‘She was cold and critical and so dismayed by me that I don’t know how she managed to stay in the same room with me half the time!’
‘So you played up to that criticism, is that it?’ he bit out. ‘Or should I say you played down to it just for the hell of watching her squirm?’
‘I stayed away from it!’ she corrected. ‘Or didn’t you notice?’ She was aching and throbbing as it all came rushing back. ‘I went out and found my own kind of people.’ Her hand stretched out to encompass the view of Athens lying beyond the window.
‘Like Vassilou.’
‘Did your mouth flatten like that in distaste, Leandros?’ she challenged the expression on his grim face. ‘If you can’t see the difference between “Do you really need to wear those terrible trousers, Isobel?” and “Ah, Kyria, you look so cool and fresh today!” well, I certainly can. Or—some babies are ill-judged and ill-timed, Isobel.’ Her eyes began to sting. She swallowed thickly. ‘Words like that when spoken by the mother of your husband rarely shore up an ailing marriage. They help to shatter it.’
‘My mother could not have said such a thing to you,’ he denied, but he’d gone pale. He knew she was telling the truth. ‘She would not be so—’
‘Cruel?’ she finished for him when the word became glued to his tight upper lip. ‘“Maybe it was for the best.”’ Hoarsely she quoted his own choice of words back at him. ‘“We were not ready for this.”’
He swung his back to her and walked over to stare out of the window. The desire to leap on that back and pummel it to the ground sang in her blood. If she shook any more fiercely she would have to sit down. He had lifted the lid on black memories, and now she was standing here being consumed by them.
‘I was ashamed of myself when I said that,’ he uttered.
‘Good,’ she commended. ‘I was ashamed of you too.’ With that she walked over to the chest of drawers and withdrew a fresh nightshirt then went into the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door because she was not running away this time. Not from this—not from anything ever again.
He came to stand in the doorway. With her back firmly to him she dropped the robe and replaced it with the clean nightshirt. ‘You were inconsolable and I did not know how to cope with your grief,’ he said huskily.
‘No, you were busy and had to be pulled out of an important meeting,’ she gave her own version of events. ‘And if it wasn’t bad enough that you didn’t want me to get pregnant in the first place, you then found yourself having to deal with an hysterical woman who didn’t appreciate ‘“Maybe it is for the best.”’
‘All right,’ he rasped. ‘So I did not want us to have a baby at that time!’
She swung round to look at his face as he dared to admit that! No wonder his skin looked grey!
‘We were both too young. Our marriage was in a mess! You were miserable; I was miserable! We had stopped communicating on any level—’
‘Especially between the sheets.’
‘Yes, between the bloody sheets!’ he grated, and suddenly he was swinging away from the door and gripping her upper arms. ‘I adored you. You fascinated me! You sparkled and sizzled and took on all-comers with a courage that took my breath away. When you were in my arms it was like holding something powerfully special. But our marriage had not had the time to grow beyond that all-consuming physical obsession before you were presenting me with a red stop light. I resented having to stop!’
‘I didn’t ask you to.’
‘You did not need to.’ His sigh took the anger out of him; dropping his hands, he moved away. ‘You did not see how fragile you looked, as if you would shatter if I so much as touched you.’
He walked back into the bedroom. This time it was Isobel that followed him. ‘Couldn’t you have just told me that instead of turning cold on me?’
‘Tell you that I was such a selfish swine that I did not want half a lover in my bed?’ He released a self-derogatory laugh. ‘Tell you that I did not want to share your body with anything?’ An oath was thrust out from the cavernous depths of his chest. ‘I despised myself. I did not know what was happening inside my own head! When you lost the baby I believed I had wished it to happen. I still believe that. My punishment was to lose you, and I was willing to take it. I was willing to take any punishment so long as I was not forced to face you with what I had done.’
‘So you let me walk away.’ She understood him now.
‘You tied me in so many knots I was relieved to see you go.’
