by Lynne Graham
Lysander was stunned to appreciate that he had lost control with her. Questioning eyes screened by his thick lashes, Lysander gazed down at her and marvelled at his appetite for her. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No,’ she framed gruffly, mortified by what had just happened between them and twisting her head away.
‘I was rough and you’re tiny, yineka mou.’ His dark drawl hoarse, he bent his handsome head and pressed his sensual mouth to the tender skin of her throat.
‘Hmm…’ Tiny little shivers rippled through Ophelia in response. She was sensitised to his every caress.
‘I’m a very sexual man. You excite me,’ he confided huskily, grazing her delicate skin with his teeth. ‘But I don’t think you could take me again right now.’
When she realized that she was being asked a question, Ophelia’s face flamed. Even lying there she was conscious of the ache of discomfort his passion had induced. ‘No, I couldn’t,’ she agreed in stifled embarrassment.
‘My little virgin wife—I should have been more considerate.’ His tone was teasing as he levered back from her, adjusted his clothing and smoothed back his black hair. He looked cool and in control. Yet after that wild conflagration, Ophelia honestly thought that she would never be the same again. With shaking hands she yanked down her skirt over her nakedness.
Without warning a frown line divided his well-shaped brows. ‘Are you using any contraception?’
In a daze at that query, Ophelia shook her head and sat up.
Lysander had fallen very still and there was an ashen quality to his skin, for he was shattered by his carelessness and unable to explain it even to his own satisfaction. The very last thing he wanted was a child. As he had no desire to be a father, he had always been very careful not to run any risks in that department. If his caution had occasionally restricted his enjoyment he had accepted that.
‘Theos…I’m afraid that I didn’t take any precautions either,’ Lysander imparted with a gravity that made his feelings on the subject very clear. ‘I won’t attempt to excuse my negligence. It’s not a mistake I’ve made before and I hope that there won’t be any repercussions.’
Ophelia dropped her head and very much hoped so too because his attitude chilled her. He was appalled by the very idea that she might fall pregnant. Negligence was a serious word to use. She was frantically counting dates inside her head and stiffened at the acknowledgement that she was dangerously within reach of the most fertile part of her cycle. ‘Let’s hope for the best,’ she muttered stiltedly.
‘I have some calls to make before we head for the airport.’
Ophelia let him get as far as the door before she spoke again. ‘Did you believe me about Matt Arnold? That his sister, Pamela, didn’t leak the fact that we were married to the newspapers?’
Sardonic eyes rested on her anxious face. ‘Of course I didn’t believe you. How could I? Perhaps you leaked that story yourself. Your conduct today underlined your guilt.’
‘And how on earth do you make that out?’ Ophelia snapped in disconcertion.
Lysander dealt her a derisive look of disbelief. ‘You married me yesterday. Today you invited a newspaper into my home. Your eagerness for media attention speaks for itself.’
Ophelia went for a shower in the state-of-the-art bathroom and while she washed she cried with anger, frustration and the most awful hollow sense of homesickness. It should have occurred to her that he would make that rather obvious deduction. An exercise intended merely to annoy him had rebounded on her, for she knew he would never accept now that she had not tipped off the press about their wedding. He saw her as a cheap publicity-hungry trollop, fine for sex but nothing else.
So why did that bother her so much when all she wanted from him was a divorce? Although how did she dare to ask herself such a question when he had put her on his bed and she had demonstrated as much self-command as a rag doll in the passionate encounter that had followed? When she looked at him, she burned for him and all her defences crumbled. It was that basic and it was the most tormenting truth she had ever had to deal with. She had believed that she was strong but now she was confronting her weakness and her pride was in the dust.
But why was she so hurt? That was what scared her the most. Why did she feel so rejected? Naturally he didn’t want her to conceive, but had he had to turn pale as death at what was surely only a small risk? She didn’t want a baby either, of course she didn’t—well, at some time maybe in the future with the right person, and Lysander Metaxis was most decidedly not the right person. Her hunger for him had nothing to do with feelings, she reasoned fiercely. It was disgusting that it should be that way and she was ashamed of it, but she was not remotely like her mother. No, she wasn’t, she absolutely wasn’t. She was too intelligent to get fixated on a man who would never love her, who would never offer her exclusive affection or fidelity and who would never want to walk down the street with her and show her off. Much, much too intelligent…
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS late afternoon the following day before Lysander and Ophelia finally landed in Greece.
A late seasonal fall of snow the night before had led to a cessation of flights and long delays. Hiring accommodation at an airport hotel, Lysander used the extra time to work with his business team and ensured that Ophelia didn’t get the chance to talk to him in private again. Indeed, faced with his cool detachment, she felt like the invisible woman. Listening to dialogues that centred solely on the stock market, derivatives and interest rates did not improve her mood. Once or twice, when she looked at Lysander, she found herself helplessly reliving the raw heat of their lovemaking the previous afternoon; his aloofness since then could only make her feel furiously ashamed of that episode. In the early hours she took a nap in the bedroom of their suite while still fully clothed.
