by Lynne Graham
‘You’re just overexcited—’
‘Like one of your racehorses?’
With a ground-out curse, Angelos slung his napkin on the table and, thrusting his chair back, sprang to his full commanding height. As he reached for her she tried to evade him, but he simply bent and swept her up into his powerful arms and held her tight. ‘Maxie…why are you suddenly behaving like a sulky child?’
‘How dare—?’
In answer, Angelos plunged his mouth passionately hard down on hers and smashed his primal passage through every barrier. Her numbness vanished He kissed her breathless until she was weak and trembling with tormented need in his arms. Then he looked down at her, and he stared for a very long while.
The silence unnerved her, but she was too shaken by the discovery that even a few kisses could reduce her to wanton compliance to speak.
His bronzed face utterly hard and impassive, he finally murmured flatly, ‘I’ll call the car for you and I’ll be in touch. I don’t feel like lunch now either.’
Maxie registered his distance. The sense of rejection she felt appalled her. And she thought then, If I go through with this private arrangement, if I try to play him at his own game, I will surely tear myself apart…
No—no, she wouldn’t, she told herself urgently, battening down the hatches before insidious doubt could weaken her determination. One way or another she would survive with her pride intact. Wanting Angelos was solely a physical failing. Ultimately she would overcome that hunger and look forward to the life she would have after him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘SO, EVEN though it was a rather unconventional proposal, Angelos did have marriage in mind,’ Liz finally sighed with satisfaction.
‘Only when he saw it was his only hope.’
‘I hear a lot of men are like that. Angelos is only thirty-three, but he’s bound to be rather spoilt when it comes to his…well, when many other women would be willing to sleep with him without commitment,’ Liz extended with warming cheeks. ‘I expect you’ve been something of a learning experience for him, and if you were more sensible, he could learn a lot more.’
‘Meaning?’
‘This marriage will be what you make of it.’
‘Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?’ Maxie muttered in confusion. ‘It isn’t going to be a proper marriage, Liz.’
‘Right now you are very angry with Angelos. I refuse to credit that you could really go through with walking out on your marriage in six months’ time,’ Liz told her with a reproving shake of her head.
‘I will, Liz…believe me, I will—’
‘This time I’m definitely not listening,’ Liz asserted wryly. ‘And as for Angelos’s apparent fantasy that he can marry you and live with you on an occasional basis without people finding out that he’s involved with you…he’s almost as off the wall on this as you are, Maxie!’
‘No, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He just doesn’t expect me to be in his life for very long.’
Liz compressed her lips. ‘I have only one real question to ask you. Why can’t you just sit down and tell Angelos the whole truth about Leland?’
Taken aback, Maxie protested, ‘He didn’t want to listen when I did try—’
‘You could’ve made him listen. You are no shrinking violet.’
‘Do you seriously think that Angelos is likely to believe that Leland took advantage of me in every way but the one in which, of course, everyone thinks he did, even though he didn’t?’ Maxie was shaken into surprised defensiveness by Liz’s attitude.
‘Well, your silence on the subject has defined your whole relationship with Angelos. Indeed, I have a very strong suspicion that you don’t really want him to know the real story.’
‘And why on earth would I feel like that?’
‘I think that you think you’re a much more exciting proposition as a bad girl,’ Liz admitted reluctantly, and Maxie turned scarlet. ‘You get all dolled up in your fancy clothes and you flounce about getting a bitter thrill out of people thinking you’re a real hard, grasping little witch—’
Maxie was aghast. ‘Liz, that’s—’
‘Let me finish,’ the older woman insisted ruefully. ‘I believe that that’s the way you’ve learnt to cope with those who have hurt you, not to mention all the mud you’ve had slung at you. You hide away inside that fancy shell and sometimes you get completely carried away with pretending to be what you’re not…so ask yourself—is it any wonder that Angelos doesn’t know you the way he should? He’s never seen the real you.’