‘And broke my heart all over again,’ she said with painful honesty. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I needed you to come for me?’
His shook his head; his shoulders were hunched, his gaze grimly fixed on his bare feet. ‘I despised myself. It was easy, therefore, to convince myself that you despised me too.’
‘I did.’
Silence fell. It came with a heavy thud. Isobel looked at the spacious bedroom with its cool floors and lavender walls and purple accessories, and wondered how silence could hurt so much.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she murmured eventually. ‘The baby, I mean,’ she added, then had to swallow tears when he lifted his dark head to send her an agonisingly unprotected look. ‘The statistics for losing a first baby in the first three months of pregnancy are high. It was simply bad luck.’
She tried a shrug to punctuate her absolute belief in that, but it didn’t quite come off and she had to turn away in the end, wrapping her arms across her body and clutching at her shoulders with tense fingers that shook. A pair of arms arrived to cover her arms; long fingers threaded tensely with hers. It was so good to feel him hold her that she couldn’t hold back the small sob.
‘I had my own guilt to deal with,’ she thickly confided. ‘I felt I had failed in every way a woman could. I had to leave because I couldn’t stand everyone’s pitying expressions and the knowledge that they thought the loss of our baby more or less summed up our disaster of a marriage.’
He remained silent but his arms tightened, offering comfort instead of words. On a small whimper she broke the double arm-lock so she could turn and give back some comfort by placing her arms around his shoulders and pressing her face into the warm strength of his neck.
‘Tomorrow we begin making a better job of this second chance we have given ourselves,’ he ordained gruffly.
She nodded.
‘We talk instead of fighting.’
She gave another nod.
‘When people say things you do not like you tell me about it and I listen.’
She agreed with another nod.
He shifted his stance. ‘Don’t go too meek on me, agape mou,’ he drawled lazily. ‘It makes me nervous.’
‘I’m not being meek,’ she informed him softly. ‘I’m just enjoying the feel of your voice vibrating against my cheek.’
With a growl, she was lifted up and kissed as punishment. The kiss led to other things, another room and a familiar bed. They slept in each other’s arms and awoke still together, showered together and only separated when Isobel had to go back to the other bedroom to find something to wear.
They met up again on the terrace. The first cloud that blocked out her sunlight came when she saw Leandros was dressed for the office in a dark suit, blue shirt and dark tie. Handsome and dynamic he may look, but she needed him to stay here with her.
‘For a few hours only,’ he promised when he saw her expression, getting up to hold out a chair for her.
‘It is reality, I suppose.’ She smiled.
‘And some unfortunate timing,’ he added. ‘I have been back in Athens for only a few weeks after a long stay abroad. Nikos’s marriage is like a large juggernaught racing down a steep hill and taking everyone else along with it for the ride.’
Was he talking about his time in Spain as his long stay abroad? Isobel wondered. But didn’t want to think about that right now when she was trying hard not to think of anything even vaguely contentious.
‘So, when is the wedding?’ she asked bri
ghtly.
‘Next week.’ He grimaced as he sat down again. ‘In my father’s stead I have been slotted into the role of host for the many pre-wedding dinners my mother has arranged, and also as to escort her to those that the Santorini family are having. Hence my having to leave you last night.’ He paused to pour her a cup of coffee. ‘Tonight I must do the same—unless I can talk you into coming with me?’
Body language was one hell of a way to communicate, Leandros mused as he watched her smile disappear and her eyes hide from him while she hunted for an acceptable excuse to refuse.
It came in the shape of Silvia Cunningham, who appeared on the terrace then. She was walking with the aid of a metal frame, and even to him it was a worthy diversion.
He stood up and smiled. ‘What a delightful sight!’ he exclaimed warmly. ‘Ee pateria, those beautiful legs look so much better when viewed upright.’
‘Get away with you,’ Silvia scolded, but her cheeks warmed with pleasure at the compliment. ‘You know, I can’t make up my mind if it is the fierce heat or the relentless sunshine, but I feel so much stronger today.’
