by Lynne Graham
It took her a long time to emerge from the bathroom, but when she did, wrapped in an over-large short silk robe she had found, the bedroom was empty. It was something of an anticlimax. Maxie got back into bed, not remotely sleepy and very tense, while she waited and waited for Angelos to reappear. A postmortem to end all postmortems now threatened. Having emerged from shock, Angelos would take refuge in anger, she forecast glumly. He would demand to know why she hadn’t told him the truth about Leland. He would utterly dismiss any claim that he would never have believed her.
She lay back, steeling herself for recriminations as only Angelos could hurl them. Like deadly weapons which struck a bull’s-eye every time. He never missed. And she hadn’t been fair to him; she knew now that she hadn’t been fair. Liz had been right. She had reaped a twisted kind of relish out of pretending to be something she wasn’t while she goaded Angelos on and taunted him. And so why had she reacted to him in a way she had never reacted to any other man? Maxie discovered that she was miserable enough without forcing herself to answer that question.
The door opened. She braced herself. Angelos stood poised in the doorway. Barefoot, black hair tousled, strong jawline already darkening with stubble, he looked distinctly unfamiliar in a pair of black tight-fitting jeans, with a black shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned on his bare brown hair-roughened chest.
‘I now know everything…’ he announced in the most peculiar slurred drawl. ‘But I am too bloody drunk to fly!’
Maxie sat up. Eyes huge, she watched Angelos collide with the door and glower at it as if it had no business being there in his path. He was drunk all right. And he just looked so helpless to Maxie at that moment that she abandoned her stony, defensive aspect. Concern for him took over instead.
Leaping out of bed and crossing the room, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Come and lie down,’ she urged.
‘Not on that bed.’ As he swayed Angelos surveyed the divan with an extraordinary force of antagonism. ‘Right at this moment I want to burn it.’
Assuming that her vindictive comment on his technique had struck home with greater force and efficacy than she could ever have imagined, Maxie paled with guilt but continued to try and ease him in the same direction. Was that why he had gone off to hit the bottle? Some intrinsically male sense of sexual failure because he had inadvertently hurt her? Maxie endeavoured to drag him across the carpet. He was obstinate as ever.
‘Lie down!’ she finally launched at him in full-throttle frustration.
And Angelos did lie down. Maxie couldn’t believe it but he sprawled down on the bed as if she had a gun trained on him. And he looked so utterly miserable. It was true, she decided in fascination, women were definitely the stronger sex. Here was the evidence. Disaster had befallen Angelos when he had least expected it in a field he prided himself on excelling in and he couldn’t handle it.
Crawling onto the bed beside him, Maxie gazed down at him until her eyes misted over. She was shattered to discover that all she wanted to do was cocoon him in lashings of TLC.
‘You were really great until the last moment,’ she told him in tender consolation. ‘I didn’t mean what I said. You mustn’t blame yourself—’
‘I blame Leland,’ Angelos gritted.
In complete confusion, Maxie frowned. ‘You blame… you blame Leland?’ she stressed, all at seas as to his meaning.
Angelos growled something in Greek that broke from him with the aggressive force of a hurricane warning.
‘English, Angelos…’
‘He’s a slime-bag!’
Focusing on her properly for the first time, Angelos dug a hand into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a great wodge of crumpled fax paper.
Maxie took it from him and spread the paper out. It was so long it kept on spreading, across his chest and finally right off the edge of the bed. She squinted down and recognised her own signature right at the very foot. In such dim light, it left her little the wiser as to its content, and in his presence she didn’t want to be seen peering to comprehend all that tiny type.
‘Leland took advantage of your stupidity—’
‘Excuse me?’ Maxie cut in, wide-eyed.
‘Only a financially very naive person would’ve signed that loan contract,’ Angelos extended, after a long pause during which he had visibly struggled to come up with that more diplomatic term. ‘And a moneylender from a backstreet would’ve offered more generous terms than that evil old bastard!’
