by Sara Wood
‘I—I had thought that Dimitri and I might be able to forget the past and start again—’
‘So he said at breakfast. Don’t you love him after all?’
‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t.’
Marina’s eyes widened. ‘So I was right all along!’
‘Not exactly. I really thought he’d changed. But I’m not sure any more. Sometimes I think he might have the morals of an alley cat.’
‘It sounds as if you hate him,’ Marina said.
‘I do!’ she hurled emphatically.
‘So tell me, if you hate him, why are you upset?’ her mother-in-law demanded. ‘Is it because you’ve lost the chance to live a life of luxury again?’
‘No!’ Olivia yelled. ‘Because I love him to distraction!’
‘I’m confused. The note you left when you disappeared said the opposite,’ Marina pointed out.
Olivia frowned. ‘No, it didn’t. I said there wasn’t any point in staying when he didn’t love me! Heavens above, you saw how devastated I was when I saw him with his mistress! I’ve always loved him, more fool me. I know what you thought. That I went after him because he was rich. Well, I didn’t know that he was wealthy to begin with. We went to small, intimate restaurants. His apartment was functional rather than luxurious. He drove an expensive car—but then a lot of men go into debt to get the car of their dreams. And by the time I knew he actually headed the vast Angelaki empire I was madly in love and I didn’t care what or who he was, so long as we could be together.
‘I’m stupid enough to have fallen for him, like all the other women who worship him and leap into his bed whenever he crooks his finger! Every time I’m with him I think that I’m the only woman in the world for him and it’s the most wonderful feeling I’ve ever known. He has me dangling on a string and dancing to his tune like some wretched puppet. But I’ve got feelings, Marina! I love him and I hate him because he can hurt me so deeply that I can barely bring myself to continue living!’ She put a hand to her aching forehead. ‘I have to go,’ she said weakly. ‘I can’t allow myself to stay near him. He’s destroying me, inch by inch. I have to be shot of him. And I want you to help me to find somewhere to live in Greece while I’m waiting for the divorce. I’m sure you’ll be willing,’ she added with bitterness.
Her mother-in-law seemed stunned by Olivia’s outburst. ‘I—I had no idea you felt like that,’ she said eventually. There was a long silence.
‘You believe me?’ Olivia mumbled.
‘Yes,’ Marina said softly. ‘I recognise what you are saying. I felt the same about my Theo.’ She smiled when Olivia blinked in surprise. ‘Yes. The Angelaki men have a habit of rejecting the love of their wives. You left my son because you’d been hurt by his affair with that woman we saw—’
‘I think he’s still seeing her.’ Olivia tried unsuccessfully to hide her pain. ‘Perhaps because of their child. Perhaps because… ‘ She couldn’t bring herself to say any more of her fears.
Marina frowned hard. ‘My dear, I’m going to give you some advice that might surprise you.’
‘I want practical help, not advice,’ Olivia muttered.
To her surprise, her mother-in-law’s eyes softened. ‘You’ll get it. But…first, something that will interest you… It may astonish you to know how awful Dimitri has been since you left. Bad-tempered, difficult to please, with little time for friends or family.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked.
‘Because Nikos has been talking to me about you. He thinks well of you and I trust his judgement. So I’m telling you that Dimitri was deeply affected by your disappearance.’
What did she care? She shrugged. ‘I imagine his pride was hurt.’
‘Or maybe he was devastated when you left and wanted you back.’ Marina sighed. ‘Who knows? All I can say is that he was not happy and his mistress was obviously not giving him what he wanted. However, he has been happy since you returned. I will tell you this. If you truly love him then you must accept him as he is.’
‘An unfaithful cheat?’ Olivia spluttered.
‘You wouldn’t be the first to turn a blind eye to adultery,’ Marina said, an unhappy light in her dark eyes. She hesitated. ‘Olivia, I know my Theo had a mistress somewhere. But I saw no reason to leave him just because he’d found a younger woman sexier than me.’
Olivia stared in amazement. ‘You didn’t mind?’
