Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4 - Линн Грэхем, Maisey Yates - Страница 19

CHAPTER NINE

‘YOU WERE TELLING me about your adoptive parents,’ Jax reminded her as they walked along the deserted beach three weeks later, walking Bella between them to keep the little girl steady.

‘Was I? They were good people. I was nine years old and very fortunate to get a home at that age,’ Lucy declared wryly.

‘I imagine you were a very pretty little girl. I’m sure that helped.’

Lucy shrugged, thinking back to that brief three-year period when she had been part of a family. ‘They were very academic. When they took me on they were warned that I’d fallen behind at school and straight off they decided to hire tutors for me in every subject.’

Jax frowned. ‘Impatient, were they?’

‘No, they were trying to help but it put me under a lot of pressure. I was trying very hard to be everything they wanted and then I failed an important exam, which meant I couldn’t get into the school they had set their hearts on and they were really disappointed. I don’t think I was the right child for them,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But when they died in the car crash, all that ended and I went back into care because none of their relatives saw me as being part of the family. At the end of the day and whether you agree with it or not, blood counts.’

‘Yes, doesn’t it?’ Jax agreed, thinking of his late brother, Argo, a good-natured, indolent young man, who with hindsight had been remarkably dissimilar to Heracles and Jax in nature.

Bella tugged her hand free of her mother’s and pulled at Jax’s jeans to be lifted. He hoisted her high and she giggled and rested her curly head down sleepily on his bare shoulder. Their interaction was so relaxed and natural now, Lucy thought with satisfaction, that it was hard to believe they had only met a month ago.

She and Jax hadn’t lasted a whole week on the island without Bella. Lucy had never been separated from her daughter before and had decided a week was unnecessarily long when there was a nanny on the household staff, willing and able to give the honeymooners a break from childcare: Heracles had prepared for every eventuality when he entertained. But the rumour of a private zoo had proved to be just that—a rumour.

The gardens, however, were spectacular although Jax and Lucy had spent more time on the beach, crunching through the pale sand to the water’s edge where Lucy, who could not swim, liked to paddle. Never having enjoyed many such opportunities, she was not keen on trusting her body to either a swimming pool or the sea, but Jax had insisted that her learning to swim was a safety issue more than anything else. So, Lucy had braved swimming lessons with Jax, which they had both found equally trying, Jax because he was naturally impatient and Lucy because she was nervous.

Over the past three weeks they had learned so much about each other, she acknowledged cheerfully. Jax was a morning person, Lucy was a night person. They had spent a wonderful ten days cruising round the Mediterranean on his father’s yacht, Sea Queen, docking at different islands to see the sights, dine out and shop. She loved to dance and they had enjoyed several really late nights out at clubs. He had bought her loads of clothes in hip boutiques on Crete and Mykonos and he had had a jeweller flown out to Tifnos for her to choose what he deemed to be the basics. A gold watch now encircled a wrist and gold hoops ornamented her ears. She had a diamond pendant, bracelet and earrings as well, which he had referred to as a ‘belated’ wedding gift. And Bella had a nursery overflowing with toys and clothing and picture books to go with the designer furnishings.

In fact, Lucy believed she already had almost everything she had ever wanted or ever dreamt of having. Jax had spoiled them both. He was marvellous with Bella, far more patient with her than he was with anyone else. He was making a huge effort to be a dad and she appreciated that when so many of his friends, smooth sophisticates whom they had met in the clubs where he was well known, had yet to even settle down. For a man who had never wanted to marry, Jax was settling down into family life remarkably well, she reflected gratefully.

Yet she couldn’t forget that Jax was the same guy who had dumped her for ‘boring’ him two years earlier, the same guy who had seemed perfectly content with her one day and who had then cut her out of his life only days later. That past still made her insecure because she had no faith that she could accurately read Jax and estimate his state of mind with regard to her and their marriage. Of course, he seemed to do and say all the right things, but then he had done that before in Spain and look how that had ended!