Isobel got up to greet her mother with a kiss then pulled out a chair for her and waited patiently while Silvia eased herself into it. As he watched, Leandros saw the tender, loving care and attention Silvia’s daughter paid to her comfort without making any kind of fuss.
He also noticed the look of relief on her face because their conversation had been interrupted. Stepping across the terrace to where the internal phone that gave a direct line to the kitchen sat, he ordered a pot of tea for Silvia then came to sit down again. He listened as mother and daughter discussed what kind of night Silvia had had while thoughts of his own began to form inside his head.
Allise arrived with the pot of tea. There was a small commotion as room was made on the table and an order for toast and orange juice was placed. Biding his time, he sipped at his coffee, watching narrowly as Isobel used every excuse she could so as not to look at him.
She was wearing the green trousers teamed with a white T-shirt today. The hair wasn’t up in a pony-tail, which had to mean that she was not about to run. But, beautiful though she undoubtedly was, fierce and prickly and always ready for a fight, she was also a terrible coward. It had taken him a long time to realise that, he acknowledged, as he watched her bright hair gleam in the sunlight, her green eyes sparkle as they smiled at Silvia and her very kissable mouth curve around her coffee-cup.
He waited until both ladies had put their cups safely down on their saucers before he went for broke. ‘Silvia,’ he aimed his loaded bet directly at Isobel’s weakest point, ‘Isobel and I must attend a party tonight. We would be very honoured if you would accompany us.’
He had chosen his bet well, for he could remember Silvia before her accident. She might have spent her working hours stuck behind the window as a teller in a high-street bank but her social life had used to be full and fun.
‘A party, you say?’ Eyes so like her daughter’s began to sparkle. ‘Oh, what fun! And you really don’t mind if I come along with you?’
From across the table, barbs began to impale him. He made eye contact with a brow-arching counter-challenge that gave no indication whatsoever to what was beginning to sizzle in his blood. This woman could excite him without trying to. She brought him alive.
‘We didn’t come to Athens equipped to attend parties,’ Isobel reminded both of them.
Silvia’s face dropped in disappointment. Isobel saw it happen and looked as if she had just whipped a sick cat.
‘No problem,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘It is an oversight that can be remedied within the hour.’
‘Of course!’ Silvia exclaimed delightedly. ‘We have time to shop, Isobel! It’s about time we treated ourselves to something new!’
I hate you, the other pair of eyes informed him. The sulky mouth simply looked more kissable.
‘Whose party is it?’
With the smoothness of a born gambler, he turned his attention to his mother-in-law and explained about his younger brother Nikos’s wedding next week and how tonight’s party was being held at Nikos’s future in-laws’ home, which was a half-hour’s drive out of the city towards Corinth.
‘You don’t play fair,’ Isobel told him in flat-toned Greek. ‘You know I don’t want to go.’
‘What did you say?’ her mother demanded.
‘She said she didn’t think it was fair to expect you to shop and spend the evening partying,’ he lied smoothly. ‘So we will solve the problem the rich man’s way, and I will have a selection of evening gowns sent out here for you to peruse at your leisure.’
The rich man part was said to tease yet another smile from Silvia. The daughter didn’t smile. But he did get a flashing vision of retribution to come. ‘Try anything stupid just to get back at me, and I will retaliate,’ he warned in Greek.
‘What did he say?’ Silvia wanted to know.
‘He said choose something outrageously daring,’ Isobel responded defiantly.
He laughed. What else could he do? He knew he had asked for that. It was fun having a wife that spoke his language, he decided.
But it was also time to cut and run, before she decided to corner him somewhere private and he did not get any work done today. Rising to his feet, he bid Silvia farewell and stepped round the table to kiss his wife’s stiff cheek, then strode away, still feeling those wonderful barbs that had launched themselves at him.
