‘Probably the first month we met,’ Atreus admitted. ‘I wasn’t brought up to pay heed to emotions. I was raised to respect a code of head over heart, and it worked like a charm until I met you. I’d fallen in lust, but never in love. I never really cared about a woman until I met you.’
Lindy treated him to a blissful smile. I was miserable without you. It was all she needed to hear to forgive the memory of those wretched months without him. ‘How miserable were you?’ she prompted, wanting every gory detail.
‘I didn’t like Chantry House without you in it. The place felt flat and empty. I couldn’t concentrate at work, and I was so bad-tempered two of my PAs asked for transfers. I missed you so much, and I was totally unprepared for feeling like that. When I let you go, I decided that it was probably time for me to look for a wife rather than another lover.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d been so comfortable, so settled with you. Did it never occur to you that we lived together like a married couple on our shared weekends? It was the most stable relationship I’d ever had,’ he volunteered. ‘But, no matter how many women I met, I couldn’t replace you.’
‘You found Krista,’ she reminded him a shade tartly.
‘I didn’t need to find Krista. I’ve known her all my life. I turned to her because she seemed to match that blueprint in my head of the woman I should marry to have the best hope of a successful relationship,’ he admitted, tugging Lindy out of bed and into the en suite bathroom, where he switched on the shower in the wetroom.
Lindy looked up at him, noting the dark reflective look in his eyes, realising that it was a struggle for him to tell her so much. ‘Why did you say she was only perfect on paper?’
His lean, strong face shadowed. ‘It was the truth. From the start she courted publicity, which I hated. That’s why we visited my family so quickly—because she had ensured they knew we were seeing each other from the first week.’
That information told Lindy that he had not been with Krista anything like as long as she had believed. She stepped beneath the water with him. ‘And of course your family was ecstatic.’
‘If they’d known as much as I now know about her, they would have been considerably less keen. Krista and I have nothing in common but our backgrounds. She’s never worked a day in her life, and doesn’t even understand the need for it.’
‘That must have been a crash course in compromise for a workaholic like you,’ Lindy guessed, slippery with shower gel as he subjected her to a slow, thorough wash. ‘But you still brought her here to the island.’
‘That was light years back, when we were teenagers. She was only one in a whole crowd of friends who came out here for a party.’
‘Oh…I assumed it was much more recent than that,’ Lindy faltered as he spun her under the water to rinse her.
‘You must be joking. Krista doesn’t like a quiet life, or the outdoors. She can’t live without shops and clubs, and she thinks sailing is very ageing for the skin,’ he completed with suppressed scorn.
Lindy laughed at that news. ‘No, I suppose you’re right. She definitely wasn’t the perfect woman for you.’
‘You are the perfect woman for me, but I was so stupid I didn’t recognise the fact until it was almost too late,’ Atreus groaned, wrapping her with care in a big fleecy towel. ‘I should have walked away from Krista sooner than I did, but I kept on thinking that eventually I would see something more in her. I didn’t sleep with her.’
Anchoring her towel more securely, Lindy stared up at him in bewilderment. ‘You…didn’t?’
‘No. I knew that once I did her expectations would be roused, and I backed off because I wasn’t sure about her. When I saw that newspaper and realised you were pregnant, it hit me very hard…’
‘So hard that you flew in with a lawyer to help me make a statement denying that it was your child!’ Lindy tossed back.
‘I was angry, and jealous that you were carrying what I believed to be another man’s baby. It never crossed my mind that the child might be mine. We had been apart almost five months at that point,’ Atreus reminded her, linking a towel round his lean hips as he uncorked a bottle of wine from a cabinet in the bedroom and filled two glasses with pale liquid.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and tell you that you were going to be a father when I found out myself.’ Lindy sighed guiltily. ‘I can see how much it complicated everything. You had to tell Krista and break up with her—’
‘That’s not how it happened,’ Atreus cut in, pressing a button that made the glass doors slide back, enabling them to walk out onto the sun-drenched patio beyond that overlooked the grounds.