Australia: Wicked Mistresses

by Robyn Grady

  She pulled her leg back in and closed the door and he resumed his scrutiny of the steering wheel, crossing both his wrists at the top.

  ‘I know we’ve never been close. I know I’ve never made you feel welcome. And I should have. Because you’re family. I was glad when you came back. Your mum was beside herself with worry and…’ He sighed. ‘Well, it was just good to know you were home, safe and sound. And I just want you to know that if this bloke tries to take advantage of you, or tries to hurt you, I’ll wipe the bloody floor with him myself.’ He swung his head around. ‘Understood?’

  She’d never known Jack to make such a long speech. She’d never known him to more than grunt in acknowledgement, and here he was, letting her know he’d defend her. As part of his family.

  She flung her arms around his beefy neck and hugged him. ‘Thank you.’And then, because she was as embarrassed as he was, and close to tears, she flung open the door and was gone before either of them could say goodbye.

  She dressed carefully, or as carefully as she could given her now limited wardrobe. A wraparound skirt and vest top with mid-height sandals were the best she could do, although she could still use the make-up she’d been given in London to make the most of her eyes. She wasn’t interested in seducing him, she told herself as she applied mascara. She just wanted him to see that she was surviving, and surviving well.

  And then she was ready. She took one last look at herself, took a gulp of air and headed upstairs.

  He was waiting for her knock, opening the door and standing there, all Greek god and potent male, so potent that the words almost dried in her throat and would have, but that there were questions she needed answers to. ‘What are you doing here, Andreas? What is it that you want?’

  He looked at her hungrily, as if she were the meal. ‘Dinner is served,’ he said, fuelling the feeling, and despite the desperate logical waves from her brain that told her to cling to her anger, to hold onto her hatred of what he’d done, her body hummed with his proximity as she let him usher her inside.

  The door closed with a snick behind her, the table laden with dishes awaiting. The steaming dishes could have smelt good, the cooking here was renowned as the best country cooking could offer, but right now her senses were full of the scent of him, and nothing incited her appetite more. Oh, no. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t do this!

  She turned suddenly, ‘Andreas, I—’, and was surprised to find him so close behind her that they almost collided. He reached out and steadied her with his hands at her shoulders, warm and strong, and the feeling was so intoxicating, so real after the memories she’d been hanging onto, that she forgot what it was she wanted to say. She felt the tremor move within him then as he exhaled, as if she wasn’t the only one fighting their demons. But that was crazy. What demons could possibly plague Andreas?

  Unless he felt guilty about seeing a woman while his child grew within another.

  ‘Come,’ he said at last. ‘Sit.’ And so she did, watching him pour them both wine, knowing she dared not touch it for fear of losing her resolve. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Andreas. Can we please cut to the chase? What are you doing here?’

  He took a deep breath, and placed an envelope before her plate. ‘You left without this.’

  With trembling hands she picked up the envelope and pulled the paper from inside. A cheque. For five hundred thousand pounds. ‘You left without your money.’

  She stared at the cheque feeling sick. So that was what this was about. Mr Businessman handling the money aspect, ensuring all the i’s were dotted, all the t’s crossed. Of course. Strange, though, when he could have just posted it. Although then she would never have had the opportunity to do this…

  She slipped it back in the envelope and pressed the flap down with her thumb, her eyes not leaving his. His mouth was halfway to a smile, as if he was expecting her to pocket it, which in turn made her smile. And then, over a snowy china plate, she ripped the envelope in half, and tore those two pieces into half again, over and over, until the tiny fragments fluttered to her plate. And then she stood. ‘I don’t want your money. So if that’s all?’

  He was on his feet, blocking her exit, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? We had a deal. The money’s yours. You earned it.’

  ‘No. I didn’t. I left before the contract term expired. Besides which, even if I had stayed, I wouldn’t want your money anyway. I don’t want anything of yours, don’t you understand that?’

