Bought for the Billionaire's Revenge(20)

He shifted a little, indicating his desire to end the conversation.

‘I should have told you he’d be here,’ Nikos said only a moment later, surprising her with the lightning-fast change in conversation.

For a moment she didn’t comprehend who he was talking about.

‘It did not occur to me that Anderson would upset you.’

She drew her brows together in confusion. ‘He didn’t.’

‘The tears in your eyes would suggest otherwise.’

She opened her mouth in an expression of her bemusement. ‘This from the man who seems to live to insult me?’ The words escaped before she could catch them.

Nikos nodded slowly, as if accepting her charge even as his words sought to contradict it. ‘Hurting you... That is not intentional. It is not what I want.’

She blinked and spun away, turning her body to face the railing. ‘I can believe that.’ And that hurt so much more! Knowing he could inflict pain without even trying, without even being conscious of her feelings, simply demonstrated how little he thought of her feelings at all.

‘Do we have to stay long?’ she asked, doing her best to sound unconcerned when emotions were zipping through her.

‘No. Let’s go. Now.’

He trapped her hand in his much bigger palm and led her from the party. Several times people moved to grab his attention, but Nikos apparently had a one-track mind, and it involved getting them off the boat.

At his Ferrari, with the moon cresting high in the sky and the strains of the party muffled by distance, Nikos put his hands on her shoulders and spun her to face him. His eyes seemed to tunnel into the heart of her soul.

‘What is it I have done that’s insulted you?’

She knew she couldn’t deny it; after all, she’d just laid the charge at his feet. She shook her head, yet the words wouldn’t climb to her tongue.

‘Tell me, agape...’

‘Nothing. It’s fine.’ Her eyes didn’t meet his.

‘Liar!’ He groaned, crushing his mouth to hers.

His hands lifted, pulling at the pins that kept her hair in its chignon until they had all dropped to the ground in near-silent protest. He dragged his fingers through her hair, pulling at it and levering her face away.

His eyes bored into hers. ‘I was angry with you tonight. I was rude.’

A sob was filling her chest. She wouldn’t give in to it. ‘Why? What in the world could you have had to be angry about?’

Was that really her voice? With the exception of a slight tremor, she sounded so cool and in command! How was that possible when her knees were shaking and her heart was pounding?

‘This. You.’ He stepped backwards, as if to shake himself out of the hurricane of feelings. He pulled the door open and stared at her.

Marnie stared back. She wasn’t going to let this go just because he appeared to have decided the conversation was at an end.

‘What?’ she demanded, lifting a hand and splaying her fingers against his broad chest. ‘What about me? What did I do?’

‘Do?’ His head snapped back as if in silent revulsion. ‘You did nothing. You cannot help that this is who you are.’

Her heart was pounding so hard now that it was paining her. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, with a soft determination that almost completely hid her wounds.

‘No? Allow me to clarify. You are Lady Marnie Kenington and you always will be. You are this dress. This party. This perfect face. You are cold and you are exquisitely untouchable. The girl I thought I loved all those years ago never existed, did she?’





CHAPTER EIGHT

FOR THE FIRST time since her arrival in Greece the early morning was drenched by storm. The sky was leaden with weighty clouds, the ocean a turbulent, raging gradient of steel. White caps frothed all the way to the horizon, and the trees that marked the shore arched in the distance, folded almost completely in half.

Marnie, her knees bent under her chin, her eyes focussed on the ravaged horizon, took a measure of consolation from the destruction. Her mind, numb from the exhausting activity of trying to join the dots of what had happened the night before, looked for some kind of comparison in the wasted outlook.

The storm was trashing everything, and yet in time—perhaps even later that day—the clouds would disperse, the sun would shine, and all would look as it once had. Better, perhaps, for the rain had a spectacular way of cleaning things up, didn’t it?

Could the same be said for her and Nikos?

Were they in the midst of a storm that would one day clear? Argument by argument, would they wash away their hurts?

She shook her head sadly from side to side, the question that had plagued her at length tormenting her anew.

