Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks: Passion and Promises: The Greek's Marriage Bargain / A Royal World Apart / The Theotokis Inheritance - Susanne James - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

‘LEX.’

‘Mmm?’

‘Wake up.’

Lexi stirred and stretched. She didn’t want to wake up. She had been in the middle of a dream—the kind you never wanted to end. A beachy type of dream with warm sand and the sound of the waves swishing against the shore. And there had been a man beside her. A man holding her tightly and kissing her and melting away all the cold sadness which was locked away inside her.

Her eyes fluttered open to find Xenon bending over her, and as his silhouette imprinted itself fuzzily in her line of vision she felt a sinking feeling of resignation. Because he was the man. Of course he was. Even her dreams were dominated by him.

Still a little groggy, she sat up and groped for her glasses and the room shifted into sharp focus as she put them on. She was in the rose room—a sumptuous suite of soft petal shades, with tall windows which overlooked the park. She had never actually slept here before, but it was still filled with memories she’d rather forget. Because she’d made love with her husband on this canopied bed. He’d straddled her over there, on that velvet chair. They’d done it on the carpet, too. In fact, they’d made love in pretty much every room in the house.

And they’d very nearly done it again.

She remembered that brief, erotic encounter on the sofa earlier and she felt the pounding of her heart; the heated rush of blood to her face as she recalled the intimate touch of his hands on her after so long without it. She shouldn’t have let it get that far and she shouldn’t have shown him how much she still wanted him. But how could she fail to want him when he was so damned gorgeous? When, even now, all she could think about was all the pleasure he had given her in the past and the way she used to choke out his name with disbelieving joy. She needed to remember the pain instead. To protect herself with the memory of how much he had hurt her.

She pushed her mussed hair back from her face and sat up, trying not to focus on the powerful thrust of his thighs, which were distractingly close. ‘What time is it?’

‘Seven o’clock. You’ve been asleep for a while.’ He studied her rumpled appearance. ‘Do you want to get changed for dinner?’

Of course she did, even though the fact that he had been the one to suggest it made her want to rebel. He’d grown up in the kind of world where even families changed for dinner and ate formally. The first time she’d met his mother she’d mistakenly thought that, because they were all on a relaxed Greek island, it might be okay for her to wear a denim skirt and a T-shirt to dinner. Big mistake. Her mother-in-law had been decked in silk and pearls, her disapproval freezing the warm Greek air as she had studied the laid-back appearance of her new daughter-in-law.

Lexi glared at him, realising that she was going to be subjected to that level of disapproval all over again. His mother had been frosty enough towards her when they’d been newly-weds. What was her attitude likely to be towards a wife who had left her precious son? ‘I’d like to know what the plan is,’ she said. ‘When are we going to Rhodes?’

‘Eager to get there, are you, Lex?’ His blue eyes mocked her.

‘Not really. But the sooner it’s done, then the sooner I can erase this whole ghastly incident from my mind.’ She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wondering if her words carried the lack of conviction she felt inside. Walking over to the dressing table, she picked up a hairbrush. ‘I can’t believe I’m back in this damned house,’ she muttered as she stared at her pinched reflection in the mirror.

‘Can’t you?’ Xenon watched as she began to pull a brush through the tumble of her hair and suddenly he realised he had missed this indefinable intimacy of married life. Watching his wife get dressed—an experience almost as erotic as seeing the whole process later completed in reverse.

He’d missed the shared look which could convey the meaning of an entire sentence in a single glance. He had missed that easy shorthand more than he’d ever imagined. Perhaps that was why his next words came out in a rush, for he had not planned to say them. ‘I thought you might consider giving our marriage another go. Didn’t you ever think you might do that, Lex?’

Lexi’s hand stilled, mid-stroke. It was an unusually candid question and one she was tempted to brush off with a glib response. But something in the brilliance of his reflected blue gaze melted away her intention. She realised that she mustn’t allow pride to skew her judgement. Just because their marriage hadn’t worked out, didn’t mean that she had to devalue it completely, did it? Because once she had loved him. She had loved him so much that she’d walked around with the biggest, stupidest smile on her face. She had felt dizzy with it, as if she’d been struck down by a mystery malady for which there was no known cure.

But it was hard to see things in a balanced way once you started looking at them from a distance. She’d got out of the habit of remembering the good times and that had been intentional. You could never move on if you allowed yourself to wallow in something which you were never going to have again.

‘No, I didn’t think about that,’ she said. ‘Even though I did find life hard without you. For quite a long time, actually. You’re a big enough personality for the world to feel quite empty without you—and it did. But our marriage wasn’t working, Xenon. You know it wasn’t.’

He stared at her and his next words seemed to come from some dark and unknown place deep inside him. ‘Because of the baby.’ There. He’d said it. He’d confronted something which had been too unbearable to confront at the time. Two long years had passed since it had happened and he had thought that time would have blunted the impact—but he was unprepared for the wave of pain which hit him with the force of a tsunami.

Lexi saw him flinch and she felt distress clawing away inside her as the hairbrush slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered onto the dressing table. That old and familiar feeling of powerlessness swept over her and became all tangled up with her grief. She still felt guilty for the pain she had caused him by her inability to carry a child to term.

