The Greek's Penniless Cinderella

He saw the expression in her eyes change, saw something moving in them. And for the first time since Ariadne had phoned him at the airport in Thessaloniki he felt hope.

But then it was gone. And her voice,

when she spoke, was as strained as it had been before, stumbling over her words.

‘But it is still going to be necessary,’ she said heavily. ‘Our divorce. Because of what my father threw at me. His impossible demand that unless... Until...until I’m pregnant the merger you married me to get will never happen.’

He plunged his hands into his pockets. Steeled his jaw. Took a breath before saying what he had to say now.

‘There won’t be a merger,’ he said. ‘I’m pulling out of it.’

* * *

Xandros was looking at her. He was silhouetted against the drawn window drapes, hands plunged into his trouser pockets, his stance stiff, face expressionless. And yet in his eyes...

Rosalie felt a pulse start to thump in her throat. Hammering in her veins.

‘You’re pulling out?’ she echoed, her voice as blank as her face. ‘But why?’

‘Why? Because I never...never...want you to doubt the reason I say this to you now.’

Something flashed across his face and the pulse at her throat thumped more strongly yet. The set of his broad shoulders seemed different, somehow, but still tense.

‘Why,’ he asked slowly, his eyes never leaving her, ‘do you call your father’s demand “impossible”?’

She swallowed. There were still razor blades in her throat, drawing blood...

‘Because...because...we were only meant to be married for half a year! My getting pregnant would have been a disaster!’

His eyes were resting on her...so dark. So unreadable.

‘Would it?’

She stared. ‘I don’t understand...’

His expression changed. In place of that unreadable mask something moved in his eyes. Something it was impossible for her to read. Then the faintest smile hovered fleetingly at his mouth. The mouth that had once kissed her into senseless bliss but would never do so again.

Pain like an arrow across her cheek scathed her heart.

‘Perhaps,’ he was saying now, still speaking slowly, with the same strange expression in his face, ‘I would have welcomed it.’

There was still the same tension across the broad sweep of his shoulders, in the motionless poise of his stance.

She felt her face pucker. ‘Don’t say that, Xandros—’

Her voice was broken. She was broken. Broken into tiny fragments that she could not hold together.

He stood looking down at her, that expression she could not read—dared not read—still in his eyes.

He was speaking to her again.

‘Don’t say it because the thought of bearing my child appals you? Don’t say it because a child would bind us, one to the other, for all our days...all our lives? Don’t say it because that would be a fate that would horrify you?’

She felt her throat twist, those razor blades embedded in it agonising. She could not stop them. Could not stop anything at all. Could not stop his voice—could not stop him starting towards her, hunkering down, taking her trembling hands in his. He was looking into her eyes, from which tears were starting to spill. Tears she could not bear to shed but could not stop.

‘Does it appal you?’

His voice had changed, and she could not bear that either. Could not bear what it held...what it was asking of her.