She slept long and deeply, waking in the morning feeling decidedly sluggish and with a banging head. Remembering she was to see the doctor this morning, she dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom, grimacing when she caught sight of her pale, listless face. The last twenty-four hours had effectively wiped out two weeks’ convalescence.
Which only helped to confirm one thing—it was the man who was her weakness, not her health.
She took her time in the shower, letting the tepid water gush over her hair and down her body for ages in the hope that the refreshing spray would disperse her headache.
It was only as she walked back into her bedroom fifteen minutes later wrapped in a towel and with her hair slicked to her skull that something about the movement of the yacht caught at her attention, and she frowned, moving to the window to glance out.
Nothing. Her body jarred on shock. She should be looking across the clear waters of the bay of Argostólion towards the misted green hills above Lixoúrion. But there was nothing in front of her but a bright, glinting stretch of water for as far as she could see.
‘No,’ she murmured, beginning to tremble all over. ‘No!’ They couldn’t have moved during the night—she would have heard the engines! Been awoken by the movement! She had an appointment with the doctor! Leon could not have moved them!
Turning, she ran to her wardrobe and grabbed at the first thing that came to hand—a baggy white cotton T-shirt that finished halfway down her thighs—only belatedly remembering to add a pair of cotton briefs before she was rushing through the door.
She ran up on to the deck then stopped, her eyes gone slightly wild as she searched the far horizon for a glimpse of land. There was none. She turned, heart pumping, and ran back inside, only to skid to a halt at the open door to the main salon.
Leon was there, sitting on one of the elegant sofas, bent forward so that he could rest his elbows on his spread knees. He was wearing his grey shorts and nothing else, she noted pensively—as if the casualness of his attire was making a statement in itself.
‘W-where are we?’ she gasped out breathlessly.
He looked up, his eyes full of dark shadows in his grim face. ‘Nowhere,’ he said, looking away from her and back at his hands. ‘Anywhere.’ He shrugged as if he couldn’t care less.
It was then she saw them spread out on the low table beside him, and her heart leapt to her throat, eyes spiralling out of focus then back in again on the items lying there. Her passport. Her wallet containing her bit of English money. Her thin roll of drachmas and, most damning of all, the envelope containing her ticket away from him.
‘You went through my drawer!’ she accused him hoarsely.
‘I could not let you do it, Jemma. No matter how much you hate me, you need me right now. I could not let you do it,’ he repeated grimly.
Her legs lost their ability to support her, and she had to feel her way to the nearest chair and drop heavily into it.
‘How—how did you find out?’
‘I had a man follow you yesterday, but he could not go in the travel agents and enquire which flight you had booked without drawing attention to us.’ He grimaced. ‘The Stephanades name is too well known on this island,’ he explained. ‘It could have caused quite a sensation if it had come out that my wife was trying to run away from me.’
‘So you waited until I was asleep,’ she whispered, ‘then quietly rifled through my private things to get your information.’ Her contempt showed at this latest invasion of her privacy.
Leon just shrugged. ‘And what did I find?’ he mocked, lancing her with a sardonic look. ‘I found that my unending patience in waiting until you were asleep before trying to discover just what you were up to was a complete waste of time, because you didn’t book your flight under the Stephanades name, did you? You didn’t need to while your passport still bears your maiden name. You really should learn to come to terms with who you are now, agape mou,’ he added cynically, ‘for in this case just the simple mention of who you really are would have got you on the first flight off the island, instead of having to wait two whole days to do it.’
‘Except that it is a name I have no wish to be associated with!’ she threw bitterly at him.
‘Too late,’ he drawled. ‘It is already yours and will remain so for the rest of your life.’
‘Not if I decide otherwise.’ She jumped up, disturbed by the deadly serious look in his eyes. ‘There’s such a thing as divorce, you know.’
‘Not with me, there isn’t,’ he stated.
‘Not until I have safely delivered your son, you mean!’ Moving jerkily, she went over to the fridge to get herself a bottle of chilled water. ‘After all, he is the only reason I’m here at all!’
