‘I’m talking about your close friendship with Amy. So close that even your godfather told me he thought the two of you would get married and so did everyone else. And before you remind me that Amy’s gay—surely that’s all part of it. She hasn’t come out, for whatever reason—
so it probably suits her very well to have people speculate on the true nature of her relationship with her business partner.’ She took a sip of her cocktail and felt the champagne and peach juice foam against the dry interior of her mouth.
‘That’s different,’ he snapped.
‘Is it?’ she questioned quietly. ‘Oh, Drakon.’ Her voice was filled with a deep sadness which she couldn’t seem to hold back. ‘Can’t you ever forgive me? Can’t we just put all this behind us and start over—now that everything’s out in the open?’
But she got her answer instantly as he rose to his feet, towering over her and the table, his muscular shadow seeming to swallow her whole.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen now,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to pay the bill and leave. And then I’m going outside to catch a cab. You can take the car.’
‘I don’t want your damned car!’
‘Really? Then how are you proposing to get back to Milton tonight?’
‘To Milton?’ she repeated blankly, blinking her eyes at him in sudden confusion. ‘You mean, back to my cottage?’
‘Of course that’s what I mean! Where else did you think you’d be spending the night, Lucy? Do you really think I want you in my home in the light of what I’ve just learned?’
‘Drakon...’ Lucy felt as if she had fallen down a deep well only to discover there were no footholds to allow her to get back up again. She had expected his censure, yes, and his condemnation, too. Deep down she’d felt as if she deserved both those things. But surely not such an instant and outright rejection, which felt so final and so permanent.
‘What did you think was going to happen after this astonishing revelation, Lucy?’ he demanded cruelly. ‘That we would just go back to Mayfair and pretend nothing had happened? That we would make love and carry on as normal?’
She shook her head as a pair of dark eyes and a silky head swam into her mind. ‘But what about Xander? What’s going to happen to our son?’
‘Xander has a nanny—and a father,’ he said coldly. ‘We don’t need you, Lucy. Perhaps we never did. I will arrange to have your stuff sent to the cottage—’
‘Please don’t bother. Keep it!’ she said furiously. ‘I won’t be able to wear those kinds of clothes in Milton, anyway!’
‘That’s entirely your decision. Oh, and I don’t think I have any further use for this, do you?’ he added contemptuously. She saw him twist his gold wedding band from his finger before letting it fall with a tiny clatter onto an unused side plate and fixing her with a final withering look. ‘Obviously I will make sure your settlement is generous, provided you agree to a swift, no-claim divorce. I don’t think there’s anything else, do you? Other than to say goodbye.’
He turned and made his way through the restaurant, oblivious to the curious eyes which followed him, and Lucy wondered if she would be able to manage that same degree of insouciance. But most of all she wondered just how long she would be able to keep the hot flood of tears at bay.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Don’t forget Xander’s check-up appointment at the clinic tomorrow. Sofia already knows but thought you might like to accompany them. L
DRAKON STARED AT the text message from his estranged wife which had just appeared on his phone and his brow creased in a frown. It wasn’t the first he had received—all to do with the welfare of his son, he noted, and all signed off with Lucy’s initial and not a single endearment.
Initially, he’d been surprised that she’d bothered contacting him, given the unceremonious way in which he had dumped her at the Italian restaurant. But wasn’t that a mark of Lucy’s soft and caring nature—that she wouldn’t allow hurt pride to stand in the way of her concern for the baby she had mothered so beautifully? Another stab of the pain pierced relentlessly at his heart. The same damned pain which had been plaguing him since her departure. Fury and denial rose up inside him in a hot and potent mix. He kept telling himself it wasn’t her he missed—it was her presence as Xander’s mother which was making him feel so remorselessly uncomfortable.
And an inner voice mocked him every time that thought came into his head, because deep down he suspected it wasn’t true. For a man so enamoured of the truth, wasn’t he falling short of his own high standards? Because hadn’t Lucy taught him how to relax around his son, so that now he felt completely confident whenever he cradled little Xander in his arms? Yet it hadn’t always been that way. A lump rose in his throat and his heart began to pound. Before Lucy had come into their lives, the realisation that he must adopt his orphaned nephew had lain heavy on his heart. It had been a task he had been prepared to undertake—but Drakon’s attitude had been reluctant. Not any more.
He stared down at the sleeping infant and his heart clenched. These days he embraced fatherhood with a sense of immense satisfaction and with something else, too. Something he’d never thought he’d feel towards Niko’s baby—and that something was love.
Restlessly, he left the nursery and moved aimlessly through the Mayfair apartment which had felt so vast and so empty since his wife had moved out. He missed her in his bed at night—and the hard, physical ache which greeted him each morning bore testimony to that.
Just as he missed talking to her over breakfast and dinner and swimming with her in the Greek sea on a winter day when surely no sane person would have swum.
He had the services of the best nanny in the world and the wherewithal to find another any time he wished. He had an address book practically overflowing with women who would be eager to provide him with whatever consolation he required.
He drew himself up short, reminding himself that he didn’t need consolation—because that would imply that he was grieving for something and he wasn’t.
Really, he wasn’t.
* * *
Of course she missed him. That was only to be expected. But it was Xander she missed, Lucy convinced herself fiercely. She certainly didn’t miss his pig-headed father. And of course it was weird being back in her tiny riverside cottage and waking up alone every morning, without the warm and muscular body of Drakon stirring beside her in more ways than one. But she would get over it. She had to. And all things passed eventually—some just took longer than others.