The Kouvaris Marriage

Watching the assured movements of that perfectly honed body as he strode back to the door, flung it open and just stood there, waiting, clicking his fingers with an impatience which boded no good at all for any tardiness, Maddie decided she might as well stay just where she was. She was too emotionally wrung out to dredge up the strength to do anything else.

Taking the tray, dismissing the breathless housekeeper, Dimitri carried it to the bed-table, set it down, and poured chilled fruit juice into a tall glass.

His heart clenched with the pain of all that bitch had put Maddie through. The reason he’d misguidedly attributed to her desire to leave their marriage was contemptibly way off the mark.

She was lying where he’d left her, her soft mouth still mutinous. But her huge eyes were lost, haunted and hollow, the tissue-thin skin stretched tightly over her cheekbones, strain showing in her pallor.

He swallowed around the tightness in his throat. ‘Drink this.’ She was slow to react, but eventually she took the glass, took a mouthful, her teeth chattering against the glass, and handed it back. Sitting beside her, he fought the instinct to take her in his arms. Too soon. He needed all the patience at his command.

‘Let me explain about Irini. You overheard me say I loved her. I do. Or did. After what you’ve told me I think I despise her.’ Briefly, his long mouth compressed. ‘As a child, after the deaths of my parents, Irini was the only playmate I was allowed to have. I came to look on her as a sister. Loved her as a sister. Nothing more. As she grew into her teens she seemed to rely on me more and more. I became the recipient of all her troubles—which were, as I told her, either of her own making or in her imagination.’

His brows drew down. ‘With hindsight, I should have seen the growing problem. But I didn’t. Her neediness brought out a half-exasperated protectiveness in me. I looked on her as the little sister I’d never had, remember?’ He sighed, touched her hand just briefly with his. ‘And now I will break a promise for the first time in my life, because you, your happiness, are far more important.’

Expression flickered in the blue depths of her eyes for the first time since he’d carried her up here. The beginnings of belief in him? He hoped so.

He captured both her unresistant hands. ‘Irini has a drugs and drink problem. When I discovered this, I was appalled. I made her face up to the damage she was doing to herself, persuaded her to seek professional help. I booked her into a clinic here in Greece. In return she made me swear I would tell no one. Not her parents, and certainly not Aunt Alexandra, who has always doted on her and from whom she expects to inherit a large fortune,’ he added drily. ‘The phone call you over-heard—well, that was a shock to me. She’d walked out of the clinic, was back in Athens and threatening to take an overdose. She was weeping, asking me if I loved her. I said I did—but as an exasperating and worrying little sister. I had no option but to try to reassure her, to go to her, persuade her to return to the clinic. I saw her into a taxi, then called into the office. I came home and you’d gone.’

‘She was here when you brought me back from England. All over you like a second skin,’ Maddie reminded him thinly.

Heartened by the first tangible sign that she’d been listening to a word he’d been saying, Dimitri agreed. ‘So she was. And no one could have been more annoyed than I! But because of the state I knew she was in I had to treat her with kid gloves. Apparently she’d instructed the driver to bring her straight back to Athens, had arrived here and obviously heard from Aunt that you’d left me. It was what she wanted—though I had not the slightest inkling of that then. I knew something had to be settled. With her adamant hysterical refusal to let her parents know what was happening, the responsibility fell on me—even though it was the last thing I wanted or needed at that time. All I wanted, needed, was to put our marriage back on track.’

‘Why?’ Maddie hoisted herself up on her elbows. She felt stronger now, more alive, determined to get to the bottom of this unholy mess. His talk about Irini’s problems, his brotherly love, did ring true. Yet…‘For the children I could give you?’

‘Chrysi mou!’ A ferocious little frown had gathered between her crystal-clear eyes. ‘That you will give me children, God willing, is a blessing. But I will still love you until the day I die if that never happens,’ he assured her emotionally, leaning forward to kiss the frown away, murmuring, ‘You will get wrinkles!’

