The Secret Valtinos Baby

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Roula told me everything.’

  Angel looked bemused. ‘Everything about...what?’ he demanded with curt emphasis.

  ‘That she’s been your mistress for years, that you always go back to her eventually.’

  ‘I don’t have a mistress. I’ve never had one. Before you, I’ve never wanted repeat encounters with the same woman,’ Angel told her almost conversationally, dark golden eyes locked to her strained face. ‘You must’ve misunderstood something Roula said. There’s no way that she told you that we were lovers.’

  ‘There was no misunderstanding,’ Merry framed stiffly. ‘She was very frank about your relationship and about the fact that she expected it to continue even though you were married.’

  ‘But it’s not true. I don’t know what she’s playing at but her claims are nonsense,’ Angel declared with harsh emphasis. ‘Is this all we’ve got, Merry? Some woman only has to say I sleep with her and you swallow the story whole?’

  Merry clasped her trembling hands together and tilted her chin, her spine rigid. ‘She was very convincing. I believed her.’

  ‘Diavolos! You just judge me out of hand? You believe her rather than me?’ Angel raked at her in a burst of incredulous anger, black curls tumbling across his brow as he shook his head in evident disbelief. ‘You take her word over mine?’

  ‘She’s your friend. Why would she lie about such a thing?’

  ‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ Angel shot back at her. ‘But she is lying!’

  ‘She said you’d been lovers for years but that you’ve always had other women,’ Merry recounted flatly. ‘I will not accept you being with other women!’

  Angel settled volatile eyes on her and she backed away a step at the sheer heat she met there.

  ‘Then try not to drive me into being with them!’ he slammed back. ‘I have not been unfaithful to you.’

  ‘She did say that you hadn’t been with her since you got married but that eventually you would return to her because apparently you always do.’

  ‘You are the only woman I have ever returned to!’ Angel proclaimed rawly. ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this stupid conversation—’

  ‘It’s not a conversation, it’s an argument,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I promised you that there would be no other women,’ Angel reminded her darkly. ‘Didn’t you listen? Obviously, you didn’t believe—’

  ‘Your reputation goes before you,’ Merry flung back at him bitterly.

  ‘I will not apologise for my past. I openly acknowledge it but I have never cheated on any woman I have been with!’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone. ‘I grew up with a mother who cheated on all her lovers and I lived with the consequences of that kind of behaviour. I know better. I’m honest and I move on when I get bored.’

  ‘Well, maybe I don’t want to hang around waiting for you to get bored with me and move on!’ Merry fired back with ringing scorn. ‘Maybe I think I’m worth more than that and deserve more respect. That’s why I’m calling time on us now before things get messy!’

  ‘You’re not calling time on us. That’s not your decision to make,’ Angel delivered with lethal derision. ‘We got married to make a home for our daughter and if we have to work at achieving that happy outcome, then we work at it.’

  A cold, forlorn hollow spread like poison inside Merry’s tight chest as she recognised how foolish and naïve she had been to dream that Angel could eventually come to care for her. He had only married her for Elyssa’s sake. She would never be important to him in her own right, never be that one special woman in his eyes, never be anything other than second best to him. He could have had any woman, and a woman like Roula Paulides, who shared his background and nationality as well as a long friendship with him, would have had infinitely more to offer him. He wouldn’t have had to talk about having to work at being married to anyone else. In fact her mind boggled at the concept of Angel being prepared to do anything as dully conventional and sensible as work at a relationship.

  ‘I don’t want to work at it,’ she heard herself say, and it was truthfully what she felt at that moment because her pride could not bear the idea of him having to suppress his natural instincts before he could accept being married to her and staying faithful.

  ‘You don’t get a choice,’ Angel spelled out grimly. ‘We’ll fly back to Palos in the morning—’

  ‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not returning to Greece with you!’

  ‘You’re my wife and you’re not leaving me,’ Angel asserted harshly. ‘That isn’t negotiable.’

