by Sarah Morgan
Faced with that choice, her head started to throb. ‘Let me tell you about my sister, Leandro. Let me tell you what my sister was to me. It was Becca who held my hand on my first day at school. It was Becca who helped me with my maths homework. It was Becca who taught me how to do my hair and make-up. Every step of my life, she was there, helping me. She encouraged me when my parents barely noticed I existed. It’s bad enough to think she’d have an affair with my husband, but now you’re suggesting she made up this entire thing just to hurt me?’
His silence said more than a thousand words would have done and Millie gave a distressed sigh.
‘Obviously that is what you’re suggesting. That’s madness. What could she have possibly gained by that? And why would you expect me to believe you without question? I’ve known you a fraction of the time I knew my sister.’
‘I expect you to believe me,’ he said acidly, ‘because you’re my wife and that role should bring with it trust and commitment, two qualities that appear to be sadly lacking in your make-up. The truth is that our marriage started to go wrong long before you saw me with your sister.’ Leandro straightened. ‘I presume that’s why you started avoiding sex.’
Her face flamed. ‘I wasn’t…avoiding sex.’
‘Night after night you turned your back on me. You pretended to be asleep. And if I arrived home too early for you to play that trick, then you threw excuse after excuse at me—“headache”, “tired”, “wrong time of the month”—and I let you hold back because I was only too aware that you’d had absolutely no sexual experience before I came into your life. I was extremely patient with you. I had no idea what was going on in your head and you gave me no clues. You just lay there and hoped it would go away.’
The fact that he’d seen through her pitiful attempts to keep him at a distance increased her humiliation. ‘I’m sure you really regretted marrying me.’ In fact, she knew he did. Wasn’t that why he’d slept with her sister?
‘Do you want to know what I regret, Millie?’ His voice was suddenly weary and he ran his hand over the back of his neck to relieve the tension. ‘I regret that I didn’t tie you to that damn bed and force you to tell me what was going on in that pretty head of yours. I backed off when I should have pushed you for answers, and I regret that more deeply than you’ll ever know.’
‘There was nothing in my head,’ she lied. ‘I was tired, that was all. When you weren’t away on business trips, we were always out—every night there was something you wanted me to go to.’ Another event designed to highlight the differences between them and sap her confidence.
‘Tired?’ His gaze was sardonic. ‘On our honeymoon you had no sleep at all. We had sex virtually every hour of every day. You were as insatiable as I was. Fatigue wasn’t the reason you had your back to me when I came to bed.’
‘Leandro—’
‘The honeymoon was perfect. The problems started when we arrived home. Suddenly you couldn’t bear me to touch you. In fact, you went to the most extraordinary lengths to make sure that I didn’t touch you.’ His lips tightened. ‘I even wondered whether the reason you invited your sister to stay with us was because you wanted something else to keep us apart.’
Appalled by the gulf in their mutual understanding, she dug her fingers into her hair and shook her head. ‘You think I wanted you to have an affair with my sister?’
‘I’ve said all I’m going to say on that particular subject.’
Millie was shaking so much she was relieved she was sitting down. ‘I invited my sister to stay because I trusted her. And because I needed her help—she was always the one I turned to when I was in trouble.’
His brows met in a frown. ‘How were you in trouble?’
Millie sat in silence, wishing she’d phrased it differently. Talking to him wasn’t easy, was it? They didn’t have that depth of understanding in their relationship. They’d shared scalding passion and nothing more. And Leandro was so confident, he wouldn’t be able to understand anyone who wasn’t. ‘This is very hard for me,’ she muttered, emotion swamping her. ‘I didn’t just lose my husband, I lost my sister. She was my best friend. And I lost her long before she died on that dusty, lonely road.’
‘I want to know why you were so quick to assume that I’d have an affair. We’d been married three months, Millie! Three months. Hardly enough time for disillusionment to set in.’
‘I knew your reputation.’
‘Which was earned before I met you.’
