by Penny Jordan
‘I understand you want clothes suitable for living on a Greek island, rather than merely holidaying there, and that your life there will include various social and business engagements?’ Without waiting for Ruby’s answer the personal shopper continued. ‘Fortunately we have got some of our new season stock in as well as several designers’ cruise collections, so I’m sure we shall be able to find everything you need. As for your wedding dress…’
Ruby’s heart leapt inside her chest. Somehow she hadn’t expected Sander to specify that she needed a wedding dress.
‘It’s just a very quiet registry office ceremony,’ she told the personal shopper.
‘But her wedding day and what she wore when she married the man she loves is still something that a woman always remembers,’ the other woman insisted.
The personal shopper was only thinking of the store’s profit, Ruby reminded herself. There was no real reason for her to have such an emotional reaction to the words. After all, she didn’t love Sander and he certainly didn’t love her. What she wore was immaterial, since neither of them was likely to want to look back in future years to remember the day they married. Her thoughts had produced a hard painful lump in her throat and an unwanted ache inside her chest. Why? She was twenty-three years old and the mother of five-year-old sons. She had long ago abandoned any thoughts of romance and love and all that went with those things, dismissing them as the emotional equivalent of chocolate—sweet on the tongue for a very short time, highly addictive and dangerously habit-forming. Best avoided in favour of a sensible and sustaining emotional diet. Like the love she had for her sons and the bond she shared with her sisters. Those were emotions and commitments that would last for a lifetime, whilst from what she had seen and heard romantic love was a delusion.
The twins were fascinated by the exhibits in the Natural History Museum. They had happily held Sander’s hand and pressed gratifyingly close to him for protection, calling him Daddy and showing every indication of being happy to be with him, so why did he feel so aware of Ruby’s absence, somehow incomplete? It was for the boys’ sake, Sander assured himself, because he was concerned that they might be missing their mother, nothing more.
Without quite knowing how it had happened, Ruby had acquired a far more extensive and expensive wardrobe than she had wanted. Every time she had protested or objected the personal shopper had overruled her—politely and pleasantly, but nonetheless determinedly—insisting that her instructions were that Ruby must have a complete wardrobe that would cover a wide variety of situations. And of course the clothes were sinfully gorgeous—beautifully cut trousers and shorts in cream linen, with a matching waistcoat lined in the same silk as the unstructured shirt that went with them, soft flowing silk dresses, silk and cotton tops, formal fitted cocktail dresses, along with more casual but still frighteningly expensive ‘leisure and beach clothes’, as the personal shopper had described them. There were also shoes for every occasion and each outfit, and underwear—scraps of silk and lace that Ruby had wanted to reject in favour of something far more sensible, but which somehow or other had been added to the growing rail of clothes described by the personal shopper as ‘must-haves’.
Now all that was left was the wedding dress, and the personal shopper was producing with a flourish a cream dress with a matching jacket telling Ruby proudly, ‘Vera Wang, from her new collection. Since the dress is short and beautifully tailored it is ideal for a registry office wedding, and of course you could wear it afterwards as a cocktail dress. It was actually ordered by another customer, but unfortunately when it came it was too small for her. I’m sure that it will fit you, and the way the fabric is pleated will suit your body shape.’
What she meant was that the waterfall of pleated ruching that was a feature of the cream silk-satin dress would disguise how thin she was, Ruby suspected.
The dress was beautiful, elegant and feminine, and exactly the kind of dress that a woman would remember wearing on her wedding day—which was exactly why she didn’t want to wear it. But the dresser was waiting expectantly.
It fitted her perfectly. Cut by a master hand, it shaped her body in a way that made her waist appear far narrower surely than it actually was, whilst somehow adding a feminine curvaceousness to her shape that made Ruby think she was looking at someone else in the mirror and not herself: the someone else she might have been if things had been different. If Sander had loved her?
Shakily Ruby shook her head and started to take the dress off, desperate to escape from the cruel reality of the image the mirror had thrown back at her. She could never be the woman she had seen in the mirror—a woman so loved by her man that she had the right to claim everything the dress offered her and promised him.
‘No. I don’t want it,’ she told the bewildered-looking personal shopper. ‘Please take it away. I’ll wear something else.’
‘But it was perfect on you…’
Still Ruby shook her head.
She was in the changing room getting dressed when the personal shopper reappeared, carrying a warm-looking, casually styled off-white parka.
‘I nearly forgot,’ she told Ruby, ‘your husband-to-be said that you had left your coat at home by accident and that you needed something warm to wear whilst you are in London.’
Wordlessly Ruby took the parka from her. It was lined with soft checked wool, and well-made as well as stylish.
‘It’s a new designer,’ the shopper told her. ‘And a line that we’re just trialling. She’s Italian, trained by Prada.’
Ruby bent her head so that the personal shopper wouldn’t see the emotion sheening her eyes. Sander might have protected her in public by pretending to believe that she had forgotten her coat, but in private he had humiliated her—because Ruby knew that he had guessed that she didn’t really possess a winter coat, and that she had been shivering with cold yesterday when they had walked in the park.
