by Jane Porter
She looked away, giving him her profile. It was such a beautiful profile. Delicate. Elegant. The long, black eyelashes, the sweep of cheekbone, the small straight nose, the strong chin, above an impossibly long neck. The Copeland girls were all stunning young women, but there was something ethereal about Morgan…something mysterious.
“You’re exhausted,” he added. “I can see you’re not eating or sleeping and that must change. I will not have you become skin and bones again. While you’re here, you will sit and eat real meals, and rest, and allow me to worry about things. I may not have been the patient and affectionate husband you wanted, but I’m good at managing chaos, and I’m damn good at dealing with pirates.”
He didn’t know what he expected, but he didn’t expect her to suddenly smile at him, the first smile he’d seen from her since she arrived, and it was radiant, angelic, starting in her stunning blue eyes and curving her lips and making her lovely face come alive.
For a moment he could only look at her, and appreciate her. She was like the sun and she glowed, vital, beautiful, and he remembered that first night in Vienna when she’d turned and looked at him, her blue eyes dancing, mischief playing at her mouth, and then she’d spotted him, her eyes meeting his, and her smile had faded, and she’d become shy. She’d blushed and turned away but then she’d peek over her shoulder at him again and again and by the end of the ball he knew he would have her. She was his. She would always be his. Thank God she’d felt the same way. It would have created an international scandal if he’d had to kidnap her and drag her off to Greece, an unwilling bride.
“I am happy to allow you to take the lead when it comes to the pirates,” she said, her smile slowly dying, “and you may manage them, but Drakon, you mustn’t try to manage me. I won’t be managed. I’ve had enough of that these past five years.”
Drakon frowned, sensing that there was a great deal she wasn’t saying, a great deal he wouldn’t like hearing, and he wanted to ask her questions, hard questions, but now wasn’t the time, not when she was so fragile and fatigued. There would be time for all his questions later, time to learn just what had dismantled his marriage, and who and what had been managing her, but he could do that when she wasn’t trembling with exhaustion and with dark purple circles shadowing her eyes.
“I’m concerned about you,” he said flatly.
“There’s been a lot of stress lately.”
He didn’t doubt that, and it crossed his mind that if he’d been a real husband, and a more selfless man, he would have gone to Morgan, and offered her support or assistance before it’d come to this. Instead, he, like the rest of the world, had followed the Copeland family crisis from afar, reading about the latest humiliation or legal move in the media, and doing nothing.
“I can see that, but you’ll be of no use to your father, if you fall apart yourself,” he said. “I’ll make some calls and the staff can prepare us a late lunch—”
“Do we really need lunch?”
“Yes, we do. And while I understand time is of the essence, not eating will only make things worse. We need clear heads and fierce resolve, and that won’t happen if we’re fainting on our feet.”
Morgan suddenly laughed and she shook her head, once again giving him a glimpse of the Morgan he’d married…young and vivacious and full of laughter and passion. “You keep using ‘we,’ when we both know you mean me.” She paused and her gaze lifted, her eyes meeting his. “But I do rather like the image of you fainting on your feet.”
His gaze met hers and held and it was all he could do to keep from reaching for her. He wanted her. Still wanted her more than he’d wanted anyone or anything. “Of course you would,” he said roughly. “You’re a wicked woman and you deserve to be—”
Drakon broke off abruptly, balling his hands into fists and he realized how close he’d come to teasing her the way he’d once teased her, promising her punishment, which was merely foreplay to make her hot, to make her wet, to make her shudder with pleasure.
It used to give him such pleasure that he brought her pleasure. He wasn’t good at saying all the right words, so he used his body to say how much he adored her, how much he desired her, how much he cherished her and would always cherish her.
But only now did he know she’d hated the way he’d pleasured her.
That she’d been disgusted—
“Don’t,” she whispered, reaching out to him, her hand settling on his arm. “Don’t do that, don’t. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did, shouldn’t have said it how I did. It was wrong. I was wrong. I was upset.”
His body hardened instantly at her touch, and he glanced down at her hand where it clung to his forearm. He could feel her warmth through the softness of the cashmere, and the press of her fingers, and it was nothing at all, and yet it was everything, too. Nothing and everything at the same time.
He looked away from her hand, up into her eyes, angry with her all over again, but also angry with himself. How could he have not known how she felt? How could he have not realized that she didn’t enjoy…him…them?
“Rest assured that I will not take advantage of you while you are here,” he said, trying to ease some of the tension rippling through him. “You are safe in the villa,” he continued, hating that he suddenly felt like a monster. He wasn’t a monster. Not even close. It’s true he could be ruthless in business, and he had a reputation for being a fierce negotiator, a brilliant strategist, an analytical executive, as well as a demanding boss, but that didn’t make him an ogre and he’d never knowingly hurt a woman, much less his wife. “You are safe from me.”
“Drakon.”
“I’ll have your bag taken up to the Angelica Suite,” he said. “It’s the second master suite, on the third floor, the suite one with the frescoed ceiling.”
