‘Theos...come here,’ Angelos groaned. He hauled her resisting frozen length into his arms. ‘Why are you always so set on punishing me?’ He gave her a frustrated little shake, black eyes blazing over her mutinous expression. ‘Why do you always feel the need to top everything I do and turn every encounter into a fight? That is not a womanly trait. Why cannot you just one time give me the response I expect?’
‘I suppose I do it because I don’t like you,’ Maxie admitted, with the kind of impulsive sincerity that was indisputably convincing.
In an abrupt movement, Angelos’s powerful arms dropped from her again. He actually looked shocked. ‘What do you mean you don’t like me?’ he grated incredulously. ‘What sort of a thing is that to say to man who has just asked you to marry him?’
‘I wrote two whole pages on the subject last week...all the things I don’t like...but why should you let that bother you? You’re not interested in what goes on inside my head...all you require is an available body!’
‘You’re overwrought, so I won’t make an issue of that judgement.’ Angelos frowned down into her beautiful face with the suggestion of grim self-restraint. ‘Let’s have lunch.’
As she sat down at the table Maxie murmured sweetly, ‘One more little question. Are you planning to generously share yourself between Natalie Cibaud and me?’
Angelos glared at her for a startled second. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘That’s not an answer—’
Angelos flung aside his napkin, black eyes glittering hard and bright as diamonds. ‘Of course I do not intend to conduct a liaison with another woman while I am with you,’ he intoned in a charged undertone.
Relaxing infinitesimally, Maxie said flatly, ‘So when will the big event be taking place?’
‘The wedding? As soon as possible. It will be very private.’
‘I think it is so sweet that you had not a single doubt that I would say yes.’ Maxie stabbed an orange segment with vicious force.
‘If you want me to take you to bed to close that waspish mouth, you’re going the right way.’
Looking up, Maxie clashed with gleaming black eyes full of warning. She swallowed convulsively and coloured, annoyed that she was unable to control her own fierce need to attack him.
‘You told me yourself that the one offer you would settle for is marriage. I have delivered...stop using me as target practice.’
Maxie tried to eat then, but she couldn’t. All appetite had ebbed, so she tried to make conversation, but it seemed rather too late for that. Angelos now exuded brooding dissatisfaction. She saw that she had already sinned. He had expected to pour a couple of glasses of champagne down her throat and sweep her triumphantly off to bed. She felt numb, for once wonderfully untouched by Angelos’s incredibly powerful sexual presence.
‘Are you aware that all those rumours about you and I have actually relaunched my career?’ she murmured stiffly.
‘Today was your swansong. I don’t want you prancing down a catwalk half-naked and I don’t want you working either,’ Angelos framed succinctly.
‘Oh,’ Maxie almost whispered, because it took so much effort not to scream.
‘Be sensible...naturally I want you to be available when I’m free.’
‘Like a harem slave—’
‘Maxie...’ Angelos growled.
‘Look, I’ve got a ripping headache,’ Maxie confessed abruptly and, pushing her plate away, stood up. ‘I want to go home.’
‘This will be your home in London soon,’ he reminded her drily.
‘I don’t like weird pictures and cold tiled floors and dirty great empty rooms with ugly geometric furniture...I don’t want to live in a building with about ten empty floors below me!’ Maxie flung, her voice rising shrilly.
‘You’re just overexcited—’
‘Like one of your racehorses?’
With a ground-out curse, Angelos slung his napkin on the table and, thrusting his chair back, sprang to his full commanding height. As he reached for her she tried to evade him, but he simply bent and swept her up into his powerful arms and held her tight. ‘Maxie...why are you suddenly behaving like a sulky child?’
‘How dare—?’
In answer, Angelos plunged his mouth passionately hard down on hers and smashed his primal passage through every barrier. Her numbness vanished He kissed her breathless until she was weak and trembling with tormented need in his arms. Then he looked down at her, and he stared for a very long while.
