by Lynne Graham
‘Helena…’ The redhead murmured with measured female superiority before she drifted off.
Dio flinched, and his bronzed skin lost colour.
‘Considering that Sally set me up for you, you weren’t very polite,’ Ellie said unevenly. ‘I’d never have come to meet her if I’d known you were planning to show up.’
‘Sally tortured me with questions when I was at my lowest ebb. And even the worst sinners get their moment to speak on judgement day,’ Dio breathed with an attempted lightness that was laced with strain.
Ellie stared back at him, her heart thumping like a hammer behind her ribs, her eyes full of pain.
‘Don’t look at me like that…it makes it so much worse,’ Dio groaned.
Instantly Ellie looked away. Yes, of course he would see how she felt. He always had been able to see inside her. Crushed by the awareness that even her love was obvious to him, she made no demur when he curved a surprisingly tentative arm round her and walked her away. The limousine was collecting a parking ticket beyond the park gates. Dio felt guilty. Obviously he felt guilty. He knew how much he had hurt her. And what was to be gained in trying to avoid a meeting that he was determined to force on her?
In the silence, Ellie stole a glance at him as the opulent car purred through the slow-moving traffic. In two and a half weeks he had contrived to lose quite a bit of weight, she noted. And now it was as if a divide the width of an immeasurable abyss separated them. She had never dreamt that Dio could look as downright sombre as he did now. The end of a marriage. Well, he wasn’t so superficial that he was about to celebrate, particularly when she would be giving birth to their child in a few months’ time.
‘It’s OK,’ she said flatly.
‘Nothing’s OK,’ Dio countered harshly. ‘Where have you been staying?’
‘A B&B out in the suburbs. I didn’t feel like the hassle of looking for somewhere more permanent yet,’ she admitted stiltedly.
‘Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be going out of my mind with worry?’ he demanded with sudden force.
‘Why should it have?’ Ellie sighed. ‘I’ve been looking after myself for a heck of a long time. I’m not the helpless type.’
The silence seemed to thunder.
‘No,’ Dio conceded gruffly. ‘But you can make me feel helpless.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Oh, you mean you looking for me and not being able to find me?’ she gathered. ‘There was no need for that. I wasn’t planning to vanish for ever, or anything stupid like that. I made that clear in my note—’
‘Ne…yes: “Dio, I’m sorry, but I had to empty your wallet to get some cash.”’ Dio quoted the opening line of her note flatly. “‘Marrying you was a mistake. I’ll be in touch. Don’t look for me…but then I don’t suppose you will, will you?”’
‘I don’t see why you have to quote the whole thing,’ Ellie protested, feeling even more foolish and exposed by that verbatim delivery. ‘I was upset and I didn’t have much time. You’re lucky you got a note!’
Instead of exploding at that rather unjust stab, Dio froze in his distant corner of the back seat. ‘I guess you’re right about that.’
Ellie sent him a slightly bewildered glance, registering the raw tension etched into his bold, dark profile. ‘I honestly didn’t think you might get worried until later—’
‘Much later. It took you eleven days to phone Sally,’ Dio reminded her tautly.
‘I had some stuff to work out.’
Like how to live without him, how to exist with a ceaseless craving that got more agonising with every passing hour, how to close out the flawed memory of good times that could only have been utterly superficial on his terms. Great sex, she had assumed on their honeymoon, but dared she assume even that now? For her, making love with Dio had been earth-shattering sensational perfection. But how did she really know what it had been like for him? He had been flatteringly insatiable, but maybe he was just rampantly oversexed, she reflected grimly.
‘So what have you been doing with yourself?’
‘I’ve been making plans.’ Actually, she had done nothing but walk around all day, sit in the public library when she got tired, eat for the baby’s sake and use up boxes of tissues at night. However, it would have taken torture to force an admission like that from her.
She had climbed out of the limo before she realised that they had not arrived at Dio’s apartment building. Her bewildered gaze absorbed the tall, imposing Georgian townhouse they had viewed the same day they’d parted. ‘What on earth are we doing here?’
