by Lynne Graham
‘You’re going to have to find a way, because until you have explained it to my satisfaction I’m not sharing a bed with you again.’ Atreus spelt out that assurance without hesitation.
In receipt of that thrown gauntlet, Lindy gritted her teeth. ‘You’re being horribly unreasonable.’
Atreus sprang upright and strode forward. ‘Not at all, I’ve been generous beyond all expectation,’ he returned in hard contradiction. ‘Some men might have walked out on you and the marriage on the same night. I stayed and gave you time to work it out. If this is the result after three weeks, I’m not impressed.’
Temper was jumping up and down inside Lindy like hot steam trying to escape. ‘Obviously I shouldn’t have bothered trying to apologise!’
‘It was done with such little grace that it was a waste of your breath,’ Atreus conceded, in a far from conciliatory way.
Provoked even more by his cold-blooded calm and scrupulous civility, Lindy was so wound up she was trembling with temper. ‘There are times when you can really make me hate you, Atreus, and this is one of them. I was jealous of Krista—there I’ve told you. Are you happy now?’ she demanded fiercely, resenting him for dragging that demeaning truth out of her. ‘When you admitted you’d been with her here in this house, and presumably in that same bed, I was scared you’d be comparing us, that you really wanted her and not me…I freaked out, all right?’
Atreus viewed her with steady narrowed eyes and a strong air of frowning disbelief. ‘You pushed me away because you were jealous of Krista?’ he pressed.
‘Of course I was jealous of her!’ Lindy slammed back, blue eyes very bright as she lifted and dropped her arms in speaking emphasis of the point. ‘How could I not have been jealous? You took her straight to visit your family. I was with you eighteen months and you never took me anywhere near them. Your family love her. She’s everything I’m not. You said you wanted a rich wife from the same background as you, and who fits that description more perfectly than Krista Perris?’
‘Only on paper.’ Atreus was still staring fixedly at her, and in a sudden movement he closed the space between them and pulled her to him, hugging her close to his lean, powerful body in an embrace that left her breathless. He pushed her hair back off her brow in an almost clumsy movement. ‘You crazy, crazy woman,’ he censured. ‘You had no need to be jealous.’
‘She’s really beautiful,’ Lindy reasoned, pain rather than resentment tugging at her uneven voice.
‘But it’s you I want, agapi mou,’ he whispered raggedly, brilliant eyes of hot liquid gold scanning her upturned face. ‘It’s always been you.’
Lindy leant into his strong supportive frame, wanting to believe what he was telling her yet not daring to do so. ‘That’s so hard to believe.’
Atreus hauled her up against him and tasted her mouth with a burning, driving hunger that left her shivering in delicious quivering surprise. ‘Day by day, hour by hour, you’ve been killing me with your happy smiles and cheerful conversation. I thought you didn’t care if we were no longer lovers,’ he ground out. ‘How was I supposed to work out that you were jealous of Krista?’
‘At the wedding Krista told me that I was the wrong bride and that you’d never stay with me,’ Lindy shared in a shamed undertone, for even repeating that melodramatic warning mortified her.
Atreus frowned, and swore long and low in Greek. ‘You never tell me anything,’ he condemned afresh, throwing the ball back in her court.
‘I didn’t want to run to you and tell tales about Krista…that’s so juvenile,’ she groaned.
‘But if you’re juvenile enough to believe that kind of silly nonsense,’ Atreus reasoned, with an incredulity he couldn’t hide, ‘telling me would have been more sensible.’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ Lindy interrupted vehemently. ‘I felt guilty about Krista so I didn’t want to make a fuss. After all, if I hadn’t fallen pregnant you’d still be with her!’
His lean, strong face clenched. ‘No, I wouldn’t be.’
Silencing her with that unexpected contradiction, Atreus lifted her up into his arms and carried her down to the master bedroom at the end of the corridor.
‘Sometimes you drive me insane,’ he admitted quietly. ‘I didn’t know why you behaved that way on our wedding night but I was reluctant to force the issue. I was aware that your main reason for marrying me was Theo. You made that very clear. And I understood. Our marriage was the best solution to his birth—but what about us?’
