A fresh start, Isobel repeated inwardly, and her eyes glazed over. Everyone wanted to make fresh starts, but how many more ugly skeletons were going to creep out of the dark cupboard before she felt safe enough to trust any one of them?
She lifted her face though, and smiled for Chloe. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. But the way her voice shook had Leandros slamming the car into gear and gunning the engine. His sister stepped back, her face pale and anxious. Isobel barely managed to get the car door shut before he was speeding away with a hissing spin of gravel-flecked tyres.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she lashed out in reaction.
‘If you are going to cry, then you will do it where I can damn well get at you,’ he thrust back roughly.
‘I am not going to cry.’
‘Tell that to someone who cannot see beyond the tough outer layer.’ He lanced her a look that almost seared off her skin. ‘I did not sleep with her—ever!’ he rasped, turned his eyes back to the road and rammed the car through its gears with a hand that resembled a white-knuckled fist. ‘I liked her! But she has poison in her soul and now I can feel it poisoning me.’ His voice suddenly turned hoarse. ‘Did I give her reason to believe what she does about me? Did I offer encouragement without realising it?’
His hand left the wheel to run taut fingers through his hair. It was instinctive for Isobel to reach across and grab the wheel.
‘You don’t need to do that,’ he gritted. ‘I am not about to drive us into a wall.’
‘Then stop acting like it.’
The car stopped with a screech of brakes. Isobel had not put on her seat belt because Chloe had been sharing her seat and the momentum took her head dangerously close to the windscreen before an arm shot out and halted the imminent clash with a fierce clenching of male muscle.
Emotions were flying about in all directions. Stress—distress! Anger—frustration. He threw open his door, climbed out and walked away a few long strides, leaving Isobel sitting there in a state of blank bewilderment as to what it was that was the matter with him.
It was her place to be this upset, surely? She had been the one who’d had to place her trust on the line ever since she came back here! She got out of the car, turned and gave the beautiful, glossy red door a very expressive slam. He spun on his heel. She glared at him across the glossy red bonnet. They were within sight of their own driveway but neither seemed to care.
‘Just who the hell do you think you are, Leandros?’ she spat at him furiously. She was still responding to the shock of almost having her head smacked up against the windscreen; her insides were crawling with all kinds of throbs and flurries. He was pale—she was pale! The sun was beating down upon them and if she could have she would have reached up and grabbed it then thrown it at his bloody selfish head! ‘What do you think her poison is doing to me? You want a divorce then you don’t want a divorce. Rumour has it that you have your next wife already picked out and waiting in the wings. Pre-nuptial agreements are suddenly the all-important topic on everyone’s lips! And I am expected to trust your word! Then I am expected to trust your word again when those photographs turn up. I even face the bitch with her so-called lies!’
‘They are lies, you know that—’
‘All I know for certain at this precise moment is that you have been working me like a puppet on a string!’ she tossed at him furiously. ‘I’ve been insulted in your boardroom—stalked around Athens—which appears is not the first time! I’ve been seduced at every available opportunity, teased over family heirlooms, paraded out in front of Athens’ finest like a trophy that was not much of a prize!’
He laughed, but it was thick and tense. She almost climbed over the car bonnet to get her claws into him! ‘Then I am forced to stare at those wr-wretched ph-photographs.’ Her throat began to work; gri
mly she swallowed the threatening tears. ‘Do you think because I could prove them to be fakes that they lost the power to hurt?’
‘No.’ He took a step towards the bonnet.
‘I haven’t finished!’ she thrust at him thickly, and the glinting green bolts coming from her eyes pinned him still. ‘I faced the poison—while you went chasing off to the wrong place!’ she declared hotly. ‘I listened to her say all of those things about you and still believed in you. My God,’ she choked. ‘Why was that, do you think, when we only have to look back three years to see that we were heading right down the same road again?’
‘It is not the same!’ he blasted at her.
‘It has the same nasty taste!’ she cried. ‘Your mother is prepared to try and like me for your sake and now your sister is prepared to do the same. Do I care if they like me?’ Yes, I do, she thought painfully. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said out loud. ‘I don’t think I care for you any more,’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘You don’t mean that—’
She flicked his tight features a glance and wished to hell that she did mean it. ‘Tell me about the pre-nuptial thing,’ she challenged. ‘Then go on to explain about this other man I am supposed to have fathered my child to. And then,’ she continued when he opened his mouth to answer, ‘explain to me why I have just had to listen to you bemoaning the poison that wretched woman has fed into you!’
Silence reigned. He looked totally stunned by the final question. A silver Mercedes came down the road. It stopped beside Isobel. ‘Is something wrong?’ a voice said. ‘Can we be of assistance?’
Isobel turned to stare at Theron Herakleides. Beside him in the passenger seat, her mother was bending over to peer out curiously. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can give me a lift.’ With that, she climbed into the back of the Mercedes.
‘What about Leand—?’
‘Just drive,’ she snapped. Theron looked at her in blank astonishment. He had probably never been spoken to like this before in his life! Then she put a trembling hand up to cover her equally tremulous mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, and tears began to burn her eyes.
‘Drive, Theron,’ her mother murmured quietly. Without another word, Theron did as he was told, his glance shifting to his rear-view mirror, where he saw his nephew left standing by his car looking like a man who had just been hit by a car.
Watching his uncle Theron drive away with Isobel, Leandros was feeling as if he had been hit—by an absolute hellion with a torrent that poured from her mouth.
How had she done it? How had she managed to leave him standing here, feeling like the most selfish bastard alive on this planet?