The Kouvaris Marriage

by Diana Hamilton

  ‘Maddie?’ he prompted. His voice was gentle. ‘Tell me what made you demand a divorce all those weeks ago.’

  A muscle in her throat jerked and her eyes slid away from his.

  Dimitri knew he couldn’t take it if she refused to give him any explanation, or told him that his suspicions had been right all along.

  Whatever—he had to know why she was determined to end their marriage. ‘When we agreed to make a fresh start, after we discovered you were carrying my child, I wouldn’t let you tell me why you’d left me. I was wrong to insist that the slate had to be wiped clean. It was a form of cowardice and I’m not proud of that. I was desperate to keep you, to make you happy. I just wanted to start over.’

  A sigh was wrenched from him before he stated, ‘But the slate isn’t clean, is it? Again you threaten to leave me, so the stain must still be there. So tell me. Is it money? I need to know.’

  He enclosed her hand in his lean, bronzed one and his touch was fire in her veins. Maddie swung her feet to the ground and shot upright, dragging her hand from his.

  She didn’t need this! This instinctive reaction to his touch!

  And she didn’t want a pay-off. How could he think that? His wealth had never interested her. And now this demeaning physical reminder of the way he could make her feel, the agony of loving, wanting and needing him that she couldn’t shake off—no matter how often and how staunchly she informed herself that she hated and despised him!

  The trouble was, she knew herself too well. With him she had always found it so easy, so imperative, to give of herself, to respond. But she was not going to let herself fall into the abyss of blind love and yearning again!

  She turned back to face him. He was standing now, and his tall, powerful physique gave her the feeling of being overwhelmed. Wrapping her arms self-protectively around her midriff, she met his eyes, determination in the sparkling blue.

  But her mouth shook a little when she got out, ‘We’d been married for just a few days when Irini told me exactly why you’d picked me.’

  ‘And?’ His hands came down on her rigid shoulders.

  He looked bemused. His strongly marked brows drawn together in a slight frown of incomprehension. Her spine stiffened until she thought it might splinter.

  ‘Big hips, humble background. No-account,’ she supplied, on a hiss of breath. ‘The sort of dumb-cluck who wouldn’t know how to fight you when you did what you meant to do.’

  ‘Pethi mou—’

  ‘Don’t!’ She wrenched away from him. Empty endearments she could do without! Fat tears scalded her face. With one swift movement he captured her waist and drew her back to him.

  ‘Irini made these insults?’

  His eyes challenged her, as if he believed she was lying. Or perhaps as if he couldn’t believe his lover’s stupidity in showing her hand so early in the game?

  ‘Who else?’ Maddie ground out, frustrated at his pretence of not knowing what she was on about. ‘And for good measure she told me the rest of it! You’re madly in love with each other but can’t marry because she can’t give you the heir you need!’

  She was almost yelling now, incensed by the hurt she’d been dealt. ‘So bingo! You’d get yourself a no-account wife, get her pregnant, and as soon as the child was born you’d take it and dump her. Goodbye, and thanks a bunch! And, hey! Know what? You’d be able to take the wife you really loved and wanted! So it’s no good you trying to pretend you want me for anything other than the baby!’

  Suddenly the fight drained out of her. She felt limp and utterly wretched.

  Her head drooped. His hands tightened about her waist as he moved her back to the lounger. ‘Sit. Before you fall down.’

  Those strong, lean features might have been carved out of granite, Maddie registered as she did as she’d been told—sat, because she felt weak and empty and keeping upright suddenly seemed beyond her.

  ‘So when did this—conversation—take place?’ He sank down beside her. Much too close. She was far too aware of his body heat, the signature scent of him, all male, and faintly, cleanly lemony. It was sheer torture.

  What did that matter now? Numbly, she considered his question. He was obviously intent on prising every last detail from her, and she really didn’t want to talk about it any more. Why didn’t he just face the fact that he’d been found out? Admit it and start negotiations—involving money, of course—to try and persuade her to hand her child over willingly?

