eyes locked to her strained face. ‘You must’ve misunderstood something Roula said. There’s no way that she told you that we were lovers.’
‘There was no misunderstanding,’ Merry framed stiffly. ‘She was very frank about your relationship and about the fact that she expected it to continue even though you were married.’
‘But it’s not true. I don’t know what she’s playing at but her claims are nonsense,’ Angel declared with harsh emphasis. ‘Is this all we’ve got, Merry? Some woman only has to say I sleep with her and you swallow the story whole?’
Merry clasped her trembling hands together and tilted her chin, her spine rigid. ‘She was very convincing. I believed her.’
‘Diavolos! You just judge me out of hand? You believe her rather than me?’ Angel raked at her in a burst of incredulous anger, black curls tumbling across his brow as he shook his head in evident disbelief. ‘You take her word over mine?’
‘She’s your friend. Why would she lie about such a thing?’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ Angel shot back at her. ‘But she is lying!’
‘She said you’d been lovers for years but that you’ve always had other women,’ Merry recounted flatly. ‘I will not accept you being with other women!’
Angel settled volatile eyes on her and she backed away a step at the sheer heat she met there.
‘Then try not to drive me into being with them!’ he slammed back. ‘I have not been unfaithful to you.’
‘She did say that you hadn’t been with her since you got married but that eventually you would return to her because apparently you always do.’
‘You are the only woman I have ever returned to!’ Angel proclaimed rawly. ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this stupid conversation—’
‘It’s not a conversation, it’s an argument,’ she interrupted.
‘I promised you that there would be no other women,’ Angel reminded her darkly. ‘Didn’t you listen? Obviously, you didn’t believe—’
‘Your reputation goes before you,’ Merry flung back at him bitterly.
‘I will not apologise for my past. I openly acknowledge it but I have never cheated on any woman I have been with!’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone. ‘I grew up with a mother who cheated on all her lovers and I lived with the consequences of that kind of behaviour. I know better. I’m honest and I move on when I get bored.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t want to hang around waiting for you to get bored with me and move on!’ Merry fired back with ringing scorn. ‘Maybe I think I’m worth more than that and deserve more respect. That’s why I’m calling time on us now before things get messy!’
‘You’re not calling time on us. That’s not your decision to make,’ Angel delivered with lethal derision. ‘We got married to make a home for our daughter and if we have to work at achieving that happy outcome, then we work at it.’
A cold, forlorn hollow spread like poison inside Merry’s tight chest as she recognised how foolish and naïve she had been to dream that Angel could eventually come to care for her. He had only married her for Elyssa’s sake. She would never be important to him in her own right, never be that one special woman in his eyes, never be anything other than second best to him. He could have had any woman, and a woman like Roula Paulides, who shared his background and nationality as well as a long friendship with him, would have had infinitely more to offer him. He wouldn’t have had to talk about having to work at being married to anyone else. In fact her mind boggled at the concept of Angel being prepared to do anything as dully conventional and sensible as work at a relationship.
‘I don’t want to work at it,’ she heard herself say, and it was truthfully what she felt at that moment because her pride could not bear the idea of him having to suppress his natural instincts before he could accept being married to her and staying faithful.
‘You don’t get a choice,’ Angel spelled out grimly. ‘We’ll fly back to Palos in the morning—’
‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not returning to Greece with you!’
‘You’re my wife and you’re not leaving me,’ Angel asserted harshly. ‘That isn’t negotiable.’
Merry tossed her head, dark hair rippling back from her flushed cheeks, pale blue eyes icy with fury. ‘I’m not even trying to negotiate with you... I already know what a slippery slope that can be. Our marriage is over and I’m staying in the UK,’ she declared fiercely. ‘I’ll move out of here as soon as I decide where I’m going to be living.’
Angel stared back at her, his hard bone structure prominent below his bronzed skin, his eyes very dark and hard. ‘You would just throw everything we’ve got away?’ he breathed in a tone of suppressed savagery that made her flinch. ‘And what about our daughter?’
Merry swallowed with difficulty, sickly envisioning the likely battle ahead and cringing from the prospect. ‘I’ll fight you for custody of our daughter here in the UK,’ she told him squarely, shocked at what she was saying but needing to convince him that she would not be softened or sidelined by threats.
Angel froze almost as if she had struck him, black lashes lifting on grim dark eyes without the smallest shade of gold, his lean, strong face rigid with tension. ‘You would separate us? That I will not forgive you for,’ he told her with fierce finality.
Ten seconds later, Merry was alone in the room, listening numbly to the roar of a helicopter taking off somewhere nearby and presumably ferrying Angel back to London. And she was in shock, her head threatening to explode with the sheer unbearable pressure that had built up inside it, her stomach churning sickly. Tears surged in a hot stinging tide into her eyes and she blinked furiously but the tears kept on coming, dripping down her face.
Their marriage was over. Hadn’t she always feared that their marriage wouldn’t last? Why was she so shocked? Yes, he had denied that Roula Paulides was his mistress but she hadn’t believed him, had she? When she had packed her bags on the island she had known she wasn’t coming back and certainly not to a marriage with a husband who had to work at being married to her!
MISERY AND GUILT kept Merry awake for half the night. She had threatened Angel just as he had once threatened her and now it lay like a big rock of shame on her conscience because she had witnessed the depth of his attachment to Elyssa, had watched it develop, had even noticed how surprised Angel was at the amount of enjoyment he received from being a parent. He did not love his wife but he definitely did love his daughter.
All her emotions in free fall after the sensitive family issues that had been explored at Sybil’s house, she had been in no fit state to deal with Angel. She had drawn up battle lines for a war she didn’t actually want to wage, she acknowledged wretchedly. A divorce or separation didn’t have to be bitter and nasty and she hadn’t the smallest desire for them to fight like cat and dog over their daughter. Angel was a good father, a very good father and she would never try to deprive him of contact with his child. Just because she couldn’t trust him with the Roulas of the world didn’t mean she was blind to his skills
