Читать книгу The Holiday Escapes Collection - Сандра Мартон - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN TABBY WOKE for the fourth time in twelve hours, she was totally disorientated and she blinked in the strong sunlight flooding through the French windows. A split second later, she sat up and checked her watch to discover that it was mid-afternoon.

My goodness, she had slept half the day away! In guilty dismay, she clambered awkwardly out of bed, learning that Acheron had got it right when he had suggested she would feel better in the morning. Her hip still ached like the very devil but the pain in her ankle had become more bearable. Curious to see her surroundings, having arrived in complete darkness the night before, she limped over to the French windows with the aid of her stick and went out onto the sunlit balcony to stand at the rail.

A craggy cove stretched out below her, the towering rocks encircling a stretch of pure white sand lapped by a turquoise sea so clear she could see the ocean bottom. The lush tree-filled gardens ran right to the edge of the beach. It was absolutely idyllic and very beautiful but Tabby’s attention was drawn straight to the couple standing together in the rippling surf. Amber’s pram was parked in the shadow of the rocks and Melinda, clad in a minuscule red bikini that exaggerated her bountiful curves, was talking with apparent urgency to Acheron, whose lean, powerful body was sheathed only in trunks.

It was an unexpectedly intimate and disturbing sight, and Tabby couldn’t take her eyes off the couple, jealousy spearing through her with an immediacy that appalled her. She jerked in dismay and snatched in a startled breath when Melinda rested a hand down on Acheron’s arm. To his credit the contact only lasted for a second because he took an immediate step back from the forward blonde and with a brief final word strode back across the sand towards the house. Tabby hobbled back hurriedly indoors to get dressed, her brain struggling to encompass what she had seen at the same time as she accepted that, yet again, the very foundations of her relationship with the man she had married had been demolished and everything had changed.

Sexual desire had stimulated that change, she conceded, shame slivering through her. No boundaries, Acheron had proclaimed with passion and he was certainly correct on that score: the rules she had tried to impose had been blown right out of the water along with her nonsensical belief that she could resist him. Even more pertinently, seeing Melinda touch Acheron had inflamed her with ferocious possessiveness and the sort of angry jealous feelings she had never before experienced. What did that say about her intelligence? What was she letting him do to her? Where were these violent conflicting emotions coming from? She was behaving like a lovesick idiot! Was that the problem? Had lust first sucked her in and then left her childishly infatuated with him?

Opening her as yet still packed cases, she extracted underwear and a long, loose sundress before stepping into the bathroom to freshen up. The whole process took her much longer than usual having to wash her hair in the sink, which was a challenge, and left the bathroom floor swimming by the time she had finished. When she finally emerged after mopping dry the floor, however, she felt more like herself with clean, tidy hair and a little make-up applied.

Acheron strolled into the bedroom and there Tabby was; captured in a patch of sunlight, long golden hair rippling down to softly frame her delicate features, her tiny body sylphlike in a pale blue dress that reflected her amazing eyes, which were currently pools of anxious troubled violet that evaded his. She was so open, so honest in her reactions, it literally shocked him. Nothing was concealed; nothing was hidden from him. His broad chest tightened as he expelled his breath and gritted his teeth. He could not begin to imagine how frighteningly vulnerable that lack of concealment and reserve made her. If he didn’t act first, she was undoubtedly about to unleash a rash volley of accusations and questions about their renewed intimacy, which threatened to put them both right back where they had started after their car crash wedding night and her proclamation of her unnecessary rules.

‘Tabby,’ he murmured evenly, noting avidly that he could see the little points of her deliciously prominent nipples showing below the fine material of her dress as well as the slender outline of her shapely legs. An overpoweringly strong urge to claim her again assailed him.

‘Ash,’ she said breathlessly, studying his lean, darkly handsome features with a sinking heart because that fast she was out of breath and dizzy just looking at him. ‘We need to talk.’

‘No, we don’t, glyka mou,’ Acheron contradicted with stubborn assurance as he drew closer. ‘Let’s do this my way. We don’t talk, we especially don’t agonise over anything. It is what it is and we just enjoy it for as long as it lasts.’

He had snatched the confused words out of her mouth before she had even collected her thoughts enough to speak. She suspected that his solution was vintage Acheron in the field of relationships—say nothing, do nothing and the problem will go away. ‘I wasn’t about to agonise over anything,’ she protested, swaying slightly because she found it hard to stand still for long and had to grip the walking stick in a tighter hold.