Clarity shone at last for Maxie. Angelos had somehow obtained a copy of the loan agreement she had signed three years earlier. That was what was on the fax paper. ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘I got it,’ Angelos responded flatly.
‘Why did you say I was stupid…? Because I’m not!’
‘You’d still have been paying that loan off ten years from now.’ He got technical then, muttering grimly about criminal rates of interest and penalty clauses. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she had become trapped in such an agreement because she had been too proud to ask someone else to read the small print out and explain the conditions.
‘You were only nineteen,’ Angelos grated finally. ‘You signed that the day before you moved in with Leland. He blackmailed you—’
‘No…I agreed. There was never any question of us sharing a bedroom or anything like that. All he ever asked for was the right to show me off. I was just an ego-trip for him but I didn’t know what I was getting into until it was too late to back out,’ Maxie muttered tightly, squashing the fax paper into a big crunched-up ball again and throwing it away.
‘And Leland was getting his own back on an unfaithful wife,’ Angelos completed grimly.
Unsurprised that he should have known about Jennifer Coulter’s affair, Maxie breathed in deep and decided to match his frankness. ‘My father is a compulsive gambler, Angelos. He got into trouble with some very tough men and he couldn’t pay up what he owed them. It was nothing to do with Leland. but I went to him for advice, and that’s when he told me he’d loan me the money if I moved in with him.’
‘Lamb to the slaughter,’ Angelos groaned, as if he was in agony. ‘Compulsive gambler?’ he queried in sudden bemusement.
‘Dad would sell this bed out from under you if he got the chance.’
‘Where have you kept this charming character concealed?’
‘I don’t know where he is right now. We haven’t been close…well, not since I took on that loan to settle his debts. Naturally Dad feels bad about that.’
‘The debt was his?’ Angelos bit out wrathfully as that fact finally sunk in. ‘Your precious father stood back and watched you move in with Leland just so that he could have his gambling debts paid?’
‘It was life or death, Angelos…it really was,’ Maxie protested. ‘He’d already been badly beaten up and he was terrified they would kill him the next time around. Leland gave me that money when nobody else would have. It saved Dad’s life.’
‘Dad doesn’t sound like he was worth saving—’
‘Don’t you dare say that about my father!’ Maxie censured chokily. ‘He brought me up all on his own!’
‘Taught you how to go to the pawnshop? Flogged anything he could get his hands on? Your childhood must’ve been a real blissfest, I don’t think!’
‘He did his best. That’s all anyone can do,’ Maxie whispered tautly. ‘Not everyone is born with your advantages in life. You’re rich and selfish. Dad’s poor and selfish, but, unfortunately for him, he has too much imagination.’
‘So have I…oh, so have I. I imagined you,’ Angelos confided, his deep dark drawl slurring with intense bitterness. ‘The only quality I imagined right was that you do need me. But all the rest was my fantasy. Tonight… deservedly…it exploded right in my face.’
Maxie slumped as if he had beaten the stuffing out of her. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t need him but her throat was so clogged up with tears she couldn’t trust herself to speak. A fantasy? He had imagin
ed her? That was even worse than being a one-dimensional trophy, she realised in horror. At the end of the day, when fantasy met reality and went bang, there was just nothing left, was there?
‘I don’t want to sober up,’ Angelos admitted morosely. ‘The more I find out about you, the worse I feel. I don’t like regret or guilt. Some people love to immolate themselves in their mistakes. I don’t. How could I have been so bloody stupid?’
‘Sex,’ Maxie supplied, even more morosely.
Angelos shuddered. It was a very informative reaction.
‘Was it that bad?’ she couldn’t help asking.
‘Worse,’ Angelos stressed feelingly. ‘I felt like a rapist.’
‘Silly…just bad luck…life kicking you in the teeth…you get used to it after a while…least, I do,’ Maxie mumbled, on the brink of tears again.
‘You should be furious with me—’
‘No point…you’re drunk. I like you better drunk than I like you sober,’ she confided helplessly. ‘You’re more human.’