Millie smiled through tears that refused to be contained. ‘Oh, sure.’ Her voice was choked. ‘Beautiful me. So vastly superior in every way to those skinny models and actresses who knew how to dress, how to walk—I can quite see how it would have been impossible to notice them with me in the room. You should have reprogrammed the lights in this house so that they went off when I walked into a room. That might have helped our marriage.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you. It was your sweet nature and your gentleness that drew me to you.’ Leandro’s eyes narrowed, his gaze suddenly intent and focused. ‘You always put yourself down. Why didn’t I notice that before?’
‘I don’t know. At the beginning we didn’t do much talking and after that you were too busy being exasperated with me for getting everything wrong, I suppose.’ Millie thought about all those tense hours she’d spent trying to be who he wanted her to be. What an utter waste of time. Obviously she hadn’t even come close. Which just proved that even eight hours in a beauty salon couldn’t make a billionaire’s wife out of a farm girl. ‘You were partly to blame—you just dumped me in that situation and left me.’
‘What situation?’ He looked genuinely perplexed and she decided that there was no reason not to talk about it now.
It wasn’t as if she was trying to impress him. She’d given up on that. ‘You dumped me at all those really glitzy parties.’
‘I did not “dump” you. I was by your side.’
‘You were either talking business with someone in a suit—or you were smiling your smile at some beauty who was determined to grab your attention even though you were with me. And they all looked at me as though I’d crawled out from under a rock.’
‘You were my wife.’
‘Yes. That was the problem.’
Leandro gave her a look of exasperation. ‘You are making no sense at all! Being my wife gave you status—’
‘It was hugely stressful.’
He rubbed his fingers over his forehead. ‘If this is a problem you expect me to discuss rationally, you’re going to have to be a little more specific. In what way was being my wife “stressful”?’
Millie rubbed her hands over her legs, staring down at nails that had been bitten to nothing over the past year. ‘I didn’t have the necessary qualifications. I don’t know why you married me, but you made a mistake.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I did make a mistake.’ His fingers drummed a slow, deadly rhythm on the table. ‘And I’m putting that mistake right and we’re ending this mess.’
His words crushed her. For a horrible moment she thought she might make a fool of herself and slide to the floor and beg, No, no, no. The pride was stripped from her, leaving her vulnerable and exposed. She felt like a mortally wounded animal waiting for the final blow.
Oddly enough, the desire to cry suddenly ceased. It was as if her body had shut down.
‘You want a divorce.’ Somehow she managed to say the words, her eyes fixed on the wooden table, studying the grain of the wood. Anything, rather than look at him and fall apart. It was illogical, she knew, but she’d rather be married to him and never see him than cut the ties forever. ‘Of course you do. Just let me take the baby, and I’ll give you a divorce.’
‘Theos mou, haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?’ His voice was rough and angry. ‘I do not want a divorce.’
‘You said you made a mistake.’
‘It seems that whatever one of us says, the other misinterprets it.’ Clearly struggling with his own volat
ile emotions, Leandro paused for a moment, his hand to his forehead. The he looked at her. ‘The mistake I made,’ he said harshly, ‘was letting you walk out that day. I should have dragged you back and made you look at the truth. But I was furious that you doubted me. I was furious that you didn’t stand your ground and fight for what we had.’
‘If something isn’t right, sometimes it’s better just to let it go.’
Leandro threw her a fulminating glare and then paced to the far side of the kitchen, his broad shoulders rigid with tension.
Millie watched him—this man she loved—wondering what was going through his mind. As if reading her thoughts, he turned. The ever-present chemistry flickered across the room, resurrecting a connection that had never died.
‘When I said that I’m ending this mess, I meant that we’re ending this ridiculous separation. I want you back by my side where you belong. When the going gets tough, I want you to stay and fight instead of running. Those are the qualities I expect in the woman I’ve chosen to be my wife and the mother of my children.’
