to name it, ‘now, in one of the furnished bedrooms,’ he offered. ‘Think about it,’ he urged. ‘You and me coupling like we used to do, driving each other mad for hours and hours.’ Bringing up a hand he gently touched the telling burn in one of her cheeks. ‘We could enjoy a whole afternoon of glorious unprotected sex with no interruptions from—'
‘What do you mean—unprotected sex?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ He smiled. ‘I want to make you pregnant.'
Robbed of breath, Louisa stared up at him. ‘You mean you actually want there to be a baby?'
‘I have thought of little else since our wild encounter on the hill,’ he admitted candidly. ‘Call me broody if you like,’ he mocked sardonically, touching the trembling fullness of her mouth. ‘I want to plant another seed inside your womb and be around this time to watch it grow.'
‘Stop it.’ She jerked her head back. ‘This is crazy.’
‘And it gets worse,’ he confessed. ‘You see, I began wanting this all the more once the name Max Landreau raised its threatening head. And do you know why?'
Louisa shook her head, not even trying to out-think a madman.
‘Because the idea of you conceiving another man’s child was just so unacceptable to me you were lucky you were with our son when I came looking for you, or I probably would have strangled you on the mere off-chance that you might be pregnant to another man!'
‘My God,’ she gasped. ‘You are unbelievable!’
‘Well, try thinking of it this way round. Ask yourself, my reluctant wife, how you would feel about me seeding my child in another woman …'
It was a blow Louisa had not anticipated. It flattened her back to the wall and whitened her face. ‘How did you get to be so brutal?’ she whispered.
His hands came up to frame her face, long fingers so incredibly tender as they slid her hair behind her ears. It was an old gesture and a familiar one he had used to make as a form of apology.
‘Primitive and brutal I might be but it hurts, hm?’ he persisted nonetheless. ‘It turns you inside out. My mother threw us together to make us see that we had nothing left between us but she could not have been more wrong if she had tried, because there is plenty left between us. You tremble,’ he husked. ‘I tremble because we still feel this much for each other.'
‘It’s just sex and the shock of what you said,’ Louisa dismissed all of that. ‘It will pass.'
‘But I don’t want it to pass.’ Lowering his head, he brushed his warm lips across hers.
And her lips clung—they clung!
‘Think about it,’ he urged. ‘Think about what we shared on the hill and what is still eating away inside us right here and now. Think of all the loving waiting for us the moment that you say yes to me. And think of the brother or sister we will make for Nikos and how happy he will be for us that we found each other again. We have a chance to make something good out of so much badness. All you have to do is agree to stay with me …'
She melted into thick, blinding tears.
Smothering a curse, Andreas wanted to take the words back. He despised himself for saying them at all! But he was not going to take them back because he meant them, every single aching one. They’d been cheated of the right to decide for themselves what happened to their marriage five years ago. They’d been manipulated by people who’d insisted on seeing them as children playing at marriage because they’d been foolish enough to conceive a son. In their twisted wisdom their families had decided that with Nikos gone their hasty young marriage should go too. It infuriated him. It burned like acid in his gut to know that people they believed loved them could do this to them.
Where would they be now without the interference? Who knew the answer? Certainly not him, he admitted as he stood looking down at this woman he had met at the wrong time in both their lives but had never—ever felt any differently about.
His mother wanted closure. Well, he wanted closure—only not in the way his mother had meant. To a Greek possession was everything. To a Greek you did not play around with something as deeply ingrained as that. Louisa belonged to him. He’d known it from the moment she walked off the ferry. What had taken place on the hill had only reinforced that belief. She was his, had always been his and would always be his. It was as simple and as clear as that.
‘If those tears spill over I will have to take drastic action,’ he warned her.
Pressing her trembling lips together, Louisa inhaled a controlling breath. ‘I will not be bulldozed into something I don’t want because you need to prove something to everyone.'
‘You have not been listening.’
‘Yes, I have.’ She looked up, eyes still awash with tears. ‘You are angry and you want revenge and you want me to be your accomplice.'
He didn’t like that. The way he stepped away from her told her that he didn’t like it. It was much too close to the truth. ‘I simply want back what they took from us.'
The moment he gave her some space to breathe Louisa felt a hot tingle spring out along her arms and shoulders. She rubbed at them absently. ‘We are two different people now. It would be like trying to relive a past that just doesn’t exist.’
‘Are you daring to tell me that our son did not exist?’ His sudden burning blast of fury shook Louisa to the core.
‘Of course I’m not!’ she cried out. ‘But you cannot recreate Nikos in another child, Andreas! That’s just—'
He went as white as a sheet and walked away from her.
Oh, dear God. Louisa closed her eyes. She should not have said that. Shaking badly inside and out now, she pushed herself away from the wall and tracked after him. He’d gone back into the kitchen and was standing in front of one of the units with his dark head dipped and his shoulders braced and he was holding on to the marble work-surface with a white-knuckled grip.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was a terrible thing for me to say.'
‘Some terrible things have been said all round,’ he uttered with an odd dry rasp. ‘It is what comes of waiting five years to say most of them.'
‘Yes,’ Louisa sighed out. ‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, Andreas. Surely you must see that?'
‘No, I do not see that.’
‘Stubborn,’ she mumbled, forced to switch her attention from their fight to herself because she’d put a hand up to her forehead and discovered it was burning hot, yet she was starting to shiver she felt so cold.
‘I am going to make coffee. Do you want some?’ he asked calmly, as if it was perfectly normal to drink coffee in the middle of a heated argument.
An odd-sounding laugh surged up from her throat. ‘Actually,’ she heard herself say almost curiously, ‘I don’t think I feel very well …'
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT LEAST
