‘I have an important question,’ Lysander countered levelly. ‘Will you allow the restoration work here to continue?’
Ophelia almost uttered a furious negative. Then she thought of the roof leaking and the damage that would continue if she took a selfish short-term view of the situation. She couldn’t face doing that to the house she loved. ‘Yes!’ she ground out between clenched teeth.
Stalking over to the bed, she snatched up a pillow and the bedspread that had spilled onto the floor. She marched over to the luxuriously upholstered ottoman couch by the window.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Lysander indicated the selection of food on offer. ‘Neither of us had the chance to eat this afternoon.’
In spite of the fact that her tummy was growling with emptiness, Ophelia wrapped herself in the bedspread and lay down on the couch. ‘Goodnight.’
Lysander surveyed his defiant bride while he satisfied his appetite. A slight frown line now divided his ebony brows, for she was not behaving as he had expected. She was excessively obstinate. Why had she offered to sell the house without any effort to negotiate a stupendous price? Why the continued obsession with the walled garden? Did she genuinely like getting muddy? Why was she set on being a thorn in his flesh, rather than taking immediate advantage of his need for her continuing presence in his life? What had happened to her profiteering instincts? Cue for diamonds, he decided. It was time to show her the sparkling financial benefits of meeting his expectations. He swept up the phone to organise it.
Five min
utes later he strode over to the ottoman, lifted Ophelia off it and strode back to the bed.
‘What the blazes do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled at him.
‘You sleep in the same bed,’ Lysander informed her, blue-shadowed jaw line set at an obdurate angle of challenge.
Ophelia was taken aback to feel tears threatening because she was genuinely exhausted and the prospect of another rousing battle of wits was too much for her just then. ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she warned him.
But it was soon obvious that Lysander had far more important matters in mind than sex. While she lay there with her back rigidly turned to him, he made five separate phone calls in a total of three different languages. His dark deep drawl was brisk and authoritative. But he paced round the room at length on another call, his voice softening in tone as he spoke in Greek. He even laughed a couple of times, although that humorous note struck her as a little forced. She was convinced he was talking to another woman and she strained to catch every nuance even though she couldn’t understand a word. Was he explaining to a favoured mistress why he hadn’t mentioned the little fact that he was getting married? Why wasn’t he prepared to write off their marriage as a mistake? Why the need for an ongoing pretence?
And why had he slept with her? She couldn’t accept that the chemistry was as strong for him as it was for her, because he was a highly sophisticated man with an endless procession of gorgeous women to choose from. He was also extremely clever and a brilliant strategist. When she had tried to deny that they were truly married, he had simply turned the tables on her by sweeping her off to bed.
While Ophelia agonised over her failure to say no, Lysander had a television wheeled in and watched the business news, which provoked another round of phone calls. She was almost begging for mercy by midnight. He hadn’t even noticed she had a pillow over her head to blank out the light and noise level. An alpha-male workaholic, he had the most appalling level of energy. He also had a passion for controlling everybody and everything around him. His nature was neither tolerant nor patient. He was the last guy alive who would stand the hassle of coping with a demanding, difficult wife. In that knowledge, Ophelia savoured, lay her salvation and her escape route from the shackles of a marriage she didn’t want. What would Lysander most dislike?
Publicity would obviously come top of the list. He liked his privacy, so a wife who gave an interview to a downmarket tabloid would be an embarrassment. And she suspected that a clingy, possessive woman always demanding to know where he was and who he was with would revolt him even more. She would have to be careful not to overdo it, though. A sleepy smile melted the tension from Ophelia’s troubled mouth. Being a nightmare wife might well be fun and should ensure that she got back to her garden sooner rather than later.
For the third time the following day, Lysander checked that no phone call or message from Ophelia had been intercepted and withheld from him.
