by Lynne Graham
‘That’s sad,’ Tansy opined. ‘When you don’t have much in the way of close family you’d prefer them to get on.’
‘That’s life,’ Jude pronounced cynically but his lean, strong face had clenched hard, hinting that he was less comfortable with those divisions than he was prepared to acknowledge. ‘I may not have close family but I do have numerous cousins. I saw little of my mother growing up. We’re not close. She’s Italian and she returned to Italy following the divorce.’
It all sounded very detached to Tansy and she wondered if that was why Jude was so hard and unemotional or if, indeed, that facade of his was simply a pretence, because she could sense that his reaction to any reference to his mother was sensitive and guarded. What was that reserve of his hiding? ‘Were you close to your father?’ she asked curiously.
Jude turned exasperated dark eyes on her. ‘What is this? Psychology for beginners?’
‘Never mind. I like knowing what makes people tick. I didn’t mean to pry,’ she responded lightly, stealing a glance at his unimpressed expression and then laughing out loud. ‘Well, yes, I was being nosy but you weren’t supposed to pick me up on it!’
A reluctant grin slashed his sculpted lips. ‘I spend my life in business meetings interpreting body language and expressions.’
Tansy had the tact not to remind him that he hadn’t contrived to read her very well and guess that she was hiding things when they first met. The wedding breakfast was being held in a pillared ballroom in the mansion. Reunited with Posy, Tansy ignored the questioning appraisals coming their way and settled in for a stint of polite socialising, eating and smiling dutifully at the many toasts. She noticed Althea Lekkas long before she realised who the other woman was and that was only after someone hailed her from across the room. The glowing glamorous blonde, her gold metallic dress melded to her shapely curves, was fizzing with energy, flirting like mad and attracting a lot of male attention.
When Jude was taking Tansy round to meet people, the same woman walked right up to them. ‘Hi, I’m Althea,’ she said brightly. ‘May I steal the bridegroom for a little private chat?’
Keen not to seem territorial while marvelling at Althea’s nerves of steel, Tansy stepped away and headed for the cloakroom to freshen up, wondering if it was too soon to get changed because they were leaving in an hour. Jude had told her so without telling her where they were going. But then, explaining himself was not Jude’s strongest talent. He behaved as though he had never been a part of a couple before and was unable to make that mental shift to sharing details in advance or even discussing his plans. Or possibly that arrogance was simply part and parcel of his attitude to her, the woman he had paid to marry him. And maybe it was rather naive of her to believe that he should consult her about what happened in their lives.
Walking back to the ballroom, Tansy heard raised voices and recognised Jude’s. Her smooth brow furrowing because he sounded both angry and frustrated, she crossed the hall to a light-filled room full of exotic plants where Althea and Jude appeared to be involved in an argument. Of course, they were conversing in Greek, so she had no idea what they were saying. The blonde appeared to be trying to soothe Jude, tugging down and clinging to his arms when he lifted them high in a gesture of seething impatience and then leaning forward to plant her full pink mouth on his in a fervent kiss. That display of intimacy, that assumption that her kisses would be welcome, was blatant as a police siren in its boldness. In response, Jude pressed the blonde back against the wall, pinning her hands to her sides, speaking to her in a low intense voice. What she was witnessing struck Tansy as the very essence of passion playing out before her appalled gaze.
Although it was the hardest thing she had ever done, Tansy snapped her spine straight, turned her head away and went upstairs to remove her wedding dress and change. Jude’s relationship with his old friend and former first love was none of her business, she told herself briskly even while another, more primal voice in the back of her mind was shouting something far more aggressive. Jude was her husband and he was already cheating on her and that hurt her like a knife thudding into her chest, igniting a host of reactions she had not expected to feel. Instead of cool, critical detachment she found angry, bitter resentment and revulsion roaring through her and she shuddered with the force of her feelings. So much for all that talk of his about respecting fidelity within marriage! Possibly, though, she was a little oversensitive to the pain of being cheated on because it wasn’t the first time it had happened to her. And watching the speed at which Calvin had moved on after her mother’s death had only reinforced her trust issues.