What about us? It was a question that neither one of them had tackled in advance of their marriage, although they had examined what it would mean for their unborn child from every possible angle. Somehow Lindy had been guilty of just blindly assuming that everything would come right without any specific input from her.
As Atreus settled her down on the wide divan bed, Lindy compressed lips still tingling pleasurably from the pressure of his. ‘It’s your fault I felt so insecure. You kept me at arm’s length before the wedding.’
‘You turned me down when I asked you to marry me. How was I supposed to behave?’ Atreus framed grimly. ‘I didn’t know where I stood with you, and the bond we had left felt too fragile to risk for the sake of sex.’
Engaged in kicking off her shoes, Lindy gave him a troubled look at that explanation. ‘I had no idea you felt like that. There’s only one reason I turned you down—I thought you were only asking me to marry you because you felt it was your duty to do so because I was pregnant. And I didn’t want any man on those terms.’
‘That’s not how I felt, agapi mou. But then I didn’t really understand what I was feeling until after that point,’ Atreus conceded heavily. ‘So it’s hardly surprising that you had no idea either.’
Lindy stood up and, emboldened by that kiss, slid her arms round his neck. ‘I don’t like sleeping alone…’
Atreus locked her to his big powerful frame. ‘Do you honestly think I do?’
‘That night after I had the scan, when you took me to bed with you in your apartment, you wanted me then—’
‘And I knew you wanted me. But I wanted something more lasting for us than occasional sex when you were in the mood,’ Atreus breathed, unzipping her dress and peeling it down her helpfully extended arms.
Lindy had turned hot pink. ‘I’m not that shameless!’
‘No?’ Atreus nibbled her full lower lip while he dispensed with her bra and moulded her creamy curves.
‘All right, I can be. You taught me bad habits,’ she muttered, feverishly unbuttoning his shirt and yanking it off him with more haste than cool. ‘But occasional wouldn’t be enough for me.’
Atreus gazed down at her with sudden unholy amusement, and laughed out loud as he tugged her down on the bed with him. ‘I didn’t want to end up in some undefined messy relationship with you and my child.’
‘So, it was marriage or nothing?’ Lindy completed, spreading her fingers over his muscular hair-roughened torso in a wondering caress of reacquaintance. As she let her hands slide wantonly lower, she felt his shudder of response with deep loving satisfaction.
Stripping off the remainder of his clothing, Atreus caught her to him and kissed her with a force of hunger and urgency that told her how much he needed her. ‘You made it clear that you were only marrying me for Theo’s sake,’ he reminded her.
‘When did I do that?’ she queried, her eyes pools of enquiry as she flopped back breathlessly against the pillows and gloried in the feel of his long, lean body settling over hers.
‘After Theo’s birth.’
Lindy blinked. ‘I forgot about that. You asked me why I’d changed my mind…Theo wasn’t the only reason. I was saving face.’
‘I didn’t know that. I was too much aware of how much I’d hurt you in letting you go in the first place,’ Atreus admitted in a taut undertone.
‘Probably only because I told you. You’re not exactly on the ball when it comes to other people’s emotions.’
The wry hint of a smile momen
tarily stole the gravity from his face. ‘Or even my own.’
Something in the troubled expression of those black-lashed eyes yanked painfully at Lindy’s heartstrings, and she stretched up to kiss him. That kiss deepened and strengthened with a passion more powerful than any they had yet experienced together. Conversation was forgotten as more primitive needs drove them. At the instant he entered her wildly responsive body her excitement surged to a burning peak and the explosive heat inside her overflowed, sending ripples of quivering pleasure that left her sobbing his name with delight.
‘Now you feel like you’re mine again, yineka mou,’ Atreus said huskily, bestowing a tender kiss on her lush mouth and holding her until the wild pounding of her heart and her thrumming pulses had subsided to a bearable level.
