She’d missed dinner, pleading a headache. It would never have done to have told him the truth, that what ached was her heart.
“Much better, thank you. Eleni brought me some tea, and aspirin.”
He nodded and stepped further into the room. “It’s late.”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
He paused beside her and lifted his hand. She thought, for a moment, he was going to touch her hair and if he had, that would have been her undoing. She’d have sighed under his hand like a kitten—but he didn’t. He only reached out, straightened the dressing table mirror, then put his hand into his pocket.
“Are you coming to bed?”
Laurel turned away and looked into the mirror again. He’d asked the question so casually but then, why wouldn’t he? So far as he was concerned, her place was in his bed. Not only was she his wife, but she’d made it clear she wanted to be there. Her throat constricted as she remembered the things they’d done together in that bed.
Why was it that loving a man who didn’t love you, knowing he’d never love you, could suddenly make those things seem cheap?
“Actually,” she said, picking up the brush again, “I thought I’d sleep in here tonight.”
“In here?” he repeated, as if she’d suggested she was going to spend the night on an ice floe in the North Sea.
“Yes.” Briskly, she drew the brush through her hair. “I still have a bit of a headache.”
“Shall I phone the doctor Glass man recommended on Ctete?”
“No. No, I don’t need a doctor.”
“Are you sure? Laurel, if you’re ill—”
“I’m fine. The baby’s fine.” She smiled tightly at him in the mirror. “It’s just an old habit of mine, Damian. Sometimes, I need a night to myself. Kirk used to say—”
“Kirk?” he said, and the way he said it made her heart stop.
Don’t, she told herself, oh, don’t do this...
“A man I used to live with. Well, actually, a man I thought about marrying. Didn’t I ever tell you about him?”
“No,” he said coldly, “you did not.”
She looked into the mirror again and what she saw in his face terrified her. The brush clattered to the mirrored top of the dressing table and she swung toward him.
“Damian,” she said quickly, but it was too late. He was already at the door.
“You’re right,” he said, “a night apart might be an excellent idea for the both of us. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Damian., wait...”
Wait? He stepped into the hall and slammed the door after him. She wouldn’t want him to wait, if she knew how close he was to smashing his fist into the wall. He stormed into his bedroom, kicked the door shut, then flung open the french doors that let out onto the terrace. The black heat of the Agean night curled around him like a choking fog.
All right, so she’d lived with a man. So what? It didn’t matter a damn. She’d married him, not Kirk, whoever in hell Kirk might be.
Married him under protest. Under the threat of losing her child to him. Under the worst kind of blackmail.
Damian spun around and slammed his fist against the wall. It hurt like hell, and he winced and put his knuckles to his mouth, tasted the faint tang of blood, and wished to God it was Kirk’s blood instead of only his own. What sort of name was that, anyway? A stupid name, befitting a man foolish enough to have let Laurel go.
Any man would want her. Would desire her. Would fall in love with her.
And, just that simply, Damian saw the truth.
He loved Laurel. He loved his wife.
“I love her,” he said to the night, and then he laughed out loud.
What a fool he’d been, not to realize it sooner.
And maybe, just maybe, she loved him, too.
He lifted his face to the moonless sky, as if the answer might be there, in the blazing light of a million stars that dotted the heavens.
It would explain so much, if she did.
The softness of her, in his arms. The passion she could never hide when he touched her. Even her reaction earlier today, when he’d so clumsily told her that he’d been married before.
His heart filled with hope. Maybe what had seemed like anger had really been pain. Maybe she’d felt the same jealousy at his mention of a former lover that he’d felt at the mention of Kirk.
But if she loved him, would she have chosen to sleep alone tonight? Would she have taken such relish in telling him she’d lived with another man and almost married him?
Damian took a deep breath. He’d always prided himself on knowing how to chart a direct path from A to B, but tonight he felt as if he were going in circles.