‘Christos…when you go for the deathblow, you don’t miss, do you?’ Unhealthily pale beneath his bronzed skin, Angelos let his tousled head fall heavily back on the pillows. His lashes swept down on his shadowed black eyes. ‘So now I know where I stand with you…basement footing—possibly even right down level with the earth’s core,’ he muttered incomprehensibly.
‘Go to sleep,’ Maxie urged.
‘When one is that far down, one can only go up,’ Angelos asserted with dogged resolution.
Well, at least he wasn’t talking about flying again. With a helicopter parked thirty yards away that had been a genuine cause for concern. She ought to hate him. She knew she ought to hate him for breaking her heart with such agonising honesty. But the trouble was, she loved him in spite of that two-page list of flaws. She didn’t know why she loved him. She just did. And she was in really deep too. He had just rejected her in every possible way and all she wanted to do was cover him up and hug him to death. Flaked out, silenced and vulnerable, Angelos had huge appeal for Maxie.
Why had she spent so long telling herself that she hated this guy? She had been cleverer than she knew, she conceded. Loving him hurt like hell. She felt as if she had lost an entire layer of skin and every inch of her was now tender and wounded. There she had been, naively imagining that he might have been upset because his sexual performance had not resulted in her impressed-to-death ecstasy. And all the time he had been ahead of her, whole streets ahead of her…
The minute he had found out that he was her first lover, he had fairly leapt into seeking out what her relationship with Leland had been based on, since it had self-evidently not been based on sex. Naturally he had immediately thought of that loan and probed deeper. And now he knew the whole sorry story and her name had been cleared. But much good it seemed to have done her…
Liz had said Maxie enjoyed pretending to be what she had called a ‘bad girl’. Maxie suppressed a humourless laugh. Poor Liz had never allowed for the painful possibility that Angelos, who had exceedingly poor taste in women, was more excited by bad girls than he was by virgins.
CHAPTER NINE
MAXIE wakened the next morning in the warm cocoon of Angelos’s arms. It felt like heaven.
Some time during the night he had taken off his shirt. She opened her lips languorously against a bare brown shoulder and let the tip of her tongue gently run over smooth skin. He tasted wonderful. She breathed in the achingly familiar scent of him with heady pleasure. Hot husky male with a slight flavour of soap. She blushed for herself, but the deep, even rise and fall of his broad chest below her encircling arm soothed her sudden tension. He was still out for the count.
And she would probably never lie like this with Angelos again. He was only here now because he had fallen asleep. She had plummeted from the heights of obsessive desirability like a stone. She had lost him but then she had never really had him. He had craved the fantasy, the Ice Queen, not the ordinary woman, and when in so many ways she had played up to that fantasy of his, how could she really blame him for not wanting her any more?
Easing back her arm, she let her palm rest down on that hair-roughened expanse of chest which drew her attention like a magnet. Her fingertips trailed gently through black springy curls, delicately traced a flat male nipple, slid downward over the rippling muscular smoothness of his abdomen, discovering a fascinating little furrow of silky hair that ran…and then she tensed in panic as she recognised the alteration in his breathing pattern. She was waking him up!
And just at that moment Maxie didn’t feel strong enough to face Angelos waking up, sober and restored to intimidating normality. Angelos would bounce back from last night’s shock and humility like a rubber ball aiming for the moon. Lying absolutely still, she waited until his breathing had evened out again and then, sidling out from under his arm, she slid off the bed.
Gathering up her discarded garments, she crept out into the corridor. Through the open doorway of the bedroom opposite she could see her single suitcase sitting at the foot of the bed. And that sight just underlined Maxie’s opinion of her exact marital status. She had no status whatsoever. Her possessions belonged in a guest-room because she was supposed to be a casual visitor, not a wife.
Pulling out a white shift dress, fresh lingerie and strappy sandals, Maxie got dressed at speed. It was only seven but the heat was already building. The house was silent. Finding her way into a vast, gleaming kitchen, she helped herself to a glass of pure orange juice and swiped a couple of apples from a lush display of fruit. Determined not to face Angelos until she had sorted herself out, she left the house. Traversing the beautiful gardens, she wandered along the rough path above the beach.