At nineteen she had lost faith in her own judgement when a spiteful girl and a lying, manipulative boyfriend had conspired to hurt and humiliate her. Egged on by her flatmate and supposed friend, Emma, Ben had tried to get her into bed with him to win a bet. In effect a price tag had been put on Tansy’s virginity and that had destroyed her pride and hurt her heart because she had fancied herself in love with Ben. Emma’s cruelty had inflicted another wound, particularly once Tansy had realised that Emma had been sleeping with Ben the whole time he had been dating Tansy.
Shaking free of that sordid recollection, Tansy studied Posy, snug in her cot and blissfully, innocently asleep, leaving her big sister longing to experience that same sense of peace and security. Kerry hovered in the doorway. ‘We’ll be joining you again tomorrow, Mrs Alexandris. Don’t worry about her.’
Tansy flushed as she registered that even the nanny seemed to know their schedule and destination while Jude had chosen to leave his bride in the dark. She found two maids packing her clothes in the bedroom and scooped up cropped linen trousers and a comfortable ivory top to wear with flat sandals. She got changed in the bathroom, but she still couldn’t think straight. Every time she tried to focus on something else, she would see Althea’s mouth plastered to Jude’s.
Why on earth had Althea cancelled the wedding if she still wanted Jude? It could have been Althea in the church today marrying Jude, Tansy reasoned painfully, and she felt like an idiot for believing him when he had said he and Althea were only friends. What sort of weird relationship did the two of them have? Perhaps they had one of those passionate on-and-off relationships that people sometimes got caught up in, a relationship full of drama and confrontation and feverish reconciliations. Yet he had married her, Tansy reminded herself, compressing her lips, bewilderment lacing the other fiery emotions she was experiencing.
Tansy was pacing and lost in troubling thoughts when Jude strode into the bedroom, dismissing the maids at almost the same time as he began stripping off his formal wedding attire. His lean, strong face was set in grim angles and hollows, his tension palpable.
‘I saw you kissing Althea,’ Tansy told him, not having planned to admit that but finding those incendiary words flying straight off her tongue.
Jude grimaced. ‘That’s all I need!’ he bit out in a raw undertone, stripping off his boxers to stride naked into the bathroom.
Her face hot from being exposed to all that bronzed masculine nudity, Tansy was nonplussed by that lack of response. What? No apology? No explanation? Not even a thin tissue of lies aimed at staging a cover-up? She could hear the shower running full force, a cascade of water splashing down on the tiles. Only minutes later, Jude emerged again, his wet curls wildly tousled, a towel loosely wrapped round his lean hips as he stalked into the dressing room. Sheathed in what she suspected to be his favourite ripped faded jeans and a loose black shirt that was still unbuttoned, parted edges showing off a slice of broad brown muscular chest, Jude joined her again. A dark shadow of stubble framed his strong jaw line, a jaw that was set granite hard.
‘We’ll discuss Althea later. I’ve just spent thirty minutes clearing that car crash up without causing a public scene. I refuse to deal with another scene from you in my grandfather’s home, where nothing is truly private,’ Jude intoned with chilling cool. ‘This is not your mom
ent.’
Utterly taken aback by his brazen lack of discomfiture, Tansy raised her head high. ‘Obviously not, since even though you married me yesterday I seem to be the only person round here who doesn’t know where we’re heading next!’ she proclaimed heatedly.
Dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘My bolthole in Rhodes. It’s private and on the beach. It’s also a short flight.’
‘You should have answered me about Althea,’ Tansy condemned, thoroughly enraged by his self-control and his unrepentant attitude.
‘We haven’t got the time to get into something that complex right now,’ Jude countered drily, planting a directional big hand to her spine. ‘Come on. I can’t wait to get out of here.’
He escorted her down the stairs, where he exchanged a few fleeting words with his grandfather in the hall before urging her out of the mansion and into an SUV that ran them back down to the helipad, where the helicopter awaited their arrival.
