A Sudden Engagement and The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife(79)

His jaw tightened. “I didn’t have to chase him, Ariana. Like any sensible man, Magnus seemed uninclined toward being the other party in bigamy. In fact, he sounded angry at your deception.”

“Bigamy?” She covered the distance between them without caring. Her heart seemed to slow down in her chest, a dreadful cold filling her. “What do you mean, bigamy?”

His mouth relaxed, he stood waiting against the same tree as if he had all the time in the world. As if there was nothing that would give him more pleasure than to watch the ground being pulled away from under her. As if he’d planned and lived this moment a thousand times and he couldn’t let his enjoyment end.

She shook her grip on his coat but he didn’t budge. “What do you mean?”

A smile curved his mouth. Rendering him starkly beautiful. “My father and you missed one small detail in your plan. If I had never discovered you were alive, it wouldn’t have mattered so much.

“But I did.”

“What detail?” she was shouting now, her voice lost in the gray bleakness around her. Everything about those few days was still jumbled in her head. She’d been acting on pure animal instincts—fear the overriding one—and listening to King Theos had been the worst kind of mistake.

All she’d wanted was to escape Drakon before Andreas came back from his summit. Before she was caught in the web of her own love for him.

She’d been so naive that she had played right into Theos’s manipulative hands. But Andreas wouldn’t believe her now.

Her leaving him had been a betrayal to a man who didn’t break rules for anyone, an unforgivable mistake to a man whose word meant everything to him.

She clasped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “What detail, Andreas?”

He still didn’t hold her. Didn’t touch her in any way. Those eyes trapped her again, until even breathing was a chore. Those eyes betrayed all his emotions—fury, shock and the cold enjoyment of her fate now. “The papers you signed for Theos, dissolving our marriage, he never presented them to me.

“Your supposed death bought him time and then…I don’t know what he and you planned. I never saw those papers until a few months ago. The motion didn’t even get filed in court.

“You are still my wife.”