by Lynne Graham
Disturbingly serious black eyes focused on her. ‘Tell me, have you ever trusted a member of my sex?’
‘No,’ Maxie admitted uneasily.
‘I feel as if I’m on trial. We’re married. You won’t wear my ring. You still don’t want anyone to know you’re my wife—’
‘You made the offer to announce our marriage out of guilt.’
‘I’m not that big a fool. I think you’re paying me back for refusing to do it the right way from the start,’ Angelos countered steadily. ‘I hurt you and I’m sorry, but we have to move on from there.’
Maxie’s gaze was strained, wary. ‘I’m not ready for that yet.’
‘Thanks for that vote of faith.’ Releasing her with startling abruptness, Angelos sprang upright and strode up the beach.
Fighting a sensation of panic, and the urge to chase after him, Maxie hugged her knees tightly and stared out at the sun-drenched blue of the sea. The first row since they had left London. It totally terrified her. She could not overcome the fear that she was just a fascinating interlude for Angelos, that she did not have what it would take to hold him. She could not face the prospect of being his wife in public and then being dumped a few months down the line when he lost interest…
And yet, to be fair, so far Angelos had not shown the slightest sign of becoming bored with her. In fact, with every passing day Angelos made her feel better about herself, so much more than a beautiful face and body—something no man had ever achieved or even tried to achieve.
Yesterday he had had to fly to Athens for the day on business. Three gorgeous bouquets of the white lilies she loved had been flown in during his absence. And every one of them had carried a personal message, carefully block-printed by his own hand. ‘Missing you.’ ‘Missing you more.’ ‘Missing you even more,’ Maxie recalled headily. So impractical, so over-the-top. Not bad for a guy she had believed didn’t have a romantic, imaginative, thoughtful, sensitive or tender bone in his entire beautiful body.
But for the past ten days Angelos had been proving just how wrong she had been to attribute such flaws to him. The list? Well, as yet, since that dinner jacket was still in London, she hadn’t had a chance to get hold of it, and the list might well have been dumped by Nikos or trashed at the dry-cleaners or some such thing by now. She knew Angelos couldn’t have found it before they left London. He couldn’t possibly have kept his mouth shut on the subject if he had.
He had presented her with a laptop computer with a wonderful spellcheck mechanism on it so that she could write things with ease. He read newspapers with her. He was so patient with her efforts and, as her confidence had risen from absolute rock-bottom inadequacy, she had improved amazingly. How had she ever imagined he was selfish and inconsiderate? And how had she ever thought she could bask in such generosity and not be expected to give something back? And she knew what he wanted back. Total, unconditional surrender. That was what trust was. She was being such a terrible, selfish coward…
Maxie found him in the airy lounge. Hovering in the doorway, she studied him, her heart jumping worse than it did when he took her up in the helicopter most mornings. ‘I trust you,’ she said tautly, a betraying shimmer brightening her eyes.
Angelos dealt her a pained, unimpressed look, and then he groaned with suppressed savagery. Striding across the room, he pulled her into his arms in one powerful motion. ‘Christos…don’t look at me like that, agape mou!’ he urged ruefully. ‘Forget that whole conversation. I’m just not very good at patience…not a lot of practice and too big an ego.’
‘I like you the way you are.’
‘The lies women tell in certain moods,’ Angelos sighed with an ironic look.
‘It’s not a lie, Angelos—’
‘Possibly it won’t be…some time in the future.’ And with that last word he sealed his sensual mouth to hers with a kind of hungry desperation.
The ground beneath Maxie’s feet rocked. In that one way Angelos controlled her. He understood that. He used it. She accepted it; the passion he unleashed inside her was more than she could withstand. But, most importantly of all, it was the one time she could show him affection without the fear that she might be revealing how much she loved him. And if anything, after the past ten days, she loved him ten times more.
She was enslaved, utterly, hopelessly enslaved. So the minute Angelos touched her she let all that pent-up emotion loose on him. She clutched, she clung, she heaved ecstatic sighs and she hugged him tight. And he responded with a flattering amount of enthusiasm every time.
