Of course he wished his cousin well, but Cristos was haunted by memories of his own wedding five years ago in a register office in the medieval city of Durham in the north of England. He had looked down at Hayley, his bride, with pride and adoration and a wondering disbelief that such an amazing woman had agreed to share her life with him. In return, her eyes had shone with love and trust as she’d offered him both her body and, more importantly, her heart. A priceless gift. One that had been wrenched away from him.
Remorse tore through him like a physical pain. He had not seen his wife in more than two years. Two years and five months to be precise. He could probably estimate the time in hours, minutes even. For every second of that separation he had torn himself apart with self-recrimination and guilt. Now, he didn’t even know where Hayley lived, what she was doing. He had hurt her by not being there when she’d needed him. But she hadn’t given him a chance to make it up to her. With a ruthlessness he had not believed his sweet, gentle wife had possessed, she had left him and completely deleted him from her life.
As his cousin Alex and his wife Dell kissed to the sound of exuberant cheering, Cristos closed his eyes as he remembered the joy of kissing Hayley when the celebrant had told him he could claim his bride. They had been as happy as these two. Excited about the prospect of a lifetime together. Deliriously in love. Confident that all they’d needed was each other when the world had seemed against them.
‘We were once just like them.’ The words were no more than a broken murmur, as light and insubstantial as the breeze playing with the branches of the tree above him.
Cristos’s eyes flew open in shock at the wistful tones of a once familiar voice. Hayley. From somewhere below his shoulder, where she’d used to fit so neatly, he seemed to breathe in the elusive hint of her scent. Crazed by regret, he must be conjuring up a ghost from his past.
He turned his head. His heart jolted so hard against his ribs he gasped. She stood there beside him, looking straight ahead towards the church, not up at him, as if she couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. His wife.
He put out his hand to touch her, to make sure he was not hallucinating. Her cheek was soft and cool and very, very real. ‘It’s you, koukla mou,’ he said, his voice hoarse. He had not used that term of endearment for years—it belonged to her and her only.
Immediately he regretted his words. Drew back his hand. He had loved her unconditionally but she had thrown that love back at him. Yes, he had made mistakes he deeply regretted. But she had not given him the chance to remedy them. She had hurt him. Humiliated him. Put him through hell as he’d searched Europe for her. But she hadn’t wanted to be found.
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘I’m not your little doll or your gorgeous girl or whatever that word translates to. Not any more.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ he said tersely.
Her gaze flickered away from him and she bit her lower lip with her front teeth as she always did when she was nervous. Or dreading something. What was she doing here?
He stared at her, still scarcely able to believe she was real. Hungry, in spite of himself, for every detail of her appearance. She was wrapped against the late morning February chill in slim trousers and an elegant pale blue coat he had once bought for her from a designer in Milan. The coat, belted around her narrow waist, was the same but he was shocked to see Hayley was not. The image of her he had for so long held in his mind shimmered around the edges and reformed into a different version of his wife.
Her beautiful blonde hair that had tumbled around her shoulders in lush waves was gone, shorn into an abbreviated pixie cut. Like a boy was his first dismayed thought. He had loved her long hair, loved running his hands through it, tugging it back to tilt her head up for his kiss. But a deeper inspection made him appreciate how intensely feminine the new style was, feathered around her face, clinging to the slender column of her neck. Her features seemed to come into sharper focus, her cheekbones appeared more sculpted, her chin more determined. Her youthful English rose prettiness that had so attracted him had, at twenty-seven, bloomed into an even more enticing beauty.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here after all this time?’
She met his gaze. ‘To see you. What else?’
Hope that she might be there to—at last—explain why she had abandoned their marriage roared to life only to be beaten back down by the cool indifference of her blue eyes, the tight set of her mouth. He wanted to demand that she explain herself. She was still his legal wife. But there was a barely restrained skittishness about her that made him hold back. He couldn’t risk her running away from him again. He wanted answers.
She looked over to the gathering outside the church and then back to him. ‘I didn’t know your entire family would be here or I certainly wouldn’t have come to this island,’ she said.
There was something different about her voice. A trace of some kind of accent blurring the precise Englishness of her words. He was fluent in English and Italian, with passable French and Spanish, but he couldn’t place it. Where had she been?
‘This is a private function.’
‘I would never have been on the guest list,’ she said, a bitter undertone to her voice.
He was unable to refute the truth of her words. His family—in particular the grandmother who had raised him since he was fourteen—had disapproved of his marriage to Hayley and made no secret of it. For Yia-yia Penelope their union had been too rushed, too impulsive, too reminiscent of his own parents’ hasty marriage that had brought the family so much grief.
‘I want to know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘The last time we met you told me you hated me. And then nothing.’
He didn’t hate her, though there had been moments when he had wanted to. Since that day in the hospital in Milan when she had turned away from him, her face as pale as the hospital pillow, his emotions had gone from guilt for his neglect, to terror for her safety, through smouldering anger that she had thought so little of their marriage—of him—to wipe him without explanation from her life. Finally his anger had mellowed to a determined indifference.
Hayley made no reply. She placed great store on honesty. A shudder of foreboding made Cristos think her unexpected visit was not something he should be glad about.
‘How did you get here?’ Kosmimo was only accessible by boat. Or the helicopters of the wealthy guests who frequented the luxury retreat spa his hotelier cousin Alex had established on the island.
‘I’d heard you were back in Nidri, staying with your grandparents.’ His grandparents ran a tourist villa complex in the port town on the nearby island of Lefkada. ‘Their maid told me you were here. I hired a man and his boat to bring me over.’
There’d been storms and the water was choppy. ‘What man?’ he said too quickly, too possessively. He wouldn’t trust his wife to just anyone on these waters. Mentally he slammed a fist against his forehead. She was no longer his concern. Who knew what risks she’d taken in the last two years and five months without him to look out for her? More to the point, why should he care?
Her eyes narrowed at his tone. But she named a local boatman he knew well. ‘Good choice,’ he said.
Why had he doubted her ability to choose a safe boat ride? Hayley had always been practical, seeing a problem and finding a solution. Then she’d seen him as a problem and the solution as leaving him.
He looked over her shoulder, aware they had become the target of curious glances. Most of the people gathered here for the ceremony had never met Hayley. But he sensed their interest like a current buzzing through the congregation. Those in ignorance would very soon be made aware that this lovely blonde woman was Cristos’s estranged wife. The one who had