Kizzy had still been unconscious then and so had missed the look of elation that must have crossed his face. This meant she had to stay with him in Greece now. She was carrying his heir and they would, of course, have to get married.
Andreas had watched his lover sleep and felt a wave of possessiveness flood his body at how small and fragile in the white nest of the hospital bed she looked. The mother of his child. The two most important things in his life seemed so dangerously vulnerable—they needed him.
He had vowed there and then to protect them both with his life.
The feeling of dread and entrapment he might have expected to feel under such circumstances had not materialized. He thought he had been meticulous about contraception, yet somehow this baby had happened, so it was clearly destined to be. His heart swelled at the thought that in a few months he would be holding his very own child in his arms and that he would have such a perfect wife. He felt warm and excited. And protective and proud.
He was going to make his new family the biggest success of his life. More than ever it was essential not to show any kind of weakness though. Kizzy had to know that she could rely on him, that he would be her rock to cling to and the best father there could ever be.
Now though, he was finding it surprisingly hard to hold on to those feelings of strength and self-control, when every look she shot him seemed to accuse Andreas of not matching up to her ideal husband.
“I couldn’t bear to be tied to a man who cheated on me,” Kizzy continued relentlessly, meeting his stare. “Not even for the sake of my baby. Don’t you remember what that did to your mother?”
“I will not cheat on you, Kizzy. That’s one promise I can make.”
“Is that what you told your first wife?”
“I didn’t need to; we made solemn vows in the house of God in front of everyone who was dear to us. I was never unfaithful to her during our marriage.”
“So what went wrong? I need to know, Andreas. I need to know a lot of things before I can even begin to consider becoming your wife.”
“It’s all in the past! My first marriage has nothing to do with you or what is happening now. She is gone and won’t be coming back. There is nothing to be gained from raking over old wounds and I will not be manipulated into talking about such things.” His chest rose and fell with exasperation. “You have to trust me on this, Kizzy. It’s for the best.”
“But how can I trust you?” Tears were brimming behind her lashes now and she bowed her head in anguish. “I saw you, Andreas! I saw you with your new girlfriend at the villa. That’s why I took off to the acropolis, I was so humiliated—”
Roughly, Kizzy swiped her forearm across her face—no, she would not let him see her cry. He must never know how much his infidelity had affected her, how it crushed her soul.
“You both seemed to be having a nice time of it while I was supposed to be at work.” Kizzy glanced up at his uncharacteristic silence, and noted, with bittersweet agony, the look of guilty confusion on his face. “A lovers’ tryst in the tower, was it? I guess that’s where you must go together. It’s the only part of the villa that’s been resolutely locked since you asked me to move in. Your secret lovers’ hideaway—”
“Stop it!” Andreas suddenly bellowed. “Stop it now! The heat exhaustion has clearly affected your mind as well as your body!”
“Oh no, you won’t brush me off that easily,” Kizzy replied with a swift, answering anger. She drew a painful breath. “I saw you both with my own eyes. I saw you kiss her. Explain that, if you can.”
Andreas pushed himself away from the back of the chair he had been leaning on. It rattled over onto the stone tiled floor, its impact echoing in the heavy, torturous silence that had fallen between them.
“What you saw was me kissing Liz goodbye. She’d come by with the keys to the safe and wanted to thank me for her going-away gift.”
Andreas struggled to retain control. The emotional turbulence within him had blurred his vision to the extent that all he could register was the paleness of her face and the thunder raging beneath his chest wall. Nonetheless, he managed to keep his voice level.
“Remember Liz? Liz, the office manager who believes in love?” He waited, breathing heavily, and watched the uncertainty begin to grow on her face. “Think about it, why the hell would an engaged woman throw all that away for a quick fumble with the ex-boss?”
“She—she didn’t sound very Australian,” Kizzy replied hesitantly. “In fact, she looked like a picture-perfect little Greek girl from where I was standing.”
“For God’s sake, she is Greek! Liz is short for Lizandra. Her boyfriend’s the Australian; they’re going to start married life back in his country.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” Andreas replied with a sudden look of despair on his face. “And you would deny our child its birthright because of this delusion? I thought better of you,” he added harshly. “I never thought I’d see you put yourself before your child.”
His words lanced through her with such painful force that Kizzy was momentarily unable to act rationally and her first instinct was to lash out verbally in retaliation for the way he was making her feel.
“You’ve never even stopped to ask if I want to have this baby, have you?”
Andreas’s face seemed to fuse into pure gray granite for a second or two of agonizing silence as he digested what she had said.
“Don’t ever say anything like that again.” His voice was husky, laced with pain. “You said yourself that having a baby was one of your dreams. Well, now a miracle has occurred and, God willing, you will have your baby. Just don’t try to pretend that my genes aren’t good enough for you now, just to hurt me. I warn you, Kizzy Dean, I will only be pushed so far.”
Kizzy had felt burning shame beneath her breastbone the second the words had passed her lips. It had been an unforgivable thing to say and he was right, she’d just wanted to hurt him. In the process, however, she had hurt herself even more.
