Loe raamatut: «The Marakaios Marriage»

CHAPTER ONE

‘HELLO, LINDSAY.’

How could two such innocuous-sounding words cause her whole body to jolt, first with an impossible joy, and then with a far more consuming dread? A dread that seeped into her stomach like acid, corroding those few seconds of frail, false happiness as she registered the cold tone of the man she’d once promised to love, honour and obey.

Her husband, Antonios Marakaios.

Lindsay Douglas looked up from her computer, her hands clenching into fists in her lap even as her gaze roved helplessly, hungrily over him, took in his familiar features now made strange by the coldness in his eyes, the harsh downturn of his mouth. With her mind still spinning from the sight of him, she said the first thing that came into it.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘You mean the security guard?’ Antonios sounded merely disdainful, but his whisky-brown eyes glowed like banked coals. ‘I told him I was your husband. He let me through.’

She licked her dry lips, her mind spinning even as she forced herself to focus. Think rationally. ‘He shouldn’t have,’ she said. ‘You have no business being here, Antonios.’

‘No?’ He arched an eyebrow, his mouth curving coldly, even cruelly. ‘No business seeing my wife?’

She forced herself to meet that burning gaze, even though it took everything she had. ‘Our marriage is over.’

‘I am well aware of that, Lindsay. It’s been six months, after all, since you walked out on me without any warning.’

She heard the accusation in his voice but refused to rise to it. There was no point now; their marriage was over, just as she’d told him.

‘I only meant that all the academic buildings are locked, with security guards by the door,’ she answered. Her voice sounded calm—far calmer than she felt. Seeing Antonios again was causing memories to rise up in her mind like a flock of seagulls, crying out to her, making her remember things she’d spent the last six months determined to forget. The way he’d held her after they’d made love, how he’d always so tenderly tucked her hair behind her ears, cupped her cheek with his hand, kissed her eyelids. How happy and safe and cherished he’d once made her feel.

No, she couldn’t remember that. Better to remember the three months of isolation and confusion she’d spent at his home in Greece as Antonios had become more and more obsessed with work, expecting her simply to slot into a life she’d found alien and even frightening.

Better to remember how depressed and despairing she’d felt, until staying in Greece for one more day, one more minute, had seemed impossible.

Yes, better to remember that.

‘I still don’t know why you’re here,’ she told him. She placed her hands flat on the desk and stood, determined to meet him at eye level, or as close as she could, considering he topped her by eight inches.

Yet just looking at him now caused her to feel a tug of longing deep in her belly. The close-cut midnight-dark hair. The strong square jaw. The sensual, mobile lips. And as for his body...taut, chiselled perfection underneath the dark grey silk suit he wore. She knew his body as well as her own. Memories rushed in again, sweet and poignant reminders of their one sweet week together, and she forced them away, held his sardonic gaze.

Antonios arched one dark eyebrow. ‘You have no idea why I might be here, Lindsay? No reason to wonder why I might come looking for my errant wife?’

Errant wife. So he blamed her. Of course he did. And she knew he had a right to blame her, because she’d left him without an explanation or even, as he’d said, a warning. But he’d forced her to leave, even if he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, ever understand that. ‘It’s been six months, Antonios,’ she told him coolly, ‘and you haven’t been in touch once. I think it’s reasonable to be surprised to see you.’

‘Didn’t you think I’d ever come, demanding answers?’

‘I gave you an answer—’

‘A two-sentence email is not an explanation, Lindsay. Saying our marriage was a mistake without saying why is just cowardice.’ He held up a hand to forestall her reply, although she couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘But don’t worry yourself on that account. I have no interest in your explanations. Nothing would satisfy me now, and our marriage ended when you walked away without a word.’

Frustration bubbled through her and emotion burned in her chest. Maybe she hadn’t had so many words when she’d finally left, but that was because she’d used them all up. Antonios hadn’t heard any of it. ‘The reason I’m here,’ he continued, his voice hard and unyielding, ‘is because I need you to return to Greece.’

Her jaw dropped and she shook her head in an instantaneous gut reaction.

‘I can’t—’

‘You’ll find you can, Lindsay. You pack a bag and get on a plane. It’s that easy.’

Mutely she shook her head. Just the thought of returning to Greece made her heart start to thud hard, blood pounding in her ears. She focused on her breathing, trying to keep it even and slow. One of the books she’d read had advised focusing on the little things she could control, rather than the overwhelming ones she couldn’t. Like her husband and his sudden return into her life.

Antonios stared at her, his whisky-brown eyes narrowed, his lips pursed, his gaze ruthlessly assessing. In. Out. In. Out. With effort she slowed her breathing, and her heart stopped thudding quite so hard.