Lindy lay in the blissful togetherness that followed feeling happier and more at peace than she had felt for many, many months. Luxuriating in his proximity, she knew that being close to Atreus again felt like coming home. It’s you I want…it’s always been you. That was all he had had to say to win her back, heart and soul, and of course she wanted to believe every word of that assurance—even though she felt that it would be the ultimate vanity not to accept that he had to be exaggerating.
Stunning golden eyes scanned her preoccupied face. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Lindy smiled. She had the perfect answer to that unfamiliar question from his quarter. ‘You. Happy now?’
‘I’m amazingly in love with you,’ Atreus confessed with a ragged edge to his delivery. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been in love. It hit me in the face, but I still didn’t recognise what it was. I was miserable without you. Nothing felt right any more.’
‘You love me?’ Lindy repeated in astonishment. ‘Since when?’
‘Probably the first month we met,’ Atreus admitted. ‘I wasn’t brought up to pay heed to emotions. I was raised to respect a code of head over heart, and it worked like a charm until I met you. I’d fallen in lust, but never in love. I never really cared about a woman until I met you.’
Lindy treated him to a blissful smile. I was miserable without you. It was all she needed to hear to forgive the memory of those wretched months without him. ‘How miserable were you?’ she prompted, wanting every gory detail.
‘I didn’t like Chantry House without you in it. The place felt flat and empty. I couldn’t concentrate at work, and I was so bad-tempered two of my PAs asked for transfers. I missed you so much, and I was totally unprepared for feeling like that. When I let you go, I decided that it was probably time for me to look for a wife rather than another lover.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d been so comfortable, so settled with you. Did it never occur to you that we lived together like a married couple on our shared weekends? It was the most stable relationship I’d ever had,’ he volunteered. ‘But, no matter how many women I met, I couldn’t replace you.’
‘You found Krista,’ she reminded him a shade tartly.
‘I didn’t need to find Krista. I’ve known her all my life. I turned to her because she seemed to match that blueprint in my head of the woman I should marry to have the best hope of a successful relationship,’ he admitted, tugging Lindy out of bed and into the en suite bathroom, where he switched on the shower in the wetroom.
Lindy looked up at him, noting the dark reflective look in his eyes, realising that it was a struggle for him to tell her so much. ‘Why did you say she was only perfect on paper?’
His lean, strong face shadowed. ‘It was the truth. From the start she courted publicity, which I hated. That’s why we visited my family so quickly—because she had ensured they knew we were seeing each other from the first week.’
That information told Lindy that he had not been with Krista anything like as long as she had believed. She stepped beneath the water with him. ‘And of course your family was ecstatic.’
‘If they’d known as much as I now know about her, they would have been considerably less keen. Krista and I have nothing in common but our backgrounds. She’s never worked a day in her life, and doesn’t even understand the need for it.’
‘That must have been a crash course in compromise for a workaholic like you,’ Lindy guessed, slippery with shower gel as he subjected her to a slow, thorough wash. ‘But you still brought her here to the island.’
‘That was light years back, when we were teenagers. She was only one in a whole crowd of friends who came out here for a party.’
‘Oh…I assumed it was much more recent than that,’ Lindy faltered as he spun her under the water to rinse her.
‘You must be joking. Krista doesn’t like a quiet life, or the outdoors. She can’t live without shops and clubs, and she thinks sailing is very ageing for the skin,’ he completed with suppressed scorn.
Lindy laughed at that news. ‘No, I suppose you’re right. She definitely wasn’t the perfect woman for you.’
‘You are the perfect woman for me, but I was so stupid I didn’t recognise the fact until it was almost too late,’ Atreus groaned, wrapping her with care in a big fleecy towel. ‘I should have walked away from Krista sooner than I did, but I kept on thinking that eventually I would see something more in her. I didn’t sleep with her.’
Anchoring her towel more securely, Lindy stared up at him in bewilderment. ‘You…didn’t?’
‘No. I knew that once I did her expectations would be roused, and I backed off because I wasn’t sure about her. When I saw that newspaper and realised you were pregnant, it hit me very hard…’
‘So hard that you flew in with a lawyer to help me make a statement denying that it was your child!’ Lindy tossed back.
