by Julia James
The sound of his mobile ringing jarred him, and he seized it from where he’d dropped it on the mahogany surface of his desk.
‘Yes?’ His voice was a bark.
An amused laugh was his answer. ‘You sound stressed, little cousin.’
‘Leo?’
‘Who else? Tell me, can you make lunch?’
‘Today?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know you were in London. Listen, this is not a good time right now.’ He hung up unceremoniously.
He didn’t want Leo around. He didn’t want lunch. He wanted Vanessa, and she’d walked out on him.
He went back to staring out across his office.
Half an hour later the door to his PA’s office opened and Leo strolled in. There was a tall, dark-haired, stunning woman with him whom Markos half recognised.
He got to his feet, exasperation in his face. ‘Leo, I said this wasn’t a good time—’
His cousin ignored him.
‘We’re flying to Athens this afternoon, so this is my only opportunity.’ He paused, drawing the woman forward. Markos’s eyes flickered over her, then back to Leo. His expression was still not welcoming.
His cousin was ignoring his lack of warmth.
‘I stopped by deliberately. I wanted you to be the first of the family to congratulate me. Probably the only one.’
Markos looked at him blankly. ‘Congratulate you?’
Leo grinned, throwing a glance at the woman beside him, who returned it with a smile. For a second something went through Markos that made him feel hollow. Leo’s good humour was like sandpaper on his skin.
His cousin’s next words were a bolt from the blue.
‘I’m married,’ said Leo, and grinned.
Markos just stared, disbelievingly.
‘You’re what?’
His cousin’s grin widened.
‘You heard me, little cousin. This is Anna—remember Anna? Gave me a hard time in Austria? Well—she finally saw sense and fell for me. Couldn’t resist me!’
‘More fool me!’ the woman at his side retorted.
Leo dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘She adores me,’ he said confidingly to his cousin.
Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Definitely more fool me.’ But the smile was still on her face as she said it.
Markos could say nothing, only stare.
Leo nodded at his new wife.
‘Takes a lot to silence my little cousin, but looks like I’ve succeeded.’ He turned his attention back to Markos. ‘You can come and kiss the bride—but only on the cheek. I get the rest of her! She’s too fantastic to waste on anyone but me.’
Anna raised her brows mock-wearily. ‘He can’t help himself,’ she explained to Markos.
‘You’re married,’ Markos said again, as if he needed to repeat it to believe it.
Leo strolled over to the drinks cabinet in the office, pulled it open as if it belonged to him, and extracted a bottle of champagne from the fridge.
‘Signed, sealed and delivered,’ he agreed, deftly opening the bottle. He poured out three foaming glassfuls and handed them around. Markos took his numbly. His cousin settled himself down in one of the pair of large wing chairs and pulled his wife down on his knee. She draped an arm around his neck and started to sip her champagne.
Leo lifted his glass.
‘To marriage,’ he said, and drank. ‘Don’t stand there looking like you’re chewing a lemon—drink up!’ He took another mouthful and cast a benevolent eye on Markos.
‘I’ve come with a message, little cousin. Remember at the Levantsky launch? Me warning you about Vanessa adoring you? Well, I’ve wised up. An adoring woman is the best thing a man can have. I should know—I’ve got one of my own, and she thinks the sun shines out of my—ouch!’ He winced exaggeratedly as Anna punched his shoulder warningly.
Markos watched the byplay expressionlessly. He felt as if a train were running over him.
‘Vanessa’s left me.’
The words were out before he could stop them.
It was like a freeze frame. Leo’s champagne flute stalled in mid-lift. Anna stilled on his knee, her hand still playfully fisted.
‘She’s left you?’ It was Leo’s turn to echo his cousin dumbly.
Anna got to her feet.
‘Vanessa left you?’ she said. ‘But she was completely nuts on you.’
‘She walked out three days ago.’
Leo’s face was sober. ‘What happened? Why did she go?’
