by Sara Wood
He studied her soft, trembling mouth and almost told her. Then he bit back the words that were on the tip of his tongue and said curtly; ‘At this hour.’ And he strode out before she could weaken him.
Olivia stood in the middle of the luxurious bedroom, mistress of all she surveyed, co-owner of the mansion and all its valuable contents, of a penthouse in Athens overlooking the Acropolis, a Georgian house in Berkeley Square, a yacht, a private jet and apparently unlimited funds. Yet never had she felt so bereft, so shorn of everything she valued.
The wealth and its trappings were nothing without Dimitri’s love. If he didn’t care, then she had nothing. She looked down at her shaking hands. The huge diamond in her engagement ring flashed at her as if in mockery. The diamond necklace, designed to look like a scattering of glittering daisies at her throat, felt suddenly like a slave’s halter.
She was a wife now. A possession. And according to their marriage ceremony she was supposed to stand in awe of her husband. At least, she thought wryly, she’d then been directed to stamp on his foot. Pity she’d just tapped his instep with her toe.
Olivia frowned, remembering that he had been instructed to love her as if she were his own body. All right. Either he did love her or he didn’t. She wasn’t going to be used purely as a sex object, or a breeding ground for Angelaki children while he ‘played away’. At times like this it was sink or swim, and she’d never been the sinking sort.
Her mouth firmed in determination. If he did have a mistress, she would leave him. She would not be shared. Tomorrow she would swallow her pride and ask Marina for that address.
No man made a fool of her. No man would ever use her purely to appease his sexual appetite. Better a life without Dimitri than that.
She noticed that the sprig of lemon blossom she’d placed on the bathroom shelf had withered and died. Was that an omen? She met her own blazing aquamarine eyes and grim mouth in the baroque mirror, the full enormity of her situation striking her with chilling reality. This time tomorrow she could be on the plane back to England.
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS three years since she’d last been in Athens. Three interminable years since she’d walked out on Dimitri after wrecking their bedroom in a fit of helpless rage, flinging valuable objects around as if they were cheap souvenirs. It had done nothing to ease the searing pain.
He had been cheating on her. She had seen it with her own eyes. Marina had driven her to a small village near ancient Mycenae, just in time to witness Dimitri’s tenderness as he shepherded his mistress towards his car.
His hugely pregnant mistress. For a moment she hadn’t been able to breathe, so great was the shock. The woman was obviously in labour. That—and Dimitri’s loving care—hurt more than anything. She felt that she would have preferred to find them both naked and in the act of love. Seeing his devotion to a woman who carried his child had been infinitely worse.
‘Believe me now?’ Marina had enquired.
And when Marina had driven them away Olivia had known that she’d never be able to forget Dimitri’s betrayal.
She had been devastated. Arriving back at the villa, a gloating Marina had reminded her that Dimitri must now be on his way to Tokyo.
‘Go home,’ Marina had urged. ‘To the people who love you.’
‘Yes,’ she’d whispered, aching for loving arms around her. ‘I need my friends.’
Her note to Dimitri had been brief but heartfelt. When there is no love in a marriage, it is a mistake to continue it. Yet a little part of her had hoped that their marriage could be saved. Maybe he’d find her in England, to apologise, and beg her forgiveness and they would begin again.
But he had made no contact. It was as though someone had turned off a light inside her. Men seemed pale shadows compared with Dimitri. England was greyer than she remembered and life was less exuberant. Greek life, and one Greek male in particular, had suited her temperament, but she had to move on. And divorce was the first step.
‘How are you feeling?’ Paul Hughes, her lawyer and friend, solicitously took her hand in his.
She withdrew it on the pretext of tucking a strand of hair back into her tight chignon. ‘Ready for battle,’ she replied grimly.
‘Next month, you could be one of the richest and most powerful women in Europe!’ Paul crowed.
Money and power. Was that all men cared about? Why didn’t they put love first, like women? She settled back in her seat, crossly smoothing imaginary creases from the figure-hugging skirt of her white linen suit.