‘Of course I did. But I wanted him,’ she said simply.
It seemed an awful compromise. And she wondered if that was why Marina seemed so bitter about life. ‘Were you happy at all?’ she asked gently, astonished that her mother-in-law had told her such an intimate confidence.
There was a fleeting flash of anguish tightening the gaunt face. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And I confess I probably made him miserable with my sharp tongue and drove him even further from me. But I couldn’t help it, I loved and needed him so much. Maybe I even drove him to another woman’s arms in the first place. I was intensely possessive.’
Olivia could feel Marina’s sorrow because she knew the same pain of rejection and humiliation. On an impulse, she put her arms around her mother-in-law in an understanding hug.
‘I couldn’t do what you did. You’re much stronger than me,’ she confided.
‘Or more pig-headed,’ Marina said with a rueful sigh. She pushed away slightly and looked at Olivia with sympathy as she tucked an escaped strand of hair behind Olivia’s ear in an almost gentle, motherly gesture. ‘But I couldn’t bear being cast aside so I pretended not to know the truth. It seems that Dimitri is like his father. Let him have his freedom. You must decide on your course of action. Either divorce him—or stay married and ignore his absences.’
Olivia gazed at Marina helplessly. ‘I can’t live without him,’ she admitted. ‘Yet I can’t live with him if he’s having affairs. Or even one affair. How could I lie in bed wondering if he was coming home, wondering who he was with? It would crucify me. And yet I don’t really feel I’m alive without him. Oh, Marina!’ she whispered, as the finality of the situation began to hit home. ‘I have to go. Help me, I beg you—’
‘There you are!’ The two women jumped at the sound of Dimitri’s strong voice. He stared in amazement at their friendly embrace. ‘What on earth is going on?’
Olivia’s mouth tightened into a thin, hard line. ‘Character assassination on my part.’
He looked puzzled by her hostility. And so sublimely innocent that her knees automatically weakened. He was utterly desirable to her as he pushed a hand through his silky hair and it tumbled boyishly onto his broad forehead.
‘But…I thought you… We were going out somewhere today—’
‘Oh, is that still on?’ she asked coolly. ‘I imagined you had better things to do or other people to see.’
There was a tightening of his face. His lashes dipped and lifted again and he shot his mother a sharp glance. To Olivia, he looked taken aback—and highly embarrassed. Proof, if she needed it, of his guilt.
‘The phone call! Of course. I’m sorry I had to leave you.’ He smiled with agonisingly tender affection and she melted, as she always did, her heart pounding with love, her head, however, bursting with ungovernable anger. ‘But I’m here now, and we have the day ahead of us. You choose where we’re going—’
‘We are going nowhere. I am leaving this house and getting out of your life for good,’ she said, ice dripping from every word.
He was instantly alert. ‘Leaving? I don’t think so,’ he sliced at her.
Tactfully, Marina muttered something and slipped from the room past the granite-faced Dimitri.
‘Watch!’ Olivia spat out.
He folded his arms across his chest, his entire body taut with menace. ‘Care to tell me the reason for your change of mind?’
‘With pleasure! I’m sick and tired,’ she ground out, ‘of being used by you!’
‘You might be tired but that, I imagine, is because you were unusually enthusi
astic last night,’ he growled, looking offended that she’d apparently forgotten the eager part she had played.
‘I like sex!’ she hurled. Liked? Adored it passionately—with him—until she had come to her senses after that phone call and realised that she was probably nothing but a toy for him to play with!
Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. She had reduced a memorable day and night to basic lust. His heart pounded as he realised with mounting dismay that for him it had been a deeper experience. Fool that he was. He knew she had never loved him. She’d made that perfectly clear.
His fists clenched. Every instinct was now driving him to punish her. To exact some kind of revenge. He would break her. He had to. No woman was going to treat him with such contempt.
‘You don’t need to tell me you like sex. I’d noticed for myself,’ he drawled.