He closed hands round her forearms to steady her and slowly trailed his hands down to her waist. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

As she looked up at him, her lush full lips tingled and she was conscious of a sensation like prickling heat curling low in her pelvis. He angled his mouth down and kissed her with intoxicating urgency.

‘Oh...’ she said in breathless surprise at the development, her body humming into ready awareness with an enthusiasm that disconcerted her.

He lifted her dress slowly, brazen dark golden eyes locked to hers, daring her to object. Anticipation pierced her, sharp as a lance, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. His gaze not once leaving hers, he found her with his fingers, eased below her lace-edged panties and stroked and that fast she was hotter than the fires of hell, leaning up against him for support, making no objection when he gently lowered her back onto the bed. The stick fell forgotten on the floor.

‘I only just got up,’ she exclaimed, her surprise unconcealed.

‘You should’ve waited here for me, glyka mou,’ Acheron told her sibilantly.

‘I can’t believe you want me again already.’ Tabby studied him with confused and wondering eyes.

‘The instant I look at you I want you,’ Acheron admitted in a slightly raw undertone because there was a lack of control and a weakness in such a truth that deeply disturbed him.

‘Not the very first time you saw me,’ she reminded him stubbornly.

‘You swore at me...not your finest hour, glyka mou,’ he mocked. ‘Now that I know you, it wouldn’t bother me at all or make me stop thinking that you’re the hottest woman on the planet.’

Eyes wide with astonishment, Tabby was transfixed by that statement. ‘You really mean that?’

‘You have to ask? Here I am throwing you down on the bed to ravish and you have to ask how much I want you? I can’t wait to get you horizontal and that’s not OK,’ Acheron groaned, yanking off her panties with scant ceremony and splaying her legs with a voracious hiss of all-male satisfaction, fully appreciating the pink glistening femininity he had exposed. ‘No, don’t spoil the view,’ he censured when, hot-cheeked, she tried to scissor her thighs together again. ‘I like to look and I love to appreciate.’

Tabby forced herself to remember that while he peeled off his trunks, revealing his long, thick erection. Heat rolled through her, moisture gathering at the heart of her along with a soul-deep yearning that should have terrified her. She realised that she was acting on instinct, not even pausing to think about what he had said, skipping the agonising as he had phrased it because what woman wished to be viewed in that light?

‘Thee mou, hot, hot, hot,’ Acheron rasped as he came down on top of her, punctuating every word with a passionate kiss and hands that traced every erogenous zone she possessed until her impatience steadily rose to match his.

Only then did he sink into her hard and fast, muttering something in Greek before he paused to press his lips to her brow. ‘Am I hurting you?’ he grated uneasily.

‘Only if you stop,’ she traded helplessly, her whole body clenching round him as possessively as her arms, hands smoothing over his satin-smooth back, clenching there, nails curving inward as he ground into her, and she cried out in helpless delight. Excitement rose in an unstoppable tide, and she lost the self she knew in it, living from one glorious moment of intense sensation to the next until the great gathering storm became too much to contain and the passion swept her off the heights down into the ecstatic rippling aftermath.

‘Well, there wasn’t much finesse about that,’ Acheron remarked, cradling her up against him in a damp tangle of limbs. ‘My apologies.’

‘No need,’ Tabby countered, pressing her mouth softly to his chest, revelling in the hot, musky smell of his skin and the closeness that he was embracing. ‘It was another ten out of ten.’

‘You’re grading me now?’ he demanded in obvious horror.

‘If you drop down to a five or lower, I’ll warn you,’ Tabby teased, smiling because she felt amazingly light-hearted while she was studiously engaged in not agonising. The minute she forgot his maxim though the real world immediately flooded back and, assailed by those whirling doubts, insecurities and unanswered questions, she became tense again and marvelled that she had so easily suppressed what she had seen.

‘I saw you with Melinda on the beach,’ she told him baldly, putting it right out there without holding back and judging her words and their effect.

Acheron’s big powerful frame stiffened and he tilted her head back to study her troubled face. ‘I’m bringing another nanny in to work with Melinda, who will eventually replace her. I’ve already made the arrangements. I don’t want Amber upset by too sudden a change in staff,’ he volunteered.

