CHAPTER SIX
THEHELICOPTERLANDEDin what looked like a forest glade.
Tansy jumped out, full of curiosity. ‘You have a cabin in the woods?’ she remarked in surprise, briefly forgetting that she wasn’t actually speaking to Jude as yet. Ironically, though, the fact that he hadn’t even tried to communicate with her during the flight had left her feeling ridiculously excluded.
‘No, not a cabin,’ Jude asserted, leading the way down a path through the pine trees, dense vegetation on all sides preventing her from catching much of a view of anything.
But the smell of the sea flared her nostrils and she saw a glint of water through the forest of tall straight trunks surrounding her. They emerged out of the shade into the evening sunshine and her eyes went wide as she saw the ancient stone walls intersected by ornamental turrets rising in front of her. ‘A castle?’ she whispered in disbelief.
‘I saw it from the water one afternoon a few years ago. It was a medieval ruin until it was illegally developed by a rich eccentric in the nineteen twenties. It was almost derelict again by the time I bought it and fixed it up. It’s the smallest property I own. I had to renovate a terrace of farmworker cottages nearby to accommodate staff.’
‘I suppose it’s unthinkable that you could manage for yourself,’ Tansy sniped.
‘I will never be able to live safely without security, nor will you. The family name does come with a downside of high risk,’ Jude told her drily.
‘Oh, believe me,’ Tansy said tartly, ‘I’ve already seen that for myself!’
Jude gritted his even white teeth and shot her a shimmering dark golden glance of condemnation. ‘You’re wrong about me, very wrong!’
Tansy said nothing more, accompanying him into an unexpectedly cosy hall and up a stone staircase into a spacious bedroom, made airy by contemporary furniture in spite of the natural stone walls and narrow window embrasures through which sunshine glimmered in long shards across the floor. ‘A drink?’ Jude prompted.
‘Wine,’ Tansy said flatly. ‘Please…’
‘Althea and I…a tangled tragic tale,’ Jude murmured grittily as he opened a cupboard kitted out with a comprehensive bar and refrigerator. ‘We were childhood sweethearts with the approval of both families. Isidore very much approved of the Lekkas pedigree, if not their lack of fortune. At sixteen, she was my first lover and I was hers and I adored her. My best friend, Santos, was in love with her as well but I trusted him, I trusted them both…’ Jude glanced up from the beer he was pouring and saluted her with it, a cynical curve to his expressive mouth. ‘You’re only that young and innocent once.’
As Tansy guessed with a sinking heart where the tale seemed to be going, she tensed, suddenly feeling that she was being made aware of stuff she wasn’t entitled to know, and then reddening on the memory that she had seen him in Althea’s arms and that, as his wife, she did have a right to know their back story if it was relevant.
‘I did a business degree at Harvard and one summer I worked as an intern in New York.’ Jude poured wine and extended a glass to her. ‘Althea slept with Santos while I was away. It only happened once but there was no reasonable excuse for it and, even though I believed her when she said it wouldn’t ever happen again, I couldn’t forgive her for it.’
Her back stiff with the tension in the atmosphere, Tansy sat down in an armchair and clutched her glass with both hands as if it were a lifesaver. ‘I can understand that.’
‘But Althea has never understood or accepted it,’ Jude declared flatly. ‘Initially I refused to have anything to do with her. I was very bitter. It was only after her father approached me on her behalf that I appreciated that our friends had made her a social pariah. That was more punishment than I felt she should suffer, and I made an effort to tolerate her again.’
‘What about…er…your friend Santos?’
Jude gave her a wry glance. ‘I found it easier to forgive him because he genuinely loved her. He asked her to marry him afterwards and she said no. He was devastated. He got drunk one night and crashed his motorbike. I’ve always secretly blamed Althea for his death as well.’
Tansy sipped wine into her dry mouth in fascination because she couldn’t take her eyes off his darkly handsome face while one emotion after another flickered there, teaching her that he felt much more than either he or she had been prepared to acknowledge. Just like her, he knew exactly what hurt and betrayal felt like and what it felt like when the object of your love revealed clay feet and came crashing down off a pedestal. ‘What Althea did was a disaster for all three of you,’ she remarked ruefully. ‘So why, bearing that problematic past in mind, were you, only a few weeks ago, considering marrying her and having a child with her?’
‘She offered when she found out that I was in a tight corner. Initially I said no, but I was desperate and I did think better the devil you know,’ Jude admitted, startling her once again with his frankness. ‘After all, it’s been almost nine years since we were together and I thought it was safe. She was married to someone else for four of those years and was recently divorced. I assumed she’d moved on long ago.’
‘Only she hadn’t,’ Tansy guessed.
‘When she said she couldn’t go through with the marriage she insisted she still had feelings for me, so I backed off immediately,’ Jude clarified. ‘That was a major turnoff for me. But today when she came to the wedding, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to run off and find someone else to marry after she dropped out.’
‘Why? What were you supposed to do?’ Tansy pressed with bemused curiosity.
His stunning dark golden eyes shadowed, and his beautiful shapely mouth twisted with exasperation. ‘Apparently, Althea had her moves all planned out. The cancellation was a power play. She thought that when she dropped out at the last minute I would panic and come back and offer her more.’
‘More?’ Tansy queried, smooth brow pleating.
‘A more lasting marriage, maybe even love.’ Jude winced in disquiet at the concept and sprawled fluidly down on a love seat, one denim-clad knee gracefully raised. ‘But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be with her long-term and I couldn’t ever love her again because fidelity for me is an unbreakable rule.’
‘Then what was that I saw between you this afternoon?’ Tansy asked him baldly, wondering if any man had ever looked so spectacularly beautiful in ripped jeans and a shirt, the sheer breathtaking perfection of his sculpted face and lean, powerful physique compelling.
‘Althea losing the plot at our wedding. She had taken something…she was as high as a kite and furious with me. That’s when she told me she’d deliberately cancelled the wedding, expecting me to offer her a more permanent deal, and I was disgusted with her because she should have moved on from me long before now… Wouldn’t any normal woman have moved on?’ he prompted in a raw undertone of appeal.
Tansy nodded weakly, marvelling that Althea had betrayed him in the first place, while thinking that most women would be challenged to fully get over a guy as rich, beautiful and sexy as Jude Alexandris. It had been a fatal mistake for Jude to offer that convenient marriage, so near and yet so far from what Althea still so desperately wanted to reclaim.