Greek Affairs: To Take A Bride

‘I protect my own,’ was all he said, as if that should mean something to her.

Well, it didn’t. ‘I do not belong to you.’

The square cut of his chin jutted as he turned them around in the car park. ‘As my wife you belong to me, as does the child in your womb.'

‘If there is one—if!’

Car tyres crunched as they drove over gravel. A few seconds later they were turning onto the road. ‘You had your chance to make it a definite no, Louisa, and decided not to take it.'

Heat flooded her cheeks. ‘I will not apologise for that decision.'

‘Did I ask you to?’ He sent her a cool glance as the car accelerated away, all slick, smooth man of the minute, she observed with a resentful sting. A sophisticated man in his sophisticated suit driving his sophisticated car, wearing a sophisticatedly implacable expression on his too, too handsome face.

‘Implied it,’ she said, seeing herself sitting beside him in her high-street skirt and little top and with about as much sophistication running in her blood to make a complete mockery of the fact that they had ever been drawn to each other in the first place!

‘Then I apologise. It was not intentional.’

‘How did your henchman know what I was thinking outside the pharmacy anyway?’ she flung out.

‘He didn’t. He merely relayed your movements to me and I drew my own conclusions.'

‘So you’re very clued up on tacky things like the morning-after pill?'

‘As, by all accounts, are you,’ he returned. ‘In truth,’ he added after a moment, ‘at first I thought you must be hovering over going in the shop to buy a pregnancy-testing kit. It only occurred to me later that you could only be so upset if you had been considering the—other thing.'

Louisa froze where she sat, she was so stunned that she had not thought of buying the test kit herself!

Twisting round in her seat, ‘Take me into town and I will buy a test right now,’ she said urgently.

‘And give the islanders something to really gossip about?’

He had an answer to everything. Sinking back in the seat she seethed in silence for a few seconds—then suddenly took notice of where they were.

‘You’ve gone the wrong way—the hotel is in the other direction.'

His answer was a quick, smooth change through the gears and an indifferent profile.

‘Andreas …’

‘I know where we are going,’ he drawled.

‘But,’ not liking this, not liking the tight, tingling feeling that was telling her she had lost control of everything that was happening here, ‘I need to go back to the hotel,’ she insisted. ‘I’m meeting Jamie there in less than five minutes and you—'

‘Liar,’ he said. ‘I met Jamie in town this morning. He has gone fishing for the day with Yannis’s son.'

Silence met that. Andreas turned his head to study the way she was sitting there with her silky blonde hair blowing back from the delicate formation of her face so she could not hide the guilty look at being caught out with the lie. She was not breathing as far as he could see and her teeth were pressing sharp crescents into her soft lower lip.

‘He did the protective-brother thing and warned me to stay away from you,’ he extended coolly.

‘Oh, he didn’t.’ She closed her eyes on a groan.

Turning his attention back to the road, ‘It was his right to do it,’ Andreas shrugged. ‘I respect him for it.'

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him nicely to stay out of it,’ he responded. ‘Then I loaned him some money because he was hovering around the bank, which was closed, and the wall machine was not working.'

‘Jamie accepted a loan—from you?’

Her disbelief made him grimace. ‘Not without a bit of manly posturing,’ he admitted. ‘Then, because he did not like to take anything from me without some pay-back, he told me about an enterprising guy called Max Landreau …'

The air inside the open-top car had been circulating quite pleasantly but at that precise moment it seemed to go perfectly still. Lifting up her chin and turning her face to the sun-kissed coastline speeding by her side of the car, Louisa pressed her lips together and refused to say a single word.

Tension inched into the sun-drenched vehicle.

‘Who is he?'Andreas asked when it became clear she was going to say nothing at all.

Building an image of Max’s tall dark shape in her head, she paused before answering, ‘That is none of your business.'

The hiss of his breath kept her chin up and her face averted. ‘He could become my business if you slept with him before you came here.'

That twisted her head around. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she prompted indignantly.

‘If you are pregnant,’ he enlightened, ‘we could have a paternity question to deal with. Very messy.'