Tabby was wildly disconcerted by the announcement but relieved to know that Melinda would soon be moving on, while being impressed and touched that he had also been careful to consider Amber’s need for consistent care. ‘You’re planning to sack Melinda?’

‘She’s on a temporary contract. We can let her go any time we like but I’d prefer to dispense with her services in the usual way. She knows a little too much about our marriage for my comfort.’

Frowning at that admission, Tabby prompted, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Melinda is clearly aware that we were using separate bedrooms at the villa. When we were on the beach she offered to share Amber’s room so that I could take over hers,’ Acheron explained grimly.

Wings of hot pink reddened Tabby’s cheeks. Annoyance and embarrassment that their unconventional sleeping arrangements had evidently attracted the attention of the staff engulfed her. ‘Perhaps she was planning to do a little wandering during the night once you were conveniently close. She was coming on to you, wasn’t she?’

Lean, extravagantly handsome features impassive, stunning dark eyes screened, Acheron nodded. ‘It happens.’

Tabby looked up at him, weak with relief that he had told her the truth without fanfare or fuss. ‘Often?’

Acheron released a rueful chuckle at the innocence of that question. ‘All the time. If I ignore it, it usually dies a natural death but Melinda doesn’t take hints...possibly because she’s already reached the conclusion that ours is not a normal marriage. She could take that information to the press, laying me open to a potential charge that I only married you to circumvent my father’s will.’

Tabby grimaced. ‘We’ll have to work harder at being a more convincing couple. Share a room, spend time together, fake it up to behave more like a honeymoon couple is expected to behave.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be fake now,’ Acheron pointed out with lazy assurance.

But in her heart she would know it was fake, Tabby reflected painfully. He gave her great sex but he wasn’t offering to give her anything more. Maybe that was the only kind of giving he knew—short-term physical stuff with a built-in time limit, she conceded fairly, not wanting to judge him just because he was different. After all, was she any more evolved in the field of relationships? She wanted him so much, wanted his attention as much as Amber did, was willing to do whatever it took to hold that attention. But she was not willing to admit even to herself that he was also stirring up emotions that she was afraid she couldn’t handle.

‘Why did your father write a will that forced you to get married when you didn’t want to?’ Tabby asked quietly, knowing that that was the heart of the matter and the mystery that he had so far avoided explaining.

‘In a nutshell? He wanted me to marry Kasma,’ Acheron told her tersely, his beautiful mouth hardening. ‘And I don’t ever want to talk about that.’

With difficulty, Tabby swallowed an irritated comeback on that omission, knowing such a response would only reinforce his reserve and make him dig his stubborn heels in even harder. She could leave the thorny question of Kasma to one side for the moment and concentrate on other aspects. ‘But surely your father knew how you felt? How close were the two of you?’ Tabby persisted.

A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling jaw. ‘I only met him in my late twenties,’ he reminded her drily. ‘I suppose it was more of a business relationship than most. His company was struggling. He asked me for advice. I went in to help and ended up taking over.’

‘Didn’t he resent that?’

‘Not at all. He wasn’t much of a businessman, more of a family man desperate to give his loved ones a secure future.’

‘That was your stepmother and her children?’

Acheron compressed his lips. ‘My father married her when her kids were very young and raised them as his own but I didn’t meet them until about eighteen months before he died.’

‘Why not?’ Tabby asked in surprise.

‘His family weren’t relevant to me or to our relationship. They were strangers. There was no blood tie and I’ve never had a family, so I was very wary about getting involved in that side of his life. As things turned out, I was right to be wary and to have kept my distance for as long as I did,’ he pronounced with dark finality.

A silence full of undertones enclosed them in the aftermath of that assurance, adding to Tabby’s discomfiture. She was trying desperately to work out what his past relationship with his stepsister, Kasma, had entailed. Obviously there had been an affair that left the beautiful brunette with expectations that Acheron was not prepared to fulfil. Presumably the affair had ended badly with bitterness on both sides. Had some tragedy occurred? Had Kasma fallen pregnant or some such thing? Mightn’t that explain why his late father had got such a bee in his bonnet about Acheron marrying his stepdaughter? Certainly the other woman had believed very strongly that she was the only woman who should become Acheron’s wife. Was Kasma in love with him? Or was she more fixated on his money and his status? But regardless of why Kasma wanted Acheron, what did it matter when he didn’t want her? Tabby asked herself irritably, weary of suspicions that were winding up her tension for no good reason. If it was that simple though, why couldn’t he just say so?

