“I didn’t want to get off cheap.”
“Of course you didn’t! If I’d ripped off every penny I could get, you’d have loved it. It would have proved that I was grasping.” Breathing tempestuously, she settled back, wearing a baleful expression. She had hardly slept last night. She had been furious. On half a dozen occasions she had been tempted to wade into his room and bawl him out like a fishwife. Sorry wasn’t always good enough.
“What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees?” he replied caustically.
“I’d kick you if you did, so I shouldn’t bother,” she responded tartly, catching the disorientating twitch of his mouth. Her own anger dissipated rapidly. They were squabbling like a pair of children.
He drove his fingers through his black hair and studied her. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested ruefully.
Beyond the house, he dropped an arm round her tense shoulders. “I lost my temper,” he sighed. “And perhaps I lost it because what you said upset me.”
He turned her round and dropped a kiss on the crown of her head. His careless action had the most outsize effect upon her. It was the first gesture of affection he had shown in an entire week. Up until now he had only ever held her as a prelude to making love, and last night she had angrily decided that that would happen no more. Now she was swerving again. Could a physical relationship bring them close? The lack of one would certainly drive them apart. But she suffered from the insecure fear that she was simply adding to his low opinion of her. Would he have respected her more, would he have been more inclined to listen to her if she had found the willpower to deny them both that outlet?
“I wasn’t a very attentive husband then, was I?” he mused when they were on their way back to the house. “You must often have been lonely, even when we were living together. Why the hell didn’t I go with you to that party in Venice?”
Her face shadowed.
“Shall I tell you why? It was so trivial. I was making a point. I was taking a stand. I worked late on into the evening, and then all of a sudden I got angry. I lifted the phone and ordered the jet to go on standby. I felt very self-righteous.”
“Don’t…” Should she try to explain? He seemed in an unusually quiet and approachable mood. As she hovered on the brink of an explanation that might well have proved momentous in the face of Alex’s candour, someone came out of the house and waved.
“Spiros. The post must have come in,” Alex sighed. “He remembers the workaholic I used to be.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOFIA HAD coffee waiting for them in the lounge. Alex, flicking through the envelopes, suddenly paused and strode over to her where she sat. “For you,” he said.
He dropped the letter into her lap and she lifted it, recognising Steven’s impossibly neat copperplate handwriting. She tucked the envelope in her pocket and collided with Alex’s dark, intent scrutiny. She didn’t realise what was wrong until he finally breathed, “Aren’t you going to read his letter?”
He had recognised the postmark, of course. “Why, do you want to read it too?” she enquired in exasperation. “Honestly, Alex, Steven is my friend and my partner, and he has never wanted to be anything else.”
“That has not been the impression I have received,” he parried icily.
She had had enough, and he had barely begun. If Alex was even going to question her mail, what hope did they have? Could adultery be committed on paper? He really would not be satisfied until he had her locked away in a little cage. Warding off the urge to leap down his throat, she murmured gently, “You’re going to have to learn to deal with your jealousy, Alex.”
Even as she said it, she could have bitten out her tongue. She might as well have dropped a burning rag on the surface of something highly inflammable. He went up like a Roman candle. “Jealousy?” he erupted in raw rejection. “Of what would I be jealous?”
She paled. “Maybe possessiveness should have been the word I used. I don’t know. But I do know that there is a problem.”
“And shall I tell you what it is? My wife does not have male friends. Either you sell out your interest in the partnership or you give it to him. I don’t care,” he grated. “But you will sever the connection completely.”
For the second time he missed out on the coffee. Kerry wiped at her damp eyes. The illusion of greater understanding between them was destroyed. She no longer wondered why he had brought her to Kordos. The men in the village held Alex in the highest esteem. None of them would have dared eye up his wife. He owned the island, he was their benefactor. Whether Alex saw it in himself or not, he really wanted to wall her up alive and prevent her from coming into contact with other men. What hope did she have of combatting his distrust? Vickie, what did you do to us both? she questioned miserably.
She read Steven’s letter. It was fortunate that Alex had not tried to do so. “Feel like telling me the truth yet? Remember this shoulder is always here. I make a great wailing wall when I’m not wailing myself.” It chirped along much as Steven did, filled with personal questions, casual endearments and entreaties to write soon and tell him where she had hidden the spare keys for the MG. An impending visit from Barbara received a careless reference. “I can’t cope without you, seriously I can’t,” he completed. “Please dump him and come home.”
She sighed. No, he wouldn’t be managing. He was too disorganised. As long as there was food on the table and petrol for the car, he would be happy. He had no ambition beyond that level, and he had depended on her heavily. If Barbara was half the woman Kerry thought she was, she would step into the breach. The business, properly run, would keep a married couple comfortably.
It was early evening when the call came. Spiros came into the lounge to have a discreet word with Alex. Kerry was lying on a couch reading an English newspaper and ignoring an atmosphere which positively pulsed with unspoken expectations. She had given Alex no reason to suspect Steven. The thought of lowering herself to further explanations stuck in her throat and a mention of Barbara now would probably strike Alex as highly suspicious.
“It seems you have a caller who refuses to identify himself.”
Her head flew up. “I have a visitor here?” she said in amazement.
“A phone call,” Alex contradicted.
She began to get up, but Spiros was already passing her the nearest extension. She swept up the receiver, fully expecting to hear her sister’s voice. The voice she did hear shot her in a state of imminent heart failure back on to the couch.
“Kerry? If it’s you, for God’s sake say something,” the New York twang implored. “I’m not much good at cops and robbers.”
“It’s me.”
“I guess you won’t have forgotten me completely. Jeff Connors?”
Had Vickie got hold of him, after all? It seemed conscience had finally won out. Dazedly, Kerry was practically digging the phone into her ear in case the voice travelled within incendiary distance of Alex. To her intense relief, he sprang up and left the room.
“I’m alone now. You can talk,” she muttered.
“Vickie told me everything. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that I had no idea you and your husband got a divorce. I just couldn’t leave it lying so I came over…”
“Over where?” Her heartbeat had hit the Richter scale.
“Athens. I’m trying to rig transport over to this island of yours.”
“Are you crazy?” she hissed in disbelief. “You can’t come here, you mustn’t come here. He’d kill you before you…”
“If your husband still feels that strongly, I was right to come.”
“Have you got a death wish?” she murmured, thinking in a hurry, which was difficult when she was in a complete panic. “Don’t come to the island. Wait until we get home to Florence and bring Vickie with you. That’s essential.”
“So you do want the story told?”
“Yes, of course I do.” In her dumbfounded horror at the vision of Jeff stepping on to Kordos, she had not immediately p
icked up the significance of his willingness to redress the damage he had done. He really had to be a much nicer person than she had ever imagined if he was ready to take the trouble…not to mention the risk. Maybe he was just too stupid to realise what Alex was likely to do if he came across him. Alex would wipe him off the face of the earth before he even got his mouth open.
“We owe you and it will be straightened out,” he promised. “I’ll persuade Vickie by kidnapping if necessary. You see, I’ve got my own aspirations riding on this, too. I want to marry your sister.”