  Drained, Maddie passed a hand over her forehead. The skin felt tight. He was waiting, watching her intently. ‘The meet-the-bride party you threw for your friends, remember?’ She answered at last with listless resignation. Even thinking about that encounter turned her stomach, and talking about it with the man who was the co-instigator of all her humiliation and misery was a thousand times worse.

  ‘Maddie—’ Lean fingers cupped her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. Shamefully, hers misted with tears. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He wasn’t denying it, she registered with helpless misery. Had she wanted him to? Wanted him to force her to believe him so that she could go on living in a fool’s paradise for just a little longer?

  Appalled by her weakness, she twisted away from him, hauled herself together and admitted tersely, ‘I wish I had! I’d been out on the terrace, hiding from those of the guests who looked at me as if I were some kind of strange peasant who’d wandered into a royal gala occasion by mistake! I was on my way back in, all fired-up. I was going to ask you if it was true. But I bumped into Amanda and she told me to cool it. She said Irini was a spiteful, malicious bitch and jealous. We’d only just got married, and she said if I went in there and caused a scene it would embarrass you in front of your classy guests and make you think I didn’t trust you.’

  Her fingers were pleating the white organza of her floaty skirt and, her head lowered, she muttered, ‘I took her advice. And then it was too late.’

  ‘Why?’ Feeling shell-shocked Dimitri knew that Maddie’s well-being, the reassurance he must give her, was the only thing stopping him marching out of there, dragging Irini back by the scruff of her neck and forcing her to get down on her knees and beg his darling’s forgiveness for such monstrous lies.

  ‘None of this rubbish is true,’ he hastened to tell her, desperately trying to smother the fear that it might, as she’d said, be too late, that the damage done was irreparable. Those telling words too late echoed hollowly in his brain, and he took her restless hands in his.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She answered his repudiation flatly, almost without interest, as if his denials were worthless, not worth listening to.

  Her hands lay limply within his. She hadn’t the energy to drag them away, simply told him, ‘Your aunt lost no opportunity to remind me that I wasn’t fit to touch the ground you walked on. And between that and the way Irini took all your attention when she was around, and the way you’d insisted on a dead quiet wedding, as if you were ashamed of me, I lost all my self-confidence. It all seemed to add up—and that was really awful. So I couldn’t tell you what I knew, what Irini had said to me, because I wouldn’t be able to hide how very much you’d hurt me. I might not have your breeding, your social clout or your hefty bank balance. But I do have some pride!’

  She gave a monumentally inelegant sniff, gathered herself and reminded him shakily, ‘That last morning I came down and you were speaking to Irini on the phone. You said you loved her. That you’d be with her in minutes. I knew the worst then. It wasn’t just a nasty niggle at the back of my mind. So I left. And how could I tell you why?’ she blurted, her eyes brimming. ‘Tell you how much I was hurting because I loved you to pieces and to you I was just a means to an end?’

  By that admission she’d gone and betrayed herself, she recognised agonisingly. To make up for that too-telling slice of information, she blurted, ‘Then you forced me to come back to you with a lie! And went on about how many children we’d have. So, sucker-like, I swallowed it. I decided you’d put what you
felt for Irini behind you and settled for me because I could give you the family you wanted, and perhaps you were even getting just a bit fond of me.’

  ‘Just a bit—’ Dimitri began, astounded, hurt by her hurt.

  She snapped his words off with an anguished, ‘Shut up! I knew just what a fool I’d been because you went to her when I’d pleaded with you to stay with me. You point-blank refused. You went to her. And stayed with her. For two whole days. When I needed you!’

  With a heartfelt groan Dimitri ground out, ‘I will never forgive myself for that, chrysi mou! I can only plead ignorance of the facts!’ Sweeping aside any objection she might make, he lifted her in his arms and strode through the vast house as if burdened with no more than a feather, bellowing for the housekeeper, issuing to that startled personage instructions for chilled fruit juice to be brought to their suite.

  ‘I have much to explain—my case to plead,’ he imparted briskly as he closed the door to the master bedroom with an Italian-crafted-leather-shod foot. ‘And you, my sweetest delight, are overwrought when you must be calm,’ he stated firmly, as he tenderly laid her stunned-into-compliance form on the bed, arranged pillows behind her head and removed her shoes.

