by Lynne Graham
‘What do you think?’
Tabby sprang out of her chair, the feet of it slamming back noisily across the tiles underfoot as she stabbed her hands down on the table for support. Anger had gripped her in a stormy surge. ‘How dare you? I’ve never been clingy or needy in my life with a man!’
‘Yet your first move is to try and hedge me round with rules. You want reassurance and promises about a future that is unknown to both of us,’ Acheron reasoned with cold precision. ‘I don’t own a crystal ball.’
‘I don’t like the way you operate!’ Tabby vented fiercely.
‘Yet you know nothing about me. For years I’ve been exclusive in my affairs and I don’t move on without saying so when I lose interest,’ Acheron declared lazily, rising upright to study her, his brilliant, dark eyes hard and glittering. ‘It is offensive that you should condemn me for lies and infidelity on the basis of your assumptions about my character.’
‘You’re so smooth...I wouldn’t trust a word that came out of your mouth!’ Tabby hurled at him accusingly, refusing to acknowledge that he had a point.
‘Now who’s guilty of prejudice?’ Acheron riposted with soft sibilance. ‘What do you find most offensive about me? My public-school education, my wealth or my lifestyle?’
Ferocious resentment held Tabby rigid where she stood, her small face taut and flushed with indignation, but it was the soft pink fullness of her lush mouth that welded Acheron’s attention there. ‘What I find most offensive is your certainty that you know best about everything!’
‘I do know that we are poles apart and that this arrangement will work most efficiently if we stick to the original agreement we made.’
Tabby’s tummy flipped as though she had gone down in a lift too fast, sheer strain locking her every muscle into tautness. ‘You should’ve kept your blasted hands off me!’ she slammed back.
Acheron flashed her a grim appraisal from his stunning golden eyes, and his mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Sadly, I couldn’t...’
And with that final admission, Acheron strode back into the air-conditioned cool of the villa and left her alone to contemplate the truly fabulous view. The rolling green Tuscan hills stretched out before her marked out in a colourful patchwork of woodland, olive groves and vineyards. She snatched in a deeply shaken breath, the hot air scouring her lungs. He wanted them to return to the sensible terms of their platonic agreement, which was exactly what she had believed she wanted. Why, then, when she had achieved her goal, did she feel as though she had lost the battle? Indeed, instead of feeling relieved and reassured by his logical approach to their differences, she felt ridiculously hurt and abandoned...
CHAPTER EIGHT
TABBY ROLLED THE soft ball back to Amber where the child sat below the dappled shade of an ancient spreading oak tree. Amber rolled over and crawled to the edge of the rug, a look of glee in her bright eyes as she scanned the wide green expanse of freedom open before her.
Tabby marvelled at the speed with which the little girl had learned to embrace independent movement. One minute she had been rolling over and over again to explore further afield and the next she had perfected crawling. At just over seven months old she was a fairly early developer but she had always been a physically strong baby who met every developmental guideline in advance, and Tabby wasn’t really surprised that Amber had discovered how to get around without adult assistance ahead of time. As she watched the little girl pulled a blade of grass and stuck it in her mouth.
‘No...no,’ she was saying while retrieving the grass when Melinda strolled up and offered to give her a break.
‘Yes, and you’re welcome,’ Tabby confided ruefully. ‘She’s much more of a handful now, and I wouldn’t mind a little break to sunbathe and read.’
‘We can manage that. I’m going to put her in the buggy and take her for a walk,’ the blonde nanny told her smoothly. ‘I just love it here.’
Tabby glanced at the younger woman, wondering why she found it such a challenge to like her and feeling rather guilty about the fact. After all, Melinda was great with Amber, a diligent worker and friendly. Perhaps it was the hungry little glances she often saw Melinda aiming at Acheron that had prevented Tabby from bonding more with the other young woman. It was not that she was jealous, Tabby reasoned uneasily, simply that she wasn’t comfortable with a woman prepared to show that much interest in the married man who employed her. In any case, and to be fair to all parties concerned, Acheron had shown not the smallest awareness of Melinda’s curvaceous blonde allure.
‘Any idea when we’ll be leaving here yet?’ Melinda asked as she gathered up Amber’s toys and stuffed them in a bag.
‘Not yet, sorry...my husband hasn’t decided how long we’ll be staying,’ Tabby replied, wryly impressed by the way that possessive label slid off her tongue. But that, she had learned, was the easiest way to refer to Acheron in front of the staff.
Yet he was as much a husband as a caged tiger in a zoo would be, she conceded unhappily, lifting her book and her sunglasses and heading for the cool courtyard in which the pool was situated. For the past week she had barely seen Acheron, who confined himself to his office most of the day and often half the night to work. Even when he was around his phone was always ringing and his single-minded focus on business was exactly what she should have expected from a goal-orientated alpha male.
Occasionally he would join her for a cup of coffee at breakfast time and he generally put in a rather silent appearance at the dinner table, eating quickly and then politely excusing himself. He was a cool and distant companion at those meals and there was never so much as a hint of sexual awareness in either his looks or his conversation. It was as though that wild bout of passion on their wedding night was the product of her imagination alone, but Tabby still found it a distinct challenge to revert to treating him like a stranger and that embarrassed her, denting her pride and her belief in her own strength and independence because no woman of character should continue to crave the attention of a man set on treating her like the wallpaper.
