any minute now she would break down, scream and throw things, or dissolve in floods of helpless tears, betraying how desperately unhappy his betrayal and cynical manipulation of her had made her. She wouldn’t be able to prevent it happening if she had to suffer this unwanted confrontation, this not knowing, for much longer.
Dimitri set his glass down with an irate click. The gold of his eyes frosted. Time she learned she couldn’t make him look a fool, shame and dishonour him. Time she knew who called the shots.
‘You are my wife. There will be no divorce. You will return with me to Greece. If the marriage ends at some time in the future, as seems likely, then I will be the one to end it. I demand that much. I will not be made to look a fool in front of my friends and colleagues.’
Because she hadn’t given him an heir, Maddie translated, chilled to the bone by his harshly decisive delivery. Hanging on to her rapidly fleeing composure, she managed, ‘You can’t stop me suing for divorce. Or make me go anywhere I don’t want to be.’
Fully expecting a blistering statement of the opposite—because the rich and the powerful had ways of getting everything they wanted—she was speechless when he gave a slight shrug of his magnificent shoulders and uttered blandly, ‘True.’
With one hand he loosened his tie and settled back in his seat, graceful in his relaxation. He was more gorgeous than any man had a right to be, she decided in utter misery—then gave herself a sharp mental kick. The days of her overwhelming love for him were over. He was no longer the light of her life, and she no longer felt herself melting inside when she looked at him.
‘But?’ she all but snapped at him. It wasn’t in the nature of the beast to simply cave in. There had to be a ‘but'.
There was.
‘But, if you follow that road be sure that your parents will be homeless by the end of the month. It’s in my power to prevent that happening. I will do so—but only if you agree to everything I ask of you. And if you think that you can divorce me, claim a large settlement and help your parents financially, live the high-life, forget it. Any lawyer I employ will make sure you receive absolutely nothing.’
CHAPTER THREE
APPALLED by that implied insult, Maddie could only stare at him, feeling her face redden. It showed how little he thought of her! Was proof—if she had needed any after what she’d been told—that outside the bedroom he viewed her with contempt, a necessary evil.
She fisted her hands in her lap—a labourer’s hands: short nails, slightly callused palms, as his aunt had commented with acid—and took a long breath. She wasn’t interested in his insults. He couldn’t hurt her more than he already had done, and she certainly wouldn’t lower herself by telling him she’d had no intention of asking him for anything except her freedom because he wouldn’t believe her. Why waste her breath when there were more important questions to ask?
The eyes she at last dragged from the cynical gold of his fell on her untouched wine glass. With the distinct feeling that there was worse to come, she reached forward, swept it up and swallowed a long draught. The rush of alcohol into her bloodstream helped her to challenge him, ‘I don’t believe you. Prove it. Why should my parents lose their home? Why don’t we go back right now and ask them?’
‘At this hour?’ Dimitri drawled, as if hearing words from a total idiot, and leaned forward to remove the half-empty wine glass from fingers that threatened to shatter the delicate stem. He set the glass down on the table and edged the plate of untouched sandwiches further in her direction. ‘They are sleeping, happy in the knowledge that we will have kissed and made up after our lovers’ tiff and, almost as importantly, that I will help them out of their present difficulties. They have a load off their mind—isn’t that how you English would put it?’
Torn between outrage that he should have made light of her precipitate flight back to England and the need to know what the so-called difficulties were, she chose the latter as being far more pertinent.
‘What difficulties?’ she got out, regretting the urgent note in her voice, but wanting to get it out into the open and get out of here. Away from the man she could no longer stand being near to. ‘Tell me!’ she pressed, with fuming vehemence, because he seemed to be intent on keeping his mouth shut and his ace up his sleeve, and was looking at her as if she were an object of mild scientific interest.
Dimitri blinked once, then twice. What was that old-hat come-on? You look magnificent when you’re angry! In this case it was spot-on! However …
Seething with sheer frustration, Maddie watched him tilt his arrogant head, veil his brilliant golden eyes and steeple his fingers as he recited, in a tone so matter-of-fact it made her blood steam in her veins, ‘Your father has reached retirement age. The company he works for has terminated his employment, and with it his tenure of the cottage. The accommodation is required by the groundsman who is to take his place, apparently.’
‘They told you this?’ Maddie asked thinly.
She felt sick. It could be so true. Six years ago old Sir Joseph had sold the Hall and its estate to a business consortium who had turned it into an upmarket conference centre, complete with a golf course, indoor swimming pool and sauna, clay pigeon range and access to excellent trout fishing. Her dad hadn’t liked the new regime. Had missed Sir Joseph and the relaxed chats they’d enjoyed over a whisky and a pipe apiece as they discussed estate matters in the cluttered estate office. On one of the last of those occasions the elderly man had confessed that it was time he moved on. He didn’t want to, that went without saying. But he couldn’t keep up with overheads, he wasn’t getting any younger, and he had no family to take over. Miserable situation, but there it was.
But a job was a job, as Dad had said, and the cottage was their family home—and hadn’t Sir Joseph promised that it would be theirs for as long as they wanted it?
However, that wouldn’t sway the hard-nosed businessmen who ran the estate now. Concessions for loyalty, long service, personal liking and respect wouldn’t come into it. None of them would have heard the words ‘old retainer', and if they had they would have dismissed them as being laughably archaic. Suddenly the threat of seeing her parents homeless didn’t seem empty at all.
‘Initially your mother told me,’ Dimitri verified. ‘When I arrived at your home she was obviously upset. I assumed it was because you’d been in touch and told her you were ending our marriage.’ He levelled an incisive look at her, the planes of his darkly handsome face hard and unforgiving. ‘But that was not so. When I dealt her that second blow of bad news she broke down and wept.’
Maddie’s heart twisted. Anguish leapt to her throat and choked her. Both her parents thought Dimitri Kouvaris was the cat’s whiskers. Charming, considerate, super-wealthy, a miracle of perfection—the type of husband they could only have dreamed of for their lovable but unsophisticated tomboy of a daughter. Of course Joan Ryan would have been devastated by his news. But if she’d been able to get her side of the story in first her mother’s dismay at the marriage breakdown wouldn’t have been so absolute. She would have been disappointed that the dream husband had shown himself to be a cynical, manipulating, cruel brute, but she would have been on her side all the way.
‘So you arrived, unasked and unwanted, and put the boot in!’ Maddie derided at volume, hating him for causing her mother even more distress. She half heaved herself out of the chair, her only thought to get back to her parents and tell the dark story of why Dimitri had really married a no-account nobody like her. She would do everything she could to help them move, find somewhere else to live, fight the men in suits. Surely