‘Don’t you want to go to this party, Isobel?’ her mother asked when she saw the way she glared at Leandros’s retreating back.
Isobel turned her head to look at her mother, who had known about her problems with Leandros three years ago, but who had never been told about the problems Isobel had had with his family. ‘I’m just a bit nervous about meeting people again,’ she answered. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘When you fall off a horse the best thing to do is get right back on it,’ was her mother’s blunt advice—while thoroughly ignoring the fact that mounting the dreaded horse had come about three years too late. ‘And if I can see that you two looked so happy you have to be right for each other, then give other people the chance to make the same discovery,’ she added sagely.
Isobel was about to open her mouth and tell her mother the hard facts about those other people, then changed her mind, because what was the use in stirring up trouble before it arrived? She was here—though she still wasn’t sure how it had happened. She was staying—though she wished it didn’t fill her with such a nagging ache of uncertainty.
Silvia sat back in her chair and released a happy sigh. ‘Gosh, I feel reborn today,’ she said. ‘It makes me want to sing.’
She did sing—all morning. She loved every gown that arrived—within the hour—complete with every accessory she could require. By the time Silvia went off for her afternoon siesta, Isobel was glad to escape to her room and wilt. But she couldn’t wilt completely because she was expecting Leandros to walk in at any moment and she wanted to be ready for him.
However Leandros was running late. The few hours he had intended to spend at work had gone smoothly enough. Time began to get away from him when he went to the boot of his car to put away the briefcase he had left in his office the day before, and discovered that the jacket he had been wearing still lay where he had placed it before chasing after Isobel. He saw the edge of the envelope straight away. It was sticking out of one of the pockets but it was only when he reached down to slide it free that he remembered what it contained.
Two minutes later he was heading into the city, not out of it. A few minutes after that and he was striding into the bank with his wife’s safety deposit box key and her letter authorising him to open the box. His curiosity was fully engaged as to what Isobel’s idea of family heirlooms actually consisted of…
By the time he did eventually arrive home it was to find Isobel sitting cross-legged upon the bed, wearing what looked like one of his own white T-shirts—and nothing else from what he could see.
She must have just come from the shower. Her hair was wet, and she was sitting with her head thrown forward while she combed the silken pelt with slow, smooth strokes, allowing the excess water to fall onto a white towel she had laid out in front of her.
‘If you want a shower, I suggest you use a different bathroom,’ she advised without lifting her head. ‘Otherwise I might decide to murder you while you’re naked and vulnerable in this one.’
He started to grin as he stood leaning in the doorway. In truth, after the trick he’d pulled this morning he had expected her to show her protest by refusing to come near this room.
‘Not you, my sweet angel,’ he denied lazily. ‘You would see my quick death as being too kind to me.’
‘Don’t bank on it.’
‘OK. I will live dangerously, then.’ With that he levered away from the doorframe, came into the room and closed the door.
She still did not deign to lift her head as he walked across the room and placed two black velvet jewellery cases into the top drawer of a chest. Studying her as he removed his jacket and tie, he tried to decide whether to simply jump on her and give her no chance to defend herself, or whether to annoy her by ignoring her as she was ignoring him.
The former was tempting, but the latter should win since the shower seemed the best venue for the both of them. Her hair was wet already. The T-shirt belonged to him, and, having issued the threat, she would not, he knew, be able to remain sitting there passively without being drawn to carry out it out.
With a click and a scrape he undid his trousers and heeled off his shoes. Isobel’s comb continued its smooth strokes while he removed his socks, then his under-shorts, which left only his shirt to conceal the fact that he was already very much aroused by this little game. He needed a shave so he strode into the danger-zone of the bathroom, paused long enough to reach in and spring the showerhead to life before he picked up his electric razor and began using it.
She arrived at the door as he had predicted, looked disconcerted to find him standing by the bathroom mirror, then mulish when she realised she had been outwitted by him.
Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle Page 64