‘And who have you slept with in the last month?’ she flicked back.

He frowned. ‘My recent sex life could not become a problem.'

‘If you were as careless with her as you were with me it could be! Now, there’s an interesting concept,’ Louisa laughed through her shimmering anger. ‘Two of your sexual partners pregnant at the same time … What will you do in your quest to have no child of yours born out of wedlock, Andreas? Dump the wife and marry the mistress?'

‘We were discussing your relationship with Landreau.’ He frowned. ‘Jamie said the guy wants to marry you.'

‘Well, lucky me,’ she mocked, thinking—you wretch, Jamie! ‘So which do I choose; the useless husband or the fabulous lover?'

Long fingers flexed on the steering wheel at her very measured insult aimed at his sexual prowess. ‘I am being serious.'

‘Well, I am seriously not going to be pregnant,’ Louisa flashed. ‘And if I am unlucky enough to find out that I have conceived a baby I will not play the role of your unworthy wife again!'

‘Tell our son that.’

The pained gasp she released hurt her throat and brought his face swinging round to flick a hard crushing look. Angry did not cover it, uncompromising ruthlessness did.

‘Tell Nikos that you are not prepared to sacrifice everything for his brother or sister in the same way that you did for him.'

‘Now who’s talking about him as if he’s still with us?’ Louisa pushed out chokily. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself for saying any of that at all!'

Breathing gone thickly haywire now, she turned her face away again, vibrating inside with hurt. Another silence stung between them like killer bees on the rampage. They’d almost reached the far end of the island when he swung the car off the road to dip down a track through a thicket of trees.

They came to a stop in a dusty clearing. The engine died. The mood between them was thick. Louisa was fighting the lumps of tears lodged in her throat. Andreas climbed out of the car and came round to her side. When he opened the door for her she just remained sitting there refusing to look at him, refusing to move. The arm that lanced across her to unfasten her seat belt brushed against her cheek and sent her head jolting backwards. The air hissed from between his clenched teeth in response because it was so clear that her reaction had been one of revulsion.

‘I want to go back,’ she insisted.

‘Tough,’ he roughed out, hard fingers closing around her wrist like a manacle so he could use it as a lever to haul her out of the car.

The fact that a slender white leg appeared through the sliding gap in her skirt again did not improve his temper at all. She saw his face darken, saw the muscle-flexing clench of his gleaming white teeth. In its own way it was fascinating to watch him lose control of his temper like this. Like the old Andreas. Like the hotly jealous and possessive younger man who’d spent six weeks keeping her well away from his lusty Greek friends.

‘You’re hurting my wrist,’ she protested.

Squared chin jutting, he turned and began pulling her towards a wide, squat building she had not noticed as they’d driven up. He did not loosen his grip.

‘And bullies are not in the least bit attractive,’ she added tightly.

‘Shut up.’ He came to a stop in front of a blue-painted door.

The building looked new, Louisa saw, trying hard to curb her curiosity as he twisted a key in the lock. The land surrounding the house was still half a building site and there was a mini-digger resting idle over by the trees.

It was all she had time to notice before she was being pulled inside. Only after he’d slammed the door firmly shut behind her did he release her wrist, then he strode off through a wide archway and down some steps, leaving her standing there staring at the angry set of his wide shoulders that shouted Arrogant Greek Male so loudly she wanted to throw something at him!

But she didn’t have anything to throw and anyway she would not lower herself to his bullish level, she told herself as she rubbed at her wrist while glancing around. She discovered she was standing in a spacious hallway with rooms leading off from either side of the arch. The sense of newness was all around her in the smell of drying plaster and freshly applied paint on the walls and the clear fact that furniture of any description was scarce.

It struck her that she could just turn and open the door and walk away now that he’d left her standing here, and she even twisted in that direction, only to change her mind when she remembered it was at least a four-mile walk back to the hotel and it was hot out there and deliciously cool in here.

Anyway, curiosity was getting the better of her. What was this place?