Yet amazingly, infuriatingly, Acheron was playing an entirely different ball game with Amber. Melinda swore that Acheron never passed the nursery door without coming in to talk to and play with her charge and Amber had already learned to make a beeline for Acheron whenever he was in her vicinity. In fact, when it came to Acheron, Amber took her welcome for granted. Maybe Acheron’s ego was flattered by the amount of attention Amber gave him. Maybe he was even belatedly discovering that he actually liked and enjoyed the company of children? How could she possibly know what motivated his interest? Tabby had not got through a week of virtually sleepless nights without acknowledging that she knew very little at all about Acheron Dimitrakos. Her husband was a mystery to her in almost every conceivable way.
* * *
Acheron stood at the window and groaned at the sight of Tabby arranging her slim pale body on a lounger like an exhibition banquet for the starving. A purple bikini cupped her rounded little breasts and slender hips and every shift of her slim thighs drew his considerable attention. He shifted uneasily, struggling to rein back the heavy pulse of arousal that was making his nights so long and frustrating.
Although he had kept watch, as he told himself a protective husband should do, he had yet to see Tabby go topless to eradicate the risk of tan marks. He frowned, not wanting her to show that amount of naked flesh when there were always staff roaming the grounds. It was very strange, he acknowledged in bewilderment, that in spite of the fact he thought it was a very old-fashioned attitude, which he would not have admitted even under torture, he didn’t like the idea of anyone but him seeing any part of Tabby bare. He thought that there was a very weird possessive streak in him somewhere and blamed it on the surprising fact that he had become his wife’s first lover.
His wife, a label he had never thought he would use, he conceded hard-mouthed, hi
s dark eyes hooded and unusually reflective. Had Tabby genuinely been his wife, however, she would have been in his bed throughout the long hot hours of the afternoon abandoning herself to the demands of his passion and losing herself in the release he would have given her. As his body hardened afresh under the onslaught of that X-rated imagery he cursed bitterly under his breath.
Regretfully, Tabby had all the flexibility of a steel girder: he could do the rules or he could do cold showers. There would be no halfway measures, no get-out clause with her. It would be all or nothing and he knew he couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk that line and change himself to suit when he knew there was no future in it. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Yet right at that precise moment Tabby’s rules had more pulling power than a ten-ton truck.
* * *
That evening, Tabby selected a drop-dead gorgeous blue dress from the closet. Over the past week she had worn a different outfit every day, reasoning that the clothes were there and there was little point wasting them. In any case it would be downright silly to choose to overheat in the jeans and tops that were virtually all she had left of her own clothes since her life first began to unravel after she had lost her own home. Back then she had had to surrender an awful lot of her possessions, whittling her collection of clothing and objects down until she retained only what mattered most and what she could carry.
She tossed the dress on the bed, put on her make-up and brushed her hair, not that how she looked mattered when Acheron was treating her as though she were someone’s maiden aunt. But then Acheron wasn’t the reason why she took the trouble to dress up, she reminded herself staunchly. She did it for her own self-esteem and the knowledge that behaving, at least on the outside, like a rich honeymoon bride was part of her role. Clothed, she eased her feet into perilously high heels and surveyed herself critically in the mirror, mouth momentarily drooping while she wished she were taller, curvier and more striking in appearance...like Kasma? The Kasma whom Acheron never, ever mentioned? But then what business was Kasma of hers? The fiery fury, ignited only a week before by the discovery that Acheron would benefit as much as she did from their marriage, had drained away. After all, she had married Acheron for only one reason: to become Amber’s adoptive mother, and all she needed to focus on now was getting through their little charade of a marriage as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Worrying about anything else, wanting anything else was unnecessarily stressful and stupid.
Acheron was crossing the hall when Tabby reached the head of the marble staircase. Obeying instinct, she threw her head back and straightened her spine even as she felt perspiration break out across her skin. There he was, sleek, outrageously good-looking and sophisticated even when clad in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Her heart went bumpety-bumpety-bump like a clock wound up too tight, and she gripped the bannister with an agitated hand to start down the stairs. Unfortunately for her, her leading foot went down, however, not onto a step but disorientatingly into mid-air and she tipped forward with a shocked cry of fright, her hand slipping its light hold on the stair rail, her whole body twisting as she tried to halt her fall so that her hip struck the edge of a hard marble step and her ankle was turned beneath her.
‘I’ve got you!’ Acheron bit out as the world steadied again.
Mercifully Tabby registered that she was no longer falling but that pain was biting all the way from her hip down her leg...no, not her leg, her ankle. She adjusted as Acheron swept her up into his arms with too much enthusiasm and her leg swung none too gently and she couldn’t bite back the cry of pain that was wrenched from her throat. ‘My ankle...’
‘Thee mou...you could’ve been killed falling on these stairs!’ Acheron breathed with a rawness that took her aback, striding back down into the hall with his arms tautly linked round her slight body. He called out in Greek until one of his security staff came running and then he rapped out instructions.