Walking back to the hotel wrapped in her new parka, Ruby reflected miserably that beneath the new hairstyle and the pretty make-up she was still exactly what she had been beforehand—they couldn’t change her, could not take away the burden of the guilt she still carried because of what she had once been. Expensive clothes were only a pretence—just like her marriage to Sander would be.
For her. Yes, but not for the twins. They must never know how she felt. The last thing she wanted was for them to grow up feeling that she had sacrificed herself for them. They must believe that she was happy.
She had intended to go straight to the suite, but the assessing look a woman in the lobby gave her, before smiling slightly to herself, as though she was satisfied that Ruby couldn’t compete with her, stung her pride enough to have her changing her mind and heading for the lounge instead.
A well-trained waitress showed her to a small table right at the front of the lounge. Ruby would have preferred to have hidden herself away in a dark corner, her brief surge of defiance having retreated leaving her feeling self-conscious and very alone. She wasn’t used to being on her own. Normally when she went out she had the twins with her, or one of her sisters.
When the waitress came to take her order Ruby asked for tea. She hadn’t eaten anything all day but she wasn’t hungry. She was too on edge for that.
The lounge was filling up. Several very smart-looking women were coming in, followed by a group of businessmen in suits, one of whom gave her such a deliberate look followed by a warm smile that Ruby felt her face beginning to burn.
She was just about to pour herself a cup of tea when she saw the twins hurrying towards her followed by Sander. His hair, like the twins’, was damp, as though he had just stepped out of the shower. Her heart lurched into her ribs. Her hand had started to tremble so badly that she had to put down the teapot. The twins were clamouring to tell her about their day, but even though she tried desperately to focus on them her gaze remained riveted to Sander, who had now stopped walking and was looking at her.
It wasn’t her changed appearance that had br
ought him to an abrupt halt, though.
In Sander’s eyes the new hairstyle and pretty make-up were merely window-dressing that highlighted what he already knew and what had been confirmed to him when Ruby had opened the door of her home to him a few days earlier—namely that the delicacy of her features possessed a rare beauty.
No, what had caused him to stop dead almost in mid-stride was the sense of male pride the sight of the trio in front of him brought. His sons and their mother. Not just his sons, but the three of them. They went together, belonged together—belonged to him? Sander shook his head, trying to dispel his atavistic and unfamiliar reactions with regard to Ruby, both angered by them and wanting to reject them. They were so astonishingly the opposite of what he wanted to feel. What was happening to him?
Her transformation passed him by other than the fact that he noticed the way she was wearing her hair revealed the slender column of her throat and that her face had a bit more colour in it.
Ruby, already self-conscious about the changes to her appearance, held her breath, waiting for Sander to make some comment. After all the sight of her had brought him to a halt. But when he reached the table he simply frowned and demanded to know why she hadn’t ordered something to eat.
‘Because all I wanted was a cup of tea,’ she answered him. Didn’t he like her new haircut? Was that why he was looking so grim? Well, she certainly wasn’t going to ask him if he approved of the change. She turned to the boys, asking them, ‘Did you like the Natural History Museum?’
‘Yes,’ Harry confirmed. ‘And then Daddy took us swimming.’
Swimming? Ruby directed a concerned look at Sander.
‘There’s a pool here in the hotel,’ he explained. ‘Since the boys will be living on an island, I wanted to make sure that they can swim.’
‘Daddy bought us new swimming trunks,’ Freddie told her.
‘There should be two adults with them when they go in a pool,’ Ruby couldn’t stop herself from saying. ‘A child can drown in seconds and—’
‘There was a lifeguard on duty.’ Sander stopped her. ‘They’re both naturals in the water, but that will be in their genes. My brother swam for Greece as a junior.’
‘Mummy’s hair is different,’ Harry suddenly announced.
Self-consciousness crawled along her spine. Now surely Sander must say something about her transformation, give at least some hint of approval since he was the one who had orchestrated her makeover, but instead he merely stated almost indifferently, ‘I hope you got everything you are going to need, as there won’t be time for any more shopping. As I said, I’ve arranged for us to fly to the island the day after the marriage ceremony.’
Ruby nodded her head. It was silly of her to feel disappointed because Sander hadn’t said anything about her new look. Silly or dangerous? His approval or lack of it shouldn’t mean anything to her at all.
The boys would be hungry, and she was tired. She was their mother, though, and it was far more important that she focused on her maternal responsibilities rather than worrying about Sander’s approval or lack of it.
‘I’ll take the boys up to the suite and organise a meal for them,’ she told Sander.
‘Good idea. I’ve got some ends to tie up with the Embassy,’ he said brusquely, with a brief nod of his head.
‘What about dinner?’ Ruby’s mouth had gone dry, and the silence that greeted her question made her feel she had committed as much of a faux pas as if she’d asked him to go to bed with her.
Feeling hot and angry with herself for inadvertently giving Sander the impression that she wanted to have dinner with him, she swallowed against the dry feeling in her mouth.
