Читать книгу Greek Affairs - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 63

‘YOU conceited devil,’ Louisa whispered.

But could what he said be true? Had she been using her working relationship with Max as a safe substitute for the man she loved—had she unconsciously wanted Andreas to see her happy with Max?

Unconsciously done or not, the mere idea devastated her, it glazed her blue eyes and whirled her into a cold, dark, empty place of hopeless self-deceit. If that was what she’d been doing, she might as well have turned to drugs and hidden from herself that way. She might as well have stayed hysterical and let them lock her away in a padded cell because this was worse—these years of hidden pining were oh, so much worse!

‘Well, I am here now, so you can forget about Landreau.'

Louisa blinked, slow to open her eyes again on this horrible new view of herself he was making her face. When she did manage it she found that Andreas had moved closer; in fact, he was standing right over her with his glinting dark gaze fixed on her pale, too expressive face.

‘You think you are better than him,’ she realised shakily.

‘I know I am better than him,’ he responded arrogantly. ‘Within hours of us meeting again you were all over me as if we had never been parted.’ Reaching out, he brushed a silken strand of freshly washed hair behind her ear in that achingly familiar tender gesture she’d always read as a form of apology—this time it felt like an act of contempt. ‘Whatever he did for you, it was no substitute for the real thing, was it? One kiss in the dark in a dusty car park and you were mine again.'

He said that as if it were a foregone conclusion. Well, it wasn’t! Shuddering, she reached up to knock his hand away. ‘If you’re this sure of me, then why go after Max at all?’ she challenged, indicating Max’s life spread out on his desk.

‘Insurance,’ he said. ‘He might decide to come chasing after you and you might decide to be stubborn and continue to lie to yourself as well as to him. How did you find out what I’ve been doing here?’ he then asked curiously.

Pressing her lips together, Louisa folded her arms around her body then told him about Max’s phone call.

‘Good, he’s panicking,’ Andreas declared in flat satisfaction. ‘He might have a lot going for him but he knows I can bring him crashing within twenty-four hours if I so wished.'

He was that sure of himself, Louisa noted bitterly—that powerful now? The knowledge shook her. ‘But you don’t wish to, do you?’ She lifted her head to watch a grimace twist the ruthless line of his mouth.

‘I want my wife back without the risk of a scandal.’

And there was the threat, she heard. She played it his way or else Max paid the price. How could she have let herself forget his vengeful desire to make others pay for their interference in their lives—for their lost five years? His family, her family … now Max had been added to the list.

This wasn’t about the two of them recapturing what they had used to have, it was about Andreas winning. It was a cold, cold moment when Louisa looked at him and finally accepted how much he had changed. His father must be proud of him; his son had grown tougher and more ruthless than the great Orestes himself.

‘All this work you’ve done is for nothing,’ she heard herself murmur in a shaky voice as bitter as the truth she had just been made to face. ‘You see, you picked the wrong fight, because I am not coming back to you.'

With that she pushed past him.

‘You are choosing him over me? This is mad.’ His hand caught her back. ‘Do you think your substitute lover will take you back now that I have him hanging by his fingernails? You should have told him who you really belong to, Louisa.'

Louisa swung round. ‘Max has always known about you,’ she fired back furiously. ‘And we have never been lovers!’ she all but screeched.

‘Four years in his constant company? Of course you slept with him!’ he dished out with yet more of that hurtful contempt. ‘Why can’t you just be honest with me about it?'

Honest? She tugged her wrist free. ‘Can you stand right here in front of me, Andreas, and honestly state that you have never taken another woman to your bed?'

The air grew thick with his pulsing stillness, the skin covering his face went tight. Shaking, simmering, refusing to let go of his diamond-hard eyes, Louisa waited for his answer while it throbbed and prickled and rattled around inside her because—

‘You know you cannot,’ she finally said for him. ‘Especially when I saw you with my own eyes, shacked up with that woman in our apartment in Athens, in our bed!'

He went so pale Louisa thought he was going to keel over—in fact, she wished that he would!