The real me, Maxie reflected, cringing where she sat. He would be bored stiff by the real Maxie Kendall, who, horror of horrors, couldn’t even read or write properly. And was it really likely that a male as sexually experienced as Angelos would be equally obsessed with possessing a woman who turned out to be just one big pathetic bluff? A woman who had never yet shared a bed with any man? A virgin?
Unaware of the younger woman’s hot-cheeked distraction, Liz was made anxious by the lingering silence. ‘You’re the closest thing to a daughter I’ll ever have,’ she sighed. ‘I just want you to be happy…and I’m afraid that if you keep up this front with Angelos, you’ll only end up getting very badly hurt.’
Her eyes prickling, Maxie gave her friend a hug. She blamed herself for being too frank and worrying Liz. From here on in, she decided shamefacedly, she would keep her thoughts and her plans to herself.
Angelos phoned her at six that evening. He talked with the cool detachment of someone handing out instructions to an employee. She knew herself unforgiven. His London lawyer would visit her with the prenuptial contract. The ceremony would take place the following week in the north of England.
‘Next week?’ Maxie exclaimed helplessly.
‘I’m organising a special licence.’
‘Why do we have to go north?’
‘We couldn’t marry in London without attracting attention.’
Maxie bit her lower lip painfully. So, Liz innocently assumed that such secrecy couldn’t be achieved? She didn’t know Angelos. Employing his wealth in tandem with his naturally devious mind, Angelos clearly intended to take every possible precaution.
‘Do we travel up together in heavy disguise?’
‘We’ll travel separately. I’ll meet you up there.’
‘Oh…’ Even facetious comments were squashed by such attention to detail.
‘I’m afraid that I won’t be seeing you beforehand—’
‘Why not?’ Maxie heard herself demand in disbelief, and then was furious with herself for making such an uncool response.
‘Naturally I intend to take some time off. But in order to free that space in a very tight schedule, I’ll be flying to Japan later this evening and moving on to Indonesia for the rest of the week.’
‘You’ll be seriously jet lagged by the time you get back.’
‘I’ll survive. I suggest you disengage yourself from your contract with the modelling agency—’
‘I was on the brink of signing a new one,’ Maxie admitted.
‘Excellent. Then you can simply tell them that you have changed your mind.’
Maxie was still recovering from Catriona Ferguson’s angry incredulity at their brief and unpleasant interview when she was subjected to the visit from Angelos’s lawyer.
At her request the older man read out the document she was expected to sign. If Maxie had been as avaricious as Angelos apparently believed, she would’ve been ecstatic. In return for her discretion she was offered a vast monthly allowance on top of an all-expenses-paid lifestyle, and when the marriage ended she was to receive a quite breathtaking settlement.
By the time he had finished speaking, Maxie’s nails were digging into her palms like pincers and she was extremely pale. She signed, but the only thing that gave her the strength to do so was the bitter certainty that in six months’ time she would tear up her copy of that agreement and throw the pieces scornfully back at Angelos’s feet. Only
then would he appreciate that she could neither be bought nor paid off.
The church sat on the edge of a sleepy Yorkshire hamlet. Mid-morning on a weekday, the village had little traffic and even fewer people. Maxie checked her watch for the tenth time. Angelos was now eleven minutes late.
Having run out of casual conversation, the elderly rector and his wife were now uneasily anchored in the far corner of the church porch while Maxie hovered by the door like a pantomime bride, on the watch in terror that the groom had changed his mind. And it was possible, wasn’t it? The arrangements had been so detached they now seemed almost surreal.
A car had picked her up at a very early hour to ferry her north. And Angelos had phoned only twice over the past week. He would have been better not phoning at all. Her spontaneity vanished the instant she recognised her own instinctive physical response to that rich, dark drawl. It had not made for easy dialogue.
Today, I am getting married. This is my wedding day, she told herself afresh in a daze of disbelief, and of course he would turn up, but he would get a tongue-lashing when he did. Angelos… Hatred was so incredibly enervating, Maxie conceded grimly. He kept her awake at night and he haunted her dreams. That infuriated and threatened her.