‘Not true,’ he denied.
She spun on him. ‘Of course it’s true,’ she declared, her fingers working agitatedly at the stubborn bottle-top. ‘It was always true from the moment you asked the doctor back in London what the sex of our baby was! Dammit!’ she sobbed out wretchedly. ‘I can’t do this!’
Tears of angry frustration blurring her eyes, she held the bottle out to him. Leon came to his feet and took it from her, easily twisting the cap open and pouring the water into a glass before handing it to her.
He stood, watching her gulp thirstily at the drink, then said quietly, ‘I did not ask the doctor anything about the child. I only asked him about your health.’
Her angry blue eyes scoffed at him. ‘Then how else would you learn the sex of our child?’
‘I don’t know it,’ he said. ‘I lied.’
Jemma went still, staring at him in stunned disbelief. Then, ‘What?’ she gasped.
‘I lied,’ he repeated flatly, taking the empty glass from her and putting it aside. ‘I needed to leave Anthia and Nico with no leg to stand on, so—’ he shrugged ‘—I lied about knowing the child’s sex. It was only when I saw the effect the lie had on you that I realised how unforgivably cruel I had been by using it.’
Jemma began to shake. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she breathed.
‘I didn’t think you would.’ His smile was brief and rueful. ‘Which is why I have not tried to tell you before now. After all, why should you believe me after the way I set you up for all of that?’
She stared into his face, looking—searching for the truth in those impossibly black eyes, then shook her head. ‘You’re lying now—not then,’ she said, wrapping her arms about her body as if she needed their protection. ‘You wouldn’t dare make such a claim without being sure it was the truth because there is a fifty-fifty chance that I will give birth to a girl, and then it would be you left without a leg to stand on, looking the fool. No company, nothing.’
He had to gall to laugh, then shake his head ruefully. ‘You are quite wrong, you know,’ he attested. ‘Personally, I couldn’t give a damn what sex our child is so long as it is healthy. You see, the Leonadis Corporation is already mine. My father officially signed it over to me yesterday—with relief, I might add, because I managed to get him out of such a sticky situation without making him look like the fool. Seeing Nico taking his place was enough to give him nightmares. But Nico is his son, too. He had no wish to hurt his feelings by being forced to tell him he was not fit for the job.’
‘So my feelings were sacrificed instead!’
‘Now that I have no excuse for,’ he quietly acknowledged.
‘You hurt me!’
‘Yes.’ He acknowledged that also.
‘You deliberately set out to use me!’
‘Yes,’ quietly again. ‘Forgive me. Please?’
‘How can I?’ she cried. ‘If this baby is a boy, I will never be sure when you told the truth!’ Her blue eyes filled with wretched tears. ‘I can never trust you again, Leon!’
Sighing, he reached for her, but she shrugged him away. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘Don’t touch me.’
When he touched her, she weakened. Hadn’t she always been weak with him?
‘Then at least listen to
me,’ he asked. ‘Please, Jemma,’ he begged when she went to turn away. ‘Listen—just listen? And when I have finished, if you still want to leave me I’ll—arrange it.’ Even Jemma in her wretchedness heard that hesitation in his voice for what it was.
She lifted her eyes to look at him. ‘Another lie, Leon?’ she challenged.
‘No,’ he denied. Then on a grimace, ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘Letting you go is not what I want to do and, selfish swine that I am, I am not sure that I can do it just like that.’ Grimly, he raked frustrated fingers through his hair. His face was pale, and she could see the strain of sleepless nights pulling at his features.
Her heart began to ache—for herself or for him she wasn’t sure, but it made her want to weep. Shakily, she put up a hand to cover her eyes. ‘I feel so wretched!’ she choked.
‘Come and sit down.’ His voice sounded gruff, and the hand he curled around her arm was trembling a little. She let him lead her over to one of the soft cushioned sofas and guide her into it. Then he pulled up a matching chair and sat down in front of her, bending to place his forearms on his knees while he waited for her to get a hold of herself.
