Greek Tycoon, Wayward Wife

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He hit the button for the lift and the doors opened immediately. He gestured for her to join him, but she shook her head frantically.

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said with a grin.

And before Libby had time to protest that she still had twenty-four hours in which to decide, and that taking a breather before going downstairs didn’t mean anything, the doors of the lift had already closed.

Which wouldn’t have been half so frustrating if they hadn’t both known he was right.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE’D had a whole sleepless night and the clarity of a morning in which to talk herself out if of it, but at three-thirty the following afternoon Libby found herself and her well-worn suitcase in a taxi on her way to the airstrip.

And she even seemed to be managing to sit still. For, although there was a part of her that was tempted to tell the driver to turn around and go as fast as he could in the opposite direction—the part which believed Rion had been far too cold in his office for this to end in anything other than heartache—over the course of the last twenty-four hours the rest of her had decided that going with Rion wasn’t just following her heart and her hormones, it was logical.

Because unless she went with him she’d never fully be able to move on, and that had been half the point of her seeking to finalise their separation in the first place. The logic was the same as if she’d been handed a lottery ticket. She’d know the chances of it containing the winning numbers were tiny, but until she checked she’d never know, and every day she’d wake up with a voice whispering what if? in her ear.

Not that if they had an actual lottery ticket it would matter to Rion whether it bore the lucky numbers or not, Libby thought ruefully as they drove alongside a hangar and a sparkling white plane bearing the striking Delikaris Experiences logo taxied round in a semi-circle and stopped in front of them. Because she was fast coming to realise that in their years apart his obsession with personal success had taken on gargantuan proportions.

Which suggested that the more she got to know him, the more she’d discover that they were incompatible. It was obvious that he cared about nothing other than money if he had earned so much in five years, and, what was more, he’d clearly chosen to spend it on flashy possessions like his own private jet. If she had that volume of cash she’d head straight back out to Africa and do some good with it. She shook her head as she stepped out onto the tarmac. She’d once thought Rion was the antithesis of her father, but now she had to wonder if they’d been two sides of the same coin all along.

But it seemed owning a plane was not enough for Rion, Libby acknowledged ruefully as she looked up and saw that he was also piloting it. She watched with a dry mouth as he disappeared from the cockpit and reappeared at the top of the steps, looking devastatingly sexy in a pair of dark aviator glasses and a casual white shirt with the cuffs rolled back, revealing his tanned forearms. Instinctively she reached up to undo the top button of her cotton blouse, feeling constricted.

‘The thought of being back in my company making you hot under the collar already, gineka mou?’ he asked dryly as he descended the steps to the satisfying sight of her waiting for him.

For a second inside his office—when she’d implied she had a titled lover waiting in the wings to marry her—there had been a small part of him which had wondered whether the combination of her desire for him, the promise of a private jet and the threat of lengthy court proceedings was enough to persuade her. But then he’d found her lingering outside, had felt her whole body ignite when she’d fallen against him, and he’d known for sure.

‘I’m glad,’ he added, ‘but I’m afraid you will have to hold that thought. Although my autopilot mode is exceptionally sophisticated, I’m not sure it would be wise to join you in the cabin for the length of time I intend to spend making love to you.’

A shiver of pleasure rippled through her, but as soon as Libby clocked her automatic response she stopped it in its tracks, suddenly afraid. Daring to hope that he was serious about giving their marriage a second chance was one thing, but starting to believe he felt anything other than lukewarm in her presence was a different delusion altogether—a dangerous one. And suddenly she foresaw how easily he could trample all over her heart if she went into this with rose-tinted glasses on.

No, she was safest going into this from the standpoint that remaining married was irrational and that he was no more excited by her now than he had been during the months of their marriage. If he presented her with actual evidence to the contrary—well, that would be the time to re-evaluate her views.

‘What’s wrong with the cockpit?’ she challenged audaciously.

