‘Roula told me everything.’
Angel looked bemused. ‘Everything about…what?’ he demanded with curt emphasis.
‘That she’s been your mistress for years, that you always go back to her eventually.’
‘I don’t have a mistress. I’ve never had one. Before you, I’ve never wanted repeat encounters with the same woman,’ Angel told her almost conversationally, dark golden eyes locked to her strained face. ‘You must’ve misunderstood something Roula said. There’s no way that she told you that we were lovers.’
‘There was no misunderstanding,’ Merry framed stiffly. ‘She was very frank about your relationship and about the fact that she expected it to continue even though you were married.’
‘But it’s not true. I don’t know what she’s playing at but her claims are nonsense,’ Angel declared with harsh emphasis. ‘Is this all we’ve got, Merry? Some woman only has to say I sleep with her and you swallow the story whole?’
Merry clasped her trembling hands together and tilted her chin, her spine rigid. ‘She was very convincing. I believed her.’
‘Diavolos! You just judge me out of hand? You believe her rather than me?’ Angel raked at her in a burst of incredulous anger, black curls tumbling across his brow as he shook his head in evident disbelief. ‘You take her word over mine?’
‘She’s your friend. Why would she lie about such a thing?’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ Angel shot back at her. ‘But she is lying!’
‘She said you’d been lovers for years but that you’ve always had other women,’ Merry recounted flatly. ‘I will not accept you being with other women!’
Angel settled volatile eyes on her and she backed away a step at the sheer heat she met there.
‘Then try not to drive me into being with them!’ he slammed back. ‘I have not been unfaithful to you.’
‘She did say that you hadn’t been with her since you got married but that eventually you would return to her because apparently you always do.’
‘You are the only woman I have ever returned to!’ Angel proclaimed rawly. ‘I can’t believe we’re even having this stupid conversation—’
‘It’s not a conversation, it’s an argument,’ she interrupted.
‘I promised you that there would be no other women,’ Angel reminded her darkly. ‘Didn’t you listen? Obviously, you didn’t believe—’
‘Your reputation goes before you,’ Merry flung back at him bitterly.
‘I will not apologise for my past. I openly acknowledge it but I have never cheated on any woman I have been with!’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone. ‘I grew up with a mother who cheated on all her lovers and I lived with the consequences of that kind of behaviour. I know better. I’m honest and I move on when I get bored.’
‘Well, maybe I don’t want to hang around waiting for you to get bored with me and move on!’ Merry fired back with ringing scorn. ‘Maybe I think I’m worth more than that and deserve more respect. That’s why I’m calling time on us now before things get messy!’
‘You’re not calling time on us. That’s not your decision to make,’ Angel delivered with lethal derision. ‘We got married to make a home for our daughter and if we have to work at achieving that happy outcome, then we work at it.’
A cold, forlorn hollow spread like poison inside Merry’s tight chest as she recognised how foolish and naïve she had been to dream that Angel could eventually come to care for her. He had only married her for Elyssa’s sake. She would never be important to him in her own right, never be that one special woman in his eyes, never be anything other than second best to him. He could have had any woman, and a woman like Roula Paulides, who shared his background and nationality as well as a long friendship with him, would have had infinitely more to offer him. He wouldn’t have had to talk about having to work at being married to anyone else. In fact her mind boggled at the concept of Angel being prepared to do anything as dully conventional and sensible as work at a relationship.