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  ‘Millie, I want you to take a deep breath.’ His masculine voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘Deep. That’s right, and again. And now you are going to listen to me, yes? And you are going to trust me. Whatever is wrong—whatever has upset you this much—you will tell me and I will fix it. But for now I just want you to try and calm down.’

  His unexpected kindness somehow made everything worse. ‘Why won’t you just leave me?’

  ‘Because that option doesn’t work for me,’ he said grimly. ‘I already told you, this time you are not walking away from our problems.’ He drew her into his arms, but she shook him off and took a step backwards.

  ‘Don’t touch me. I can’t bear you to touch me.’ She heard the sharp intake of his breath and knew that her apparent rejection had hurt him.

  ‘So you don’t trust me.’

  ‘This isn’t about trust. This isn’t about what happened with my sister. And it can’t be fixed. Just—just—wait—and you’ll see.’ Her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t untie the knot of silk holding together the edges of her robe and she almost screamed with frustration. Eventually the fabric loosened in her fingers and she bit her lip, trying to find the courage to do what she had to do. ‘I don’t know why you wanted me the first time, Leandro. You say I’m beautiful and—well, I never was. And even less so now.’

  ‘I’m the best judge of that.’

  ‘All right. Then judge.’ Without giving herself any more time to think about it and change her mind, she allowed the dressing-gown to slip from her shoulders.

  Naked, she faced him. Unprotected, she let him see. Vulnerable, she stayed silent and let him judge—and saw his handsome face reflect everything she herself had felt over the past year.

  Shock, disbelief, distaste.

  The emotions were all there.

  ‘Now do you understand why I said this would never work? I wasn’t beautiful enough for you before. How could I possibly be beautiful enough now?’ Somehow the reality of exposing her damaged flesh was less traumatic than the thought of it had been. Now that she’d done it, she felt nothing but relief.

  No more pretending.

  He’d divorce her and she’d get on with her life. And it may not have been the life she’d dreamed off, but it would be all right. She’d make sure it was all right. She’d get over him, wouldn’t she? It had only ever been a stupid dream.

  Quietly sliding the robe back onto her shoulders, Millie cast one final look at his shocked face, reflecting on the fact she’d never actually seen him lost for words before.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered wearily. ‘I’m sorry to do that to you—in that way. Perhaps it was cruel of me, but I honestly didn’t…’ Her pause was met with silence. ‘I—just didn’t know any other way.’ Impulsively she lifted her hand to touch his arm and then realised that the best thing she could do for him was to just get out of his life.

  Letting her hand drop, she walked past him towards the door feeling tired and completely drained of energy.

  ‘God damn it, Millie, if you walk out on me one more time I won’t be responsible for my actions.’ His voice rasped across her sensitised nerve endings. ‘You stay right there. I just need to—’ He broke off and ran a hand over his face, clearly struggling with his emotions. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  She stopped walking. ‘It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to work out what you’re supposed to say or do. Nothing you say is going to make any difference.’

  ‘Just wait.’ Leandro pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and exhaled slowly. ‘Maledezione, you have no idea…’

  ‘Yes, I do. I know what you’re thinking. And I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ His voice was harsh. ‘Then you’ll know that I’m asking myself what exactly I did to you that made you think you couldn’t talk to me about this. Is this why you turned your back on me night after night?’ He frowned and then shook his head, clearly angry with himself. ‘No, of course. This…’ He glanced towards her now concealed body. ‘This didn’t happen when we were together, did it? It couldn’t have done. I would have known.’

  Millie looked at him. ‘It happened the day I left you.’

  ‘What happened the day that you left me?’ His hoarsely worded demand increased her tension.

  ‘Can we talk about this tomorrow?’ Seeing his face had been bad enough. She wasn’t up to a conversation. She just wanted to hide.

