Wheelchair access? Leandros sat forward, his attention suddenly riveted. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘What’s wrong with her? Has she been hurt…is she ill?’
‘I don’t know if the special room is for her,’ Takis answered. ‘All I know is that she has reserved such a room.’
‘Then find out!’ he snapped. Suddenly the thought of his beautiful Isobel trapped in a wheelchair made him feel physically ill!
He must even have gone pale because Takis was looking at him oddly. ‘It could change everything, do you not see that?’ His tycoon persona jumped to his rescue. ‘The whole structure on which we have based our proposals for a settlement may need to be revised to take into account a physical disability.’
‘I think you have adequately covered for any such eventuality, Leandros.’ The lawyer smiled cynically.
‘Adequate is not good enough.’ He was suddenly furious. ‘Adequate is not what I was aiming towards! I am no skinflint! I have no wish to play games with this! Isobel is my wife.’ Hearing that ‘is’ leaving his lips forced him to stop and take a breath. ‘I will leave my marriage with no sense of triumph at its failure, Takis,’ he informed the other man. ‘But I will hopefully leave it with the knowledge that I treated her fairly in the end.’
Takis was looking surprised at his outburst. ‘I’m sorry, Leandros, I never meant to—’
‘I know what you meant,’ he interrupted curtly. ‘And I know what you think.’ Which was why that derisory comment about Isobel being adequately compensated had made him see red. He knew what his family thought about Isobel. He knew that they probably discussed her between themselves in that same derogatory way. He had even let them—if only by pretending it wasn’t happening. But they were wrong if they believed his failed marriage was down to Isobel, because it wasn’t. Not all of it anyway.
Takis was wrong about him if he believed that he was filing for divorce because he no longer cared about Isobel. He might not want her back to run riot through his life again, but…‘Whatever anyone else thinks about my marriage to Isobel, she deserves and will get my full honour and respect at all times. Do you understand that?’
‘Of course.’ For a man who was twice his own age and also his godfather, Takis Konstantindou suddenly looked very much the wary employer as he gave a nod of his silvered head. ‘It never crossed my—’
‘Find out what you can before we meet with her,’ Leandros interrupted, glanced at his watch and was relieved to see he was due at a meeting elsewhere so could end this conversation.
He stood up. Takis took his cue without further comment and went off to do his bidding. Leandros waited until the door closed behind him, then threw himself back down into his chair. He knew he was behaving irrationally. He understood why Takis no longer understood just where it was he was coming from. Only two weeks ago Leandros had called up his godfather and informed him he wanted to file for divorce. It had been a brief and unemotional conversation to which Takis had responded in the same brisk, lawyer-like way.
But a few weeks ago, in his head, Isobel had been a witch and a hellion with barbs for teeth. Now, on the back of one small comment she was the young and vulnerable creature he had dragged by the scruff of her beautiful neck out of sensual heaven into the hell of Athenian society.
On a thick oath he stood up again, paced around his desk. What was going on here? he asked himself. What was the matter with him? Did he have to come over all macho and feel suddenly protective because there was a chance that the Isobel he would meet tomorrow was going to be a shadow of the one he once knew?
A wheelchair.
Another oath escaped him. The phone on his desk began to ring. It was Diantha, gently reminding him that his mother would prefer him not to be late for dinner tonight. The tension eased out of his shoulders, her soft, slightly amused tone showing sympathy with his present plight where his mother was concerned. By the time the conversation ended he was feeling better—much more like his gritty, calm self.
Yes, he confirmed. Diantha was good for him. She refocused his mind on those things that should matter, like the meeting he should be attending right now.
‘You’re asking for trouble dressed like that,’ Silvia Cunningham announced in her usual blunt manner.
Isobel took a step back to view herself in the mirror. ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ All she saw was a perfectly acceptable brown tailored suit with a skirt that lightly hugged her hips and thighs to finish at a respectable length just below her slender knees. The plain-cut zip-up jacket stopped at her waist and beneath it she wore a staunchly conventional button-through cream blouse. Her hair was neat, caught up in a twist and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. She was wearing an unremarkable flesh-coloured lipstick, a light dusting of eye-shadow and some black mascara, but that was all.
In fact she could not look more conservative if she tried to be, she informed that hint of a defiant glint she could see burning in her green eyes.
‘What’s wrong with that suit is that it’s an outright provocation,’ her mother said. ‘The wretched man never could keep his hands off you at the worst of times. What do you think he’s going to want to do when you turn up wearing a suit with a definite slink about it?’
‘I can’t help my figure!’ Isobel flashed back defensively. ‘It’s the one you gave to me, along with the hair and the eyes.’
‘And the temper,’ Silvia nodded. ‘And the wilful desire to let him see what it is he’s passing up.’
‘Passing up?’ Those green eyes flashed. ‘Do I have to remind you that I was the one who left him three years ago?’
‘And he was the one who did not bother to come and drag you back again.’
Rub it in, why don’t you? Isobel thought. ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said and began searching for her handbag. ‘I have a meeting to go to.’
‘You shouldn’t be going to this meeting at all!’
‘Please don’t start again.’ Isobel sighed. They had already been through this a hundred times.
‘I agree that it is time to end your marriage, Isobel,’ her mother persisted none the less, ‘and I am even prepared to admit that the letter from Leandros’s lawyer brought the best news I’d heard in two long years!’
Looking at the way her mother was struggling to stand with the aid of her walking frame, Isobel understood where she was coming from when she said that.