Rion’s eyes flared in shock. So, the innocent young girl he’d married was long gone, and in her place was an experienced adulteress, who only yesterday had been claiming she needed the divorce to move on with another man, and was now suggesting they make love at the earliest opportunity. To his infinite frustration his disgust was accompanied by the overwhelming urge to take her right here on the tarmac, and an erection so hard it was painful.

And it made him furious—because it seemed that no matter how she behaved, she still reminded him of his lack of refinement. She always had. He drew in a ragged breath. But at least he’d feel no shame taking her back to his house in Metameikos, no shame in flying her there on his plane. Unlike five years ago, after their pitiful wedding, when he’d been forced to take her on the bus back to that shabby rented apartment. He smarted in distaste. From the second he’d opened the front door of that place—the only one in Athens he’d been able to afford—all the self-belief that maybe he could be good enough for her had evaporated. He’d never felt more ashamed of who he was in his life.

And he knew she’d never felt more ashamed of him—she’d been so desperate to escape it, her lack of faith in him so unequivocal, that she’d even volunteered to work. But even though he’d done everything he could so that she didn’t have to, even though he’d avoided involving her in the sordid details of his pathetic day job, worked every hour there was to try and save for their own place—a place she could be proud of—it had never been enough.

And it never will be, a voice inside him taunted, even though you fought so hard for all this because you believed if you succeeded she’d come crawling back.

No—that was a lie. That hadn’t been the reason. His determination might have doubled the day she left, but he’d succeeded for himself, and for Jason, his brother.

He turned away from her, his voice terse. ‘You will be travelling in the cabin.’

There wasn’t any evidence to the contrary then, Libby acknowledged with ridiculous disappointment. She really didn’t excite him. And the sooner he admitted it, the sooner she could silence the what ifs? She ducked down, pretending to look for another pair of legs on the opposite side of the plane. ‘Because you have a co-pilot joining you up front?’

‘No. I fly alone.’

She walked towards the steps defiantly. ‘Then there is no reason why I shouldn’t join you, is there?’

It was only when he’d followed her in and sat down beside her that she realised in fighting so hard to prove that he didn’t really want her she’d just inadvertently guaranteed their close proximity for the duration of the flight.

‘How long will it take us to get to Metameikos?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Just under an hour.’

No time at all, she thought, trying to feel relieved as he hit the starter switch and took the controls. But they hadn’t even taken off yet, and she was already transfixed by the sight of his long-fingered hands manoeuvring the complex equipment, unable to prevent herself remembering how they had once felt against her bare skin.

God, why did looking at him keep making her think about sex?

She moved awkwardly in her seat and tried to think of a logical answer. Maybe it was because he’d been the object of her first teenage crush, and somehow that made him the blueprint for the kind of man she found attractive. But, whilst his dark Mediterranean looks had been a novelty to her at fifteen, she’d met plenty of men since who fitted that description. The language teacher at the night classes she’d enrolled in as her first act of freedom once she’d arrived back in England; one or two of the other tour guides that Kate—whom she’d met at those language classes—had introduced her to when she’d expressed her enthusiasm for travel; the multitude of men she’d inevitably met the world over once she’d started filling in. But none of them had made her feel this irrepressible physical hunger.

Or maybe it was just that he was the only man she’d ever made love with, and like Pavlov’s dogs, who had salivated when they heard bells ringing because they had come to associate that sound with food, her body had connected the sight of him and the smell of him with sex. Yes, that was probably it. She just needed to uncondition her response, to associate him with something negative instead—the way he’d become so obsessed with money, perhaps. She took a deep breath, relieved to have alighted on a course of action that would bring about an end to it.

‘So, when did you learn to fly?’ she asked, deciding to lead the conversation down the ‘needless luxury’ route.

‘Years ago, for research. Flying lessons were one of the first gift experiences I decided to market, along with luxury driving days,’ he answered, handing her some headphones as they approached the runway.

