gone paler with each ugly word she’d thrown at him. ‘When?’ he demanded roughly, ‘When did this happen?'
‘Six weeks after I’d left here.’ Turning away because she could no longer look at him, Louisa wrapped her arms around her shivering body and felt her fingernails bite into her flesh. ‘I went straight to the apartment. I let myself in with my key. The signs of your habitation were everywhere. It—it looked like you’d been enjoying one heck of a good party!’
His thick curse raked across her flesh.
‘I see you’ve remembered which day it is I am talking about,’ she swung back to slice at him, ‘unless, of course, you had been enjoying wild parties there every night after you walked out and left me alone here!'
It was his turn to swing his back to her and he said absolutely nothing. He just pushed a hand up to grip the back of his neck, making muscles bunch all over him, his amazing damn shoulders racked up tight.
‘I left as quietly as I’d arrived,’ she continued with effort. ‘I didn’t think a forgotten wife singing out “Hi, I’m back!” would have done much for the—pleasures you were in the process of sleeping off.'
‘You can stop now,’ he roughed out. ‘I know what you saw.'
‘Good.’ So why did it hurt so badly that he wasn’t making excuses? Why couldn’t he just come up with some clever quick lie to explain away what she’d seen? And why did she want him to?
The answer was so deeply humiliating it made her cringe inside her own flesh. Hot dry tears burned the back of her throat and she knew she just had to get out of here.
Shaking, Louisa turned to head for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ he ground out.
‘I would have thought it was obvious. I’m leaving.’
‘To go back to Landreau?’ The hard cynicism in his voice cut her to the raw.
Her narrow back tensed inside the blue sundress, hair sliding down her back as her chin shot up with a jerk. Barely able to breathe across the ice suddenly flowing through her veins, Louisa turned to look at him—look at her tall, dark, handsome husband who had about as much faith in her word as she’d ever had in this crazy second chance of their marriage working out.
He was looking at her now, angry—contemptuous. ‘Well, don’t kid yourself that you are the only woman he sleeps with. There is at least one other woman out there who shares his bed when you are not in it,’ he extended brutally. ‘Can you live with that?'
‘And how many lovers have passed through your bed, Andreas?’ she flung right back. ‘One or two, a dozen—a hundred—?'
His mouth took on that grim flat line in refusal to answer and he went to turn away again. On a blazing flare of anger Louisa walked back to him and grabbed hold of his arm to swing him back. ‘You demanded honesty between us, so answer the question!'
‘So fierce.’ He laughed oddly.
‘Tell me!’
‘Have I taken other women to my bed?’ suddenly he was all sardonic arrogance. ‘Of course,’ he responded. ‘Five years is a long time to spend celibate.'
She let go of his arm as if it repelled her, inside she was a shivering, quivering wreck of hurt and disgust. ‘So the old Greek double standard is still alive and kicking,’ she breathed acidly. ‘I hope you enjoy living up to it.'
With that she walked back to the door on legs that felt as unstable as the tears she was fighting.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ he roughed out.
‘You said it first—five years apart?’ Fingers taking a white-knuckled grip on the door handle, she sent him a deriding look. ‘You don’t really think that I haven’t been playing the field like you and Max, do you.?’
She watched him tense, watched his beautiful bronzed skin whiten, watched him turn himself into a block of stone. That she could also see he actually believed what she was saying sent the death rattle of her love for him rolling through her heart and across her throat.
‘If I’m pregnant I’ll let you know—if you’re still interested by then,’ was her final cold volley before she walked out.
Kostas and Pietros were nowhere to be seen, which suited her fine because she didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to get away from here and never come back.
Isabella was about to get her dearest wish, she thought bitterly as she stepped down from the shady veranda into the fierce midday heat.
Tugging in a thick breath of air, she set off walking down the long driveway without a single clue as to where she was going to go. The other house was out of the question, she even shuddered at the idea of going back there. The hotel was out too, since there was no way she was going to be able to put on a nice, polite face for everyone there.
Which left only one other place for her to go and it drew her like a homing pigeon, keeping her moving down the long driveway, and she was not—not—not going to cry! she told herself.
The angry roar of a car engine coming up fast from behind stiffened her backbone. Her chin shot up, eyes hot and dry, mouth quivering, her insides heaving and twisting with the multitude of emotions playing havoc with her as she quickened her pace.
The open-top car came to a screeching stop beside her. ‘Get in,’ Andreas commanded harshly.
Louisa just kept on walking. There was a curse and a click then he was out of the car and around the bonnet and blocking her path before she could manage to draw breath.
‘Get in the car, Louisa, if you don’t want me to pick you up and put you in!’ he rasped out angrily.
She heaved in a deep breath. ‘I don’t—’
He picked her up and dumped her in the car seat right over the top of the door. The sheer shock of it stung through her in a trembling fizz that chased up and down her limbs.
She was still trembling when he got in beside her and threw the car into gear then shot off down the drive. ‘You are going to have to stop walking away from me,’ he growled roughly.
‘Me walk away from you?’ Shaken up, hair flying as she swung her flashing blue eyes up to glare at his face, only to have her heart dance off in a skittering flurry when she found herself staring at an Andreas she had never seen before.
His lean golden profile stood right on the cutting edge of murder—tense and tight, the steel-rimmed sunglasses covering his eyes filling her head with fantastical images of hard, handsome hit men of the coldly ruthless kind. Something else sprang to life inside her and sizzled, making her look away again quickly, not happy at all to feel the full impact of his attraction in such a way.
‘We both have to stop walking away from each other, then,’ he amended tightly. ‘Whatever. It stops right here!’ Hot tears were beginning to take her over, she watched them blur out her vision. ‘So we can flog this marriage to death some more?’
With a