‘I wish you didn’t keep secrets. I wish you were more frank and straightforward about things,’ she admitted before she could think better of it.

‘You’re so honest sometimes you terrify me, glyka mou,’ Acheron confided ruefully. ‘And if this honeymoon is going to work, we will each have to compromise our most cherished ideals.’

* * *

Acheron peered down at the red-rose tattoo adorning Tabby’s slender arm with a frown and stroked a finger gently across it. ‘The skin underneath feels rough and the design is already blurred. The tattooist must have damaged your skin.’

Tabby gritted her teeth, relaxation abandoned as she yanked her arm free of his light hold. ‘Don’t touch me there.’

Lustrous dark golden eyes scrutinised her from below inky-black lashes. ‘Why not?’

‘Are we about to have another one of those conversations in which you suggest that I go for laser treatment to have it removed?’ Tabby condemned, her small face taut and pale as she decided it was time to tell him the truth, which would surely conclude his interest in the subject. ‘If you must know, I won’t have it removed because it’s covering up an ugly scar. In fact, the scar was there first. The tattooist did a marvellous job but he couldn’t have made the ink design perfect when my skin was far from perfect to begin with.’

His lean dark features were frowning now. ‘What sort of a scar?’

‘Take it from me...you really don’t want to know,’ Tabby told him warningly, pulling away from him to scramble to her feet in the shade of the pine trees that overhung the pinkish pale sand. After checking that Amber still lay splayed out on her blanket in sleeping abandonment, her olive-skinned chubby limbs protruding starfish fashion from her white broderie anglaise playsuit, her rosebud mouth soft and relaxed, Tabby stalked on down the beach, a slight figure clad in shorts and a bikini top.

Acheron, she thought, her hands knotting into fists, her teeth grinding together in angry frustration. There were times she wanted to throw him into the sea from a great height. She had thought she was the nosy one but he didn’t quit once he was on a trail either. Even worse, he was a domineering perfectionist. Although he wasn’t planning to spend the rest of his life with her and Amber, he still wanted to persuade her that she should have the tattoo removed and he was as relentless as a steam roller running down a hill. At breakfast he had asked her if she would be happy for Amber to get something similar done, and Tabby had been betrayed into looking in dismay at Amber’s smooth soft forearm and Acheron, being Acheron, had noticed that revealing appraisal.

‘So, you do regret getting it done,’ he had exclaimed with satisfaction.

Yes, Acheron had some infuriating traits, she acknowledged, but over the past month in Sardinia he had also been a highly entertaining companion, a very sexy lover and a patient and caring father figure for Amber. At that moment, Tabby couldn’t begin to work out how an entire four weeks had flashed past faster than the speed of light. The first week had been a challenge while she was still hobbling round with a stick and pretty much sentenced to passing her time at the beach house. But once her ankle had healed, they had begun to go out and about.

Snapshots of special moments they had shared filled her memory with more comforting images. They had climbed the massive staircase to the Bastione terrace to see the amazing panoramic view of the rooftops of Calgiari. While she was still wheezing from the climb and overheated from the sun, he had told her that there was actually a lift but that he had assumed that she would enjoy the full tourist experience more. It had taken several cocktails and the cooling effect of the lovely breeze on the terrace before she had forgiven him, and if she was truthful her resistance had only truly melted when he slid long brown fingers into hers in the lift on the way down again.

They had made an evening visit to Castelsardo, a beautiful village dominated by a magical citadel all lit up at night, to enjoy live music in the piazza. Amber had adored all the noise and bustle going on around her and Acheron had enjoyed the baby’s bright-eyed fascination.

The following night, however, they had sought out more adult fun, dancing until dawn at the Billionaire club where Tabby had felt distinctly overshadowed by the number of gorgeous women, sleek and deadly as sharks, cruising for a wealthy hook-up. That Ash had acted as if he only had eyes for her and had kissed her passionately on the dance floor had done much to lift her self-esteem.