Then, ‘Jemma,’ he said quietly, ‘I love you.’
She stiffened in instant rejection. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word!’ she denounced, bitterly denouncing, too, that weak flutter of joy her heart responded with.
‘I thought I didn’t,’ he agreed. ‘I thought I never wanted to know, until I met you.’ His smile was heavy with irony, then was gone as he looked into her tear-washed eyes. ‘But I missed you when I was in New York,’ he murmured softly. ‘Nothing seemed worth breaking my neck for when I did not have you to rush back to.’
‘You seemed to do well enough,’ she remarked, remembering the article in the newspaper that had so sung his praises.
‘That is because I hardly ever went home,’ he explained. ‘I just bit people’s heads off and made the kind of reckless decisions that should have been the finish of me.’
‘Then it was lucky for you that it went the other way,’ she mocked that explanation acidly.
‘Yes.’ He deliberately ignored her scorn. ‘Then all this stuff with Nico blew up, and my father was on the phone panicking because Nico has announced his intention to marry and that stupid document he had drawn up to make me toe his line was suddenly backfiring on him because Anthia knew about it, and, although he loves her—almost to distraction—he also knows of her insane need to possess, if not for herself then for her son, anything that was once my mother’s. It is not entirely greed that drives her,’ he admitted. ‘She was my father’s first love—his only love! But he sold her out for a big purse, and if she ever forgave him for it she never forgave my mother—or me for that matter.’
Another grimace, and Jemma found herself wondering painfully what kind of childhood he must have had, with a stepmother who resented the very sight of him.
‘Being well aware of this,’ he went on, ‘through the years, my father had been very careful never to give her the slightest hope that Nico will ever inherit anything that belongs to the Leonadis family. There are other things,’ he explained. ‘Other ventures which are kept entirely separate from the main corporation. Ventures my father set up and built on his own merit. Those are Nico’s for the taking. He knows it—I know it! Nico was, until recently, content with what he knew was to be his. But Anthia wasn’t. This chance appeared and she took it with both hands by quickly marrying Nico off and making that document known to anyone who mattered.’
For a moment, angry frustration roughened his voice. ‘My father was now facing the prospect of having to make the biggest climb-down of his life by withdrawing that document. I couldn’t let him do it!’ he muttered. ‘He is old and he is ill, and, though we may not always see eye to eye, I love him and I am proud of all he has achieved with his life. I could not let him go out on such a low light.’ He took in a deep breath then let it out again. ‘”Marry Melva”, he begged. “Marry anyone but get me out of this mess”! And I realised that there was only one woman I could think of marrying—only one woman I wanted to marry! You!’ he stated huskily. ‘You and only you.’
He was looking at her, willing her to lift her eyes to his, but she didn’t, keeping them lowered on her twisting hands.
He sighed heavily, then went on. ‘So I came back to London to see you. I meant to explain all of this to you then ask for your help—keep it all as honest as I could. But—you know how I found you, Jemma!’ he declared. ‘Pregnant with my child! Weakened by sickness and so obviously struggling to survive that suddenly my priorities changed! Or maybe they were only excuses in the first place, I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘But from the moment I set eyes on you again it was you I was concerned about. Your health, your happiness and well-being! Blow my father, I thought to myself. He can stew for a while; Jemma needs me—and it felt so good to be needed by you,’ he chanted huskily, ‘that I proceeded to put the rest of it to the back of my mind because I was enjoying myself too much making up for all those miserable months in New York when I missed you so badly. I’ll explain the rest of it to her tomorrow, I kept telling myself. And the tomorrow became another tomorrow and another and another because we were happy and I didn’t want to spoil it with what had really become such an insignificant part of why I married you at all! Then suddenly I had run out of tomorrows!’ he bit out angrily. ‘And it hit me hard the morning my father came to the yacht that I had left it too late; that whatever I said now was going to hurt you because it looked so damned calculated!’