  Leandro gave a hollow laugh and his fingers closed around her wrist as he drew her firmly into the guest bedroom. ‘No, agape mou. We’re going to talk. Or perhaps I should say that you’re going to talk. And you’re going to do it now.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KEEPING her hand in his, Leandro led her across the terrace to the pool. The evening was still stiflingly warm and the stylish curve of the swimming pool was illuminated by the tiny lights that gleamed under the water.

  ‘I always loved sitting out here at night,’ she said softly, sinking onto the edge of a sun lounger. ‘It’s so peaceful.’

  ‘We made love out here. Do you remember?’

  Millie didn’t answer his question because she knew that the only way she was going to be able to deal with the present was if she didn’t think about the past. ‘So—what do you want to know?’

  He sat down right next to her, the length of his powerful thigh brushing the length of hers. ‘I want to know what happened to you. I want to know how you got those scars.’ For once there was no mockery in his voice and she stared down at their linked hands with almost curious detachment.

  ‘When I drove away that day I was…’ She hesitated. ‘Very upset. I didn’t really think about where I was going. I drove south and found myself in a very rough part of London. I stopped at a set of lights—and three men took a fancy to the car I was driving.’

  His fingers tightened their grip on hers. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear it?’

  ‘Yes.’ But the word sounded as though it had been dragged from him and she looked up at his hard, set profile dubiously.

  ‘If you’re just going to rant and rave and turn all macho, this is going to be hard.’

  ‘I won’t rant and rave.’

  ‘You promise not to go and extract revenge?’

  Leandro made a sound that was close to a snarl. ‘No,’ he said thickly, placing her hand on his thigh and holding it there, ‘no, agape mou, I don’t make that promise.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘What caused the scars?’ he asked harshly. ‘Was it a knife?’

  ‘Broken bottle.’ Millie felt the horror of it burst into her brain. ‘Carjacking. I stopped at a set of lights—they had the doors open before I even saw them coming.’

  ‘They dragged you out of the car?’

  ‘I refused to undo the seat belt—big mistake. I think I was in a state of shock. But that resistance got me the scar on my stomach.’

  The breath hissed through his teeth. ‘Why didn’t you just give them the keys?’

  ‘You gave me the car as a wedding present,’ she mumbled. ‘I liked it.’

  ‘Cars are replaceable.’

  ‘Spoken like a billionaire.’

  ‘I would say the same thing if I was living on benefits and someone had just stolen your bicycle.’ He spoke in a low, urgent tone. ‘Nothing is worth that sort of risk.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you don’t really think clearly when it happens. You just react by instinct.’

  ‘And you were upset and that was my fault.’

  She stilled. ‘You told me that you didn’t have an affair with my sister.’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m blaming myself because I was so blisteringly angry that you didn’t trust me, I let you walk out instead of dragging you back and proving my innocence to you. If I’d done that, this wouldn’t have happened.’ The breath hissed through his teeth again. ‘Normally I’m not a believer in wasting time on regret but believe me, agape mou, when I say that with you, my regrets are piling up. But we�
��ll deal with that in a minute. Finish the story. You were very badly injured?’

  ‘Yes. They dragged me out of the car, attacked me with the bottle a few more times just to make sure I’d got the message and then took the car and my bag. I was unconscious, lying on the road—so I had no identity with me. I woke up days later in hospital with everyone wondering who I was. Initially they thought I was the victim of a hit and run.’

  ‘Did you have amnesia?’

  ‘No.’ Millie shook her head. ‘I remembered everything. They told me they’d found the car ten miles away, burned out and abandoned. Because no one had reported it missing, they hadn’t been able to identify the owner. I was so angry with myself.’ She frowned. ‘I should have noticed them waiting at the lights.’

  ‘You’re not exactly streetwise.’ Leandro toyed with her fingers. ‘You hadn’t even lived in a city until you married me. And on top of that, you were upset. Because of me.’

  ‘You’re not responsible for the carjacking. That was my own stupid fault for not locking my doors. But I wasn’t used to London. Where I come from we wind the windows down and offer people lifts. People leave their front doors open.’ Her frank confession drew a groan of disbelief from him.