She flushed. ‘I respond to you because you’re good at it. I hear that comes of continual practice. But what we did last night doesn’t mean I like you, or that I accept your peculiar morality—’
‘Just a minute. What has my mother said?’ Putting two and two together, he moved forward, till he was just a foot away, studying her with shrewd eyes. Olivia had radically changed her mind about their arrangement. There could be only one explanation. ‘I thought she was happy for me that you were staying. But…has she offered you money to go?’
Olivia gasped and cracked her hand across his face. He caught it a second too late, and for a moment she was terrified by the black glitter in his eyes. Then he did something extraordinary. He pulled her against him, tipped her head back roughly and kissed her hard.
She fought him—and herself. Felt her body sliding against his. The fierce beat of his heart. He cupped one breast and bent her backwards, dominating her, firing her with his skilful, hateful caresses till she sank into them, her defiance blown away by her own body’s betrayal.
‘You want me!’ he gritted. ‘That’s obvious. OK. We’ll deal. Shall I offer you even more money to stay?’
Olivia drew her head back, hot blue eyes blazing into his. ‘I can’t be bought or bribed!’ she grated. ‘I don’t want your mother’s money or yours—’
‘You took the maintenance I sent you,’ he said in a cynical drawl.
Her eyes widened in utter bewilderment. ‘What maintenance?’
‘Paid into the English bank where we had a joint account, remember? Or was that small change for you?’ he scathed.
‘You don’t know which bank I use! I go to a different one in—’ She firmed her mouth, remembering not to tell him where she’d been for the past three years. ‘If you’ve put money in our old bank,’ she said grimly, ‘then it’s still there untouched, with the rest of the cash we’d put by. There are probably statements heaped up on the mat of your London apartment. Haven’t you been there?’
‘No. Avoided it like the plague,’ he muttered. His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you telling me you haven’t taken a penny?’
She applauded. ‘Well done.’
He scowled at her sarcasm but he looked uncomfortable. ‘I thought—’
‘I know what you thought,’ she snapped. ‘That I worship money.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No more than the next woman. Of course I like new clothes and eating in restaurants and trips to New York. Of course it was wonderful to have financial security. But that came at a price—’
‘Me.’
‘You,’ she agreed, deciding not to elaborate any more.
His mouth tightened. ‘How did you manage when you left?’
She glared. ‘I told you. On my own earnings. I don’t need a man to provide for me. Does that tell you something about my money-grabbing tactics? Does that suggest I might not have taken a bribe from your mother?’
Clearly surprised, he touched his face where the marks of her fingers still lingered. ‘I deserved this, it seems,’ he said stiffly.
‘And more!’ she muttered.
His eyes flashed but he nodded. ‘I apologise. However, it doesn’t explain why you are so determined to leave. Only last night you seemed perfectly reconciled to amusing yourself with me for an indefinite period.’
‘And now I want to go home,’ she muttered, not daring to tell him that his cavalier attitude to women distressed her. He might think she cared—and that was the last thing she wanted him to know.
‘This is an attempt to wring more alimony out of me, isn’t it? Yes,’ he said when she opened her mouth to protest, ‘I know you haven’t touched the maintenance, but that’s because you didn’t know it was there. The fact remains that you admit you like financial security. Your lawyer has already accepted a substantial sum on your behalf which you want to increase—’
‘I don’t want it!’ she snapped.
His eyebrow arced up in surprise. ‘Really? Then ring him. I am calling your bluff, Olivia.’
‘I don’t know what time it is—’
‘Excuses, excuses.’
‘All right!’ Eyes glittering, she picked up the phone on his desk and made the call, instructing the astonished Paul that she didn’t want one penny from Dimitri.
‘He’s forced you to do this!’ Paul protested. ‘Olivia, if he’s seduced you with the sole purpose of—’
‘Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t care any more. I just want to wash my hands of everything connected with him as soon as I possibly can. I refuse to be accused of whoring. As far as I’m concerned, whatever has the Angelaki stamp on it is contaminated and poisonous.’ Shaking, she put the receiver down. ‘Satisfied?’ she flung at Dimitri. ‘You can’t accuse me of marrying you for your money now. Or divorcing you for it.’
