The Marakaios Marriage (The Marakaios Brides 1)

Then he flicked his gaze away and, sagging with relief, she turned and went upstairs.

She dragged a suitcase out of the hall closet, forced herself to breathe more slowly. She could do this. She had to do this, not because she wanted a divorce so badly but because she owed it to Daphne. Her own mother had turned her back on her completely when she’d been no more than a child, and Daphne’s small kindnesses to her had been like water in a barren desert. But not enough water. Just a few drops dribbled on her parched lips, when she’d needed the oasis of her husband’s support and understanding, attention and care.

‘Lindsay?’ She heard the creak of the staircase as Antonios came upstairs, his broad shoulders nearly touching both walls as he loomed in the hallway, tall and dark, familiar and strange at the same time. ‘We need to leave shortly.’

‘I’ll try to hurry.’ She started throwing clothes into her suitcase, dimly aware that she had nothing appropriate for the kind of social occasions Antonios would expect her to attend. Formal dinners, a huge party for Daphne...as the largest local landowner and businessman, Antonios’s calendar had been full of social engagements. From the moment she’d arrived in Greece he’d expected her to be his hostess, to arrange seating for dinner parties, to chat effortlessly to everyone, to be charming and sparkling and always at his side, except when he’d left her for weeks on end to go on business trips. Lindsay didn’t know which had been worse: trying to manage alone or feeling ignored.

In any case, she hadn’t managed, not remotely. Being Antonios’s wife was a role she had been utterly unprepared for.

And now she’d have to go through it all again, all the social occasions and organizing, and, worse, it would be under his family’s suspicious gaze because she’d been gone for so long. Her breath hitched at the thought.

Don’t think about it. You can deal with that later. Just focus on the present.

The present, Lindsay acknowledged, was difficult enough.

‘You left plenty of clothes at the villa,’ Antonios told her. ‘You only need to pack a small amount.’

Lindsay pictured all the clothes back in their bedroom, the beautiful things Antonios had bought her in New York, before he’d taken her back to Greece. She’d forgotten about them, and the thought of them waiting for her there, hanging in the closet as if she’d never left, made her feel slightly sick.

‘I’ll just get my toiletries,’ she said, and turned to go to the bathroom down the hall. She had to move past him in the narrow hallway and, as she tried to slip past his powerful form, she could smell his aftershave and feel the press of his back against her breasts. For one heart-stopping second she longed to throw herself into his arms, wrap herself around him, feel the comforting heat of his body, the sensuous slide of his lips on hers. To feel wanted and cherished and safe again.

It was never going to happen.

Antonios moved to let her pass and her breath came out in a shuddering rush as she quickly slipped towards the bathroom and, caught between relief and despair, shut and locked the door.

Ten minutes later she’d packed one small case and Antonios brought it down to the hired car he had waiting in one of the college car parks. Lindsay slipped into the leather interior, laid her head back against the seat. She felt incredibly, unbearably tired.

‘Do you need to notify anyone?’ Antonios asked. ‘That you’re leaving?’

‘No.’ Her research, as he’d so bluntly pointed out, could wait. She’d stopped her work as a teaching assistant for introductory classes after her father had died last summer. Only nine months ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime.

It had been a lifetime.

‘No one will worry about you?’ Antonios asked. ‘Or wonder where you’ve gone?’

‘I’ll email my colleagues. They’ll understand.’

‘Did you tell them about me?’

‘You know I did,’ she answered. ‘I had to explain why I left my job and house and went to Greece on the spur of the moment.’

His hands flexed on the steering wheel; she could feel his tension. ‘It was your choice, Lindsay.’

‘I know it was.’

‘You said you had nothing left back in New York.’

‘It felt like I didn’t.’

He shifted in his seat, seeming to want to say more, but kept himself from it.

Lindsay turned her face to the window, steeled herself for the next endless week of tension like this, stalled conversations and not-so-veiled hostility. How on earth were they going to convince Daphne, as well as the rest of his family, that they were still in love?