  ‘You are ridiculously trusting. And I’m angry with myself for not teaching you to be more careful.’

  ‘Not your fault,’ Millie said gruffly. ‘Just another example of how I’m the wrong woman for you.’

  ‘How can you reach that conclusion? It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that I had absolutely no idea what was going on in your head at any point during our short marriage. But we’ll come back to that later. First I want you to finish telling me what happened.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything.’ Millie shrugged. ‘I was in hospital for a while, obviously.’

  ‘Why didn’t the hospital contact me?’

  ‘At first because I had no identity. And later…’ She paused. ‘Because I asked them not to.’

  Leandro greeted that confession with a hiss of disbelief. ‘Why would you do that? No, don’t answer that.’ His tone was weary. ‘You thought I was having an affair with your sister. You thought she was pregnant with my child.’

  ‘I thought our marriage was over.’

  ‘Millie, we’d been together for less than three months and I couldn’t get enough of you! Until you started turning your back on me, we were constantly together and it was good, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was incredible. At first.’

  ‘At first?’

  ‘You worked very long hours. You were always jetting off to New York or Tokyo and you didn’t want me with you.’

  ‘Because I had trouble concentrating when you were around,’ he bit out, and Millie looked at him in surprise because that explanation hadn’t ever occurred to her.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh? What did you think the reason was?’

  ‘I…wondered if you had other women.’

  His jaw tightened. ‘When, before that incident with your sister, did I ever give you cause to doubt me?’ Leandro released his grip on her hand and rose to his feet in a fluid movement. ‘When?’

  ‘I suppose I looked at the facts. When I met you, you were thirty-two, rich, good-looking and single. You’d never been committed to a woman, but you’d been involved with plenty.’

  ‘Before I met you.’

  ‘And they were all different to me.’

  Leandro spread his hands wide, his expression expectant. ‘And does that tell you anything?’

  ‘Yes. It tells me that you made a mistake when you married me.’

  He sank his fingers into his hair and said something in Greek. ‘Always if there are two ways to interpret something, you choose the wrong one.’ His usually fluent English suddenly showed traces of his Mediterranean heritage. ‘Did no other reason come to mind?’

  Millie gave a tiny shrug. ‘You’re Greek.’ At the moment there was no mistaking that fact. ‘I was a virgin and you’re old-fashioned enough to like that.’

  His laugh lacked humour. ‘Yes. All right. I concede that point. But I took your virginity within hours of meeting you so that wasn’t a reason to marry you.’

  ‘Well. Everyone makes mistakes,’ she said simply. ‘Even you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you contact me after the accident?’

  ‘What for? If I couldn’t hold you before I was injured, I knew there was no chance afterwards.’ Millie stared at the still surface of the pool. ‘And I knew I could never be the sort of wife you needed. Lying there in hospital gave me the time to think about that.’

  ‘The sort of wife I needed? What is that supposed to mean?’ His tone raw, Leandro sat back down next to her. His hand slid under her chin and he forced her to look at him. ‘You were the woman I married. You were the wife I needed.’

  ‘No.’ Millie shook her head, tears swimming in her eyes. ‘I wasn’t, Leandro. I was never the wife you needed. I learned that pretty soon after we were married. We came back from our honeymoon and I was plunged into the life you lead—and nothing about the time we’d spent together had prepared me for what was expected of me.’

  ‘Nothing was expected of you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, people expected a lot.’ The tears still glistening in her eyes, Millie moved her head away from the comfort of his fingers. ‘You’re Leandro Demetrios—declared the sexiest man in the world. Everyone wanted to know who you’d married. And everyone wanted to comment.’

  ‘Who is everyone? Are you talking about the media?’

  ‘Them, too. But mostly your friends. The people you mixed with in your daily life. They used to give me these little sideways glances that showed what they thought of your choice.’