Memory after memory was now tumbling inside Tabby’s head. For forty-eight hours they had sailed a yacht round the national park of La Maddalena, a group of protected and largely uninhabited islands teeming with flora and wildlife. The last night they had skinny dipped in a deserted cove and made love until the sun went down. Exhausted, she had wakened to find Acheron barbecuing their evening meal, stunning dark golden eyes smiling lazily at her and making her heart somersault like a trapeze artist.

Of course, they had done all the usual things as well, like strolling round the famous boutiques on the Costa Smeralda, an activity or a lack of activity that Acheron was astounded to discover bored his bride to tears.

‘But you must want me to buy you something,’ he had protested. ‘You must have seen something you liked. You do realise that the only thing I’ve bought you since we arrived is that bed linen?’

Tabby had seen the exquisite bed linen in an upmarket handicrafts shop and her childhood memories of being clumsy with a needle and thread had given her a true appreciation of the amount of skill involved in producing such beautiful embroidery. That had been a purchase to treasure, a gift she truly loved, and only later had it occurred to her that she would never see that winter-weight linen spread across a bed that she shared with Acheron and that it would inevitably adorn a bed she slept in alone. Once the summer was over, their marriage would be history.

But then while she had known they would be faking their honeymoon and had dutifully posed with him for a persistent paparazzo, who had followed them round Porto Cervo, she had not appreciated the lengths Acheron might go to in making their relationship look genuine from the inside and the outside. So, if occasionally she got a little confused and thought about him as if he were her real husband, who could blame her for making that mistake?

Or for falling madly and irrevocably in love with him during the process, she reasoned wretchedly. After all, no man had ever treated her as well as he did, no man had ever made her so happy either, and only he had ever made love to her several times a day, every day, as if she were indeed the hottest, sexiest woman on the planet. Naturally her emotions had got involved and she suppressed them as best she could, knowing that the last thing Acheron required from her was angst and a broken heart, which would make him feel guilty and uncomfortable.

It wasn’t his fault she had fallen for him either. It certainly wasn’t as though he had misled her with promises about the future. In fact, right from the outset she had known that there was no future for them. He had never made any bones about that. Once they had succeeded to legally adopt Amber, their supposed marriage would be left to wither and die. Tabby would make a new life with the little girl she loved while she assumed Acheron would return to his workaholic, womanising existence. Would she ever see him again after the divorce? As she confronted that bleak prospect an agonising shard of pain slivered through Tabby and left a deep anguished ache in its wake. Would Acheron want to retain even the most distant relationship with Amber? Or would he decide on a clean break and act as if Amber didn’t exist?

Acheron crossed the beach, noting how Tabby’s figure had rounded out once she was eating decent food, recalling with quiet satisfaction that she no longer bit her nails—small changes that he valued.

‘How did you get the scar concealed by the tattoo?’ he demanded obstinately, interrupting Tabby’s reverie and shooting her back to the present by wrapping both arms round her from behind, carefully preventing her from storming off again. ‘Were you involved in an accident?’

‘No...it wasn’t an accident,’ Tabby admitted, past recollections making her skin turn suddenly cold and clammy in spite of the heat of the sun.

He was being supportive, she reminded herself doggedly, guilt biting into her former annoyance with him. When Amber had cried half the night because she was teething and her gums were sore, Acheron had been right there beside her, helping to distract the little girl and calm her down enough to sleep again. She had not expected supportiveness from Acheron but his interest in Amber was anything but half-hearted. When it came to childcare, he took the rough with the smooth, serenely accepting that children weren’t always sunny and smiling.

The new nanny currently working with Melinda was called Teresa, a warm, chattering Italian woman whose main source of interest was her charge. Within a week the English nanny would be leaving to take up a permanent position with a family in London.

‘Tabby...I asked you a question,’ Acheron reminded her with deeply unwelcome persistence. ‘You said you didn’t get the scar in an accident, so—’

Dredged from the teeming tumult of her frantic attempt to think about just about anything other than the past he was trying to dig up, Tabby lifted her head high and looked out to sea. ‘My mother burned me with a hot iron because I knocked over a carton of milk,’ she confessed without any expression at all.

‘Thee mou...’ Acheron growled in stricken disbelief, spinning her round to look at her pale set face and the yawning hurt still lingering in her violet eyes.

‘I was never allowed to be with either of my parents unsupervised again after that,’ she explained woodenly. ‘My mother went to prison for burning me and I never saw either of them again.’

