And it had been a vow, she acknowledged as she sat there and shook in reaction. A vow which put all her high-minded principles about leaving Leon his freedom while she struggled to bring their child up alone to shame.
As if he could read her thoughts, Leon twisted his dark head to look at her, his voice calm now but grim when he spoke. ‘We will not speak of this again,’ he decreed. ‘The deed is done, our futures set.’ He paused, levelling one final implacable look at her, then leaned across her to open her door. ‘I shall be back here by noon tomorrow. Be ready.’
* * *
The next day, she was packed and waiting when his knock sounded at the flat door. He stepped inside, his gaze running briefly over the loose pale blue cotton sundress she was wearing without revealing his thoughts.
She wondered what he was seeing when he looked at her like that—the desirable woman he had once taken in his arms so passionately? Or did he see the pale shadow of that woman she felt she had become?
‘Ready?’ he asked, glancing at the neatly stacked suitcases standing against the wall.
She nodded mutely.
‘Nothing else?’ He seemed surprised, and Jemma forced her dilatory tongue to move.
‘I’ve left a few boxes of things in my room. Nothing important,’ she told him. ‘They can be picked up—whenever.’ Her accompanying shrug said she didn’t care.
‘Then they come now,’ he said decisively. ‘You won’t be coming back here again, Jemma.’
She shivered, the words having a much more final ring to them than just thinking them all night long had.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘NO,’ JEMMA refused outright, staring in horror at the room he was in the process of placing her suitcases in. ‘I won’t sleep with you, Leon!’
Turning, she stalked back down the stairs and into the sitting-room, where she stood staring angrily out of the window. How dared he? If it wasn’t bad enough him taking her straight from her flat to a private clinic where he proceeded calmly to stand right beside her while a top London gynaecologist put her through just about every embarrassing examination a woman could be subjected to, he was now just as calmly expecting her to share his bed!
‘I hate you!’ she whispered without turning when she heard him come into the room. ‘How could you be so bloody insensitive?’
‘Are we about to discuss our sleeping arrangements or the fact that I insisted on being present throughout your examination?’ By contrast he sounded smooth and beautifully cool!
‘Both!’ she snapped. ‘I find both intrusions on my privacy utterly distasteful!’
‘It is not the fact that I intrude on your privacy that you find so distasteful, Jemma,’ he argued drily. ‘It is the fact that I intrude at all!’
She went to deny it, then snapped her lips tight shut over the words. She did see him as an intruder, so much so that she was still trembling from the indignity of it all. She felt trapped, wrung out and trampled on. In less than twenty-four hours, Leon had completely taken over her right even to think for herself! And she was just beginning to understand what it was like to become a Leon Stephanades business take-over. The iron hand in the velvet glove! she called it helplessly, because he was doing it all with the kind of quiet authority she found impossible to fight against.
‘You could at least have shown some—taste and allowed me to lose my dignity in private!’ she threw tensely at him.
‘And what about my rights as a prospective father to be interested and concerned for you and the child?’ he countered. ‘You think it did not move me as deeply as it moved you to see the actual evidence of our child moving—living inside your womb? Yes...’ he taunted softly when his words surprised her enough to turn and stare at him. ‘I saw your expression when the scanner showed our perfectly formed child, agape mou. I saw the glow of pride and the more obvious feelings of relief when the good doctor assured us that everything is well. You think I did not experience the same emotions, should not be allowed to experience the same things?’
‘That isn’t what I meant!’
‘Isn’t it?’ He walked towards her, his expression grim suddenly as he made his usual statement by placing both hands on her swollen body. ‘We are a unit,’ he declared. ‘Three parts of one whole, joined by the irrefutable existence of our child—ours!’ he repeated with soft ferocity. ‘And the quicker you come to terms with that, the more comfortable we can all become with it!’
