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‘Of course not!’ Penny snapped. ‘We couldn’t just give up on things. Life had to go on. For everyone. I mean, even…’
‘Even…?’ Zarek prompted when her throat closed up and she couldn’t finish the name.
Penny reached for her glass again, took another fortifying sip of wine. Nerves had made her slip on the words, but suddenly she was determined to have this out. Time it was out in the open and faced.
‘Even for bloody Odysseus Shipping.’
Oh, she had his attention now. If she thought that nearly black gaze had been focused before, now it had the burn of a laser so that she expected her skin to actually scorch where it rested.
It was too much to see the sudden change from stillness to attention. To watch his face change, the sudden light of interest in his eyes.
But, “Bloody Odysseus Shipping?” was all he said and his tone was quite mild, enquiring. ‘You were desperate to get rid of it,’ he added in the same sort of tone.
‘Is that so impossible to believe?’
Pushing her chair back with an ugly scraping sound on the stone-tiled terrace, she got hastily to her feet and reached for his empty plate. Stacking it on top of her own, she winced inwardly at the crashing sound it made. She wasn’t deliberately clattering them together, it just sounded that way. Her hands weren’t as steady as she wanted and she cursed how much they gave away of her inner turmoil.
‘I mean, I’m no hot-shot businesswoman. I’m a secretary—a very junior secretary at that. And when a company loses its chairman to sudden death—an accident at sea—and there is no one ready and trained to take his place, then apparently the values of shares waver—people wonder about their connections with the firm. Didn’t you hear? I mean, I assume that you did a lot of investigating, checking on facts—looking into things before you came back to Ithaca. Just so that you knew what was going on.’
She actually paused and looked up at him, waiting for his answer. Not that she needed it. She knew already that he must have checked out all the details of what was happening on Ithaca before he had even thought about coming home. That was the sort of man Zarek was. He never made a move until he had all the facts.
‘You didn’t know!’ she exclaimed as his head went back in shock. ‘You really didn’t find out about that?’
‘I knew.’
Zarek’s confirmation was a low growl as she made herself turn and head towards the kitchen with the dirty plates. She wouldn’t allow herself to look back but she heard the pad of his bare feet on the tiles as he came up behind her.
At least the simple task of loading the plates and cutlery into the dishwasher meant that she could keep her back to him, focusing hard on the job in hand. But all the same she felt as if she could sense the tension coming off him in waves and directed at the back of her head, so sharp that it almost penetrated her skull.
‘Then you’ll understand why it felt like a millstone round my neck. And all the time I had Hermione and your stepbrothers on my back too. Telling me that nothing I did was right. That the company needed a man in control. So, yes, in the end I gave in. I’d had enough. I was going to walk away, go back to England. Start my life over again. Yes, I know you never wanted them to have the company, but what else could I do? It’s not as if I had a child whose inheritance I had to fight for too.’
Too late she realised just what she had said, the minefield into which she had wandered. And the silence from behind her was so deep, so intense that she could practically feel it closing around her, sealing off her lungs, taking the breath from her body.
‘No, you made sure of that.’
His voice had turned to ice. Icy shards that seemed to slash at her exposed and vulnerable skin.
‘You knew I wanted a child. You led me to believe you wanted one too.’
Washing-powder tablet…rinse aid…Penny forced herself to focus on the mundane details to stop her mind going into meltdown as she hunted for an answer.
‘I didn’t want your heir.’
She could answer him this way while she had her back to him and he couldn’t see her face. It meant that she couldn’t see his expression but that hardly mattered. It was much more important that he didn’t know her answer for the half lie that it was. She hadn’t wanted only to provide him with an heir, but the thought of a small baby with Zarek’s black hair and deep brown eyes almost destroyed her. Her eyes were blurred with focusing on the front of the dishwasher so fiercely rather than let any tears form.
‘But that was why we married—why I became your husband.’
Slamming the dishwasher door shut—the noise and force deliberate this time—Penny pushed herself up from the squatting position and pressed the start button fiercely.
He was leaning against the worktop, arms folded across his powerful chest, but the tension in the long body showed the position to be anything other than the relaxed one it appeared to be.
