eyes showed it. ‘He did nothing but criticise my taste in clothes. When he did, I was just too stubborn to make even one small concession to his opinion of what his wife should look like, wear or behave.’

‘Quite right too.’ Her beautiful, loyal mother nodded. ‘Pretentious oaf.’

‘Well, I mean to show him that when I have the freedom to choose what the heck I want to wear, then I can be as conventional as anyone.’

A pair of shrewd old eyes looked into their younger matching pair, and saw cracks a mile wide in those excuses just waiting for her daughter to fall right in.

A knock sounded at the door. It would be Lester Miles, Isobel’s lawyer. With a hurried smile, Isobel got up to leave. But her mother refused to let go of her hand.

‘Don’t let him hurt you again,’ she murmured urgently.

Isobel’s sudden flash of annoyance took Silvia by surprise. ‘Whatever else Leandros did to me, he never set out to hurt me, Mother.’ Mother said it all. For Silvia was Mum or sweetheart, but only ever Mother when she was out of line. ‘We were in love, but were wrong for each other. Learning to accept that was painful for us both.’

Silvia held her tongue in check and accepted a second kiss on her cheek while Isobel wondered what the heck she was doing defending a man whose treatment of her had been so indefensible!

What was the matter with her? Was it nerves? Was she more stressed about this meeting than she was prepared to admit? Hurt her? What else could Leandros do that could hurt her more than he’d already done three years ago?

Another knock at the door and she was turning towards it, her mind in a sudden hectic whirl. She tried to fight it, tried to stay calm. ‘What are you going to do while I’m out?’ she asked as she walked towards the door.

‘Clive has hired a car. We are going to do some sightseeing.’

Clive. Isobel’s mouth tightened. There was another point of conflict she had not yet addressed. Clive Sanders was their neighbour and very good friend. He was also what Isobel supposed she could call the new man in her life. Or that was what he could be if Isobel gave Clive the green light.

Clive had somehow managed to invite himself along on this trip—aided and abetted by her mother, she was sure. The first she’d known about it was when she’d been in the hotel foyer last night and happened to see him arrive. Clive had just smiled at her burst of annoyance, touched a soothing hand to her angry cheek and said innocently, ‘I am here for your mother. You’re supposed to be pleased by the surprise, you ungrateful thing.’

But she had been far from pleased or grateful. Too many people seemed to believe they had a right to interfere in her life. Clive insisted the trip to Athens fitted in with his plans for a much-needed break. Her mother insisted it made her feel more secure to have a man like Clive around. Isobel thought there was a conspiracy between the two of them, which involved Clive keeping an eye on her in case she went totally off the rails when she met up with Leandros again.

But she knew differently. For all that she’d just defended Leandros, she knew there was not a single chance that seeing him was going to send her toppling back into the madness of their old love affair. She didn’t hate him, but she despised him for the way he had treated her. He’d killed her confidence and her spirit and, finally, her love.

‘Don’t let him tire you out,’ was her clipped comment to Silvia about Clive’s presence here.

‘He’s a fully trained physiotherapist,’ Silvia pointed out. ‘Give him the benefit of some sense.’ Which was her mother’s way of making it known that she knew Isobel disapproved of him being here. ‘And Isobel,’ Silvia added as she was about to pull the door open, ‘a brown leather suit is not conventional by any stretch of the imagination, so stop kidding yourself that you’re out to do anything but make that man sit up and take note.’

Isobel left the room without bothering to answer, startling Lester Miles with the abruptness with which she appeared. His eyes widened then slid down over the leather suit before carefully hooding in a way that told her he thought her attire inappropriate too.

Maybe it was. Her chin went up. Suddenly she was fizzing like a simmering pot ready to explode because her mother was right—she was out to blow Leandros right out of his shoes.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

Lester Miles just nodded and fell into step beside her. He was young and he was eager and she had picked him out at random from the Yellow Pages. Yes, she was dressed for battle, because she didn’t think she needed a lawyer to fire her shots for her—though she was happy for him to come along and play the stooge.