Her hand was shaking and she stared at the back of the chauffeur’s head, pumping up her courage with cold, clinical anger by thinking of the terrible moment when her love for Dimitri had shattered into bits.
On his yacht, moored near Piraeus Harbour, Dimitri dealt with his e-mails, despatching instructions to his property agents scattered about the globe. Business was doing well—though it should be, since he’d devoted eighteen hours a day to it for the past three years.
Unravelling his six-feet of toned muscle from the confining chair, he escaped from his desk, unable to concentrate, incapable of sitting like a trapped lion for a moment longer. He’d glanced at his watch impatiently. Ten minutes and she’d be here.
She’d been in his mind ever since the call. The scent of her body. The wicked look in her eyes as she wound herself around him, capturing him in her silken web.
‘I want a divorce,’ she’d said coldly, two days earlier.
‘Come and get it, then,’ he’d replied, and severed the connection.
He’d sat motionless for an hour, steaming. So many questions had been on his lips. Where have you been? Why run away like a coward? And why the hell did you marry me—for sex and money, as everyone told me over and over again till I doubted even those early months of married bliss? Then had come the most chilling question of all. Did you ever care?
He scowled at the glittering sea and wondered why she had waited till now for a divorce. Perhaps she was afraid of his anger. With good reason. Though his mother had said it was because she’d run out of money and that fact had conquered her fear of what he might do to her. It was odd, though. The allowance he paid every month into their old bank account was more than generous.
Sometimes when he lay awake at night he imagined himself putting his hands around that slender neck and throttling her. Or flinging her to the ground and…
He disgusted himself. She’d aroused terrible emotions that shamed him utterly. The raw animal nature of his fury appalled him. He’d believed himself to be a gentleman, but Olivia had reduced him to his basest instincts. Hatred, ungovernable desire and revenge.
His fist descended on his desk with such force that everything on it bounced. He slammed the fist into his palm. His eyes glittered. He was ready.
Taking the stairs three at a time in huge leaps, he emerged onto the deck to find Eleni, the daughter of his business partner. She was outstaying her welcome. He had relented—under persistent pressure from his mother—to take Eleni on a trip along the coast for a couple of days.
With Olivia constantly filling his mind he’d been bad company and Eleni had irritated him beyond belief. Too girly. Too breathless, clingy and starry-eyed. And, at nineteen, too young to be a companion for him anyway. Poor kid.
He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. This meeting with Olivia had to be short and sharp. It would be a merciful release from a marriage that had died with Olivia’s curt admission that she didn’t love him.
‘Time to go,’ he announced in crisp tones of authority. ‘You’re due at your father’s for lunch.’
Sulkily, Eleni rose, her bikini-clad silicon-enhanced body voluptuous and tanned, her blonde hair swishing around her shoulders and reminding him sharply of his final day with his wife.
Hating to remember even one second of that deceitful day, he clenched his jaw in anger. It had figured in his dreams as their last perfect time together. Yet all the time they’d been making love she must have been planning
her departure. He ground his teeth in impotent fury.
Olivia had made a fool of him and that was unforgivable.
Where she was concerned, their relationship had been nothing but lies, lust and credit cards. Lies he could brush away with contempt. His bank balance could cope with her spending sprees—which he’d encouraged, admittedly, delighting in lavishing gifts on her and watching her slither into fabulous creations by top designers. And out of them again. His hand shook.
But the lust… That was an unbearable loss. Desperate to forget her, he’d made love to several willing women, but they were nothing compared with Olivia. Worse, it crucified him to know that she would be incapable of doing without sex. Through many sleepless nights he’d fumed over his highly coloured imaginings of Olivia writhing beneath some other man. Or men.
Eleni reached up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Her mouth seemed to press more firmly than usual and he realised that his fears were real. She was definitely being lined up as his next wife.
Inwardly he cursed as he saw his car approaching the mooring. He’d miscalculated the journey time. Either baggage control had got its act together or the notorious Athens traffic must have been less dense than usual.