  His features looked strained, the flesh across his cheekbones drawn tight. Clearly a man unused to not getting his own way. ‘I pay my debts, Cleo. We had a contract and I—’

  She wanted to scream, suddenly grateful for the foresight Daphne had had to organise dinner for them here in a private room as opposed the dining room, where this discussion would have provided gossip for the next decade at least. ‘I will not take your money! You will not reduce those days I spent with you, making me feel like some overpriced whore!’

  It was Andreas’ turn to stand. ‘I never thought of you like that!’

  ‘No? But Petra did. She found the contract in your suite and made it clear that’s what I was. Remember Petra,’ she charged, ‘the mother of your child?’

  ‘You don’t have to remind me about Petra,’ he said, his teeth clenched. ‘Petra was the woman who took you away from me.’

  How could he be so blind? How could he avoid the truth that had sent her away? The truth that meant he shouldn’t be here with her now or ever, whatever the reason. ‘She never took me away from you. You did that all by yourself, when you got her pregnant and used me as some kind of human shield. How do you think that made me feel? Knowing that all the time I was in your bed, your previous lover was already carrying your child!’

  ‘She was never my lover and she was never carrying my child!’

  Cleo felt the wind knocked out of her sails. ‘She what? But she was pregnant. She told me…And she said you were paying me to humiliate her…’

  His hand raked through his hair; the other rubbed his neck. ‘We had sex. Once. It was a mistake and I told her. But she knew my mother wanted grandchildren, and that she’d had a cancer scare and was worried I’d never get around to it. She admitted as much to Petra, who decided she’d have to bring out the big guns if she was going to get rid of you and clear the way for her. She faked the pregnancy to trap me.’

  ‘But she was sick, dizzy…’

  ‘All of it put on. All of it designed to make everyone believe it was true.’

  It was too much to take in. Too much to accept. And there was still so much that didn’t make sense.

  And yet hadn’t Petra said the very same thing—that Andreas’ mother wanted grandchildren? And hadn’t Cleo remembered his unexpected response when she’d informed him her period had arrived?

  She swallowed. ‘Is that why you’re back here? Because you need a child and you think I’ll provide it for you?’

  ‘What? Cleo, what are you saying?’

  ‘You wanted me to be pregnant, didn’t you? You seemed strangely disappointed that I wasn’t. That was right after visiting your mother, wasn’t it? She told you then that she wanted grandchildren.’

  He took a step closer, knowing the bridge between them was much longer and way more fragile than he’d realised. ‘Cleo—’

  ‘And then you asked me to stay longer, offered to pay me more. Why do that if you weren’t going to try and get me pregnant?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Except he knew that it was. Hadn’t that been his exact plan? Keep her longer, get her with child. Make his mother happy.

  ‘And then you discover Petra was faking it and you turn up on my doorstep.’

  ‘No! I’ll admit—’ He spun away, troubling his hair again with his fingers, raking his scalp with his nails until he flung himself back, his arms slashing through the air. ‘Yes, I’ll admit I was hoping, that it seemed like an easy option. I’ll admit that I wanted you to stay because I thought you might fall
pregnant. But that’s not why I’m here now. I didn’t come for a child, Cleo, I came for you.’

  Her chin kicked up, her blue eyes liquid and shimmering in the rays from the sun setting outside the window. ‘And you expect me to believe that?’

  ‘Cleo, I know I don’t deserve your trust. I know I’m the last person to deserve that. But on that flight to London when I’d left you behind, I learned something. That I wanted you. That I wanted to marry you. And so I turned the plane around and came home.’

  Her face was paler now, her fingers clawed around the back of her chair. ‘Isn’t it the same thing? Why decide to marry me, unless it was to keep me around longer and increase your chances of having a child?’