As she boarded, sidestepping Jude’s attempt to lift her, Tansy’s hair blew back from her delicate features, highlighting the almost aggressive angle of her chin. Just his luck, Jude thought, he had married a gold-digger with moral principles and a surprising amount of backbone, because she had done the unexpected: she had challenged him openly.
As the helicopter took off, however, Jude compressed his wide, sensual mouth hard. He would have to tell her about his history with Althea and he was outraged by the prospect of having to explain himself to any woman. Sadly, circumstances were about to force him to share private stuff that he did not usually share with anyone, but it was necessary to keep Tansy on side. He needed a child with Tansy, and he could not afford to alienate her. Hadn’t he thrown his life open to a stranger? Hadn’t he married her in the hope of having a child and to protect his mentally fragile mother from a loss that might break her again? It was unthinkable to him now that he would not ultimately win his complete freedom with the sacrifices he had already made.
And yet Tansy had already deceived him, lied to him, cheated him of his expectations, he reminded himself fiercely. His lean brown hands clenched into fists because he was so bitterly weary of women trying to use him, trying to profit from him. Yet if she did give him a child it would be a commercial transaction like their marriage, so how was he any better than she was? He himself might have been conceived in love but even by the time he was born his mother had hated his father as much as she’d loved him.
He was an Alexandris and that was how it was for an Alexandris, he reasoned grimly. He got the money, the worldly acclaim and success, he got nothing else deeper or more meaningful from anyone…even Althea. Her love had been whisper-thin and warped. As for his troubled mother, she could barely tell the difference between her adulterous late husband and her living son, who had learned very young never, ever to cheat on any woman because that pain could break someone vulnerable…
His brilliant eyes shadowed with his most tragic memory of his mother, Clio, and he paled. Of course, he had naively believed that there might be more to Tansy before he’d married her, before she’d chosen to show him her true colours of lies and deceit. But she was a gold-digger, there was no denying that now, and, ironically, he was much safer with Tansy, a tough, greedy little woman who likely wouldn’t care if he bled to death in front of her…
CHAPTER SIX
THE HELICOPTER LANDED in what looked like a forest glade.
Tansy jumped out, full of curiosity. ‘You have a cabin in the woods?’ she remarked in surprise, briefly forgetting that she wasn’t actually speaking to Jude as yet. Ironically, though, the fact that he hadn’t even tried to communicate with her during the flight had left her feeling ridiculously excluded.
‘No, not a cabin,’ Jude asserted, leading the way down a path through the pine trees, dense vegetation on all sides preventing her from catching much of a view of anything.
But the smell of the sea flared her nostrils and she saw a glint of water through the forest of tall straight trunks surrounding her. They emerged out of the shade into the evening sunshine and her eyes went wide as she saw the ancient stone walls intersected by ornamental turrets rising in front of her. ‘A castle?’ she whispered in disbelief.
‘I saw it from the water one afternoon a few years ago. It was a medieval ruin until it was illegally developed by a rich eccentric in the nineteen twenties. It was almost derelict again by the time I bought it and fixed it up. It’s the smallest property I own. I had to renovate a terrace of farmworker cottages nearby to accommodate staff.’
‘I suppose it’s unthinkable that you could manage for yourself,’ Tansy sniped.
‘I will never be able to live safely without security, nor will you. The family name does come with a downside of high risk,’ Jude told her drily.
‘Oh, believe me,’ Tansy said tartly, ‘I’ve already seen that for myself!’
Jude gritted his even white teeth and shot her a shimmering dark golden glance of condemnation. ‘You’re wrong about me, very wrong!’
Tansy said nothing more, accompanying him into an unexpectedly cosy hall and up a stone staircase into a spacious bedroom, made airy by contemporary furniture in spite of the natural stone walls and narrow window embrasures through which sunshine glimmered in long shards across the floor. ‘A drink?’ Jude prompted.
