elevator doors slid open and she walked straight into the apartment, where a smiling Sofia was waiting with Xander in her arms. The baby was dressed in a green sleepsuit covered with red-nosed reindeers and Lucy felt a welling up of something hard in her chest which took her breath away as she cradled the infant. He was so tiny and helpless and…she’d missed him, she realised with a wrench. Had Drakon missed him too? she wondered, turning her head to speak to her husband.
‘Drakon? Look. See how he’s…’ But Lucy realised she was talking to an empty space. That Drakon had slipped from the room without a word and, from the fading sound of his conversation, it appeared he was already on the phone to somebody.
She tried not to let it bother her as she played with the baby. She bathed him and fed him and sang a crooning little song she remembered from those long hours of night duty when she’d worked in the neonatal unit at St Jude’s hospital. She gave Sofia the evening off and, once Xander was asleep, Lucy changed into a dress she’d never worn before. Before she’d met Drakon, she would never have dared. Silky scarlet jersey clung to her hips and the slashing V neckline gave an uncharacteristic glimpse of shadowed cleavage. Spiky-heeled black shoes with scarlet soles completed the outfit and she styled her hair into a fashionably messy topknot which the Granchester hairdresser had showed her how to do.
Zena had prepared a meal which she’d left for them and Lucy was just lighting tall candles in the dining room, when Drakon walked into the room. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone and she could see the faint darkness of chest hair, which arrowed downward in a beguiling path. He hadn’t changed since they’d arrived back from Prasinisos, she realised, narrowing her eyes. He must have been on the phone all this time. He was looking around the room, taking in the holly-strewn centrepiece with tall silver candles which adorned the table and the bottle of champagne which protruded from an ice bucket.
‘This all looks very…festive,’ he observed, with the air of a man who had just been told that his dentist was about to make an unscheduled visit.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Lucy said brightly. ‘Zena must have gone to a lot of trouble and it’s still…well, it’s still Christmas.’
He turned his attention to her outfit. ‘Is that why you’re dressed like the personification of seasonal sex in your Santa-red dress?’ he questioned huskily. ‘Because you want me to unwrap you?’
Lucy swallowed as her nipples tightened in time to his slow scrutiny. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she whispered. ‘We might no longer be on honeymoon, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make love after dinner every night, if you want to, which I’m rather hoping you do.’
‘Who knows what either of us will want? This is still all very new—to both of us.’ He picked up the champagne bottle and began to tear the foil from its neck. ‘Let’s just take it one day at a time, shall we, Lucy?’
His voice was soft but entirely devoid of emotion, and as she looked into the unfathomable darkness of his eyes Lucy wondered whether he intended his words to sound more like a threat than a promise.
DRAKON SAT BACK in his chair and twisted the stem of his wine glass between his fingers as he studied his wife who was sitting opposite him in the large dining room of his Mayfair apartment. Candlelight flickered over the polished table and over the dark, coiled gloss of her hair. ‘Did I mention that I need to go to Singapore tomorrow?’ he questioned.
Lucy looked up from her bowl of Greek lemon chicken soup, her spoon suspended in mid-air. ‘No, you didn’t.’ A frown criss-crossed her brow. ‘Tomorrow? Just like that? Without any kind of warning?’
‘That’s business, Lucy.’
‘It seems to be a very demanding business.’ She hesitated. ‘When you always seem to be working.’
He shrugged. ‘Billion-dollar empires don’t just happen without someone putting in the legwork.’
‘It would be nice…’ her voice trailed off and, once again, she seemed to be picking her words carefully ‘…if you could spend a little more time with your son.’
Drakon felt a flicker of irritation because that felt almost like a criticism, and it was not in her remit to criticise him. But why not placate her when he was going away tomorrow, by wiping that look of uncertainty from her face? ‘That will happen,’ he said. ‘When things are a little quieter.’
She looked unconvinced and maybe he couldn’t blame her for that because, in truth, his heart was not engaged in fatherhood. He could see her hesitating, worrying her teeth into her bottom lip as if she was trying not to say something, but she said it all the same.
‘Do you have to go, Drakon?’
She tried to keep the question casual but in this she failed because it was a refrain he’d heard from women countless times over the years and Drakon tensed—because didn’t her words almost justify his intended trip? Didn’t they reinforce what he suspected was her growing emotional dependence on him and make him aware of the subtle ways she was trying to steer him away from his work? But she had to understand that no way was he going to take his eye off the ball, because he’d seen what could happen if you did. He was still his own boss and a man who answered to nobody—not to his adopted baby and certainly not to his wife—and the sooner she realised that, the better.
Steeling his heart against the reproach in her eyes, he shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I do,’ he answered coolly. ‘I don’t know if I mentioned that we’re trying to extend our oil refinery—’
Her voice sounded stiff. ‘No, I don’t believe you did. You don’t exactly encourage me to keep up with what’s going on in your empire, do you?’
Ignoring the underlying complaint in her question, he picked up a piece of home-made pitta bread. ‘Amy hasn’t been able to get anywhere with the government. She keeps coming up against opposition—she suspects it’s because she’s a woman—and I really do need to be there.’
‘Of course you do.’ But Lucy put her soup spoon back down on the plate, her appetite suddenly deserting her. Was that because, although Drakon was going through the motions of sounding apologetic, the anticipation in his voice suggested he really wanted to go off on a last-minute trip to the Far East? And wasn’t the truth of it that he probably felt trapped in a marriage he’d never really wanted?
Because the honeymoon was over. At least, that was how it seemed to her. Within twenty-four hours of returning to London from Prasinisos, life had picked up a new routine and Lucy realised just how much time she was expected to spend on her own. Drakon had resumed what she was to discover were his habitual twelve-hour days at the office, leaving her at home with Xander, Sofia and the rest of his large contingent of staff.
She took to rising deliberately early in order to eat breakfast with her husband before he left for the office, knowing he wouldn’t return until dinner time. Because what was the point of being married if you never got to see the man you’d married? At least when she was pouring strong coffee and offering him a croissant—which he would invariably refuse—she felt as if she was going through the motions of being a married woman. But only at night did she feel like a real wife, when Drakon undressed her and took her into his arms. When he made her cry out with disbelieving pleasure as his lips and fingers and tongue opened up her senses. Her