‘No,’ he denied. ‘You could not—’

‘Now who’s hiding the truth?’ she laughed, spinning away from him, only to spin right back to add bitterly, ‘I have told you once already that I knew about her,’ though he’d so conveniently forgotten that she’d said it at all! ‘I came back here to the villa to you, but the only people here were Kostas and your dear brother Alex.’ She had to stop to draw in a thick breath. ‘Alex told me you were living in Athens, that you had not been back to the island at all! So I asked him to arrange me a flight. He warned me not to bother. I was history, he said. You’d moved on! I refused to listen to his poison and insisted he arrange me a helicopter, but I should have listened to him, shouldn’t I, Andreas, because this time his warning was genuine!'

He’d gone paler with each ugly word she’d thrown at him. ‘When?’ he demanded roughly, ‘When did this happen?'

‘Six weeks after I’d left here.’ Turning away because she could no longer look at him, Louisa wrapped her arms around her shivering body and felt her fingernails bite into her flesh. ‘I went straight to the apartment. I let myself in with my key. The signs of your habitation were everywhere. It—it looked like you’d been enjoying one heck of a good party!’

His thick curse raked across her flesh.

‘I see you’ve remembered which day it is I am talking about,’ she swung back to slice at him, ‘unless, of course, you had been enjoying wild parties there every night after you walked out and left me alone here!'

It was his turn to swing his back to her and he said absolutely nothing. He just pushed a hand up to grip the back of his neck, making muscles bunch all over him, his amazing damn shoulders racked up tight.

‘I left as quietly as I’d arrived,’ she continued with effort. ‘I didn’t think a forgotten wife singing out “Hi, I’m back!” would have done much for the—pleasures you were in the process of sleeping off.'

‘You can stop now,’ he roughed out. ‘I know what you saw.'

‘Good.’ So why did it hurt so badly that he wasn’t making excuses? Why couldn’t he just come up with some clever quick lie to explain away what she’d seen? And why did she want him to?

The answer was so deeply humiliating it made her cringe inside her own flesh. Hot dry tears burned the back of her throat and she knew she just had to get out of here.

Shaking, Louisa turned to head for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ he ground out.

‘I would have thought it was obvious. I’m leaving.’

‘To go back to Landreau?’ The hard cynicism in his voice cut her to the raw.

Her narrow back tensed inside the blue sundress, hair sliding down her back as her chin shot up with a jerk. Barely able to breathe across the ice suddenly flowing through her veins, Louisa turned to look at him—look at her tall, dark, handsome husband who had about as much faith in her word as she’d ever had in this crazy second chance of their marriage working out.

He was looking at her now, angry—contemptuous. ‘Well, don’t kid yourself that you are the only woman he sleeps with. There is at least one other woman out there who shares his bed when you are not in it,’ he extended brutally. ‘Can you live with that?'

‘And how many lovers have passed through your bed, Andreas?’ she flung right back. ‘One or two, a dozen—a hundred—?'

His mouth took on that grim flat line in refusal to answer and he went to turn away again. On a blazing flare of anger Louisa walked back to him and grabbed hold of his arm to swing him back. ‘You demanded honesty between us, so answer the question!'

‘So fierce.’ He laughed oddly.

‘Tell me!’

‘Have I taken other women to my bed?’ suddenly he was all sardonic arrogance. ‘Of course,’ he responded. ‘Five years is a long time to spend celibate.'

She let go of his arm as if it repelled her, inside she was a shivering, quivering wreck of hurt and disgust. ‘So the old Greek double standard is still alive and kicking,’ she breathed acidly. ‘I hope you enjoy living up to it.'

With that she walked back to the door on legs that felt as unstable as the tears she was fighting.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ he roughed out.

‘You said it first—five years apart?’ Fingers taking a white-knuckled grip on the door handle, she sent him a deriding look. ‘You don’t really think that I haven’t been playing the field like you and Max, do you.?’

She watched him tense, watched his beautiful bronzed skin whiten, watched him turn himself into a block of stone. That she could also see he actually believed what she was saying sent the death rattle of her love for him rolling through her heart and across her throat.

‘If I’m pregnant I’ll let you know—if you’re still interested by then,’ was her final cold volley before she walked out.

Kostas and Pietros were nowhere to be seen, which suited her fine because she didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to get away from here and never come back.

