Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

His breathtaking smile lit his lean, strong features and made her heart hammer like a road drill. ‘And I have something I have to say to you.’

‘Me first,’ Katie countered hurriedly, keen to get her little speech over with. ‘I’m not going to sleep with you tonight. Now, please don’t get mad about that.’

Alexandros had gone very still. Dense black lashes dipped almost to his stunning cheekbones, then slowly lifted again on glittering golden eyes filled with level enquiry. ‘This is our wedding night. Why would you decide not to sleep with me?’

Katie closed her hands tightly in on themselves. ‘Because you blackmailed me into marrying you, and that was wrong.’

‘Blackmail is an evocative word. I wanted to marry you, and I cut through all the…nonsense.’ Alexandros selected that final word with care, and squared his stubborn jawline. ‘And here we are, married and with our whole lives before us. Please don’t tell me that you’re planning to destroy that.’

Katie made a tiny movement with a jerky hand, her normal relaxed motion restricted by the reality that the level of tension in the room was truly horrendous. ‘I’m not planning to destroy anything—’

‘Then why give me grounds for divorce on our wedding night?’ Alexandros demanded wrathfully ‘What is all this?’

CHAPTER TEN

ANGER burnishing his challenging gaze, Alexandros was unable to wait for her to answer that demand for clarity. ‘This is some petty revenge because I saw what was right for us and I went for it on my own. You didn’t like my methods?’ he queried. ‘Tough. My methods get results. If I’d left you in charge, we’d still be in limbo and nothing would be decided!’

‘Well, it’s good to know that your conscience won’t be keeping you awake at night,’ Katie responded, fighting the fact that her nerves had gone into panic mode at that reference to divorce. ‘You need to accept that what you did was wrong, Alexandros—’

‘How’s it wrong? You’re my wife now. My children will take on my name—’

‘I want our relationship to be about us, not about the children—’

‘Then stop behaving like a child!’

Katie breathed in deep, mentally buckled herself into defensive armour and held up a finger. ‘One…I married you because you threatened to contest my custody of the kids—’

‘I wouldn’t have done that to you!’ Alexandros grated, with a flash of his even white teeth. ‘Don’t you know anything about me yet?’

‘Two—’

‘Siopi…quiet!’ Alexandros cut in. ‘Holding up fingers and counting is bloody irritating.’

‘Two…’ Katie launched defiantly. ‘I don’t want to sleep with a guy who makes me feel that I’m only good enough for sex!’

‘I don’t want to sleep with a wife who thinks that she can use her body like a bargaining chip!’

‘Three,’ Katie continued doggedly. ‘I—’

Alexandros threw up both hands in an explosive demonstration of rage. ‘I’m out of here!’

‘No…don’t be like that!’ Katie gasped, racing past him at breakneck speed to plant her back against the door and block his exit.

‘Move.’

‘But we need to talk—’

‘I’m not in the mood. Move.’

‘No…’

In response, Alexandros scooped her up off her feet, crossed the room in two strides and dumped her down on the bed. He came down over her and she lay there, looking up at him with huge green eyes full of surprise and uncertainty. ‘Alexandros…’

‘When you say my name it’s an invitation.’ Tawny eyes smouldering gold with aggression, he took her lips with a passionate urgency that melted her body into a honeyed compliancy that tore giant holes in her defences.

With a sob of regret in her throat, Katie pulled free.

Alexandros surveyed her with a savage condemnation that seemed to her to be all out of proportion to what she had done. His lean bronzed face might have been chipped out of granite, and he was pale below his dark skin.

‘I swore I’d never marry again. I changed for you. I swore I’d never have children. I learned to accept and love our sons,’ he breathed, with a bleakness of tone that made her break out in a sweat. ‘And I thought you were different. Loving and giving and truthful. Well, where the hell has that all gone?’

His fierce bitterness cut through every layer of her skin. Suddenly she felt very much in the wrong, even if she did not quite comprehend exactly what that wrong was. What she did grasp was that in his eyes she had let him down, betrayed him, and that accusation hurt like hell. Who had he thought she was different from? She had never seen him reveal that much emotion before, and it shook her inside out.

The door closed. He was gone. She had done what she’d set out to do. She had stood firm, stuck like glue to her convictions. But she had not got to state the finer points of what she had intended to say. However, she had got across the basic message, she reminded herself, and, considering the hostility of her audience, that had been quite an achievement.

Her muscles were aching with the stiffness of extreme stress. Slowly, clumsily, she flopped back in her floral bower. She was still clad in her exquisite dress and tiara. He would have taken them off. Without any warning at all, she was racked by the most terrible doubts, and the tears started flowing.

The next day, Katie went down to breakfast at eight.

At one in the morning she had gone looking for Alexandros. Searching a house that contained two hundred and thirty two rooms had ultimately become too much of an embarrassing challenge as she’d run into or disturbed various members of the household staff. She’d rung his mobile, but it was switched off. Even if she had run him to earth, she had no idea what she would have said to him, and feared that, in the mood he had been in, she might actually have made things worse.

During the night, she had not slept a wink. She’d lain awake, hoping that Alexandros might come back to talk to her, and fretting herself to death when she had been left in splendid isolation. Suppose Alexandros demanded a divorce? Suppose he had left the country? Would he even go ahead with the honeymoon now?

She had got up at six to double-check her packing, then spent ages trying to hide the redness of her eyes with make-up. She’d put on a green skirt and top that she wasn’t that fussed about but had bought purely because he liked her in short skirts.

The dining room was empty. She comfort-ate her way through a huge breakfast.

The wave of relief that assailed her when Alexandros strolled in, casually elegant in beige cargo pants and an Italian knit sweater, left her dizzy.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

A second wave of relief washed over her; the honeymoon was still on the travel schedule.

‘Like the skirt,’ he murmured, as she clambered with the greatest difficulty into the limo.

‘Are you still talking to me?’

‘Got any more skirts like that in your luggage?’

‘Alexandros—’

He leant over and rested a silencing finger against her soft pink mouth. ‘No—don’t say it again, agape mou. “We need to talk” has to qualify as the phrase most likely to make the average guy run like hell.’

Green eyes huge, she nodded slowly. He lounged back into his corner, contriving to look absolutely gorgeous. She swallowed hard. They did need to talk, but now she was too scared to risk it. The night before he had told her that he had changed for her, and that declaration had shocked her, giving her another, not entirely welcome perspective of their relationship. Did he mean that marrying her and learning to be a father had been major sacrifices? She reckoned that he might well do, and she felt cut to the bone. There she was, always asking for more from him, and she knew that that was unfair and unreasonable.

A large contingent of the press awaited them at the airport. They were kept at a distance by Cyrus and his men. Alexandros closed a protective arm round Katie and ignored the questions flying their way. Someone said something about ???the latest story’ and her blood went cold. What story? She cringed at the idea that Leanne’s revelations might have made it into print again, and started praying feverishly. She could not work up the courage to ask Alexandros.

They boarded his private jet. She saw the neat rows of newspapers on the desk and riffled through them, to emerge with the trashiest—which bore a rather grainy depiction of them kissing on the dance floor.

Alexandros rested a lean brown hand over hers before she could lift the publication. ‘Don’t waste your time,’ he advised.

But Katie was a glutton for punishment. She leafed through to find the centre spread. As far as embarrassing photos went, there was only one more, showing her in her bridal finery, but every detail of their special day was now public knowledge. Her eyes watered like mad and she stared into space, fighting for self-control. She felt so terribly to blame. She had been stupid and sentimental to trust Leanne again.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ she mumbled tightly.