Millie pressed the palm of her hand against her heart to relieve the almost intolerable ache. ‘Are you saying that you don’t think I’d make a good mother?’
Something dark and dangerous shifted in his eyes. ‘Let’s just say that at the moment I’m not convinced.’
Appalled that he could possibly think that of her, Millie stared at him, seeing dark shadows in his eyes that she didn’t understand. ‘You don’t know me at all.’
‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t. But I intend to rectify that.’
He spoke the word with deadly emphasis. ‘Let’s see how powerful that commitment is this time around, shall we, Millie? If you want to be a mother to that child, you’ll do it by my side, as my wife.’
The shock of his words silenced her and he lifted an eyebrow.
‘It’s a yes or no answer, Millie.’
She stood up, so agitated that she couldn’t stay sitting. The fact that he intended to keep the baby suggested that he must be the father. Did he expect her to just ignore that fact? She wondered why he was so determined to continue the marriage. Was it a matter of pride? ‘Why do you want this?’ Her chair scraped on the floor, the sound grating against her jagged nerves. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘I know that. But you will have the whole of our marriage to understand me. And I’m going to understand you.’ He strolled across to her and she stepped backwards, but he kept coming, backing her against the wall, planting his hands either side of her head. ‘You and me, Millie.’ His voice was suddenly dangerously masculine and she caught her breath because he was casting the same spell that had drawn her in right at the beginning.
‘Leandro, don’t—’
His hand caught her face, his gaze intense. ‘I want you to stand by those promises you made to me in the church that day.’
His eyes darkened to a fierce black, as if her silence had somehow given him an answer to a question still unasked.
‘Millie?’
Millie closed her eyes. She wanted to ask why he was so determined to keep the baby. Couldn’t he see how that looked? Her mind was a mess—her thoughts so tangled and confused that she couldn’t follow a single strand through to its conclusion. ‘You can’t just resurrect our marriage. We were a disaster.’
‘Our communication was a disaster, that I agree.’ Leandro shrugged. ‘I rarely make mistakes and when I do, it’s just once, so you can relax.’
She’d never felt less relaxed in her life. ‘I can’t be what you want me to be.’
Leandro gave a humourless laugh. ‘Our communication has been so appalling up until this point, agape mou, I seriously doubt that you have any idea what I want from you. But this time around you will not be turning your back on me. And you will not be walking out when we hit a problem.’
Millie thought about what she had to offer him. Even less than last time. ‘You want me to come back as your wife, but things have changed, Leandro. You don’t know everything. Things have happened over the past year.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he said roughly, and she realised that he thought she was referring to another relationship.
‘There are things I need to tell you.’
‘Don’t tell me. At least, not right now. I’m Greek, remember? I’m trying to be modern, but I have a long way to go.’ With a low growl of frustration he lowered his head towards hers, the gesture an erotic reminder of everything they’d shared. For a moment his mouth hovered and he was obviously deciding whether to kiss her or not and then he lifted his head and stepped back. ‘No. This time we’re not going to let the sex do the talking. You look exhausted. Get some sleep. Just for tonight you can sleep in one of the spare bedrooms but after that you’ll sleep where my wife is supposed to sleep. By my side.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘DON’T cry. Don’t cry.’ Crying herself, Millie held the baby against her, rocking gently as he gulped and sobbed.
She’d been lying fully dressed and wide awake on top of the bed in one of the rooms just down the corridor from the nursery when she’d heard the baby howling. Instantly she’d sprung from the bed, driven by a deep instinct that she hadn’t felt before.
To begin with she’d stood back and allowed the nannies to comfort him, reminding herself that they were familiar to him, whereas she was a stranger. But after a few minutes she’d realised that they were getting nowhere and she’d taken over and dismissed them.
‘Are you hungry? Is that what’s wrong?’ Wiping away her own tears on her sleeve, Millie lifted the baby out of the cot, feeling his sturdy body beneath her hands as she held him awkwardly. ‘I haven’t done this before so you’ll have to tell me if I’m getting it wrong. Are you missing your mummy?’ Although, from what the clinic had told her, Becca had spent precious little time with her baby.