Then she let her thoughts loose, and she winced and she squirmed and she hurt. Their wedding night had been a disaster. And how much of that final confessional dialogue would Angelos recall when he woke up? Would he remember the stupid, soppy way she had hung over him? Would he recognise the pain she had not been able to conceal for what it was? The mere idea that Angelos might guess that she was in love with him was like the threat of death by a thousand cuts for Maxie.
Last night, for the very first time, Angelos hadn’t treated her as an equal. Maxie shrank from that lowering awareness. Funny how she hadn’t really noticed or even appreciated that Angelos had always met her on a level playing field until he suddenly changed tack. Now everything was different. She had been stripped of her tough cookie glossy image and exposed as a pathetic fraud. A virgin rather than a sultry, seductive object of must-have desire. A blackmail victim rather than a calculating gold-digger and the former mistress of an older man.
And who would ever have guessed that Angelos Petronides had a conscience? But, amazingly, he did. Angelos had been appalled by what he’d discovered. Even worse, he had pitied her for her less than perfect childhood and her gullible acceptance of that hateful loan agreement. Pitied. That acknowledgement was coals of fire on Maxie’s head.
Angelos now regretted their strange marriage but he felt guilty. Maxie didn’t want his guilt or his pity, and suddenly she saw how she could eradicate both. It would be so simple. All she had to do was tell Angelos about the conditions of Nancy Leeward’s last will and testament. When Angelos realised that she had had an ulterior motive in marrying him, he would soon stop feeling sorry for her…at least she would retain her pride that way.
As Maxie rounded a big outcrop of rock, she saw two little boys trying to help a fisherman spread a net on the beach below. As she watched, unseen, their earnest but clumsy efforts brought a warm, generous smile to her lovely face.
‘You have never once shown me that ravishing smile.’ Maxie was startled into a gasp by the intervention of that soft, rich, dark drawl, and her golden head spun.
Angelos stood several feet away. Clad in elegant chinos and a white polo shirt, he stole the very breath from Maxie’s lungs. Her heart crashed violently against her breastbone. He looked drop-dead gorgeous. But her wide e
yes instantly veiled. She knew how clever he was. She was terrified he would somehow divine her feelings for him.
‘But then possibly I have done nothing to inspire such a reward,’ Angelos completed tautly.
He stared at her, black eyes glittering and fiercely intent. In the brilliant sunlight, with her hair shimmering like a veil of gold and the simple white dress a perfect foil for her lithe figure, she was dazzling. Moving forward slowly, as if he was attuned to her pronounced tension, he closed a lean hand over one of hers and began to walk her back along the foreshore.
‘From today, from this moment, everything will be different between us,’ Angelos swore with emphasis.
‘Will it be?’ Briefly, involuntarily, Maxie stole a glance at him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks.
‘You should have told me the truth about Leland the very first day—’
‘You wouldn’t have believed me…’
His long brown fingers tightened bard on hers. He looked out to sea, strong profile rigid. He released his breath in a sudden driven hiss. ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t have. Nothing short of the physical proof you gave me last night would’ve convinced me that you weren’t the woman I thought you were.’
‘At least you’re honest,’ Maxie muttered tautly.
Apparently enthralled by the view of the single caique anchored out in the bay, Angelos continued to stare out over the bright blue water. ‘Considering that there were so many things that didn’t add up about you, I can’t say that I can pride myself on my unprejudiced outlook…or my judgement. You asked me to stay away from you and I wouldn’t. You even left London…’
He was talking as if someone had a knife bared at his throat. Voice low, abrupt, rough, every word clenched with tension and reluctance
‘I have never treated a woman as badly as I have treated you…and in the manner of our marriage I really did surpass myself, pethi mou.’
He sounded like a stranger to Maxie. Angelos having a guilt trip. She trailed her fingers free of his, cruel pain slashing at her. It was over. She didn’t need to hear these things when she had already lived them, and most of all she did not want him feeling sorry for her. In fact that humiliation stung like acid on her skin.