“I’m sorry. It was a terrible thing to say—of course I want this baby,” she whispered and summoned the courage to look him in the eye. She was met with a man simmering like an angry volcano. “But I still can’t marry you.”
Andreas swore in Greek and slammed his palm against his forehead. “What do I have to do to convince you? I’m running out of ideas here but I’m telling you now—I will only ask once. I will not be humiliated into begging for your hand in marriage.”
“I don’t even recall being asked. As with most things that come from you, it was more of a command than a request.”
“An assumption, perhaps. What difference does it make? I thought you’d be delighted.” He paused briefly and his expression softened as he stared at her. “You’d make such a beautiful bride.”
She felt her resolve begin to melt and tried hard not to fall under the spell of his tempting words. Instead, she hoisted up an emotional shield to hide behind. “This time you assumed too much, Andreas. As it happens, I will consider marrying you for the sake of our child, but only if certain conditions are fulfilled.”
“Conditions?” Andreas took a step nearer, frowning. “I thought we’d gone beyond contracts and deals.”
“We have,” she said, agreeing. “No one else needs to be involved. We can sort it out between us right here. This minute.”
He crossed his arms. “Fire away.”
Kizzy took a deep breath. “I must insist on exclusivity in this marriage. I will not live with an adulterer.”
Andreas nodded slowly, and a flush of hard color tinged his cheekbones. “And I will expect the same from you, pethi mou. I won’t pretend I’m a man who is used to being told how things will be. But if you are to be my wife, an equal partner in our marriage, I suppose I had better get used to it.”
“There must be no secrets between us if I am to trust you with my dignity and the well-being of our child. There are two things I must know. Firstly, I need to understand what happened in your first m
arriage.” She paused at his sharp intake of breath, then plunged on regardless. She had to know the truth if this was going to work. “And secondly, I insist on knowing why you keep that tower locked all the time, if it’s not a lovers’ hideaway.”
“This is ridiculous!” He unfolded his arms, his face taut with exasperation. “Why do you insist on dragging my first marriage into this? It’s not relevant. And this constant obsession with the tower—it’s just an outbuilding!”
“I need to know.”
“But why?”
“How can there ever be any trust between us if you won’t tell me something as simple as this?”
“And how can you insist on this insulting question-and-answer session with the father of your unborn child? It’s undignified.”
“Yes, it is. And now it appears the matter is settled—I will not be taking your name.”
“This is stupid.”
“No, it’s very sad,” Kizzy whispered and stood up, gathering her strength to leave. She still felt a little dizzy and light-headed. “Andreas, I’m not asking you to fall down on one knee and profess undying love—you’ve made your feelings quite clear on that score and I was prepared to accept a civil and pragmatic marriage to secure the future happiness of our child.”
Her thoughts were becoming scrambled and clouded with the intensity of the emotion she was feeling. And each glance at Andreas’s tempestuous features increased her struggle even further.
“But I also firmly believe our baby should have two parents who at least respect each other. We can’t possibly have a future together if we’re not honest and open from the start. Secrets poison everything—they will tear us apart in the end.”
“It seems to be you who is trying to tear us apart,” he replied, running both hands through his hair.
“I’ve kept nothing from you, Andreas,” she continued desperately. “I’ve been completely open with you about my past, yet you seem incapable of doing the same for me. And it hurts.”
“So that’s what it will take, is it? Complete honesty?”
Andreas could feel his heart ramming ferociously against his rib cage as he battled with his pride, his rage, and his fear.
“If I tell you my secrets, if I reveal myself to you, you will marry me?” He grabbed her by the arm and began to pull her along the terrace. “Very well, we’ll do it your way. But I’m warning you now, Kizzy, you may not like what you discover.”
Chapter Thirteen
Kizzy stumbled along in a daze as Andreas propelled her mercilessly to the foot of the tower. He put an arm down into a clay urn that was beside the imposing door and retrieved a large iron key.
“You could have done this yourself if you’d been more dishonest and devious,” he said, turning the key noisily in the lock, throwing open the door she had only ever seen closed.
As he guided her up the dark, musty stairwell inside, he shielded her shoulders from the coarse stone walls by wrapping an arm around her and squeezing her to his body.
“Just a few more steps,” he muttered in a voice that seemed different from the one she was used to. He came to an abrupt halt. “Stay here and don’t move.”
Kizzy obeyed him—it seemed to her that they were both breathing heavily in the silent gloom of a stone tomb. Thin shafts of gray-brown light were the only hint of an outside world until Andreas wrenched open the first set of wooden shutters. Her hands flew to her eyes as she struggled to adjust to the fierce burst of sunlight streaming in.
Another shutter was flung open, followed by another and another until she was drowned in summer light that burst into every crevice of ancient gray stone. Looking around in bewilderment, she blinked her eyes into focus: a battered chair; a tumble of old jars; crumpled-up newspapers in every corner, and a pile of filthy rags.
“Satisfied now?” Andreas asked stiffly. He indicated that she should look behind her.
Satisfied?
Slowly, Kizzy turned and smothered a shocked gasp. “I had no idea that you—th-that—it’s beautiful!” She took a tentative step toward a huge canvas fixed to an easel.