‘I went ahead and bought it.’
‘You did say it would be a good investment,’ Ellie recalled as she opened the front door.
‘I was joking.’
Had he been? Ellie had spent two and a half wretched weeks picking apart everything Dio had ever said or done, seeking evidence with which to bolster up her resistance level. Waste of time, she now conceded gloomily. One look at him, even in this strange, muted mode he appeared to be in, and she was back where she had been that first night on Chindos. Mesmerised. Poised there in his exquisitely tailored charcoal-grey suit, he was so gorgeous he still took her breath away.
‘What did you do with the rest of my things?’ Ellie asked to fill the simmering silence.
Dio frowned. ‘They’re here.’
‘Where?’
‘In the main bedroom.’
‘Oh, right. You didn’t tell the staff that I wasn’t coming back.’ Ellie started up the grand staircase.
‘Where are you going?’
Ellie barely glanced over her shoulder. ‘I might as well get my stuff packed up while I’m here,’ she said briskly. ‘It’ll save me another trip.’
‘Ellie…’ Dio began heavily. ‘I know I’ve acted like a total four-letter word—’
‘Dio, I don’t need to hear that sort of stuff.’ Ellie marched on up the staircase at an even faster rate of knots. ‘This is nobody’s fault. We only got married because I was pregnant, which was just plain stupid…OK? It’s no big deal, is it?’
‘No big deal?’ Dio repeated thickly.
Ellie could not resist the urge to turn and peer down at him from the landing, but he had swung away. ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is I don’t want to talk about it. There’s no need.’
Dio appeared in the dressing room doorway while Ellie was frantically trailing clothes off hangers. Her hands were all thumbs. What on earth had possessed her? In another minute she would either crumple into humiliating hysterical tears or she would seize him by the throat and ask him how he could possibly prefer Arctic Woman to her.
‘Helena was behind that disgusting tabloid attack on you…’
Ellie stilled, and then suddenly jerked round, eyes very wide.
Dio stared back at her with tormented dark eyes shimmering with strain, his hands clenched into powerful fists by his side. His vibrant skin had a greyish cast.
‘I suppose she came off that pedestal you had her on with a real shocking crash…’ Ellie’s heart felt as if it was cracking right down the middle, and she felt that if she didn’t keep on talking she might be at serious risk of starting to sob. Everything she had never wanted to see was etched in Dio’s face. His appalled reaction to Helena’s true nature.
‘I didn’t have her on a—’
‘I’m sorry, Dio. But you know a woman would have spotted her for what she was a mile off! But then…’ Ellie altered direction hurriedly, not wishing to come across as spiteful ‘Isn’t it comforting to know that she was that determined to get you back?’
‘Only because…only because of who I am and what I have.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Ellie managed with a sickly smile. ‘Be honest. You valued those same things in her. All that background and breeding and money.’
Dio just closed his eyes and bowed his proud head. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me for refusing to believe you.’
‘Good. I wasn’t going to make the offer.’ Ellie turned back to the built-in
units which blurred in front of her eyes. ‘I understand that you thought that she was above all that kind of thing, and that you’re feeling pretty bad now you know the truth…how do you, by the way?’ she prompted with sudden curiosity.
‘A journalist sang like a canary bird. Helena had had you investigated.’
‘I could have told you that.’
‘She set up a meeting with a reporter and handed over the file. She gave it on the understanding that the article would vilify and humiliate you.’ Dio’s dark, deep drawl roughened tellingly. ‘She was too arrogant to even try to cover her tracks.’
‘Maybe she thought it would be more of a risk to trust somebody else with that file.’ Tears were inching down Ellie’s cheeks, but she kept on hauling garments blindly off hangers as she struggled to get a grip on herself.
‘Did you see the interview I gave about you?’
Ellie’s wet eyes widened with bemusement. ‘No…’
‘I hoped it would bring you out of hiding. I knew you had promised to meet Sally today, but she warned me that she’d had to fight to get you to agree,’ Dio disclosed tautly. ‘And when you would only set a date a whole week in advance…frankly, I thought there was little hope that you would actually turn up.’