  Watching the assured movements of that perfectly honed body as he strode back to the door, flung it open and just stood there, waiting, clicking his fingers with an impatience which boded no good at all for any tardiness, Maddie decided she might as well stay just where she was. She was too emotionally wrung out to dredge up the strength to do anything else.

  Taking the tray, dismissing the breathless housekeeper, Dimitri carried it to the bed-table, set it down, and poured chilled fruit juice into a tall glass.

  His heart clenched with the pain of all that bitch had put Maddie through. The reason he’d misguidedly attributed to her desire to leave their marriage was contemptibly way off the mark.

  She was lying where he’d left her, her soft mouth still mutinous. But her huge eyes were lost, haunted and hollow, the tissue-thin skin stretched tightly over her cheekbones, strain showing in her pallor.

  He swallowed around the tightness in his throat. ‘Drink this.’ She was slow to react, but eventually she took the glass, took a mouthful, her teeth chattering against the glass, and handed it back. Sitting beside her, he fought the instinct to take her in his arms. Too soon. He needed all the patience at his command.

  ‘Let me explain about Irini. You overheard me say I loved her. I do. Or did. After what you’ve told me I think I despise her.’ Briefly, his long mouth compressed. ‘As a child, after the deaths of my parents, Irini was the only playmate I was allowed to have. I came to look on her as a sister. Loved her as a sister. Nothing more. As she grew into her teens she seemed to rely on me more and more. I became the recipient of all her troubles—which were, as I told her, either of her own making or in her imagination.’

  His brows drew down. ‘With hindsight, I should have seen the growing problem. But I didn’t. Her neediness brought out a half-exasperated protectiveness in me. I looked on her as the little sister I’d never had, remember?’ He sighed, touched her hand just briefly with his. ‘And now I will break a promise for the first time in my life, because you, your happiness, are far more important.’

  Expression flickered in the blue depths of her eyes for the first time since he’d carried her up here. The beginnings of belief in him? He hoped so.

  He captured both her unresistant hands. ‘Irini has a drugs and drink problem. When I discovered this, I was appalled. I made her face up to the damage she was doing to herself, persuaded her to seek professional help. I booked her into a clinic here in Greece. In return she made me swear I would tell no one. Not her parents, and certainly not Aunt Alexandra, who has always doted on her and from whom she expects to inherit a large fortune,’ he added drily. ‘The phone call you over-heard—well, that was a shock to me. She’d walked out of the clinic, was back in Athens and threatening to take an overdose. She was weeping, asking me if I loved her. I said I did—but as an exasperating and worrying little sister. I had no option but to try to reassure her, to go to her, persuade her to return to the clinic. I saw her into a taxi, then called into the office. I came home and you’d gone.’

  ‘She was here when you brought me back from England. All over you like a second skin,’ Maddie reminded him thinly.

  Heartened by the first tangible sign that she’d been listening to a word he’d been saying, Dimitri agreed. ‘So she was. And no one could have been more annoyed than I! But because of the state I knew she was in I had to treat her with kid gloves. Apparently she’d instructed the driver to bring her straight back to Athens, had arrived here and obviously heard from Aunt that you’d left me. It was what she wanted—though I had not the slightest inkling of that then. I knew something had to be settled. With her adamant hysterical refusal to let her parents know what was happening, the responsibility fell on me—even though it was the last thing I wanted or needed at that time. All I wanted, needed, was to put our marriage back on track.’

  ‘Why?’ Maddie hoisted herself up on her elbows. She felt stronger now, more alive, determined to get to the bottom of this unholy mess. His talk about Irini’s problems, his brotherly love, did ring true. Yet…‘For the children I could give you?’

  ‘Chrysi mou!’ A ferocious little frown had gathered between her crystal-clear eyes. ‘That you will give me children, God willing, is a blessing. But I will still love you until the day I die if that never happens,’ he assured her emotionally, leaning forward to kiss the frown away, murmuring, ‘You will get wrinkles!’