‘But there’s so much more to being a husband than just declaring it.’
Did something change in those eyes or was it just the flicker of the candlelight throwing a different set of shadows into them?
‘What was missing? Was I cruel to you? Did I treat you badly—not give you everything you wanted?’
‘You gave everything I could have dreamed of.’
If they were talking about material things. But from the moment that she had known how much she needed his love, then marriage, his beautiful homes, all the riches he had were as nothing compared with what she wanted most in all the world. And she had more pride than to beg for something he couldn’t give her.
‘And yet you didn’t want to stay—you didn’t want a child.’
Just as she couldn’t read his face, she couldn’t interpret his tone.
‘We didn’t have a marriage to bring a child into. A child has the right to have two parents who are happy to be together, and not just because of the life they had created between them.’
Two parents who loved each other.
She’d finished drying her hands on a towel and now she tossed it down onto the marble surface beside the sink. She’d prevaricated for as long as she could, avoided meeting his eyes until she could do so no longer. If she didn’t turn now and look him in the face it would be so obvious that she was avoiding him that she would not be able to dodge it any more.
‘I was wrong to marry you. My parents married just because I was on the way and it was a terrible mistake. They tore each other apart—and I was always caught in the crossfire.’
‘We didn’t even get that far,’ Zarek murmured dryly.
‘No—because I realised I should never have said yes in the first place.’
‘So why did you stay when I was declared missing?’
‘Someone had to hold things together. I discovered that you had left everything to me in your will. And there was always just the possibility that you might come back.’
‘And now that I am back?’
‘I really don’t know.’
Simple honesty was all that she was capable of. In spite of the sleep she had had earlier that day she was suddenly desperately tired. It was as if the tension that had been holding her upright and keeping her going in all the time that Zarek had been away had now totally evaporated, taking with it her spirit and the strength of her spine. Her mind seemed hazed, her thoughts muddied.
‘You don’t know why you married me?’ Zarek questioned sharply, throwing her even further off balance.
How was she expected to answer that without bringing the L word into things? Right now, attack seemed the better form of defence.
‘Don’t you think it’s a little late to be asking that now? It never occurred to you to ask it when you were about to put a ring on my finger? Well, no, I don’t suppose you did. Because for you it was all cut and dried, wasn’t it? A cold-blooded business deal. You wanted me and you wanted a child. Marry me and you’d get both.’
Zarek shifted his weight from one hip to the other, but apart from that his expression remained unchanging.
‘Not all such deals are cold-blooded.’
‘No, of course not—we were pretty hot-blooded most of the time. And that gives you the reason why I married you. Great sex.’
When he dared to frown as if he needed more explanation she lost her grip on her tongue and really let him have it.
‘I was twenty-two. You’re pretty gorgeous—and rich. What’s not to like?’
‘Yes, there was that.’
‘There definitely was.’
Somehow the defiance she dredged up from deep inside her made it easier than she thought to face that dark-eyed gaze.
‘But while you’ve been away I’ve had time to grow up. And…and…’
Watching him wipe the back of his hand across his face, she found she was stumbling over her words. If she was tired then he looked drained, and she recognised the way that he pressed his fingers to the scar at his temple as a warning sign.
Looking at him more closely, Penny saw the shadows under his eyes, the faint cloudiness in the polished jet gaze. She thought that she knew how he felt. It was now well past midnight and she felt as if she had lived through several lifetimes in less than twenty-four hours. Right now she felt as if she was losing her grip on being able to control where the conversation went and what, underneath it all, it might mean.
‘But I don’t think now is the time to discuss it. It’s been a long day. And we’ve both had so much adjusting to do since you came back.’
Dear heaven, was it only this morning? Just a few short hours before and yet she felt as if he had been back for ever. As if he had never been away. But he had been missing and that had had such an effect on her life that she had no idea quite when she would feel as if her existence was back under her control once more.
‘We do need to talk more. But not tonight. It’s late—and I’m—I’m tired.’
She accompanied the words with a stretch and a yawn to emphasise them but the truth was that she didn’t have to put on any sort of a show. Now that she thought about it she was worn out, aching with tiredness right through to the bone, her head spinning nauseously.
