Libby drew in a ragged breath and began walking back in the direction of the house. How had she spent even a minute believing he was capable of understanding a single thing about her? He wasn’t the Rion she’d once known. He’d grown so cynical. She glanced at him as he came alongside her. Why was that, when in the years since she’d been gone it appeared that so much had gone his way?
‘I love my work,’ she said tonelessly. ‘And I’ve already told you I don’t want your money. After all this time I just thought it was the right thing to do. As for Ashworth Motors, I honestly have no idea. The last time I saw my parents was the day we left for Athens together, so your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Your father refused to have you back?’ He looked appalled.
‘I didn’t go back.’ Didn’t Rion realise she’d had nothing to go back to?
‘So where did you go?’
‘The first flight back to the UK from Athens landed in Manchester.’ She shrugged. ‘It seemed as good a place as any.’
It had been two hundred miles away from her parents for a start. Not that that had stopped her father getting hold of her phone number three years later, when he’d read about Rion’s success in the paper and thought it was in his interest to call her and repent.
‘So living alone in a strange city was preferable to being married to me?’
Libby’s expression grew taut. ‘It was what I needed to do, Rion. In the same way that I knew you were happier working, making it on your own.’
Rion turned sharply to look at her as they reached the front door. ‘Happier? The only reason I was always working was to earn enough to get us out of that hovel we were living in!’
Libby felt as if someone had just removed the ground from beneath her feet. Working so hard had been his dream, hadn’t it? After the excitement of getting married had gone, when she’d realised that she wanted to take control of her life, he’d discovered that what he really wanted was to make a success of himself alone. Hadn’t he?
‘It made you happier than I could, Rion. Our marriage wasn’t what either of us was expecting. You said yourself the day I left it had been on the cards from the start.’
‘Only because you never believed in me.’
Libby clung on to the front wall of the house for support, guilt washing over her in a wave. Was that true? Had she been the only one who’d been disappointed in their marriage? Her mind traced back over those three short months. No, whatever he said, she knew he had been too. But the reality was she was the one who’d given up on it altogether, who’d left her proud Greek husband. And suddenly she saw with hideous clarity the answer to her question. Why had he become the dark, jaded man stood before her now when so much had gone his way in the intervening years? Because she’d walked away from him.
Hot tears pricked behind Libby’s eyes. ‘I always believed in you, Rion, that’s why I married you.’
Rion gritted his teeth. Yes, when she’d accepted his proposal she’d believed in him, believed her father would give them his blessing. And maybe she’d desired him so much that even after her father had given them the opposite she’d allowed herself to believe he was still someone back in Greece. She’d gone through with the wedding, after all. But once he’d taken her back to that god-awful apartment he’d known she must realise that he was really no one at all. And, though he’d tried to convince himself that she didn’t think like that, deep down he’d been half expecting her to bolt from the minute he’d carried her over the threshold.
He grimaced. God knew why he’d persisted in hoping she was immune to the same prejudices as her father even at that point. Or why, before that, he’d believed Thomas Ashworth was any different from Spyros and his father. He supposed he’d been blinded by gratitude because he’d given him his first proper job, because he’d been on the first step of the ladder to becoming the kind of man he’d sworn he’d become: a man whose life was worth something. A man whose family—mother, wife, child one day—would never have to suffer what Jason had.
But even so he shouldn’t have been blind, should have recognised that the only reason her father had promoted him was because he made him more money than all his other Ashworth Motors employees put together. Should have realised it wasn’t the mark of respect he’d taken it to be, that there was no way on earth Thomas Ashworth would even consider accepting someone like him as his son-in-law and successor to his company.
Not that Rion had ever wanted the latter. He’d always planned to build his own company the second he’d earned enough to go solo. But Libby—from the first time she’d looked at him with those wide blue eyes which hadn’t seemed to see any difference between them at all, he’d never been able to help wanting her. Even though they’d really known so little about one another, even though he’d always felt like a boy from the slums compared to her elegance and beauty, even though he should have known she was out of his league. He’d wanted her regardless—more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his life.
