“I cannot promise this.”
“Poor Phoebe. Does she know what an unfaithful letch she is married to?”
“Phoebe is married to a man of absolute honor,” he replied, his voice laced with furious affront.
“You? Don’t make me laugh,” she scorned. A man with integrity did not marry one woman after impregnating another.
Dimitri sat down, keeping Alexandra pinned in his lap. His blue gaze scorched into hers. “You believe I am married to Phoebe? And you believe I have no honor?” The last was said with escalating anger.
“I suppose you’re going to try to tell me you’re not married to your little Greek paragon.”
“This is true. I am not.”
Alexandra closed her eyes. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t expected him to lie to her. She opened them again and stared into his deceitful face. “She told me she was your wife, so you can just forget about the smoothy deceptions.”
“She would not have told you she was my wife.” His voice was filled with such conviction that Alexandra thought back to the devastating phone call.
“She told me she was Mrs. Petronides.”
“But then she told you she was married to my brother.”
“What?”
“She told you she had wed my brother.”
“She did no such thing!” But she could have. Alexandra remembered the voice still talking as she’d ended the call.
Dimitri wouldn’t let her look away from him, his compelling eyes holding hers hostage. “She did.”
“But…”
“She also pleaded with you to tell her where you were.”
Alexandra remembered that part. “I wasn’t about to have a heart-to-heart with your new wife.”
“She is not my wife.”
“Prove it.”
In his shock at her demand, Dimitri’s grip loosened and Alexandra extricated herself from his lap, this time much more carefully. “You say you are not married to Phoebe Petronides. Well, I don’t trust you anymore, Dimitri. If you want me to believe it, you’ll have to bring me proof.”#p#分页标题#e#
He shot to his feet again, all outraged male. “How dare you question my word?”
“You wouldn’t believe how easy it is,” she admitted.
That seemed to shake him. “I will get you the proof you require,” he said angrily.
“Fine. Until then, I suggest you go.”
“I am not letting you out of my sight again.”
“What do you propose, setting up camp outside my sister’s door and dogging my every footstep?”
“Count on it, but I have no desire to sleep in a hallway. You can come with me to my suite.”
“No way. I’m not staying in a hotel room with you.”
“There are two bedrooms, though there was a time you would not have required the other one.”
She glared at his, to her mind, savagely insensitive reminder. “Forget it. I’m not going.”
“Then I will stay here. It is a large apartment. I’m sure your sister has a spare room I could use.”
She felt flummoxed. “You can’t stay here. Madeleine would have a hissy fit. She hates you.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Speaking of hissy fits, your brother-in-law implied your mother would have one if you were featured in a scandalous article.”
Alexandra couldn’t prevent her eyes from rolling in exasperation. “Yes.” She’d spent six years living as someone else to protect her mother’s sense of family dignity. Dupree women did not work.
Only this generation of Dupree women would have been out on the street if one of them hadn’t ignored the old money heritage and gotten a job to support the family. The cousin of a friend from school had offered her a modeling contract. She’d taken it with one proviso…she work anonymously under an assumed name. He’d gone one better and helped her create Xandra Fortune, French orphan turned fashion model.
Dimitri was speaking again. “She would be most upset to see an exposé interview with her daughter’s discarded tycoon lover and rejected father of her child.”
Her body didn’t know whether to go faint or boil with fury at his implied threat and twisting of the facts. “I didn’t discard you. You dumped me to marry Phoebe, the Greek virgin bride, or don’t you remember?”
“I am not married to Phoebe.”
“You don’t have to have committed a murder to be guilty of a crime.”
Instead of getting angrier, he smiled. “Are you saying you believe I did not marry her?”
“No!”
“You still require proof?”
“Yes.”