Markos looked away. ‘I have no idea.’ He drew in a sharp breath and deposited his unwanted champagne glass on his desk with a click. ‘She had no reason to,’ he went on. His voice sounded strange in his own ears, harsh, but very remote. ‘She had everything she wanted with me. Everything. She was the best mistress I ever had—’
There was another sharp inhalation of breath. But not from him.
‘Mistress?’ Anna’s voice cut like a knife.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Leo.
Markos stiffened at the open aggression in Anna’s voice. He glanced coolly at her. Anna’s face was darkening.
‘You regarded Vanessa as your mistress?’ she demanded.
Leo began to say, ‘I should explain—’ in Greek. His wife twisted her head.
‘Don’t let him off the hook! God, he’s the one with the English mother! He’s got no excuse for talking like that!’ She turned her wrath back on Markos, her eyes snapping with anger.
‘You know, I always thought Vanessa was a fool to be so besotted with you—because obviously you weren’t about to make all her dreams come true, were you? I always knew it was going to be tears before bedtime for her. But I didn’t realise what a total louse you were! You actually have the gall to stand there and insult her like this—calling her your mistress!’
‘Anna—’ Leo’s voice was temporising.
She turned on him, snapping, ‘Don’t you dare take his side!’ then whipped back to Markos. ‘If Vanessa’s finally seen sense and walked out on you then I say thank God for that. She can do a whole lot better than a jerk like you! Leo.’ She glared at him. ‘I want to go. Now.’
She stormed out, not waiting to see if Leo was following.
‘What the hell—?’ said Markos slowly.
His cousin shrugged heavily and reverted to Greek.
‘Bad word to use—mistress. Doesn’t go down well.’
‘Why the hell not? What’s their problem?’
Leo just looked at him.
‘Maybe, little cousin, one day you’ll wise up and find out.’ His voice was dry and sombre, but it held a note of something in it that Markos had never heard before from Leo.
Pity.
Markos stiffened. He didn’t need pity. And certainly not from his cousin. A cousin who’d quite clearly lost his marbles. ‘Why on earth have you gone and got married?’ he demanded.
For a moment Leo’s eyes narrowed belligerently. Then, deliberately, he calmed.
‘Marriage can work, Markos. There are good marriages in this world. I’m proof of that.’
Markos threw him a jaundiced look. ‘Honeymoons are the easy bit,’ he said. ‘It’s what comes after that screws it up. And screws up anyone who gets trapped in the middle.’
The look of pity came again in Leo’s eyes.
‘You got a raw deal, I know,’ he said quietly. ‘But you don’t have to damn the whole game just because of it—’
‘It’s best to just stay clear of it, that’s all,’ finished Markos. ‘Which I have every intention of doing.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘Look, I’m not in the mood right now for any of this. If you’ve gone and got yourself married, I’m staying out of it—just let me know when you need a good divorce lawyer, and I’ll find you the best.’
Leo shook his head and gave a resigned laugh.
‘I won’t need one. Listen, little cousin.’ His voice changed. ‘I’m sorry about Vanessa. More than I can say. If ever a woman thought the sun shone out of you, she did. What
ever went wrong, I hope you can fix it.’
For a moment Markos’s eyes were bleak. Then his mouth tightened.
‘Maybe it’s just not worth fixing,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should just damn her to hell and be done with it. I’ll get along just fine without her.’
Leo looked at him. Looked at the tension webbing his eyes, the tic high in his cheekbone, the haggard look around his mouth.
‘Yeah—right,’ he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘IT’S MRS DIMISTRIS again, Mr Makarios,’ Markos’s PA said apologetically down the line to him as he picked up the phone in his office.
An expletive was instantly suppressed.
‘Put her through,’ said Markos grimly. This was not the first time Constantia Dimistris had phoned, but it was the first time he’d spoken to her. Time to get rid of her permanently.
‘Constantia,’ he said levelly, as he was put through.
The conversation that followed was neither brief nor pleasant. But it was at least, Markos hoped, effective. In the end he was reduced to bluntness.
