“I am accustomed to getting my own way.”
She gave a watery smile he couldn’t see. “I know.”
“I am sometimes arrogant.”
She didn’t answer, thinking silence more politic than speech.
“I hated the time your career took away from me before, but I must not be selfish. If it is what you need for happiness, I will not stand in your way.”
Had he really hated to be away from her? “It won’t embarrass you to have a model for a wife?” she probed.
“Why should it? I was not ashamed when you were my lover.”
“That was different. You even said so.”
“I said many things I learned to regret,” he said heavily.
“Mama would have a hissy fit.”
“I will deal with your mother. She thinks I am a god, I have returned to her the family home.”
The remnants of Alexandra’s tears turned to laughter. “You mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Turn on the light,” she pleaded.
“Why?”
“I want to see you.”
He humored her and a second later the soft glow of the bedside lamp illuminated his chiseled features. Sincerity burned in his eyes.
“You really will support me returning to my Xandra Fortune career.”
“No.” His mouth set in a firm line.
She sucked in her breath on a wave of pain. She’d been mistaken. He couldn’t accept the woman she’d been.
“You can model, but you are Alexandra Petronides. You will not deny me my place in your life.”
The arrogant statement should have infuriated her, but instead it made her heart sing. Not only would he support her career as a model, but he had no desire to distance himself from it by her using a working name.
He didn’t love her, but he did respect her. “I don’t want to be a model,” she admitted.
His expression turned to stone. “What?”
“I want to stay home with the baby.”
“Then what the hell has this last half hour been about?” he demanded in a shout that hurt her eardrums.
“Don’t raise your voice to me!”
His jaw clenched and she could just see him counting to ten. “Why did you tell me you wanted to be a model when you did not?” he asked, teeth gritted, eyes spitting frustrated anger.
“I needed to know.”
“What did you need to know?”
“If you accepted the woman I was…the woman who became pregnant with your baby. When you asked me to marry you, I was living as Alexandra Dupree.”
“They are the same woman. I have said this before.”
But she hadn’t taken it in, or maybe she hadn’t believed him. “You tossed me out as Xandra Fortune.”
“You thought if you went back to modeling and calling yourself this other name, I would do so again?” he asked, outrage lacing every syllable.
“No, of course not.” But it all seemed muddled now. None of her thinking since discovering his second promise had been particularly clear. “I don’t know.”
He flopped back on his pillow and covered his eyes with his forearm. “You are never going to forget, are you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked anxiously.
“My stupidity. You will never trust me enough to let yourself love me again.”
“You don’t believe in love,” she reminded him.
He moved his arm and she flinched at his bleak expression. “You do not know what I believe in, Alexandra.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the second promise to your grandfather?” she asked in a whisper. She hadn’t meant to ask, but now that the words were out, they could not be unsaid.
He sat up, his body vibrating with something she would not label defeat in a million years. “This is why you put me through hell tonight thinking you wanted to go back to a career that always came before me?”
“It didn’t come before you.”
“Ohi? No? I can’t come with you, I’ve got a photo shoot. I’ll be gone for a week to do the commercial. We can’t make love right now, I need to sleep so I won’t look like a hag in the morning.” He repeated excuses she’d given him in the past with cruel sarcasm. “Even our damned sex life was dictated by your career. Do not say you did not put it before me.”
“I had to work, Dimitri. You know why now.”
“But I did not then and you did not enlighten me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not? Why could you not tell me who you really were?”
“Because…”
“I will tell you why. You did not trust me. You gave me your body, but not your trust. Not your heart.” His Greek accent had gotten very thick.
“That’s not true! I loved you!”
He slammed out of bed and towered over it on the opposite side. “Such a love I can do without. You lied to me every day we were together.”
She gasped in outrage. “I did not lie to you.”
“You said you were Xandra Fortune.”
“I was Xandra Fortune.”
He sliced through the air with his hand. “What is the use? You rewrite history to suit your own purpose.”
“I don’t have to rewrite history to know you kicked me out of your life like a pile of garbage!” she screamed at him, shocked at her own loss of control.
His shoulders slumped, his face looked haggard. “It will always come back to this, will it not?” He turned away.
And suddenly she was out of bed, vibrating with rage suppressed for months while pain and despair held sway. “Don’t you turn your back on me, you bastard!”
He spun around. “What did you call me?”
“Nothing worse than what you called me that day at Chez Renée,” she accused.
“I called you nothing that day.”
“You called me a whore!”
He looked shocked. “I did not say this.”
“Yes you did. That damn jeweler’s box said it for you!”
“I bought the bracelet before my grandfather’s heart attack. I had meant it as a gift to express my affection…then in my jealousy it became something else.”
So, it had been a bracelet. She’d never looked. “You expect me to believe that, after what you said that day?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I do not expect you to believe anything I say. You did not trust me before I betrayed our love, how can you possibly trust me now?”
In the red mists of fury surrounding her, she doubted her hearing, but she could have sworn he’d said he’d betrayed their love. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
“As I thought.” He stood there in silence for several seconds. “Is there anything more you wish to say?”
She slowly jerked her head to one side in a negative. She’d said enough.
He braced himself, as if for a blow and then nodded. “I cannot sleep here tonight next to a woman who hates me. I cannot hold you in my arms knowing you suffer my touch for the sake of our son.”
She felt her heart contract like a vise had been clamped onto it and was being slowly tightened. “I don’t hate you.” As for suffering his touch, how could he think that?
His eyes said he did not believe her.
He went into the dressing room and came out wearing a robe. “I’ll sleep next door in the guest room.”
She wanted to beg him not to go, but her tongue would not form the words. His hand was on the door handle when she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about the second promise?”
“I knew you would believe I had only come after you to keep it. I needed you to believe I wanted you for myself.” Then he opened the door and was gone.
I needed you to believe I wanted you for myself. You never trusted me. You lied to me. You hate me. Dimitri’s words ran like an unending refrain through her head. Such a love I can do without.
Love. He had said he had betrayed their love. She knew it. While she’d been screaming her invective at him, he’d admitted he had loved her. Did he still love her? Could he after the way she’d rejected him over and over again since he found her in New York?
She still loved him.
She did love him, but she hadn’t acted like it. Not when they’d been together in Paris and not since his resurgence in her life. She had withheld her secrets, herself and her trust. What kind of love was that?
The only kind of love she’d known—conditional and with limits. Her limits had been born of fear, but they had damaged Dimitri as much as her mother’s limits had hurt her. Alexandra felt that knowledge clear to her soul. She had wanted to receive unconditional love, but she hadn’t been willing to give it. Was it too late?
She went toward the dressing room with one purpose in mind. She flipped on the light and started sifting through her lingerie. There had to be something, then she remembered and started looking for white gossamer. Dimitri had bought it for her their second week together. It was a flowing nightgown with a princess cut and yards and yards of gossamer fabric that fell from the gathered waistline below her breasts. The wide straps accentuated the delicate curve of her shoulders and it had reminded her of a wedding dress…a see-through wedding dress.
It was one of the few gowns that would fit over her pregnant stomach. She slipped it on, her mission firmly in her mind. To be on the safe side, she pulled a robe on over it as well. No telling who might be wandering around in the hall outside her door to witness her state of dress. Security cameras at the very least.