His jaw clenched. “Ex-lover.”
“Why…” She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She couldn’t ask this, but she had to. “Why did you make love, I mean… have sex with me just now?”
He spun away from her, his magnificent body sending messages to her own even amidst the carnage of their discussion.
“I couldn’t help myself.”
She believed him. She hadn’t been able to help herself with him from the very beginning. She’d still been a virgin at the ripe age of twenty-two, but her innocence had been no barrier to the feelings he ignited in her.
He’d been shocked by her virginity, but not deterred in his resolve to make her his lover. She’d loved him and after two months of holding him off, she’d given in. It had been fantastic. He had made her feel cherished and there had been times over the past year when she had even felt loved.
“I don’t believe you want to let me go.” He couldn’t.
“It is time,” he said again, as if that explained it all.
“Time to marry the woman you intended to marry all along?” she asked, needing to make it very clear in her own mind.
“Yes.”
Suddenly she felt her nakedness even through the mists of her anger and it shamed her. She had shared her body without inhibitions with this man for a year…a year during which he knew he planned to marry another woman.
She spun on her heel and headed to the bathroom where she jerked on the toweling robe she kept hanging on the back of the door. When she came back into the bedroom, Dimitri was gone. A search of the apartment revealed he had not merely left the bedroom, he had left her.
She stood in the middle of the living room and let the emptiness of the apartment sink into her consciousness until it was so heavy it forced her to her knees. Her head dropped, feeling too heavy for her neck and the sting of tears began in the back of her throat.
Soon their acid heat burned their way down her cheeks and neck to soak into the lapel of the heavy Turkish robe.
Dimitri was gone.
Dimitri leaned against the wall in the hallway outside the apartment. He’d forced himself to leave when Xandra went into the bathroom. If he hadn’t, he would never have made it out the door. Even now, the temptation to go back to her and tell her it was all a mistake rode him hard.
But it was not a mistake. If Dimitri did not marry Phoebe Leonides, an old man whom Dimitri loved more than his own life or personal happiness, would die. His grandfather had refused to back down from his ultimatum and even now sat weakly in a wheelchair, refusing necessary surgery until Dimitri set a wedding date.
His fist jabbed viciously into the palm of his other hand. Why had Xandra mentioned marriage between them? Why taunt him with the impossible? She did not want marriage. She could not. If she had, at least one time over the past year, her career would have come second and he would have come first. It never had. Not once.
Xandra was angry right now, her feminine pride bruised. It had upset her to realize he had planned to marry another woman all along, but he could not take seriously the idea she thought their liaison would end in marriage. She’d made her independence too much an issue for that. However, she had obviously believed he had no plans at all in that direction.
More guilt added to the already swirling cauldron of emotions inside him.
He had not intended to make love with her again, but he’d lost his cool and his control the moment she went into seductive mode. For all her worldly sophistication, Xandra was not an aggressive lover. She was affectionate and responsive, more responsive than any woman he’d ever known, but she initiated lovemaking rarely and even then, she did so subtly. Her seduction just now had been anything but subtle and it had undermined his defenses with the impact of an invading army.
Afterward, it had been harder than he thought possible to tell her of his upcoming marriage while her body remained warm and fragrant from their intimacy.
He forced himself away from the wall and toward the elevator. A clean break was the only way.
Alexandra waited thirty-six hours to call Dimitri’s cell phone, sure with the passing of each hour, the man she loved, the father of her child, would come back to her.
He had made love to her. She was sure he hadn’t planned to do it, but he had. He’d never slept with Phoebe. He had said he didn’t love the other woman and equally important, he couldn’t possibly need her the way he had needed Alexandra for the past year.
But he did not come and she had no choice but to contact him. She was furious with him, more hurt than she’d ever been in her life, but she carried his child and she had to tell him before he made the mistake of marrying another woman.
She refused to consider what she would do if the news of impending fatherhood had no effect on his marital plans.
The sound of the phone ringing beeped in her ear three times before he picked up. “Dimitri, here.”
“It’s Xandra.”
She was met with unnerving silence.
“We need to talk.”
More silence. “There is no more to say.”
“You’re wrong. There are things I must tell you.” Did he notice how alike her words now to the ones he’d spoken to her two days ago?
“Can we not dismiss the postmortems?”
She sucked in air, but controlled the desire to scream like a fishwife at the insensitive tycoon dismissing her like yesterday’s garbage. “No. We need to talk. You owe this to me, Dimitri.”
This time she didn’t break the silence.
Finally she heard a heavy exhalation at the other end of the line. “Fine. Meet me at Chez Renée for lunch.”
“I’d rather meet in the apartment.” She did not want to tell him of his impending fatherhood and her true identity in a public setting.
“No.”
She gritted her teeth, but didn’t argue. “Fine.” Maybe a public setting would be best after all. He would hesitate to commit murder with witnesses, she thought with black humor.
They set a time and hung up.
Dimitri cut the cell connection and turned to look out the large window in his Athens office. He had flown to Athens within hours of leaving the Paris apartment. He hadn’t trusted himself to stay in France and not go back to her.
And that infuriated him.
His grandfather’s life was at stake and Dimitri refused to allow an obsession with a woman deter him from his purpose. His parents had taught him all the lessons he needed to learn in that area. His father’s obsessive need for his mother had resulted in years of volatile togetherness and ultimately both their deaths.
He could not allow
