eight weeks it had been more like a very heavy though heartbreaking period. But the second time had been different.
All her hopes and dreams had been focused on the life growing inside her and when that first low cramping pain had caught her by surprise, she had been so scared. She hadn’t been able to believe it was happening all over again—especially because she’d passed the ‘danger’ period of twelve weeks. But it had been happening and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it. It had been the Greek housekeeper who had kept a silent vigil throughout the day and into the next day, until at long last Xenon had arrived back from his trip to the Far East. He had walked into her private room at the hospital and Lexi had seen the empty look in his eyes when she told him that the baby had died. And she had known that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
She drew back from the housekeeper’s embrace and took a moment to compose herself. ‘Oh, Phyllida,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again.’
‘Kyrios Alexi.’ Clearly emotional herself, Phyllida touched Lexi’s hair. ‘You have changed.’
‘No longer the crazy redhead? I know. While you look exactly the same. You look fantastic.’
‘No. I am too fat.’ Phyllida laughed as she patted her ample stomach. ‘Not like you.’
Xenon glanced across at the main house. ‘Is my mother around?’ he asked.
‘She went to visit your sister. She said that you should settle in and she will see you at dinner.’
Xenon’s voice dropped. ‘And my grandmother?’
Phyllida shook her head, her face growing grave. ‘She is weak, but she is comfortable,’ she said. ‘The nurse is with her now and she is looking forward to seeing her grandson again. Now. Shall I make fresh lemonade for you and Kyrios Alexi after your long journey?’
‘Efharisto,’ said Xenon, his hand moving to brush the base of Lexi’s spine. ‘Come on, Lex. Let’s go and unpack.’
It was the briefest of touches but it started a whisper of reaction flaring over her skin and Lexi could feel her heart pounding as she followed him towards the furthest of the three villas, with its prime position overlooking the bay.
Their cases had been deposited inside the house and left on the ghostly surface of the marble floor—standing side by side as if in silent mockery. The white walls and dark wooden furniture were just as she remembered and Phyllida must have put that vase of white roses on one of the low tables.
The door of the villa closed behind them and Lexi was left with a feeling of panic. She thought of the bedroom next door and unwanted memories came crowding back. The smell of sex and the rumpled sheets. The closeness of Xenon’s hard body.
She licked her tongue over impossibly dry lips before she spoke.
‘Xenon, this is crazy. There’s no way we can stay here.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know very well why not. You’re not a stupid man, although at times you can be a very stubborn one.’ She steeled herself against the soft light of battle on his face. Don’t make me spell it out, her eyes pleaded silently. But his blue gaze remained obdurate and she glared at him. ‘There’s only one bed,’ she said.
‘And? Isn’t the whole point that we’re here as a married couple—and married couples share beds? What did you think would happen, Lex? That I would stay in the main house, knowing that you were closeted in here all on your own?’
‘You could do what any other man would do under the circumstances—and offer to sleep on the sofa!’
He shot a disparaging look at the piece of furniture she was indicating. ‘On that? Come on—that was never designed to be slept on. A Greek husband sleeps in the marital bed.’ His blue eyes gleamed with a mixture of mockery and promise. ‘With his wife.’
Lexi hated the way her body responded to the unashamedly sexual look which accompanied his macho boast. It was easy to tell herself she shouldn’t want him but much harder to ignore the way he was making her feel. When his gaze raked over her like that, she could feel the answering clamour of her body. The ache of her breasts and the insistent heat coiling low inside her. Because she still desired him as intensely as she had ever done—and she didn’t have a clue how to deal with it.
‘Why did you bring me here, Xenon?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, really? You say it was to bring comfort to your grandmother—’
‘That desire was genuine,’ he interrupted coolly.
‘And what else? Did you picture this scene when you made your suggestion? The inevitable showdown which would result when I found out that I’d be expected to share a bed with you?’
For a moment he didn’t answer and when he did, his words were accompanied by an odd kind of smile. ‘Yes, I pictured it,’ he answered slowly. ‘Though not at first.’
She stared at him, her heart beating very fast. ‘Tell me.’
He lifted his shoulders in a careless kind of shrug and once again she could see the bunching of muscle beneath his shirt. ‘I admit that when I came to your house that day I was little more than curious. I wanted to see the woman I had married and to see what life had done to her. I’d even promised myself that I would give you your divorce papers, if I were so inclined. And then you opened the door and...’
His voice tailed off in a way which made Lexi look at him suspiciously. Because Xenon didn’t do hesitation. And neither did he screw his eyes up as if he had been presented with a problem he couldn’t quite work out. Because wasn’t he the man with the answers to everything?
‘And what?’ she prompted.
‘I realised I still wanted you,’ he said simply. ‘I wanted you in a way I’ve never wanted any other woman, not before and not since. I wanted you in my arms. I still do. I look at you, Lex, and my body aches for you. I want you so badly that I can hardly think straight. Even now.’
She felt the dull crash of disappointment—for these were not new words. They were words he’d spoken many times when he’d been wooing her—when she’d bewitched and infuriated him by refusing to fall straight into his arms. They were expressions of high emotion he used when he was trying to get something which was just out of reach. He’d never said them when they would have meant something. He’d hadn’t spoken of wanting her when she’d been lying in that hospital bed with her womb raw and empty and the feeling that she had failed him as a wife.
‘We can’t,’ she said in a hollow voice.
‘Why not?’ he demanded, his eyes blazing like blue jewels in the dimness of the shuttered room. ‘Because you haven’t got the guts to face the fact that you want me, too? Why can’t you just come out and admit it? If not to me—then at least to yourself. That what we have isn’t over. And that it isn’t going to go away.’
She felt the quickening stab of fear and the even fiercer stab of desire. She felt the blurring of past and present. She thought about the secrets she had locked away.
‘You just like a challenge,’ she declared. ‘You’re a man who has everything. Who can get anything. You just want the one thing that’s eluding you.’
‘This