In defiance of the suspicion that she was taking part in some illegal covert operation, she was wearing her scarlet dress. A scarlet dress for a scarlet woman. No doubt that would strike Angelos as an extremely appropriate choice.
Hearing the sound of an approaching car, Maxie tensed. A gleaming Mercedes closely followed by a second car pulled up. Angelos emerged from the Mercedes. Sheathed in a wonderfully well-cut navy suit, pale blue tie and white silk shirt, he looked stupendous. As his London lawyer appeared from the second car, Angelos paused to wait for him. As if he had all the time in the world, Maxie noted incredulously. Her ready temper sizzled. How dared Angelos keep her waiting and then refuse to hurry himself?
Stepping into full view, her attention all for Angelos as he mounted the shallow steps to the door, Maxie snapped, ‘And what sort of a time do you call this? Where the heck have you been?’
As his lawyer froze into shattered stillness, Angelos’s black eyes lit on Maxie like burnished blazing gold. And then a funny thing happened. A sudden scorching smile of raw amusement wiped the disturbing detachment from his savagely handsome features. ‘We had to wait thirty minutes for a landing slot at the airport. Short of a parachute jump, there wasn’t much I could do about that.’
Suddenly self-conscious, her cheeks flaming, Maxie shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘Thanks for wearing my favourite outfit. You look spectacular,’ Angelos murmured huskily in her ear, before he moved smoothly forward to offer his apologies to the rector for his late arrival.
Minutes later, they were walking down the aisle. As the ceremony began Maxie looked tautly around herself and then down at her empty hands. Not even a flower to hold. And her dress—so inappropriate, so strident against the timeworn simplicity of the church and its quiet atmosphere of loving piety. But then what did love have to do with her agreement with Angelos?
Suddenly she felt the most terrible fraud. Like any other woman, she had had wedding day dreams. Not one of them had included marrying a man who didn’t love her. Not one of them had included the absence of her father and of even a single friend or well-wisher. Her eyes prickled with tears. Finding herself all choked up, Maxie blinked rapidly, mortified by her own emotionalism. A ring was slid onto her wedding finger. And then it was over. When Angelos tried to kiss her, she twisted her golden head away and presented him with a cool, damp cheek.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Angelos demanded as he strode down the steps, one big hand stubbornly enclosing hers in spite of her evasive attempts to ease free of him. ‘Why the tears?’
‘I feel horribly guilty…we just took vows we didn’t mean.’
Maxie climbed into the Mercedes. After a brief exchange with his lawyer, Angelos swung into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Starting the engine, he drove off. The silence between them screeched louder with every passing minute.
‘Tell me, is there the slightest hope of any bridal joy on the horizon?’ Angelos finally enquired in a charged and sardonic undertone.
‘I don’t feel like a bride,’ Maxie responded flatly. ‘I thought you’d be pleased about that.’
Angelos brought the Mercedes to a sudden halt on the quiet country road. As he snapped free his seat belt Maxie turned to look at him, wondering why he had stopped. With a lack of cool that took her completely by surprise, Angelos pulled her into his powerful arms and sealed his mouth to hers in a hot, hard, punishing kiss. Maxie struck his broad muscular back with balled fists of outrage, but all that pent-up passion he unleashed surged through her like a lightning bolt of retribution.
Her head swam; her heartbeat thundered insanely fast. Her fists uncoiled, her fingers flexed and then rose to knot round the back of his strong neck. She clung. He prised her lips apart and with a ragged groan of need let his tongue delve deep. Excited beyond belief at that intensely sexual assault, Maxie reacted with a whimpering, startled moan of pleasure, and then as abruptly as he had reached for her Angelos released her again, his hard profile taut
‘We haven’t got time for this. I don’t want to have to hang around at the airport.’