His eyes roamed over her. He hated the feeling of weakness. Wished that now he knew the look in her eyes was a lie, that she was just the same as her father, the wanting would disappear. It never had. Maybe it would when he took her again, one final time, with the full force of his need. Maybe it never would. But at least he was not in any danger of ever being so gullible again, of falling for her lies—so carefully engineered to absolve herself of blame.
‘Well, if you’ve always believed in me so unfalteringly, and now you’ve had the time to find yourself, what could be better than two weeks discovering whether our marriage can work, just as we agreed?’
Libby shook her head desolately. ‘Because you only want me for the good of your campaign!’
‘I’ve already told you. The fact that your return happens to coincide with this election is just a fortunate coincidence. Allow me to spend two weeks convincing you this marriage can work, just as we agreed. If I fail, then I will sign the divorce papers.’
Her voice choked. ‘I already know this marriage can’t work. You’ve changed too much.’
She missed his wince. ‘But we agreed that I had two weeks.’ He looked at his watch patronisingly, knowing she was only so outraged at the prospect of staying now that she knew about the election because it meant there’d be no chance of her keeping their marriage—so shameful in her eyes—a secret.
‘I’m afraid it’s only been a matter of hours.’
Libby pressed the heels of her hands into the sockets of her eyes. She wanted to run away as far as possible, so she didn’t have to face being blackmailed by the only man she’d ever loved, so she could forget this whole sorry episode had ever happened. She wanted to shake him until the old Rion rose to the surface, understood her, saw what he was doing was wrong, told her she wasn’t the one who had done this to him. But she knew that was like wishing for sunshine at midnight. That even if she ran she’d never forget. He’d never let her, because he’d drag her through the courts indefinitely.
Which left only one option. She dropped her hands and raised defiant eyes to meet his.
‘Then it seems you leave me with little choice. But I can assure you you’ll live to regret not agreeing to this divorce while you had the chance.’
She turned quickly, to deny him the satisfaction of looking her in the eye and giving some gloating response. But as she picked up her small suitcase, which she’d dumped in the hallway earlier, and began walking up the stairs, she felt his gaze rake over her rear view and decided a snide comment would have been preferable. Because she knew it wasn’t real, and that hurt most of all.
Rion sensed her telling hesitation and smiled, enjoying the sight of her bottom and her shapely legs. ‘I doubt that either of us is going to regret being back in one another’s company for two weeks, Liberty. The master bedroom is the third on the right, if you’d rather just cut to the chase and admit it.’
Libby swung round at the top of the stairs, her eyes blazing furiously. ‘Libby,’ she ground out. ‘And
the divorce petition is right here,’ she replied, whipping it out of the front pocket of her suitcase and tossing it down the stairs, ‘if you’d rather just rediscover your conscience.’ And with that she stormed into the first room at the top of the stairs and slammed the door behind her.
Rion gathered up the papers and smirked to himself. She’d just shut herself in his storage room, and something told him that bedding down for the night amongst a heap of clutter he hadn’t got round to sorting yet wasn’t exactly the alternative to the master bedroom she’d had in mind.
Not that he had any idea what was really going on in her mind, he thought, turning at the foot of the stairs and trying to get his head around her revelation that she had no duke or earl waiting in the wings to marry her after all.
He walked into his study, tossed the papers into the bottom drawer of his desk, slammed it shut, and poured himself a generous measure of Scotch. It made little difference, of course; he was under no illusion about that. She’d still no doubt had other lovers, still found the idea of being married to him abhorrent, no matter how hard she tried to absolve herself of guilt by arguing that she’d simply needed time to ‘find herself’.
He swilled the amber liquid around his glass. But what it did mean was that if she’d been pursued by men she deemed suitable husband material—and he had no doubt that she had been—in one way at least they hadn’t matched up to him.