Probing her mouth with hot, sexual intimacy, Angelos unclipped her bikini bra. As her breasts spilt full and firm into his palms, he uttered a hungry sound of pleasure. He let his thumbs glance over her urgently sensitive pink nipples. Maxie moaned, her spine arching as he used his mouth to torment those straining buds. She was so excited she couldn’t breathe. Reaching down, he unclipped the bikini briefs clasped at her slim hips and pulled them free, leaving her naked.
‘I love exciting you,’ Angelos confided hoarsely, and he kissed her again, slowly, sensually this time. A long, powerful thigh nudged hers apart. A surge of unbearable heat left her boneless as he bent her back over his supporting arm, splaying his hand across the clenched muscles of her stomach. His skilled fingers skated through the cluster of damp golden curls and into the hot, melting warmth beneath. She whimpered and squirmed under his mouth, and at the exact moment when her legs began to buckle he picked her up with easy strength and carried her down to the bedroom.
He stood over her, unzipping the cut-offs, peeling them off. And then he came down to her. ‘Angelos…’ she pleaded, aroused beyond bearing.
Answering the powerful need he had awakened, he took her hard and fast, as always disturbingly attuned to the level of her need. And then there was nothing, nothing but him and the wild sensation that controlled her as surely as he did. She cried out as he drove her to a peak of exquisite pleasure and then slumped, absolutely, totally drained.
‘Have you ever been in love?’ Angelos asked lazily then.
Unprepared for serious conversation, Maxie blinked and met brilliant assessing eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
Maxie lowered her lashes protectively. ‘He didn’t love me back…er, what about you?’
‘Once…’
Maxie opened her eyes wide. ‘And?’
Angelos focused on her swollen mouth, ebony lashes screening his gaze. ‘I fell victim to a feminist with high expectations of the man in her life. She thought I was great in bed but that was kind of it.’
‘Tart!’ Maxie condemned without hesitation, absolutely outraged to discover he had loved somebody else and, worst of all, somebody wholly undeserving of the honour. There was just so much more to Angelos than his ability to drive her crazy with desire, she thought furiously. He was highly entertaining company and such a wretched tease sometimes…
Dark eyes met hers with disturbing clarity. ‘She wasn’t and isn’t a tart…is that jealousy, I hear?’
‘I’m not the jealous type,’ Maxie lied, and, snaking free of him with the Ice Queen look she hadn’t given him in weeks, she slid off the bed. ‘I feel like a shower.’
On the flight back to London, Maxie contemplated the wedding ring now embellishing her finger. It was new, a broad platinum band. It was also accompanied by a gorgeous knuckleduster of sapphires and diamonds.
‘An engagement ring?’ she had asked him incredulously.
‘A gift,’ Angelos had insisted. But he had produced both at spectacular speed.
Indeed, her finger was now so crowded, a glance at a hundred yards would give the news that she was married to even the most disinterested onlooker. But why couldn’t Angelos mention the prospect of having children…or something, anything that would make her feel like a really permanent fixture in his life? she wondered ruefully. Maybe he didn’t want children. Or maybe he just couldn’t contemplate the idea of having children with her. Certainly he hadn’t taken a sing
le risk in that department.
They parted at the airport. Angelos headed for the Petronides building and Maxie travelled back to his apartment, her new home. Barely stopping to catch her breath, she found the main bedroom, went into the dressing-room and searched through wardrobe after wardrobe of fabulous suits in search of that dinner jacket with her list in the pocket. She found half a dozen dinner jackets, but not one of them contained what she sought. Obviously that list had been dumped. She relaxed.
Angelos called her at lunchtime. ‘Something’s come up. I may be very late tonight,’ he informed her.
Maxie’s face fell a mile but her response was upbeat. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll amuse myself—’
‘How?’ Angelos interrupted instantaneously.
‘I’ll have an early night.’ Maxie worked hard to keep the amusement out of her voice.
‘I have this recurring image of you hitting the town on your own.’
‘Because you know you got away with going to that nightclub by yourself, but you won’t ever again,’ Maxie murmured with complete sincerity.