Overlooked in the excitement of the stock market opening, she was the last person to be roused and she missed out on breakfast and the chance to change out of her creased clothing, so had to take care of that necessity when they finally boarded the jet. By then she was in a defiant mood and, disdaining the more dressy options in her suitcase, she pulled on casual combats and a T-shirt. Lysander had insisted that they pretend that their marriage was normal. He had threatened her with court action, then had wrenched her from her home, her garden and her parrot while persistently refusing to offer her the smallest explanation for his behaviour. But when was he planning to start acting like a newly married man? Or were his staff already aware that his marriage was an empty charade? Albeit a charade with a little sexual action thrown in for colour, Ophelia reflected, squirming with self-loathing.
When she emerged from the luxurious cabin an odd little silence fell and absolutely nobody looked in her direction, while her husband’s attention seemed welded to his newspaper. It was a response that did nothing to relieve her suspicion that on board a Metaxis jet non-working personnel ranked as the lowest of the low in the pecking order.
Lysander, however, was gripped by the article on his bride in the newspaper for which Matt, Pamela Arnold’s brother, was a writer. Unfortunately the old link between the Metaxis and Stewart families—the wedding that never took place between Aristide and Cathy—had been dug up and given a fresh melodramatic airing. Lysander hoped his mother didn’t come across the item, since she tended to be sensitive about that episode and he was determined to keep her spirits up during her medical treatment.
Ophelia’s interview was only the jewel in the crown of a spread that contrived to flatter her from every possible angle. The dialogue had been polished clean of the smallest hint that Ophelia might regard gifts of very expensive jewellery as the best bit of having married a billionaire. Indeed in the published version Ophelia now waxed lyrical about how she hoped to use her privileged position to do some good in the world and came across as a thoroughly nice girl with traditional values.
He was very surprised to learn that until the age of sixteen years she had lived in a tough housing estate with a mother
who had problems with alcohol and unsuitable men. Social Services had been frequent callers. There was a photograph of Ophelia about the age of ten clutching a dark-haired toddler. They looked like half-starved waifs.
‘Ophelia was a great little mother to her sister. Took her to school, did everything for her, but then she didn’t have a choice, did she?’ a former neighbour was quoted as saying. ‘Her ma, Cathy, was more of a child than she was.’
Lysander wondered if the little sister had died with the mother in the train crash as there was no further mention of her. Without doubt, as sob stories went, it was a blinder and the unnamed contributors must all have been close friends, for nobody had a bad word to say about his bride. Had her difficult childhood made her avaricious? Or had her troubled mother and scheming, embittered grandmother tainted her with a desire for revenge?
Why did nothing about Ophelia add up? Why was she such a mixture of opposing traits? She had trained for three years to be a low-earning horticulturist and there was a picture of her dressed like a scarecrow—albeit one with shining eyes and a happy smile. Yes, she liked getting muddy and clearly always had. He found it hard to equate that Ophelia with the woman who had posed in lace stockings and with a vacuous smile for the camera. Why had she claimed to want out of their marriage when, just twenty-four hours later, she had done her utmost to attract the very worst kind of publicity?
When Lysander handed Ophelia a newspaper she felt bewildered—until she saw the picture of herself and Molly. Her tummy went into a nervous spiral, a reaction that only got worse as she ploughed through the article that laid bare her chequered childhood. Her late mother’s inadequacy as a parent was now revealed for all to see and it filled Ophelia with shame. But what she hated most was the raking over of Cathy’s doomed romance with Aristide Metaxis and she blamed herself for being stupid enough to court publicity in the first place. A lesson had been learned, she conceded painfully.
‘I’m afraid I have some matters to take care of before I can join you on the island,’ Lysander murmured as they disembarked the plane.
‘What island?’ Ophelia enquired stiffly without looking at him.
Even Lysander’s tough hide was pierced by the ramifications of that leading question. ‘I bought an island a few years ago.’
Her expression stony and unimpressed, Ophelia pursed her pink lips as if she were sucking on a lemon. ‘I suppose it’s surrounded by sea and very private?’
‘Ne…Yes.’
‘How thrilling,’ Ophelia droned in a not-thrilled voice, imagining herself marooned on a giant sun-baked rock without occupation while he enjoyed himself elsewhere. ‘Please don’t worry about me. I may well be as dried-up as an Egyptian mummy by the time you deign to take notice of my existence again. But no doubt if someone props me up in a corner you’ll be quite happy with the remains rather than the demanding reality of a living, breathing wife!’
‘Very funny,’ Lysander countered flatly.
‘You ignored me all the way here—you didn’t even tell me where we were going—’
‘We are in the middle of a stock-market crisis,’ Lysander growled in an incredulous undertone. ‘While you were sleeping, I was working!’
Shimmering eyes the colour of pale blue ice landed on him. ‘So?’ Ophelia challenged just as a plethora of cameras went off behind security barriers in the airport arrivals hall that prevented the paparazzi from getting any closer to their quarries.
Wholly disconcerted by a counter-attack of a type he had never previously received, because the importance of making money had always provided an acceptable catch-all excuse, Lysander gritted his perfect teeth. ‘Smile for the cameras,’ he told her in a sardonic undertone.