Comfortable? He honestly believed she would learn to be comfortable being with a man who could turn his back on the woman, yet was prepared to put up with her because she was suddenly the mother of his unborn child? ‘Which does not include my having to sleep with you!’ she declared stubbornly.
‘It does if we are to have any hope of making a success of this marriage,’ he said grimly.
‘We are not married yet!’
‘But we will be in two days’ time!’ Another shock announcement that set her poor head reeling. ‘And wherever you decide to sleep tonight, Jemma,’ he warned, ‘you will sleep with me from then on!’
He meant it. The hard flash of his eyes said he meant it, the possessive grip of his hands said he meant it, and the dark, angry sense of frustration she felt burning inside told her she just did not have a single say in it. But she had one last try. ‘Can’t you at least give me a little time to get used to the idea of us being together like this before I have to—?’
He was already shaking his head, grim-faced and immovable. Jemma sighed, feeling the threat of tears block her throat. ‘Then I repeat,’ she whispered thickly, ‘you are an insensitive brute!’
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded, coming down from anger to a rueful kind of self-mockery when he sensed her defeat. His hand moved from her body to her shoulders, then slid gently to her throat, his long fingers burrowing into her thick, shining hair to cup her nape and his thumbs gently pressing beneath her chin to bring her face up to meet the smile softening his eyes. Her heart flipped over, her senses beginning to buzz as the look awakened all those weaknesses she had always harboured for him. ‘Surely, agape mou,’ he murmured, ‘it is not so long ago that we slept together that you could have forgotten how good it was for both of us?’
‘I don’t remember sleeping much!’ she snapped, trying to fight both him and her own wayward feelings.
Leon laughed softly. ‘But this time will be different,’ he promised, adding ruefully, ‘If only because the good doctor prescribed rest and no excitement!’ Taking her by surprise, he kissed the top of her nose, then released her. ‘Now,’ he said on a complete change of subject, ‘I want to know your opinion of boats.’
‘Boats?’ She just stared blankly at him. ‘What have boats got to do with anything?’ she demanded bewilderedly.
‘A lot if you like them,’ he replied. ‘Nothing if you are prone to seasickness. Your body has enough to contend with from that particular malady without my wanting to worsen it.’
Jemma lowered her eyes, refusing to tell him that she had not felt sick once since he arrived back in her life. The doctor had hinted at worry and stress as being the culprit. And she was beginning to believe he was right.
Heart sickness, not morning sickness? that small voice inside her head suggested.
‘Are you?’
‘What?’ She glanced up at him, having lost the thread of the conversation in the tangle of her own troublesome thoughts.
‘Prone to seasickness.’ He sighed out patiently as if he were talking to a child.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I used to belong to a sailing club when I was a teenager. And I did a bit of sailing with Trina last Christmas when we were in Barbados without feeling any ill effects. But I don’t see—’
‘Good,’ he cut in. ‘Because I have one—or,’ he then amended wryly, ‘I have a yacht. The doctor prescribed rest, good food and no excitement for the next few weeks while we bring you back into decent health, and I cannot think of a better place to ensure all three than cruising the Greek islands on my y
acht with the most exquisite chef your tastebuds have ever encountered. What do you think?’
What did she think? For the first time since he had walked back into her life, she felt the stirring of pleasure. ‘I think it sounds lovely, but...’
‘No buts,’ he dismissed arrogantly. ‘We will pick the yacht up in Corfu on Tuesday, and work our way south through the Ionian islands—a good idea for a honeymoon, eh?’
Honeymoon? Jemma couldn’t help it, she shuddered, the whole idea sounding utterly hypocritical to her. ‘You don’t have to put the rest of your life on hold for me, Leon,’ she told him huskily. ‘I am quite aware that I must have messed up your...schedule enough as it is!’
‘Have you?’ he murmured thoughtfully. Then, ‘Yes, I suppose you have,’ he agreed. ‘Still,’ he added with a careless shrug, ‘that is what we will do. Now,’ he went on before she had a chance to make up her mind whether to be hurt or not by his answer, ‘I’m hungry. Let’s go and see what there is to eat.’