She glanced up at him, conscious of how he was staring at her. And she was staring at him; she couldn’t help herself. Even angry as he so obviously was, and had every right to be, he looked beautiful. She remembered when she’d first seen him in New York, with snowflakes dusting his hair and a whimsical smile on his face as he’d caught sight of her standing on Fifth Avenue, gazing up at the white spirals of the Guggenheim.

I’m lost, he’d said. Or at least I thought I was.

But she’d been the one who had been lost, in so many ways. Devastated by the death of her father. Spinning in a void of grief and fear and loneliness she’d been trying so hard to escape.

And then she’d lost herself in Antonios, in the charming smile he’d given her, in the warmth she’d seen in his eyes, in the way he’d looked at her as if she were the most interesting and important woman in the world. For a week, a mere seven days, they’d revelled in each other. And then reality had hit, and hit hard.

‘Let me clarify,’ he said, his voice both soft and so very cold. ‘You will come to Greece. As your husband, I command you.’

She stiffened. ‘You can’t command me, Antonios. I’m not your property.’

‘Greek marriage law is a little different from American law, Lindsay.’

She shook her head, angry now, although not, she suspected, as angry as he was. ‘Not that different.’

‘Perhaps not,’ he conceded with a shrug. ‘But I am assuming you want a divorce?’

The sudden change in subject jolted her. ‘A divorce...’

‘That is why you left me, is it not? Because you no longer wished to continue in our marriage.’ He bared his teeth in a smile and Lindsay suppressed the sudden urge to shiver. She’d never seen Antonios look this way. So cold and hard and predatory.

‘I...’ A divorce sounded so final, so terrible, and yet of course that had to be what she wanted. She’d left him, after all.

In the six months since she’d left Greece, she’d immersed herself in the comforting cocoon of number theory, trying to finish her doctorate in Pure Mathematics. Trying to blunt that awful ache of missing Antonios, or at least the Antonios she’d known for one week, before everything had changed. She’d tried to take steps to put her life back together, to control her anxiety and reach out to the people around her. She’d made progress, and there had been moments, whole days, when she’d felt normal and even happy.

Yet she’d always missed Antonios. She’d missed the person she’d been with him, when they’d been in New York.

And neither of those people had been real. Their marriage, their love, hadn’t been real. She knew that absolutely, and yet...

She still longed for what they’d shared, so very briefly.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She lifted her chin and met his gaze. ‘I want to end our marriage.’

‘A divorce,’ Antonios clarified flatly. Lindsay flinched slightly but kept his gaze, hard and unyielding as it was.

‘Yes.’

‘Then, Lindsay,’ he told her in that awful silky voice, ‘you need to do as I ask. Command. Because under Greek marriage law, you can’t get a divorce unless both parties agree.’

She stared at him, her eyes widening as she considered the implications of what he was saying. ‘There must be other circumstances in which a divorce is permissible.’

‘Ah, yes, there are. Two, as a matter of fact.’ His mouth twisted unpleasantly. ‘Adultery and abandonment. But as I have committed neither of those, they do not apply, at least in my case.’

She flinched again, and Antonios registered her reaction with a curl of his lip. ‘Why do you want me to return to Greece, Antonios?’

‘Not, as you seem to fear, to resume our marriage.’ His voice hardened as he raked her with a contemptuous gaze. ‘I have no desire to do that.’

Of course he didn’t. And that shouldn’t hurt, because she’d chosen it to be that way, and yet it still did. ‘Then...’

‘My mother, as you might remember, was fond of you. She doesn’t know why you left, and I have not enlightened her as to the state of our marriage.’

Guilt twisted sharply inside her. Daphne Marakaios had been kind to her during her time in Greece, but it still hadn’t been enough to stay. To stay sane.

‘Why haven’t you told her?’ Lindsay asked. ‘It’s been six months already, and you can’t keep it a secret forever.’

‘Why shouldn’t you tell her?’ Antonios countered. ‘Oh, I forgot. Because you’re a coward. You sneak away from my home and my bed and can’t even be bothered to have a single conversation about why you wished to end our marriage.’

Lindsay drew a deep breath, fighting the impulse to tell him just how many conversations she’d tried to have. There was no point now. ‘I understand that you’re angry—’

‘I’m not angry, Lindsay. To be angry I would have to care.’ He stood up, the expression on his face ironing out. ‘And I stopped caring when you sent me that email. When you refused to say anything but that our marriage was a mistake when I called you, wanting to know what had happened. When you showed me how little you thought of me or our marriage.’

‘And you showed me how little you thought of our marriage every day I was in Greece,’ Lindsay returned before she could help herself.

Antonios turned to her slowly, his eyes wide with incredulity. ‘Are you actually going to blame me for the end of our marriage?’ he asked, each syllable iced with disbelief.

‘Oh, no, of course not,’ Lindsay fired back. ‘How could I do that? How could you possibly have any responsibility or blame?’

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing, and Lindsay almost laughed to realize he wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not.

