For Pleasure...Or Marriage?

‘Apollonia is a lovely girl, but further acquaintance would be pointless. Whatever my father may have led you to believe—and please accept my profound regrets if that is indeed the case—I am not considering marriage. Please, therefore, stop considering me as a prospective son-in-law. Apollonia deserves a man who can give her the devotion that any wife should have.’

Even as he said the courteous words he knew they were, however unintentionally, tactless. It was well known that Constantia Dimistris’s late husband had been notoriously un- devoted to his wife, mounting a stable of mistresses and taking them everywhere with him. She was as bitter about her own marriage as she was ambitious for her daughter’s. As for poor Apollonia—well, maybe she would do better with her mother’s next target.

Memory stabbed at him as he hung up. The night that Cosmo Dimistris had so signally failed to warn him that his mother and sister were staying at the same hotel. Apollonia had gazed with open fascination at Vanessa. With her sheltered up-bringing she would never have seen a man’s mistress before.

Markos’s eyes hardened.

What the hell was wrong with calling Vanessa his mistress? It was what she had been. There was no shame in it. She had lived with him, ergo she had been his mistress.

No—he didn’t want to think about Vanessa. Didn’t want to remember her. She was gone. She’d made her choice, and that choice had been to walk out on him. In the many long weeks since she’d left, he’d come to terms with that. He’d had no choice.

She didn’t want him any more. End of story. He wasn’t going to chase after a woman who didn’t want him.

If ever a woman thought the sun shone out of you, she did…

Leo’s words echoed in his head. He thrust them out. He’d thought Vanessa devoted—well, now he knew better.

He sat back in his chair and flicked open the leather folder on his desk. It was an acquisitions proposal, and it looked highly profitable. He looked down at the figures, narrowing his focus.

They blurred in front of his eyes.

Mouth tightening, he forced himself to concentrate. He was flying to Geneva that evening, and he had no time to waste. Two days in Geneva, and then it was Boston. Then Jo’burg. Then Sydney, and back to Frankfurt. Then Paris. Then New York.

These days he liked to keep busy.

Markos pushed back against the leather seat in the first-class cabin, flexing his shoulders restlessly. Tiredness seeped through him—he had been on the go for ever, it seemed, and he’d crossed so many time-zones his body-clock was totally haywire—yet he could not sleep. Outside through the porthole the dark, moonless night, high above the cloud base, reached into infinity. Around him, the low vibration of powerful jet engines hummed. The cabin lights were low, interspersed here and there with the pools of reading lights.

He was in no mood to read. No mood to work at his laptop. No mood to watch the in-flight entertainment on the screen in front of him.

No mood to do anything except look out over the formless night, his face shuttered, inexpressive.

Damn her.

Damn her to hell and back.

He’d been going to put her behind him. Forget all about her. Move on. There were women galore in the world he inhabited—beautiful, eager, exquisite. A host of them to choose from.

The moment he’d showed up at his first social affair without Vanessa—not that he’d wanted to go, but it had been predominantly a business occasion and he’d had no choice—they’d made a beeline for him. Beautiful, sophisticated, sexy—all eager to catch his interest, his attention.

He hadn’t wanted any of them. Not one.

It wasn’t just that same sense of ennui that had assailed him in Paris last year. That sense of searching for novelty that was increasingly hard to find as the years went by.

Ennui was nothing compared to what he was going through now.

This mix of emotions was poisonous. Anger, a bitter sense of ill-usage, sheer incomprehension as to why she had walked out on him without a word—and lacing all through it something that was much worse. Something he didn’t, wouldn’t, give a name to, but which ate at him like a cancer.

With a rough gesture he picked up the copy of the Wall Street Journal that had been handed out by the flight attendant. He looked at it cursorily. He was in no mood for reading about the global economic situation, the complex manoeuvrings of companies and governments and central banks. He tossed the paper aside. Surely to God something could distract him?

Moodily he reached for the glass of whisky that was on the table at his side, and took a mouthful of the burning liquid. Then he put that aside too. Getting drunk was no answer. He’d done that several times in these last bitter few months, and had regretted it every time. The oblivion was only temporary, and the emotions that the lowering of his defences allowed to rip through him were devastating.

His mouth tightened. The woman who’d walked out on him without a word, a reason, wasn’t worth a single hangover.

He shifted again restlessly.

He wanted her.

Vanessa. He wanted her here, at his side. He wanted to be able to glance at her, let his eyes rest on her extraordinary beauty, let his gaze wander over her, take in the line of her profile, the glory of her hair, the soft, sweet curves of her body. Knowing that when they had reached their destination, wherever in the world it was, he would take her straight to bed….