Or perhaps it was the result of the stress of the day. A long day of trying to adjust to all that had happened, a day of shocks and bewilderment that had kept her feeling raw and on edge with every hour that passed.
Chapter Ten
SHE didn’t expect that Zarek would allow himself to be diverted but to her surprise he nodded his head and stepped backwards towards the door.
‘You’re right. It is late, and I’ll admit that I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed after all this time.’
Perhaps it was her own fatigue, or perhaps it was the way that they went up the stairs, Argus trotting beside her and Zarek switching off the lights behind them as he mounted the stairs, that blurred Penny’s mind. They had done this so many other times in the past, when they had been married. Wandering upstairs in companionable silence at the end of the day, having shared a meal, a glass of wine and now heading for bed. But it was not until she reached the wide landing and turned towards the bedroom that reality hit home again reminding her of the truth of how things really were and making her stumble slightly, banging into the wall as she fought to keep her balance.
‘Careful.’
Zarek put a hand out to support her, taking hold of her elbow and helping her to straighten up.
‘Thank you.’
It was stiff and tight, the muscles in her throat clenching in response to the feel of the heat of his palm against her skin, the burn of his touch along every nerve. In flashes of memory the scene in the bedroom earlier that night came back to haunt her, overlaid by older but no less vivid memories of the nights that Zarek had taken her to bed in the past. During their marriage. Starting with the heated passion of their wedding night that had left her weeping with joy and disbelief that such stunning passion could ever exist.
And now Zarek clearly expected that he would share her bed again. That they would sleep together in the wide soft marriage bed with its huge, ornately carved wooden headboard. And after his casual, ‘Yes, there was that,’ that was more than she could bear.
Coming to a halt before she actually reached the master suite door, she half turned towards Zarek and tried for what she hoped was an appeasing smile.
‘I’ll get you some clean towels and bring them to your bedroom. The blue suite is made up and ready.’
‘The blue suite?’
Appeased was the last thing Zarek looked. His black brows drew together in an angry frown and the flash of something dangerous in the depths of his eyes made her legs tremble beneath her.
‘I think not.’
‘Oh, but…’
Protesting was a mistake. As was thinking that he was ever going to be persuaded on this one. Ruthless rejection of what she had planned was stamped in hard, cruel lines on his face, burning in that cold-eyed glare that he turned on her.
‘Oh, but nothing. Not if you are trying to say that you think I should sleep elsewhere.’
His hand was already on the door, twisting the handle with a force that spoke of the anger he was working to hold in check. But what made Penny’s stomach tense and twist itself into tight, painful knots was not the thought of the dark fury he might feel but the demonstration of the ruthless power he was determined to exert to control it. The force of will it spoke of made her quail at the thought of it being used against her.
And which way would it be used? Earlier today he had wanted to take her to bed and she had been unable to resist. Only at the last minute had common sense reasserted itself, the much-needed sense of self-preservation kicking in to make her react in the rational way at last. If Zarek turned the sheer power of his seductive persuasion on her once more she might not be able to hold out this time.
Just the memory of the feeling of drowning in his kisses, in his touch, gave her the sense of going down for the third time. She could feel the dark heated waters of sensuality swirling about her dangerously once again.
‘Where else would I sleep, glikia mou?’
The bite on the last two words took them to a point light years away from any real term of affection.
‘This is my home, this is my bedroom. My bed. The bed I have dreamed of sleeping in again ever since I realised just who I was. There is nowhere else I intend to sleep tonight—or any other night.’
And there was no way at all she could refute that argument even if she dared to try.
‘So—what about me?’
‘What about you?’
The coolly assessing stare he turned on her moved from the top of her head, down to her toes where they curled nervously on the polished wooden floor, then swept back up again to linger on her uneasy face, looking straight into her frowning eyes.
‘Where—where am I expected to sleep?’
‘Expected?’
There was a dark note of mockery in that single drawled word, one that scraped over her nerves like the sound of fingernails on a blackboard, making her wince inwardly.
‘I expect nothing from you, agapiti mou
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