He ran a hand over his eyes, eyes that had been alight with a burning sincerity all the way through his long explanation.
‘Jemma,’ he pleaded, ‘you have to believe me when I say that I never wanted to hurt you. It just—reached a point where there was no other way out without hurting you! But, if you will let me, I will try my best to make it up to you.’
He didn’t know it, but he had already gone a long way to doing just that. Yet—
Confused by the wrangle of emotions churning inside her, she got up and walked over to gaze out of the window.
‘I lied, Jemma, about knowing the sex of our child,’ he said quietly. ‘My father knows I lied. I told him before I would let him sign anything over to me.’
Surprised, she glanced at him. ‘And he didn’t mind you lying to him in public like that?’
He shook his head. ‘He only wanted to save his own face. If we have a daughter it will be my credibility placed in question, not his.’
‘Which could happen if we do have a daughter,’ she pointed out.
Oddly, Leon smiled. ‘Actually,’ he murmured rather ruefully, ‘you quoted fifty-fifty odds at me on that event happening. But,’ he confessed, ‘I feel it only fair to warn you that there has not been a female born into the Stephanades line for five generations, which must widen the odds considerably.’
‘In your favour.’
He nodded. ‘Which does not help me in convincing you that I lied—does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Jemma agreed, turning to stare at the rich blue Ionian Sea sparkling in the morning sun. Yet she was beginning to believe him. Why she was not quite sure except, perhaps, because she wanted to believe him, needed to if she was going to be able to forgive him and put all of this aside, try to pick up the pieces of their relationship from here, but...
But what? she asked herself bleakly. What exactly is it you’re so upset about? A lie that, since you’ve been told it is a lie, has lost its power to wound? Or the fact that you trusted him so utterly that when he let you down you couldn’t take it?
What has changed? What has really changed over the last twenty-four hours other than you’ve witnessed a more ruthless side to his character and have been made painfully aware that he is capable of going to any lengths to win?
And what else would you expect of a man like him? He’s strong. So strong that even his father leans on him. You lean on him! You barely exist when he isn’t near
you—last night proved that, when you sat here on this yacht, pining for him even while you were hating him.
As she turned back to look at him, her heart gave a painful squeeze when she saw he was sitting there with his wide shoulders hunched, dark head lowered in grim contemplation of his hands again. He looked oddly vulnerable sitting there like that—cut off and alone, as perhaps, she realised, strong men had to be if they were to maintain that air of strength.
Yet she didn’t like it. It hurt something precious inside her to see him like that. It wasn’t the man she had come to know so well, that other warm, caring and crushingly gentle man he had always been when alone with her.
The man who claimed he loved her.
Dared she believe him? Dared she take the ultimate risk and let herself trust in that love?
She swallowed thickly, her heart beginning to drum with need and fear and a host of other emotions she could not begin to separate as, warily, she let her defences come tumbling down.
‘Leon?’ she asked, her tense throat working as she watched his head come up, expression carefully guarded as it focused on her. Lips dry and unsteady, she ran her tongue over them then whispered thickly, ‘If I tell you I love you, will you break my heart?’
His eyes closed—on what she didn’t know, but she felt the power of it wash right over her. Then he was on his feet and coming towards her. ‘They say beauty is only skin-deep,’ he responded huskily as he reached for her. ‘But with you it glows from every living cell. Thank you. And no,’ he answered her question, ‘I will never break your beautiful heart. How can I, when it is so precious to me?’
‘Then just hold me,’ she begged. ‘I need to feel you holding me.’
His body became the rock she clung to as he drew her into his arms. She wound her arms around his body, fingers splaying across the muscled blades of his shoulders, and, sighing shakily, she lifted her mouth for his kiss. He took it passionately, stirring her into bright, vibrant life as no other man had ever managed to do.
And there it was, she acknowledged from somewhere within the deep abiding warmth of his embrace. The reason why she was here at all. This man, his touch. Her catalyst. She could deny him nothing.
Passion Becomes You Page 17