Thanks to her chronic insecurity and Xenon’s demanding work schedule, communication between them had broken down. The first miscarriage had left an emptiness deep inside her and the second seemed to have brought everything to a head. She would never forget the bleakness etched on his face when he’d finally arrived at the hospital, once it was all over. The way he’d found it difficult to look her in the eye as he’d sat stiff and unmoving beside her bed.

But why hurt him more than he was already hurting by reminding him of that bitter time? It wouldn’t change anything, would it?

Interlocking her fingers, she stared down at them and thought about all the games of cat’s cradle she would never play with her child. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Why not?’ He realised that his voice was shaking. ‘Lex, look at me. Please.’

She lifted her head and it was almost unbearable to have to meet that bleak gaze of his. Why was he doing this now? Now when it was much too late. It was like picking at a scar and making the cut so deep that it would never heal. And how could she possibly heal if she started to fool herself that he wanted to understand? Because she knew better than anyone that Xenon didn’t do understanding.

‘Because it’s too late,’ she said, her fingers gripping at the shiny surface of the dressing table, as if she needed that small piece of leverage to prevent herself from sliding to the floor.

Stubbornly he shook his head as he stared at her, with a sense of determination he rarely felt outside the boardroom. After two years of having this fester away inside him like something dark and unmentionable, didn’t it come as something of a relief to finally expunge it? ‘Don’t you think it’s time we said all this? Stuff we couldn’t bear to say at the time? Because you couldn’t bear me to touch you after the second miscarriage, could you, Lex? You couldn’t bear to let me near you.’

She got up from the dressing table and walked over to the window, wanting to put distance between them. Wanting to stop the pain which was twisting remorselessly inside her. She stared out as the first shadows of the evening began to deepen the summer night and they seemed to echo the darkness in her heart. ‘Because I saw that look in your eyes!’

‘What look?’

‘What look? What look? You know damned well what look! The look that said I’d failed you—only this time I’d done it in spectacular style. I mean, I was already aware of the shortfall in my attempts to be the perfect wife, but this was one thing I really couldn’t afford to get wrong, wasn’t it?’ She sucked in a ragged breath. ‘And I did. You’d married me essentially to be your brood mare and you realised too late that you’d chosen a weak and flighty filly who was never going to meet your requirements.’

‘Will you stop putting words in my mouth?’

She shook her head, resting her forehead against the coolness of the glass as her breath made it grow misty. ‘Don’t tell me that you haven’t thought all these things, Xenon, because I won’t believe you. Maybe in a way I don’t blame you. I can even understand why you would think that.’

‘Can you?’ he questioned. ‘You’ve added mind-reading to your sizeable list of accomplishments, have you?’

‘Think about it,’ she said, ignoring his sarcasm. ‘You’ve devoted your entire adult life to growing the Kanellis corporation. And you need a son and heir to take over from you, as once you took over from your father and he from his father before him. You’ve always put having a family of your own at the top of your list of requirements.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We both know that.’

Her words were met with silence. She hadn’t really expected a denial, but the lack of one hurt her more than she had expected. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to cry. But she never cried in front of anyone, because tears got you nowhere and they made you look weak. They took you back to that scary place—the one which made you look into the future, and think about everything you were missing.

Outside the window the shadows in the park were lengthening. She saw a street-light flicker on, and then another. A young couple, arm in arm and laughing, walked past. It was as if the world were conspiring to remind her of everything she no longer had. It could be a cruel old world sometimes.

But she was doing this for Jason—that was the thought she needed to hang onto. She was giving her little brother a last chance to get his mixed-up life back on track. And if she and Xenon could manage to close the door on some of their issues, then wouldn’t that be an added bonus? They might never become one of those divorced couples who were amicable enough to have dinner together—but mightn’t they aim for some kind of civilised parting which didn’t resemble a dark night of the soul?

Just so long as she realised that it wasn’t going anywhere.

‘I think you need dinner,’ he said, his voice breaking into her thoughts.

She turned around to find him watching her closely. Too closely. ‘I don’t know that I’m very hungry.’

‘Oh, no.’ His voice was grim. ‘I’m not having you fainting on me when we fly to Rhodes tomorrow. You are going to eat, Lex—even if I have to find a spoon and feed you myself.’

She wanted to fight him but she knew he was right. Hunger made your thinking go haywire and that was the last thing she needed. She sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll eat. But I don’t want to go and sit in some fancy restaurant. I can’t face the thought of dressing up and having to sit with other people watching us. Or rather, watching you.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t tend to attract unwanted attention these days.’

He glanced at her hair with curious eyes. ‘Is that why you lost the red?’

‘Partly. And I could no longer face going to the hairdressers’ every six weeks to have my roots touched up.’

‘That often?’

She smiled. ‘Didn’t you realise? That kind of glossy hair doesn’t just happen by magic, no matter what the ads might promise.’

‘And the glasses? Do you wear them because they make you look so different and reduce your chances of being recognised?’