With no intention of trailing in Andreas’s footsteps to ask him, Louisa struck out in another direction, opening doors along the lobby and peering inside. Most of them seemed to be bedrooms. Some of them were furnished and others were completely bare. After she’d checked all the doors she stepped up to the central archway and found herself looking down on a huge white space with wall-to-wall windows at one end framing what looked from here like a fabulous ocean view. A couple of big sofas still wrapped in plastic occupied the centre of the floor and what looked like a large flat-screen television covered in bubble-wrap was fixed to one wall.

The whole place had an unfinished, unlived-in echo about it, she thought as she walked down the three shallow steps which took her into the room itself, the main sounds she could hear coming from beyond another archway cut into a side-wall.

It was a kitchen, she discovered as she stepped into the opening, a huge, glossy white kitchen with a wooden table standing in the middle of its white-tiled floor. It was all very new, very modern, with another wall of glass Andreas was in the process of sliding open to let in the breeze coming off the ocean.

He had removed his jacket and tossed it onto the table. Unwanted butterflies attacked low in her stomach as she slid her eyes over the pale blue shirting covering his long torso, then his narrow hips and legs, which seemed to have gained in length and pure, potent power with the jacket gone.

‘What is this place?’ she finally gave in and asked him.

‘Mine.’ He said it with a low, rasping economy that told her his mood had not improved at all.

So much for curiosity, she thought with a grimace, spied a huge fridge opposite and was drawn to it by a sudden raging thirst. Tugging open the doors, she discovered it had been stocked full with just about everything to tempt anyone’s appetite. Ignoring the sudden hungry snap her stomach sent her, she selected a bottle of chilled water and unscrewed the cap as she elbowed the fridge doors shut.

Too thirsty to wait to hunt down a glass, she tipped back her head and drank greedily straight from the bottle. When she finally felt quenched enough to lower the bottle again, her blue eyes widened then stilled when she found that Andreas had turned and was staring through heavily hooded, glinting dark eyes at her extended throat.

Her heart gave a thump and a trickle of cool water lodged in her throat. She had to cough to clear it. The choky little sound brought his gaze up to lock onto the dews of water still clinging to her lips. Her very flesh began to tingle with that tight sting of overwhelming intimacy that came with the deeply bedded knowledge of everything about each other, which exposed what they were thinking or feeling even if neither wished to be so transparent. In this case Louisa would not have been in the least bit surprised if he’d leapt on her like a big hungry cat.

Because they’d always had this … gift for making the air between them pulse with sexual awareness. It had happened at the ferry terminal. It had happened on the hill. It had happened twice already today when he’d watched her wrap-around skirt slide apart. Andreas had looked at her exposed thigh and the heat of his desire to reach down and stroke her exposed flesh had struck right at the very centre of her sexual heart. Now here it was happening again as he stared at her water-dewed lips.

She licked the dew away with a flick of her tongue. The heavy black curves of his eyelashes flickered and the sizzling sting arrowed itself in a three-pronged attack on the tips of her breasts and between her thighs.

‘Thirsty,’ she said jerkily in the hope that speech would banish the unwanted sensation.

It didn’t.

‘How long had you been at the chapel before I arrived there?’ he demanded huskily.

The husky tone didn’t do much for her comfort either. ‘I can’t see that it matters.’ She shrugged the question away while wishing to hell that he didn’t look as good as he did.

‘It matters if you have been foolish enough to let yourself become dehydrated.'

He was right, she was forced to acknowledge with a frown. She had desperately needed the water but now that its deliciously cooling effect had reached her stomach she was beginning to feel ever so slightly queasy, and the skin on her arms and her shoulders felt tight and hot, which told her she had spent way too long in the sun.

‘Such husbandly concern,’ she mocked, lifting the bottle up so she could read the label, just in case she’d accidentally drunk something more lethal that water, ‘but it’s absolutely wasted on me, Andreas, when I don’t answer to you any more.'

‘If I gathered you up and stretched you out on that table you would answer to me,’ he growled out. ‘So stop trying to pretend you don’t give a damn about me when you know you still light up like a blowtorch whenever you look at me or I look at you.'

