Mrs Delikaris hadn’t really felt much different from being Miss Ashworth. She’d felt no more in control of her own life than she had before. What had happened to her chance to just be Libby?
It had disappeared, she had finally admitted to herself one day, three months after their wedding. And unless she did something about it, their marriage was going to destroy her.
He had been tying his tie in the bedroom the following morning, when she’d finally plucked up the courage. ‘Rion, before you leave for work again there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Oh?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve decided to apply for a job at the language school down the road.’
It wasn’t going to solve all her problems, but it might be a start. She’d wanted to get a job ever since they’d arrived, for herself as well as to help out with paying the bills, but he’d told her it wasn’t necessary. She realised now she should have fought harder.
‘They’re looking for native English-speakers to help with classes,’ she continued, ‘and I thought an extra bit of cash coming in might mean you needn’t spend so much time working.’
He shook his head. ‘I told you before, it’s not necessary for you to get a job.’
She sucked in a frustrated breath. Couldn’t he see that she needed a life of her own? ‘But I want to. I’ll be able to learn Greek whilst I’m there and—’
‘I promised you a private tutor.’ He looked pained. ‘And you will have one—just as soon as I secure an investment.’
‘But I don’t want to wait that long. I can’t even greet the neighbours!’
Rion’s face contorted. ‘I can assure you it won’t be that long.’
She shook her head. ‘Even so, it isn’t just that. I want to go to a class, to meet other people.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘When you’re at work I just feel so…lonely.’
Rion blinked up at her. ‘I am more than willing to have a child, if that is what you mean.’
Libby’s eyes widened in disbelief. She’d always dreamed of having a family of her own one day, but not before she’d had the chance to really live herself, and certainly not now, when he was only suggesting having a baby as a solution to a problem.
A problem he didn’t even understand. And was it really any wonder? No, she realised, feeling her heart rupture, he couldn’t, because the truth was he didn’t even know her. They’d married so hastily that she’d hadn’t even had the time and space to get to know herself.
And in that instant Libby suddenly saw, as if a bolt of lightning had forked down from the sky and illuminated everything, that as long as she remained here she never would. That even if she stayed and fought and fought she would never really gain control of her own life. No, there was only one way to do that.
She shook her head. ‘No, Rion, a child isn’t what I want. I want—’ She dropped her eyelids and took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know it isn’t this. I…I don’t want to stay here.’
And that was the moment she discovered for sure that she was just as big a disappointment to him as he had been to her.
Rion grimaced. ‘Then go. I think we both know it’s been on the cards from the start.’
Libby drew in a ragged breath, forcing her eyes open and blinking under the bright artificial lights of the corridor outside his office, remembering the twin feelings of both heartbreak and release as she’d walked away. She couldn’t have gone on living that way. She had needed time to find herself, to take control of her life.
But now she had. And he was implying that he had too.
What was more, though it seemed so much had changed, her physical reaction to him most definitely hadn’t. She breathed out deeply, listening to the sound of her heart, still racing. In a way that shocked her most of all, and to her shame it was undoubtedly the hardest thing to fight. Because she’d been convinced she’d never felt anything like it in the intervening years for the simple reason that she was no longer a young girl in the throes of her first love affair. The reality, it seemed, was that there was just no other man on earth who could make her whole body go into meltdown quite the same way that he did. Just by looking at her.
And, whilst she knew that instructing a solicitor to proceed with the divorce the hard way was the logical thing to do, she couldn’t help it—her body longed for her to say yes. And so did her heart, because, no, they didn’t know each other now, but what if they got to know one another and rediscovered what they’d once had before all that? Then divorcing him would be a huge mistake. So shouldn’t she seize the chance to find out whether they could recapture it, even if the odds were minuscule and—?
Suddenly the ground gave way from under her, and she felt herself stumble backwards into hard, compacted muscle. As her mind played catch-up amongst the shock of lost footing and the treacherous thrill of arousal, she realised that to her enormous embarrassment Rion had just opened his office door. The one she’d been leaning against, with all of her weight. She leapt out of his arms, cheeks burning.
‘I was just…’ Libby exhaled, her mind completely blank. But then what excuse was there for being so utterly stupid as to remain leaning up against his door?
‘Oh, no need to explain,’ he said, his mouth quirking into a smile as he walked past her, his hands briefly brushing her sides as if to steady her. ‘Happens all the time.’
He hit the button for the lift and the doors opened immediately. He gestured for her to join him, but she shook her head frantically.
‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said with a grin.
And before Libby had time to protest that she still had twenty-four hours in which to decide, and that taking a breather before going downstairs didn’t mean anything, the doors of the lift had already closed.
Which wouldn’t have been half so frustrating if they hadn’t both known he was right.
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