‘I wouldn’t have done that to Sally. She’s a nice person.’
‘When I faced Helena with what she had done, she kept on lying very convincingly for a long time. Then I mentioned the malice Sally had heard her spitting at you on our wedding day—’
‘Isn’t it wonderful the way you believed everyone but me? That journalist? Sally?’ Ellie condemned with tremulous but very fierce bitterness.
‘I honestly could never have imagined Helena capable of such behaviour,’ Dio framed grittily. ‘That is…until two weeks ago, when I confronted her and she finally lost her temper because she realised that she had lost.’
‘She didn’t lose, Dio. She won all the way,’ Ellie contradicted flatly, her tears drying on her cheeks now. ‘We didn’t have much to start out with…and by the time she’d finished we had nothing. But don’t you kid yourself that she was the one most at fault!’
‘I know where the blame lies. I know I let you down and made you very unhappy. You hate me, don’t you?’
‘Some of the time…like right now, yes!’ Ellie suddenly snapped as she rounded on him, her green eyes emerald with anger. ‘She really scared me that day with her threats. She’d have done anything to persuade me into getting rid of our baby! She sneered at my mother, she insulted me every way possible and you wouldn’t even listen.’
Dio moved forward. ‘Ellie…I—’
‘Shut up!’ Ellie interrupted furiously. ‘I was a total idiot to marry you in the first place! I was very upset that day—’
‘You had every right to be. All I know is that I have never been closer to violence than I was when confronting Helena two weeks ago,’ Dio revealed with raw force. ‘The manner in which she spoke of you almost drove me to assault!’
‘Really?’ Ellie was quite happy to rein back temper long enough to relish that enervating detail. ‘So does that mean that there’s not going to be a reconciliation?’
Dio stared back at her blankly.
‘You’re not planning to marry her after me, then?’ Ellie rephrased.
‘Are you unhinged? Marry her?’ Dio exclaimed incredulously. ‘She’s a cold, vicious bitch!’
‘Well, it took you a lifetime, but in the end you got there. Congratulations,’ Ellie said very drily. ‘Could you get me a case?’
‘A case?’
Ellie was possessed by the need to keep busy. Dio was getting to her and she had been determined that he was not going to get to her. That five-letter word labelling Helena as beyond the pale, for all her background, breeding and brilliance, had blown a small hole in Ellie’s defences. She moved forward and then almost fell over the mound of clothing heaped round her. She looked down in astonishment at what appeared to be a whole heap of Dio’s suits.
Sidestepping them, she attempted to brush past Dio. He closed his hand over hers. ‘You’ve got to hear me out!’ he grated rawly.
‘You didn’t hear me out, did you? No, when I was trying to state my case either I was insane with jealousy or off my trolley with being pregnant! And shall I tell you something, Dio? Right now, I’m near my personal edge!’ Ellie vented with ringing honesty. ‘Let…go…of…me!’
Dio released her with a jerk. Dark colour scored his stunning cheekbones but it was the savage pain in the depths of his dark eyes that shook her. ‘I am more sorry that I have hurt you than you will ever believe,’ he breathed raggedly.
Pale and trembling from that charged exchange, Ellie went off in search of a suitcase. It was mad, it was crazy to keep on trying to pack in the midst of such emotional turmoil, but she couldn’t bear to see Dio in so much pain; she really couldn’t! All over the head of that evil witch, who had almost sucked him in like a boa constrictor! Ellie shuddered as she banged through the closets she recalled touring two and a half weeks earlier. Locating the designated luggage storage, she grabbed up a case.
‘Let me take that…’ Dio took it from her again.
‘You know…you don’t feel it now, but sooner or later, you’ll realise what a lucky escape you’ve had,’ she muttered half under her breath, and hurried back to the master bedroom suite that they would now never share.
‘Ellie…please sit down so that we can talk,’ Dio urged, sounding almost pathetically humble. ‘I need to tell you about Helena.’