‘I’m hungry...’ Jax curved a hand to Lucy’s shoulder and steered her up the beach towards the buggy that would waft them up the steep hill. ‘And I think our daughter needs a nap...and maybe I need one too, glyka mou.’

Lucy coloured. Heat licked at her feminine core as Jax sent her a glittering green glance of sensual enquiry. Dampness gathered between her legs, anticipation rising because that side of their relationship was outrageously healthy. He still wasn’t doing the cuddling thing the way she wanted. No, with Jax what might start out as a cuddle invariably turned into sex. He said he couldn’t be that close to her and touch her without wanting to get naked and energetic. There was nowhere they hadn’t made love. They had indulged on the beach, in the pool, in the pine forest, in the labyrinthine privacy of the lush gardens, but most often in the delicious comfort of their own bed. The simmering flare-ups of passion that wound through their days felt so natural to her. It was as if Jax couldn’t get enough of her, a thought she kept tactfully to herself, and that made her feel safer. She couldn’t help viewing sex as a barometer to gauge the health of their marriage because Jax certainly wasn’t any keener to discuss such things than he had ever been.

‘It’s those freckles. I can’t resist them,’ Jax said huskily, skimming the bridge of her nose with a teasing finger.

Lucy laughed because she hated her freckles, seeing them as imperfections, but Jax thought they looked delightfully natural, which of course they were. Did anyone draw in freckles? She thought not and smiled as they piled into the buggy. A pang of sadness infiltrated her mood because the honeymoon as such was almost over. Jax was meeting with Heracles about some big project in Athens the following morning and she was accompanying him because she planned to take Bella to visit her father and Iola. She was hoping that the passage of time since her wedding day and Bella’s noisy presence would make the occasion less tense and awkward.

In actuality, Jax wasn’t looking forward to the next day either. He intended to confront his father with the file Heracles had had sent to him on Lucy two years before. From what he had so far managed to establish the file was full of inaccuracies and outright lies and he needed to know if those lies had been a deliberate attempt to break up their relationship or the simple product of a lazy investigator and a case of mistaken identity. He could scarcely censure Kreon’s ethics if his own father was guilty of the same lack of moral scruple when it came to getting the result he wanted most.

Even so, he still could not have said which answer he wanted to hear from Heracles because if the older man actually believed the contents of that file, it outraged Jax in a way he could not rationally explain. Yet he, more than anyone, knew Lucy was far from perfect. His mind skipped superfast over that acknowledgement and tucked the memory of that alleyway encounter back into the box where he kept it locked away. She had made an unforgivable mistake and he had to live with that...for Bella’s sake, he told himself urgently, only for Bella’s sake.

Bella’s nanny took the little girl off to bed. Lucy went for a shower because she was hot and sandy and she wasn’t at all surprised when Jax stepped into the shower with her, all lithe, wet bronzed skin and rippling muscles. She ran her hands up appreciatively over his torso and as the water jets shot at them, sprinkling even their faces with droplets, his mouth came crashing passionately down on hers. He tasted her with raw driving need and as always the strength of his hunger for her disconcerted her. He gathered her slippery body up and pinned her against the cold tiles, lifting her thighs round his waist while rocking and grinding against the tender triangle of flesh at the heart of her.

That fast she wanted him intolerably and with every probing plunge of his tongue she wanted him more. Evocative little noises were wrenched from low in her throat as skilled fingers teased and played to prepare her for his entrance. And then he tilted her back and thrust into her with vigour while she clung to his shoulders, her ankles wrapped round him. He grunted with raw male satisfaction, his hand supporting her hips as he pounded her yielding body with delicious force. Excitement writhed through Lucy in an unstoppable surge and she reached her peak with an involuntary cry, convulsive waves of exquisite pleasure rippling through her lower body as an orgasmic flush spread over her sun-dappled skin.