Stung by the horrible truth in that, ‘Maybe I light up the same for any man,’ Louisa retaliated. ‘I mean, think of all those years I’ve had to manage without you around to light my torch!'

Taking him on in the mood he was in was pretty stupid, Louisa recognised the moment he took his hands out of his pockets and she saw the darkening look hardening his face.

‘Well, that brings us neatly back to Max Landreau,’ he said and began moving towards her, coming in so close it was all she could do not to take a defensive step back. But that would give him an edge she refused to let him have, so she held her ground even though that ground felt oddly shaky beneath her feet.

‘I’m not going to talk to you about Max,’ she declared stubbornly, then frowned when she realised that a lot of things felt rather shaky right now, including her voice.

Twisting the cap back on the bottle, she turned to place it on the counter and almost staggered when the quick movement made her head start to swim.

‘Why not?’

Turning back to him, she frowned even more when his lean, dark bulk kept floating in and out of focus and nausea made a second grab at her stomach.

‘I need the loo,’ she said, fixing her muzzy gaze on the archway.

His hand closing around her arm stopped her from moving towards it. ‘We will finish this before you walk away.'

‘There is nothing to finish.’ Tugging free of his grip, she stepped around him and tried her best to walk in a straight line, only to find Andreas had moved to block her path.

Staring dizzily at the dark blue strip of his tie hanging down the front of his shirt, she laid a hand across her churning stomach. ‘Andreas, I don’t …'

‘You either tell me about Landreau or we do it the hard way,’ he warned her grimly. ‘And heed this, Louisa,’ he added, ‘you will not be leaving this house until I know everything about you and him—understand?'

Oh, she understood all right. Trying to ignore what was rumbling round inside her, she lifted her eyes to his angry face. ‘Where do you get off believing that you have that right?'

He sucked in his breath. ‘You are my wife. You belong to me.'

‘I do not belong to you!’ she cried out. ‘Will you stop saying that? I stopped belonging to you when you didn’t bother to come and get me five years ago! Now, please let me—’

‘What do you mean, I didn’t bother to come and get you? Where do you get off, telling a damn lie like that?'

This wasn’t the time for this. She was in real danger of losing the contents of her stomach on his shoes if she didn’t get to a loo quickly. But there was something in his harsh rasp that made her pause.

‘You couldn’t even manage a single telephone call to England to speak to me,’ she accused shakily. ‘I waited and waited for you to come and get me but you didn’t want to, did you, Andreas? As your brother Alex was so fond of telling m-me, I was the mistake you had to live with, but never, for one second, did I believe all of his mean rubbish until Nikos died and you took off to Athens to console yourself with another woman!'

CHAPTER SEVEN

THERE, it was out. The one secret she had been hugging inside herself for so long it actually ripped at the tissues of her ravaged senses to tear it free! If she had been less distressed she might have noticed the way his whole stance had frozen.

‘I h-hate you for that,’ she whispered. ‘I will never forgive you for doing that!'

His voice when it came was thick and hoarse. ‘Alex—my brother told you I …'

She nodded then wished she hadn’t when it set off the whole sick, dizzying feeling again. ‘And I might have been stupid enough to fall into your sexual trap again,’ she said bitterly, ‘but I will never, ever belong to you again! Now, just let me pass …'

Pushing him to one side, she fled with a hand pressed to her mouth, glad she’d already checked out the other rooms because it meant she could make directly for a finished bedroom with a bathroom attached.

When it was over and the room eventually stopped spinning she dared to move to the washbasin to freshen her mouth and splash cool water on her face. Everything was so new in the bathroom that even the bar of soap was still sealed in its wrapper. As she turned off the tap she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror and was shocked to see how dreadfully pale she looked because she felt so tingly and hot. Her shoulders and arms had turned pink, she noticed. If she were back at the hotel she would be loading on the after-sun lotion by now but this bathroom contained only the bare essentials.

A sigh turned her round to stare at the closed bathroom door. She knew she couldn’t put it off. She had to go back out there and face him—finish it.