Maxie’s swollen mouth tingled. She lowered her head, but as Angelos shifted restlessly on the seat and switched the engine back on she could not help but notice that he was sexually aroused. Her face burning from that intimate awareness, she swiftly averted her attention again. He seemed to get that way very easily, she thought nervously. And only then did Maxie admit to herself that her own lack of sexual experience had now become a source of some anxiety to her.
For a cool, sophisticated male, Angelos had seemed alarmingly close to the edge of his control. If he could react like that to one kiss, what would he be like tonight?
That Greek temperament of his was fiery. Virile, overwhelming masculinity powered his smouldering passion to possess, which she had already frustrated more than once. And, since he believed that she had had other lovers, maybe he wouldn’t bother too much with preliminaries. Maybe he would just expect her to be as hot and impatient as he was for satisfaction…
For goodness’ sake, Angelos wasn’t a clumsy teenager, she told herself in exasperation. As experienced as he undoubtedly was in the bedroom, he was sure to be a skilled and considerate lover. And he would never guess that she was inexperienced. She had once read on a problem page that most men couldn’t even tell whether a woman was a virgin or not.
Honestly, she was being ridiculous! Embarrassed for herself, Maxie stared stonily out at the passing scenery and forced her mind blank. She smothered a yawn. As the ferocious tension drained gradually out of her muscles, tiredness began to creep in to take its place.
Angelos helped her out of the car at the airport. He frowned down at her pale, stiff face. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m just a bit tired.’
They were flying straight to Greece and they were able to board his private jet immediately. He tucked her into a comfortable seat and, after takeoff, a meal was served. Maxie had about two mouthfuls and a glass of wine. In the middle of the conversation Angelos was endeavouring to open, she noticed that she still had the wedding ring on her finger.
He is my husband, Maxie suddenly registered in shock. And then, just as suddenly, she erased that thought. She didn’t want to think of him as her husband because she was all too well aware that he did not think of her as his wife. A private arrangement, a temporary one, not a normal marriage, she reminded herself. Her troubled eyes hardened. Sliding the slender band from her finger, she studied it with a slightly curled lip before leaning forward to set it down on the table between them.
‘You’d better take that back,’ she told him carelessly.
Angelos stared at her as if she had slapped him. A faint arc of colour scored his high cheekbones. His fulminating gaze raked over
her. ‘You are a ravishingly beautiful woman…but sometimes you drive me clean up the wall!’ he admitted grittily. ‘Why should you remove that ring now, when we are alone?’
‘Because I don’t feel comfortable with it.’ To evade that hard, assessing scrutiny, Maxie rested her head back and closed her eyes. He was acting as if she had mortally insulted him. But she had no intention of sporting a ring that she would eventually have to take off. On that awareness, she fell asleep.
Angelos shook her awake just after the jet had landed at Athens.
‘You’ve been tremendous company,’ he drawled flatly.
Maxie flushed. ‘I’m sorry, I was just so tired I crashed.’
‘Surprisingly enough, I did get that message.’
They transferred from the jet onto a helicopter for the final leg of their journey to the island. As the unwieldy craft rose into the air and then banked into a turn, providing Maxie with a frighteningly skewed panoramic view of the city far below, her stomach twisted sickly. She focused on the back of the pilot’s seat, determined not to betray her fear to Angelos. A long, timeless period of mute suffering followed.
‘We’re almost there. I want you to see the island as we come in over the bay,’ Angelos imparted. His warm breath fanned her cheekbone as the helicopter gave an alarming lurch downward and she flinched. ‘Go on…look.’ Angelos strove to encourage her while she shut her eyes tight and her lips moved as she prayed.
‘I totally forgot you were afraid of heights,’ he murmured ruefully as he lifted her down onto solid ground again and steadied her with both hands. ‘I always come to Chymos in the helicopter. You’ll have to get used to it some time.’
All Maxie could think about was how soon she would have to undergo that ordeal again.
‘What you need is more of the same,’ Angelos announced in a tone of immoveable conviction. ‘I have a pilot’s licence. I’ll take you up in the helicopter every day for longer and longer periods and you’ll soon get over your phobia.’