Isabella was about to get her dearest wish, she thought bitterly as she stepped down from the shady veranda into the fierce midday heat.

Tugging in a thick breath of air, she set off walking down the long driveway without a single clue as to where she was going to go. The other house was out of the question, she even shuddered at the idea of going back there. The hotel was out too, since there was no way she was going to be able to put on a nice, polite face for everyone there.

Which left only one other place for her to go and it drew her like a homing pigeon, keeping her moving down the long driveway, and she was not—not—not going to cry! she told herself.

The angry roar of a car engine coming up fast from behind stiffened her backbone. Her chin shot up, eyes hot and dry, mouth quivering, her insides heaving and twisting with the multitude of emotions playing havoc with her as she quickened her pace.

The open-top car came to a screeching stop beside her. ‘Get in,’ Andreas commanded harshly.

Louisa just kept on walking. There was a curse and a click then he was out of the car and around the bonnet and blocking her path before she could manage to draw breath.

‘Get in the car, Louisa, if you don’t want me to pick you up and put you in!’ he rasped out angrily.

She heaved in a deep breath. ‘I don’t—’

He picked her up and dumped her in the car seat right over the top of the door. The sheer shock of it stung through her in a trembling fizz that chased up and down her limbs.

She was still trembling when he got in beside her and threw the car into gear then shot off down the drive. ‘You are going to have to stop walking away from me,’ he growled roughly.

‘Me walk away from you?’ Shaken up, hair flying as she swung her flashing blue eyes up to glare at his face, only to have her heart dance off in a skittering flurry when she found herself staring at an Andreas she had never seen before.

His lean golden profile stood right on the cutting edge of murder—tense and tight, the steel-rimmed sunglasses covering his eyes filling her head with fantastical images of hard, handsome hit men of the coldly ruthless kind. Something else sprang to life inside her and sizzled, making her look away again quickly, not happy at all to feel the full impact of his attraction in such a way.

‘We both have to stop walking away from each other, then,’ he amended tightly. ‘Whatever. It stops right here!’ Hot tears were beginning to take her over, she watched them blur out her vision. ‘So we can flog this marriage to death some more?’

With a jerk, he pulled the car to a stop at the junction with the road to let an ancient truck pass by. It struggled on the slight incline, belching out diesel fumes and its old engine growling like a great angry mammoth.

‘It isn’t dead yet.’

It was in Louisa’s opinion! ‘I don’t want to stay married to a man who can’t even trust me when I tell him the truth,’ she said, conveniently forgetting the lie she had tossed at him just before she’d left.

The old truck rolled past. Andreas made no answer, just eased his foot off the brake in the wake of the lorry’s lumbering upheaval and swung them out onto the road.

‘You’re going the wrong way again,’ she told him thickly. ‘I was going to visit Nikos.'

A muscle flicked in his taut jaw, other muscles clenching elsewhere at the same time as he gave the engine more speed. Barely thirty seconds later and he was slowing down again to swing the car onto a narrow track that would take them up the hill behind the luxury villas. Instant recognition as to what exactly lay on the other side of that hill made Louisa tense in her seat.

‘No,’ she gasped out. ‘Andreas, you can’t do this!’

He turned to look at her through those steel-rimmed sunglasses. ‘When are you going to recognise that I can do very much as I please?'

The coolly delivered statement left Louisa gasping. True alarm caused a whole new set of senses to spring into life inside her, most of them circling around the knowledge that he hadn’t just said that to score points.

He was different. From the moment she’d stepped into that hi-tech study in the family villa she’d been looking at and dealing with a completely different man from the one he had let her see while they’d been living in that crazy bubble they’d created around themselves at the other house. Now the bubble had burst it was like dealing with a stranger, a stranger hell-bent on doing what he wished.

‘But I w-want to visit Nikos.’ It broke from her in a tearful, pained plea.

It was as if she’d stuck pins in him the way his muscles flinched, but it didn’t stop him driving them over the peak of the hill. A moment later he turned them off the track and drove through a pair of security gates that swung open by some invisible command.