‘I didn’t use a condom,’ Jax groaned in her ear as he slowly lowered her back to her own feet. ‘Is that likely to be a problem?’

‘Hopefully not,’ Lucy muttered after doing some quick calculations and without looking directly at him as she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. ‘It’s the wrong time of the month.’

What had he meant by that question? Was he asking her if she was willing to get pregnant again? Or was he worrying that she would conceive? And for that matter, was she willing to take that risk? Lucy thought not. She had not had an easy pregnancy the first time around and was not in a hurry to do it again, particularly when she did not yet feel secure with Jax. Even so, if she did conceive she would still welcome and love her baby.

But then what would it take for her to feel truly secure with Jax? she asked herself. Perhaps she was her own worst enemy and had quite unrealistic expectations of a marriage in which only one of them loved. She might not like the reality but their relationship was bound to be unbalanced with one of them wanting and hoping for more than the other.

* * *

‘Did you know that the contents of that file were a complete fiction?’

‘What do you want me to tell you?’ Heracles slapped the file on Lucy back onto his desk and sighed heavily. ‘I will not lie. I did what I felt I had to do.’

Sharply disconcerted, Jax tensed even more, anger roaring through his tall, powerful frame because he had somehow expected the older man to try and evade his very direct question. ‘Why did you think you had to do anything? Why did you even think that it was your place to interfere? It wasn’t as though I was talking about marrying her—’

‘Jax...in the space of two weeks, you flew back to Spain five times to see her,’ Heracles traded defiantly. ‘That was enough for me to view her as a serious contender for something and when I discovered that she was the daughter of Kreon Thiarkis, well, to be really blunt...that was that. Thiarkis is a slippery customer, always has been, always will be and I will not apologise for not wanting a criminal’s daughter involved with my family.’

‘I know Kreon’s history,’ Jax interposed harshly. ‘I know what he is and I can understand your concern but I was twenty-six years old, not a teenager, and you had no right to interfere.’

The older man stood his ground. ‘I know I had no right but I didn’t care. Years ago I watched Thiarkis charm my deluded first wife into paying for his legal representation in court when he was charged with fraud—’

‘Two years ago, Lucy hadn’t even met her father,’ Jax pointed out rawly. ‘What I had with her was our business alone, nothing to do with your ongoing distaste for Thiarkis. And far be it from me to say a word in Kreon’s defence but for over thirty years he held onto a letter that would have made his fortune had he sold it to the press...’

Jax settled the letter Lucy had given him down on the desk. ‘Your first wife confessed her sins on paper during her last days.’

His father turned grey before his eyes and dropped down suddenly into his office chair, studying the letter as if it were a cobra likely to strike out at him. ‘Sofia was never discreet,’ he muttered heavily. ‘Are you telling me I have to thank Thiarkis for his restraint?’

‘No,’ Jax breathed in a driven undertone, having decided not to reveal the secret of Kreon’s blackmail. ‘But it’s time you came to terms with the fact that he is Lucy’s father and stopped visiting your experiences and your resentments on my life. I’m not Argo—’

‘I know you’re not,’ Heracles acknowledged grimly. ‘Argo always did as he was told and you won’t, which is why I went behind your back in the first place. I assumed she would be wrong for you.’

‘She’s not,’ Jax bit out curtly. ‘But because of that file I treated her badly and now I have to tell her why.’

Heracles compressed his lips in disapproval. ‘Do you? I don’t think that’s a good idea. A wise man shares nothing with his wife but a bed.’

‘Three wives and you still don’t know better?’ Jax derided with seething bite. ‘Well, I do know better and I will not tolerate your meddling in my life. If you ever do anything like this again, I’m out.’

‘You can’t mean that,’ Heracles breathed in consternation.

‘I do. Blood counts but family counts more and you were out of my life for too many years to be considered family in the same way that I consider my wife and my daughter. They come first...always.’