  ‘And?’ she got out chokily.

  ‘I will love them. As I will always love everything about you.’

  ‘You’ve never said the love word.’ Maddie could hardly speak for the fluttering of unbearable hope that coursed through her. But could she trust it?

  Cupping her face between his lean hands, he had the grace to look discomfited as he confessed, ‘I never got the hang of it. I don’t remember if my parents told me they loved me, but I know they must have done. After that, my life was a series of chilly rules and regulations.’ He shrugged. Then beamed. ‘But I’m telling you now! I fell fathoms deep that first day, remember? In the courtyard. You were wearing tatty old shorts, had smears of dirt on your lovely face. And freckles! I knew I was in love for the first time in my life, and vowed I would make you my wife!’

  Somehow he was on the bed beside her, holding her, but Maddie wasn’t going to let herself melt into him. Instead, she said firmly, ‘Do you promise on our child’s life that all that stuff Irini told me wasn’t true?’

  Golden eyes widened. He looked as if she had asked him to swear the earth wasn’t flat. He hoisted himself up on one elbow, his mouth quirking. ‘My Maddie, sometimes I think you don’t possess even one streak of logic in your beautiful head!’ A gentle finger made an exploratory journey over the fullness of her lower lip.

  ‘Think about it. If she and I had indeed made such absurdly Machiavellian plans, would she have alerted you to them right at the beginning of our marriage, when it would have ruined everything? Of course not!’ He answered his own question with that well-remembered supreme self-assurance. ‘She would have held her tongue, done and said nothing to make you suspicious, kept her fingers crossed, and hoped you remained in ignorance!’

  ‘Oh!’ Feeling monumentally stupid for not having worked that out for herself, she felt colour wash over her face.

  Contrite at having pointed out her lack in the logic department, he amended, ‘I can see why you fell for it, though. You implied you were feeling out of your depth at the time. And Aunt’s spitefulness would have further dented your feelings of self-worth. For which she will go unforgiven. And as for Irini—well, my only guess is she saw you as a threat to what I can now see as her possessive feelings towards me. She wanted you out of my life and used the most far-fetched and ridiculous pack of lies I have ever heard! Amanda was quite right in insisting that Irini was just a sp
iteful, malicious woman. But wrong in advising you not to tell me.’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ Maddie mourned with real regret. And then forgot any further explanations as he kissed her.

  He lifted his handsome head long minutes later to state thickly, ‘Now everything is right between us? No more misgivings, doubts, chrysi mou?’

  Everything inside her yearned to say Yes, of course! But there was still that raw spot, so recent it was capable of hurt. ‘So what was so important that you had to go to her a couple of weeks ago, when I asked you to stay with me?’

  He stilled. She thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged, his golden eyes rueful. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t like to be reminded of the worst failure of my life.’ He took a long breath. ‘I was absent for the week before we went to the island, remember?’

  Maddie nodded speechlessly. How could she forget? She’d been convinced he and Irini were together.

  ‘I was at the end of my tether,’ he confessed impatiently, as if that state of affairs was anathema to him. ‘You’d told me you wanted a divorce. I was determined to make you change your mind. On top of that, in refusing necessary treatment Irini had become a constant albatross around my neck. I needed all my energy to convince you to stay with me. So I decided to get her sorted out once and for all—get her off my back. I booked her into a clinic in California and personally escorted her there, thinking she’d be in good hands and far enough away to ensure she would think twice about just walking out.’

  Anger darkened his eyes. ‘But that is what the wretched woman did! She was back in Athens and again threatening to kill herself. I couldn’t take the risk that she didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t have my worst enemy’s death on my conscience, never mind the woman I’d always looked on as a needy little sister. It took me two days to convince her that her problems weren’t over, as she claimed, and that her suicide threats were simply a cry for help. That I could no longer provide that help and her parents had to be told.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Apparently Aunt Alexandra was the first person she contacted when she got back to Athens. She learned that you were expecting our baby, and I guess that tipped her over the edge.’