For today was redemption day. Today she intended to take back all of those things that Leandros had wrenched from her and walk away a whole person again. She didn’t want his money or to discuss settlements. She had nothing he could want from her, unless he planned to fight over a gold wedding ring and a few diamond trinkets that had made his mother stare in dismay when she’d found out that her son had given them to Isobel.

Family heirlooms, she recalled. ‘A bit wasted on you, don’t you think?’ his sister Chloe had said. But then, dear Mama and Chloe had not been in the bedroom when the precious heirlooms had been her only attire. They’d not seen the way their precious boy had decked out his wife in every sparkle he could lay his hands on—before he enjoyed the pleasure they gave.

Those same heirlooms still lay languishing in a safety deposit box right here in Athens. Leandros was welcome to them as far as she was concerned. It was going to be interesting to discover just what he was willing to place on the table for their safe return—before she told him she wanted nothing from him, then gave him back his damned diamonds and left with her pride!

The journey across Athens in a taxi took an age in traffic that hardly seemed to move. Lester Miles kept on quizzing her as to what was required of him, but she answered in tight little sentences that gave him no clue at all.

‘You are in such a powerful position, Mrs Petronades,’ he pointed out. ‘With no pre-nuptial agreement you are entitled to half of everything your husband owns.’

Isobel blinked. She hadn’t given a single thought to a pre-nuptial agreement or the lack of one, come to that. Was this why Leandros wanted to see her personally? Was he out to charm her into seeing this settlement thing from his point of view? The stakes had quite suddenly risen. A few family heirlooms didn’t seem to matter any more when you put them in the giant Petronades pot of gold.

‘Negotiations will stand or fall on which of you wants this divorce more,’ Lester Miles continued. ‘As it was your husband who instigated proceedings, I think we can safely say that power is in your hands.’

‘You’ve done your homework,’ she murmured.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It is what you hired me to do.’

‘Does that mean you might know why my husband has suddenly decided he wants this divorce?’ she enquired curiously.

‘I have not been able to establish anything with outright proof,’ the lawyer warned her, then looked so uncomfortable Isobel felt that fizz in her stomach start up again. ‘But I do believe there is another woman involved. She goes by the name of Miss Diantha Christophoros. She is from one of the most respected families in Greece, my sources tell me…’

His sources couldn’t be more right, Isobel agreed as she shifted restlessly in recognition of the Greek beauty’s name. A union between the Petronades and Christophoros families would be the same as founding a dynasty. Mama Petronades must be so very pleased.

‘She spent some time with your husband on his yacht recently,’ her very efficient lawyer continued informatively. ‘Also, your brother-in-law—Nicolas Petronades—will be marrying Carlotta Santorini next week. Rumour has it that once his brother is married your husband would like to follow suit. It could be an heir thing,’ he suggested. ‘Powerful families like the Petronades prefer to keep the line of succession clear cut.’

An heir thing, Isobel repeated. Felt tears sting the backs of her eyes and the fizz happening inside her turn to an angry ache.

To hell with you, Leandros, she thought bitterly.

CHAPTER TWO

TO HELL with you, Isobel repeated fifteen minutes later, when finally they came face to face in the elegant surroundings of Leondros’s company boardroom with all its imposing wood panelling and fancy portraits of past masters.

Here stood the latest in a long line of masters, she observed coldly. Leandros Petronades, lean, dark and as arrogant as ever. A man built to break hearts, as she should know.

He stood six feet two inches tall and wore a grey suit, white shirt and a grey silk tie that drew a line down the length of a torso made up of tensile muscle wrapped in silk-like bronze skin. He hadn’t changed, not so much as an inch of him; not the aura of leashed power beneath the designer clothing, or the sleek, handsome structure of his face. His hair was still that let-me-touch midnight-black colour, his eyes dark like the richest molasses ever produced, and his mouth smooth, slim, very masculine—the mouth of a born sensualist.

She wanted to reach out and slap his face. She wanted to leap on him and beat at his adulterous chest with her fists. The anger, the pain, the black, blinding pulse of emotional fury was literally throbbing along her veins. It was as if the last three years hadn’t happened. It could have been yesterday that she had walked out of his life. Diantha Christophoros of all women, she was thinking. Diantha, the broken-hearted one who had had to be taken out of Athens by her family when Leandros arrived there with his shocking new wife.