Ellie was so appalled by that confession she sank down on the side of the bed before her legs gave out beneath her. If he needed a shoulder, why did it have to be hers? Then she understood. He wanted to make a complete confession. Nothing less would satisfy his over-active conscience. So he was about to drag out personal admissions that would very probably rip her heart out and depress her for the next thirty years.
Dio regarded her warily and very slowly set down the case. He cleared his throat. ‘I—’
‘Will you keep it short?’ Ellie begged without pride.
Dio got even tenser. He looked so absolutely miserable her heart went out to him. She had to face it now. He had really loved Helena. He might now be repulsed, but he had loved her.
‘My father first told me that Helena would make me a wonderful wife when I was five.’
‘Five…five years old?’ Ellie yelped. ‘What age was she?’
‘Eight.’
‘Five…dear heaven, that’s like brainwashing!’ Ellie said in disgust.
‘My grandparents died in a car accident when my father was still very young. He was brought up by his father’s family. You must understand that my father was made to feel very much ashamed of his mother’s more humble ancestry.’
‘So he was raised to be a real snob?’
Dio nodded.
‘And he wanted to be sure you didn’t let the side down?’
Dio nodded again.
‘So you were indoctrinated from a very early age to believe that Helena was your future.’
‘A future I kept putting off.’ Dio breathed in deep. ‘I could never admit even to myself that I didn’t like Helena—’
‘You didn’t…like Helena?’ Ellie interrupted in astonishment.
‘Did you find her a warm, inviting personality when you first came in contact with her on Chindos?’
‘No, but—’
Dio’s jawline hardened. ‘I could never fault her behaviour. Her every accomplishment was continually paraded before me, and she is very accomplished. It was instilled in me that I had to marry her.’
‘So you decided you’d marry her and have a mistress to supply the warmth she so conspicuously lacks.’
Recognising her scorn, Dio dealt her a wry look of reproach. ‘Such marriages are not uncommon in my world. Until I met you, I didn’t realise what I might be missing.’
Ellie sighed. ‘I can’t believe that.’
‘OK…so there have been a few w
omen in my past,’ Dio conceded, in distinctly charged understatement. ‘But not one of them got to me the way you did. We had that one magical night and then I blew it. But I couldn’t stay away from you—’
‘So you married me and blew it again,’ Ellie slotted in painfully.
Dio crossed the carpet and hunkered down to look up into her wan face. He tried to reach for her hands. She put them behind her back.
Dio’s mouth quirked. ‘The night you told me that you might be pregnant, I realised that I was in love with you—head over heels in love.’
‘You would tell me anything to keep a hold on our baby, wouldn’t you?’ Ellie mumbled with a sob in her voice.
Dio’s beautiful dark eyes shimmered. He unpeeled her hands from behind her back and held them fast in his. ‘My biggest mistake was not telling you how I felt that night in my apartment,’ he told her rawly. ‘I knew then that I would never marry Helena, and that’s when the guilt kicked in. Then she phoned after we had made love and I felt even worse!’
A little shard of hope pierced Ellie’s emotional turmoil. Now she was locked onto his every facial expression, his every word. She remembered the way he had reacted after that phone call that had interrupted them. ‘You should have explained about her then!’
Dio released his breath in a rueful hiss. ‘I didn’t want to upset you. I also didn’t feel right talking to you about her at that stage,’ he admitted. ‘First I needed to see her and tell her that I had fallen in love.’
‘Is that what you told her?’
Dio gave her a questioning look. ‘What else would I have told her? I knew she wouldn’t be too impressed by the announcement, but it was the truth. When you came out of Nathan’s surgery, I really was pleased about the baby, but I’m afraid my guilt over Helena ruined what should’ve been a very special occasion.’
‘I can understand how you must’ve felt.’
Dio grimaced. ‘No, you can’t. I was very angry with myself for letting that understanding with Helena drift on for so long. I believed that I was letting her down very badly,’ he confessed. ‘But if I felt bad then, it was nothing to how I felt when I actually faced Helena in Paris.’