‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
And the costume? she asked herself as she padded on bare feet across the stone-paved terrace, heading for the pool house. Well, if it fitted—and was in any way modest—then she might risk it.
She’d make up her mind when she saw it.
But when she saw the pale lavender swimming costume hanging on a peg in the small changing room the effect of it was like a sudden blow to her heart, stilling its beat and leaving her standing staring in blank and stunned disbelief, unable to think at all.
It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be, was the phrase that repeated over and over inside her head, making the real world fade from her awareness into a buzzing, whirling haze in which the only real thing was the sleek, small item of clothing before her.
‘It can’t,’ she said, shaking her head in shock. ‘It can’t be.’
Because the costume she now held in shaking hands was the one that she had worn herself on the single day she had spent in the villa as Andreas’ wife.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT STILL fitted her.
That was a shock. She knew she had lost weight in the ten and a half months since her wedding and that she was no longer the relaxed, happy-go-lucky person she had been before she had met and married Andreas Petrakos.
But the lavender swimming costume still fitted almost perfectly. There was so much Lycra in the material that it clung to her new, more slender shape, the low neck exposing softer curves, the high-cut legs revealing slender hips and thighs that had been so much more rounded when she had first worn it.
Looking at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall of the changing room, Becca smoothed hands that were none too steady over the clinging material and tried to remember the Becca who had looked into the same mirror not quite a year before. Then her eyes had been sparkling with delight and the sensual satisfaction of having just made wild, abandoned, passionate love with her brand-new husband. And there had been a wide smile on her mouth that she had felt sure was going to be there for ever and that nothing would ever erase it.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Barely two hours later she had been on her way home, leaving her married life lying in pieces behind her.
‘Love!’ Andreas’ harsh voice, with its cruelly cynical emphasis on that vital word, echoed down from the past, sounding so loud and clear inside her thoughts that she almost believed for a moment that he had come into the room and thrown the word at her.
‘I don’t love anyone—least of all you! I doubt if I’m capable of the feeling…’
They had arrived on the island late in the afternoon after the flight from England. Becca was still floating on a cloud of happiness after the delight of their wedding, the bliss of the thought of being Andreas’ wife. And she truly was his wife. He had wasted no time in making sure of that. They had been barely through the door before he had carried her upstairs to his bedroom, stripped her of the elegant trouser suit she had worn for travelling and made passionate love to her with all the ardour and the heat of which he was capable.
Later, when Andreas had reluctantly been obliged to go to his office to deal with a fax that had come through unexpectedly, Becca had changed into the lavender-coloured one-piece swimming costume and headed for the pool.
‘I’ll join you there as soon as I can,’ he’d promised.
He was much longer than she had anticipated. She was tired and bored, and thinking of getting dressed again before he came back onto the terrace where he stood, hands on hips, his face almost white with some fierce emotion that made his eyes glitter like polished jet.
‘Get dressed.’
It was an order, an autocratic command delivered with such savagery that her blood ran cold, icy pins and needles prickling her skin in spite of the heat of the day.
‘I want to talk to you.’
The words had barely left his lips before he turned on his heel and walked away, either not hearing or deliberately turning a deaf ear to her shaken question, her nervous request for an explanation as to his sudden change in mood.
She hardly dared take the time to dry herself thoroughly, discarding the swimming costume and hauling on jeans and a T-shirt, pushing her feet into flip-flops, barely pausing for breath as she almost ran from the pool house and into the office, where Andreas was standing by the window, silhouetted against the setting sun, as he waited for her.
‘What’s happened? Is there something wrong?’
‘You tell me.’
There was nothing of the ardent, caring husband in his tone; nothing of the passionate lover who had torn himself so reluctantly from her arms and from their bed just a short time before. What could have happened to have changed his mind and his mood so terribly?