Simmering with angry frustration, Jax sat in his limo in the heavy Athens traffic mulling over that confrontation. Heracles had finally apologised and at least his father had at last told him the truth. Jax hated secrets. He had grown up in an atmosphere of secrecy, continually urged never to tell anyone that his mother was ‘ill’, pregnant or involved with a man. As a boy, he had reacted to those warnings by deciding to never tell anyone at school that the famous Spanish movie star was his mother. It had been a rather pathetic ploy considering that the name Antonakos was too well known and just about everyone who was anyone knew his father had divorced Mariana for having an affair with one of her co-stars. But the practice of keeping his thoughts and feelings and personal details strictly private had been taught to him when he was very young and had become a habit he couldn’t shake...until he’d met Lucy and told her things he had never told anyone before.

And if he was honest that experience had totally unnerved him two years earlier. He had seen that he was veering into dangerous territory and had feared getting too involved with a woman again. Feared? No, obviously he had been in no hurry to admit that to himself. His mother had been frighteningly volatile, constantly ranging between high and low moods while using drugs as a crutch to get her through the day. Freed by Mariana’s death from the powerful conviction that it was his responsibility to look after her, Jax had decided that emotion was a weakness and that a sensible man steered clear of it. Most of the time that had worked very well for him.

Until he’d met Lucy...

Until he’d met Bella...

Jax poured himself a stiff drink and drank it down. He had to tell Lucy. How could he not tell her? He reminded himself that she had married him even after what he had done in Spain. He reminded himself that she seemed happy. He didn’t have to love her to make her happy. Hadn’t he already proved that? Together they had the fathers from hell. Not her fault, not his fault either. He would give her the facts. She would be angry and hurt but she would forgive him. Jax knew he wasn’t the forgiving type but he was convinced from recent experience that Lucy was. They had signed up to be a family for Bella’s benefit. And that would be Lucy’s bottom line because more than anything else, Jax reminded himself doggedly, after a life of turmoil Lucy craved security.

And he offered security, he offered a lot of security, he reflected with growing assurance. But it still really bothered him that she wasn’t clingier and more open with him. The Lucy he remembered in Spain had been distinctly needy and clingy and, although he ran a mile from that trait in other women, for some reason he had liked that attribute in Lucy as much as he had liked her once flaky tell-all chatter. He had liked it when he was the first person she looked for in a room, when he was the only one she really smiled at or noticed, when she wrapped herself round him all night as though she was afraid he might attempt an escape. He had liked being told that he was loved even if in the end it had all turned out to be a lie.

But she didn’t do those things any more even though he wanted her to. She was wary. Of course she was, he conceded, struggling to be fair, so, putting the truth out there was a sensible move, he told himself squarely. He would tell her what had really happened and she would forgive him because that was what Lucy did. And what choice would she have? a more cynical voice enquired. After all, she had betrayed his trust too...

* * *

‘He’s treating you well?’ Kreon prompted while Iola was playing in the garden with Bella.

‘Yes,’ Lucy told her father flatly. ‘But I won’t discuss Jax with you.’

‘A wife should be loyal to her husband,’ Kreon remarked equably. ‘I simply wanted you to be happy—’

‘I can only be happy with a man who is happy to be with me,’ Lucy countered drily, resisting the urge to remind him that he hadn’t thought of that angle.

But with Jax being the very practical but reserved male that he was, he was more likely to make the best of a bad job than try to wriggle out of the commitment, particularly when his daughter was involved. Lucy showered and changed while telling herself that she had absolutely nothing to complain about. Whatever else, she was married to the love of her life. There was nothing she could do about the fact that she had only gained a wedding ring through her father’s dirty tricks. But she knew that somewhere in the back of Jax’s astute brain he would probably always associate her with her father’s treachery and would never quite forgive her for his lack of choice and loss of freedom.

‘He gave in to me very easily. That is not an Antonakos trait,’ Kreon argued.