Why had Ruby’s simple question brought back that atavistic feeling he had had earlier? Sander asked himself angrily. For a moment he let himself imagine the two of them having dinner together. The two of them? Surely he meant the four of them—for it was because of the twins and only because of them that he had decided to allow her back into his life. Sander knew better than to allow himself to be tricked by female emotions, be they maternal or sexual. As he had good cause to know, those emotions could be summoned out of nowhere and disappear back there just as quickly.
‘I’ve already arranged to have dinner with an old friend,’ he lied. ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’
An old friend, Sander had said. Did that mean he was having dinner with another woman? A lover, perhaps? Ruby wondered later, after the boys had eaten their tea and she had forced herself to eat something with them. She knew so little about Sander’s life and the people in it. A feeling of panic began to grow inside her.
‘Mummy, come and look at our island,’ Freddie was demanding, standing in front of a laptop that he was trying to open.
‘No, Freddie, you mustn’t touch that,’ Ruby protested,
‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ Harry assured her adopting a heartbreakingly familiar pose of male confidence. ‘Daddy said that we could look.’
Freddie had got the laptop lid up—like all children, the twins were very at home with modern technology—and before Ruby could say anything the screen was filled with the image of an almost crescent shaped island, with what looked like a range of rugged mountains running the full length of its spine.
In the early days, after she had first met him, Ruby had tried to find out as much as she could about Sander, still refusing to believe then that all she had been to him was a one-night stand.
She had learned that the island, whose closest neighbour was Cyprus, had been invaded and conquered many times, and that in Sander’s veins ran the ruling blood of conquering Moors from the time of the Crusades—even though now the island population considered itself to be Greek. She had also learned that Sander’s family had ruled the island for many centuries, and that his grandfather, the current patriarch, had built up a shipping business in the wake of the Second World War which had brought new wealth and employment to the island. However, once she had been forced to recognise that she meant nothing to Sander she had stopped seeking out information about him.
‘Bath time,’ she told her sons firmly.
Their new clothes and her own had been delivered whilst they had been downstairs, along with some very smart new cases, and once the twins were in bed she intended to spend her evening packing in readiness for their flight to the island.
Only once the boys were bathed and in bed Ruby was drawn back to the computer, with its tantalising image of the island.
Almost without realising what she was doing she clicked on the small red dot that represented its capital. Several thumbnail images immediately appeared. Ruby clicked on the first of them to enlarge it, and revealed a dazzlingly white fortress, perched high on a cliff above an impossibly blue green sea, its Moorish-looking towers reaching up into a deep blue sky. Another thumbnail enlarged to show what she assumed was the front of the same building, looking more classically Greek in design and dominating a formal square. The royal blue of the traditionally dressed guards’ jackets worn over brilliantly white skirts made a striking image.
The other images revealed a hauntingly beautiful landscape of sandy bays backed by cliffs, small fishing harbours, and white-capped mountains covered in wild flowers. These were contrasted by a modern cargo dock complex, and small towns of bright white buildings and dark shadowed alleyways. It was impossible not to be captivated by the images of the island, Ruby admitted, but at the same time viewing them had brought home to her how different and even alien the island was to everything she and the twins knew. Was she doing the right thing? She knew nothing of Sander’s family, or his way of life, and once on the island she would be totally at his mercy. But if she hadn’t agreed to go with them he would have tried to take the twins from her, she was sure. This way at least she would be with them.
A fierce tide of maternal love surged through her. The twins meant everything to her. Their emotional security both now and in the future was what would bring her happiness, and was far more impor
tant to her than anything else—especially the unwanted and humiliating desire that Sander was somehow able to arouse in her. Her mouth had gone dry again. At seventeen she might have been able to excuse herself for being vulnerable to Sander’s sexual charisma, but she was not seventeen any more. Even if her single solitary memory of sexual passion was still limited to what she had experienced with Sander. He, of course, had no doubt shared his bed with an unending parade of women since he had ejected her so cruelly from both it and his life.
She looked at the computer, suddenly unable to resist the temptation to do a web search on Sander’s name. It wasn’t prying, not really. She had the boys to think of after all.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find, but her eyes widened over the discovery that Sander was now ruler of the island—a role that carried the title of King, although, according to the website, he had decided to dispense with its usage, preferring to adopt a more democratic approach to ruling the island than that exercised by his predecessors.
Apparently his parents had died when Sander was eighteen, in a flying accident. The plane they’d been in piloted by a cousin of Sander’s mother. A shock as though she had inadvertently touched a live wire shot through her. They had both been orphaned at almost the same age. Like hers, Sander’s parents had been killed in an accident. If she had known that when they had first met… What difference would it have made? None.
Sander was thirty-four, to her twenty-three; a man at the height of his powers. A small shiver raked her skin, like the sensual rasp of a lover’s tongue against sensitised flesh. Inside her head an image immediately formed: Sander’s dark tanned hand cupping her own naked breast, his tongue curling round her swollen nipple. The small shiver became a racking shudder. Quickly Ruby tried to banish the image, closing down the computer screen. She was feeling nauseous again. Shakily, she made her way to the bathroom.