For Pleasure...Or Marriage?

For a moment she just stared, thinking the unthinkable. Then, with a wash of relief, she realised it was all right. No, of course she couldn’t be pregnant—she’d had a period in Austria. It had been a bit of an odd period—different, scantier—but she remembered reading somewhere that altitude could affect menstrual cycles, and had put it down to that.

It must be a bug, then, making her throw up. Or a last bite from the one that she’d suffered just after Christmas, when Markos had insisted she get antibiotics.

Maybe, she thought with a wry smile as she made her way shakily out of the bathroom, it had been more than missing Markos that had made her feel so rotten these past ten days. Maybe she’d been coming down with a bug as well. The smile faded. She didn’t want to be ill with Markos—not again—it would be such a drag for him. He hated illness, she knew, and was highly impatient of it in himself and others. Though he would, of course, not be horrible to her, he would hardly be glad if she were hors de combat so soon after that post-Christmas bug.

Well, she would just not succumb, that was all. She felt much better now, anyway. Probably throwing up had got the germs out of her and done her good.

Tightening the belt of her dressing robe resolutely, she went in search of Markos.

He was in the kitchen, putting coffee beans into the grinder.

‘I’ll do that!’ she said instantly. She knew he hated fiddling about with the kitchen gadgets.

He turned and made space for her.

‘How are you?’ he asked, his dark grey eyes searching over her rapidly.

Don’t let him know you’re coming down with a bug, she thought. He’s only just got back; he won’t want news like that.

‘Fine,’ she said brightly. Then, her smile deepening into radiance, she gazed at him. ‘Oh, Markos, I’m so glad you’re home again! I missed you so much!’

For just the most fleeting second she thought she saw reserve in his eyes. Then it had gone. With a fond, careless flick of his finger he touched her cheek as she gazed up at him.

‘Yes, you showed me last night,’ he said indulgently, and watched the colour steal across her cheeks.

She was very pale, he found himself thinking. Paler than usual. Why had she not mentioned having been sick? He gave a mental shrug. The English side of him knew why—not making a fuss over things like that was a national characteristic. And if he mentioned it now she’d just be embarrassed by it.

His eyes glanced at the kitchen clock and he muttered an oath in Greek. He was running late. He had a meeting with his finance director in fifty minutes. True, the man would wait, but it was bad practice to run late in front of subordinates. It encouraged them to think they could be sloppy.

‘No coffee—I’ll catch breakfast in my office,’ he said briskly. As he headed out of the kitchen back to the bedroom to get dressed, he called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll take you out to dinner tonight. Buy a new dress to wear for me. Something sexy. On second thoughts, if it’s that sexy, we’ll eat in—afterwards,’ he added, with a throwaway taunting laugh.

Vanessa watched him go, lettin

g her eyes feast on the angled planes of his smooth, bare, muscled back. A wave of longing went through her. Reluctantly she turned back to the coffee grinder.

As the rich fragrance of the beans struck her, so did another wave of nausea.

She clamped her lips tight and breathed deeply through her nose. No, she would not be sick again. She would not be ill.

She’d rest in the morning, then go and do what Markos asked. Buy a new dress and make herself beautiful for him.

It was what he wanted—and doing what he wanted was all she wanted to do.

She loved him so much.

Vanessa leant forward and softly blew out the two candles on the coffee table. It was stupid to waste them when Markos was not here. She glanced at the time again. Ten o’clock.

In the dining room, the table was laid for dinner. The food had been sent up, all prepared, and now waited in the fridge, as did the champagne. Everything was ready—especially her.

As she walked, the silky folds of her new dress sussurated around her long legs. The colour was daring for her—a deep, saffron-shot vermilion that she would never normally have worn. But during the fashion shoot for Leo Makarios’s jewellery the stylist had put her into a similar coloured dress that had at first horrified her and then, as she’d realised that the colouring was clever enough not to clash with her red hair but instead complemented it stunningly, amazed her.

For a moment she gazed at her reflection in the mirror on the lounge wall. She did indeed look beautiful. A slow smile lit her face. Never before in her life had she been so grateful to be beautiful—because her beauty was for the man she loved. For Markos. Without it, after all, he would not have looked twice at her—but with it, oh, with it, she could lay it at his feet as her gift to him!

After all, it was all that she could give to him. She had nothing else. Whereas he, with his incredible wealth, could shower largesse down upon her endlessly. And he did—far more than she was comfortable with. Far more than she wanted from him. But she never said a word of that. He would be offended—how would he not be, if she rejected his largesse? And besides, all of it was to make her more beautiful. And her beauty was for him, not her. Like this dress now, costing hundreds and hundreds of pounds, purchased from one of the dozen fashion shops where he’d set up accounts for her.

But, though he lavished his largesse on her, she was as prudent as she could be with it. She bought clothes and accessories only when it was required of the life she led with him. Only when, with the slightest frown in his eyes, he remarked that he’d seen her too many times in a particular outfit. Only then would she replenish her wardrobe, so that she always looked pleasing to his eyes.

As she would now, she was sure, in this stunning dress that moulded down her slender body and flared in soft folds around her calves.