Maxie couldn’t believe how much she missed him that night. She thought she would turn over at some stage and find him there in the bed beside her, and it was something of a shock to wake up at eight and discover she was still alone.
By the time she sat down to breakfast, however, the table was rejoicing in a huge bunch of white lilies. ‘Missing you too much,’ the card complained. Maxie heaved a happy sigh, consoled by the sight. Her portable phone buzzed.
‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she said, since nobody else but Angelos had her number. ‘Where are you?’
‘The office. I was out of town last night. It was too late to drive back and I didn’t want to wake you up by phoning in the early hours.’
‘The next time, phone,’ Maxie urged.
‘What are you wearing, agape mou?’ Angelos enquired huskily.
Maxie gave a little shiver and crammed the phone even closer to her ear. The sound of that honeyed drawl just knocked her out. ‘Shocking pink…suit…four-inch stilettos,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I can’t wait to take them all off.’
‘How am I supposed to concentrate when you say things like that?’ Angelos demanded in a driven undertone.
‘I want you to miss me.’
‘I’m missing you…OK?’
‘OK…when can I expect a snatched moment?’
‘Don’t go out anywhere. I’ll pick you up at eleven. I’ve got a surprise for you.’
Maxie flicked through the topmost newspaper and went as usual to the gossip column. She saw the picture of Angelos instantly. Her attention lodged lovingly on how wonderfully photogenic he was, and then her gaze slowly slewed sideways to take in the woman who occupied the photo with him, the woman whose hand he was intimately clasping across a table.
Aghast, she just stared for a full count of ten seconds. Her stomach twisted, her brow dampened. She felt sick. Natalie Cibaud, the movie actress…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fresh from reports of an on-off affair with the model Maxie Kendall, Greek tycoon Angelos Petronides, our all-time favourite heartbreaker, seen dining last night with the ravishing actress Natalie Cibaud. Is it off with Maxie and on with Natalie again? Or is this triangle set to run and run?
Last night? Dear heaven, Angelos had been with another woman? With Natalie Cibaud? Maxie just couldn’t believe it. She kept on laboriously re-reading the column and staring an anguished hole into the photo. Then her stomach got the better of her. She lost her breakfast in the cloakroom.
Sick and dizzy, she reeled back to the table to study the card she had received with her flowers. ‘Missing you too much.’ There was a certain appalling candour in that admission, wasn’t there? Evidently Angelos couldn’t be trusted out of her sight for five minutes. And, trusting woman that she was, Angelos had been out of her sight for almost twenty-four hours…
Maxie asked Nikos to have the car brought around. She swept up her portable phone. No, she wasn’t going to warn Angelos. Nor was she about to sit and wait for him to arrive with whatever surprise his guilty conscience had dreamt up. She would confront him in the Petronides building. Her phone buzzed in the lift. She ignored it.
The phone went again in the limousine. Angelos trying to call her. She switched the phone off with trembling fingers. Offered the car phone some minutes later, she uttered a stringent negative. Getting a little nervous, was he? By now, Angelos would’ve been tipped off about that piece in the gossip column. He knew he had been caught out. He had been unfaithful to her. He must have been. He had been out all night. All night. Maxie shivered, gooseflesh pricking her clammy skin. She was in sick shock. Why…why? was all she could think.
Until now she hadn’t appreciated just how entirely hers Angelos had begun to seem. She had trusted him one hundred per cent. And now she couldn’t comprehend how her trust had become so unassailable. He had never mentioned love, never promised to be faithful. On the very brink of making a public announcement of their marriage, Angelos had betrayed her. Why? Was this one of those male sexual ego things women found so incomprehensible? Or was an adulterous fling his revealing reaction to the prospect of fully committing himself to her?
Magnificent in her rage, Maxie stalked into the Petronides building. Every head in the vicinity seemed to turn. They did a double-take at the bodyguards in her wake. Maxie stepped into the executive lift.
Angelos had to be gnashing his teeth. Famous for his discretion in his private life, and his success in keeping his personal affairs out of the gossip columns, he would’ve assumed he was safe from discovery. Or had he deliberately sought to be found out? Was she becoming paranoid? The simplest explanations were usually the most likely, she reflected wretchedly. Had Angelos just met up with Natalie Cibaud again and suddenly realised that she was the woman he really wanted?