  His features were tight, his jaw line growing even tighter before he conceded in a nod. ‘Okay, that’s what crossed my mind—initially—and no, I’m not proud of it. And then I got home and learned you’d already left and was about to follow you and bring you back, except there was Petra saying she was pregnant and I knew I had no choice but to let you go.’

  He held out his long-fingered hands in supplication. ‘Do you have any idea how that feels? To bow to responsibility when it feels wrong and when your heart wants something different even if it doesn’t understand why?’

  She swallowed again and he followed the movement in her throat and down to where she crossed her arms under the breasts he’d missed so much, but not just because of their perfection he’d learned, but because of the woman he missed more.

  ‘So tell me, Mr Businessman, what is it that your heart wants?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘You once said you loved me.’

  ‘A figure of speech—’

  ‘So you said. I promise you, at the risk of thoroughly humiliating myself here, my declaration won’t be.’ He watched her perfect blue eyes, saw the questions, the suspicion and maybe, maybe, just a flicker of hope to mirror his own. ‘I love you,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know when it happened, or how, or why it took me so long to realise that that was the reason I couldn’t let you go, that you had to stay. And you will probably never forgive me for the way I treated you and for being so blind for so long, but I pray you will, because I love you, Cleo, and I had to come and ask you, beg you if necessary, if you would do me the honour of becoming my wife.’

  Time stood still. There was the odd shout from the verandah downstairs, the odd drift of laughter through the French doors and outwardly her world hadn’t changed. But inside it was as if someone had taken the pieces of her world and rearranged them and everything was suddenly new and unfamiliar

  ‘Cleo, for God’s sake, say something.’

  And she blinked to find Andreas still there, not a dream, not some wild imaginings of a woman who’d been too long in the sun.

  ‘Me? You love me?’ Cleo, the high-school dropout. Cleo, the cleaner, who would never amount to anything. A bubble of hope burst from her heart. ‘You want to marry me?’

  And she must have looked so shaky that he snatched her in his arms and held her so close that she could feel his heart thudding powerfully in his chest, but still she couldn’t quite trust him. ‘And babies, then. I guess you want babies.’

  And he stilled for a moment and held her away from him with his big broad hands until he could see her face. ‘Right now, all I want is you. I love you, Cleo. And if a child never happens, so be it, my mother will have to deal with it. Because it’s you that I want, nothing more. ‘

  Her eyes swam with tears, happy tears, as she looked up into his perfect face. ‘I guess you’ve got me, then, Andreas.’

  His dark eyes still looked uncertain. ‘Is that a yes?’

  And she flung her arms around his neck and held him tight. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Because I love you, Andreas, I love you so much!’

  And he kissed her and swung her into his arms and carried her, the meal laid out for them forgotten, to the soft embrace of the queen-sized bed.

  Later, much later, when the passion of their reunion had temporarily abated, they stirred. ‘There’s something else I brought you,’ he whispered, nuzzling her cheek, before disappearing for a moment to withdraw a small package from his jacket. He didn’t hand the box to her; instead he snapped on her bedside light before holding the pendant up before her. She loved it immediately the geometric Greek pattern in gold surrounding a circle of amazing blue gemstone that looked as if it were on fire.

  ‘I bought this in Fira,’ he said as he clipped the chain around her neck, ‘but I never had a chance to give it to you. But I think it signifies everything about us. For this,’ he said, tracing one finger around the gold border where it lay on her chest, ‘is the Greek, while the core, the inner beauty is an Australian opal, that shows, like your eyes, every colour of the sea and sky.’

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, lifting and cradling the pendant in her hands so she could study its colour and depth.

  ‘It’s you and me,’ he said. ‘The Greek and the Australian, together.’

  And they kissed and held each other tight.

  ‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand,’ she murmured a little while later as she nestled against him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You said you turned the plane around. Didn’t you go to London? I thought you had to go or you could lose the hotel deal.’