‘Why the devil did you marry me, then?’ he flung angrily.
‘If you don’t know, I sure as hell am not going to tell you!’ she yelled.
He went very still. His eyes searched hers. ‘Love?’
It was the way he said the word that made her tremble, imbuing it with such tenderness that she felt her heart would break.
‘Love,’ she agreed, her face mournful. ‘It’s terrible when it dies.’
So that was it. She had loved him once—maybe in the early days of their relationship. But when they were married she’d been restless. After she’d run away, the passage of time must have killed whatever feelings she’d once had for him. At least now he knew the truth and could act accordingly. She would regret ever giving him the impression that their love had been reignited.
His teeth clenched. She looked suddenly vulnerable, her lashes thick crescents on her cheeks. Her mouth seemed carved in sorrow and he had the urge to kiss it into smiles. Instead, he scowled and sought to bind her to him. Because he wasn’t finished with her yet.
‘We’re getting nowhere. The plain fact is that you can’t leave,’ he said in cutting tones, ‘because you would be breaking your promise.’
She stared at him in loathing. ‘I didn’t promise that I’d live here!’
‘No,’ he said, his mouth savage. ‘But you agreed that you’d pretend we were in love until Eleni gave up her quest to be the next Mrs Angelaki. And lovers don’t live in separate places, not if they’re married and rebuilding their relationship.’
She swallowed the ache in her throat. Tried to ignore the nausea swirling around in her stomach. He looked utterly ruthless and determined. The set of his body and the hardness of his eyes intimidated her. He actually wanted her to stay around and flatter his ego in bed and out of it, while she slowly died inside!
‘You can’t and you won’t hold me to that!’ she cried, distraught.
‘Believe me, I can and I will,’ he growled, his brows a dark line above coal-black eyes. ‘It was a promise. And one I’ll make you keep.’
‘I can’t bear to be near you!’ she cried raggedly.
His eyes flashed a warning, and then his hands descended on her shoulders as if intent on crushing her slender bones.
‘Do it,’ he gritted. ‘You want this farce of a marriage annulled
in record time. It’s the only way.’
‘I can’t keep the pretence going! I feel sick at the thought of being touched by you—’
‘Then,’ he said, frighteningly tight and angry, ‘I have to congratulate you on your performance to date. You almost convinced me that you enjoyed every second.’
‘Let me go,’ she said feebly.
‘No. You won’t wriggle out of this.’
She gave a helpless groan. ‘Please, Dimitri!’
‘Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see the back of you,’ he snapped. ‘But you have a job to do. I’ll make it easier for you, though. You will continue to live here. We will leave for trips together and return together. This place is a hotbed of gossip and Eleni will soon discover that we are rarely separated—’
‘I’m not spending all day with you—’
‘You’ll do whatever I say,’ he growled. ‘At night—’
‘I won’t sleep with you!’
‘I can’t remember us sleeping much before,’ he said drily. ‘But I agree. You will sleep in my room for appearances’ sake, but I will go elsewhere—’
‘Where?’ she demanded, thinking of Athena.
‘Anywhere. Does it matter?’ he said impatiently. ‘Agree to this and I’ll get my lawyers working around the clock. You’ll soon be free of me. And I will be free of you,’ he finished under his breath.
If only she hadn’t given her word. He had trapped her in an impossible situation. She lifted a haunted face.
‘I have no choice,’ she muttered. And ran from the room before she burst into tears.
CHAPTER NINE
THE boat sped once again across the aquamarine sea, leaving behind the small community where her happiness had been found and lost for the second time. The white houses faded against the background of olive trees covering the hills and soon the harbour and the little boats there were no longer visible.
The contrast between how she felt on this day and how she had felt the previous day was too painful to contemplate.
She knew that Eleni had watched them leave the house from the drawing-room window. And Olivia had felt a pang of sympathy for her, knowing what that misery was like and how horribly it could possess and destroy. She didn’t like what she was doing—and wished it were all over.