Bewildered by the great surge of ferocious anger welling up inside him, Acheron crushed her slight body to his, both arms wrapping tightly round her. For some reason he registered that he was feeling sick and his hands weren’t quite steady, and in that instant some inexplicable deep need that disturbed him was making it impossible for him not to touch her. ‘That must’ve been a relief.’

‘No, it wasn’t. I loved them. They weren’t very lovable people but they were all I had,’ Tabby admitted thickly, her dry throat scratching over the words as if she was reluctant to voice them. She had learned as a young child that loving gestures would be rejected but now more than anything in the world she wanted to wrap her arms round Acheron and take full advantage of the comfort he was clumsily trying to offer her, only that pattern of early rejection and knowledge of how abandonment felt kept her body rigid and uninviting in the circle of his arms.

‘I understand that,’ Acheron breathed in a raw driven undertone. ‘I rarely saw my mother but I still idolised her—’

‘What a pair we are!’ Tabby sniffed, her tension suddenly giving way as tears stung her eyes and overflowed, her overloaded reaction to having had to explain and indeed relive what she never, ever talked about to anyone.

Acheron stared down at her tear-stained visage, pale below his bronzed skin, his strong facial bones forbiddingly set. ‘I can’t bear to think of you being hurt like that, yineka mou—’

‘Don’t...don’t talk about it!’ Tabby urged feverishly. ‘I try never to think about it but every time I saw the scar in the mirror as a teenager, I remembered it, and sometimes people asked what had happened to me. That’s why I got the tattoo...to cover it up, hide it.’

‘Then wear that tattoo with pride. It’s a survival badge,’ Acheron informed her with hard satisfaction. ‘I wish you’d explained weeks ago but I understand now why you didn’t.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, let’s talk about something more cheerful!’ Tabby pleaded. ‘Tell me something about you. I mean, you must have some happy childhood memories of your mother?’

Acheron closed an arm round her slight shoulders to press her back across the beach towards Amber. ‘The night before my first day at school she presented me with a fantastically expensive pen engraved with my name. Of course, I was only allowed to use a pencil in class but naturally that didn’t occur to her. She was very fond of flamboyant gestures, always telling me that only the very best was good enough for a Dimitrakos—’

‘Maybe that was how she was brought up,’ Tabby suggested quietly. ‘But you still haven’t explained why that pen made you happy.’

‘Because generally she ignored me but that particular week she was fresh out of rehab and engaged in turning over a new leaf and it was the one and only time she made me feel that I genuinely mattered to her. She even gave me a whole speech about education being the most important thing in my life...that from a woman who dropped out of school as a teenager and couldn’t read anything more challenging than a magazine,’ he told her wryly.

‘Do you still have the pen?’

‘I think it was stolen.’ He sent her a rueful charismatic smile that tilted her heart inside her chest and interfered with her breathing. ‘But at least I have that one perfect moment to remember her by.’

* * *

Acheron could not relax until he had commissioned a special piece of jewellery for Tabby’s upcoming birthday, which surprisingly fell in the same week as his own. That achieved, he worried about having taken that much trouble over a gift. What was wrong with him? What sort of man went to such lengths for a wife he was planning to divorce? Keep it cool, a little voice chimed in the back of his uneasy mind. But it had proved impossible to play it cool when confronted with the harsh reality of Tabby’s childhood experiences, which had had the unexpected effect of showing Acheron that he had a good deal less to be bitter about with regard to his own. His mother had been a neglectful, selfish and inadequate parent but even at her worst he had never doubted that she loved him. And possibly, but for the malicious machinations of a third party, his father might have learned to love and appreciate him as well...

The constant flow of such unfamiliar thoughts assailing him kept him quiet over dinner. Aware of Tabby’s anxious gaze, he was maddened by the knowledge that he wasn’t feeling like himself any more and that, even in the midst of that disorientating experience, withdrawing his attention from her could make him feel guilty. Never a fan of great inner debates, or even in the habit of staging them, he was exasperated and bewildered by the emotions Tabby constantly churned up inside him. She was too intense, too rich for his blood. He needed to take a step back, he decided abruptly; he needed some distance, and the instant he made that decision he felt better and back in control again.