Was that why she’d never gone back to her parents?
Discovering that she hadn’t had shocked the hell out of him at first, but then maybe she’d known that her father would require appeasement in the form of a second, more appropriate match. And maybe she hadn’t been able to bear that thought, because she understood that, ironically, the kind of man she wanted fathering her children was not the kind of man who turned her on.
Rion lifted the glass to his lips and knocked back the measure in one go. It appalled him that his wife had been out there alone, that her father was such an unforgiving man that she’d felt unable to go back home. He’d gathered that Thomas Ashworth was a strict father even before they’d naïvely gone to seek his blessing to marry, but he’d always imagined he’d forgive Libby just as soon as she’d dumped him. For once, his own father’s abandonment seemed almost tame.
But most of all he was appalled that he empathised with Libby whatsoever, when by definition empathy meant feeling on the same page as another person and she thought of him as a whole other book, on a different shelf altogether. The bottom shelf.
Rion put the glass down on the table with a bang. Well, maybe they would always be on different shelves in her eyes, but their bodies spoke the same language, and this time around he wasn’t going to let her forget it. He was going to make her beg, and only then would he let her go.
Libby hadn’t expected to turn on the light and find a room full of his photos and personal possessions, but it seemed fate had made up its mind to just keep dishing out the pain tonight.
Although she could have opened the door and asked him if she could sleep elsewhere, or gone and tried to find another room herself, the last thing she needed was to run into him and receive another insincere invitation to his bed.
Besides, she needed to train herself to look at his face and feel nothing, instead of remembering the man she’d fallen in love with. That man no longer existed. Her heart ached at the realisation, at the thought that her actions might be partly responsible—actions he couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. She wanted to believe there must have been some mistake, that he hadn’t become a ruthless, blackmailing brute, that it was just a nightmare—but she knew it was the part before they’d met Spyros which had all been a dream.
So maybe finding herself in such close proximity to all his possessions was the best thing that could have happened. Maybe she could uncondition those old feelings and build up her resistance ready to confront the real thing again tomorrow? Like presenting images of a spider to an arachnophobe, she thought, remembering something she’d once read in an in-flight magazine about the way cognitive behavioural therapies worked.
But hadn’t it also said something about the dangers of presenting the phobic with too much too quickly? She shook her head, wishing for the second time that day that she didn’t recall everything in such categorical detail, before deciding that the analogy was pointless anyway. Because she wasn’t afraid of Rion, she reasoned with herself, ignoring the voice which said no, but you’re afraid of the way he still makes you feel.
But at least she had discovered the truth early—wouldn’t have to go through the pain of slowly coming to realise that he only had space in his heart for money and power. And now she knew that making their separation official was one hundred per cent the right thing to be doing. That the way forward was to refuse to comply with his blackmail until he couldn’t bear her remaining as his wife a moment longer. Yes, she was actually grateful for tonight, because it had banished all the doubts she’d started to have about whether getting divorced was the right thing to do. It was. Unequivocally.
At least she was sure she would feel that way once she’d slept on it.
CHAPTER SIX
LIBBY woke at six, after a surprisingly easy night’s sleep. She put it down to emotional exhaustion, and the relief of having settled on a course of action. Six was actually relatively late by her standards; she’d been an early bird since her childhood, reading voraciously in the early hours of morning when her father wasn’t around to forbid her on the grounds that no man wanted a wife more intelligent than he was. Now, getting up at the crack of dawn to lead an excursion, catch a flight, or meet a new tour group was part of her job description, and ordinarily she adored it.
So why did just the thought of returning to that life, even if she successfully got Rion to sign the divorce petition, fill her with such depression this morning? Because all these years she’d thought that if she saw him again she wouldn’t feel anything any more, she supposed, and yesterday she’d realised she was wrong. Because he’d made her realise that the life she’d carved out for herself didn’t make her as happy as she’d told herself it did. And because, just when she’d allowed herself to believe she had a shot at real happiness, she’d discovered the man who’d once made her so happy had been replaced by a man who wanted to control her for his own gain.