Did he think she didn’t know about her? Did he really believe his awful sister would have passed up the opportunity to let her know what he had thrown away in the name of hot sex? Did he think Chloe would have kept silent about the trips he made to Washington D.C. to visit his broken-hearted ex?

I hate you, her eyes informed him while the anger sang in her blood. She didn’t speak, she didn’t want to. And as they stared at each other along half the length of his impressive boardroom table the silence screamed like a banshee in everyone’s ears. His uncle Takis was there but she refused to look at him. Lester Miles stood somewhere behind her, watchful and silent as the grave. Leandros didn’t make a single move to come and greet her, his dark eyes drifting over her as if they were looking at a snake.

Well, that just about says it all, she thought coldly. His family has finally managed to indoctrinate him into their speciality of recognising dross.

Having just watched his wife of four years walk into his boardroom—and scanned her sensational legs—Leandros was held paralysed by the force of anger which roared up inside him like a lion about to leap.

So much for killing himself by imagining her a mere shadow of her former self, he was thinking bitterly. So much for feeling that overwhelming sense of relief when he’d found out it was not Isobel who was confined to a wheelchair but her mother—then feeling the guilt of being relieved about something so painfully tragic, whoever the victim! Silvia Cunningham had been a beautiful woman, full of life and energy. To think of that fine spirit that she had passed on to her daughter now quashed into a wheelchair had touched him deeply.

He was in danger of laughing out loud at his latest plan to make sure that Isobel’s mother was provided for within the settlement. Indeed that plan was not about to change because of what he now knew.

Only his plans for this beautiful, adulterous creature standing here in front of him, with her glossed-back hair, spitting green eyes and tight little mouth with its small upper lip and protruding bottom lip that made him want to leap on it and bite.

Where only hours ago he had been content to be unbelievably kind and gentle. He now wanted to tear her limb from limb.

Four years—for four long years this woman had lived inside him like a low, throbbing ache. He’d felt guilt, he’d felt sadness, he’d wanted to accord her the respect he’d believed she deserved from him by making no one aware of his plans to remarry until he had eased himself out of this marriage in the least hurtful way that he could.

But that was until he discovered that his wife was suffering from no such feelings of sensitivity on his behalf, for she had brought her lover with her to Athens! Could she not manage for two days without the oversized brute? Did he satisfy her, did he know her as intimately as he did? Could he make her tremble from her toes to her fingertips and cry out and grab for him as she reached her peak?

Cold fury sparked from his eyes as he looked her over. Bitterness raked its claws across his face. She was wearing leather. Why leather? What was it she was aiming to prove here, that she was brazen enough to wear such a fabric—bought with his money, no doubt—but worn to please another man?

‘You’re late,’ he incised, flicking hard eyes up to a face that was even more treacherously perfect than he remembered it. The gentle hairline, the dark-framed eyes, the straight little nose and that provoking little mouth. A mouth that knew how to kiss a man senseless, how to latch on to his skin and drive him out of his mind. He’d seen the oversized blond brute with the affable smile, standing in the hotel foyer wearing cotton sweats and touching her as if he had every right.

He should not have gone there. He should not have been so anxious to find out the truth about the wheelchair, then he would not have had to witness that man touching his wife in full view of anyone who wanted to watch.

His wife! Touching his wife’s exquisite, smooth white skin, making that skin flush when it only used to flush like that for him! She had not been wearing leather then, but tight jeans and a little white top that showed the fullness of her beautiful breasts!

Her wonderful hair had been flowing down her back, not pinned up as if she was some little prude. A lying prude, he extended.

‘This meeting was due to begin fifteen minutes ago. Now we will have to keep it brief,’ he finished his cutting comment.

Then watched as her witch’s green eyes narrowed at his clipped, tight tone. ‘The traffic was bad—’

‘The traffic in Athens is always bad,’ he inserted dismissively. ‘You have not been away from this city for so long that you could have forgotten that. Please take a seat.’

