sorry…can I help you?’ she asked in apologetic English.
‘Who are you? Some little secretary bird?’ the female demanded haughtily. ‘Put me on to my fiancé.’
Maddie frowned in confusion. ‘Your fiancé? Who do I say is calling?’
‘Krista. Who else?’ the woman responded with withering scorn. ‘Hurry up…I haven’t got all day!’
Maddie set the phone down with a weak hand. She discovered that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was as winded as though she had been punched in the gut. It had to be some misunderstanding. Or perhaps the woman had been joking, or lying for some reason best known to her? What the heck was she imagining? That Giannis would deceive her to that extent? That she could be so foolish? She realised with a sinking heart that she had never actually asked him if there was anyone else in his life. But he knew that she believed he was single, she reminded herself frantically, thinking back to their conversation the night before.
Sliding out of bed, she reached for the turquoise kaftan she had been using as a dressing gown. As she pulled it on with clumsy hands she heard an angry burst of speech from the phone she had laid down.
Giannis appeared with a towel twisted round his lean brown hips. She pointed at the receiver. ‘Krista’s on the phone.’
He was still only for a fraction of a second, and his lean, darkly handsome features betrayed nothing. Yet Maddie knew in that same instant that there was no misunderstanding, no joke, and no lie: the guy she had allowed herself to fall madly in love with was engaged to another woman. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Shock was setting like pointed shards of ice in her stomach. He was speaking Greek on the phone, but somehow his dark-timbred drawl sounded to her as though it was coming from the other end of a long dark tunnel. Through him she had learned to recognise the sound of his language. Did Krista speak Greek as well? Hastily she tried to shut out that thought. Because she wasn’t ready to think about the unfortunate woman whom she had inadvertently wronged.
Giannis raked a keen-eyed glance at Maddie. She was as pale as death, her Titian hair like a burning firebrand against the pallor of her alabaster skin. He could not concentrate on the conversation with Krista, which related, as usual, to her latest selection of extravagantly inappropriate wedding themes. His lean, powerful face set with purpose, he brought the call to a swift close and swung back to Maddie.
‘This is not the way you should have found out about Krista,’ Giannis conceded. ‘But until you came to Morocco I believed that you already knew of her existence. My engagement is common knowledge.’
‘But you should have told me.’ Her voice almost failed her, because with every word he spoke the nightmare became more real, and more agonising for her to bear.
‘I intended to tell you when you got back to London.’
Maddie parted near bloodless lips. ‘After you’d had your fun?’ she slotted in tightly, a deep sense of humiliation creeping over her. ‘How long have you been engaged?’
‘A couple of months. I see no reason why it should come between us.’
Maddie was too shattered by what she had found out to do more than shake her head in incomprehension at that bold statement. The conversation had already knocked her off balance, since he was not reacting as she had assumed he would. He was not apologising, he was not making excuses. Indeed, he was not even owning up to his fault.
‘I want you to take the time to consider the fact that what I have with Krista is quite separate from what I have with you.’
A mortified laugh that carried no humour fell jarringly from Maddie’s dry lips. ‘I hardly need to be told that. I may not be very sophisticated, but even I can tell the difference between an engagement ring and the equivalent of a dirty weekend!’
His big powerful body tensed. ‘That is not how it has been between us.’
‘How would I know how it’s been when I’ve been in the dark ever since the first day?’ Maddie demanded feverishly. ‘Why did you involve me in this horrible situation? And why did you bother getting engaged if you don’t intend to be faithful?’
‘Perhaps fidelity is not as important to some people as it is to you,’ Giannis delivered. ‘I will only say that my conscience is clear as far as my engagement is concerned.’
‘Well, bully for you…so your fiancée was desperate enough to take you on those terms? Presumably she made that choice.’ Maddie watched his lean strong face tighten with hauteur and marvelled at his self-assurance, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he had done wrong. ‘But I didn’t get that opportunity. You lied to me—’
‘I have told no lies,’ Giannis asserted.
‘You lied to me by omission.’ Angry patches of colour had blossomed in Maddie’s cheeks. ‘Last night you knew I didn’t know you were engaged when I said I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t single. But you chose not to tell me the truth.’
‘We had already slept together. I didn’t see the point of upsetting you when you were away from home.’
That was the precise point at which Maddie lost her temper, for it seemed to her that he had the hide of a rhinoceros. ‘In other words, you put your own comfort first and decided that it was fine to leave me in ignorance. It didn’t matter to you that I was betraying my values in getting involved with a man who’s planning to marry another woman. Or that the knowledge that our relationship is not an exclusive one makes me feel physically sick!’
His lean, dark face hardened, his strong jawline squaring. ‘Of course it matters to me. But one cannot live one’s whole life by rigid rules—’
‘Particularly not when they conflict with what Giannis Petrakos wants?’ Maddie dared. ‘There are good reasons for the rules I live by.’
Giannis studied her with glittering golden eyes. ‘I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman for a very long time. Walking away wasn’t an option.’
‘Let’s not exaggerate my supposed attraction,’ Maddie cut in rawly, a pain as sharp as a knife twisting through her. ‘Obviously it’s only sex, because my personal appeal won’t prevent you from marrying someone else. Yet you talked about me not knowing how to behave? Don’t you think I had the right to know I was just a casual fling? A little bit on the side of the main event? If you had had any respect for me at all, you wouldn’t have treated me like this!’
‘You’re wrong about that. There was an explosive attraction. Nor do I think that self-denial makes anyone a better person.’ With that ringing rejoinder, Giannis went into the dressing room and pulled out fresh clothing. ‘We’ll discuss this when you’ve calmed down. I consider arguments a waste of valuable energy.’
‘And walking out the ultimate escape hatch,’ Maddie told him tightly.
That incendiary comment brought Giannis back into view, his tailored chinos still unbuttoned at his lean waist, his bronzed hair-roughened chest still bare. He refused to consider the rights and wrongs. What was done was done. But he was determined not to lose her. ‘I don’t do escape hatches.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Just arrange for me to get home as soon as possible.’ She tilted up her chin and drew on every ounce of her pride to hide her pain. ‘I don’t mind having to sit around the airport for hours and wait
