let me stop you from doing your own thing. I’m perfectly happy with my own company.’
He smiled as he poured them both a coffee. ‘I like it,’ he said. ‘Quite like old times.’
For a moment she said nothing because this was nothing like old times. She’d woken this morning feeling disorientated, aware that she’d spent the night in bed with Xenon but that he hadn’t touched her. Or rather, he had. He’d touched her in a way which was completely out of character. He’d held her. Just held her. And it had been tender rather than sexual. More than that, he’d actually listened to her and then had gone out of his way to explain some of his more controlling behaviour.
Didn’t he realise how confused that made her feel?
She shot him a quick glance. ‘Phyllida also said that we can go and see your grandmother after breakfast.’
‘Right.’
She saw the sudden tension which had darkened his face. ‘I hope she’s not in any pain.’
He shook his head. ‘The doctors are very good about managing the pain these days and at least we are able to care for her here at home.’ He put his cup down. ‘It was last time I was here that she began asking about you. You know, she liked you, Lex. She liked you a lot.’
Lexi met his eyes, incredibly touched by his words because she had liked Xenon’s ghiaghia, too. She hadn’t known any of her own grandparents—maternal or paternal—and maybe that was why she’d enjoyed the company of the Greek matriarch so much. She’d loved hearing about her own far-off childhood here on this island and her long and subsequently happy marriage. ‘What did she say?’
He looked at her with the expression of a man weighing up his options. ‘She said that I was a very clever man, but that sometimes I could be a fool. And that I was a fool to let you go.’
‘Xenon.’ Her voice rose with sudden anxiety. ‘I don’t want to lie to her.’
‘I’m not asking you to. But do you think you could manage to do a convincing enough impression of still caring for me?’
She met his gaze. If only he had said it with his habitual arrogance—an attitude which sprang from the certain knowledge that pretty much every woman he met cared about him. But he hadn’t said it in that way. For a minute back then he’d sounded almost vulnerable.
Her untouched peach seemed to stare balefully at her from the plate. Maybe he was feeling vulnerable—or as close to it as someone like him could get to such an emotion. His beloved grandmother was dying and Lexi knew she had to stand by him. She owed him her support at this time because she had loved him and had married him. She would be there for him.
Some impulse made her stand up and reach out her hand to run her fingers through the tangle of his ebony hair. ‘Oh, I think I’m a good enough actress to put on a convincing enough performance of caring for you.’ She smiled.
But something in the air had changed. Something she had said or done had clearly angered him, for he rose to his feet and suddenly he seemed huge as his shadow fell over her.
‘Good enough actress?’ he echoed. ‘Is that a fact?’
Without warning, he pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her and it was as if someone had opened a floodgate. His lips were hard on hers as he explored her mouth with an urgent kind of hunger. The man who had lain so chastely beside her during the night had gone and in his place was the Xenon she remembered best.
He pressed his body closer. She could feel the jut of his hips against hers and the heavy weight of his erection pressing into her belly. She could feel the insistent tug of desire melting insistently at her core—a hot ache which was clamouring to be released. His hand cupped her breast and she groaned, wriggling luxuriously as he played with one peaking nipple. Restlessly, she moved her hips in silent invitation. Wanting him to slide his hand up underneath her dress to where she was wet and waiting. Wondering if she dared touch him. To stroke him as he loved to be stroked. To take the heavy weight of him in her hand and to whisper her fingertips over his silken length until he moaned something guttural in his native tongue in response. Yet something stopped her from initiating that next step towards total intimacy—for wouldn’t he interpret such a move as weakness or reliance on him?
So why didn’t he make a move instead? Why didn’t he push her back inside the villa and slide her onto the cool marble floor and take her without further ceremony in that hungry macho way of his? If he’d straddled her right there and then, she would have eagerly welcomed him into her body because she wanted him so badly it felt almost like pain.
But he didn’t do that. Instead he drew his head away from hers, although his blue eyes were almost black with lust. And although she could see the faint tremble of his hands, his voice was quite calm when he spoke.
‘I must say, Lex,’ he observed, ‘that you put on a pretty convincing performance of “caring for me”—even without the benefit of an audience. Don’t you think?’
And Lexi knew she’d walked into a trap of her own making. A stupid and cheapening trap. She’d shown him she still wanted him and that was bad enough—but she prayed that he wouldn’t guess the real reason behind her passionate response to him.
That she was still in total thrall to her husband.
‘Fifteen-love,’ she said.
‘I’d say it was closer to set point.’ His voice was dry. ‘Come on, let’s go and see Ghiaghia.’
She asked for five minutes to compose herself, to tidy her hair and smooth down her dress, and was quiet as they walked across the courtyard to the side of the house where they’d eaten dinner last night. Her heart was in her mouth as they walked into the large bedroom whose shutters were half closed and where his grandmother now lay.
Sometimes Lexi was grateful that she hadn’t had a sheltered upbringing and this was one of them. As a child she had seen things no child should ever see—shocking, brutal things—but she found herself thinking that nothing was more shocking than the inevitable approach of death.
Like her daughter, Sofia had once been a great beauty but her exquisite bones were now cruelly defined by the waxy skin stretched tightly over them. Her once-lustrous eyes were dulled by morphine and her body was as insubstantial as a sparrow’s as it lay beneath the white sheet.
Her eyes tried to focus on the couple as they walked into the room and for a moment she frowned, as if she was examining her failing memory for clues. But then came the hint of a smile as she stared at Lexi. The faintest fluttering of bony fingers as she attempted to lift her hand from the bed in greeting.
Lexi went straight over to her, wanting to hug her tightly but, mindful of her frailty, she bent down and took her hand before bending to kiss each shrunken cheek.
‘Ghiaghia,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me, Alexi.’
‘Alexi.’ The Greek matriarch struggled a little and Lexi glanced over at the nurse, who nodded, and the two women helped move the old lady further up the bed, positioning her feeble body against a deep pile of pillows. ‘I am happy to see you.’
‘And I you. Oh, Ghiaghia.’ Lexi’s voice cracked, just a little. ‘I’m...I’m so sorry that you’re sick.’
For a moment, Sofia looked