He took a seat. He pulled out a chair at random and threw himself into it with a force that verged on insolence. Takis was frowning at him but he ignored this lawyer’s expression. The other lawyer was trying not to show anything, though Leondros could see he was thoroughly engrossed.

Perhaps fascinated was a better word, he decided as he studied his wife’s lawyer through glassed-over eyes. The man was nothing but a young hawk, still wet behind the ears, he noted with contempt. What was Isobel thinking about, putting a guy like this up against himself and Takis? She knew of his godfather’s brutal reputation, she knew of his own! The only thing that Lester Miles seemed to have going for him was the cut of his suit and his boyish good looks.

Maybe that was it, he then thought with a tightening of just about every nerve. Maybe the body-builder was not her only man. Maybe this guy held a different place in her busy private life.

Irritation with himself made him take out his silver pen and begin tapping it against the polished boardroom table while he waited for this meeting to begin. Takis was shaking hands with Lester Miles and trying to appear as if Isobel’s husband always behaved like this. Isobel, on the other hand, was walking on those long legs down the length of the boardroom table on the opposing side to his. The leather suit stretched against her slender thighs as she moved and the jacket moulded to the thrust of her breasts. Was she wearing anything beneath it? Did she have the jacket zipped up to her throat simply to taunt him with that question?

Her chin was set, her flesh so white and smooth it didn’t look real—but then it never had. She chose to take the seat right opposite him. As she pulled the chair out his gaze moved to the smooth length of her slender neck, then up to the perfect shell-like shape of her ear, and his teeth came together with a snap. One cat-like lick of that ear and all of that cool composure would melt like wax to her dainty feet, he mused lusciously. He knew her, he knew her likes and dislikes, he knew every single erogenous zone, had been the one to take her on that journey of glorious discovery. He knew how to make her beg, cling, cry out his name in a paroxysm of ecstasy. Give him two minutes alone with her and he could wipe away that icy exterior; give him another minute and he could have her naked and begging for him. Or maybe he should be the one to strip his clothes off, he mused grimly. Maybe he should take her on the ride of their lives up against the panelled wall, with her skirt hitched up just high enough for his flesh to enjoy the erotic slide against leather while other parts of him enjoyed a different kind of slide, inside the hot, moist core of her ever-eager body.

It was almost a shame that he wasn’t into sexual enhancers, though it suddenly occurred to him that the body-builder looked the type. A new and blistering flash of his recently constructed fantasy now being enacted by the lover sent his eyes black with rage.

She sat down, bent to place her handbag on the floor by her chair, then sat up straight again—and looked him right in the eye. Hostility slammed into his face. His pulse quickened as the glinting green look lanced straight through him and war was declared. Though he wasn’t sure which of them had done the declaring.

She had certainly arrived here ready for a battle, though why that was the case he had no idea. It was not as if he had done anything other than suggest this divorce. Since it was very clear that she had not spent the last three years pining for him, her hostility was, in his opinion, without cause.

Whereas his own hostility…His narrowed eyes shot warning sparks across the table. She lifted her chin to him and sent the sparks right back. His fingers began to tingle with an urge to do something—they began tapping the pen all the harder against the polished table-top.

What is it you think you are going to get out of this, you faithless little hellion? he questioned silently as his lips parted to reveal the tight, warning glint of clenched white teeth. You had better be well prepared for this fight, because I am.

She placed her hands down on the table, long white fingers tipped with pink painted fingernails stroked the polished wood surface like a caress. His loins tightened, his chest began to burn. She saw it happen and her upper lip offered a derogatory curl.

Takis took the chair beside him. Lester Miles sat down beside Isobel. She turned to her lawyer and sent him a smile that would have made an iceberg melt. But Lester Miles was no iceberg. As he watched this little byplay, Leandros saw the young fool’s cheekbones streak with colour as he sent an answering smile in return.

It’s OK, I am here, that smile said to her. Leandros felt the lion inside him roar again. She turned to fix her gaze back on him. I am going to kill you, he told her silently. I am going to reach out and drag you across this table and spoil your little piece of foreplay with the kind of real play that shatters the mind.