‘Because I had no reason to doubt what I saw,’ she shot back. ‘She was naked and you were in the shower.’
‘I left the robe in my office,’ Zander recalled, a frown touching his dark brows. ‘She must have pulled it on over her clothes to make you think she was naked.’
Lauranne stared at him. ‘Over her clothes?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? And it really doesn’t matter anyway. Why did you have so little faith in me?’
She swallowed hard. ‘Because I suppose deep down I couldn’t believe my luck,’ she mumbled. ‘Everyone wanted you, Zander. You’re an international heartthrob. I’d been expecting it to happen at some point. It just came earlier than even I’d expected—’
Dark eyes crashed into hers. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘You don’t do commitment and you never did,’ she said, her eyes sliding away from his. ‘Women chase you endlessly. The temptation is always there. I was always afraid that sooner or later you’d find someone else.’
Waiting, aching, hoping it wouldn’t happen—
He looked at her, his eyes glittering strangely. ‘And you married me, believing that?’
She dragged her eyes away from his, afraid of giving too much away. ‘We were both impulsive—’
‘So you assumed the worst of me—’
Her eyes shot back to his in defiance. ‘As you did of me.’
They glared at each other and then he gave a long sigh and raked long fingers through his cropped hair, a rueful expression on his handsome face.
‘The problem is that we are both equally stubborn,’ he said dryly. ‘You were determined not to let me know that I’d hurt you and I was too jealous and angry to look deeper.’
Lauranne licked her lips. ‘You really weren’t having an affair with her?’
‘This is the first time in my life I’ve ever repeated myself,’ he gritted, walking towards her and taking her hands in his. ‘But no, I wasn’t.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Oh, God—’
What had they both done?
He slid his hands into her hair and tilted her face to his, forcing her to look at him.
‘She was trying to break up our relationship.’
Lauranne nodded sickly. ‘I already reached that conclusion myself.’
‘She thought she was in love with me,’ he said, his tone matter-of-fact, his thumbs gently massaging her cheeks as he stared down into her eyes. ‘Your arrival on the scene must have been very hard for her to cope with. You were young, clever, stunningly beautiful and I was totally captivated. It must have been obvious to everyone that I was seriously smitten with you.’
Totally captivated? Seriously smitten? Reminding herself that he was still just talking about sex, she looked at him blankly.
‘How would it have been obvious?’
Until their whirlwind marriage, most of their relationship had been conducted behind closed doors or on boats or quiet corners of deserted beaches. She certainly wasn’t aware that they’d had an audience.
‘I didn’t do a stroke of work for the entire two months
we were together,’ he confessed in that lazy drawl that always made her knees shake. ‘My staff were in a state of shock.’
They were?
‘So you think Marina—’
‘I think she got rid of you in the only way possible.’ His expression was thoughtful. ‘She knew that I was Greek enough to be blinded by jealousy.’