by Lynne Graham
‘I was trapped. She was my wife and my responsibility. Her parents were dead by then. I got her psychiatric treatment, but it didn’t make much difference. She’d act a little more grounded for a while, and then slide back. She was taking heavy-duty medication when she crashed her car. She wasn’t even supposed to be driving.’
The silence lay there until Katie finally picked up the courage to ask what she still longed to know. ‘Did you ever love her?’
He released his breath on a stark hiss. ‘No…not for a single moment.’
Katie blinked back hot stinging tears. ‘I’ve been horribly jealous of her, and yet she must’ve been so unhappy—and so must you have been.’
‘When she died I felt incredibly guilty, because I knew I had my life back again and I’d wanted it back so badly I could taste it,’ he grated in hoarse admission. ‘I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.’
‘You did the best you could. You stuck by her,’ Katie mumbled, half under her breath. ‘Not every man would’ve done that in those circumstances. How much do your grandparents know about this?’
‘Very little. But they must’ve had their suspicions that things weren’t right. It was better that I didn’t talk about it, though. It was easier to just do what I had to do and protect Ianthe by keeping up a front,’ Alexandros told her flatly. ‘Do you mind if I go for a walk?’
The abruptness of that request unbalanced her at a moment when all her concentration was focused on him. There was so much more she would have liked to have asked and said.
‘No, of course not,’ she lied, and headed straight back to the house. He wanted to be alone, and she was willing to bet that that had been a problem when Ianthe was around. Obsessive love was possessive, demanding and suffocating. His first marriage had been a nightmare that had to have poisoned his past with Katie and their present. How could it not have done? Of course he was wary of female love, expectations and commitment after such a ghastly experience. He had lost years of his life to a deeply troubled woman, and yet he had behaved with great honour. She realised in surprise that she loved him all the more for not having let Ianthe down. Yet in choosing not to confide even in Pelias and Calliope he had added to his burden of stress.
To have something to do she cleared up the dinner dishes, even though staff would come in the following day to take care of the housework. She went to bed but left her lamp lit, reckoning that it would show under the door. An hour later she heard him come back. She listened to the faint sound of the shower running next door and waited to see if he would come to her.
She lay in bed thinking about Alexandros and the state of their marriage. Not good, she concluded fearfully. He had admitted that he should not have used coercive tactics to get a wedding ring on her finger. How was withdrawing all intimacy likely to improve their relationship? Wouldn’t it push them apart? He was so passionate. Why hadn’t she thought of that? He had finally talked to her about Ianthe and she understood a lot of things much better now. In committing to marry a second time, he had made a much bigger leap in faith than she could ever have appreciated.
Confrontational demands did not seem much of a reward for that leap. She worried at her full lower lip and glanced at her watch. It was obvious that he was not about to join her—and why would he when she had said she would not sleep with him? Before she could lose her nerve, she got up again.
Alexandros was stretched out on the bed with his hands laced above his head, the sheet riding low on his hard flat stomach.
Moonlight revealed the wide-awake gleam of his gaze and Katie leant back against the door, her heart thumping like mad inside her. ‘It’s me…’
‘What can I help you with?’ he enquired lazily
Her face flamed, making her glad of the low level of the light. ‘S-sex,’ she stammered.
Alexandros resisted an unholy urge to grin and punch the air in triumph. A suffering shared was a suffering halved. ‘Come here…’
Anchoring a hand into her silky ringlets, he dragged her mouth hungrily down to his. She moaned under that urgent onslaught, heat pooling like liquid gold between her slender thighs.
He cupped her cheekbones between spread fingers. ‘I can’t think about anything or anyone but you, thespinis mou.’ He dipped his tongue provocatively between her lips and eased her out of her nightdress.
‘Neither can I…’
When she was all of a quiver with intense anticipation, he paused. ‘Promise me you’ll put on your wedding dress for me tomorrow, so that I can take it off…’
In a daze, she looked down at him, not quite sure she had heard him right. He ran a caressing hand over the swollen peaks of her breasts. Her stark indrawn breath was audible. ‘I didn’t bring it with me.’