‘Apollonia is a lovely girl, but further acquaintance would be pointless. Whatever my father may have led you to believe—and please accept my profound regrets if that is indeed the case—I am not considering marriage. Please, therefore, stop considering me as a prospective son-in-law. Apollonia deserves a man who can give her the devotion that any wife should have.’
Even as he said the courteous words he knew they were, however unintentionally, tactless. It was well known that Constantia Dimistris’s late husband had been notoriously un- devoted to his wife, mounting a stable of mistresses and taking them everywhere with him. She was as bitter about her own marriage as she was ambitious for her daughter’s. As for poor Apollonia—well, maybe she would do better with her mother’s next target.
Memory stabbed at him as he hung up. The night that Cosmo Dimistris had so signally failed to warn him that his mother and sister were staying at the same hotel. Apollonia had gazed with open fascination at Vanessa. With her sheltered up-bringing she would never have seen a man’s mistress before.
Markos’s eyes hardened.
What the hell was wrong with calling Vanessa his mistress? It was what she had been. There was no shame in it. She had lived with him, ergo she had been his mistress.
No—he didn’t want to think about Vanessa. Didn’t want to remember her. She was gone. She’d made her choice, and that choice had been to walk out on him. In the many long weeks since she’d left, he’d come to terms with that. He’d had no choice.
She didn’t want him any more. End of story. He wasn’t going to chase after a woman who didn’t want him.
If ever a woman thought the sun shone out of you, she did…
Leo’s words echoed in his head. He thrust them out. He’d thought Vanessa devoted—well, now he knew better.
He sat back in his chair and flicked open the leather folder on his desk. It was an acquisitions proposal, and it looked highly profitable. He looked down at the figures, narrowing his focus.
They blurred in front of his eyes.
Mouth tightening, he forced himself to concentrate. He was flying to Geneva that evening, and he had no time to waste. Two days in Geneva, and then it was Boston. Then Jo’burg. Then Sydney, and back to Frankfurt. Then Paris. Then New York.
These days he liked to keep busy.
Markos pushed back against the leather seat in the first-class cabin, flexing his shoulders restlessly. Tiredness seeped through him—he had been on the go for ever, it seemed, and he’d crossed so many time-zones his body-clock was totally haywire—yet he could not sleep. Outside through the porthole the dark, moonless night, high above the cloud base, reached into infinity. Around him, the low vibration of powerful jet engines hummed. The cabin lights were low, interspersed here and there with the pools of reading lights.
He was in no mood to read. No mood to work at his laptop. No mood to watch the in-flight entertainment on the screen in front of him.
No mood to do anything except look out over the formless night, his face shuttered, inexpressive.
Damn her.
Damn her to hell and back.
He’d been going to put her behind him. Forget all about her. Move on. There were women galore in the world he inhabited—beautiful, eager, exquisite. A host of them to choose from.
The moment he’d showed up at his first social affair without Vanessa—not that he’d wanted to go, but it had been predominantly a business occasion and he’d had no choice—they’d made a beeline for him. Beautiful, sophisticated, sexy—all eager to catch his interest, his attention.
He hadn’t wanted any of them. Not one.
It wasn’t just that same sense of ennui that had assailed him in Paris last year. That sense of searching for novelty that was increasingly hard to find as the years went by.
Ennui was nothing compared to what he was going through now.
This mix of emotions was poisonous. Anger, a bitter sense of ill-usage, sheer incomprehension as to why she had walked out on him without a word—and lacing all through it something that was much worse. Something he didn’t, wouldn’t, give a name to, but which ate at him like a cancer.
With a rough gesture he picked up the copy of the Wall Street Journal that had been handed out by the flight attendant. He looked at it cursorily. He was in no mood for reading about the global economic situation, the complex manoeuvrings of companies and governments and central banks. He tossed the paper aside. Surely to God something could distract him?
Moodily he reached for the glass of whisky that was on the table at his side, and took a mouthful of the burning liquid. Then he put that aside too. Getting drunk was no answer. He’d done that several times in these last bitter few months, and had regretted it every time. The oblivion was only temporary, and the emotions that the lowering of his defences allowed to rip through him were devastating.
