He smiled that slow, melting smile of his. ‘Then I would rejoice in your maternal if excessive desire! But I would, I think, gently persuade you to consider three a happy number. I could not stand by and see you exhaust yourself by producing the beginnings of a football team! You are far too precious to me.’
The tips of his fingers trailed lightly from her cheekbones down to the side of her jaw. Maddie closed her eyes, lost in his touch. So gentle, so caring, so achingly seductive.
The trouble with loving someone as much as she loved Dimitri was the way you wanted to believe everything he said—clung onto it because it gave you hope, conveniently forgetting everything else, she thought to herself, appalled by the weak stupidity she seemed incapable of kicking into touch.
Her mouth dry, her heart thumping heavily, she steeled herself to broach the subject of his mistress. She couldn’t afford to be confrontational, she knew that. An open attack on his motives—his downright wickedness—would only serve to elicit an immediate and vehement denial.
Aiming for a light, only vaguely interested tone, she made herself relax back against the arm he held around her waist, leaning into him, and ventured, ‘I believe Irini is unable to have children?’ She waited, feeling downright nauseous, for the telltale and instinctive tightening of his body that would tell her that her words had put him on his guard.
It didn’t come as he bent his head to rest it against hers and confirmed, sounding completely relaxed and unfazed about it, ‘No. An accident when she was a child.’ She felt his minimal shrug. ‘But it’s not the tragedy it would be for most women, believe me. Irini has a positive aversion to children; she can’t stand to be around them. There’s not one maternal bone in her body, so her infertility is for the best in my opinion. Children need love more than anything else.’
His deep, exotically accented voice carried total conviction, Maddie recognized. A long-held conviction springing from his own childhood when he’d had precious little love and affection after the deaths of his parents when he was little more than a baby.
Her mouth ran dry as her heart picked up speed. He was genuinely as pleased as punch at the prospect of fatherhood. Surely he wouldn’t contemplate giving any child of his into the care of a woman who plain didn’t like children and wouldn’t give the child the love he claimed was more important than anything?
Her head spinning with what her heart was telling her, she found herself looking up into his riveting, fantastic golden eyes as he shifted slightly and cupped her face in large, gentle hands.
For better or for worse. Logically, that was what she was accepting. Give him the children they both wanted and their marriage would remain important to him, she would be important to him.
And Irini? Well, as sure as night followed day Maddie couldn’t see her hanging around while she, Maddie, produced gorgeous babies in the image of their charismatic father.
He loved the other woman—she herself had actually heard him express that emotion, so no way could she pretend it wasn’t the case—and according to Amanda their names had been coupled, eventual marriage between them the general expectation, long before she, Maddie, had come on the scene.
Could she live with him, bear his children, knowing he still wanted the Greek woman, still loved her?
She could if she tried with everything in her to earn his love for herself. As the mother of his children she could make him forget the other woman, she answered herself, with the kind of elated determination she hadn’t experienced for ages.
Feeling hypnotised by the warmth of those glinting, tawny lights, she felt her own eyes widen as her breathing fractured, the familiar tightening, the pooling of heat that surged to electrifying excitement swamping her as he murmured, ‘Do we make tracks? Or do we spoil ourselves and make love again?’
‘What do you think?’ Her smile was luminous. Slim arms reached for him as unstoppable response rocked through her. She simply couldn’t stop loving him, wanting him, needing him. She might be stupid, walking into a trap with her eyes wide open, but this last week had taught her that she just couldn’t help herself and that the trap, if there was one, could be rendered harmless by the strength of her love for him.
Even in the gathering twilight those thickly fringed eyes gleamed with molten gold as Dimitri offered, ‘I forgot to ask—was your mother half as delighted as I was when you told her our news?’
Gathering her thoughts, Maddie forked up a morsel of the tender lamb in a delicious herby sauce Xanthe had prepared for the evening meal. The stone-paved terrace was lit with lanterns, and between them a candle in an amber glass bowl cast a warm glow over the delicate cast-iron table, set with dishes of salads and tiny almond cakes.
Reaching for her glass of iced water, Maddie let her eyes drift over his impressive frame. He was wearing a white shirt in the softest of cottons, tucked into a pair of narrow-fitting beat-up denim jeans, his dark hair just slightly rumpled, the evidence of emerging dark stubble shadowing his tough jawline.
In Athens he was never less than perfectly groomed, dressed in beautifully tailored dove-grey or light tan suits over pristine, exquisite shirts, and he could look intimidating. But here, like this, though still just as shatteringly handsome, he seemed warmer, wonderfully approachable.
Easy to talk to. ‘I did get round to mentioning it—although I almost didn’t,’ she confessed, laying down her fork with a small sigh of repletion, listening to the soothing sound of the whisper of the sea as it caressed the shore far below, feeling more relaxed and at peace than she had felt in ages. ‘I was too busy listening to her telling me how you bought the farm and put the deeds in their names. Why didn’t you tell me?’ she probed gently.
His own fork abandoned, Dimitri leant back, his features shadowed now. ‘I thought you already knew—that your parents would have told you.’
Then, rough-edged, showing the first sign of discomfiture Maddie had ever seen in him, he leant forward again, fisting his hands on the top of the table, the gleam from the candle picking blue lights from his rumpled raven hair, and admitted, ‘That’s not true. I allowed you to believe that your parents’ security depended solely on your agreement to come back to me, stay with me. When the truth is that I would have helped them regardless, because I like them and saw the injustice of what cold, big-business brains could do to small, good people with no possible means of self-defence.’
Helplessly in love with him, Maddie felt her heart twist behind her breast. Behind the tough business tycoon façade beat the generous heart of a truly good guy—a guy who would always put
his family first and, in time, learn to stop loving Irini and begin to love her instead. At least that was what she was now determined on. It might take some time, but it would be worth waiting for.
Her heart melted further, until she thought that poor organ must resemble a pool of hot treacle, when he castigated, ‘What I did was dishonourable! I threatened you, let that threat lie between us as the only way I could think of to make you come back to me! It was a despicable thing to do. So—’
Steeling himself, doing his best to appear to be relaxed over what in all honour had to be said, Dimitri leaned back in his seat again. For the first time in his adult life he was losing control, giving control over his happiness to another. Knowing it was what honour demanded didn’t make it any easier.
‘So the threat no longer exists,’ he intoned heavily. ‘It never did. You are free to make your own decisions about our marriage. You wanted to divorce me,’ he reminded her with a studied calm that almost killed him in its achievement. ‘If your reasons for wanting to end our marriage still exist—’ a sudden, involuntary downward slash of one strongly crafted hand betrayed the inner tension he was trying to hide ‘—and whatever they are or were, I do not want to hear them, then you are free to do as you think fit.’ He breathed in deeply, then stipulated forcefully, ‘However, I would demand that you remain in Greece, that I have full visiting rights where our child is concerned.’
Silence hung, thick and spiky with expectation. Maddie’s eyes were liquid sapphire, drenched with understanding. And awe.
This gorgeous man must have wanted her to return and take her place as his wife really badly for him to have done what he had himself named despicable and dishonourable. And it would have taken guts for him to come straight out and admit that the threats had never been real, to let it be known that the tough exterior hid a marshmallow centre.