  ‘You were my wife,’ he gritted. ‘I didn’t care what anyone thought of you.’

  ‘But I did,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not like you. When they said I was fat and that my hair was curly, I cared. When they said I didn’t dress like any of your previous girlfriends, I worried. They made me realise that I was totally wrong for you.’

  Leandro growled low in his throat. ‘And you didn’t think I might have been the best judge of that?’

  ‘I met one of your previous girlfriends.’ She gave a twisted smile. ‘She took great pleasure in drawing comparisons between herself and me. And she made the very apt comment that if she hadn’t been able to hold you, how could I?’

  ‘When did you meet her?’

  ‘At a charity ball, the first week we spent in London. We were standing in front of the mirror together.’ Millie nibbled her lip. ‘I looked at what I was wearing and I looked at what she was wearing—well, let’s just say I could see what she was talking about. I thought to myself, OK, so I need to dress differently. I treated it like a project. When I joined you at our table, I started studying everyone. And I got home and bought magazines, went shopping…’

  ‘And so began your obsession with clothes. I had no idea.’ His tone flat, Leandro gently rubbed her fingers with his. ‘Those hours you spent in your dressing room every evening, trying on this dress and that dress—I thought you’d suddenly discovered the joys of shopping.’

  ‘Joys?’ Millie gave a hollow laugh. ‘I hated it. Not that it isn’t fun to have nice clothes, don’t misunderstand me, but when you know that everything you wear is going to be criticised…Have you any idea how many clothes there are out there? How was I supposed to know what to wear? All I knew was that every time I went out, people stared at me. I just never seemed to get it right.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something to me?’

  ‘I presumed you could see for yourself,’ she said wearily. ‘And the fact that you were getting so impatient with me seemed to confirm that I was getting it all wrong.’

  Leandro muttered something in Greek and rubbed his forehead with his fingers. ‘We were at cross-purposes,’ he said gruffly. ‘I didn’t think you were getting it wrong. I had no idea you were feeling like this.’

  ‘I didn’t know what looked good.
Every time I thought I liked myself in something, I’d remember how many times I’d been wrong before. Then my sister rang and told me she needed somewhere to crash in London. You were away all the time—I thought she’d be company and I thought she’d be a good person to give me advice. She’d always helped me before. By then I was a mess,’ she confessed. ‘My confidence was on the floor. Everything I put on I found myself thinking, What are they going to say about this?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me if I liked what you were wearing?’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ Millie defended herself. ‘On our honeymoon you seemed crazy about me—everything I wore, you stripped it off and made love to me. And then we arrived home and…you changed. And it took me a while to understand what was going on.’

  ‘And what did you think was going on?’

  ‘It was obvious. Our relationship was fine when we were here.’ She waved a hand. ‘Sort of like a holiday romance. But when it came to living your life, well, that’s when the cracks appeared. And I panicked. I tried every outfit, every style—but I could see I was different to every other woman you’d ever been with. Every time we went out was torture. Everyone looked at me, judged me.’

  Leandro swore under his breath. ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘They did. People do it all the time. You don’t notice because you don’t care what people think of you.’ Millie sneaked a glance at him. ‘And you’re not very tolerant of weakness in others. I remember one evening I begged you not to leave me with that group of women and you just frowned and told me I’d be fine. There was some government dignitary you had to speak to so you just threw me to the wolves and let them devour me.’

  He winced. ‘Millie—’

  ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. The truth is you shouldn’t have had to hold my hand at events like that. I was pathetic, I realise that, but every time we went out I was hit with another ten reasons why you shouldn’t have married me and I was shocked by how nasty people were.’

  ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  ‘You were too absorbed in your work to notice what was going on. And you were already starting to get irritated with me. Your favourite trick was to glance at your watch and narrow your eyes when I was fumbling about, getting dressed. So I started getting ready earlier and earlier until in the end it took me most of the day. And then I’d appear and you’d be pacing the room like a caged tiger plotting his way out of captivity.’