  His fingers stilled momentarily in her hair, and she nestled closer, allowing her own hand to explore the perfection of his chest, the feel of his satin skin, the wiry dusting of dark hair that coiled around her fingers, the nub of a masculine nipple. ‘It was important, as you say. But suddenly the hotel didn’t seem to matter any more. And neither did getting even with Darius—or Demetrius, as you knew him.’

  ‘What happened to the deal, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘Last I heard, he was back in charge. Probably still losing money hand over fist to his turf accountant.’

  It was her fingers’ turn to still. ‘You let the deal fall through? I thought you hated him so much.’

  He sighed. ‘I did. Once.’

  Troubled now, she let her fingers resume their exploration, down his chest and circling his navel with her fingertips. ‘But why? What did he do to deserve that?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I need to know the kind of man I’m marrying. I need to understand. You seemed so ruthless then, so driven.’ She shivered and he tucked her in closer, his thumb stroking the nipple of one goose-bumped breast and flicking her thermostat to simmer.

  ‘A long time ago he was my father’s partner. They’d built a strong business together and everything seemed to be going well. But he’d asked my mother to marry him once, a long time before my father had married her. It seems he’d never forgiven him for that. Or her. So he bided his time watching the business grow and waiting for the perfect opportunity, when the business was cashed up and ready to make a major investment. He took the lot and left us with nothing. My father died barely a year later, a broken man, and I swore on his grave that I would one day get even.’

  ‘Oh.’ He’d tensed with his words, and her fingers worked to massage the pain away, stroking his flat belly and following the trail of hairs that arrowed downwards where she encountered him, thick and pulsing once more into life. ‘I understand now,’ she said, and she did. ‘I can see why you needed to get even.’

  He flipped over her then, so suddenly that she didn’t see it coming. ‘It’s history,’ he said as he buried his face in her neck and settled between her legs. ‘And it doesn’t matter any more. My mother tried to make me see that, but it was you who made me understand.’

  She shook her head as his hot tongue circled her nipples, first one and then the other, his breath like a heated caress where his tongue didn’t touch. ‘How?’

  But she did see the foil packet he had ready in his hand. She shook her head. ‘I want you, this time,’ she whispered. ‘It’s you I want to feel inside me, your flesh against mine.’ And he cast it aside and kissed her, hot and desperate and
soul deep.

  She gasped into his mouth as he entered her in one tight, fluid stroke, gasped again when he started to move inside her, the delicious friction of his increasing rhythm sending tremors through every part of her. ‘For too long,’ he muttered through teeth clenched tight, ‘I was looking to the past. But in you…’ He stilled for a moment, poised at the brink as he looked down at her, caressing her face with the pads of his thumbs. ‘In you, I found something different. In you I found my future. I love you, Cleo.’

  And he lunged into her again, his cry rent from him like a cry of freedom, as together they spilled into their future.

  EPILOGUE

  HER mother was hanging out sheets on the line, her nanna sitting in the shade of the ancient peppercorn tree, when Andreas’ car pulled up alongside the homestead late the next morning. Cleo had warned them they were coming but still her mother turned and stared, while the twins bowled around a corner of the house, shooting each other up with guns they’d improvised from sticks and rubber bands and skidding to a halt when they saw the red sports car Andreas was unfolding himself from. ‘Wow,’ they said in unison. ‘Is that your car?’

  Andreas turned on his million-wattage smile as he pulled off his sunglasses and shook his head. ‘Sadly no, it is a hire car,’ and the boys’ faces dropped. ‘But I have one much better than this back on Santorini,’ and they wowed again and positively drooled as they circled the car like a couple of sharks.

  ‘I’ll give you a ride a little later,’he said. ‘That is, if you like.’ Their eyes lit up on their combined, ‘Awesome!’ Cleo laughed and wondered how he could read children so well when he’d had so little to do with them. Maybe he’d make a pretty good father, she figured, if his reaction to her half-brothers was any indication. Maybe having his babies wouldn’t be such a hardship.