It was genius, Libby realised, for the first time contemplating how he’d made his money. He’d recognised other people’s dreams and found a way of offering them neatly packaged in a box. But then that had always been what he did best—it was what had once persuaded her father to promote him from valet to salesman to showroom manager. He’d always known exactly which element of an Ashworth motor to push, depending on the customer and their body language. Speed and performance for men on the brink of a mid-life crisis; style and sex-appeal for the computer geek who’d just earned his first million; an investment opportunity for the retired banker and safety features for his anxious wife.

But did his customers ever really get everything they’d dreamed of? Or was the reality quite different? Libby thought bleakly, unable to help making a comparison with their marriage as they took off.

Marrying Rion had been her dream from the very first day she’d seen him—when she’d taken her father some papers he’d forgotten and caught Rion looking up at her from the 1964 Ashworth Elite he’d been polishing with those devastating liquid brown eyes. She’d been so infatuated that it hadn’t occurred to her that neither of them were ready for marriage, full-stop.

And it was no wonder she had felt that way really, she thought as they soared above Athens, the Parthenon shrinking to the size of a hotel on a Monopoly board below them. Because not only had he looked so different from the suitors her father had kept forcing her to meet, but when the furtive looks between them had eventually turned to snatched conversation on the days when her father was off-site, she’d discovered he was different. So unpretentious, and so exciting. He hadn’t spent their conversations praising her father or calculating the acreage of the Ashworth estate; he’d talked to her about the travel books she liked to read, about the customs in Greece—which had seemed the most exotic place in the world to Libby, who’d never left Surrey, and whose long, monotonous days had been spent walled up inside Ashworth Manor and its grounds.

Libby felt a tightness around her wrists and her ankles at the memory of how her father had deemed even a walk to the village shops too much autonomy, even in her late teens. How her mother, plagued by the guilt her husband had made her feel for never producing a son, had enforced every rule he created.

And so her conversations with Rion had become a ritual, however infrequent, which she’d survived on for the duration of her teenage years. And though the details they’d actually shared with one another during those conversations had been sparse—he’d rarely spoken about his childhood, and never mentioned any family other than his mother, who’d brought him to England when he was in his early teens—at the time she’d only seen that lack of information as a positive. He’d obviously had no wish to discuss what must have been a difficult period in his life, and she had understood that, because she’d had no wish to talk about her childhood either.

The whole appeal of their conversations had been that they’d offered an escape from that—a freshly created world where nothing that had gone before mattered. And, although she’d never really been able to see a way in which marriage to him might be possible, nor imagine exactly how it might be if it was, she hadn’t stopped dreaming about living in that world all the time.

Until one January day, not long after her nineteenth birthday, when she’d passed the showroom accidentally-on-purpose and found him actually waiting for her. He’d had a smile on his face so uncontainable that remembering it made her heart flip over even now.

‘Rion, what is it?’

‘Your father—he’s promoted me. I’m going to be the showroom manager.’

‘That’s fantastic!’ She beamed and threw her arms out, but just stopped short of embracing him, suddenly afraid that she might have imagined the significance of their conversations. Until he reached out and took her hands in his for the first time, and looked her straight in the eye.

‘It means that I’m going to be on a really decent salary.’

She nodded enthusiastically, her hands shaking.

He took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. That I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time. Before I didn’t think…but now…’

Libby’s heart rose ten inches in her chest.

She heard his breath come thick and fast, his voice shaky. ‘Would you consider marrying me, Liberty Ashworth?’

Her arms didn’t hesitate this time. She threw them round him, and then he kissed her. The first and most magical kiss of her entire life.

‘I know that technically I’m supposed to ask your father first, but—’

‘No…this is perfect,’ she breathed—because it was. The choice of who she married was hers, not anybody else’s, and it meant the world to her that he understood that.

But her father didn’t agree. When they went to ask for his blessing Thomas Ashworth fired Rion on the spot for his impudence.