Why had he married her?

‘You are Lady Marnie Kenington and you always will be. The girl I fell in love with all those years ago never existed, did she?’

Had she?

He was right. Marnie had changed so much since then. He seemed to attribute it to her upbringing, to her parents’ snobbery. Wasn’t it more likely that she’d simply grown up?

She glanced down at her manicured fingernails and the enormous diamond that sparkled on her ring finger.

They were husband and wife, but outside of that, they were strangers. A lump formed in her throat; futility hollowed out her core.

He hadn’t come to bed last night. She’d showered and waited for him—hoping, knowing, that their being together would make sense of everything. That when they made love the truth of their hearts was most obvious.

But she had no experience in the matter. Was it as he said? Just great sex? Or was it love? Or memories of love, like fragments of a dream, too hard to catch now in the bright light of reality and daytime?

She scraped her chair back impatiently. The pool was dark today, too, reflecting the sorrow of the skies. Had it been a stormy day like this when Nikos had lost his father? When the ocean had swallowed him up, perhaps as retribution for the fish he’d stolen out of its belly?

He had been silent and brooding on the car trip home, and Marnie had been too absorbed by his statement to try to break through that mood, to get to the heart of what he had meant.

Perhaps this morning they could talk.

She moved towards the kitchen, the thought of a cup of tea offering unparalleled temptation. And froze when she saw him.

It was like a flashback to the morning after they’d first arrived. Impeccably dressed in a high-end business suit, he had his head bent over the newspaper and a cup to his left, which she knew would be filled with that thick coffee he loved.

‘Good morning,’ she murmured, her voice croaky from disuse.

He flicked a gaze to her face, studying her for one heart-stopping moment before smiling tightly and returning his attention to the paper.

So that was how it was going to be.

Marnie squared her shoulders and tipped up her chin defiantly. ‘Did you sleep well?’ She walked to the bench, standing directly opposite him.

Without looking up, he responded, ‘Fine. And you?’

It was a lie. He hadn’t got more than ten minutes altogether.

‘Not really,’ she said honestly.

He turned the page of the newspaper. Did she imagine that it was with force and irritation? The admission had cost her. It was an offer of peace—an acceptance of their relationship, faults and all.

‘Where did you sleep?’ she pushed, determined to crack through the facade he’d erected.

‘In a guest room.’ Still he read the damned newspaper.

Marnie, trying her hardest to forge past the storm, reached down and put her hand over the article. ‘Nikos, we need to talk.’

He expelled a sigh and glanced at his watch. ‘Do we?’

‘You know we do.’ She lifted her hand and moved it to his, lacing his fingers with her own. ‘This isn’t right.’

He moved his hand so that he could lift his coffee cup and drink from it. ‘Talk quickly. I have a meeting.’

Hurt lashed her as a whip. ‘That’s not fair,’ she said, with soft steel to her voice. ‘You can’t keep doing that.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Making yourself unavailable as soon as things get tough.’

‘I relish obstacles. I relish difficult opportunities. But I cannot see the point in discussing anything with you right now.’

‘So what you said last night isn’t important enough to talk about?’

‘What did I say?’ he asked softly, his eyes roaming her face.

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ she snapped. ‘You made it sound like we didn’t love each other. Like we didn’t know each other.’

His look was one of confusion. ‘But we don’t.’

Denial! The sharpness of it plunged into her heart.

‘I meant back then...’ She limped the conversation along even when she felt as if she was dying a little.

‘I said that the girl I thought I loved never existed,’ he said with a shrug. ‘That girl would have stood up for what we were. Would have fought to be with me. But you were never that. Seeing you last night, in that dress, you looked so perfect.’ Derision lined his face. ‘You’ve become exactly what your parents wanted.’

‘You keep doing that! You keep making me out to be some kind of construct of theirs.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ she challenged. ‘You are a product of your life just as I am of mine. But if you hate me so much why the hell did you insist I marry you? It has to be more than revenge against my father’