‘Obviously he cares about his father.’

‘I believe he cares more about you.’

Unconvinced by that startling claim, Lucy returned to the city villa with nerves run ragged by the strain of pretending for Iola’s benefit that everything was fine between her father and her. She had been surprised that Jax hadn’t objected to her visiting Kreon and Iola and then relieved because her father was still her father even though he was imperfect. Imperfect? Manipulative, sneaky, quick to jump on a golden opportunity even if it entailed blackmail, Lucy’s brain added unhappily. But until she had met her father and learned about the existence of her sisters, she had believed that her father was her only living relative and his support and acceptance had meant a great deal to her. That he was capable of going to such lengths to secure a very rich husband for her still devastated her because of course it had to make a difference to her marriage and the light in which Jax saw her.

If Kreon hadn’t interfered, who knew what might have happened? All right, they would clearly not have got married, she allowed ruefully, but at least Jax wouldn’t have felt forced into doing something he didn’t want to do.

Lucy had only just finished drying her hair when Jax strode into the bedroom. He paused for a second, appreciating the sight of her small slender figure in a summery blue dress, tumbling ringlets framing her piquant face. ‘You look ridiculously pretty,’ he heard himself say stiltedly, and he almost winced at that ill-timed opener because he had come upstairs to give her the investigation file.

Lucy angled her head to one side and gave him a questioning look. ‘You never pay me compliments. What’s wrong?’

He had called her pretty, not beautiful, and she was more than happy with that, well aware that her looks weren’t on the beauty level. In marrying Jax, she had boxed above her weight because he was the beautiful one in their relationship, standing there in his exquisitely tailored silver-grey suit, his stunning bone structure accentuated by a shadow of black stubble, gorgeous green eyes glittering like stars in his lean bronzed face.

‘Never?’ Jax was taken aback by her claim, only belatedly recognising that she was right. He thought such things but he very rarely voiced them out loud. ‘I have something for you to read.’

He looked so very serious that Lucy’s heart gave a sudden lurch inside her chest. ‘OK,’ she said apprehensively.

He extended the file. ‘My father sent this to me two years ago in Spain. It’s why I didn’t turn up that last night.’

Lucy grasped the slim file and sank down heavily on the foot of the bed. ‘Your father?’ she queried with a bemused frown.

‘He had discovered who your father was and apparently he was determined to break us up,’ Jax explained flatly. ‘The file is filled with what I now know to be lies about you.’

Lucy lowered her shaken gaze to the file, thoroughly off balanced by what he was revealing because it was coming at her out of nowhere. Suddenly he was talking about what had happened in Spain and admitting that he hadn’t ditched her simply because he had got bored. ‘You now know...?’ she questioned with an uncertain questioning glance.

‘I had my own investigation carried out,’ he admitted smoothly.

And Lucy was even more shaken at the enormous amount of stuff that Jax had been hiding from her, not to mention the lowering reality of just how much his father had not wanted her in his family. She swallowed hard and, breathing in bracingly, she opened the file and straight away she could not credit what she was reading. It was a seriously exaggerated character assassination in print, from the outrageous allegation that she had convictions for drug dealing and soliciting sex to the fact that her age was quoted as being twenty-five.

‘But how could you possibly have believed any of this?’ she heard herself whisper with incredulous emphasis.

‘It was in the early stages of my new relationship with my father and I trusted him. I had no reason to be suspicious of his motives because I had no knowledge of his acquaintance with your father or his dislike of him,’ he pointed out flatly.

Lucy shook her head very slowly, an almost dazed light in her luminous blue eyes as she focussed on him. ‘You misunderstood my question. I’m not asking why you believed your father but how on earth you could believe that kind of nonsense about me? Soliciting sex? I was a virgin when we met!’ she reminded him with sudden resentful heat. ‘And you knew that!’

