“What nonsense? I don’t know what you’re talk—”
“You damn well do know what we’re talking about! It’s two months now, two whole months since I got that insane call from you, telling me you’d married that—that Greek super-stud and that you’d found him in the arms of his bubble-brained mistress a week later, and in all that time, I’m not supposed to ask any questions or so much as mention his name.” Annie folded her arms and lifted her chin. “That is a load of crap, and you know it.”
“It isn’t.” Laurel shut off the water and folded her arms, too. “There’s nothing to talk about, Annie.”
“Nothing to talk about.” Annie snorted. “You got yourself knocked up and let the guy who did it strong-arm you into marrying him!”
Laurel stiffened. “Must you say it like that?”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
After a minute, Laurel nodded. “I guess it is. God, I almost wish I’d never gone to Dawn’s wedding!”
Susie sighed dramatically. “That must have been some wedding.” Annie and Laurel spun toward her and she flushed. “Speaking metaphorically, I mean. Hey, come on, guys, don’t look at me that way. It must have been one heck of a day. Annie’s ex, coming on to her...”
“For all the good it’s going to do him,” Annie said coldly.
“And didn’t you say that friend of yours, Bethany, met some guy there and ended up having a mad affair?”
“Her name’s Stephanie, and at the risk of sounding cynical, I don’t think very much of mad affairs, not anymore.” Annie jerked her chin toward Laurel. “Just look where it got my sister.”
“I know.” Susie shook her head. “And Damian seemed so perfect. Handsome, rich—”
“Are you two all done discussing me?” Laurel asked. “Because if you aren’t, you’ll have to continue this conversation elsewhere. I told you, I will not talk about Damian Skouras. That chapter’s over and done with.”
“Not quite,” Annie said, and looked at Laurel’s gently rounded belly.
Laurel flushed. “Very amusing.”
“Can we at least talk about how you’re going to raise this baby all by yourself?”
“I’ll manage.”
“There are financial implications, dammit. You said yourself you’re at the end of your career.”
“Thank you for reminding me.”
“Laurel, sweetie—”
“Don’t ‘Laurel sweetie’ me. I am a grown woman, and I made a lot of money over the years. Trust me, Annie, I saved quite a bit of it.”
“Yes, but children cost. You don’t realize—”
“Dammit,” Laurel said fiercely, “now you sound just like him!”
“Who?”
“Damian, that’s who. Well, you sound like his attorney, anyway. ‘Raising a child is an expensive proposition,’ she said in a voice that mimicked the rounded tones of John Hastings. ”‘Mr. Skouras is fully prepared to support his child property.“’
Susie and Annie exchanged looks. “You never told me that,” Susie said.
“Me, neither,” Annie added.
Laurel glared at the two women. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m not about to take a penny from that bastard.”
“Yes, but I thought... I mean, I just figured...” Susie cleared her throat. “Not that being willing to support his kid makes me change what I think of the man. Running off that way, going back to his mistress after a week of marriage... It makes me sick just to think about it”
Annie nodded. “You’re right. How he could want that idiotic blonde instead of my beautiful sister...”
“He didn’t.” Susie and Annie looked at Laurel, and she flushed. “I never said that, did I?”
“You said he left you, for the blonde.”
“I said he went back to New York and that I found him with her. I never said—”
“So, he didn’t want to take up where they’d left off?”
“I don’t know what he wanted.” Laurel plucked a sponge from the sink, squeezed it dry and began wiping down the counter with a vengeance. “I never gave him the chance to tell me.”
“What do you mean, you never...?”
“Look, when you find your husband with a naked blonde, it’s not hard to figure what’s going on. I just turned around and walked out. Don’t look at me like that, Annie. You would have, too.”
Annie sighed. “I suppose. What could he possibly have said that would have made things better? Besides, if he’d really wanted to explain, he’d have called you or come to see you—”
“He did come here.”
Annie and Susie looked at each other. “He did? When?”
“That same night.”
Susie looked shocked. “You see what happens when George and I take a few days off? Laurel, you never said—”
“I wouldn’t let him in. What for? We had nothing to say to each other.”
“And that was it?” Annie asked. “He gave up, that easily?”
Silence fell on the kitchen and then Laurel cleared her throat.
“He phoned. He left a message on my machine. He said what had happened—what I’d seen—hadn’t been what it appeared to be.”
“Oh, right,” Annie said, “I’ll just bet it—”
“What did he say it had been?” Susie asked, shooting Annie a warning look.
“I don’t remember,” Laurel lied. She remembered every word; she’d listened to Damian’s voice a dozen times before erasing it, not just the lying words but the huskiness, hating herself for the memories it stirred in her heart. “Some nonsense about his bimbo threatening to drag my name through the mud unless he paid her off. Oh, what does it matter? He’d have said anything, to get his own way. I told you, he was determined to take my baby.”
“Well, it’s his baby, too.” Susie swallowed hard when both women glared at her. “Well, it is,” she said defiantly. “That’s just a simple biological fact.” She frowned. “Which brings up an interesting point How come he’s backed off?”