‘My wife is here,’ he said curtly. ‘Get dressed and stay out of sight. Go!’
He heard her irritating snigger as she scampered away. Getting rid of a wife was one matter. Acquiring a second bride barely out of her pram before the ink was dry on the divorce papers was another.
As the car had driven into the marina Olivia had identified Dimitri’s luxurious yacht immediately—and his tall, arrogant figure standing on the deck. Her heart somersaulted at the sight of him.
But it steadied when she saw his companion. A pneumatic blonde, with hair just like hers and wearing the tiniest of bikinis, was strolling with a hip-swaying walk towards him. The woman was now kissing his cheek and murmuring something sultry in his ear. There was something vaguely familiar about her that she couldn’t quite place, as if she’d met her before. Perhaps at a party during their marriage…
‘Nice little popsie,’ commented Paul.
Olivia’s eyes glittered with contempt. Dimitri’s mistress had been dark and beautiful with flashing black eyes, another woman entirely. How many dancing girls did he need to fawn over him? She fumed silently. They were all set to discuss divorce and he was intending to parade his latest conquest to show he didn’t give a damn!
Well, she’d show him that she didn’t care either.
‘She’s one of Dimitri’s “popsies”. That’s his boat, probably his latest woman, and that’s him up there,’ she said, proud there was no tremor in her voice.
‘Wow. How many million is that worth?’ Awed, Paul stared at the luxury yacht, then more warily at the intimidating figure of Dimitri.
‘No idea, but he worked for every penny of it,’ she said shortly. ‘Dragged himself up from nothing, from shepherd’s son to property magnate. Worked night and day without ceasing, pitting his brains against the sharpest knives in the box and coming out top through drive, determination and sheer force of personality.’
‘Sounds as if you admire the pants off him,’ Paul commented sulkily.
Insulted, she turned brightly sparking eyes on the lawyer. ‘I loathe every hair on his head! I’d sooner lie in a pit of venomous snakes and be eaten by rats than be in a room with him!’
Olivia drew in a breath and controlled her temper. She must stay calm. Be dignified. In the privacy of her small flat, she’d rehearsed the right words till she was hoarse.
When she reached the top of the gangplank, regal and icy-featured, she waited for Dimitri to move towards her. Infuriatingly, he just stood like a rock in that conceited way he had, with his legs planted apart, the darkness of his hair and the bright blaze of his obsidian eyes giving her a jolt of surprise.
Long-neglected embers startled her even more by sizzling into life within her. She felt the wonderful, warm, curling sensation in her stomach with some dismay. The hunger was still there, then. Festering like a disease.
Deliberately she put the lid on it. But she still reeled from the impact of Dimitri’s magnetism, the lurking strength of his torso beneath the crisp white shirt that was belted neatly into the sand-coloured trousers, and the intense masculinity of his cynical mouth that had once roamed over her body so freely and with such devastating effect.
Her eyes narrowed behind the concealing sunglasses as she surveyed him. She noticed the air of wealth that hung about him and how beautifully groomed he was—in contrast to Paul’s drooping and travel-worn appearance.
A glorious hunk of a man. Supremely male and with a raw and magnetic appeal that still had the ability to reach deep into her and stir her senses.
Dimitri was a power to be reckoned with, a man whose huge personality and vitality could fill a room and draw all eyes. A man in a million.
The air sucked from her lungs, her mouth became dry. Paul, perhaps thinking she was nervous, put his hand in the small of her back and propelled her forward. She had to either go with the flow or stumble, and naturally she chose to move—but silently cursed Paul for giving Dimitri the advantage.
‘This is Paul Hughes, my lawyer,’ she said coolly and without preamble.
Eyes mocking her, Dimitri nodded with cool indifference and turned away to pick up a towel from the deck, thus neatly ignoring Paul’s outstretched hand.