‘I have to go away on business for a couple of days,’ Acheron volunteered as he strode out of the bathroom, a towel negligently wrapped round his lean, muscular body. His black hair tousled and damp, his lean, devastatingly handsome face clean-shaven, he looked amazing and Tabby’s mouth ran dry before she could even process what he had said.

Realising that he was leaving her, Tabby went rigid and then scolded herself because he had done very little work in recent weeks and could hardly be expected to maintain that lifestyle indefinitely. No, she had been spoilt by his constant company and had to learn fast how to adapt to his absence. Was that why he had been so quiet and distant over dinner? Had he worried about her reaction? Well, it was time to show him that she was strong and not the complaining type.

‘I’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine,’ she responded lightly.

Acheron ground his teeth together, having expected her to object or even offer to travel with him. This was definitely a moment when he had believed she would cling and make him feel suffocated. He watched her clamber into bed, slender as a willow wand, the modest nightdress concealing the hot, secret places he loved, and lust kicked in so fast he felt dizzy with it. Lustrous dark eyes veiling, he discarded the towel, doused the lights and joined her. Not tonight, he thought grimly, as though he was fighting a battle; tonight he could get by without her.

Eyes sparkling in the moonlight, Tabby rolled over to Acheron’s side of the bed and ran delicate fingers hungrily across a hair-roughened thigh while her hair trailed over his pelvis.

Acheron closed his eyes in despair. He could always lie back and think of Greece. If he said no like a frightened virgin, he would probably upset her, and there was no point doing that, was there? Why risk upsetting her? She found his swelling shaft with her mouth, and his hips shifted upward in helpless encouragement. It crossed his mind that the divorce might upset her because she acted as if she was fond of him, looked at him as if he was special, dived on him in bed if he didn’t dive on her first, never missed a chance to put her arms round him...although strangely not this afternoon on the beach when he had put his arms round her in an effort to offer sympathy for what his thoughtless questions had made her cruelly relive. A particularly strong wave of pleasure blanked out the subsequent thought about why she might not have responded, yet another thought he didn’t want to have. All that sentimental stuff, he thought grimly—he never had been any good at that. He had probably been clumsy.

Afterwards, Acheron didn’t hold her the way he usually did, and Tabby felt cold inside and abandoned. She curled up on her side, hating him, loving him, wanting him, fretting and reckoning that love was the worst torture in existence for a woman. There was no point always wanting what he wouldn’t give her, didn’t even want to give her, she reflected painfully. Their divorce was not only written in the stars but also written into a pre-nuptial contract from which there would be no escape.

And maybe he still had feelings for Kasma, whom he would not discuss although she had on several occasions worked the conversation helpfully round in that direction to give him an easy opening. But trying to get Acheron to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about was like trying to get blood out of a stone. In her experience though, people only avoided topics that embarrassed or troubled them, so his failed relationship with Kasma must have gone deep indeed to leave behind such conspicuous and quite uncharacteristic sensitivity...

* * *

The following morning, Tabby drifted out of sleep to discover that Acheron had made an early departure and without leaving even a note. She spent a quiet day with Amber and it was the next day before the silence from Acheron began to niggle at her. He didn’t have to stay in touch when he was only planning to be away forty-eight hours, she conceded ruefully, and she was not so needy that she required him to check in with her every day. But as she lay in the bed that felt empty without him the day stretched before Tabby like a blank slate, shorn of anticipation, excitement and happiness.

Thoroughly exasperated with her mood, she went for a shower and got dressed in the bathroom, emerging to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the tall cheval mirror across the bedroom and wonder why she couldn’t see it properly. As she automatically moved closer to see what was amiss with the mirror she realised that someone had written something on it, and she frowned at it in bewilderment.

He’s using you! Tabby was gobsmacked. Why would anyone write that on their mirror for her to see? Clearly it was meant to be personal, and presumably Acheron was the ‘he’ being referred to. What on earth did it mean? Whatever, it really spooked her that someone had come into their bedroom while she was in the bathroom and left a message presumably intended to shock and insult her. After all, only someone in the house could have had access to their room and that knowledge made gooseflesh blossom on her exposed skin.

Without hesitation she lifted the house phone and asked to speak to Ash’s security chief, Dmitri. Almost before she had finished speaking, Dmitri joined her in the room to see the mirror for himself. If his forbidding expression was anything to go by, he took the matter very seriously. Dmitri, however, was a man of few words and she left him to it and went downstairs for breakfast.