She looked up at him, her eyes wide and pleading. ‘I came to the next day, in a village miles away in the hills. I’d been rescued by a stranger.’
‘A stranger?’
‘Sister Mercedes. I lived with her for the past few years.’
A nun? She was asking him to believe she’d been living a life of unblemished innocence with a nun all this time?
His shout of laughter echoed in the quiet room as the unaccustomed tension drained from his taut shoulders.
Tessa Marlowe wasn’t such an accomplished liar after all. She’d overplayed her hand with that particular fabrication. Living a life of virtue with a holy sister for four years.
Next she’d claim to be a virgin!
If he’d been in a more generous frame of mind he’d have given her a lesson on not gilding the lily.
‘It’s true!’ She stepped in front of him, her chin tilted up and her hands stretched out as if pleading. A nice touch. She looked gorgeous with her eyes wide and her soft lips parted. So brave and vulnerable.
‘We stayed in the mountains, where it was safer. I tried to cross the border once, later, but my guide was shot and wounded. It was just too dangerous.’
‘That’s enough.’ He turned away, unwilling to hear any more of her lies. Each untruth from those beautiful lips sickened him.
Strange, he should be inured by now, after three grasping stepmothers and a legion of women vying for the position of Mrs Stavros Denakis. Lies and half-truths, manipulation and greed, there was nothing new here.
He strode to the door and yanked it open.
‘Save your breath.’ He speared her with a furious glare. ‘You’ll gain nothing with this pretence of innocence.’
Yet as he left the room and pulled the door shut behind him, Stavros felt an unfamiliar twinge of doubt.
Just as well he was too intelligent, too experienced to let it sway him.
Stavros stood alone in the dusk, watching the lights of a passing vessel in the bay. The intense quiet was like a benediction after the hours spent farewelling guests. It had taken most of the day, but then this was an important occasion: the merging of two significant families. And, his father had reminded him wryly, traditionally a time for rejoicing.
As if there’d be any celebrations while his wife was still on the premises.
Still his wife.
Still a threat, a potential embarrassment, a conundrum he hadn’t resolved.
Stavros wasn’t used to unresolved problems. And this particular problem threatened to take far too long to fix.
Preliminary enquiries by his staff confirmed that ending the marriage wouldn’t be quick. Already his patience had been tested to the limit, having to house that conniving female on the premises. The knowledge that he was obliged to keep her for any length of time made his blood boil.
His hands tightened into fists at the thought of her.
All those hours today he’d stood beside Angela, politely chatting to family and friends. He’d been close enough to feel the heat of his fiancée’s body, to experience an anticipatory surge of physical desire for the woman he was going to wed. The woman he’d chosen as much for her stunning looks as her character and breeding.
Yet he’d felt nothing. No flicker of heat. No hint of sexual anticipation.
Damn. He couldn’t even enjoy the ripe promise of his fiancée’s body. Not with this imbroglio looming over him.
Having a wife was death to a man’s libido.
But his lack of response wasn’t the worst of it. All day he’d been haunted by the memory of emerald eyes, of another woman, who stirred his blood in a way he couldn’t explain. Even in his fury he couldn’t dismiss the raw attraction for her that welled from some dark, hidden place inside him.
What was it about her that crept under his guard every time? He couldn’t put his finger on the trigger that sparked such a traitorous response in him whenever he spoke with her, looked at her, even thought of her.
Asto kalo! He needed to focus instead on his beautiful fiancée. He’d chosen Angela meticulously from an army of contenders. She was elegant, clever, a woman who understood what drove him, his work and his family obligations. She came from a wealthy family and would fit into his life, give him companionship, sex and the family he’d decided he wanted.
She was nothing at all like the ragtag con-artist to whom he was currently shackled.
He swung around and headed for the house, sick of his circling thoughts.
Halfway across the wide terrace a prickling sensation slowed his step. Heat slid like an unfurling ribbon across his shoulders and down through his torso. He looked up, pinpointing instantly the shadowy figure, half-hidden by curtains at the window on the second floor.
Even at this distance he knew their eyes met. He could feel it in his slow, suddenly leaden pulse, throbbing with such force through his body. Awareness sizzled in his bloodstream, just as it had last night. Just as it had four long years ago.