‘I’ll organise a special delivery.’ Binding her slender body to his hair-roughened muscular chest with a strong arm, Alexandros sat up and murmured in earthy challenge, ‘So, wife of mine…will you dress up for me if I ask?’
‘Yes…’
‘You philistine,’ he whispered huskily. ‘How could you call anything this sublime just sex?’
So shamelessly excited she couldn’t think straight, Katie closed her eyes beneath his demanding mouth and revelled in the tide of his hungry passion.
Four weeks later, Katie parked down at the harbour in her four-wheel-drive. She was early, so she lifted Toby and Connor out of their seats and buckled them into the light buggy she always carried in the boot. Her sons struggled against their harnesses and complained. Every since they had begun to learn to walk they had grown increasingly less tolerant of such restraint on their movements.
‘Behave,’ she told them sternly, copying the tone that Alexandros used when his sons played up.
‘Mum-mum,’ Toby murmured in a pathetic tone, all big brown eyes and charm.
Connor just stuck out his arms and gave her a big hopeful smile.
Helpless love surging through her, Katie crouched down and hugged each one in turn. A slim bright figure in a turquoise sundress, she walked up the village street. Several old people sat out on chairs at the front of their homes, and some children were playing with a ball. She smiled and responded to greetings, pausing now and then to allow the boys to be admired. She made liberal use of the Greek phrases Alexandros had taught her, and was delighted whenever she managed to add to her vocabulary.
She had a soft drink in the taverna, and sat out in the evening sunlight, enjoying the glorious view of the sea and the wonderful sense of relaxation she had. Alexandros did honeymoons really well. Just to think that she had another four weeks of the same bliss to look forward to made her feel positively giddy. He had already taken her shopping and clubbing and sailing and fishing.
The first week had been filled with lazy sun-drenched days when they had never been apart for more than a moment. Nothing had ever been so intense for her. She had never dreamt that she could feel as close to him as she now did, or that he could be so tender and affectionate. The barriers had come down after he’d told her the truth about Ianthe. The only time she had seen that cool reserve of his since was when some tourists had come ashore to stage a raucous party on their private beach.
Indeed, Katie had never been so happy in all her life. They had talked endlessly about so many things—even what it had been like for her when she was pregnant. That she had had to undergo that experience alone still bothered him. He was so good to her. She had bought designer clothes in Corfu town and modelled them for him. She was steadily acquiring a collection of contemporary jewellery. She fingered an earlobe, newly healed from being pierced to carry exquisite platinum and pearl earrings. She had been rather nervous, but he had held her hand through that experience. He spoiled her. He kept her awake at night in all sorts of infinitely fascinating and seductive ways. She was more madly in love with Alexandros Christakis than ever.
She watched his yacht skimming in and sailing into the harbour with sure skill. Alexandros appeared, and his crewman vaulted lithely on to the jett
y to tie the craft up. Relief filled her. She wasn’t into fishing, so that was the one thing he got to do alone. But, even though the sea had been smooth as glass all day, she could never quite relax until he came back again.
Evening sunlight providing pleasant warmth on her back, she walked down to the harbour to greet him. Clad in disreputable cargo shorts and a black T-shirt, Alexandros uncoiled his lithe, powerful frame from the yacht. He needed a shave, and it made him look like a very sexy pirate. She felt that little clenching sensation deep down inside her that only he could evoke, and stilled.
His beautiful eyes glittered, and he lowered his tousled dark head to kiss her with long, slow, intoxicating sweetness. He jerked back from her and looked down in surprise. Toby was hauling on the hem of his shorts to demand his father’s attention.
‘I’m kissing your mother…have some pity,’ Alexandros censured, reaching back for Katie.