The receptionist on the top floor stared and rose slowly to her feet.
Maxie strode on past, the stillness of her pale features dominated by eyes as brilliant as sapphires. Agog faces appeared at doorways. Without breaking her stride, Maxie reached the foot of the corridor and, thrusting wide the door of Angelos’s office, she swept in and sent the door slamming shut behind her again.
Angelos was standing in the centre of the room, lean, hard-boned face whip-taut, black eyes shimmering.
A pain as sharp as a knife cut through Maxie. She could read nothing but angry frustration in those startlingly handsome features. That neither shame nor regret could be seen savaged her. ‘Before I walk out of your life for ever, I have a few things to say to you—’
Angelos moved forward and spread silencing hands. ‘Maxie—’
‘Don’t you dare interrupt me when I’m shouting at you!’ Maxie launched. ‘And don’t say my name like that. The only way you could get around me at this moment is with a rope! When I saw that photo of you with Natalie Cibaud, I couldn’t believe my eyes—’
‘Good,’ Angelos slotted in fiercely. ‘Because you shouldn’t have believed what you were seeing. That photo was issued by Natalie’s agent three months ago! That dinner date took place three months ago!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Maxie breathed. jerkily, studying him with stunned intensity.
‘Then call my lawyer. I’ve already been in touch with him. I intend to sue that newspaper.’
Maxie’s lashes fluttered. Her legs trembled. She slumped back against the door. Widening blue eyes dazed, she framed raggedly, ‘Are you saying that…you weren’t with Natalie last night?’
‘Maxie, I haven’t laid eyes on Natalie since the night you took ill. We did not part the best of friends.’
The tremble in Maxie’s lower limbs was inexorably spreading right through her entire body. ‘But I thought you saw her after that—’
‘You thought wrong. I have neither seen nor spoken to her since that night, and as far as I’m aware she’s not even in the UK right now. Maxie…you should know I haven’t the smallest desire for any
other woman while you are in my life,’ Angelos swore, anxiously searching her shaken face and then lapsing into roughened Greek as he reached for her and held her so tight and close she couldn’t breathe.
‘You s-said if you saw a beautiful woman walk down the street—’
‘No, I said, “a ravishing beauty like you”,’ Angelos contradicted with strong emphasis. ‘And there is no other woman like you. When I realised you must’ve seen that picture, it was like having my own heart ripped out! I can’t bear for you to be hurt—not by me, not by anyone, agape mou.’
Strongly reassured by that unexpectedly emotional speech, Maxie gazed wordlessly up at him. Angelos breathed in deep and drew back from her. Black eyes meeting her bemused scrutiny, he murmured tautly, ‘I have so much I want to say to you…but there is someone waiting to see you and it would be cruel to keep him waiting any longer. Your father is already very nervous of his reception.’
‘My…my father?’ Maxie whispered shakily. ‘He’s here?’
‘I put private detectives on his trail and they contacted me as soon as they found him. I went to see him yesterday. I had planned to bring him back to the apartment to surprise you.’ Angelos guided her over to one of the comfortable armchairs and settled her down carefully, seeming to recognise that she was in need of that assistance. ‘I’ll send him in…’
Stiff with strain, Maxie breathed unevenly, ‘Just tell me one thing before you go…has Dad asked you for money?’
‘No. No, he hasn’t. He’s cleaned up his act, Maxie. He’s holding down a job and trying to make a decent life for himself.’ Angelos shrugged. ‘But he would be the first one to admit that he still has to fight the temptation to go back to his old habits.’
Her troubled eyes misted with tears. As Russ Kendall stepped uncertainly through the door through which Angelos had just departed, Maxie slid upright. Her father looked older, his hair greyer, and he had put on weight. He also looked very uncertain of himself.
‘I wasn’t sure about coming here after what I did,’ her father admitted uncomfortably. ‘It’s very hard for me to face you now. I let you down the whole time I was bringing you -up but I let you down worst of all three years ago, when I left you to pay the price for my stupidity.’