Seething with irritation that this was not going as she’d planned, she glared at the back of Dimitri’s head. The raven hair had been cut with its usual precision, the band of olive-toned skin below the sharp black line being a tempting contrast against the crisp edge of his hand-tailored shirt. And his back… Tingles skittered across her skin as she contemplated the gorgeous, so-touchable triangle…
Enjoyed by other women now. That nubile blonde was waiting somewhere below, perhaps waiting for Dimitri’s sensitive fingers to arouse her to frenzied delight. A terrible stab of jealousy lacerated her chest.
She heard Paul clearing his throat and found herself jumping in with both feet and firing off her first salvo before the lawyer had a chance to speak. Unfortunately it wasn’t what she’d intended to say, but a question she just had to ask before it burned its way out in an un-ladylike screech.
‘Was that your secretary I saw you with just now?’ she asked coolly.
Immediately he was flung back in time. He saw Olivia entering his office for her interview as his secretary. Slender and shapely, she had oozed sensuality despite the modest beige suit and cream shirt, and her entirely proper demeanour. It was her eyes that had enticed him, as deep and as mysterious as the sea. And her mouth, with its high arch and full lower lip, had made him wonder what it would be like to have her kneeling before him with that soft mouth sucking the sweetness from him, that white-blonde hair soft beneath his fingers…
He’d never forget the interview, during which he had become so heated that he’d opened the windows and called for a fresh carafe of water. And he had known that, whatever her secretarial skills, he must have her.
Amazingly she was as efficient as she was beautiful. Images of her as his secretary filled his brain. The palpable tension as she took his hurried dictation. Then he saw her spread across his desk, her eyes and fabulous body reeling him in as he slowly removed her clothes with shaking fingers.
His jaw tightened, his chest cramping. Enough. It was over. He turned then, his eyes narrowed as he thrust his hands into his pockets in a belligerent gesture.
I know your game, he thought. He’d employed it often enough himself in business not to recognise it. Disconcert your quarry. Throw them off balance. Find their Achilles’ heel. And she knew all too well that the sex they’d had together was so incredible that recalling it would heat him up in seconds.
The same, he thought callously, went for her. Two could play. But he’d win this one.
‘No. Not…my secretary,’ he murmured, giving her the benefit of a long, memory-filled stare.
&nb
sp; The richness of his deep voice filled the very air between them with provocative resonances and she felt something inside her give a little shimmy of guilt-laden delight. The curl of his mouth captured her gaze and she had to force herself to remain outwardly cool to hide the oven-heat within.
‘Just some woman, then,’ she said dismissively.
Did he detect a note of jealousy? he wondered. Mocking amusement flickered in Dimitri’s satin-soft eyes. She hadn’t recognised Eleni. But then, she had known her before the girl had increased her bust size to its current oversized proportions, dyed her hair and spent some of her father’s fortune on liposuction.
‘Last time I looked, she was,’ he agreed in a sexy drawl, his mouth upwardly curved with salacious, masculine pleasure.
And he let his gaze wander. Linger. Contemplate. Then he reached out and removed her sunglasses before she could protest, slipping them into his pocket. Now he could see her eyes. He smiled into them.
‘I need to see into your soul,’ he explained.
Olivia glared, even as she felt the knife of jealousy stab deeply in her chest. Dimitri was the most sensual man she’d ever known. It occurred to her that maybe he had never been faithful to her, even in the early days. He was a man of huge passions, vast sexual needs. For all she knew, she could have been merely one of many women he enjoyed.
And did Athena know about this blonde—or had he abandoned Athena and moved on to pastures new? Her head whirled. This was the man she’d married—a man apparently with the morals of a stray dog. It hurt to know she’d been so thoroughly deceived. It made her stomach curdle to think of his betrayal. There had been times when she’d tormented herself thinking of him playing with his child.
Her eyes gleamed like blue glass in the mask of her face. ‘You are such a bigoted chauvinist where women are concerned,’ was all she could say in icy derision, without revealing how upset she was beneath her frosty exterior.