Jax compressed his lips, wearing the aspect of a male who would have liked to be anywhere but where he was at that moment. He shifted his feet uneasily. ‘A woman can fool a man over stuff like that. She can pretend,’ he began uncomfortably.

‘Then you must have assumed my acting ability rivalled your mother’s!’ Lucy slotted in a little shakily because anger was rising now to cut through the shock of what she was learning. ‘I just don’t know what to say about all this...stuff!’ she selected jaggedly, tossing the file down on the floor in disgust. ‘I thought you knew me—’

‘I thought I knew you too until I read that file,’ Jax admitted curtly. ‘But I had no good reason then to suspect my father of setting me up.’

‘So, you’re telling me then that he was responsible for me losing my job?’

‘I didn’t go into that with him... I was far too angry,’ Jax confessed. ‘But it’s probable that he was responsible for that and for the manner in which you were treated as you were put off the yacht. If I had stayed long enough to get into that kind of detail I probably would have hit him...’

‘Oh...’ Lucy was a long way from forgiving him for having had so little faith in her but she was certainly mollified by that little speech.

‘You were pregnant,’ Jax pointed out, still stuck on that offence with an anger she could see making his lean, darkly handsome features rigid. ‘You could have been seriously hurt. He could have killed his own grandchild...we could have lost Bella!’

Lucy warmed up to him a little more in response to that additional really quite emotional exclamation. Jax had only known her for six weeks in Spain. Six weeks and a handful of dates. They had finally become intimate during the final two weeks of that time frame. Why would he have distrusted his father? The father then riding high on the wave of finally deciding to accept and welcome the younger son he had once ignored?

Lucy felt that she had to be fair to Jax. After all, she had not distrusted Kreon when she first came to Greece, had she? It occurred to her that Jax was probably feeling much as she had felt on their wedding day, angry and hurt and defensive while wondering how someone he cared about and respected could have done such a thing to him.

‘I think the very least you could have done was speak to me about the file and give me the chance to answer those allegations,’ Lucy told him firmly. ‘There is no excuse whatsoever for you failing to tell me about that file two years ago.’

And Jax’s long, lean, powerful physique went rigid, shoulders squaring, legs straightening. ‘Actually there is...’

‘No, there’s not.’ Lucy could understand and forgive a great deal but he could not justify his complete failure to tell her what was going on either in the past or the present. ‘You didn’t even send me a text in Spain to tell me we were finished, for goodness’ sake!’ she exclaimed.

‘I had my reasons,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone, his eyes gleaming like polished gems.

‘Unacceptable reasons.’ Lucy refused to give way. She often gave in to Jax because he had a very forceful personality but she knew she couldn’t go through life without disagreeing with him occasionally. ‘You owed me an explanation of some kind—’

‘I owed you nothing!’ Jax shot at her with sudden derision. ‘I did come to see you the night after I received that file.’

Her brow had furrowed because she was beginning to feel a little lost in the dialogue, as though she had misinterpreted some crucial sentence. ‘You didn’t come to see me—’

‘And do you know why?’ Jax’s hands knotted into fists because he felt like a volcano about to spew lava and somewhere in the back of his mind lurked a tiny voice asking him if he really wanted to say what he was about to say. But Jax didn’t back down, had never learned how to back down. He only knew how to come out of a corner fighting and how to win. He had had a hell of a day and it wasn’t getting better the way it was supposed to, it was only getting worse and that thought did nothing to cool his temper. He had done nothing wrong with Lucy, he was, in his own opinion, the injured party. He was not a vengeful man but he would not be accused of something he wasn’t responsible for.

‘If I did, I wouldn’t be arguing with you or trying to get you to see my point of view,’ Lucy parried.

‘I bet you don’t even remember that night...’