His mouth tightened. The woman who’d walked out on him without a word, a reason, wasn’t worth a single hangover.
He shifted again restlessly.
He wanted her.
Vanessa. He wanted her here, at his side. He wanted to be able to glance at her, let his eyes rest on her extraordinary beauty, let his gaze wander over her, take in the line of her profile, the glory of her hair, the soft, sweet curves of her body. Knowing that when they had reached their destination, wherever in the world it was, he would take her straight to bed….
No! Don’t think about that! Don’t think about having Vanessa in his arms, his bed, how her ardour had inflamed him, how his passion for her had consumed him…
We were so good together—what the hell did she have to walk out on me for? Why did she do it?
He stared blindly in front of him.
There was no answer. None. She had gone, and that was that.
And he simply didn’t know why.
With a sharp inward sigh, of anger and bleakness, he yanked the in-flight magazine from its pocket. He started to flick through it, not caring what was in it, totally uninterested, just wanting anything to distract him.
And then, abruptly, he stopped flicking and just stared.
It was Vanessa.
Her photograph, looking out of the page at him, her beauty so incandescent that he felt scorched by it.
Utterly still, he gazed at the page, taking in every detail of her face in the image. He felt his insides clench, and the cancer clawed at him with its savage, merciless pincers.
What the hell is she doing in a magazine?
He forced his eyes away from her face, flicking rapidly over the page. It was an advert for some designer he’d never heard of.
What is she doing in an advert?
He forced his brain to work.
She must have taken a job as a model. Something must have come up after that publicity shoot she’d done for Leo’s launch of the Levantsky jewels.
Was that why she’d left? She’d been offered a contract and snapped it up—dum
ping him in the process?
The anger stabbed through him again. Why would she have left him just because she’d been offered a modelling contract? Christos, he wouldn’t have objected! She had been perfectly welcome to do whatever amused her during the daytime—he wouldn’t have said no. OK, he wouldn’t have wanted her travelling abroad without him, but apart from that she would have been welcome to start a modelling career if that was what she was keen on. All she’d have had to do was ask him—he’d have gladly said yes.
A surge of bitter ill-usage bit through him. No, she’d had to go and make some kind of dramatic exit, disappear into the night, walk out on him without a word.
Damn her to hell for it!
His eyes went back to the image on the page, taunting him with her beauty—her utterly unobtainable beauty.
And finally something registered, slowly, like a wave welling from far, far away. The words of the script accompanying the photo blurred and swirled and then cleared.
And left him rigid with shock.
Vanessa set down her brush in the paint tray and surveyed her handiwork so far. A faint smile lit her face. She was glad she was capable of it—smiles were as rare as hens’ teeth these days.
But the primrose yellow walls looked bright and cheerful in the afternoon light, even though the room on this side of the house lost the sunlight after lunchtime. She stood for a moment, admiring the transformation of the hitherto dark walls, absently rubbing the small of her back. She knew she’d been somewhat ambitious in attempting to paint walls at this stage, but she also knew it was a case of now or never. With the walls done she could get the new carpet delivered, as well as move the new furniture in. Fortunately, the rest of the house was in good decorative order, and she had been able to move in the moment the sale had gone through.
House-hunting, the buying process, and moving and settling in had all kept her busy over the past weeks, and she was grateful for it. Keeping busy was essential.
And, in so far as she was capable of any positive emotion, she knew she could be pleased with the home she’d bought, and its location. The East Devon seaside town of Teymouth, on the border with Dorset was familiar to her from childhood holidays there with her grandparents, and she liked its old-fashioned look and feel. The marine parade of Regency houses, looking as if they’d stepped out of a Jane Austen novel, overlooked a sandy beach, and the English Channel beyond, and, though she knew that now, in high season, the town was filled with holidaymakers, the small terraced house she’d bought was in a quiet, narrow road, set back from the parade, to the east of the main section of the town. Even so, it was only five minutes’ walk down to the seafront, which also meant that the upper flat of the two into which the house had been divided when she’d bought the freehold was perfect to let out as holiday accommodation.