‘I was angry, and jealous that you were carrying what I believed to be another man’s baby. It never crossed my mind that the child might be mine. We had been apart almost five months at that point,’ Atreus reminded her, linking a towel round his lean hips as he uncorked a bottle of wine from a cabinet in the bedroom and filled two glasses with pale liquid.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and tell you that you were going to be a father when I found out myself.’ Lindy sighed guiltily. ‘I can see how much it complicated everything. You had to tell Krista and break up with her—’
‘That’s not how it happened,’ Atreus cut in, pressing a button that made the glass doors slide back, enabling them to walk out onto the sun-drenched patio beyond that overlooked the grounds.
Lindy sipped her wine. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I went to see Krista to end the relationship and tell her about you,’ he admitted levelly. ‘The maid assumed I was expected and let me into Krista’s apartment, where I found her and a selection of her friends enjoying a cocaine party.’
Lindy froze, and stared at him in consternation.
‘I’d often found her very moody, and I was blind not to suspect that drugs were involved. I’m fiercely anti them,’ Atreus breathed grimly. ‘That was the moment that it hit me in the face—I had let the love of my life walk away and had then wasted my time trying to idealise a woman who couldn’t hold a candle to you. I was ashamed I could be so out of touch with my own feelings that I hadn’t even appreciated that what I felt you was love and respect and friendship, and all the other things that a successful marriage needs to thrive. I had it all and threw it away!’
Shocked as much by what he had told her about Krista as by being told that he loved her, Lindy set her glass down and wrapped her arms round him. ‘No, you didn’t. I started asking questions and you just weren’t ready for that. It all blew up in our faces.’
Atreus dealt her a rueful appraisal and gripped her hands hard in his. ‘Don’t be kind to make me feel better. I don’t deserve to feel better on that score. You had to leave for me to appreciate you, and if I’d lost you for ever I would only have had myself to blame for it.’
‘Do Krista’s family know about the drugs?’ Lindy asked awkwardly.
‘When I saw her at the wedding she promised to tell them, because she n
eeds to go into rehab.’
‘Was that what you were talking about when you both looked so serious?’
‘I know that once she tells her family she’ll get the support she needs. If she doesn’t, I’ll do it for her. Now, can we talk about us instead of Krista?’
Her eyes softened. ‘Of course.’
‘Thankfully,’ Atreus murmured, dark golden eyes clinging to her animated face with warm appreciation, ‘I got a second chance with you through Theo being conceived. And second time around I’d learned what I needed to know. I knew exactly what I wanted and what I was fighting for—your love.’
A rueful laugh fell from Lindy’s lips. ‘You never lost my love. There were weeks when I thought a lot of bad, unforgiving thoughts about you, but I still loved you underneath.’
Atreus sank down on the sofa on the patio and scooped her onto his lap. ‘And…now?’ he queried tautly.
Lindy helped herself to his wine, because her own glass was out of reach, and kissed him with joyous abandon. ‘Can’t you tell how I feel? I’m crazy about you.’
‘Crazy enough to apologise…’
‘You wanted to make me grovel!’ she condemned.
‘It was the fate you deserved,’ Atreus told her. ‘I was devastated when you pushed me away on our wedding night, agapi mou.’
Her eyes stung with sudden ready tears of remorse, for she could tell by his voice that he had indeed been knocked back hard by her rejection. She kissed him again, more than willing to make up for that mistake. They became entangled on the sofa, and as things heated up they headed back indoors to the comfort of their bed, where they made love, exchanged lovers’ promises and jokes, and lay together feeling very blessed to have found each other…
Almost three years later, Atreus and Lindy hosted a weekend party on Thrazos, to celebrate their third wedding anniversary.
Sergei and Alissa had sailed in on their latest yacht, Platinum II, and Atreus and Lindy, Jasim and Elinor had been given the full tour of the fabulous brand-new craft. The men had stayed onboard longer than the women and children, while Atreus had manfully withstood Sergei’s teasing about his own small craft, saying that he had to be the only Greek shipping tycoon alive without a huge yacht.