  Merry tossed her head, dark hair rippling back from her flushed cheeks, pale blue eyes icy with fury. ‘I’m not even trying to negotiate with you... I already know what a slippery slope that can be. Our marriage is over and I’m staying in the UK,’ she declared fiercely. ‘I’ll move out of here as soon as I decide where I’m going to be living.’

  Angel stared back at her, his hard bone structure prominent below his bronzed skin, his eyes very dark and hard. ‘You would just throw everything we’ve got away?’ he breathed in a tone of suppressed savagery that made her flinch. ‘And what about our daughter?’

  Merry swallowed with difficulty, sickly envisioning the likely battle ahead and cringing from the prospect. ‘I’ll fight you for custody of our daughter here in the UK,’ she told him squarely, shocked at what she was saying but needing to convince him that she would not be softened or sidelined by threats.

  Angel froze almost as if she had struck him, black lashes lifting on grim dark eyes without the smallest shade of gold, his lean, strong face rigid with tension. ‘You would separate us? That I will not forgive you for,’ he told her with fierce finality.

  Ten seconds later, Merry was alone in the room, listening numbly to the roar of a helicopter taking off somewhere nearby and presumably ferrying Angel back to London. And she was in shock, her head threatening to explode with the sheer unbearable pressure that had built up inside it, her stomach churning sickly. Tears surged in a hot stinging tide into her eyes and she blinked furiously but the tears kept on coming, dripping down her face.

  Their marriage was over. Hadn’t she always feared that their marriage wouldn’t last? Why was she so shocked? Yes, he had denied that Roula Paulides was his mistress but she hadn’t believed him, had she? When she had packed her bags on the island she had known she wasn’t coming back and certainly not to a marriage with a husband who had to work at being married to her!

  CHAPTER TEN

  MISERY AND GUILT kept Merry awake for half the night. She had threatened Angel just as he had once threatened her and now it lay like a big rock of shame on her conscience because she had witnessed the depth of his attachment to Elyssa, had watched it develop, had even noticed how surprised Angel was at the amount of enjoyment he received from being a parent. He did not love his wife but he definitely did love his daughter.

  All her emotions in free fall after the sensitive family issues that had been explored at Sybil’s house, she had been in no fit state to deal with Angel. She had drawn up battle lines for a war she didn’t actually want to wage, she acknowledged wretchedly. A divorce or separation didn’t have to be bitter and nasty and she hadn’t the smallest desire for them to fight like cat and dog over their daughter. Angel was a good father, a very good father and she would never try to deprive him of contact with his child. Just because she couldn’t trust him with the Roulas of the world didn’t mean she was blind to his skills as a parent or that she wasn’t aware that Elyssa benefitted as much as Angel did from their relationship. She wasn’t that selfish, that prejudiced against him, was she?

  Anguish screamed through her as she sniffed and blew her nose over her breakfast in the dining room. She was a garish match for her elegantly furnished surroundings, clad as she was in comfy old pyjamas and a silky, boldly patterned kimono robe that had seen better days. She had left her fancy new wardrobe behind on Palos as a statement of rejection that she wanted Angel to notice. Sh
e had wanted him to appreciate that she didn’t need him or his money or those stupid designer clothes, even if that was a lie.

  Her real problem, however, was that pain and hurt magnified everything and distorted logic. She had told Angel that she was leaving him because pride had demanded she act as though she were strong and decisive rather than betray the reality that she was broken up and confused and horribly hurt.

  The thwack-thwack of a helicopter coming into land made her head ache even more and she gulped down more tea, desperate to soothe her ragged nerves. She heard the slam of the front door and she stiffened, her head jerking up as the dining-room door opened without warning and framed Angel’s tall, powerful form. She could not have been more appalled had he surprised her naked because she knew she looked like hell. Her eyes and nose were red, her hair was tangled.

  ‘Will you come into the drawing room?’ Angel asked grimly. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  ‘I’m not dressed,’ she protested stiltedly, her head lowering to hide her face as she stumbled upright, desperate to make a quick escape from his astute gaze.

  ‘You’ll do fine,’ Angel told her callously, dark eyes cold and treacherous as black ice.