Annie frowned, too. “Good question. He has backed off, hasn’t he?”
Laurel nodded. She pulled a chair out from the table and sank into it. “Uh-huh. He has.”
“How come? Not that I’m not delighted, but why back off now, after first all but dragging you into marriage?”
Laurel folded her hands on the tabletop.
“He—he called and left another message.”
“The telephone company’s best pal,” Susie said brightly.
“He said—he said that he had no right to force me into living with him. That he understood that I could never feel about him as I had about Kirk—”
“Kirk?” Annie’s brows arched. “How’d that piece of sewer slime get into the picture?”
“He said he’d been wrong to make me marry him in the first place, that a marriage without love could never work.”
“The plot thickens.” Susie leaned forward over the table. “I know you guys are liable to tar and feather me for this, but Damian Skouras isn’t sounding like quite the scuzzball I’d figured him for.”
Annie reached out and clasped her sister’s hand. “Maybe you should have taken one of those phone calls, hmm?”
“What for?” Laurel snatched back her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, both of you. I called him and left him a message of my own. I said it didn’t matter what had been going on or not going on with the blonde because I agreed completely. Not only could a loveless marriage never work, a marriage in which a wife hated the husband was doomed. And I hated him, I said. I said that I always had, that he had to accept the fact that it had been nothing but sex all along... Don’t look at me that way, Annie! What was I supposed to believe? That that woman appeared at his door, uninvited, and stripped off her clothes?”
“Is that what he claimed?”
“Yes!”
Annie smiled gently. “It’s possible, isn’t it? The lady didn’t strike me as the sort given to subtle gestures.”
Laurel shot up
from her chair. “I don’t believe what’s going on here! The two of you, asking me to deny what I saw with my own eyes! My God, it was bad enough to be deceived by Kirk, a man I’d thought I loved, but to be deceived by Damian, by my own husband, the only man I’ve ever really loved, is—is...” Her voice broke. “Oh God, I do love him! I’ll never stop loving him.” She looked from Susie to Annie, and her mouth began to tremble. “Go away,” she whispered. “Just go away, and leave me alone.”
They didn’t, not until Laurel was calmer, not until she was undressed and asleep in her bed.
Then they left because, really, when you came right down to it, what else was there to do?
* * *
What else was there to do? Damian thought, as he attacked the boulder outside his house overlooking the Aegean with the sledgehammer.
Nothing. Nothing but beat at this miserable rock and work himself to exhaustion from sunup to sundown in hopes he’d fall into bed at night and not dream of Laurel.
It was a fine plan. Unfortunately it didn’t work.
He had not seen Laurel, or heard her voice, in two months—but she was with him every minute of the day, just the same. The nights were even worse. Alone in the darkness, in the bed where he’d once held his wife in his arms, he tossed and turned for hours before falling into restless, dream-filled sleep.
He had considered returning to New York, but he could not imagine himself sitting behind a desk, in the same city where Laurel lived. And so he stayed on Actos, and worked, and sweated, and oversaw his business interests by computer, phone and fax. He told himself that the ache inside him would go away.
It hadn’t. If anything, it had grown worse.
He knew that Eleni and Spiro were almost frantic with worry.
“Is he trying to kill himself?” he’d heard Eleni mutter just that morning, as he’d gone out the door. “You must speak to him, Spiro,” she’d said.
Damian’s mouth thinned as he swung the sledgehammer. If the old man knew what was good for him, he’d keep his mouth shut. He’d interfered enough already. Damian had told him so, on his return to Greece.
“Was it you who permitted my wife to leave the island and follow me to New York?” he’d demanded.
Spiro had stiffened. “Né,” he’d said, “yes, it was I.”
Damian’s hands had balled into fists. “On whose authority did you do this thing, old man?”
“On my own,” Spiro had replied quietly. “The woman was not a prisoner here.”
A muscle had knotted in Damian’s cheek. “No,” he’d said, “she was not.”
Spiro had waited before speaking again.
“She said that she had something of great importance to tell you,” he’d said, his eyes on Damian’s. “Did she find you, and deliver her message?”
Damian’s mouth had twisted. “She did, indeed,” he’d replied, and when Spiro had tried to say more, he’d held up his hand. “There is nothing to discuss. The woman is not to be mentioned again.”
She had not been, to this day. But that didn’t mean he didn’t think about her, and dream about her. Did she dream of him? Did she ever long for the feel of his arms and the sweetness of his kisses, as he longed for hers?
Did she ever think of how close they’d come to happiness?
Damian’s throat constricted. He swung the hammer hard, but his aim wasn’t true. His vision was blurred—by sweat, for what else could it be?—and the hammer hit the rock a glancing blow.
“Dammit,” he growled, and swung again.
“Damian,” Spiro’s voice was soft. “The rock is not your enemy.”
“And you are not a philosopher,” Damian snapped, and swung again.
“What you battle is not the boulder, my son, it is yourself.”
Damian straightened up. “Listen here,” he said, but his anger faded when he looked at the old man. Spiro looked exhausted. Sweat stained his dark trousers and shirt; his weathered face was bright red and there was a tremor in his hands.