The baby’s yells increased and Millie settled herself in the chair and tentatively offered him the bottle that the nannies had left. ‘Is this the right angle? I’ve never fed a baby before so you’re going to have to yell a bit louder if I get it wrong.’
But the baby clamped his little mouth round the teat and sucked fiercely, gulping noisily as he greedily devoured the milk.
Millie gave an astonished laugh. ‘You really are starving. You certainly don’t take after your mother. She never ate anything.’ As the baby fed, she stared down at him, examining his features with an agonising pang.
There was no escaping the fact that he had Leandro’s hair. And his beautiful olive skin.
‘Is he your daddy?’ Speaking softly, she adjusted the angle of the bottle. ‘And if he is, how do I live with that? I don’t know. This is like one of those hypothetical dilemmas you talk about with your friends over a coffee. What would you do if your husband has an affair? Except maybe he didn’t—I don’t know. Should I really trust his word—or my sister’s? Am I supposed to just overlook it? Is that what he means about being the wife of a Greek man? I’m supposed to be in the kitchen stirring a casserole while he’s off having fun with his mistress?’ The baby sucked rhythmically, his eyes fixed on her face. ‘There’s no way we can carry on where we left off, even if I wanted to. Everything has changed. Things happened to me—things he doesn’t know about. He’s assuming everything is the same as when I left, and it isn’t.’
The baby sucked happily and Millie gave a watery smile. ‘You’re not giving me much help, are you? I don’t know what to do. If I wasn’t attractive enough to keep him the first time, it’s going to be even worse this time. He doesn’t know what he’s taking on.’ She thought about the last year and gave a despairing laugh. ‘On the other hand, there’s no way I’m leaving you here with him. You’ll be corrupted in a month.’
One of the nannies appeared in the doorway. ‘You persuaded him to take a bottle! We couldn’t get him to feed. I’d really had it with him by the time I went off duty last night.’ She yawned. ‘I even woke Erica because she’s been doing this job for twenty years
and knows every trick in the book. But he wouldn’t take it for her either. He’s the most miserable baby we’ve ever looked after. Probably knows there’s this big row about his parentage. His mum’s dead, apparently. And sexy Leandro Demetrios is supposedly his father. Scandal, scandal, scandal.’ She gave a conspiratorial giggle, and walked across the room. ‘Of course, he won’t say whether the baby is his or not, but he’s taken it in, hasn’t he? So that must say a lot.’
‘It says that he’s a responsible human being,’ Millie said stiffly, concentrating on the baby and hating the thought that everyone was gossiping. ‘Am I giving it to him too fast?’
‘No. He’s fine. He’s not crying, is he? I much prefer toddlers. At least you have the option of sticking them in front of the television when you get fed up with them.’ The nanny frowned. ‘Thank goodness you’ve got the touch. I was expecting to get fired this morning.’
‘Fired?’
The girl gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘Well, Leandro Demetrios isn’t exactly known as someone who accepts failure, is he? Erica and I decided in the night that if we hadn’t got the baby to take the bottle by morning, both of us would be for the chop. Shame. The pay is good and the boss is gorgeous. We’re trying to find excuses to be on his floor of the house in case he sleeps in the nude. So—who are you, exactly? I didn’t know he was hiring anyone else.’
‘I’m his wife.’ The moment she’d said the words, Millie wished they could be unsaid because the girl gaped at her in astonished disbelief.
Then the drive for job security overtook her natural astonishment and she cleared her throat. ‘I had no idea.’ Her eyes slid from Millie’s tumbling hair to her old jeans. ‘God—sorry. I mean—And you’re looking after his—’ Her face turned scarlet but it was obvious from the look in her eyes that she thought Millie was a fool. ‘We didn’t know he was still married.’
‘We’ve been apart for a while.’