I must.
The mantra went round her head, carried by Bach, stopping her thinking of anything else. Anything at all.
And especially, above all, what ‘this’ would actually mean…
She could feel her eyes flickering and managed to replace the coffee cup on the table in front of her, her head starting to loll. Her restless, tormented night was catching up with her.
The dream she slipped into was vivid. Instant.
She was on the island. That magical, maquis-clad island, where the azure bowl of the sky cupped land lapped by a cobalt sea, enclosing it in a private, secret world, a world where the outside world ceased to exist, where everything—everyone—was reduced to the elements of which they were made. Sky and stone, sand and sea, air and water, light and dark. Flesh and blood.
And heat. Heat beating up through the rocks, burning down from the blazing sun, heat running in her veins like a fire. A fire she could not quench, a heat she could not cool, heat in her skin, her veins, her nerves, her flesh…flushing through her, pulse, after pulse, after pulse…
She woke—eyes wide, staring. Heart pounding. Terrified.
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Words screamed through her.
I can’t do this! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!
Her hands clenched over the arms of her seat.
The plane flew on.
Theo listened as Demetrious brought him up to date on a dozen different items on his always crowded agenda. But his mind was elsewhere.
So she had come. He had half wondered if she would. It could have gone either way, he knew—her self-righteous fury was quite capable of cutting off her own nose to spite her face. His face tightened. It was that, above all, that enraged him—her self-righteousness! Her self-righteous fury at being denied what she dared, dared to consider her entitlement to her uncle’s money! The uncle she had insulted and shamed, who even now still felt the burden of what she had done.
As for himself—the lines around his mouth incised more deeply—did she really think she could do what she had done and then expect him to meekly hand over the money? His eyes flickered to where he could just see the edge of her body, almost invisible to him. He felt again that stab of raw black anger go through him. Then another emotion countered it.
Should he have made her this offer, given her the chance to get the money she craved? Shouldn’t he just have continued to stonewall her, ignore her very existence, as he had done since he had thrown her out, raining down on her the censure she so richly deserved?
With his head he knew that that was indeed what he should have done—every gram of sense in him told him so.
But sense was not uppermost in his mind now. He knew that, deplored it, and yet even so knew he was going to pursue this—knew he was going to carry out what he had every intention of doing. What he had promised her last night when he’d felt again the touch of her flesh against his.
He had unfinished business with her.
And only when he had finished it—finished with her—would he finally throw her from his life permanently.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS THE plane made its final descent, Vicky felt her stomach acid go into overdrive again. Not just because she was that much closer in time to the ordeal ahead of her. Nor just because of the nightmare memories that were ready to spring like banshees into her brain, with every familiar sight of Greece around her. But because something else had dawned on her—something that would make the ordeal ahead even worse. Where, exactly, was Theo planning on taking her—and did he intend her to be seen with him in public? On show at his side…?
Dear God, surely he can’t be planning to do that?
She swallowed. That had turned out to be the worst aspect of her brief, ill-fated marriage. It was ironic, really. It had been, after all, purely for show that she had gone along with the insane idea of marrying him in the first place! To show the world that Aristide Fournatos was not going cap in hand to Theo Theakis to save his company, but was merely doing something that every Greek family could approve of: forging a link for the mutual benefit of both commercial dynasties, between his niece and a suitable—oh, so highly suitable—husband. Saving his company was almost incidental.
And so being on show had been an essential part and purpose of their marriage. Vicky had thought she could cope with it—after all, a marriage for external show only was all she had signed up for.
But it had proved far, far more difficult than she had ever imagined.
And then—impossible…
Quite, quite impossible…
She tensed in recollection as the memories started to march across her brain.