Lusty Billionaires Bundle(91)
“It kept me grounded. It would have been too easy to get wrapped up in the glitter and glitz surrounding the fashion industry.” She sighed and kissed the hair roughened skin of his chest simply because she couldn’t help herself. “I guess I didn’t want to end up like my mother with my view of life and the world blinkered by the society surrounding me.”#p#分页标题#e#
But like her mother, she’d willfully worn blinders in one area of her life…with him. She had refused to consciously acknowledge the transitory nature of their relationship, living only in the present. So, when he ended it—she had been devastated. She didn’t want to think about that right now, maybe never again.
“Why the darkness?” she asked instead.
“I needed it to be only you and I. No more pain. No past. No present. No future. Just us.”
She understood that. Allowing this area of their relationship to be tainted by the differences that plagued them would be like taking a color marker to the Mona Lisa.
They lay like that for a long time, his fingers brushing her side in an absentminded movement while her hand rested over his heart. It reminded her of their last time together and her words then. A strong heart.
“You said your grandfather had another heart attack? You never told me about the first one.”
“It happened while I was in Greece that last time before you left Paris.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?” he countered.
“I was Xandra Fortune in France.”
“Yes, and you took periodic trips that were not modeling assignments and yet you would not tell me what they were. Presumably they were to return to your life as Alexandra Dupree.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I thought you had met someone else.”
She sat up and stared down at him, his beautiful black hair tousled by her fingers, his naked body gleaming bronze above where the sheet rested across his hips. “You thought I was two-timing you?”
Chance would be a fine thing. If he had believed that about her, he would not have stayed. “I had never had another lover. Did you think that now I knew what sex was, I couldn’t wait to try it with someone else?”
She wasn’t prepared for the guilty stain across his cheeks.
“You did!” She didn’t think about it, she just balled up her fist and smacked him right on the chest. Hard.
He grunted and caught her hand in his own. “I did not believe it. If I had, I would have ended our relationship.”
Right. That sounded like him. “But you thought the baby was someone else’s.”
“Yes. I did hold this tormenting belief for a week. I have no excuse.”
She glared at him. “No, you don’t.”
But inside she had to acknowledge her trips home could have looked suspicious to a lover as possessive as Dimitri. He’d hated the fact she had things in her life she refused to tell him about. She’d kept it that way to stop him from taking her over completely. She had loved him so much, she’d needed the defense mechanism of having a part of herself he did not know. Only when she returned to living that part of her life, she took the pain of his loss with her. The defense had not worked.
“My grandfather refused to have necessary by-pass surgery until I promised to set a date for my marriage with Phoebe. I was not ready to give you up, but I was not prepared to let him die, either.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You cannot be serious. You always told me what a great guy your grandfather was. How could he blackmail you like that into ditching me?”
“He did not know about you.”
This new view of what had happened three months ago left her feeling disoriented. “But still…”
“He wanted an assurance I would do my duty by the Petronides name.”
“And instead you got your mistress pregnant and yourself featured in a public fight with her.”#p#分页标题#e#
He grimaced. “Yes.”
“He’ll be furious if you marry me.”
He looked amused. “He will be thrilled to become a great-grandfather and he cannot help but be charmed by so lovely a new granddaughter.”
“I’m not beautiful anymore. You said so.”
He used the grip he had on her hand to tug her down to his chest. “I said you looked ill, not ugly, you foolish woman.”
“But I don’t have sultry green eyes now,” she said, remembering what he used to say about them.
“Now you have eyes that change color with your mood. It is quite tantalizing.”
“My hair is short and mouse brown.”