Belatedly aware of the amused looks their amorous behaviour was attracting, Katie backed off and began to unclip her sons from the buggy. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘It’s such a long way…and I hate waiting, agape mou,’ Alexandros growled, pressing his sensual mouth hotly to the nape of her neck as her ringlets cascaded over to one side.
Katie went breathless. Having watched him stow their sons in the four-wheel drive, she got in. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked across the bonnet.
‘What does what mean?’
‘Agape mou…’
Alexandros sprang into the driver’s seat. In the silence, thinking that perhaps he hadn’t heard her, she repeated the question and pointed out that he used the expression a lot.
He drove off. His handsome mouth compressed, he shrugged. ‘It means…my love. That’s all.’
Katie’s eyes opened to their fullest extent. She dared not look at him. He’d sounded so dismissive of the endearment that it was clearly just an expression. Had her question made him uncomfortable? He said not a word all the way back along the twisting road that led to the house. Their smiling nanny emerged to take charge of Toby and Connor, and Alexandros gripped Katie’s hand and dragged her into the house.
Giggling and blushing as he urged her into their bedroom and kicked shut the door behind him, she protested, ‘Alexandros…’
‘There’s been something I’ve been meaning to say to you…’ Alexandros incised tautly. ‘It’s your own fault I didn’t say it on our wedding day.’
Dismayed by his tone and tension, Katie whispered, ‘Say what? What was my fault?’
His lean dark face clenched, lashes sweeping down as he studied the floor. ‘I just feel so stupid saying it. I love you…okay? Right? I fell in love with you in Ireland, but I didn’t recognise it for what it was. My emotions were so strong that I couldn’t believe it was normal to feel that way.’
Katie blinked. ‘Are you serious?’ she mumbled dizzily.
‘Yes. It was very destabilising stuff.’
Katie was honestly afraid she would faint with shock. ‘Destabilising?’
‘There I was, working at getting over a bad marriage, and then in you walked. I went straight off the rails into territory I didn’t know even existed,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I’m the guy who plans everything, and nothing that happened with you was planned. I didn’t realise it was love. I thought it was my unbalanced state of mind after Ianthe’s death…that I was upset, out of control.’
‘Our timing wasn’t very lucky. So you loved me,’ she conceded, striving to adjust to what he was telling her but very challenged to do so. ‘No wonder I was so devastated when it all ended. I’d felt so sure of you up until that point…’
His dense lashes lifted on his brooding golden gaze and there was a definite appeal there for her understanding. ‘When you told me you loved me, all I could think about was Ianthe. It was not that you reminded me of her in any way. But her confessions of love that I could never return still haunted me then.’
‘Maybe you needed that time to get over what had happened with Ianthe. Were you really going to tell me you loved me on our wedding day?’
‘You blew it,’ he reminded her ruefully. ‘You told me the wedding night was off.’
‘It would have been full speed ahead if you’d mentioned love! When did you find out that you loved me?’
‘I ignored my sneaking suspicions until the day I went into your apartment and thought for all of thirty seconds that it was you, rather than the nanny, who was shagging Damon Bourikas. Suddenly my mental fog cleared,’ Alexandros confessed raggedly. ‘The belief that you might have found consolation with another man almost killed me…almost killed him too.’
‘My goodness, is that why you pulled the blackmail thing to get me to marry you?’
Alexandros nodded warily.
‘Oh, that’s so sweet.’ Katie hugged him, thinking that fear of losing her was an award-winning excuse. ‘And the picnic I rubbished. It was more real than I could’ve appreciated.’ Her mind continued to rove over the blanks, and now she had him talking she had no intention of holding back any questions. ‘But why did you keep on harping on about how it was just sex?’
‘At first I thought it was, and then it seemed safer to keep it on that level—’
‘You almost broke my heart!’ Katie heard herself confess, and she was appalled, but a great surge of emotion had welled up inside her and a strangled sob emerged.