  ‘I can’t see anyone looking like this,’ Merry argued vehemently, striving to leave the room and flee upstairs by sidestepping him, but she found him as immoveable in the doorway as a rock.

  ‘You’ll be in very good company. I swear she’s cried all the way from Greece,’ Angel informed her incomprehensibly, gripping her elbow with a firm hand and practically thrusting her into the room next door.

  Merry’s feet froze to the floor when she saw the woman standing by the window. It was Roula, looking something less than her usually sophisticated and stylish self. Her ashen complexion only emphasised her swollen eyes and pink nose and she was convulsively shredding a tissue between her restive fingers.

  ‘I’m so...so sorry!’ she gasped, facing Merry. ‘I lied to you.’

  Angel shot something at the other woman in irate Greek and she groaned and snapped something back, and then the door closed behind Merry and when she turned her head again, Angel was gone, leaving them alone.

  ‘You lied to me?’ Merry prompted in astonishment.

  ‘I was trying to frighten you off. I thought if you left him he might finally turn to me,’ Roula framed shakily, her voice hoarse with embarrassment and misery.

  ‘Oh,’ Merry mumbled rather blankly. ‘You’re not his mistress, then?’

  ‘No, that was nonsense,’ Roula framed hoarsely. ‘We’ve never had sex either. Angel’s never been interested in me that way, but because we were such good friends I thought if you broke up with him he would confide in me and maybe start seeing me in a different light. But it’s not going to happen. He said the idea of me and him ever being intimate was disgusting, incestuous. I wish I’d worked out that that’s how he saw me years ago. I’d have saved myself a lot of heartache.’

  Merry experienced a very strong desire to pat the blonde’s shoulder to comfort her and had to fight the weird prompting off. She could see that the other woman felt humiliated and guilty and very sad. ‘Did Angel force you to come here and tell me this?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my idea, but he said I owed him and he was right. From the moment he told me that he was marrying you I was so jealous of you!’ Roula confessed with a sudden wrenching sob, clamping her hand to her mouth and getting herself back under control again before continuing, ‘Why you? I asked myself. Why not me? You worked for him and he never ever sleeps with his employees and yet he slept with you...and you’ve got a great figure and you’re very pretty but you’re not exactly supermodel material...and then you totally freak him out by having a baby and yet somehow he’s now crazy about the baby as well!’

  ‘Have you always been in love with him?’ Merry mumbled uncomfortably, grasping that, by Roula’s reckoning, Angel deciding to marry her qualified as an unbelievable and quite undeserved miracle.

  ‘When I was a teenager it was just a crush. He was my best friend. I knew all the rotten things Angelina has ever done to him and it broke my heart. I learned how to handle her to keep her out of his hair, to try and help him cope with her. That’s why she likes me, that’s why she decided that he should marry me if he ever married anyone. I’ve had other relationships, of course,’ Roula told her wryly. ‘But every time one broke down, I told myself it would’ve been different with Angel. He was my ideal, my Mr Right...at least he was until he dragged me onto that plane and shouted at me half the night!’

  ‘His temper’s rough,’ Merry conceded while frantically trying to work out how she had so badly misjudged the man whom she had married. It was obvious that Roula was now telling her the truth. Bitter jealousy had driven the blonde into an attempt to destroy Angel’s marriage.

  ‘And he’s like the elephant who never forgets when you cross him. He’ll never forgive me for causing all this trouble,’ Roula muttered with weary regret.

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Molly said woodenly, wondering if he would ever forgive her either.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry,’ the blonde framed guiltily. ‘I know that’s not much consolation in the circumstances but I deeply regret lying to you. I didn’t think it through. I told myself you’d probably got deliberately pregnant and planned the whole thing to trap him. I could see he was happy on your wedding day but I wouldn’t admit that to myself and if anyone merits being happy, it’s Angel.’

  ‘I think we can forget about this now,’ Merry commented uncomfortably. ‘I can’t put my hand on my heart and say that I forgive you, but I am grateful you explained why you did it and I do understand.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Roula sighed as she opened the door to leave.

