The Kouvaris Marriage

Or planning to carry out her threat to walk away from their marriage as soon as she was back on her feet?

He would never understand what went on inside her head! Until that ultimatum she’d thrown at him—in an inexplicable fit of pique, or so he had supposed at the time—everything had been more than fine between them as far as he knew.

As far as he knew!

His jaw clenched. The hidden thing! Her untold initial reason for asking for a divorce.

He had categorically refused to hear her tell him those reasons. Stubbornly not wanting to know, and just as stubbornly believing that he had no need to know something that might be a constant source of distaste and sorrow in the new start he had determined they embark upon.

Something on the lines of a greedy plan to gain her freedom and take him to the cleaners at the same time? A scenario his aunt had immediately hit on, and one that he, albeit reluctantly, had almost accepted, unable to see any other.

He hadn’t wanted to know, had hated the thought of having to accept that the woman he adored saw him as little more than a gold-plated meal ticket.

Head in sand, or what?

His fault!

And now that she was again threatening to end their marriage, it, whatever it was, had to be forced out into the open.

At least she hadn’t lost the baby. And, according to her doctor, provided she took things easily for the next two or three weeks, the remainder of her pregnancy should proceed without a hitch.

And come hell or high water he’d be around to make sure she and the baby were fine.

His lean, strong features grim, he paused as he approached the room she had been given, ran his fingers through his already rumpled hair, over his stubble-roughened chin, and mentally cursed Irini and her problems. Problems she’d landed on him, gaining his reluctant promise to tell no one else, hysterically vowing that the only way she’d agree to taking the professional help she so obviously needed was on hearing his promise that no one else should hear about it.

It had been young Eleni who had found Maddie crumpled on the floor two days ago, who’d rushed to alert the housekeeper, who had then had the presence of mind to phone for an ambulance.

Two days. Forty-eight long hours while his Maddie had suffered. Waiting, alone, in a fever of anxiety through a whole slew of tests to discover if the tiny life inside her was safe.

Two unforgivable days since his aunt had seen fit to stir herself, lift a phone to reach his mobile and tell him of the emergency!

Two days while he’d been pandering to the needy Irini, convincing her that life was worth living, that her threatened overdose was foolish talk, eventually persuading her that at long last her parents must be told of the drug problem she had vowed was sorted.

Had he had the slightest idea that his Maddie was in danger of losing their baby he would not have answered Irini’s hysterical call for the help she’d always insisted he alone could give her.

His teeth clenched until his jaw ached.

Had he known what he knew now the wretched woman would have been left to sort her own problems out. But at the time—to his own deep shame—he had put what he had mentally named Maddie’s tantrum down to her mysterious jealousy of the other woman.

Cursing himself to hell and back, he dragged in a deep breath, expelled it slowly, relaxed his tautly held shoulders and opened the door.

Propped up against the pillows, Maddie had another stab at concentrating on the magazine one of the nurses had given her to look at. But she still felt a little drowsy from the mild sedative she’d been given yesterday, to help her relax, and the magazine—Greek language, but glamorous fashion shots—couldn’t hold her interest.

Besides, she couldn’t imagine herself ever trying to shoehorn herself and what she’d always considered to be her over-generous curves into any of the skinny garments so enticingly displayed. They all seemed to be designed to be worn by the models pictured—walking skeletons! Women like Irini!

Despite her earlier good intentions, tears scalded her eyes. Dimitri hadn’t even bothered to phone her and see how she was doing, let alone visit. Too bound up with that dreadful woman to give a single thought to his second best wife. Had it come down to this? That Irini was even more important to him than the fate of their baby? It certainly looked like it!

A lump the size of a house brick formed in her throat. She swallowed it angrily and scrubbed at her eyes with a corner of the cotton sheet.

Enough!

What had she promised herself?

That he wasn’t worth a single tear and Irini wasn’t worth so much as a glancing thought. That she would think about only really positive things. Her hand moved to rest gently on her tummy. Her baby was safe. Nothing else mattered.

Certainly not a low-life like her husband, with his sordid obsession with a stick insect!

As soon as she felt able she would take the second option he’d offered back on the island. Leave him. But she would return to England, pass the waiting time at her parents’ new home, where her mother would pamper her and love her. And understand.