Her mind shied away blindly from the word husband.
Tessa stared out of the window to the formal garden, the panorama of dark sea and cloudless sky. Even the air was balmy, scented with salt and the perfume of orange blossom.
It didn’t seem right that everything should look so peaceful when she was a mass of jangling nerves, raw from the corrosive memories of last night’s confrontation.
Where did that man get off, treating her as though everything were her fault? As if she’d connived to put in him an embarrassing predicament when all she’d wanted was to do the right thing?
She squeezed her eyes shut, appalled at her naïvety. At her spur-of-the-moment impulse, cashing in her airline ticket to Sydney and instead travelling to Greece. As if high-and-mighty Stavros Denakis would be interested in her gratitude after all this time.
She drew in a shuddering breath and blinked to clear her blurred vision, appalled at how near to crying she was. Last night, for the first time in years, hot tears had threatened to fall. Now they stung her eyes again. This weakness after all she’d been through was inexplicable.
Today her actions seemed nothing short of foolish. So what if it had seemed like a sign, like fate, when she’d opened that discarded magazine in the airport lounge and stared straight into the eyes of the man who’d haunted her for four years? The man who’d been at the centre of her secret hopes and dreams as she’d struggled daily against privation and poverty and the temptation to give up hope.
She was no innocent kid. You’d think years of hardship would have taught her there was no point in spinning foolish dreams. Except she hadn’t been able to deny those secret fantasies of him. Those unsettling night-time imaginings that had been her only solace. Dreams of strong arms, of a determined, powerful saviour coming to her aid. Dreams that had left her edgy and burning with a heat that belied the chilly mountain nights.
Tessa clenched her jaw and straightened. No way would the real Stavros Denakis protect her ever again. Not after his fury last night. He must be deeply in love with his fiancée, and enormously protective of her, to view Tessa as any sort of threat.
She breathed deeply, sloughing off a sneaking twinge of self-pity. That would get her nowhere.
She’d spent the morning in a deep, exhausted sleep, waking to a visit from a doctor, organised by her host. As if Stavros Denakis actually cared how she was! He was probably just checking she hadn’t brought some highly contagious disease with her from South America.
Her first instinct had been to refuse to be examined, but the doctor had been persuasive and Tessa just anxious enough about her strangely emotional state to comply. It was a relief to have her fears allayed. She was fine. All she needed was time to recover her strength.
But now it was late afternoon and she’d achieved nothing. She’d better contact the Australian embassy in Athens. They’d help her with the legalities and her return to Sydney. Not that there was anything waiting for her there. But she’d be home, where she’d longed to be for years. She’d have access to her bank account, could start rebuilding her life while the lawyers sorted out a divorce.
Tessa swung round from the window to look for a phone, wondering how difficult it would be to place a call to the embassy when she spoke no Greek.
She stopped dead when she met Stavros Denakis’ storm-grey eyes.
Her lungs seized up as she met his probing gaze, then she lifted her chin and drew in a slow breath, refusing to be daunted by the sight of him.
He stood just inside the room, his shoulders almost as broad as the closed door behind him. She blinked, realising he’d entered without a sound. A shiver of trepidation trickled down her backbone at the knowledge he must have the soundless tread of a predator. Like a jungle jaguar.
It made her feel vulnerable. But she shoved her hands into the pockets of her baggy trousers, resisting the impulse to curve her arms defensively around herself.
His expression was shuttered, totally unreadable. Somehow that was more worrying than the blaze of wrath he’d directed at her last night. Fury and bullying she could stand up to. But what was going on in his mind now?
She wasn’t foolish enough to believe he’d seen the error of his ways and accepted the truth about her intentions. No, there was a waiting stillness about him, as if he were a hunter sizing up his prey, that sent its own wordless message across the humming silence between them.
Yet to her horror, his patent distrust wasn’t enough to prevent the spark of excitement that flared into life deep inside her. He did that to her without even trying.
She’d only ever experienced the sensation with this man: a thrill, a yearning that made her seem a stranger to her own body. It scared the hell out of her.