The silence unnerved her, but she was too shaken by the discovery that even a few kisses could reduce her to wanton compliance to speak.
His bronzed face utterly hard and impassive, he finally murmured flatly, ‘I’ll call the car for you and I’ll be in touch. I don’t feel like lunch now either.’
Maxie registered his distance. The sense of rejection she felt appalled her. And she thought then, If I go through with this private arrangement, if I try to play him at his own game, I will surely tear myself apart...
No—no, she wouldn’t, she told herself urgently, battening down the hatches before insidious doubt could weaken her determination. One way or another she would survive with her pride intact. Wanting Angelos was solely a physical failing. Ultimately she would overcome that hunger and look forward to the life she would have after him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘SO, EVEN though it was a rather unconventional proposal, Angelos did have marriage in mind,’ Liz finally sighed with satisfaction.
‘Only when he saw it was his only hope.’
‘I hear a lot of men are like that. Angelos is only thirty-three, but he’s bound to be rather spoilt when it comes to his...well, when many other women would be willing to sleep with him without commitment,’ Liz extended with warming cheeks. ‘I expect you’ve been something of a learning experience for him, and if you were more sensible, he could learn a lot more.’
‘Meaning?’
‘This marriage will be what you make of it.’
‘Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?’ Maxie muttered in confusion. ‘It isn’t going to be a proper marriage, Liz.’
‘Right now you are very angry with Angelos. I refuse to credit that you could really go through with walking out on your marriage in six months’ time,’ Liz told her with a reproving shake of her head.
‘I will, Liz...believe me, I will—’
‘This time I’m definitely not listening,’ Liz asserted wryly. ‘And as for Angelos’s apparent fantasy that he can marry you and live with you on an occasional basis without people finding out that he’s involved with you...he’s almost as off the wall on this as you are, Maxie!’
‘No, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He just doesn’t expect me to be in his life for very long.’
Liz compressed her lips. ‘I have only one real question to ask you. Why can’t you just sit down and tell Angelos the whole truth about Leland?’
Taken aback, Maxie protested, ‘He didn’t want to listen when I did try—’
‘You could’ve made him listen. You are no shrinking violet.’
‘Do you seriously think that Angelos is likely to believe that Leland took advantage of me in every way but the one in which, of course, everyone thinks he did, even though he didn’t?’ Maxie was shaken into surprised defensiveness by Liz’s attitude.
‘Well, your silence on the subject has defined your whole relationship with Angelos. Indeed, I have a very strong suspicion that you don’t really want him to know the real story.’
‘And why on earth would I feel like that?’
‘I think that you think you’re a much more exciting proposition as a bad girl,’ Liz admitted reluctantly, and Maxie turned scarlet. ‘You get all dolled up in your fancy clothes and you flounce about getting a bitter thrill out of people thinking you’re a real hard, grasping little witch—’
Maxie was aghast. ‘Liz, that’s—’
‘Let me finish,’ the older woman insisted ruefully. ‘I believe that that’s the way you’ve learnt to cope with those who have hurt you, not to mention all the mud you’ve had slung at you. You hide away inside that fancy shell and sometimes you get completely carried away with pretending to be what you’re not...so ask yourself—is it any wonder that Angelos doesn’t know you the way he should? He’s never seen the real you.’
The real me, Maxie reflected, cringing where she sat. He would be bored stiff by the real Maxie Kendall, who, horror of horrors, couldn’t even read or write properly. And was it really likely that a male as sexually experienced as Angelos would be equally obsessed with possessing a woman who turned out to be just one big pathetic bluff? A woman who had never yet shared a bed with any man? A virgin?
Unaware of the younger woman’s hot-cheeked distraction, Liz was made anxious by the lingering silence. ‘You’re the closest thing to a daughter I’ll ever have,’ she sighed. ‘I just want you to be happy...and I’m afraid that if you keep up this front with Angelos, you’ll only end up getting very badly hurt.’