The Kouvaris Marriage

Her hands clenched, her fingernails cutting into her palms. Looking back, she just didn’t believe herself! How could she have thought, for one insane moment, that a man as knock-’em-dead gorgeous, charismatic, sophisticated, rotten rich and frighteningly clever would want to tie himself for life to an ordinary-looking, low-status nobody like her?

As he brought the car to a halt in front of the small town’s only hotel Maddie made herself a set-in-concrete promise. If her devious husband tried to make her change her mind, because he’d decided he didn’t want the delay of even a quickie divorce and then the tiresome chore of hunting down another sucker, with the tedious expenditure of all that seemingly effortless charm to get her to marry him, and had decided he’d be better off sticking to the brood mare he’d got—which, thinking about it, was the only motive possible for him being here at all—then she would resist all his attempts to her very last breath!

With scarcely controlled impatience Dimitri fisted the ignition key and exited the car, reaching the passenger side in a handful of power-driven strides.

He wrenched the car door open and ordered, ‘Come.’ He had to use every last ounce of self-control to stop himself from hauling her to her feet. In the space of twenty-four hours his wife had changed from a voluptuous, adoring wanton to an ice-cold stranger. And he didn’t know why—although he had strong and utterly distasteful suspicions. It was driving him insane. And no one, not even his wife, would be allowed to do that!

As if she sensed the stirrings of his volcanic anger, Maddie moved. Slowly swinging her feet to the ground, she exited the car and stood, facing the timber-framed façade of the hotel. The light from above the main entrance illuminated her. She was wearing jeans and a lightweight jacket, a leather bag clutched in one small hand, a mutinous twist to her mouth.

Dimitri cupped an unforgiving hand beneath her elbow and headed to the main door. If he bent his head he could tease the mutiny away, feel those lush lips tremble beneath his own, flower for him. The gateway to paradise. She liked sex, more than met his demands. But no way would he oblige—now, or in the foreseeable future. That would be part of her punishment!

No, the sex hadn’t been feigned. Everything else in their marriage had been, though. Starting with her wedding vows, uttered with her eye on the main chance. He was ninety per cent sure of it. Three months of her life in exchange for a settlement that would keep her in luxury for the rest of her days. Logically, it was the only scenario that remotely fitted in with what she had done—and, heaven knew, he’d racked his brain to try and find another, coming up with a big fat zero.

She would not do that to him!

He removed his hand from her arm as if even that connection was poisonous.

Maddie shivered as the heavy main door swung closed behind them and he strode away from her. She hadn’t wanted this confrontation; it had been forced on her. No wonder her nerves were going haywire, adrenalin pumping through her veins. He was rigid with anger, she recognised. And she could understand it.

He was a busy man, a driven man. Amanda had told her, in one of her long, chatty phone calls after Maddie had returned to England that first time, that Dimitri Kouvaris had pumped her for information. About her, about her family. Stupidly, the knowledge had excited her, made her feel almost special. How he would hate the waste of his time. Not that it had taken much of that, she recalled with a sickening lurch of her tummy. Five days later, after having gathered the necessary information from her unsuspecting friend, he had charmed her into a state of besotted adoration with very little effort.

No, he would view the three months of their marriage as an unforgivable waste of his time and effort. And it would have taken an effort on his part to treat a peasant as if she were a princess, she decided with a resurgent cynicism. As for the other—the sex—trying to get her pregnant at every opportunity with no result, while thinking of the time when he could get rid of the wife he didn’t love and marry the woman he did love, must have infuriated him.

He’d hidden it well. She had to give him that.

But now it was showing.

Thing was, was she brave enough to handle it? Discover what he meant by those threats? And the answer was, she had to be.

At this late hour the hotel foyer was deserted, the lights low, adding another layer of atmosphere to the heavy exposed beams and oak panelling of what had once been a coaching inn. The night porter had emerged from his cubby-hole behind Reception and was handing Dimitri a key. A few inaudible words were exchanged, and then he swung round on his heels and faced her, his stance disdainful, coated in ice.

Sucking in her breath, she obeyed his curtly expressive hand gesture and made herself move towards him, her head high. True, she wasn’t here of her own free will—but she’d be damned if she was going to let herself down and act like a victim.

‘We can talk in the lounge.’ Her voice as firm as she could make it, Maddie gestured towards a partly open door. The steel grille was lowered over the bar, but there were comfy lounge chairs grouped around the tables, and the light from the foyer gave sufficient illumination.

Totally ignoring that sensible suggestion, just as if she’d never spoken, Dimitri started up the uncarpeted broad oak staircase, and Maddie, biting back a howl of fury, followed.

Arrogant low-life!

Still seething, Maddie caught up with him as he opened a door and reached in to switch on a light.

‘In.’

Her stoma

ch clenched painfully. This icily intimidating side of him was alien to her. But she was going to have to get used to it—at least for as long as it took him to spell out what had to be, surely, his groundless threats.

Slightly comforted by that slice of common sense, Maddie stepped into a room that looked as if it hadn’t had a makeover since the sixteenth century. And all the better for it, she approved, making an inventory of the jewel-coloured rugs laid over wide, highly polished oak boards, the ornately carved four poster bed and linen press, the tapestry-like curtains. It took her weary mind off being here with the husband she had loved to distraction and now hated with a vehemence that made her bones tremble.

An overnight bag stood at the foot of the bed. So he must have checked in here before driving out to her parents’ home. To wait. Somehow he had known that she must contact her folks on her arrival back in the UK, stay with them or in the vicinity until the divorce came through, she deduced tiredly—though the reason for his precipitate actions escaped her. And how had he arrived ahead of her?

She would have already been waiting for her delayed flight when he’d returned at lunchtime, making for the bedroom as usual and more of the sex he was so good at—the hoped for end result his son and heir—and finding her note instead.

And yet he had been ahead of her, waiting for her. His private jet—of course! Why hadn’t she remembered that? Because she’d never rated the outward signs of his financial clout, only the man himself. The super-wealthy had the means for getting things done that humble peasants could only dream of, she decided with resignation, as a firm hand in the small of her back propelled her towards two wing chairs at opposite ends of a low, dark oak table.

She sat, was grateful to. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this weary and drained in her life before. Dimitri was hovering over her, his hands in the trouser pockets of his superbly tailored pale grey suit, the fabric pulled taut against his pelvis.

Smothering a groan as a hatefully familiar, ultra-responsive frisson lurched through her entire body at his sexy magnetism, Maddie closed her eyes to shut him out. She didn’t need that kind of betrayal from her own body—not now, not ever again. All she needed right now was the healing oblivion of sleep.