They didn’t speak for the rest of the three-hour drive to New York City. Antonios returned the rental car and took their suitcases into the airport; within a few minutes after checking in they’d been whisked to a first-class lounge and treated to champagne and canapés.

It seemed ludicrous to be sitting in luxury and sipping champagne as if they were on honeymoon. As if they were in love.

Lindsay sneaked a glance at Antonios—the dark slashes of his eyebrows drawn together, his mouth turned downwards in a forbidding frown—and she had a sudden, absurd urge to say something silly, to make him smile.

The truth was, she didn’t know what she felt for him any more. Sadness for what she’d thought they had, and anger for the way he’d shown her it was false. Yet she’d been so in love with him during their time in New York. It was hard to dismiss those feelings as mere fantasy, and yet she knew she had to.

And in a few hours she’d have to pretend they were real, that she still felt them. Her breath hitched at the thought.

‘Does anyone know?’ she asked and Antonios snapped his gaze to hers.

‘Know what?’

‘That we’re...that we’re separated.’

His mouth thinned. ‘We’re not, in actuality, legally separated, but no, no one knows.’

‘Not any of your sisters?’ she pressed. She thought of his three sisters: bossy Parthenope, with a husband and young son, social butterfly Xanthe, and Ava, her own age yet utterly different from her. She hadn’t bonded with any of them during her time in Greece; his sisters had been possessive of Antonios, and had regarded his unexpected American bride with wary suspicion. They’d also, at Antonios’s command, backed off from all the social responsibilities they’d fulfilled for him when he’d been a bachelor. A sign of respect, Antonios had told her, but Lindsay had seen the disdain in their covert glances. What they’d done so effortlessly, maintaining and even organizing the endless social whirl, had been nearly impossible for her. They’d realized that, even if Antonios hadn’t.

And now she would have to face them again, suffer them giving her guarded looks, asking her questions, demanding answers...

She couldn’t do this.

‘Is the thought of my family so abhorrent to you?’ Antonios demanded, and Lindsay stiffened.

‘No—’

‘Because,’ he told her bluntly, ‘you look like you’re going to be sick.’

‘I’m not going to be sick.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But the thought of seeing your family again does make me nervous, Antonios—’

‘They did nothing but welcome you.’ He cut her off with a shrug of his powerful shoulders.

She took a measured breath. ‘Only at your command.’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘Does that matter?’

Of course it does. She bit back the words, knowing they would only lead to pointless argument. ‘I don’t think they were pleased that you came home with such an unexpected bride,’ she said after a moment. ‘I think they would have preferred you to marry someone of your own background.’ A good Greek wife...the kind of wife she hadn’t, and never could have, been.

‘Perhaps,’ Antonios allowed, his tone still dismissive, ‘but they still accepted you because they knew I loved you.’

Lindsay didn’t answer. It was clear Antonios hadn’t seen how suspicious his sisters had been of her. And while they had accepted her on the surface, there had still been plenty of sideways glances, speculative looks, even a few veiled comments. Lindsay had felt every single one, to the core.

Yet she wasn’t about to explain that to Antonios now, not when he looked so fierce—fiercely determined to be in the right.

‘You have nothing to say to that?’ Antonios asked, and Lindsay shrugged, taking a sip of champagne. It tasted sour in her mouth.

‘No, I don’t.’ Nothing he would be willing to hear, anyway.

His mouth tightened and he turned to stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the runway. Lindsay watched him covertly, despair and longing coursing through her in equal measures.

She told herself she shouldn’t feel this much emotion. It had been her choice to leave, and really they’d known so little of each other. Three months together, that was all. Not enough time to fall in love, much less stay there.

She was a mathematician; she believed in reason, in fact, in logic. Love at almost first sight didn’t figure in her world view. Her research had shown the almost mystical relationships between numbers, but she and Antonios weren’t numbers, and even though her heart had once cried out differently her head insisted they couldn’t have actually loved each other.