“I remember it.”
“It’s in the opposite wing of where I’m staying but it should give you privacy and I think you’ll find it quite comfortable. I can show you the way now.”
“There’s no need to take me there,” she said hoarsely. “I remember the suite.”
“Fine. Then I’ll let you find your way, and as I have quite a few things to do, I’ll eat as I work, and I’ll have a light lunch sent to you in your room, but we’ll need to meet later so I can fill you in on the arrangements I’ve been able to make for your father.”
* * *
Morgan was glad to escape to her room, desperate to get away from Drakon and that intense physical awareness of him….
She’d hurt him. What she’d said earlier, about their sex life, about their marriage, it’d hurt him terribly and she felt guilty and sorry. So very sorry since she knew Drakon would never do anything to hurt her. He’d always been so protective of her but he was also so very physical, so carnal and sexual and she was a little afraid of it. And him. Not when she was with him, making love to him, but later, when he was gone, separated from her. It was then that she analyzed their relationship, and what they did and how they did it and how little control she had with him.
It frightened her that she lost control with him.
Frightened her that he had so much power and she had so little.
It had niggled at her during their honeymoon, but their picnics and dinners out and the afternoon trips on his yacht were so fun and romantic that she could almost forget how fierce and shattering the sex was when he was charming and attentive and affectionate. But in Athens when he disappeared into his work life, his real life, the raw nature of their sex life struck her as ugly, and she became ugly and it all began to unravel, very, very quickly.
Upstairs in her suite, Morgan barely had time to open the two sets of French doors before a knock sounded on the outer bedroom door, letting her know her overnight bag had arrived. She thanked the housemaid and then returned to the first of the two generous balconies with the stunning view.
She had never tired of this view. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could tire of it.
It’d been a three-month shopping expedition that big sister Tori had accompanied her on for the first month, and then Logan came for the second month, and Jemma for the third.
By the time Morgan returned to New York, she’d filled two enormous trunks of stones and had a briefcase and laptop full of sketches and the first orders from Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. The designs were pure fantasy—a stunning collection of statement-making collars, cuffs and drop earrings—and had cost her a fortune in stone. It had tested her ability to execute her ideas, but had ended up being worth every stress and struggle as the Amalfi Collection turned out to be a huge success, generating significant media attention, as well as the attention of every fashion designer and fashion publicist of note, never mind the starlets, celebrities and socialites who all wanted a Morgan Copeland statement piece.
Morgan’s second collection, Jasper Ice, had been inspired by her love of the Canadian Rockies and ski trips to Banff and Lake Louise. The collection was something that an ice princess in a frozen tundra would wear—frosty and shimmering pieces in white, silver, blush, beige and pale gold. The second collection did almost as well as the first, and garnered even more media with mentions in virtually every fashion magazine in North America, Europe and Australia, and then photographed on celebrities and young royals, like the Saudi princess who had worn a gorgeous pink diamond cuff for her wedding.
Morgan was glad Jasper Ice did well, but the cool, frozen beauty of the collection was too much like her numb emotional state, when she’d been so fiercely, frantically alive and in love with Drakon Xanthis.
Drakon, though, was the last person she wanted to think of, especially when she was enjoying the heady rush of success, and for a while she had been very good at blocking him out of her mind, but then one October day, she had been walking with Jemma to lunch and she had spotted a man in a limousine. He’d had a beard and his hair was long but his eyes reminded her so much of Drakon that for a moment she thought it was him.
She had kept walking, thinking she’d escaped, but then a block away from her shop, she’d had to stop, lean against a building and fight for air.
She’d felt like she was having a heart attack. Her chest hurt, the muscles seizing, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air, couldn’t even speak. She opened her mouth, stared at Jemma, wanting, needing help, but she couldn’t make a sound. Then everything went black.
When she woke up, she’d been in an ambulance, and then when she woke again, she was in a bed in the emergency room. She’d spent the next ten days in the hospital, six in ICU, being seen by cardiac specialists. The specialists explained that her extreme weight loss had damaged her heart, and they warned her that if she didn’t make immediate and drastic changes, she could die of heart failure.
But Morgan hadn’t been dieting. She didn’t want to lose weight. She had just found it impossible to eat when her heart was broken. But she wasn’t a fool, she understood the gravity of her situation, and recognized she was in trouble.
During the day they’d fed her special shakes and meals and at night she’d dreamed of Drakon, and the dreams had been so vivid and intense that she’d woke desperate each morning to actually see him. She made the mistake of telling Logan that she was dreaming about Drakon every night, and Logan had told their mother, who then told the doctors, and before Morgan knew it, the psychiatrists were back with their pills and questions and notepads.
Did she understand the difference between reality and fantasy?
Did she understand the meaning of wish fulfillment?
Did she want to die?
It would have been puzzling if she hadn’t been through all this before at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and then at the Wallace Home for a year after that. But she had been through it before so she found the doctors with their clipboards and questions and colorful assortment of pills annoying and even somewhat amusing.