‘Actually, no. I wear them because they’re good for all the detailed work I do with my jewellery design.’ She found herself wondering whether he liked them or not, but Xenon’s opinion of her trendy spectacles didn’t count. She liked them and that was what mattered. She didn’t add that she felt safer behind them. That their slightly geeky look fitted her new image of herself. ‘And I was always losing my contact lenses.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said. ‘I seemed to spend half my time on my hands and knees looking for the damned things.’ He gave a lazy smile. ‘But I rather enjoyed being on the floor with you for what you might call legitimate purposes.’

Their eyes met.

‘Xenon, don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t keep dredging up memories.’ Especially not happy ones. ‘There’s no point.’

‘Okay.’ He lifted his hands in mock-surrender. ‘The past is off-limits. Just come downstairs when you’re ready and I’ll fix dinner.’

‘You?’ Lexi blinked. ‘Did I hear that correctly? Xenon Kanellis fixing dinner? Why, you wouldn’t know where to start unless it involved speed-dialling the nearest Michelin-starred restaurant.’

‘Want to bet?’

‘I think I’ll leave the betting to my brother.’ She pulled a face. ‘Or hopefully not. So what’s on the menu? A take-out from the local deli?’

‘Wait and see,’ he responded coolly and walked out.

Lexi didn’t move for a moment or two after the door had closed behind him. She wanted to go back over everything he’d said, and to replay it in her mind like a teenager with her first crush.

He’d thought she might want to give their marriage another go?

But—as she’d said—there was absolutely no point dredging up memories and so she went into the bathroom, determined to wash all thoughts of him away.

Afterwards she put on a pair of jeans and gave her reflection a satisfied nod. Xenon wasn’t a big fan of jeans because he thought it was a crime for a woman to cover up her legs. But if her legs were covered then he wouldn’t look at them in the way she was discovering she still liked. And just to really slam the message home, she pulled on a baggy black T-shirt, with a giant pink sequinned lollipop on the front.

He had laid the table in the garden and lit lots of little tea-lights and she found that as astonishing as anything else which had happened. Xenon managing to put a match to tea-lights? Whatever next? Xenon discovering that food came from shops, and that you actually had to go and buy it?

But she was somewhat relieved to discover that the familiar macho Xenon was never too far from the surface because when she walked into the garden, he looked up and scowled.

‘What’s that hideous thing you’re wearing?’

She affected innocence as she ran a reflective forefinger over the garish pink sequins. ‘This? It’s one of a batch from our last tour, which never got sold. Extra-extra-large. If you’re interested I can always have one couriered to you. I’ve got masses of them back at the cottage.’

He gave a flicker of a smile as he poured a glass of wine and handed it to her. ‘Tempting, but I’ll pass. Now, eat.’

She sat down and did as he suggested and was soon tucking into pasta with a simple sauce, studded with anchovies and olives. Afterwards there were iced grapes and squares of dark chocolate, accompanied by the thick, sweet coffee he loved so much. In the flickering light, she ate with an appetite which seemed sharpened, and as the stars began to prick the velvet sky she felt better.

By tacit agreement, they kept to neutral topics, with Xenon recounting some of the exploits of his twin cousins in New York, who Lexi had always liked. He told her that there had been talk of doing a sequel to My Crazy Greek Father but that he had ruled it out, because he couldn’t face going back to Hollywood for any sustained length of time. Lexi found herself wishing that the dinner could continue, like one of those meals you found in fairy tales, where the table was lavishly replenished each day. Because around that table it was easy to forget about the world which existed outside that garden.

But the world did exist and it came with complications. Big complications, in their case. She pushed away her empty coffee cup and looked at him.

‘What have you told your mother?’

He shrugged. ‘That you’re coming to the christening with me and are eager to see my grandmother again. Other than that, I haven’t elaborated.’

She folded her napkin and put it on the table. ‘And what did she say?’

For a moment Xenon was silent as he poured himself another cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly, his mother’s response to his news had been muted. She had never wanted him to marry this particular Englishwoman when there had been so many suitable Greek girls eager to take on that privileged role. He suspected she still lived in hope that it might one day still happen, for she did not share his grandmother’s sentimental views on divorce. But he had told her that Lexi’s visit was non-negotiable and had demanded that she show his estranged wife courtesy and consideration, a demand which had left his mother looking at him thoughtfully before she had agreed.

‘She accepted it,’ he said.

‘Just like that?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘My mother wouldn’t dream of objecting to the way I live my life. Not any more.’

‘Or maybe she just wouldn’t dream of saying it out loud.’

‘Most people have thoughts they wouldn’t want to say out loud, Lex. I’m having a few of my own at the moment.’

She stood up. ‘I think that’s my cue for bed.’

‘Wise decision.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘If a rather disappointing one as far as I’m concerned.’

Lexi looked at his ruggedly handsome face and thought how easy it would be if they’d only just met. If she could just give in to the demands of her body. Just walk right over there and let him take her in his arms and to hell with the consequences.

But she couldn’t. There was a reason why she still sometimes woke in the middle of the night with her heart pounding with fear and a sinking feeling of realisation twisting at her gut.

It was the same reason why she could never give their marriage another go.