‘I don’t want to work at it,’ she heard herself say, and it was truthfully what she felt at that moment because her pride could not bear the idea of him having to suppress his natural instincts before he could accept being married to her and staying faithful.
‘You don’t get a choice,’ Angel spelled out grimly. ‘We’ll fly back to Palos in the morning—’
‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not returning to Greece with you!’
‘You’re my wife and you’re not leaving me,’ Angel asserted harshly. ‘That isn’t negotiable.’
Merry tossed her head, dark hair rippling back from her flushed cheeks, pale blue eyes icy with fury. ‘I’m not even trying to negotiate with you… I already know what a slippery slope that can be. Our marriage is over and I’m staying in the UK,’ she declared fiercely. ‘I’ll move out of here as soon as I decide where I’m going to be living.’
Angel stared back at her, his hard bone structure prominent below his bronzed skin, his eyes very dark and hard. ‘You would just throw everything we’ve got away?’ he breathed in a tone of suppressed savagery that made her flinch. ‘And what about our daughter?’
Merry swallowed with difficulty, sickly envisioning the likely battle ahead and cringing from the prospect. ‘I’ll fight you for custody of our daughter here in the UK,’ she told him squarely, shocked at what she was saying but needing to convince him that she would not be softened or sidelined by threats.
Angel froze almost as if she had struck him, black lashes lifting on grim dark eyes without the smallest shade of gold, his lean, strong face rigid with tension. ‘You would separate us? That I will not forgive you for,’ he told her with fierce finality.
Ten seconds later, Merry was alone in the room, listening numbly to the roar of a helicopter taking off somewhere nearby and presumably ferrying Angel back to London. And she was in shock, her head threatening to explode with the sheer unbearable pressure that had built up inside it, her stomach churning sickly. Tears surged in a hot stinging tide into her eyes and she blinked furiously but the tears kept on coming, dripping down her face.
Their marriage was over. Hadn’t she always feared that their marriage wouldn’t last? Why was she so shocked? Yes, he had denied that Roula Paulides was his mistress but she hadn’t believed him, had she? When she had packed her bags on the island she had known she wasn’t coming back and certainly not to a marriage with a husband who had to work at being married to her!
CHAPTER TEN
MISERY AND GUILT kept Merry awake for half the night. She had threatened Angel just as he had once threatened her and now it lay like a big rock of shame on her conscience because she had witnessed the depth of his attachment to Elyssa, had watched it develop, had even noticed how surprised Angel was at the amount of enjoyment he received from being a parent. He did not love his wife but he definitely did love his daughter.
All her emotions in free fall after the sensitive family issues that had been explored at Sybil’s house, she had been in no fit state to deal with Angel. She had drawn up battle lines for a war she didn’t actually want to wage, she acknowledged wretchedly. A divorce or separation didn’t have to be bitter and nasty and she hadn’t the smallest desire for them to fight like cat and dog over their daughter. Angel was a good father, a very good father and she would never try to deprive him of contact with his child. Just because she couldn’t trust him with the Roulas of the world didn’t mean she was blind to his skills as a parent or that she wasn’t aware that Elyssa benefitted as much as Angel did from their relationship. She wasn’t that selfish, that prejudiced against him, was she?
Anguish screamed through her as she sniffed and blew her nose over her breakfast in the dining room. She was a garish match for her elegantly furnished surroundings, clad as she was in comfy old pyjamas and a silky, boldly patterned kimono robe that had seen better days. She had left her fancy new wardrobe behind on Palos as a statement of rejection that she wanted Angel to notice. She had wanted him to appreciate that she didn’t need him or his money or those stupid designer clothes, even if that was a lie.