They ate in the kitchen with no formality, just as they used to do before. And Jemma was rather surprised at how easily they slipped back into their old easy ways. By the time they had cleared away, her long day had thoroughly caught up with her, and she couldn’t stifle a weary yawn.
‘Bed,’ Leon commanded, turning her towards the stairs. ‘There are five bedrooms up there, agape mou. Take your pick.’ It was a reassurance and the allowance of one small victory for her. Jemma accepted it with a tired smile and a contrary sense of disappointment inside. ‘Take what you need for the night, but leave your cases where they are until the morning. I have several hours of work to get through before I can retire,’ he added. ‘So I will say goodnight now.’ He bent to press a light kiss against her lips.
She responded—couldn’t stop herself even as she damned her own weakness for it. As Leon drew away, it was her lips that clung, her soft sigh which whispered between them filled with helpless longing. Opening her heavy eyes, she then wished she hadn’t when she found herself staring into his, so dark with knowledge that it made her want to weep at her own pathetic vulnerability.
‘I wish I could really hate you,’ she whispered helplessly.
‘Do you?’ He smiled strangely, as though the idea that she could hate him was not that impossible to imagine. ‘Well,’ he murmured, his gaze roaming over her pale, wan face, ‘I will be giving you no reason to hate me tonight, so go to your bed. And be at peace.’
* * *
And she was, totally, utterly at peace, Jemma decided two weeks later as she lay in the depths of a sublime laziness on the sun-drenched deck of Leon’s disgustingly luxurious yacht, shading the sun from her eyes with one hand while the other held up a letter she had just received, via the speed launch that came skimming across the water from the mainland to pull alongside them every morning, bringing Leon any business papers that might need his attention.
It had surprised her that he had not shown the least inclination to get back to the cut-throat excitement of a powerful tycoon’s life. But, if there was one new thing she had learned about him during these weeks—and there had been several—then his ability to play the sloth had been the most surprising. Oh, he worked, certainly. A man with his responsibilities could not simply close shop and forget about it completely. But he restricted his time spent shut up in his fully equipped stateroom to a few hours every morning and the same in the afternoon while she took her enforced rest. Between times, he became a lazy, good-natured, intoxicatedly charming companion, willing to indulge her in anything from lying next to her here on the sun-deck for hours on end without bothering to move, or taking her out in the on-board speedboat to the nearest island where she could enjoy her newly acquired skills at snorkelling around the rocks.
The improvement in her health had been remarkable, even to Jemma herself. The sickness had gone, she had acquired a very carefully nurtured but rather attractive golden tan to her skin, and a bloom to her features which was a one hundred per cent improvement on the hollow-eyed pregnant wraith she had been threatening to become.
She had stopped being self-conscious of her new maternal shape within hours of arriving on the yacht, forced to dismiss how she looked by the sheer heat of the sun and the utter arrogance with which Leon had walked up to her while she stood on the sun-deck in one of her long, baggy T-shirts, boiling hot and wondering if she dared slip away to the delicious coolness of her cabin—which was more like a luxury hotel suite with its en-suite bathroom and delicious air-conditioning—so that she could hide away from yet another day of fierce Greek sunshine. But Leon had had other ideas. He had simply reached out and coolly stripped the T-shirt right off over her head! Then, while she’d stood there red-faced and struck dumb with mortification because she was left wearing only the briefest pair of cotton panties, he’d taken his time exploring every inch of her and even gone as far as to grip her wrists and wrench them apart when she had attempted to cover herself.
‘Now we have got that embarrassing little moment out of the way,’ he had drawled eventually, ‘perhaps we can begin to relax and enjoy this cruise as it was meant to be enjoyed?’
Since then she had lived in one of the bikinis Leon had provided for her—sometimes topless, sometimes not—or in a light cotton shirt when it was sensible to cover herself from the sun for a while.