  Merry tensed when she saw Angel poised across the hall, straightening to his full predatory height, shrewd dark eyes scanning her like a radiation counter.

  ‘I told the truth,’ Roula told him flatly. ‘Can I leave now?’

  ‘You’re satisfied?’ Angel demanded of Merry.

  She nodded in embarrassed confirmation.

  ‘I’ll have you returned to the airport,’ Angel informed Roula curtly.

  Merry took advantage of his momentary inattention to head for the stairs at a very fast rate of knots. She wanted to splash her face, clean her teeth, brush her hair and ditch the pyjamas with the pink bunny rabbits on them. Then she would work out what she had to say to him to redress the damage she had done with her lack of faith. Possibly a spot of grovelling would be appropriate, obviously a heartfelt apology...

  She was caught unprepared and halfway into a pair of jeans when Angel strode into the bedroom. He thrust the door shut, leant his long, lean frame sinuously back against it and studied her with brooding dark eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry... I’m really sorry,’ she muttered, yanking up the jeans. ‘But she was very convincing and I don’t think she’s a bad person. I think she was just jealous and she got a bit carried away.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about Roula or why she did what she did,’ Angel declared impatiently. ‘I care that even after being married to me for weeks you were still willing to threaten me with the loss of my daughter.’

  Merry lost colour, her eyes guiltily lowering from the hard challenge of his. ‘That was wrong,’ she acknowledged ruefully. ‘But you used the same threat to persuade me into marrying you...or have you forgotten that?’

  ‘My intentions were good. I wanted to persuade you to give us a chance to be a proper family. But your intentions were bad and destructive,’ Angel countered without hesitation. ‘You wanted to use Elyssa like a weapon to punish me. That would have damaged her as much as me.’

  ‘No, I honestly wasn’t thinking like that,’ Merry argued, turning her back to him to flip off the despised pyjama top and reaching for a tee shirt, having decided for the sake of speed and dignity to forgo donning a bra. ‘Even when I was mad at you I accepted that you are a great father, but I assumed you would make any
divorce a bitter, nasty battle.’

  ‘What made you assume that?’ Angel asked drily. ‘I didn’t even ask you to sign a pre-nuptial agreement before the wedding. That omission sent the family lawyers into a tailspin but it was a deliberate move on my part. It was an act of faith formed on my foolish assumption that you would respect our marriage as much as I did.’

  Merry reddened with more guilt. He really knew what buttons to push, she reflected wretchedly. It hadn’t occurred to her that he hadn’t asked her to sign a pre-nup before the ceremony, but in retrospect she could see that that had been a glaring omission, indeed a very positive statement, in a marriage involving a very wealthy man and a reasonably poor woman. His continuing coldness was beginning to unnerve her. He had never used that tone with her before. He sounded detached and negative and he was still icily angry. She glanced up, scanning his lean, strong features for another, more encouraging reading of his mood, and instead noted the forbidding line of his wide, sensual mouth, the harsh angle of his firm jaw and the level darkness of his accusing gaze.

  ‘But the instant we hit the first rough patch in our marriage you were ready to throw it all away,’ Angel condemned.

  ‘A long-term mistress is more than a rough patch,’ Merry protested helplessly. ‘I believed Roula because you introduced me to her as a friend that you trusted.’

  ‘She’s the sister I never had,’ Angel asserted with sardonic bite. ‘The thought of anything of a sexual nature between us is...repellent.’

  And the last piece of the puzzle fell into place for Merry, who, while believing Roula, had not quite been able to grasp why Angel had never been tempted into having a more intimate relationship with her. After all, Roula was a beauty and had to share a lot with him. But if he saw the blonde in the same light as a sibling, his indifference to her as a woman was instantly understandable and highly unlikely to ever change.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of divorces,’ Angel admitted. ‘In my own family, amongst friends. Nobody comes out unscathed but the children suffer the most. I don’t want my daughter to ever suffer that damage, but neither do I want a wife who runs like a rabbit at the first sign of trouble.’