Her gaze ran excitedly over the bold swirls of color and she inhaled the unfamiliar smell of artists’ materials—oil paints and turpentine. Brutally aware of his stony silence behind her, she resisted the almost overwhelming urge to brush her fingertips over the thick ridges of oil paint on the canvas and folded her hands together beneath her chin to keep them away.
It was an incomplete work but what he was trying to achieve was clear. A disturbed sky as stormy and gray as the wall surrounding it was slashed into focus by a tumbling heap of burning gold, red, amber, and black. Four horses, still tethered to a chariot, were falling and twisting toward earth in a firmament being torn apart from all sides. Winged creatures were trying to hold the beasts back, but failing in the fiery blaze of destruction, and there was the beginning of a body falling from inside the chariot—a pale foot was as far as the artist had gotten.
“This is your work?” Kizzy asked in wonder as she turned to face the dark storm of his expression. “This is what you do in here?”
He nodded silently and then looked pointedly out the nearest window, a muscle working rhythmically in his jaw. “There you have it. My dark, shameful secret…”
“What?” Kizzy fixed him with an unyielding look of fascination. “I don’t see anything shameful about this.”
“It’s a weakness. The forbidden fruit I’ve never been able to leave alone, however much it cost me.” His face twisted. “At least that was the case until you came on the scene. I’ve not managed a single brush stroke since I met you.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” he said more gently. “It’s a good thing.”
“It is? But I don’t understand, you obviously have such talent—”
“Then I will explain it to you. Step by shameful step, every single detail, if that’s what you genuinely want. Do you want to know everything, Kizzy?”
She nodded, despite being aware that she might be opening a forbidden box of secrets. It was as if a great shadowy beast was approaching both of them from some outer ring of darkness, ready to pounce and tear them to pieces, but she refused to run from it, not so long as Andreas needed her. Transfixed by what she had seen in his face, she took a deep breath and waited to hear his explanation.
“Any artistic inclinations that I showed as a child were forbidden by my father. There were no pencils or paints in our house, just a couple of ink pens locked away in his study. If he caught me so much as etching a line or two in the sand he would tell me I was pathetic—a mommy’s boy who needed to toughen up. Then of course he would beat the living daylights out of me.” He swallowed hard. “I pressed some flowers between the pages of a schoolbook once. He found out and had our cat put down as punishment.”
Kizzy gulped back a lump in her throat. “Andreas, I—”
“You wanted this, now hear me out.” He placed a hand on the edge of the canvas, staring blindly down at his own work. “I know I should put all this behind me, that I’m stronger than my father now, yet I can’t seem to shake off those feelings of shame. Every time I pick up a paintbrush, it feels like I’m doing something dirty and furtive—I still have to hide myself away, ensure that no one ever discovers what I do up here.”
“But you know in your heart that’s not the case, don’t you?” Kizzy reached out to touch his hand, and he moved it away. The thought hurt her deeply but she persevered, hoping to salvage something from their relationship. She could only guess how he was feeling. “There is nothing wrong or bad about creating such beautiful work.”
He gestured toward the dark, swirling colors of the painting. “This has become a twisted form of punishment for me, for what happened to my sister, an attempt to remind myself how weak and selfish I am—how unworthy of any genuine respect.” He placed his fingertips over Kizzy’s mouth as she began to protest. “No, hush. Do you know I even let my father hound me into an arranged marriage that no one but he
and his second cousin wanted?”
Kizzy’s sharp intake of breath made his fingers drop from her lips.
He looked away.
“My father told me that he was terminally ill, and that if I married Sophia he could die happy, that he would forgive me all my supposed transgressions. He even got my mother to back up his story with tears as added leverage. So I did it. I married Sophia.”
“What happened?”
The musty air hung with thick silence. “My father made a miraculous recovery after the wedding and Sophia went straight to Ibiza on my credit card to be with her current girlfriend. Our marriage was never even consummated. All the same, she couldn’t resist humiliating me with her druggy, swinging antics spread all over Europe’s gossip magazines.”
Suddenly, he seized Kizzy’s chin, twisting her face away from his own and pointing it toward the painting. “Do you recognize these images, Kizzy? You really should.”
Kizzy blinked back the shock she felt at the intense pressure of his fingertips and pulled herself free. She had recognized the scene almost immediately.
“It’s Phaëthon’s Fall.”
“Very good.” He inclined his head, studying the painting with hard eyes. “That degree has come in useful after all. Yes, mischievous, bigheaded Phaëthon disobeyed his father, took the sun chariot out for a spin but couldn’t control it, and almost destroyed the world. Until Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.”
“You should finish it,” Kizzy ventured carefully. “It’s incredible—”
“I can’t,” he replied abruptly and pointed to the unfinished corner with the foot. “Because I can’t decide if this person here, the one where the demigod should be, should look like me or Callista.”
Slowly the pieces began to fall clumsily into place. Kizzy looked back at him warily. This canvas was a cathartic ritual for Andreas, a punishment as he’d said, all tied up somehow with his father, the too-fast Lamborghini, and his sister’s death.
Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire Page 14