His sardonic mouth compressing into an even thinner line, he turned his attention back to the board meeting. The stock-market crisis had ensured that he had to fly back to London at seven that morning. Unsated desire had sentenced him to a restless night and plunged him into an icy shower at dawn. One tiny taste of Ophelia had unleashed a disturbingly powerful storm of sexual craving. What the hell was the matter with him? He couldn’t concentrate and he hated the unfamiliar edgy tension nagging at him.
In contrast, Ophelia, to whom histrionics came naturally, had happily slept in his arms half the night as well as through his departure. But then he was convinced that Ophelia would sleep through an earthquake, since he had contrived to clasp a superb pearl and diamond necklace round her neck without wakening her. Even though he had spoken to her she had only mumbled like a zombie and curled up in a ball again.
Any woman, however, would be overwhelmed by so magnificent a gift, he reasoned with conviction. He had also for the first time in his life left a note explaining his absence. And during the course of a phenomenally busy morning he had also arranged for the walled garden to be managed by an experienced horticulturist during their absence. In short, Lysander could not recall when he had ever made that much effort on a woman’s behalf and received less appreciation for it. Or, been treated to a total silence that was steadily beginning to grate on him.
Ophelia enjoyed an equally busy morning. She had opened her eyes to a terse five-word unsigned note on the pillow. ‘At office, flight Greece 20.00 hrs.’ She had almost leapt out of bed and saluted with a ‘Yes, sir!’ as though she were in the military. That amused response was doused by the staggering discovery that she was wearing an opulent pearl and diamond necklace, which put her worryingly in mind of a very elegant dog collar. Was it payment for her virginity? A reward for submission?
Filled with self-loathing at that awful suspicion, Ophelia was sufficiently preoccupied to find herself accepting the luxury of breakfast in bed without complaint. The same maid offered to run her a bath and lay out her clothes and a PA phoned to tell her that she would be leaving for Lysander’s house in London at eleven. Ophelia, who had relished her recent freedom to work all the hours of daylight in her garden, felt trapped by the schedule already mapped out for her.
Ophelia rang Pamela.
‘No, of course I didn’t tell my brother about your marriage,’ Pamela declared. ‘In fact Matt’s furious that I didn’t tip him off. I’m practically under siege by the paparazzi down here. Lysander’s security men have put up barriers at the foot of the lane and the police are patrolling. It’s hugely exciting.’
Ophelia was deep in thought. ‘Do you think anyone would be interested in interviewing me?’
‘Are you crazy? Any journalist would kill for the chance! You’re hot news now.’
Ophelia reckoned that she would never have a better opportunity to take the first step in her campaign to regain her freedom. Did she have the nerve to pull it off? She could not think of anything that Lysander would like less than a wife who could not wait to gush about him and his lifestyle in print. ‘I think it would be fun to do an interview, but it would have to be in London this afternoon. Do you think your brother would like to do it?’
Pamela was so thrilled by that offer that she offered to act as a go-between and handed out loads of tips on self-presentation. Ophelia inspected her new wardrobe with a purposeful glint in her gaze and combined several colourful items to achieve the tarty over-the-top effect she wanted. Lysander had to be made to appreciate that threat could only take him so far and no further, and that it would provide no defence whatsoever against the indignity of an unsuitable wife.
Lysander travelled back to his London town house around four that afternoon and found it in uproar. Stamitos greeted him tensely at the door and informed him that Ophelia was giving an interview to the press. Staff were grouped in doorways in strained silence. Nobody had the courage to meet Lysander’s utterly disbelieving gaze.
‘Which newspaper?’ Lysander demanded, thinking some sixth-sense prompting must have urged him home a good five hours in advance of his usual finishing time.
Stamitos’s big shoulders took on a visible slump. He named a very popular tabloid that had run several scurrilous stories about Lysander’s sex life in recent years. For a split second Lysander actually felt his skin turn clammy with shock, a sensation he had experienced on only one other occasion since reaching adulthood, which had been when his mother’s illness was first diagnosed.