before she started an argument while still trapped in the car with him. ‘Where exactly are we going?’
‘A villa in the hills. Like most of my properties it once belonged to my mother but I had it renovated last year.’
Despite her anger, curiosity stirred in Tabby. ‘Your mother died when you were still quite young, didn’t she?’ she remarked.
His lean bronzed features clenched hard, dark golden eyes screening. ‘Yes.’
The wall of reserve he used as a shield cast a forbidding shadow over his expressionless face. ‘I lost my parents quite young too,’ Tabby told him, rushing to fill the uneasy silence with an innate sensitivity towards his feelings that annoyed her. ‘I went into foster care. That’s where I met Jack and Amber’s mum, Sonia.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d been in foster care,’ Acheron breathed flatly, well aware she would not have had the escape route from that lifestyle that had eventually been granted by his inherited wealth.
‘Well...’ Tabby responded awkwardly, colliding with impenetrable midnight eyes heavily fringed by spiky black lashes and fighting a sensation of falling...and falling...and falling. ‘They weren’t the happiest years of my life but there were some good times. The last foster home I was in was the best and at least the three of us were together there.’
That appeared to be the end of that conversation as Acheron compressed his lips in grim silence while Tabby fought that light-headed sensation and struggled to focus on her anger. So, Acheron Dimitrakos was gorgeous and he kept on making her hormones sit up and take notice but he was also a skilled manipulator and deceiver and only a complete fool would forget the fact. In addition, it had not escaped her notice that he really wasn’t interested in learning anything about her background and who she was as a person. But then had he ever seen her as a person in her own right? Or simply as someone he could easily use?
The car turned off the road and purred up a sloping driveway to the very large ochre-coloured stone building sprawling across the top of the hill. Tabby had to tense her lower lip to prevent her mouth from dropping open in comical awe because what he called a villa she would have called a palace. A fountain was playing a rainbow of sparkling water droplets down into a circular pool in the centre of a paved frontage already embellished with giant stone pots of glorious flowers. As she climbed out into the early evening sunshine, a flicker of movement from a shrubbery attracted her attention and a white peacock strutted out, unfurling his pristine feathers. The light caught his plumage as he unfurled it like a magnificent silver lace fan. The peacock posed, head high, one foot lifted, his confidence supreme in spite of his aloneness.
‘You remind me of that bird,’ Tabby muttered as the car carrying Amber and her nanny with the bodyguards drew up behind them.
Acheron raised an ebony brow enquiringly.
Embarrassed, Tabby shrugged. ‘Never mind. Could we have a word in private?’ she asked then.
‘Of course,’ he said without expression, but she didn’t miss the frowning glance he shot in her direction as she moved to speak to Amber and her nanny. The little girl was fast asleep though, and a last feed and an early night were clearly what she most needed after a long and exhausting day.
The hall of the villa was breathtaking. Gleaming stretches of marble flooring ran below the arches that separated the reception areas. Tabby had never seen so many different shades of white utilised in a decor or anything so impractical for a household with a child in tow. Of course they would not be staying for long, she reminded herself, and Amber wasn’t yet mobile so all the sharp-edged glass coffee tables and stylishly sited sculptural pieces on pedestals would scarcely endanger her.
‘Very impressive,’ she pronounced while Melinda followed the housekeeper up the wrought-iron and marble staircase.
‘I have a few calls to make,’ Acheron informed her and he was already swinging away, a tall, broad-shouldered male in a beautifully cut lightweight suit made of a fine fabric that gleamed in the light flooding through the windows.
‘We have to talk...’
Over the years, far too many women had fired that same phrase at Acheron and had followed it with dramatic scenes and demands for more attention that he found abhorrent. His powerful frame tensed, his lean, strong face shuttering. ‘Not now...later.’
‘Yes...now,’ Tabby emphasised without hesitation, violet eyes shimmering with anger, for she was not going to allow him to rudely brush her off as if she were the nobody from nowhere and of no account that Kasma had labelled her. If she toed his line and treated him like a superior being she would soon be thinking the same thing about herself.
‘What is this about?’ Acheron enquired coldly.
Tabby walked very deliberately out of the hall into the area furnished with incredibly opulent white sofas and slowly turned round, slim shoulders straight, chin lifted. ‘Is it true that to retain ownership of your company your father’s will required you to take a wife before the end of the year?’
His stubborn jaw line clenched. ‘Where did you get that story from?’ he asked grittily and then he released his breath with a measured hiss of comprehension. ‘Kasma...right?’
‘It’s true, then,’ Tabby gathered in furious disbelief. ‘She told me the truth.’
‘The terms of my father’s will are nothing to do with you,’ Acheron stated with chilling bite, his dark eyes deep and cold as the depths of the ocean.
But Tabby was in no mood to be intimidated. ‘How dare you say that when getting married must’ve suited you every bit as much as it suited me? Didn’t you think I deserved to know that?’
Acheron gritted his even white teeth together in a visible act of restraint. ‘What difference can it possibly make to you?’
‘I think it makes a huge difference!’ Tabby slung back at him, violet eyes darkening with seething resentment. ‘You made me feel as if you were doing me an enormous favour for Amber’s benefit.’
‘And wasn’t I?’ Acheron slotted in, utilising a tone that was not calculated to soothe wounded feelings.
‘And you can stop being so rude right now!’ Tabby launched at him, that derisive tone and superior appraisal of his lashing her like an offensive assault. ‘Yes, Acheron, it is rude to interrupt and even more rude to look at me as if I’m some bug on the ground at your feet! I was completely honest with you but you, and no doubt your lawyer, deceived me.’
Eyes smouldering gold, Acheron was having trouble holding on to his temper. ‘How you were deceived? I did exactly as I promised. I married you, I helped you to lodge an adoption application and I have ensured your future security. A lot of women would kill for one half of what I’m giving you!’
Her slender hands closed into irate fists. She wanted to pummel him as he stood there, the king of all he surveyed, cocooned from ordinary mortals and decent moral tenets by a level of wealth and success she could barely imagine. ‘You are so arrogant, so hateful sometimes I want to hit you and I’m not a violent person!’ Tabby hastened to declare in her own defence. ‘Do you honestly not understand why I’m angry? I was frank with you. There were no lies, no pretences, no evasions. I believe I deserve the same respect from you.’
His wide, sensual mouth curled. ‘This doesn’t feel like respect.’
‘Is