‘Wine,’ Tansy said flatly. ‘Please…’
‘Althea and I…a tangled tragic tale,’ Jude murmured grittily as he opened a cupboard kitted out with a comprehensive bar and refrigerator. ‘We were childhood sweethearts with the approval of both families. Isidore very much approved of the Lekkas pedigree, if not their lack of fortune. At sixteen, she was my first lover and I was hers and I adored her. My best friend, Santos, was in love with her as well but I trusted him, I trusted them both…’ Jude glanced up from the beer he was pouring and saluted her with it, a cynical curve to his expressive mouth. ‘You’re only that young and innocent once.’
As Tansy guessed with a sinking heart where the tale seemed to be going, she tensed, suddenly feeling that she was being made aware of stuff she wasn’t entitled to know, and then reddening on the memory that she had seen him in Althea’s arms and that, as his wife, she did have a right to know their back story if it was relevant.
‘I did a business degree at Harvard and one summer I worked as an intern in New York.’ Jude poured wine and extended a glass to her. ‘Althea slept with Santos while I was away. It only happened once but there was no reasonable excuse for it and, even though I believed her when she said it wouldn’t ever happen again, I couldn’t forgive her for it.’
Her back stiff with the tension in the atmosphere, Tansy sat down in an armchair and clutched her glass with both hands as if it were a lifesaver. ‘I can understand that.’
‘But Althea has never understood or accepted it,’ Jude declared flatly. ‘Initially I refused to have anything to do with her. I was very bitter. It was only after her father approached me on her behalf that I appreciated that our friends had made her a social pariah. That was more punishment than I felt she should suffer, and I made an effort to tolerate her again.’
‘What about…er…your friend Santos?’
Jude gave her a wry glance. ‘I found it easier to forgive him because he genuinely loved her. He asked her to marry him afterwards and she said no. He was devastated. He got drunk one night and crashed his motorbike. I’ve always secretly blamed Althea for his death as well.’
Tansy sipped wine into her dry mouth in fascination because she couldn’t take her eyes off his darkly handsome face while one emotion after another flickered there, teaching her that he felt much more than either he or she had been prepared to acknowledge. Just like her, he knew exactly what hurt and betrayal felt like and what it felt like when the object of your love revealed clay feet and came crashing down off a pedestal. ‘What Althea did was a disaster for all three of you,’ she remarked ruefully. ‘So why, bearing t
hat problematic past in mind, were you, only a few weeks ago, considering marrying her and having a child with her?’
‘She offered when she found out that I was in a tight corner. Initially I said no, but I was desperate and I did think better the devil you know,’ Jude admitted, startling her once again with his frankness. ‘After all, it’s been almost nine years since we were together and I thought it was safe. She was married to someone else for four of those years and was recently divorced. I assumed she’d moved on long ago.’
‘Only she hadn’t,’ Tansy guessed.
‘When she said she couldn’t go through with the marriage she insisted she still had feelings for me, so I backed off immediately,’ Jude clarified. ‘That was a major turnoff for me. But today when she came to the wedding, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to run off and find someone else to marry after she dropped out.’
‘Why? What were you supposed to do?’ Tansy pressed with bemused curiosity.
His stunning dark golden eyes shadowed, and his beautiful shapely mouth twisted with exasperation. ‘Apparently, Althea had her moves all planned out. The cancellation was a power play. She thought that when she dropped out at the last minute I would panic and come back and offer her more.’
‘More?’ Tansy queried, smooth brow pleating.
‘A more lasting marriage, maybe even love.’ Jude winced in disquiet at the concept and sprawled fluidly down on a love seat, one denim-clad knee gracefully raised. ‘But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be with her long-term and I couldn’t ever love her again because fidelity for me is an unbreakable rule.’
‘Then what was that I saw between you this afternoon?’ Tansy asked him baldly, wondering if any man had ever looked so spectacularly beautiful in ripped jeans and a shirt, the sheer breathtaking perfection of his sculpted face and lean, powerful physique compelling.