rich golden colour of his skin. She tried to relax in his light grasp, tried not to notice the way his fingers lingered on the white marble ledge for a few more seconds before he slid them away and straightened up again. But the sudden sting gathering in her eyes and her throat was the sting of thick tears because she knew that his lingering touch on the toy car meant the same to a Greek male who did not show his emotions in public as the tender farewell kiss she’d just pressed to the marble stone.
‘Let’s go,’ he said gruffly and turned her towards the gap in the wall which led to the car park.
‘W-we should go and speak to Father Lukas,’ she managed to mumble across the threatening tears.
‘He will not want to intrude on our privacy today of all days,’ Andreas said quietly. ‘Unless, of course,’ he then added smoothly, ‘you want me to ask him how quickly he can arrange the renewal of our marriage vows.'
That totally unexpected, truly sardonic comment sent Louisa lurching from hot tears into a bristling fury she had to fight to keep down if she didn’t want Father Lukas to see her blow up.
‘I’m going to pretend that you never said that,’ she whispered hotly. ‘That way you won’t get blood on your fancy suit!'
‘I take it that renewing our vows is not to your liking, then?’ Andreas responded lightly.
‘Being near you at all is not to my liking!’ Louisa flung back.
‘Shame you did not think about that the other night.’
Louisa gave up trying to behave and went to wrench free of him. ‘I don’t know where you get the flat arrogance to believe you can joke about it!'
‘No joke.’ Long fingers pinned her right where she was.
‘Well, you’re mad, then, if you’re daring to think I actually want to stay married to you!'
‘Well, no child of mine will be born out of wedlock,’ he informed her. ‘So divorce is out, which leaves us with—what option left?'
Divorce …?
With that one casually uttered word he shattered her. It was like driving at full speed into a brick wall. For all the long hours she’d battled with letting go of their past, the crazily logical solution of divorce had not so much as entered her head!
Why hadn’t it?
She pulled to a shuddering stop in the dusty car park. Divorce, she repeated to herself. The final solution. It was sensible. It brought proper closure to everything—freed them both to get on with the rest of their lives.
So why was she feeling as if she was being turned inside out?
Andreas twisted to stand in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, his voice a low, husky rasp. ‘Stop trembling,’ he muttered. ‘It isn’t as if we.’ He ground to a stop suddenly, the black bars of his eyebrows pulling together across the bridge of his nose as his fingers lightly tested the heat in her skin. ‘How long have you been sitting out here in the sun?’ he demanded.
Dusky eyelashes flickering away from turbulent blue eyes, she barely heard what he had said. ‘I’m not pregnant,’ she whispered.
‘I thought you had more sense than to sit in the sun without shelter,’ he muttered. ‘Now your lovely skin is so hot it—'
‘Andreas—I am not pregnant!’ she choked out.
His fingers stilled on her burning shoulders, a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. He looked into her eyes, her wide, blue, anxious eyes. ‘But you are seriously concerned that you could be,’ he said, ‘or you would not have spent several minutes standing outside the pharmacy the other morning fighting with yourself before deciding that you could not do it.'
It was just one hard shock too many. The breath came and went from her body in appalled understanding of what that coolly delivered statement actually meant. ‘You’ve been having me watched!'
He didn’t even bother to deny it, just clasped her arm and led her across the last few metres to where his car was parked then leant past her to open the door.
‘Get in,’ was all he said.
When she turned to argue with him a cold chill went chasing through her because he looked so stern, so unrelentingly tough, and on a sudden bright flash of understanding it hit her that during his days away from the island Andreas had come to some serious decisions about them.
‘Why?’ she whispered shakily.
Irritation flicked across his hard-boned features. ‘Because I am not indulging in a stand-up fight with you here?'
His sarcasm hissed the air from her body. ‘Don’t be so—'
He pulled her against him then lowered his head and captured her mouth. It wasn’t an angry kiss or even a passionate kiss, it was a—frustrated, compulsive, shut-up kind of kiss that locked the two of them together in a dusty car park with the sun beating relentlessly down on their heads.
‘That,’ he husked out as he drew away again, ‘was for Father Lukas. Now get in the damn car before I take the next one for myself!'
Shaken—shocked some more because she’d forgotten all about the watchful priest standing in the church doorway, Louisa subsided into the low car seat. She pretended not to notice the way Andreas dropped his glinting gaze to her legs as the wrap-around skirt slithered open to reveal the length of a long and slender thigh, pale as porcelain and as smooth as silk—before her trembling fingers covered it up.
He closed the car door with a sharp flick from long fingers then strode around the bonnet with her wide blue eyes fixed on his tall, lean bulk as it moved with a smooth animal grace. His dark suit shifted expensively against him as he opened the other door then got in beside her, making her mouth go dry, because once again she was recognising that this Andreas was a completely different kind of beast from the one she had used to know.
‘Why have me watched?’ she demanded as he stretched out a hand to turn the key in the ignition.
The engine fired. He slipped it into gear. ‘I had to go back to Athens for a few days,’ he answered. ‘We had just enjoyed unprotected sex and I could not be sure what you would do about it once the shock had worn off, so I had one of my security team flown in to keep an eye on you.’
His security team? Her image of him was growing bigger and bigger. ‘For what purpose?’ she snapped out. ‘To stop me from throwing myself off the peninsula in despair—or to push me off it if I went near the edge?'
‘I protect my own,’ was all he said, as if that should mean something to her.
Well, it didn’t. ‘I do not belong to you.’
The square cut of his chin jutted as he turned them around in the car park. ‘As my wife you belong to me, as does the child in your womb.'
‘If there is one—if!’
Car tyres crunched as they drove over gravel. A few seconds later they were turning onto the road. ‘You had your chance to make it a definite no, Louisa, and decided not to take it.'
