The Marriage Betrayal (The Volakis Vow 1)

‘Yes … yes, we do need to talk!’ Tally exclaimed abruptly, sensing that not talking and using the hotel room for a far more basic purpose would come far more naturally to him at that moment. ‘But that’s all.’

She knew it was crazy to let Sander walk her out of the airport and into a taxi to travel to a nearby hotel, but she was on automatic pilot and desperately, cravenly hoping and praying that he might have something to say that she might want to hear. She had her ticket for her flight and there was nothing to stop her from still boarding that plane, she reminded herself urgently. At the hotel she discovered that he had booked them into a penthouse suite because that was the only accommodation available.

‘I understand that you’ve spent the last month fighting to keep Volakis Shipping in business,’ she conceded, standing by a floor-deep window to look across the spacious reception room at him. ‘But you didn’t tell me about it until I’d already walked out. How can we have a future together when you won’t even share something that basic with me?’

Sander pondered that question and his ebony brows drew together in a frown line. ‘It’s easy to share when things are going well, but when it’s the other way round, talking about it makes me feel …’ he shrugged awkwardly ‘… wimpy,’ he finally pronounced with complete contempt.

‘So I’m only allowed to hear good news on the business front? Sander …’ Momentarily her voice trailed away and she semi-groaned to express her discomfiture, turning reproachful eyes on him to say, ‘You actually thought I might have put my father up to blackmailing you into marrying me.’

Sander strode forward. ‘The instant I saw your face when I said that I knew it wasn’t true!’

Tally was relieved by his immediate withdrawal of that suspicion. ‘But how could you even think I was capable of that kind of manipulation?’

‘Blame the world I live in, moli mou. People use whatever weapon they can find to get on in life.’

‘But that’s not who I am, that’s not what I’m about,’ Tally argued with pained sincerity.

‘I used to believe that and then, when you fell pregnant, I had doubts. Your father’s blackmail made me doubt you even more, but I couldn’t risk a confrontation with you before the wedding to satisfy myself on that score.’

With reluctance, Tally accepted that he could not have come clean with her at that stage. But she had so many other concerns that the silence simmered.

‘Throw whatever you have to throw,’ Sander urged in raw encouragement. ‘Bring it—I can take it.’

‘Feeling as you have to feel about being railroaded into our marriage, why on earth have you come after me?’ Tally demanded emotively. ‘Why didn’t you just let me go?’

‘Because I can’t!’ Sander proclaimed without hesitation. ‘I thought of my life before I met you and I don’t miss any aspect of it. I don’t want my freedom back, I want you to stay with me.’

‘You feel bad about the way this has happened. I think that’s your conscience talking.’

‘If I thought I would be happier if you left Greece, I wouldn’t be here asking you to stay,’ Sander told her with an assurance that was persuasive. ‘I’m not that much of a fool.’

Exhaustion catching up with her, Tally sank heavily down on a seat. ‘You don’t love me. Look at it from my point of view: what would I stay for?’

Sander studied her small determined figure with brooding force. He wondered how he could explain why he wanted her when he couldn’t explain it even to his own satisfaction. As he watched her chin came up, corkscrew curls the colour of marmalade dancing back from her cheekbones and enhancing evocative green eyes.

With a stifled curse he lifted his lean brown hands to inscribe an arc of frustration in the air and he broke the simmering silence. ‘I don’t do love but there’s a whole host of other things I can offer you, pedhi mou,’ he argued vehemently, a muscle snapping taut at the corner of his stubborn sensual mouth. ‘I’ll be there for you when you’re lonely or scared or ill. There won’t be any other woman in my life. I won’t let business come between us again. I’ll make time for us to be together. You will be the centre of my world and I will spoil you and the baby, that I promise you.’

Sander spoke with far more emotion than she had ever heard him use before and the rough edge to his dark deep drawl and the strain in his beautiful dark eyes added another whole layer of sincerity to that speech. Tally was impressed and her heart was touched. She was even more pleased to hear his reference to the child she carried. He was offering to care for her as she had once believed he cared for her and it crossed her mind that had it not been for the distressing effect of her father’s blackmail Sander might never have stopped caring for her.

‘You never mention the baby,’ she remarked awkwardly.

Sander dug his hand into a pocket and removed something, which he extended to her. ‘I bought it a couple of weeks ago. I saw it in a window.’

Tally accepted the little brightly painted metal train and her eyes burned and prickled with a surge of moisture. It was an elaborate adult toy built of tiny components and would have been ridiculously dangerous to give to a young child. But Sander had no notion of such safety hazards and with this particular purchase it was very much the thought that had prompted it that counted.

‘I mean, girls can play with trains too,’ Sander added in forceful addition, keen to let her know that he wasn’t being sexist.

‘Of course they can,’ she agreed gruffly, her throat aching.

You will be the centre of my world. That, and a promise of fidelity would be enough for her, Tally reflected fiercely. Love would have been the icing on the cake, love would have made everything perfect, but she knew that she didn’t live in a perfect world and she had not yet given up all hope. Maybe some day he would fall in love with her.

Sander closed his arms round her and almost squeezed the oxygen from her lungs as he crushed her to him in a driven embrace that said far more about his troubled and vulnerable state of mind than his words. ‘I want you to be my wife. I want you to be a permanent part of my life, pedhi mou,’ he swore feelingly. ‘And I promise that you won’t regret staying with me.’

‘I’d better not,’ Tally told him tightly, fighting the emotion threatening to paralyse her vocal cords, when she saw the suspicious glimmer of moisture in his beautiful dark eyes and realised that he too was fighting to control strong feelings. ‘But you’ll have to be on your very best behaviour.’

Sander loosened his grip, only long enough to stoop and sweep her right off her feet into his arms and grin down at her. ‘Absolutely.’

‘I expect action in the bedroom every night,’ Tally warned him, reddening but desperate to take the tension out of the atmosphere.

She was rewarded by his dazzling grin. ‘If only you knew how hard it was to keep my distance, but every time I was tempted I thought about the blackmail and I felt like I was being controlled by your father. That just made me angry again,’ he admitted gruffly.

‘But you’re not angry any more,’ Tally pointed out soothingly, reaching up a caressing hand to his strong jaw line as he laid her down on a wide divan bed in the bedroom.

Sander shed his jacket and came down beside her and she hugged him tight, her heart racing. He felt the terrible tension seep out of him and he held her close, one hand smoothing back her hair from her face.

‘I have a house in the South of France. It belonged to Titos and he left it to me in his will. We never had a honeymoon and I think it’s time I remedied that, pedhi mou,’ Sander murmured. ‘At the very least, we’ll stay there for a few weeks and make a fresh start—’

‘A fresh start begins in here,’ Tally argued, pressing his broad chest over his heart in emphasis. ‘It doesn’t matter where we are, just that we’re together—together in body and spirit.’

Sander cupped her chin and gazed deep in her shining eyes, marvelling at the strength of her optimistic spirit while experiencing a blessed sense of peace that was new to his restless nature. ‘I do care about you: the last month is just a blur of meetings and late nights. I’ve been very selfish. I am very selfish, matia mou,’ he concluded in apologetic warning, anxious dark eyes skimming to her from below spiky dark lashes.

‘I knew you weren’t perfect. But I signed up for the long haul,’ Tally whispered unevenly, loving him so much as she met his dark steady gaze that tears were only seconds away in the great tide of emotion sweeping through her.

Sander looked down at her. ‘Just don’t give up on me. I can learn, I can do everything better.’

Tally rested a fingertip against his sculpted lips. ‘It’s not a competition.’

‘Competition brings out the best in me.’ He sighed.