Well, today he was going to discover that she would not be controlled by anything or anyone, Libby thought defiantly, rifling through her suitcase and digging out a sleeveless top and skirt. She got up and pressed her ear to the door to see if she could hear any sounds of movement on the landing. Nothing. She was thankful that in giving her the co-ordinates of his bedroom, and having directed her to the bathroom to freshen up yesterday, he’d prevented her from having to embark on a Russian-Roulette-style door-opening session this morning, which would most certainly have resulted in waking him, and probably stumbling across him in bed too.
Appalled to catch herself lingering outside his door, wondering whether he still slept naked, Libby rushed to the bathroom and jumped straight in the shower. But she was frustrated to find jets of water shooting out from the walls to massage her body from every angle, and, despite the fact that she had to contend with different shower mechanisms all the time, she couldn’t work out how to turn them off. Defeated, but adamant that she would not be subjected to such a sensual assault, she turned the temperature unarousingly low, soaped, rinsed, and then dried herself off briskly in record quick time before flinging on her clothes and leaving the house.
It was a gloriously sunny morning, with a light breeze rising off the ocean that caught the scent of wild thyme as it blew inland. To her relief, it blew her melancholy aside and immediately put her in the mood to explore.
She decided to turn right and begin in Metameikos’s old town first, taking photos along the way and sketching out a rough map in her notebook. She told herself the old town was the most logical place to start, but if she was honest she was too curious about the place where he’d grown up not t
o start there. Especially when he’d always been so reluctant to talk about it, and tried to argue that there was nothing remotely sentimental about his decision to come back here. He’d admitted that he’d bought the house because as a child he’d sworn he’d own it one day, so surely there was more to his decision to come back to Metameikos than he was willing to reveal? After all, the place where you grew up always shaped the person you became, didn’t it? Even if only in the sense that it made you want to escape it.
But as Libby began to wander through the streets she couldn’t imagine Metameikos could have that effect on anyone, and knew almost instantly that it would go down well with the clientele who booked with Kate’s Escapes. Yes, some parts were in need of serious rejuvenation, but at the same time she couldn’t recall anywhere else she’d visited that was quite so charming: the rows of washing strung out across the narrow streets, the small gardens lovingly planted and teeming with butterflies, the natural stream of water that trickled down through the mountains to the village square, where locals gathered to collect water and exchange gossip.
But, she thought, stopping at a small café for a cup of lemon tea and a delicious pastry, she didn’t suppose stopping the rat race and enjoying life’s simple pleasures would appeal to Rion. Yet he’d still chosen to return to that house—even though there were newer, far more luxurious and impressive properties that must have sprung up since his childhood.
So surely that meant he didn’t want to escape the simple charm of the place where he’d grown up completely?
Or maybe it just conveniently happens to be the most politically neutral location in Metameikos, the voice of reason piped up in the back of her mind as she walked along the promenade towards the new town, the boats changing from small fishing vessels coming in from a morning’s work to enormous yachts with last night’s empty champagne bottles strewn across the deck, their curtains drawn tight. For if Metameikos did mean something else to him, then surely the few times he’d spoken about it he wouldn’t have done so reluctantly. And maybe he knows that having been raised here gives his bid for power an added credibility? Yes, now she thought about it, it was obvious that that was the reason why he’d chosen to run for office in his home town—it increased his chances of winning. That, and the fact that, as Metameikos was the only independent province in Greece, if he did win his power would be far greater than if he’d simply become a member of the vouli in Athens. She cursed herself for wanting so desperately to believe she’d been mistaken about him when she knew it was so futile, and carried on.
Greek Tycoon, Wayward Wife Page 6