‘Oh, dear, my battery’s gone flat,’ Ophelia responded. ‘Nothing to smile about either—’
‘You’re the one who set off this media circus!’
Ophelia paled at that blunt reminder and contrived a rather hunted curve of the lips. In truth she was genuinely shocked when it finally dawned on her that the heaving crush of shouting people behind the barriers was comprosed of members of the press waiting solely on their arrival.
In the limousine, Lysander turned bronzed eyes of censure on her. ‘I expect you to behave in public!’
‘I expect you to behave in private,’ Ophelia responded with spirit. ‘You told me to act like a wife and that’s what you’re getting. No bride in her right mind would put up with this kind of treatment on what is supposed to be her honeymoon!’
Lysander startled her by throwing back his arrogant dark head and laughing with husky appreciation. She was crazy, but it exerted the strangest appeal for him. Just as quickly he remembered the silk and velvet feel of her and the eager curve and welcome of her slight body against his. The heavy pulse at his groin threatened to become painful. He closed his lean, powerful hands over hers and pulled her to him with easy strength. ‘If I make it back tonight, I promise not to ignore you,’ he murmured huskily, slumberous metallic eyes full of sensual promise.
Her rising temper was punctured by the shock of that unsettlingly direct masculine response as it made nonsense of her attempt to call him to book and shame him for his attitude. Ophelia went red to the roots of her hair. ‘That isn’t what I meant,’ she hissed. ‘You are not welcome in my bed. There’s not going to be any more of that kind of nonsense—’
In silent answer, Lysander clamped her up against the hard contours of his lean, muscular frame and ravished her soft mouth with devouring hunger. A glittering ripple of white-hot heat and energy snaked through her and she fought a pitched battle with her response before the sudden sound of the passenger door opening made both of them pull apart in a simultaneous action.
‘Later, yineka mou,’ he breathed, before he climbed out in front of a large building. The passenger door thudded shut again and the limo moved off.
In a daze Ophelia shook her head, uncertain whether he was finally acting the part of her new husband or simply set on outmanoeuvring her.
Inside the exclusive clinic, Lysander was greeted by the medical specialist he had arranged to meet. Reassured by the latest bulletin on his mother’s health, he used a private lift to access her comfortable suite. The older woman’s passion for keeping her illness a secret from all but her closest friends had exasperated him. But he was deeply attached to Virginia and, although it was not a sentiment he could bring himself to share even with her, he tried to respect her wishes. Her cancer diagnosis had shattered him and the strain of keeping his concern hidden had been compounded when the older woman initially succumbed to depression and refused to consider surgery.
Although exhausted by her recent treatment, Virginia, a slim woman in her late fifties, still maintained the highest standards of grooming. But her son was quick to notice her reddened eyelids. He also recognised the corner of the newspaper protruding from beneath a hastily rearranged bedspread.
‘You’ve already seen the article about Ophelia,’ he guessed.
‘I get all the English newspapers.’
‘It upset you.’
Her discomfort patent, Virginia evaded his gaze. ‘No, memories of the past did that. Naturally I’m curious about my new daughter-in-law—her mother was once my friend.’
‘If you had agreed to my telling Ophelia that you were in hospital, I would’ve brought her to meet you.’ In truth, however, Lysander was not yet sure that he could trust Ophelia with his vulnerable mother. Virginia would always be the woman who had supplanted Cathy Stewart in Aristide’s affections.
‘I refuse to blight your first weeks together with this illness,’ the older woman declared staunchly. ‘Particularly so soon after your wife has lost her grandmother. You shouldn’t even be here tonight; you should be with your bride.’
An indulgent look on his lean, strong face, Lysander sat down. ‘I haven’t seen you for several days.’
Virginia sighed. ‘But I’m content. I was very happy when you told me you’d got married. I swear, I was only scared
for about twenty seconds thinking that you might’ve married the poor girl purely to get hold of Madrigal Court!’
With difficulty he retained his charismatic smile. ‘Where would you get such a wild idea from?’
‘You’re my son and I love you, even though you can be very ruthless,’ his mother retorted. ‘But I know you would only give up your freedom for someone very special and that quiet, quick wedding was very much your style. From what I’ve read, though, Ophelia’s had rather an unhappy life to date—’
‘But she doesn’t wear it like a badge. She sparkles.’ Lysander selected the descriptive word with care, thinking of the sassy light in Ophelia’s eyes and the liveliness of her quick movements.
Virginia rested anxious brown eyes on her handsome son. ‘What I’m about to say may annoy you, but if I don’t say it and your marriage ends in divorce, I’ll blame myself. You must’ve been angry about the interview that Ophelia gave to the press. She needs time and support to adjust to our world—’
‘Of course.’
‘Too many women have spoiled you, or perhaps I should say that the possession of power has spoiled you,’ the older woman murmured heavily. ‘You haven’t had to learn how to compromise. I want your marriage to work. I need to know that you have a loving home and family to rely on.’