Greek Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

Atreus raked lean fingers through his tousled black hair, enraged by what had happened. He had been taken by surprise and he wasn’t accustomed to that. How could she be so foolish? They were perfect together as they were. What was wrong with being his mistress? Hundreds of women would have killed to occupy her position. Labels and silly discussions about where they were going had never been necessary between them. She had never tried to subject him to such a conversation before. Why should she have done? He knew he made her happy and prided himself on that fact.

It cut both ways: she pleased him as well. When he needed to work she never voiced a word of objection; she would just go off to the animal sanctuary and put in a few hours there. Often he would end up looking for her. She was easy to be with, stubbornly independent, and well able to manage without him around. She had slotted into his schedule as though she had been tailor-made for the purpose.

But that did not empower her to make ridiculous demands and throw his generosity back in his teeth, and nor would he necessarily forgive her for those errors of judgement. Had she truly thought he might consider marrying her and having a family with her? Just as though he was some Joe Nobody instead of one of the richest men in the world, with a social pedigree in his Greek homeland that could be traced back several hundred years?

Was he so much a snob? When it came to matrimony, surely his family were entitled to have certain expectations of him? Hadn’t his father’s divorce, remarriage and subsequent loose lifestyle caused the Dionides family incessant grief and mortification? The family had had to pick up the pieces in the end: not his deluded father and his feckless mother, but his aunt and uncle, who had ultimately been landed with the task of raising him to adulthood. A responsible man did not marry out of his own order.

Atreus was as outraged with Lindy as he was frustrated by her departure. Just as quickly, however, he recalled his awareness at the outset of their arrangement that she had no idea of the rules he played by and was likely to be hurt. The logic was irrefutable: he should let her go now, close the book on their association.

Lindy had never known she had it in her to be as emotional as she was that night. Eyes dry, head held high, she had stalked back to the lodge on foot with her dogs, fury washing over her in heady bursts. But her anger with Atreus was no greater than her anger towards herself. Why on earth had she got involved with him? She couldn’t sleep, she tossed and turned, fell into a doze a couple of times and then, wakening, instinctively looked for him and went through the whole ghastly drowning sense of loss all over again. Samson and Sausage got up on the bed and lay beside her, pushing their heads under her hand, nudging her with their warm bodies in an effort to respond to her misery.

Atreus would never have let the dogs into the bedroom, never mind onto the bed, she reflected numbly, seeking some reason to celebrate their break-up. But still more tears leaked from her sore eyes. It had happened so fast that she had had no time to prepare, and now her whole world seemed empty and without structure. She was used to going horse riding first thing on Saturday mornings. Atreus had taught her to ride and had tipped her out of bed soon after dawn every Saturday without fail. When he wasn’t involved in business he was relentlessly active, with buckets of surplus energy that required a physical outlet. Her face burned as she recalled how available she had always been—as hot for him as he was for her. Shifting uneasily in her bed, she frowned as a bout of nausea made her tummy lurch, and a moment later she flung herself out of bed and raced full tilt for the bathroom.

Lindy was almost never sick, and she wondered if her emotional distress had somehow affected her digestive system. As she freshened up she accidentally brushed her breast with her arm and winced at the painful tenderness of her flesh. She knew that some women experienced sore breasts during the latter half of their menstrual cycle but she’d had a light period only a few days ago. Her momentary tension faded. Obviously her hormones were out of sync and her body was going haywire, doing things it had never done before. But at least she had no grounds to suspect that she might have fallen pregnant, she told herself in urgent consolation.

Early on in her relationship with Atreus Lindy had begun taking contraceptive pills, but side effects had forced her to come off them again and give responsibility for protection back to Atreus. He had never taken the smallest risk with her which, bearing in mind his feelings on that issue, she reckoned painfully was fortunate. He would surely give an ex-mistress who had become pregnant with his child short shrift. It was not hard to assume that, put in such a situation, he would prefer a termination to an actual birth—an approach which would ensure that there was no permanent damage inflicted on his precious aristocratic family tree. She was very, very thankful that she was not being faced with that particular challenge.