Nope. Not that easy to evade his questions then. “Samir,” she sighed softly. “I don’t really like to talk about my marriage.”
“I am not asking for a full analysis of why it failed, only where you lived with him.”
That was fair. It wasn’t exactly a carefully guarded secret. She pulled her hands free, and he released them, but stayed so close she could smell his masculine, exotic fragrance tickling her nostrils.
“He had a place in London.”
“So you moved in with him?”
She ground her teeth together, nodding.
“But you’re close to your family.”
Her eyes lifted to his. She nodded again.
“So you commuted back to Greece often.”
She took another sip of her coffee. “My parents expected it. We have lunch often—most Sundays. My dad, he and his brother grew up rough. Poor. They didn’t have a big family, so with their six kids between them, they wanted it to be different. They wanted us to really know each other, love each other.” Something darkened Cora’s vision for a moment, a frown changing her features completely, like a storm cloud on a sunny day.
Her uncle had wanted them to be a big family, even when he’d had his own secret family on the side. The knowledge she held pressed like a blade against her side, especially when she thought of her aunt, still in mourning over the death of her beloved husband, one of the Xenakis family patriarchs, with no idea that she’d been betrayed for decades.
“So you and Alfonzo would come back for lunch?”
“Alf,” she said after a pause. “He hated his full name.”
Samir made a gruff noise that spoke clearly of disapproval. “Fine, you andAlf,” he laced the single syllable word with distaste. “Would come and have lunch with your family on Sundays.”
She was tempted to shut this line of questioning down, but it wouldn’t hurt to answer a little bit more, would it?
“No,” she shook her head. “Not after the first time.”
“Why not?”
Her brothers’ raised voices filled her mind, memories sliced through her. Unpleasant memories. Shame. Sadness. It was the beginning of the unravelling of their marriage, and it was still so early on—just after their honeymoon.
“He was wasted,” she said, keeping emotion from her voice. “He was big on pills.”
“And you?”
She pulled a face. “Not my thing.”
“Didn’t that bother you?”
She took another sip of coffee. “Yes. I didn’t realise how much he did until we were married. I thought it was just an occasional, letting his hair down habit or whatever. Even then, I couldn’t understand it. Two martinis is my limit,” she confessed, missing the calculating look in his eyes as she revealed a little more about herself than she’d intended. “But for Alf, it was a way of life. Pills with breakfast,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I tried to ignore it as much as I could. Then I tried to help him quit, but he wasnotinterested in that, at all.”
“And that’s why you left him?”
She startled as if being woken from a trance. Somehow, he’d led her down a garden path, and she hadn’t even realised it. What happened to keeping her personal life private? Damn it. She felt the crumbling of boundaries she desperately wanted to hold.
“There weremanyreasons my marriage failed, most likely because it was a terrible, spontaneous, stupid idea in the first place.” She lifted her fingers in the air with a smile she hoped would end the conversation. “Two martinis.”
And fortunately for Cora, hedidlet it go. She hadn’t expected the reprieve but a moment later, he took a drink from his own cup and moved the conversation onto more neutral topics—a film festival in America, and the selection of movies. Cora knew the director of the headlining film and made a mental note to text him her congratulations.
Later though, after lunch—toasted sandwiches in bed after a morning of making love—Samir rolled onto his side, his eyes roaming her face in a way that never failed to give Cora goosebumps, and lifted a finger, tracing the outline of one nipple until she expelled a softly shaking breath.
“I cannot understand how you have been single so long.”
It was just a throwaway line, a comment, if anything, on her sensuality while with Samir, but in light of their conversation that morning, it felt more loaded to Cora, so she answered with a degree of caution. “It’s not hard. My life is busy enough without the complication of men.”