glimmer of a smile when he saw she was covered from neck to ankle in a pair of pale silk pyjamas, but he made no comment about her buttoned-up nightwear.
‘You were sweet with my mother tonight,’ he said.
Lexi blinked. It wasn’t what she had been expecting to hear. What had she been expecting? ‘She’s much softer than she used to be.’
‘Yes, she is. So many things have happened and she’s a grandmother now. I think the fact that her own mother is dying has made her look at the world differently.’ He shrugged. ‘The cycle of life keeps turning. It’s made her aware of how precious time is.’
His undeniably emotional words hung on the air and Lexi felt the painful punch of her heart. ‘No. None of us should ever forget that,’ she said.
Xenon let his gaze drift over her. She had taken off her glasses and her face was scrubbed clean. He thought how unbelievably young she looked. And how innocent. Sometimes it was hard to believe the reality of her rough upbringing when right now she looked as if she’d spent her life growing up in a convent, nurtured on nothing stronger than milk and orange juice. Her fair hair tumbled down over her pyjamas and he wondered what she would say if he told her that the look she’d been aiming for had completely missed the mark. Because it didn’t matter how prim she tried to make herself—she still exuded a sensuality which oozed from her like honey from a slice of Baklava.
‘Ready for bed?’ he questioned sardonically.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t think you want to know what I think. So why don’t you run along and make yourself comfortable and I’ll give you long enough so that you can pretend to be asleep when I join you?’
Lexi’s face felt hot as she skulked off into the bedroom and climbed in between the Egyptian cotton sheets and for a moment she felt foolish. Had that been deliberate on his part? Was Xenon trying to make her doubt herself? Trying to make her believe that any woman would be insane not to take advantage of the opportunity which was now presenting itself?
Was she? Would it really be the end of the world if she gave in and let him make love to her again?
She knew the answer immediately. Of course it would. It would take her back to that dark place, the one with the unimaginable future and constant heartache. So forget it, she told herself fiercely.
Instead, she lay there doing a crash-course in sheep-counting and listening to the distant swish of the shower. And maybe she was wearier than she’d thought, because her eyelids began to grow heavy. Or maybe Xenon was just keeping to his word and stalling for as long as possible.
All she knew was that by the time he came to bed, she was in that comfortable half-world between waking and sleeping and the dip in the mattress as he got in beside her didn’t alarm her as much as it should have done.
But then he moved and she became aware of just how much space his body took up, even though the bed was vast. It had been a long time since she’d slept with him and her space suddenly seemed to have been invaded by a potent rush of testosterone. She could sense it pulsing in the air around her; she could feel her skin absorbing it, like a dark sensual heat.
She held her breath for what must have been a full minute while they lay there in the darkness, until his drawled voice broke the silence.
‘So are we just going to lie here, pretending to be asleep?’
She let out her breath in a slow rush. ‘I’m not going to ask what your alternative suggestion might be.’
‘You might be surprised by the answer. Come here.’ Snaking out his hand, he pulled her against him so that her bottom was pushed against his belly and his hand was resting lazily over the jut of her hip bone.
Half-heartedly, Lexi wriggled. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t make such a big deal out of it, Lex. Relax. I’m just holding you, that’s all.’
She wanted to tell him to roll over to the far side of the bed and leave her alone, but something stopped her. Because wasn’t it delicious to feel his warm breath fanning the back of her neck like that? And didn’t his arm feel so right when it was lying around her waist? She wanted to wriggle closer, to settle herself comfortably in a spoonlike position against him as she’d done so many times before, but in the midst of this forbidden pleasure came confusion. Because this was a first. Xenon lying next to her and just holding her? What was that all about?
She closed her eyes. Her Greek husband had been very definite in his views about what took place in the marital bed and what took place was sex. Lots of it. Consistently amazing sex it had been, too. In fact, lying here with him just a hair’s breadth away from her, it was very hard not to remember just how amazing it had been.
Until after the baby, of course. When Xenon had put himself out of ‘temptation’s way’ by absenting himself from the marital bed and going to sleep in the room next door. He’d told her she needed time to recover, but in her sorrow and her grief Lexi had felt neglected, and lonely. The longer they had been apart, the easier it had been to stay that way. And then she’d had time to think that maybe it was all for the best.
She had never slept with him again.
The taste of memory was bitter in her mouth and again she tried to wriggle away from him, but Xenon was having none of it. ‘Relax,’ he repeated.
‘Trying to lull me into a false state of security isn’t going to work.’
‘How very brutal of you, Lex—to suggest that I might have some kind of ulterior motive.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not right at this moment, no.’ Fractionally, his thumb moved over her satin-covered waist. ‘Tell me, did you enjoy dinner?’
‘Which part? The delicious bourekakia and tiropita—or your astonishing about-face on the subject of married women working?’
The thumb stopped moving. She thought she heard him sigh.
‘I should never have stopped you from following your career,’ he said.
Lexi stared into the nothingness. Now that her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, she could make out faint shapes of furniture. ‘Nobody can stop someone from doing something, not if they don’t want to.’
‘But I delivered an ultimatum,’ he said. ‘I told you in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t tolerate my wife working.’
‘And maybe you weren’t entirely wrong,’ she said slowly. ‘Our marriage would never have survived me trying to pursue a solo career which was always doomed. I recognised that eventually. It was just the way that you told me which hurt so much.’
‘How?’
His word seemed to fill the dark room and Lexi’s breathing grew shallow. It was a question he would never normally have asked, though this particular situation hardly qualified as ‘normal’, did it? Not by anyone’s definition of the word. And surely the concealing cloak of darkness meant that she could answer it honestly.
‘You spoke to me like I was just...something instead of someone,’ she said. ‘Like I was a person who was simply there to complement your life.