Then he shrugged her words aside and answered in a clipped voice, ‘I don’t care, about you or your reasons. But my mother does. Because she has been ill, I have spared her the further grief of knowing how and why you have gone.’

‘Ill—’

‘Her cancer has returned,’ Antonios informed her with brutal bluntness. ‘She got the results back a month after you left.’

Lindsay stared at him in shock. She’d known Daphne had been in remission from breast cancer, but the outlook had been good. ‘Antonios, I’m so sorry. Is it...is it treatable?’

He lifted one powerful shoulder in a shrug, his expression veiled. ‘Not very.’

Lindsay sank back in her chair, her mind reeling with this new information. She thought of kind Daphne, with her white hair and soft voice, her gentleness apparent in every word and action, and felt a twist of grief for the woman she’d known so briefly. And as for Antonios...he adored his mother. This would have hit him hard and she, his wife, hadn’t been there to comfort and support him through her illness. Yet would she have been able to, if she’d stayed in Greece?

She’d been so desperately unhappy there, and the thought of returning brought the old fears to the fore.

‘Antonios,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m very, very sorry about your mother, but I still can’t go back to Greece.’

‘You can and you will,’ Antonios replied flatly, ‘if you want a divorce.’

She shook her head, her hair flying, desperation digging its claws into her soul. ‘Then I won’t ask for a divorce.’

‘Then you are my wife still, and you belong with me.’ His voice had roughened and he turned away from her in one sharp movement. ‘You cannot have it both ways, Lindsay.’

‘How will my seeing your mother help her?’ Lindsay protested. ‘It would only hurt her more for me to tell her to her face that we’ve separated—’

‘But I have no intention of having you tell her that.’ Antonios turned around, his eyes seeming to burn right through her as he glared at her. ‘It is likely my mother only has a few months to live, perhaps less. I do not intend to distress her with the news of our failed marriage. For a few days, Lindsay, perhaps a week, you can pretend that we are still happily married.’

‘What—?’ She stared at him, appalled, as he gave her a grimace of a smile.

‘Surely that is not impossible? You have already proven once what a good actress you are, when you pretended to fall in love with me.’

* * *

Antonios stared at his wife’s lovely pale face and squashed the tiny flicker of pity he felt for her. She looked so trapped, so horrified at the prospect of resuming their marriage and returning to Greece.

Not, of course, that they would truly resume their marriage. It would be a sham only, for the sake of his mother. Antonios had no intention of inviting Lindsay into his bed again. Not after she’d left him in such a cold-hearted and cowardly way. No, he’d take her back to Greece for a few days for his mother’s sake, and then he’d never see her again...which was what she obviously wanted. And he wanted it, too.

‘A few days?’ she repeated numbly. ‘And that will be enough...’

‘It’s my mother’s name day next week,’ Antonios told her.

‘Name day...’

‘In Greece we celebrate name days rather than birthdays. My family wishes to celebrate it especially, considering.’ Grief constricted his throat and burned in his chest. He could not imagine Villa Marakaios without his mother. Losing his father had been hard enough. His father had built the vineyard from nothing; he’d been the brains behind the operation, for better and definitely for worse, but his mother had always been its heart. And when the heart was gone...

But perhaps his own heart had already gone, crushed to nothing when his wife had left him. He’d thought Lindsay had loved him. He’d believed they were happy together.

What a joke. What a lie. But Antonios knew he should be used to people not being what they seemed. Not saying what they meant. He’d had hard lessons in that already.

‘We are having a celebration,’ he continued, just managing to keep his voice even. ‘Family and friends, all our neighbours. You will be there. Afterwards you can return here if you wish. I will explain to my mother that you needed to finish your research.’ He knew Lindsay had been pursuing her doctorate in Pure Mathematics, and when she’d left him she’d told him she needed to tie a few things up back in New York. He’d said goodbye in good faith, thinking she’d only be gone a few days. She’d already told him that her research could be done anywhere; she’d said there was nothing for her back in New York. But apparently that, like everything else, had been a lie.

Lindsay’s face had gone even paler and she lifted one hand to her throat, swallowing convulsively. ‘A party? Antonios, please. I can’t.’

Fury beat through his blood. ‘What did I ever do to you,’ he demanded in a low, savage voice, ‘to make you treat me this way? Treat my family this way? We welcomed you into our home, into our lives.’ His insides twisted as emotion gripped him—emotion he couldn’t bear Lindsay to see. He’d told her he didn’t care about her any more, and he’d meant it. He had to mean it. ‘My mother,’ he said after a moment, when he’d regained his composure and his voice was as flat and toneless as he needed it to be, ‘loved you. She treated you like her own daughter. Is this how you intend to repay her?’

Tears sparkled on Lindsay’s lashes and she blinked them back, shaking her head in such obvious misery that Antonios almost felt sorry for her again. Almost.

