Regretfully, Tabby had all the flexibility of a steel girder: he could do the rules or he could do cold showers. There would be no halfway measures, no get-out clause with her. It would be all or nothing and he knew he couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk that line and change himself to suit when he knew there was no future in it. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Yet right at that precise moment Tabby’s rules had more pulling power than a ten-ton truck.
* * *
That evening, Tabby selected a drop-dead gorgeous blue dress from the closet. Over the past week she had worn a different outfit every day, reasoning that the clothes were there and there was little point wasting them. In any case it would be downright silly to choose to overheat in the jeans and tops that were virtually all she had left of her own clothes since her life first began to unravel after she had lost her own home. Back then she had had to surrender an awful lot of her possessions, whittling her collection of clothing and objects down until she retained only what mattered most and what she could carry.
She tossed the dress on the bed, put on her make-up and brushed her hair, not that how she looked mattered when Acheron was treating her as though she were someone’s maiden aunt. But then Acheron wasn’t the reason why she took the trouble to dress up, she reminded herself staunchly. She did it for her own self-esteem and the knowledge that behaving, at least on the outside, like a rich honeymoon bride was part of her role. Clothed, she eased her feet into perilously high heels and surveyed herself critically in the mirror, mouth momentarily drooping while she wished she were taller, curvier and more striking in appearance...like Kasma? The Kasma whom Acheron never, ever mentioned? But then what business was Kasma of hers? The fiery fury, ignited only a week before by the discovery that Acheron would benefit as much as she did from their marriage, had drained away. After all, she had married Acheron for only one reason: to become Amber’s adoptive mother, and all she needed to focus on now was getting through their little charade of a marriage as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Worrying about anything else, wanting anything else was unnecessarily stressful and stupid.
Acheron was crossing the hall when Tabby reached the head of the marble staircase. Obeying instinct, she threw her head back and straightened her spine even as she felt perspiration break out across her skin. There he was, sleek, outrageously good-looking and sophisticated even when clad in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Her heart went bumpety-bumpety-bump like a clock wound up too tight, and she gripped the bannister with an agitated hand to start down the stairs. Unfortunately for her, her leading foot went down, however, not onto a step but disorientatingly into mid-air and she tipped forward with a shocked cry of fright, her hand slipping its light hold on the stair rail, her whole body twisting as she tried to halt her fall so that her hip struck the edge of a hard marble step and her ankle was turned beneath her.
‘I’ve got you!’ Acheron bit out as the world steadied again.
Mercifully Tabby registered that she was no longer falling but that pain was biting all the way from her hip down her leg...no, not her leg, her ankle. She adjusted as Acheron swept her up into his arms with too much enthusiasm and her leg swung none too gently and she couldn’t bite back the cry of pain that was wrenched from her throat. ‘My ankle...’
‘Thee mou...you could’ve been killed falling on these stairs!’ Acheron breathed with a rawness that took her aback, striding back down into the hall with his arms tautly linked round her slight body. He called out in Greek until one of his security staff came running and then he rapped out instructions.
Against her cheek she could feel the still-accelerated pounding of his heart and she wasn’t surprised that he was still high on adrenalin because he must have moved faster than the speed of light to intercept her fall. She felt quite queasy at the realisation that but for his timely intervention she might have fallen all the way down the marble staircase and broken her neck or at the very least a limb or two. Relief that she had only wrenched her ankle and bruised herself filtered slowly through her. ‘I’m OK... Lucky you caught me in time.’
Acheron laid her down with exaggerated care on a sofa and squatted athletically down to her level. ‘Did you feel anyone push you?’ he asked, brilliant dark heavily fringed eyes locked to her face.
She was astounded at the tenor of that question; her violet eyes rounded. ‘Why would anyone push me down the stairs?’ she asked weakly. ‘I lost my balance and tripped.’
Acheron frowned. ‘Are you certain? I thought I saw someone pass by you on the landing just before you fell.’
‘I didn’t see or hear anyone.’ Her brows pleated and her lashes screened her eyes, the heat of embarrassment washing away her pallor because she knew exactly why she had tripped but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged the confession from her. ‘Yes, of course I’m certain.’
If she hadn’t been so busy admiring Acheron and trying to pose like a silly teenager to look her very best for his benefit, she would never have missed her step, Tabby was reflecting in deep, squirming chagrin.
‘I’m afraid I have to move you again...I’ll try not to hurt you,’ Acheron told her, sliding his hands beneath her prone length. ‘But I have to get you into a car to get you to a doctor.’
‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t need a doctor!’ Tabby exclaimed in growing embarrassment.
But over the next couple of hours while she was subjected to every possible medical examination at the nearest hospital, she might as well have been talking to a wall because Acheron refused to listen to a word she said. Furthermore, far from behaving like the cool, reserved male she was accustomed to dealing with, Acheron was clearly all wound up although why he was, she had no idea. He paced the floor outside her examination cubicle, talked to her through the curtain to check she was all right and not in too much discomfort, insisted on an X-ray being done while virtually ignoring the doctor who assured him that she was suffering from nothing more serious than some nasty bruising and a sprained ankle. Even more embarrassing, his security team spread out round them on full systems alert as if awaiting an imminent rocket attack on the casualty department.
‘Ah...very much the adoring and anxious husband,’ the middle-aged doctor chuckled in his ignorance.
If only the man knew how wrong he was, Tabby thought unhappily, feeling like a wretched nuisance and a malingerer taking up valuable medical attention when really there was nothing very much amiss with her.
* * *
If Tabby had died, it would have been his fault. Acheron brooded on that thought darkly, rage and guilt slivering through him in sickening waves and like nothing he had ever felt before. But then he had never been responsible for another life before and, though he would have liked to have thought otherwise, he believed that his wife was very much his responsibility. Naturally he was appalled by the suspicion that someone who worked for him might have attempted to hurt his wife. Having seen the rude message left on her bedroom mirror, he was unimpressed by her conviction that she had simply had an accident. In the split second it had taken for Tabby to lose her balance and topple she might not even have noticed that someone had lightly pushed her or tripped her up.
He was even more frustrated that his security staff had failed to come up with anything suspicious on any member of the villa staff. Acheron’s mouth twisted. Unfortunately the Tuscan villa had rarely been used, hence the renovation the previous year and the hire of employees who were a new and unknown quantity and whose dependability would only be confirmed by the test of time. His lustrous eyes hardened and his stubborn mouth compressed into a tough line of determination. Tabby’s safety was paramount and as he was very reluctant to frighten her with his suspicions. The wisest strategy would be to immediately vacate the villa and seek a more secure setting. That decision reached, Acheron gave the order, refusing to back down even when the chief of his security pointed out that such a move would entail rousing the baby from her bed as well. Regardless of the drawbacks of his plan, Acheron could hardly wait to get Tabby and