There was only one thing to do, by God, go back into Laurel’s room, confront her, drag her from that bed if he had to, shake her silly or kiss her senseless until she told him what she felt for him...
The telephone rang. Damian cursed and snatched it up.
“Whoever you are,” he snapped, “you’d better have a damned good reason for calling.”
It was Hastings, his personal attorney, phoning from New York.
Damian sat down on the edge of the bed. Hastings was not a man given to running the risk of waking his most important client in the middle of the night.
“I’m afraid we have a problem, Mr. Skouras.”
Damian listened and, as he did, the look on his face went from dark to thunderous.
“Gabriella is suing me for breach of promise? Is she crazy? She hasn’t got a case. What do you mean, she’s going to sell her story to ‘The Gossip Line’ unless I meet her demands? Who’d give a crap about...? What’s my marriage got to do with...?” His face went white. “If she drags my wife down into the mud, so help me God, I’ll—”
Hastings spoke again. According to Gabriella. Damian had made promises. He’d said he’d marry her. He’d been not just her only lover but her first lover, since her divorce, and her last.
Damian took a stranglehold on the telephone cord. “All right,” he said abruptly, rising to his feet and shrugging off his robe. “Here’s what I want you to do.” He rattled off a string of commands. Hastings repeated them, then asked a question, and Damian glared at the phone as if he could see the attorney’s face in it. “How the hell do I know who to contact? That’s why you’re on retainer, Hastings, because you’re the legal eagle, remember? Just get the information by tomorrow. That’s right, man. Tomorrow. I’ll see you in New York.”
Rage and determination propelled him through the next few minutes. He phoned Spiro on the intercom, called his pilot on Crete—and then he hesitated.
Should he wake Laurel, to tell her he was leaving? No. Hell, no. The last thing he needed right now was to explain to his wife that his vindictive former mistress was trying to stir up trouble by selling a story to some TV gossip show featuring herself as an aban
doned lover—and Laurel as a scheming, pregnant fortune hunter.
Spiro could deal with it. The old man could tell her he’d been called to New York on urgent business. She wouldn’t like it, but how long would he be gone? A day? Two, at the most. Then he’d be back, on Actos, and he’d take his wife in his arms, tell her he loved her and pray to the gods that she would say she loved him, too. And if she didn’t—if she didn’t, he’d make her love him, dammit, he’d kiss her mouth until all memory of Kirk whoever-he-was had been wiped from her mind and her soul, and then they’d begin their lives together, all over again.
He just had to see her once, before he left. The house was quiet, as he left his room; no light spilled from beneath Laurel’s closed door. Damian opened it and slipped inside.
She lay on her back, fast asleep.
How lovely she was. And how he adored her.
“Kalí mou,” he murmured, “my beloved.”
He bent and brushed his mouth gently over hers. She stirred and breathed a soft sigh, and it was all he could do to keep from lying down beside her and gathering her into his arms.
First, though, there was Gabriella to deal with.
Damian’s jaw hardened as he left his wife’s room and quietly shut the door after him.
And deal with the bitch, he would.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LAUREL AWAKENED to bright sunlight and a memory as ethereal as a wisp of cloud.
Was it a dream, or had Damian really entered her room in the middle of the night, kissed her and called her his beloved?
It seemed so real...but it couldn’t have been. They’d quarreled, and even though he’d held out a tentative olive branch, she’d rejected it.
She sat up, pushed aside the light sheet that covered her and scrubbed her hands over her face.
Rejected his peace offering? That was putting it mildly. She’d damn near slapped his face, then rubbed his nose in her relationship with Kirk for good measure.
Laurel puffed out her breath. What on earth had possessed her? The man she loved—the only man she’d ever loved—was Damian.
She dressed quickly, with little care for how she looked. All that mattered was finding a way to rectify the damage she’d caused last night. Damian didn’t love her, not yet, but she knew that he cared for her—at least, he had, until she’d instigated that ugly scene.