‘And?’ she got out chokily.

‘I will love them. As I will always love everything about you.’

‘You’ve never said the love word.’ Maddie could hardly speak for the fluttering of unbearable hope that coursed through her. But could she trust it?

Cupping her face between his lean hands, he had the grace to look discomfited as he confessed, ‘I never got the hang of it. I don’t remember if my parents told me they loved me, but I know they must have done. After that, my life was a series of chilly rules and regulations.’ He shrugged. Then beamed. ‘But I’m telling you now! I fell fathoms deep that first day, remember? In the courtyard. You were wearing tatty old shorts, had smears of dirt on your lovely face. And freckles! I knew I was in love for the first time in my life, and vowed I would make you my wife!’

Somehow he was on the bed beside her, holding her, but Maddie wasn’t going to let herself melt into him. Instead, she said firmly, ‘Do you promise on our child’s life that all that stuff Irini told me wasn’t true?’

Golden eyes widened. He looked as if she had asked him to swear the earth wasn’t flat. He hoisted himself up on one elbow, his mouth quirking. ‘My Maddie, sometimes I think you don’t possess even one streak of logic in your beautiful head!’ A gentle finger made an exploratory journey over the fullness of her lower lip.

‘Think about it. If she and I had indeed made such absurdly Machiavellian plans, would she have alerted you to them right at the beginning of our marriage, when it would have ruined everything? Of course not!’ He answered his own question with that well-remembered supreme self-assurance. ‘She would have held her tongue, done and said nothing to make you suspicious, kept her fingers crossed, and hoped you remained in ignorance!’

‘Oh!’ Feeling monumentally stupid for not having worked that out for herself, she felt colour wash over her face.

Contrite at having pointed out her lack in the logic department, he amended, ‘I can see why you fell for it, though. You implied you were feeling out of your depth at the time. And Aunt’s spitefulness would have further dented your feelings of self-worth. For which she will go unforgiven. And as for Irini—well, my only guess is she saw you as a threat to what I can now see as her possessive feelings towards me. She wanted you out of my life and used the most far-fetched and ridiculous pack of lies I have ever heard! Amanda was quite right in insisting that Irini was just a sp

iteful, malicious woman. But wrong in advising you not to tell me.’

‘Don’t I know it?’ Maddie mourned with real regret. And then forgot any further explanations as he kissed her.

He lifted his handsome head long minutes later to state thickly, ‘Now everything is right between us? No more misgivings, doubts, chrysi mou?’

Everything inside her yearned to say Yes, of course! But there was still that raw spot, so recent it was capable of hurt. ‘So what was so important that you had to go to her a couple of weeks ago, when I asked you to stay with me?’

He stilled. She thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged, his golden eyes rueful. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t like to be reminded of the worst failure of my life.’ He took a long breath. ‘I was absent for the week before we went to the island, remember?’

Maddie nodded speechlessly. How could she forget? She’d been convinced he and Irini were together.

‘I was at the end of my tether,’ he confessed impatiently, as if that state of affairs was anathema to him. ‘You’d told me you wanted a divorce. I was determined to make you change your mind. On top of that, in refusing necessary treatment Irini had become a constant albatross around my neck. I needed all my energy to convince you to stay with me. So I decided to get her sorted out once and for all—get her off my back. I booked her into a clinic in California and personally escorted her there, thinking she’d be in good hands and far enough away to ensure she would think twice about just walking out.’

Anger darkened his eyes. ‘But that is what the wretched woman did! She was back in Athens and again threatening to kill herself. I couldn’t take the risk that she didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t have my worst enemy’s death on my conscience, never mind the woman I’d always looked on as a needy little sister. It took me two days to convince her that her problems weren’t over, as she claimed, and that her suicide threats were simply a cry for help. That I could no longer provide that help and her parents had to be told.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Apparently Aunt Alexandra was the first person she contacted when she got back to Athens. She learned that you were expecting our baby, and I guess that tipped her over the edge.’