‘I have promoted you from valet to showroom manager in four short years and that is still not enough for you? How dare you consider yourself worthy enough to even look at my daughter? I try to nurture your talent for selling and this is how you repay me?’ he spat. And then he made it clear to Libby that if she even tried to contact Orion again, he would banish her from the Ashworth family completely.

Her father had meant is as a threat, of course, but to Libby it had simply acted as an incentive. To swap her life of oppression for one of freedom. But it hadn’t been until she and Rion had eloped to Athens that she’d realised she’d been utterly naïve to suppose they could go on living in that imaginary world, that marriage to anyone could have given her the autonomy she’d so desperately needed.

Libby drew in a ragged breath as the view from the aircraft window became more rural, and ran her hand through the short length of her hair, frustrated that she’d recalled the past in such damned fine detail again. But then she’d always had remarkable powers of recollection. It was a blessing in her job—that she remembered every travel guide she’d ever read was what had convinced Kate to take her on in the first place, when her practical experience had been non-existent—but it felt like a curse now.

‘So, what business do you have in Metameikos?’ she said loudly above the noise of the plane, determined to distract herself from remembering any more.

She saw the edge of his lip curl in amusement. ‘For a minute there I thought the cat had got your tongue.’ He paused over the English phrase, as if it amused him to remember one so fitting. ‘What were you thinking about?’

‘Nothing in particular.’

‘No? I could have sworn you were looking at my hands, remembering how it felt to have them touch you.’

Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘So you’re a mind-reader and a pilot? Is there no end to the talents you’ve acquired in the last five years?’

‘I wasn’t reading your mind, gineka mou, I was reading your body.’

All too aware that he was an expert at that, Libby reverted to her original choice of subject. ‘So, what business do you have in Metameikos?’

‘I have some meetings to attend, some functions at which I need to make an appearance. Plus there are some things I need to sort out at my property before I settle there permanently.’

Libby was so surprised by this information that she let the frankly detailless description of his business go unchallenged. He’d barely mentioned Metameikos in the past, let alone expressed any desire to return there permanently.

‘You are making Metameikos your home? I always presumed it didn’t mean that much to you.’

Rion’s lips barely moved. ‘It’s a business decision.’

‘But your main offices are in Athens, aren’t they?’

‘Indeed.’

Libby frowned. That he’d as good as stated he had no emotional attachment to the place came as no surprise to her—especially now that it appeared he had no emotional attachment to anything other than money—but then why move there? She didn’t know a great deal about Metameikos, compared with her detailed knowledge of many other parts of the world, but she did know that it was no Athens when it came to its business credentials. What she could recall was that it was Greece’s only independent province and that it was pretty much divided in two—one half being one of the poorest areas of the whole country, where she knew Rion had grown up, whilst the other was full of luxury holiday homes belonging to the very wealthy. If she remembered correctly, it was best known for a well-preserved ancient amphitheatre somewhere in the middle. There were no prizes for guessing which side they were heading to now, but why he planned on staying there permanently was a mystery.

‘I hope to have an office in Metameikos too, soon.’

Libby nodded, but remained unconvinced. She supposed if he was branching out into all aspects of the leisure industry then the location was a desirable one for watersports and the like, but it still puzzled her. Maybe it was some kind of tax haven. ‘Your meetings these next couple of weeks are related to that, then?’

‘Indirectly,’ he replied vaguely. ‘This evening we will attend a play at the amphitheatre there.’

‘A play?’ she repeated back at him in astonishment, surprised not only that his time would be spent on something other than crunching numbers, but also that he wanted her to join him.

Rion gritted his teeth. So, she thought a man like him wasn’t capable of enjoying a little culture. ‘How is it that you are so adamant we lay the past to rest, when it is perfectly obvious you will never forget mine?’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that much has changed.’

‘Has it?’ she asked, a flicker of hope igniting in her heart as the plane touched down, his landing utterly flawless.

‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ he asked, inclining his head towards the extensive property spanning the horizon. ‘We’re here.’