He was standing in front of the open wall of glass again with the rigid set of his back facing the room.

‘Max Landreau is my employer and a very good friend but he is not my lover,’ she stated, ‘and the only reason I am telling you that is if I have been unfortunate enough to conceive a baby I don’t want any doubt cast upon who the father is.'

He didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t even bother to turn. All he did was continue to stand there staring at the view as if it was more interesting than what she’d just said. Anger began to sizzle. It was enough that she deeply resented feeling forced into saying what she had, but to be ignored after saying it was the final straw.

As far as she was concerned she’d said more than enough to earn her freedom. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car—'

‘I did come to get you.’

About to spin away, she stilled to watch as he turned to look at her, his lean strong face hewn from rock against a backcloth of uninterrupted blue.

‘Say that again,’ she shook out.

‘I followed you to England but you refused to see me.’ He gave a flick of a long-fingered hand. ‘I was not going to bring this up but you did, so we might as well deal with it. It was a difficult period for both of us five years ago and I knew you needed time to come to terms with … what happened, but how much time, Louisa?’ A sigh wrenched from him. ‘You were grieving, I understood that. I behaved badly after the funeral. I knew I deserved everything that you dished out. But to refuse to see or even speak to me? To keep me hanging around in England like a dog to be whipped and even after weeks of it to still send me packing as if our years together meant nothing to you at all?'

Lost in confusion, Louisa gave a shake of her head. ‘But I didn’t refuse to see you.'

‘I phoned, I wrote; you refused to answer my calls or my letters.'

‘No,’ she denied, not wanting to believe this.

The flat line of his mouth offered up a derisive twist. ‘Lie to yourself if you feel you must do, but I know it happened, agape mou, and there is only so much banging of my head against the brick wall of your unforgiving nature I could take before I finally let it sink in that it really was over for us.'

The growing horror that he could be telling her the truth here really shook her. ‘I never knew you had come to England,’ she whispered.

Grim scepticism spun him away again. A different kind of churning took charge of her stomach as she walked towards him. ‘Andreas,’ she said. ‘I truly did not know! You came—to England? No one told me. Who did you speak to? Why didn’t they tell you where I …?'

Enlightenment suddenly began to dawn, dragging her feet to a shuddering halt a couple of steps from his hard, lean, unrelenting stance.

‘My parents,’ she breathed unsteadily.

Her parents had been so eager to get her away from this island, always resentful of the Markonos wealth and power and the way they believed Andreas had used her that summer. When Andreas had walked away after the funeral he had confirmed every bad thought they’d ever had about him.

And his family had not tried to hide their relief when she had eventually agreed to go back to England. For the best, everyone had said. You both need time to recover from your loss. So she’d given in to pressure and left the island, wanting, needing to get away from everything, not least from what she’d read as his desertion of her when she’d needed him the most.

Suddenly the strength drained from her legs and she pulled out one of the chairs then sank down onto it. By then Andreas had turned again and was studying her face with a hard, cold, unforgiving glitter while she sat there numbly recalling all the heartache and pain she had carried away with her along with the heavy drag of her numbing grief.

‘After arriving in England I became … very upset,’ she improvised because the truth was so impossible to admit. ‘H-hysterical,’ only just touched the edge of it. ‘The doctor decided it was best that I went away to—to convalesce.'

‘You were in hospital.?’ The stunned catch in his voice made her flinch.

‘More like a private retreat,’ she said, unable to look at him because even after five years she still found it difficult to accept how quickly she’d sunk into that dark place inside herself. ‘If—when you came for me my parents were supposed to tell you where I’d gone! They promised me, they promised …’

Then they’d lied and lied and lied in their determination to keep them apart. All those long, bleak, empty days and weeks when she’d waited for him to come and get her. All those ‘No, he hasn’t made contact’ replies when she’d asked the question—asked and asked! And she’d been so gently let down, so lovingly pitied.

‘You are telling me that your parents lied to me?’ Andreas said harshly. ‘Why the hell would they want to do that?'