‘I remember it very well,’ Lucy admitted, lifting her chin. ‘What’s this all about, Jax? I’m getting confused—’

His eyes narrowed, his mouth flattening. ‘I drove over to the bar and before I could get out of my car, I saw you walking down the alleyway in your red dress—’

‘It wasn’t me you saw,’ Lucy sliced in thinly. When Jax had failed to turn up to see her the night before Lucy had stayed in her attic room after doing her shift, frantically hoping that Jax would magically appear with an explanation. Like a child waiting for Santa Claus she had refused to believe he wouldn’t show up eventually and she had been terrified of somehow missing him. She had had that much faith in him, that much trust...

‘It was you. You were with a man—’

‘You’re mistaken,’ Lucy told him confidently.

‘I followed you because I assumed you were heading for the entrance that led up to your room but you weren’t,’ Jax informed her stonily. ‘You stayed outside to have sex with the man you were with against the wall.’

Her lashes fluttered up on disbelieving bright blue eyes and she stared back at him. ‘You think that I had sex with some guy in the alley?’ she demanded with a revulsion she couldn’t hide. ‘Are you kidding me?’

Lean, strong face shuttered and forbidding, Jax stood his ground because naturally he hadn’t expected her to own up to her behaviour. ‘You know I’m not kidding and what I saw that night is why you never heard from me again. There was no point in showing you that file when you were already with another man,’ he proclaimed harshly. ‘I don’t need to apologise or make excuses for not approaching you again.’

‘I agree,’ Lucy said with wooden diction, shattered inside herself but holding it all together out of pride. ‘If I had been with another man that soon, you owed me nothing. Clearly, it suited you very well to assume that night that the girl in the alley was me—’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Jax shot at her suspiciously.

‘Well, you’d seen that file and learned that your precious father did not approve of me. It was really incredibly convenient for you that in spite of everything you knew about me you decided to accept that file and assume that I was the sort of young woman who would have sex in an alley.’

Lucy could feel her cheekbones ache with the strain of keeping her face composed but there was a much deeper ache of pain inside her chest. She knew he didn’t love her. She knew he had never loved her. That wounding knowledge had chipped away at her upbeat outlook on their marriage and she had fought it off, telling herself to settle sensibly for what she could get. But for the first time ever, Lucy decided that Jax was bad for her.

Never mind the Antonakos fame, the money and the gorgeous looks. Two years back, she had told Jax that she loved him and she had, but he had given nothing back, not the words nor any other form of commitment. He had held back from her, he had always held back from her and now she finally knew why. But she deserved better. She deserved a man who would, at the very least, refuse to believe that she would have sex in public with some chance-met stranger. And Jax hadn’t had that faith in her and probably never would have. A horrible sense of emptiness spread inside her. Her loving him wasn’t enough.

‘It was you. I recognised the dress,’ Jax bit out, exasperated by the stretching silence and the strange way she was staring at him.

‘Yes...you may have done but it wasn’t me wearing the dress,’ Lucy countered tightly. ‘I loaned it to Tara that night because she had a hot date and I imagine she was fooling around in the alley because she could hardly bring a man back to the room we shared when I was there. Not everyone has a private room or a yacht available for these things...’

Jax froze. ‘It couldn’t have been her! Why would she have been wearing the dress I bought you?’

Lucy sent him a weary glance of exasperation. ‘Because we shared our clothes. We didn’t have much but what we had, we shared. Half the clothes you saw me wear that summer belonged to Tara.’

‘It couldn’t have been her,’ Jax repeated again doggedly, struggling to remember her friend before dimly recalling the much more worldly blonde whom Lucy had worked and lived with.

Lucy shrugged a shoulder in a jerky movement. ‘Well, it doesn’t much matter after this length of time, does it?’ she traded.

‘It matters to me. And it must matter to you,’ Jax told her with assurance.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Lucy responded heavily.