Alexandros grabbed her with a satisfying lack of his usual cool. Apologising in Greek and English, he covered her damp face with comforting kisses. ‘Signomi…I’m sorry. I can’t be happy without you. Nobody else can make me feel the way you do, yet until it was almost too late I didn’t understand why.’
‘You must have been really stupid!’ she hissed in tearful condemnation.
Alexandros wrapped both his arms tightly round her and rocked her against him until she had calmed down. ‘I know I don’t deserve you, but I really do love you, agape mou. You and the children have brought me back to life and I wake up every day feeling blessed,’ he swore gruffly.
She subsided against him and held him close. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered happily. ‘I can finally say it again.’
‘I’ll never stop saying it, agape mou.’
‘What a little precious,’ Calliope Christakis sighed, peeping into the cot at her newest great-grandchild, a little girl named Athena. ‘She’s dainty, just like her mother. And to think you and my grandson said there would be no more children for a few years!’
Katie blushed and grinned. Athena was now three months old. Not much planning had gone into her conception. Alexandros had merely murmured one night that he would love to see her body ripen with his child, and birth control had been abandoned there and then. Athena had been on the way within weeks.
Toby and Connor were now three years old. Energetic and talkative pre-schoolers, the twins were thick as thieves when plotting mischief, but each had a distinctive personality. Toby was a quick-tempered livewire, Connor the more thoughtful and calm leader of the pair.
They had flown out to the villa in Italy with his grandparents only two days before. Pelias and Calliope, however, weren’t staying for long on this occasion. The older couple were about to leave on an escorted tour of their favourite Italian cities. Leaving the children in the tender care of the staff, Katie strolled downstairs with Calliope and kissed her goodbye. She waved at Pelias, who was already waiting in the car and tapping his watch, shaking his head in teasing rebuke of his wife’s tardiness.
Sometimes Katie found it hard to credit that she had been married for two whole years. Her mother and her stepfather had been over for a lengthy visit at the start of the summer. Alexandros made sure she saw her family as often as possible. He went out of his way to make her happy and she loved that in him. Their marriage had gone from strength to strength as their trust in each other blossomed and added a sense of warm mutual security. They both very much valued what they had together.
Alexandros had taken some drastic mea
sures to cut down on his working hours. That had not been easy for him, and at first she and the twins had shared some of his trips abroad. But when she’d fallen pregnant with Athena, he had been afraid that she would overtire herself. He had made changes, and she saw a great deal more of her handsome husband now and loved the fact.
In actuality this very day was the day of their second wedding anniversary, but in answer to all enquiries she had told everyone that no, they weren’t doing anything special. That was a complete lie. Some things, however, weren’t for sharing. Some celebrations were of a more private nature. She adjusted the narrow pearl shoulder straps on her short swirling green organza dress and set off for the tower.
She walked down the woodland path and saw him through the trees. Her steps quickened without her even being aware of the fact. The romantic scene of luxurious quilts, cushions and a marble table overflowing with tasty food was every bit as beautiful as she recalled, and her sunny smile broke out. Alexandros, lounging back against the cushions with a glass of wine cradled in one lean brown hand, began to get up.
‘Don’t move,’ Katie urged softly. ‘You look like a Roman emperor.’
‘Bring on my dancing girls.’
‘There’s just me…will I do?’
Alexandros ran smouldering golden eyes over her and extended his hand. ‘I like the dress…I like you in it, but I’ll like you even more out of it, agape mou,’ he confided, with the earthy honesty that was so much a part of him
In response, Katie shimmied her slight shoulders and swung her hips. With one lingering glance he could make her feel like the most beautiful, sexy woman alive. ‘You are so predictable, Mr Christakis.’
Laughing, his lean strong face alive with humour and a powerful look of tenderness, Alexandros tugged her down beside him with possessive hands. He settled her back against the cushions and extracted a lingering kiss. ‘Isn’t it great to know we’ve had less than three years together and there’s hopefully another forty-seven at least ahead of us?’
