Her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She dragged her eyes away from him—but not before they’d taken in the sharply tailored dark business suit in some expensive fabric that made such a big statement about his wealth and how comfortable he was with the stunning sophistication with which he wore it. Even the way his pale blue shirt collar sat so smoothly around his brown throat made its own statement about an exclusivity he had been gifted with from birth. Seeing it all set Louisa reeling because—how was it that she hadn’t noticed this staggeringly elegant man developing inside him while they’d still been together as man and wife?
‘How can you even be considering deserting our son?’ he rasped at her.
Having to force herself to concentrate on what he’d just said to her, Louisa tugged some air into her lungs. ‘Haven’t you just told me that he isn’t here?’ she reminded him. ‘And you’re right,’ she added when his dark eyes flicked like hard black diamonds and his tense mouth parted to say something. ‘Nikos left here a long time ago. Travelling all the way out here once a year to visit what is really only a shrine to him is a pretty meaningless exercise when I know exactly where I can find him when I need him.'
‘Look at me when you say that,’ Andreas responded tautly. ‘Look into my face and tell me again that this place, this island, that small grave over there no longer mean a thing to you!'
The force of his anger widened her eyes on him. ‘That was not what I said,’ she denied. ‘And why are you so angry with me?’ she demanded. ‘Until a few days ago you were not even aware that I came here at all!'
His body tensed inside all of that elegant dark suiting. ‘That has nothing to do with it.'
‘Well, thanks,’ Louisa murmured bitterly.
Something ripped across his hard features. ‘I mean that we are not discussing my failings here, we—'
‘So you do know you have them.’
He twisted away from her but even the way he did that was smoothly controlled and elegantly graceful instead of packed full with those old unfettered passions belonging to the younger man she had once known—the man she had met on a hill the other night!
‘As soon as you could after we buried Nikos you walked away from me,’ she reminded him bleakly.
The chiselled edge of his jaw flexed. ‘There were too many people around. I—needed to be alone.'
‘And I didn’t?’
‘I am a man. It’s OK for a woman to break down and weep in front of others but a man must remain strong and supportive.'
Louisa uttered a thick laugh. ‘Well, you certainly failed there, Andreas.'
His hands came out of his pockets and bunched into fists and she knew they did. She’d hit a nerve and the sadness of it all was that she just did not care. He’d hurt her badly when he’d walked away from her that day and even now, five years on, she still found it impossible to forgive him for doing that.
They’d had a fight via the telephone the day that Nikos had taken his fatal fall. Andreas had been telling her that he had to stay in Athens to attend an important board meeting. He’d insisted that he had no choice. She’d insisted that everyone had choices and that it was his choice to break his promise to spend the day on the beach with his son! Then she’d slammed down the phone and made her choice to take Nikos to the beach by herself.
As she lowered her head, her eyes turned dark like a bottomless ocean as she relived the moment that Nikos had broken free of her grasp and begun to run down the dusty track towards a herd of goats. She could still hear the way she had called out to him, ‘Nikos, take care!’ and still see the way one of the goats leapt from the embankment to land directly in his path.
‘You left because you blamed me for what happened,’ she whispered.
He spun around, a shaft of hard shock on his face. ‘I did not!'
Still, Louisa sent him a look of bleak disbelief. Why wouldn’t he blame her when she blamed herself?
‘I did not blame you.’ He grabbed her arm when she went to spin away from him. ‘It was an accident. Apportioning blame to such a tragedy is a weak fool’s way of dealing with it.'
Which was all very wise and grown-up, Louisa thought with a rueful twist of her mouth, but five years ago they had been neither wise nor grown-up, had they?
‘Where did you go when you left here?’ she questioned after yet another taut moment scrambled between them.
Letting go of her arm, he released a sigh. ‘I flew to the apartment in Athens and just stayed there. By the time I returned here to the island you had already left with your family.'
‘Two weeks later, Andreas,’ Louisa provided. ‘I waited two weeks for you to come back.'
His dark eyes were steady on her, not a hint of apology in them. ‘And you, agape mou, gave me only two weeks to come to my senses before deciding to go …'
It was the cool counter-challenge, Louisa recognised. It was the new tougher male with compromise spread very thin. She could have said more. She could have reminded him how he had not called her once while she’d been in England to ask how she was coping. She could even explain how she’d come back to the island six miserable weeks later, only to discover that he was not here. Or she could tell him how she’d flown to Athens and gone to their apartment, witnessed for herself what he had been doing to blot her out of his life.
But why bother when all of that was in the past and the consensus of opinion was that it was time to let the past go? It was over between them. It had been over for the last five years, which only made the lusty romp on the hill all the more shameful and what might come from it something she could repent at her leisure once she got back home.
Taking a blind glance at her watch, ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Jamie in ten minutes,’ she lied and walked away from him.
CHAPTER SIX
ANDREAS watched her go with his eyes narrowed and his chest feeling as if it was about to explode.
Blame her? He was still struggling to believe she had actually said that. How could she possibly think that he would blame her for anything when it had to be patently obvious that the only person he’d ever blamed for what had happened was himself?
Swinging away, he glared at the ocean. He should have been there. He should have been keeping his promise to his wife and his son instead of playing the big tycoon who found the alluring drug of power more important to him than them.
Well, he’d learnt that lesson in life the hardest way. She had accepted none of his calls to her parents’ house while she’d been in England. She’d switched off her mobile phone. When he’d flown to London to see her he’d been stonewalled by her cold-faced parents telling him that their daughter did not want to see him or speak to him. After that kick in the gut he’d flown back to Athens and spent the next few weeks stone-cold drunk.
Turning round, he saw she was in the process of squatting down and kissing her fingertips before gently pressing them to their son’s bright white marble headstone. His throat tightened, a whole gamut of aches raking through him as he watched her remain there like that with the hot sun beating down on her golden head and her fingers lingering where she had placed them.
So what next? he mused grimly. Where did the two of them go from here?
Not where that cold little look she’d sent him before she walked away said they were going anyway, he determined.