Jax hovered and clenched his teeth hard. He wanted it dealt with and then never mentioned again. But could it have been Tara in that stupid dress? It had been dark and Tara had had long blonde hair too. Between the street lights and the shadows, it was possible that he had been mistaken. And if he had been mistaken, it would be the very first time in Jax’s life that he would ever be grateful to have made a mistake. Didn’t she appreciate that? Didn’t she understand what believing she would behave that way had done to him? Refusing to look at him, Lucy was staring at the tiled floor instead as if she were expecting it to start showing a movie and frustration racked Jax’s tall powerful frame. Women! She had gone into a weird mood now and he would probably get nothing more out of her.

‘I have a meeting. I was planning to reschedule it and take us back to Tifnos—’

‘No, go to your meeting,’ Lucy urged, her throat convulsing, and she still wouldn’t let herself look at him because she didn’t want what she felt in her heart to show.

‘We can fly back in the morning,’ Jax commented. ‘The timing would probably suit Bella better than a late flight.’

Lucy listened to the door close on his exit and continued to sit there with tears rolling silently down her cheeks. Jax had just shown her how he really thought of her and how he saw her and it was...it was ugly, uglier than she could bear or forgive or comprehend. To think that all those weeks on the island he had believed that she had been unfaithful to him and yet he hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even given her the chance to explain or defend herself. It was so cruel, so unfair but you couldn’t change a man, couldn’t alter what went on inside his head.

Jax didn’t trust her, had never trusted even a word she’d said. He had been her one and only lover and he couldn’t even believe that. She had been too young and immature at nineteen to recognise how cynical and distrustful Jax was. She had realised that he was pretty jealous and possessive but her awareness had gone no deeper than that. She thought of him seeing Tara in that grubby alley and believing it was her and a stifled sob of pain and regret and humiliation was wrenched from her. That hurt so much and it seemed with Jax at that moment that he did nothing but hurt and disillusion her. She didn’t want to stay married to a man like that, she couldn’t stay married to a man who thought so little of her...

And when the wave of conflicting emotions began to tear at Lucy more than she could stand she dug out her phone and rang her sister, Polly, desperately needing a shoulder to cry on.

Polly was a terrific listener. Lucy let the whole sorry story of her relationship with Jax and Kreon spill out and, very satisfyingly, Polly was even more appalled by the alleyway accusation than Lucy had been.

‘Come and stay with us, Lucy,’ Polly suggested warmly. ‘You need a holiday. I know you felt that you were happy with him at first but Jax doesn’t seem to appreciate you the way a husband should. It’s possible that he resents you for what your father did.’

To Lucy in that instant the prospect of walking away into a different environment shone like a bright welcoming light. ‘I don’t even know where you live, Polly,’ she pointed out unevenly.

‘In a country called Dharia. It’s one of the Gulf States,’ Polly explained.

Lucy was flummoxed by that news. ‘I don’t know how I’d get there or even how I’d get away from here.’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Polly told her assertively. ‘I will arrange everything. If you leave tonight, we’ll be having breakfast together in the morning and I can get hold of Ellie and she could be here by this weekend. We really do want to meet you and your daughter, Lucy.’

‘Leave...tonight?’ Lucy gasped in astonishment, wondering if it would be wrong of her to take her daughter with her as well and then deciding that, just at that moment, losing both of them was what Jax deserved for his distrust.

‘I don’t think you should waste any more time on the Antonakos family. They don’t love or value you but we will.’

And Polly’s enthusiasm was the deciding factor for Lucy, who usually took more time to decide anything of a serious nature. But at least she didn’t feel like crying any longer, she registered with relief, because crying after Jax had gone over her like a steam roller with his nasty allegations seemed feeble. Jax didn’t want her and his father didn’t want her in his precious family and her own father had seriously disappointed her. A fresh start and the friendship of her sisters looked a lot more promising than her current situation.

‘Tonight will be fine,’ she assured Polly. ‘I’ll start packing. I suppose it will be very hot?’

‘Yes, but the pal—er...my place is air-conditioned,’ her sister informed her.