‘No, of course not,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I...I was very grateful to your mother, and her kindness to me.’

‘You have a funny way of showing it.’

Her eyes flashed fire at that, and Antonios wondered what on earth she had to be angry about. She’d left him.

‘Even so,’ she said quietly, one hand still fluttering at her throat, ‘it is very difficult for me to return to Greece.’

‘And why is that? Do you have a lover waiting for you here in New York?’

Her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘A lover—’

Antonios shrugged, as if it were a matter of no consequence, even though the thought of Lindsay with another man, violating their marriage vows, their marriage bed, made him want to punch something. ‘I do not know what else would take you so abruptly from Greece.’ From me, he almost said, but thankfully didn’t.

She shook her head slowly, her eyes wide, although with what emotion Antonios couldn’t tell. ‘No,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I don’t have a lover. There’s only been you, Antonios. Ever.’

And yet he obviously hadn’t been enough. Antonios didn’t even know whether to believe her; he told himself it didn’t matter. ‘Then there is no reason for you not to come to Greece.’

‘My research—’

‘Cannot wait a week?’ Impatience flared inside him, along with the familiar fury. Didn’t she realize how thoughtless, how selfish and cruel she was being?

Even now, after six months of coming to accept and learning to live with her abandonment, he was stunned by how completely she’d deceived him. He had believed in her love for him utterly. But, Antonios reminded himself, they’d only known each other a week when they had married. It had been impulsive, reckless even, but he’d been so sure. Sure of his love for Lindsay, and of her love for him.

What a fool he’d been.

Lindsay was staring at him, her face still pale and miserable. ‘One week,’ Antonios ground out. ‘Seven days. And then I intend never to see you again.’ She flinched, as if his words hurt her, and he let out a hard laugh. ‘Doesn’t that notion please you?’

She glanced away, pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘It doesn’t.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I know.’ She let out a shuddering breath. ‘You never did.’

‘And that is my fault?’

She shook her head wearily. ‘It’s too late to apportion blame, Antonios. It simply is. Was. Our marriage was a mistake, as I told you in my email and on the telephone.’

‘Yet you never said why.’

‘You never asked,’ Lindsay answered, her voice sharpening, and Antonios frowned at her.

‘I asked you on the phone—’

‘No,’ Lindsay told him quietly, ‘you didn’t. You asked me if I were serious, and I said yes. And then you hung up.’

Antonios stared at her, his jaw bunched so tight it ached. ‘You’re the one who left, Lindsay.’

‘I know—’

‘Yet now you are attempting to imply that our marriage failed because I didn’t ask the right questions when I called you after you’d left me. Theos! It is hard to take.’

‘I’m not implying anything of the sort, Antonios. I was simply reminding you of the facts.’

‘Then let me remind you of a fact. I’m not interested in your explanations. The time for those has passed. What I am interested in, Lindsay—the only thing I am interested in—is your agreement. A plane leaves for Athens tonight. If we are to be on it, we need to leave here in the next hour.’

‘What?’ Her gaze flew back to his, her mouth gaping open. ‘I haven’t even agreed.’

‘Don’t you want a divorce?’

She stared at him for a moment, her chin lifted proudly, her eyes cool and grey. ‘You might think you can blackmail me into agreeing, Antonios,’ she told him, ‘but you can’t. I’ll come to Greece, not because I want a divorce but because I want to pay my respects to your mother. To explain to her—’

‘Do not think—’ Antonios cut her off ‘—that you’ll tell her some sob story about our mistake of a marriage. I don’t want her upset—’

‘When do you intend on telling her the truth?’

‘Never,’ Antonios answered shortly. ‘She doesn’t have that long to live.’

Tears filled Lindsay’s eyes again, turning them luminous and silver, and she blinked them back. ‘Do you really think that’s the better course? To deceive her—’

‘You’re one to speak of deception.’

‘I never deceived you, Antonios. I did love you, for that week in New York.’

The pain that slashed through him was so intense and sudden that Antonios nearly gasped aloud. Nearly clutched his chest, as if he were having a heart attack, the same as his father, dead at just fifty-nine years old. ‘And then?’ he finally managed, his voice thankfully dispassionate. ‘You just stopped?’ Part of him knew he shouldn’t be asking these questions, shouldn’t care about these answers. He’d told Lindsay the time for explanations had passed, and it had. ‘Never mind,’ he dismissed roughly. ‘It hardly matters. Come to Greece for whatever reason you want, but you need to be ready in an hour.’

She stared at him for a long moment, looking fragile and beautiful and making him remember how it had felt to hold her. Touch her.

‘Fine,’ she said softly, and her voice sounded sad and resigned. Suppressing the ache of longing that trembled through him, Antonios turned away from the sight of his wife and waited, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, as she packed up her belongings and then, without a word or glance for him, slipped by him and out of the room.