She’d refused the pills. She’d answered some questions. She’d refused to answer others.
She wasn’t sick or crazy this time. She was just pushing herself too hard, working too many hours, not eating and sleeping enough.
Morgan had promised her medical team and her family she’d slow down, and eat better, and sleep more and enjoy life more, and for the next two plus years she did. She began to take vacations, joining her sisters for long holidays at the family’s Caribbean island, or skiing in Sun Valley or Chamonix, and sometimes she just went off on her own, visiting exotic locations for inspiration for her jewelry designs.
She’d also learned her lesson. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, mention Drakon again.
Those ten days in the hospital, and her vivid, shattering dreams at night, had inspired her third collection, the Black Prince, a glamorous, dramatic collection built of ruby hues—garnets, red spinels, pink sapphires, diamonds, pave garnets, watermelon tourmaline, pink tourmaline. The collection was a tribute to her brief marriage and the years that followed, mad love, accompanied by mad grief. In her imagination, the Black Prince was Drakon, and the bloodred jewels represented her heart, which she’d cut and handed to him, while the pink sapphires and delicate tourmalines were the tears she’d cried leaving him.
But, of course, she had to keep that inspiration to herself, and so she came up with a more acceptable story for the public, claiming that her newest collection was inspired by the Black Prince’s ruby, a 170-carat red spinel once worn in Henry V’s battle helmet.
The collection was romantic and over-the-top and wildly passionate, and early feedback had seemed promising with orders pouring in for the large rings, and jeweled cuffs, and stunning pendulum necklaces made of eye-popping pale pink tourmaline—but then a week before the official launch of her collection, news of the Michael Amery scandal broke and she knew she was in trouble. It was too late to pull any of her ads, or change the focus of the marketing for her latest Morgan Copeland collection.
It was absolutely the wrong collection to be launched in the middle of a scandal implicating Daniel Copeland, and thereby tarnishing the Copeland name. The Black Prince Collection had been over-the-top even at conception, and the finished pieces were sensual and emotional, extravagant and dramatic, and at any other time, the press and fashion darlings would have embraced her boldness, but in the wake of the scandal where hundreds of thousands of people had been robbed by Michael Amery and Daniel Copeland, the media turned on her, criticizing her for being insensitive and hopelessly out of touch with mainstream America. One critic went so far as to compare her to Marie Antoinette, saying that the Black Prince Collection was as “frivolous and useless” as Morgan Copeland herself.
Morgan had tried to prepare herself for the worst, but the viciousness of the criticism, and the weeks of vitriolic attacks, had been unending. Her brother, Branson, a media magnate residing in London, had sent her an email early on, advising her to avoid the press, and to not read the things being written about her. But she did read them. She couldn’t seem to help herself.
In the fallout following the Amery Ponzi scandal, the orders that had been placed for her lush Black Prince Collection were canceled, and stores that had trumpeted her earlier collections quietly returned her remaining pieces and closed their accounts with her. No one wanted to carry anything with the Copeland name. No one wanted to have an association with her.
It was crushing, financially and psychologically. She’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the stones, as well as thousands and thousands into the labor, and thousands more into the marketing and sales. The entire collection was a bust, as was her business.
Fortunately, there was no time to wallow in self-pity. The phone call from Northern Africa, a
lerting her that her father had been kidnapped, had forced her to prioritize issues. She could grieve the loss of her business later. Now, she had to focus on her father.
And yet…standing here, on the balcony, with the bright sun glittering on the sapphire water, Morgan knew she wouldn’t have had any success as a designer, or any confidence in her creative ability, if it hadn’t been for her honeymoon here in this villa.
And Drakon.
But that went without saying.
CHAPTER FOUR
MORGAN HAD ONLY packed her traveling clothes and the one blue linen top and skirt she’d changed into after arriving in Naples, and so before lunch arrived, she slipped into her comfortable tracksuit to eat her lunch on the balcony before taking a nap. She hadn’t meant to sleep the afternoon away but she loved the breeze from the open doors and how it fluttered the long linen curtains and carried the scents of wisteria and roses and lemon blossoms.
She slept for hours in the large bed with the fluffy duvet and the down pillows all covered in the softest of linens. The Italians knew how to make decadent linens and it was here on her honeymoon that she’d come to appreciate cool, smooth sheets and lazy afternoon naps. She’d fall asleep in Drakon’s arms after making love and wake in his arms and make love yet again and it was all so sensual, so indulgent. It had been pure fantasy.
She’d dreamed of Drakon while she slept, dreamed they were still together, still happy, and parents of a beautiful baby girl. Waking, Morgan reached for Drakon, her hand slipping sleepily across the duvet, only to discover that the other side of her big bed was empty, cool, the covers undisturbed. Rolling onto her side, she realized it was just a dream. Yet more fantasy.
Tears stung her eyes and her heart felt wrenched, and the heartbreak of losing Drakon felt as real as it had five years ago, when her family had insisted she go to McLean Hospital instead of return to Drakon in Greece.