Why was the old fool so stubborn? The heat was too much for a man his age. Damian sighed, set the sledgehammer aside and stripped off his work gloves.
“It is hot,” he said. “I need something to drink.”
“There is a bottle of retsina in my jacket, under the tree.”
Damian plucked his discarded T-shirt from the ground and slipped it on.
“I know the sort of retsina you drink, old man. The sun will rot our brains quickly enough, without its help. We will go up to the house. Perhaps we can convince Eleni to give us some cold beer.”
“Né.” Spiro smiled. “For once, you have an excellent idea.”
It took no convincing at all. Eleni took one look at them, rolled her eyes and brought cold beer and glasses out to the terrace. Damian ignored the glasses, handed one bottle to the old man and took the other for himself. He leaned back against the railing and took a long drink. Spiro drank, too, then wiped his mustache with the back of his hand.
“When do you return to New York?” he said.
Damian’s brows lifted. “Are you in such a rush to get rid of me?”
“You cannot avoid reality forever, Damian.”
“Spiro.” Damian’s voice was chill. “I warn you, do not say anything more. It is hot, I am in a bad mood—”
“As if that were anything new.”
Damian tilted the beer bottle to his lips. He drank, then set the bottle down. “I am going back to work. I suggest you go inside, where it is cooler.”
“I suggest you stop pretending you do not have a wife.”
“I told you, we will not discuss her.”
“And now I tell you that we must.”
“Dammit, old man—”
“I saw how happy she made you, Damian, and how happy you made her.”
“Are you deaf? I said that we would not—”
“You loved her. And you love her still.”
“No! No, I do not love her. What is love anyway, but a thing to make men idiots?”
Spiro chuckled and folded his arms. “Are you saying I was an idiot to put up with you, after I found you on the streets of Athens? Be careful, or I will have to take a switch to your backside, as I did when you were a boy.”
“You know what I mean,” Damian said, stubbornly refusing to be taken in. “I’m talking of male and female love, and I tell you that I did not love her. All right? Are you satisfied now? Can I get back to work?”
“She loved you.”
“Never.” Damian’s voice roughened. “She did not love me, old man. She despised me for everything I am and especially for forcing her into a marriage she did not want.”
“She loved you,” Spiro repeated. “I know this, for a fact”
“She loved another, you sentimental old fool.”
“It is not sentiment or foolishness that makes me say this, Damian, it is the knowledge of what she told me.”
Damian’s face went pale beneath its tan. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It is the reason I sent her after you. She said she loved you deeply.”
For one sweet instant, Damian felt his heart might burst from his chest. But then he remembered the reality of what had happened: the swiftness with which Laurel had accepted the ugly scene orchestrated by Gabriella, the way she’d refused even to listen to his explanation...and the message he’d found on his answering machine, Laurel’s cool voice saying that she’d never stopped hating him, that what they’d shared had been nothing but sex...
“You misunderstood her, old man. You speak English almost as badly as she spoke Greek.”
“I know what she told me, Damian.”
“Then she lied,” Damian said coldly. He picked up the bottle and drained it dry. “She lied, because it was the only way she could get you to agree to let her leave the island, and you fell for it. Now, I am going to work and you are going to stay out of the sun before it bakes your brain completely. Is that clear?”
“What is clear,” the old man
said quietly, “is that I raised a coward.”
Damian spun toward him, his eyes gone hard and chill. “If any other man but you dared say such a thing to me,” he said softly, “I would beat him within an inch of his life.”
“You are a coward in your heart, afraid to face the truth. You love this woman but because she hurt you in some fashion, you would rather live your life without her than risk going after her.”
“Damn you to hell,” Damian roared, and thrust his face into the old man’s. “Listen, Spiro, and listen well, for I will say this only once. Yes, I love her. But she does not love me.”
“How do you know this?”
“How? How?” Damian’s teeth glinted in a hollow laugh. “She told me so, all right? Does that satisfy you?”
“Did you ever tell her that you loved her?”
“Did I ever...?” Damian threw his arms skyward. “By all the gods that be, I cannot believe this! No, I never told her. She never gave me the chance. She came bursting into my apartment in New York, found me with another woman and damned me without even giving me an opportunity to explain.”
Spiro’s weather-beaten face gave nothing away. “And what were you doing with this woman, my son? Arranging flowers, perhaps?”
Damian colored. “I admit, it did not look good...”
“You were not arranging flowers?”
“What is this? An interrogation? I had just come out of the shower, okay? And the woman—the woman was trying to seduce me. I just admitted, it did not look good.” He took a deep breath. “But Laurel is my wife. She should have trusted me.”
“Certainly she should have trusted you. After all, what had you ever done to make her distrustful, except to impregnate her and force her into a marriage she did not want?”
“How did you—”
“Eleni says that there is a look to a woman’s face, when she is carrying a child. Any fool could see it, just as any fool could see that when you first brought her here, neither of you was happy.” Spiro smiled. “But that changed, Damian. I do not know how it happened, but you both finally admitted what had been in your hearts from the beginning.”
The Greek's Unwilling Bride Page 17
