CHAPTER TWO
SHE COULD HARDLY turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse but she’d done the best she could, polishing and tidying, neatening the small apartment to within an inch of its life in preparation for Dimitrios’s return. Her whole world felt completely tipped off-balance.
For our marriage, Annabelle. What else?
As though it were a fait accompli—a given.
It was so like Dimitrios. He was born to command, a Titan of any boardroom he entered, a man people couldn’t help but respond to and obey. Naturally it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she might not wish to be married to him.
But...hello!
How in the world could he possibly think she’d go along with this? They hadn’t seen each other in seven years, and that had been a spectacular disaster. She was still sifting through the shrapnel of that evening, let alone the emotional fallout that had come after.
After he’d left.
After she’d found out she was pregnant.
After she’d gone to tell him.
After she’d seen him with his girlfriend, surrounded by people like him.
After she’d had their baby.
She felt as though she’d boarded some kind of express train and hadn’t been able to pause to draw breath. Marriage? Impossible.
Knots tangled inside her belly.
She moved to the kitchen and wiped the counters for the third time that morning, then pressed the button on the kettle, exhaling slowly as she did so. It was grey outside, gloomy and hot, the kind of late-spring day that typified the tropics. The clouds sat low in the sky, thick like a blanket, holding Sydney hostage to humidity and the lure of rain—a relief that wouldn’t come.
Annie caught her reflection in the window, darkened from the outside, and winced. Having seen the kind of women he associated with, she understood why his rejection of her had been so fierce that night.
How could a man like Dimitrios Papandreo ever really be interested in her? She’d dressed with care that morning, pulling on her best pair of jeans and a neat, white linen blouse she’d found in a charity shop about a month earlier. She’d pulled her silky blonde hair into a pony tail, then yanked it straight back out again and brushed it until it shone, before deciding the pony tail was best after all. She’d run through the process a few more times before giving up in frustration and allowing it to fall around her shoulders, unintentionally creating the impression of a golden halo.
She didn’t generally wear cosmetics unless she was going somewhere for work—which was very rare—and she didn’t really own very much in the way of make-up. But as a concession to their meeting, and out of a desire to feel her very best, she’d dashed some pale-pink lipstick across her mouth and dabbed a bit to the apples of her cheeks, blending it until it just gave a hint of much-needed colour to her pale skin. Her nails were short, her feet bare, and there wasn’t much she could do about the expression of worry that had taken up residence on her features.
The kettle clicked off; she reached for a tea cup on autopilot, placing it on the bench top, adding a herbal bag and filling it with wat
er. She stared at the swirling waves of steam, trying not to contemplate how completely her life was about to change. One way or another—marriage or not—nothing would ever be the same again.
She’d just taken a sip of her tea when the doorbell rang. Startled, she moved abruptly, spilling a gush of boiling liquid over her shirt. She swore, pulling the shirt from her skin, wincing at the hint of pain and shaking her head at her own clumsiness, before moving in the direction of the door.
She wrenched it open, barely giving Dimitrios more than a passing glance—nonetheless, it was enough to send her pulse into overdrive. ‘Come in. Have a seat. I’ll just be a second.’ She moved down the tiny hallway and into the room she was using as her own—it had been designed as a study, a small adjunct to the single bedroom, but it worked better for Max to have the bedroom. While he didn’t have many toys, those he did have were very precious to him. She liked him to have space to play with the train tracks he’d been collecting, as well as the books he brought home from the library.
She pulled a replacement from her wardrobe, a simple yellow T-shirt, and changed quickly. The skin above her breasts was pink from where the water had landed but it didn’t hurt. Sparing a brief second to check her appearance before she left the room, she almost instantly turned away again, hating to think about the ways she’d changed since that night.
At eighteen she’d been youthful and, despite the grief following Lewis’s death, she’d been full of brightness and spark. Her future had all been ahead of her—choices to be made, a university degree to be attained. She looked far older than her twenty-five years, Annie thought with a frown. She didn’t see the way the light picked up the colours of her eyes—sparks of blue alongside silver and green. Nor did she see the way the sunshine-yellow shirt complemented her deep brown tan, or the way her slender frame hadn’t lost the curves of her breasts and hips.
When she emerged a moment later into the stillness of her living area, it was to see Dimitrios had overtaken the space completely. Not with anything he was doing, just by the simple act of being there. He was big—large—his frame too much for the room, his presence too dynamic and demanding. Annie worked alone, and sometimes a whole day could pass in which she wouldn’t hear another human’s voice. Everything about her life was small, quiet and unremarkable. Dimitrios was like a blade of lightning splitting that apart.
‘I spilled something on my shirt,’ she said quietly, self-conscious about her apartment. He was dressed in a suit that, she would bet her non-existent savings, had cost more than her year’s rent. Slate-grey with a light blue shirt, it was clearly hand-made and tailored to his frame.
He nodded once, a crisp movement of his head, and gestured towards the table. ‘Shall we get down to business?’
Despite the tension, a smile tightened her lips. Just as she remembered. All command, completely in charge. Well, that didn’t hurt. For now, she could let him call the shots. Besides, she was curious to hear just what he was suggesting, even when she had no intention of accepting his ludicrous proposal.
‘Of course. I’ve just made a tea. Would you like something?’
‘No, this won’t take long.’