They lived, ate and slept on the yacht, and her feet had only touched dry land on the few rare occasions Leon had let them visit a secluded bay for the odd picnic. And in general she was more than at peace with herself, she was happy. At least, she amended ruefully, she was happy within the confines of the contented little bubble she was living in just now.
Which was probably why she was looking at Trina’s letter without reading a single word of it. She was afraid her friend might say something that could burst the bubble. Remind her, perhaps, of the realities she had so successfully thrust aside.
‘Read,’ she told herself firmly, and forced her eyes to focus on the tightly crushed and very rushed lines of words. Trina began:
Guess what! I’m married! And if you think yours was a disgustingly rushed affair, well, wait till you hear about mine!
Jemma grinned, settling herself back to enjoy a good read. Frew, it seemed, had taken Trina off to Barbados and married her on a beach! They had been away a week, and been back in London a week. Trina was now madly trying to find a house for them.
Frew’s flat is just too small for us both, what with all my office stuff littering up the place and the work he brings home piled everywhere. We should have thought more about it before deciding to live at his place. It may be nearer to his office than our flat was, but at least ours had your bedroom free to turn into an office. Still, it’s too late now. I closed the lease on our old place, so now we’ve just got to find something bigger.
The flat was gone. Jemma felt the tiniest bit of disturbance within her bubble—as if some of the air was trying to escape. No home, she realised. Nothing in London to go back to if she ever felt she needed to. It felt a bit strange, realising just how totally she was now dependent on Leon.
The sound of approaching footsteps almost had her falling off her lounger in an effort to snatch her straw sunhat up off the deck and quickly stuff it on her head. Leon appeared, just as she had settled herself back on her lounger looking as though she hadn’t moved in hours.
He came to stand beside her, silently offering her a tall glass of iced water and two small pills. Making heavy weather of it, she pulled herself into a sitting position, exchanged the glass and pills with him for the letter, then found herself studying him covertly from beneath the shadowed brim of her hat.
He was wearing nothing more than a faded old pair of dark grey shorts—his usual attire when aboard the yacht—and he looked big and lean and brown, the dark cluster of crisp black hair on his broad chest curling downwards over the flat planes of his stomach to disappear beneath the elasticated waist of his shorts.
Her senses leapt and she looked quickly dow
n and away. It never had done her any good to feed her weak love of simply looking at him, she noted drily. Her senses always ended up spoiling it.
And her senses were not allowed to ignite, she drily reminded herself. Because this was a ‘no sex’ marriage. Ironic really, when before it had been a ‘no marriage’ sexual relationship! He had kissed her only once since the day they married when he’d turned her into his arms and placed his cool lips against her own in what she could only describe as a civil seal to their civil marriage!
Since then—well, the matter of sharing a bed had never arisen again. And, other than the fact that she sunbathed in next to nothing, for most of the time they were both scrupulously respectful of the other’s privacy.
Quite a change from those long lazy weekends they’d used to spend invading each other’s privacy as if it were their right!
Still, she mused, it had its benefits. Without the added ingredient of sex to complicate their relationship, she and Leon had actually become quite good friends. And although she sometimes awoke in the middle of the night, her body tight and hot with a need which could sometimes hold her tense in desperation, she had never so much as considered giving in to the feelings and creeping into the room next door and Leon’s bed. Mainly, she acknowledged ruefully, because Leon had not shown any inclination that he still wanted her physically. He flirted and teased in that light-hearted way friends did with each other, but she had never glimpsed, even once, any hint that he could still desire her as a lover.
Not that she blamed him. With a small grimace, she glanced down her reclining body where their child thumped rhythmically against the tightly drawn walls of its home. She had to be about as undesirable as she could get!
‘This is from Trina?’ he asked, breaking into her thoughts to wave the letter at her.
Passion Becomes You Page 11