Against her cheek she could feel the still-accelerated pounding of his heart and she wasn’t surprised that he was still high on adrenalin because he must have moved faster than the speed of light to intercept her fall. She felt quite queasy at the realisation that but for his timely intervention she might have fallen all the way down the marble staircase and broken her neck or at the very least a limb or two. Relief that she had only wrenched her ankle and bruised herself filtered slowly through her. ‘I’m OK... Lucky you caught me in time.’
Acheron laid her down with exaggerated care on a sofa and squatted athletically down to her level. ‘Did you feel anyone push you?’ he asked, brilliant dark heavily fringed eyes locked to her face.
She was astounded at the tenor of that question; her violet eyes rounded. ‘Why would anyone push me down the stairs?’ she asked weakly. ‘I lost my balance and tripped.’
Acheron frowned. ‘Are you certain? I thought I saw someone pass by you on the landing just before you fell.’
‘I didn’t see or hear anyone.’ Her brows pleated and her lashes screened her eyes, the heat of embarrassment washing away her pallor because she knew exactly why she had tripped but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged the confession from her. ‘Yes, of course I’m certain.’
If she hadn’t been so busy admiring Acheron and trying to pose like a silly teenager to look her very best for his benefit, she would never have missed her step, Tabby was reflecting in deep, squirming chagrin.
‘I’m afraid I have to move you again...I’ll try not to hurt you,’ Acheron told her, sliding his hands beneath her prone length. ‘But I have to get you into a car to get you to a doctor.’
‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t need a doctor!’ Tabby exclaimed in growing embarrassment.
But over the next couple of hours while she was subjected to every possible medical examination at the nearest hospital, she might as well have been talking to a wall because Acheron refused to listen to a word she said. Furthermore, far from behaving like the cool, reserved male she was accustomed to dealing with, Acheron was clearly all wound up although why he was, she had no idea. He paced the floor outside her examination cubicle, talked to her through the curtain to check she was all right and not in too much discomfort, insisted on an X-ray being done while virtually ignoring the doctor who assured him that she was suffering from nothing more serious than some nasty bruising and a sprained ankle. Even more embarrassing, his security team spread out round them on full systems alert as if awaiting an imminent rocket attack on the casualty department.
‘Ah...very much the adoring and anxious husband,’ the middle-aged doctor chuckled in his ignorance.
If only the man knew how wrong he was, Tabby thought unhappily, feeling like a wretched nuisance and a malingerer taking up valuable medical attention when really there was nothing very much amiss with her.
* * *
If Tabby had died, it would have been his fault. Acheron brooded on that thought darkly, rage and guilt slivering through him in sickening waves and like nothing he had ever felt before. But then he had never been responsible for another life before and, though he would have liked to have thought otherwise, he believed that his wife was very much his responsibility. Naturally he was appalled by the suspicion that someone who worked for him might have attempted to hurt his wife. Having seen the rude message left on her bedroom mirror, he was unimpressed by her conviction that she had simply had an accident. In the split second it had taken for Tabby to lose her balance and topple she might not even have noticed that someone had lightly pushed her or tripped her up.
He was even more frustrated that his security staff had failed to come up with anything suspicious on any member of the villa staff. Acheron’s mouth twisted. Unfortunately the Tuscan villa had rarely been used, hence the renovation the previous year and the hire of employees who were a new and unknown quantity and whose dependability would only be confirmed by the test of time. His lustrous eyes hardened and his stubborn mouth compressed into a tough line of
determination. Tabby’s safety was paramount and as he was very reluctant to frighten her with his suspicions. The wisest strategy would be to immediately vacate the villa and seek a more secure setting. That decision reached, Acheron gave the order, refusing to back down even when the chief of his security pointed out that such a move would entail rousing the baby from her bed as well. Regardless of the drawbacks of his plan, Acheron could hardly wait to get Tabby and the baby away from the Tuscan villa, which now, to his way of thinking, seemed a tainted place. He watched the doctor bandaging her swollen ankle, annoyance still gripping him that he had failed to prevent her from getting hurt.
‘Sorry about all this.’ Tabby sighed in the limo as they left the hospital.
‘When you have an accident you don’t need to apologise for it. How are you?’ Acheron pressed.
‘A bit battered and sore—nothing I won’t quickly recover from,’ Tabby responded with a smile. ‘It’ll certainly teach me to be more careful on stairs from now on.’
Acheron was quietly stunned. No woman of his acquaintance would have neglected to make a huge fuss over such an incident by exaggerating their injuries and demanding his sympathy and attention. Tabby, however, characteristically downplayed the episode and asked nothing of him, an acknowledgement that only increased his brooding discomfiture with the situation.
‘Where on earth are we going?’ Tabby enquired as he lifted her out of the limo and stowed her in the wheelchair already waiting for her use. ‘Is this the airport?’
‘Yes, we’re flying to Sardinia,’ Acheron said casually.
‘Seriously? I mean, like right now?’ Tabby stressed in disbelief. ‘It’s ten o’clock at night.’
‘Amber and her nanny are already on board the helicopter, as is your luggage,’ Acheron admitted.
