The Kouvaris Marriage

But how to do it gently, without creating panic and outraged anxiety, when her mother’s bubbly conversation was filled with enthusiasm for the farmhouse they had recently moved into, her redecorating plans, the imminent arrival of the new glasshouse, and the hard work her menfolk were putting in? ‘No, not your father,’ she said soothingly. ‘He is being sensible. He takes gentle exercise each day and contents himself with keeping the accounts.’

Eventually Maddie slid in a question—when her mother drew breath after happily imparting the fact that the old fellow hadn’t farmed intensively for a decade, merely keeping a flock of sheep and a few free-range hens and pigs, so the land wasn’t contaminated with nasty chemicals—‘Did Dad go over the small print of the lease for the farmhouse and land?’ And fingers crossed, but without too much hope, ‘There is a properly drawn-up lease?’

Ringing silence greeted the question that had stopped the flow of excited information in its tracks. Maddie felt truly dreadful.

Was poor old Mum belatedly recalling that Dad had failed to check the details of his contract of employment when the men in suits had taken over the estate? Maddie hated having to do this to her family, and her heart plummeted even further when Joan Ryan asked with some bewilderment, ‘What lease?’

So nothing had been put in writing concerning her family’s security of tenure. Even though Maddie had known what would happen, having the fact thrust under her nose reminded her much too forcefully of Dimitri’s threats, and made her feel dreadfully nauseous.

Until her mother questioned, ‘Didn’t Dimitri tell you? No, I suppose he wouldn’t. He’s too big-hearted to boast about his generosity! He bought the property, but it’s in my and your father’s name. We own it, Maddie. We did feel a bit awkward about it—poor but proud, as your Dad always says! He tried to persuade your Dimitri to make it a capital loan, but he was having none of it. We were family, he said, and the cash outlay was peanuts to him. You married a man in a million!’ This was followed by a slightly anxious, ‘Everything’s still all right between you? We were worried. On the face of it, Dimitri’s everything a parent could want for a daughter. But—’

Her head reeling from what she’d heard, Maddie put in, ‘We’re fine, Mum.’ And, because they had to know, ‘I’m pregnant.’

No need to worry them now. It would be a few more weeks before she had to tell them the truth. She was more than happy to listen to her mother’s overjoyed exclamations as her mind spun, trying to make sense of this new information.

CHAPTER NINE

AFTER the call ended Maddie stood immobile under the shower, her brow furrowed, as she grappled with Joan Ryan’s revelations, and what they meant.

Thanks to Dimitri’s generosity her parents’ home and livelihood were safe. There was, of course, huge relief because from the start he had led her to believe that her family would be out of their new home and business like a shot if she didn’t toe the line and stick with their marriage—but the question remained.

Why? Why had he done that?

To force her to resume her marital duties? Share his bed until the child he needed was conceived.

Obvious.

And yet…

That kind of thoughtful generosity didn’t gel with the kind of guy she had categorised him as being—a heartless blackmailer who would use any means to get what he wan

ted and suffer not one pang of conscience when he made her family face real hardship when he’d got it, because they were unimportant, mere peasants. He didn’t fit that box now.

It looked as if he were the kind of guy who would spend vast amounts of money setting her parents up in their own home and business, generously sorting out the difficulties they were facing and were financially and emotionally unable to cope with.

In the situation that had faced her parents any other needle-sharp, super-wealthy businessman with a philanthropic streak a mile wide might have done what he had done, she conceded, but he would have kept the deeds in his name, as an investment, one among many.

But Dimitri had gone one huge stride further. His generosity shook her, made her acknowledge that he wasn’t all as bad as she had named him. Far from it.

Could she have misjudged him in other aspects of their relationship?

Irini?

The attention he lavished on the other woman when she was around—which had always been far too often for Maddie’s liking—could be explained away by the fact that his aunt had counted her as one of the family from the time of her birth. And the relationship had rubbed off because for Dimtri family was all important.

Having lost both his parents at an early age, he was determined to create a family of his own. She could understand that because he would lavish care on anyone he considered part of his family, as witness how he had helped his parents-by-marriage.

But she couldn’t explain away that overheard telephone conversation when he had confirmed his love for the beautiful Greek woman, dropped everything and shot off to be with her. Nothing could. Or the way the two of them had vanished together during the week before he’d brought her here to this island. And, although he hadn’t confirmed it—or denied it either, come to that—the intimate-sounding phone call she’d interrupted had to have been to Irini, breaking the news of the pregnancy they had both waited so anxiously for.

And Irini’s spiteful warning on the night of that party, spelling out exactly why the man who was probably the most eligible bachelor in the whole of Greece had chosen to marry an insignificant nobody like her, was solid, irrefutable fact.

Her mind preoccupied, Maddie dressed and went down to find him, uselessly wishing yet again that she had never taken Amanda’s advice and kept quiet about Irini’s warning, sticking her head in the sand and putting it down to the malicious spite of a jealous woman.

Her pride had stopped her flinging what she knew and what she strongly suspected at him after he had flown to England to find her and force her to return to him. And now, it seemed, it was too late.

He had categorically stated that he no longer wished to know why she had left him. He wouldn’t listen and, knowing him, his masculine pride, she could understand why. In leaving him, demanding a divorce, she had rejected him and all that he was. His ego wouldn’t let him listen to why she had done it. Not if he wanted them to start over, wipe the slate clean. Make the marriage work.

Until the safe delivery of their child?