Louisa found herself staring at the Markonos private heliport complete with hangar tucked neatly into the bowl of the hill. A shiny white helicopter stood idle on the concrete helipad. As they shot to a halt beside it she could see a pilot already ensconced in the cockpit, and over by the hangar several employees were loitering, awaiting their arrival.

‘Wh-when did you arrange all of this?’ she breathed unsteadily.

‘Before I came after you.’

With a long-limbed, lithe grace he climbed out of the car, leaving her sitting there coming to terms with this new view of him. He came round the car and opened her door for her then bent to unfasten her seat belt. An engine started up, rotor blades whirred into life.

‘I’m not getting on that,’ she refused as he drew her to her feet.

He turned to toss the car keys at one of the loitering men. His hand still manacled her wrist. She gave a tug to get free but, like the last time, his fingers tightened. He was playing it tough again, he was playing it ruthless, only this time it wasn’t just a half-empty house on the island he was dragging her off to, it was a helicopter that could be taking her anywhere!

‘Will you listen to me?’ Desperation made her swing round so she was standing in front of him, and pure compulsion made her reach up and snatch the sunglasses from his face. She found herself staring up at his hard, tight, lean golden features with glinting black eyes that offered no hope of a compromise.

‘Y-you’re delusional if you think I’m just meekly going to board that thing without you explaining why the heck I should!’ Desperately she tried to grab back some control here.

‘Delusional?’ he repeated. ‘Well, let us see about that, shall we?'

She saw what was coming. Her breathing feathered. She put both hands to his chest as if to ward him off but the flashing burn in his eyes told her that nothing was going to stop him as he lowered his head and claimed her mouth. The hot sting of desire leapt to life in her bloodstream and her helpless groan vibrated across each separate layer of her skin. He possessed her mouth—all of it. He threw everything into that kiss, every bit of angrily passionate frustration he was feeling. He kissed her until her legs couldn’t support her, until her fingers crushed his glasses into her palm and her other hand crawled up his chest to cling around his neck. He used his hands to keep her pressed up against his body and let her feel what was happening to him. And he did it knowingly, ruthlessly, until her mouth throbbed and her blood pounded and her thighs pulsed and danced.

And he did it right there in full view of his watching pilot and the ground staff. When he lifted his head he waited in silence until she opened her kiss-drugged, man-possessed eyes.

‘Was that real enough?’ he asked then.

‘Yes,’ was the only breathless little answer she had to give him.

‘Sure you don’t want to argue the point some more?’ Pressing her pulsing lips together, she shook her head. ‘Then do you walk onto the helicopter or do I carry you there too?’

‘W-walk,’ she whispered.

He nodded, then, because she looked so beaten, he sighed and said roughly, ‘Don’t look so hopeless. You know I will never harm a single golden hair on your beautiful head.'

Strangely she did know; in fact, it was the only comfort she had to cling to as she let him walk her onto that helicopter without kicking up a screaming fuss.

The Markonos fleet of executive helicopters were not what you could ever call standard issue. The rich cream leather and glossy walnut veneer interior made yet another statement of wealth and of power she had conveniently let herself forget.

‘Jamie,’ she remembered as he saw her settled into one of the seats.

‘Your brother is being well cared for,’ he assured her.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she asked warily, something in the cool way he had said it making her frown.

He took a mobile phone out of his trouser pocket. ‘Jamie has been watched over by one of my people since I agreed to let him stay at the hotel instead of moving into the villa with us.’

‘Your people? Do you mean like the man you instructed to watch my every movement when you walked away earlier this week?'

The tart stab made his firm mouth flex. ‘I look after my own,’ was all he said.

Then he dropped the mobile phone on her lap and took back the sunglasses she had forgotten she was holding. ‘You have three minutes to assure your brother that everything is fine between us,’ he instructed as he turned away from her. ‘You can tell him we are on our way to Athens and will be back on the island before nightfall—'

‘Athens? I don’t want to go to …’

Louisa found herself protesting to a walnut-veneered bulkhead. He’d just walked through the door and into the pilot’s cabin without giving her a chance to finish what she’d been going to say! Sitting back in her seat, she picked up the mobile. By the time she’d finished assuring her brother that everything was absolutely fine, they were lifting off the ground.