Her heart gave a sickening lurch as she twisted round on the massive bed, sitting with her hands tightly wrapped around her updrawn knees to hold herself together, and trying to gather the coherent yet cutting words that would tell him in no uncertain terms she was aware of his sick plans, and that no way would she allow him to bring them to fruition. Even if she did come from a humble background—fit, as his ultra-snobbish aunt would have it, only to scrub his floors—it didn’t mean she didn’t know how to fight her corner, or that she wouldn’t!
But before she could formulate a single phrase, let alone anything approaching a sensible sentence from the mayhem going on inside her head, he took her hands, gently unknotting her savagely clenched fingers, and spoke with a warmth that momentarily drove everything out of her mind and left her gaping.
‘Between us we have created a precious new life. There will now be no question of a divorce. And, whatever your reasons for wanting one, I do not wish to hear them. I will not hear them,’ he stressed with fierce insistence. ‘As of the moment your pregnancy was confirmed past differences are forgotten. By both of us,’ he stressed again, this time with a blithe arrogance that literally took her breath away.
Just like that! Maddie exploded internally, her gaze narrowing to needle-points of glittering bright blue as she tried to read the golden eyes partially obscured by the thick dark sweep of his ebony lashes. She was as sure as she could be that divorce would be the first word to trip smartly off his tongue the moment his son or daughter was born!
Removing her hands from his gentle grasp, she sat on them, speedwell-blue eyes daring him to take them back. He didn’t, simply brushed the tumbling silk of caramel curls from her forehead with tender fingers and smiled that slow, devastating smile of his that always before had had the power to send delicious tingles up and down her spine. Now it just made her hate him!
‘Today we start our married life afresh, chrysi mou. For the sake of our child. And it will be good, I promise. You will want for nothing. Whatever you desire, you will have,’ he claimed with extravagant emphasis. ‘And now—’ he got to his feet ‘—I will make that belated lunch. You must eat for two now, and I am ravenous! But the food I prepared before will be unfit to eat. I left it on the balcony in my panic to find you.’
The light kiss he dropped on her cheek made her heart leap like a landed fish, and there was anger sparking in her eyes as she watched him walk to the door, turning, giving her that bone-melting smile as he invited, ‘Come down and join me.’
The silence that followed his exit was thick with her rage and pain as she vowed she would not be taken for a sucker. Not again!
He had got what he wanted.
Her pregnancy.
Of course he would sweet-talk her—he was very good at it! Brush aside her request for a divorce as the utterings of a retard. Use soft-soap by the bucketful to keep her with him until the child was born. He’d want to keep a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t take up sky-diving, get drunk every night, or in any way put his heir at risk!
Swinging her feet off the bed, she stood slowly, straightened her skirt and headed for the bathroom, sluicing her burning cheeks with cold water and dragging a brush through her tangled hair. Staring sightlessly at her reflection, she took several deep, calming breaths.
Dimitri thought he’d got her right where he wanted her. But she would prove otherwise. Always up front—what you saw was what you got—she would change the habits of a lifetime and learn to be as devious as he. She’d had a top-flight tutor in that regard, hadn’t she?
Useless to confront him now with what she knew. It was far too late. Pointless to repeat what Irini herself had told her, his aunt’s sly hints, or to remind him forcefully of the evidence of her own eyes and ears. The way when Irini was around, he’d always give her the undivided attention she routinely demanded—the way he’d dropped everything on that last morning, not hanging around even to share morning coffee with his wife as he always did. His avowal of love to the other woman would continually haunt her nightmares.
And other things—things that hadn’t troubled her one iota before—had fallen into place when she’d been forced to face the truth on that dreadful morning.
Their low-key wedding in the tiny village church, with only her immediate family invited to witness the event, for instance. As if he was ashamed of marrying so far beneath him and regarded the ceremony as a necessary evil, the tedious preliminary to a hopefully shortlived marriage that would provide him with what he really wanted.
Greeks made a great celebration of marriage, and in the normal course of events a man such as Dimitri Kouvaris would have wanted an almighty splash—with his aunt there, of course, and all the distant relatives Irini had spoken of, his large circle of friends and business colleagues, the press, all in admiring awestruck attendance.
Useless to confront him with what she knew—because with the heir he wanted so badly now on the horizon he would deny everything until his face turned blue. There was too much at stake for him to do anything else.
So for the next few weeks she would play it his way. Grit her teeth and fall in with the charade of starting their marriage afresh. There was too much at stake for her to do anything other. Oh, how she wished she’d come straight out with it on the night of that party—insisted that Irini repeated what she’d said in front of Dimitri. On the face of it Amanda’s advice had seemed sensible after all, she was married to a well-heeled Greek herself and would know how their minds ticked. But, oh, how she wished she hadn’t taken it!
She would have to find a way to warn her parents that their comfortable new lifestyle would soon be a thing of the past, give them time to make contingency plans. And plan her own bid for freedom—because no way was he going to take her baby from her.
If she couldn’t bear the thought of giving up the tiny life inside her now, she couldn’t begin to contemplate how very much worse it would be after the birth.
When they were back on the mainland she would be able to work on what she had to do. Transfer some of what she had always considered to be the over-the-top personal allowance he’d made her from Greece into her still open but paltry account back in England for starters.
Not that she wanted anything from him for herself. She definitely didn’t, and the thought of actually doing it turned her stomach, but for her baby’s sake she had to have some funds behind her. Enough to live frugally until the birth, until she could rebuild her career and work to keep them both.
And back in England she wouldn’t make the unthinking mistake she’d made before. She wouldn’t go near her family, but hide somewhere he’d never find her.
In the meantime she would bide her time, let him think she was willing to make a fresh start. It was the only way she could ensure that he didn’t suspect what she was planning. Besides, pulling the wool over his eyes while playing him at his own game was one way of paying him back for what he had done. Taken her heart and broken it.
She left the room and went down to find him, her head high, the welcome upsurge of renewed self-confidence momentarily smothering the pain of what was happening. It lasted until she tracked him down, hearing his voice, the tone low and warmly intimate, issuing from what turned out to be the huge airy kitchen. That upsurge of self-confidence drained away as he abruptly ended a call as soon as she entered the room, closing down his mobile and slipping it into his back pocket.
‘Maddie—’
‘Dimitri—’ How she kept her voice cool, her smile pleasant, she would never know. He looked—what? Guilty? Glittering golden eyes, a faint band of colour across those sculpted cheekbones.
‘You look so much better. Pregnancy suits you!’
‘Does it? That’s nice.’ She wandered further into the room. He’d been working at the huge central table,