‘Are you in pain?’
Slowly she nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I suddenly don’t feel very well.’
That was some understatement. Judging by the taut way she held herself and the pain marking her features, she was suffering. Stavros remembered the stoic way she’d brushed aside her earlier illness, insisting that she was perfectly healthy, despite the medical report to the contrary. An icy hand reached out and clenched hard round his heart.
‘Don’t talk. I’ll take you in and we’ll call a doctor.’ He’d stood and scooped her close in his arms as he spoke. His anxiety intensified at the way she held herself stiff in his arms, as if trying to curl into a ball.
‘It’s all right,’ she lied, lifting a hand to shield her eyes against the outdoor lights as they approached the terrace. ‘It’s just a sudden headache. I’ll be OK if I rest quietly, alone.’
Rest certainly, but not alone. Not when she was hurting like this.
Why hadn’t he noticed her symptoms earlier? Because he was too absorbed in what he had to tell her? But, casting his mind back, he couldn’t recall any hint of the pain to come. Only moments earlier she’d been smiling up at him with such sweetness that he felt like a kid who’d had all his Christmases come at once. The excitement, the pleasure, the satisfaction of knowing this was absolutely the right decision for them both. When she looked at him that way he felt something he’d never experienced before. A tenderness, a power, a longing, so strong it rocked him.
He’d barely been able to control the impulse to reach out and haul her up against him. Instead he’d had to remain aloof, not touching her until he trusted himself to take her hand without dragging her fully into his embrace and ravishing her then and there.
She shivered in his arms, her hand still hiding her eyes. But he could see her mouth, drawn tight in anguish, her bottom lip caught by her teeth.
So swift, so devastating. It must be a migraine.
‘Shh, little one. We’re almost there. Soon you can lie down in your own bed.’
Tessa didn’t respond except for the hint of a nod against his chest. It scared him to see her like this. Never before had she seemed so small and frail. Even the night she’d appeared at the villa, almost collapsing with exhaustion, she’d been spitting fire at him, all defiance and flashing bright eyes. Watching her now made something inside him shrivel up in fear.
An hour later Tessa lay in Stavros’ huge, comfortable bed. He’d ignored her pleas to let her sleep in another room, declaring instead that if he agreed not to call a doctor, she at least needed to be within earshot in case she got worse in the night.
The concern in his clouded eyes was almost her undoing as she sought not to sob her heartache out loud. She couldn’t tell him there was no headache, but instead the shredding pain of her wounded heart.
So she’d let him give her a painkiller, strip her clothes away and cover her gently in one of his oversized cotton T-shirts. He’d bathed her face, settled her in the bed and slid in behind her, pulling her tenderly into his embrace, against the comforting rhythm of his heart.
She wanted to hate him for what he’d done to her.
He hadn’t a clue that she loved him. He thought, stupid man, that marriage was about convenience, not love. He thought he’d found a neat solution that would suit them both. If he believed that, it was clear he had absolutely no idea what it meant to be in love himself.
Yet how could she hate a man who treated her like the most precious thing on this earth, worried and cared for her, even when he didn’t love her? His strongly protective instinct was part of what made him so special.
How could she not love this man?
But she’d been wrong before. No way could she stay with Stavros knowing he couldn’t offer her love.
She had to get away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
STAVROS looked at his watch again. The formalities should be over soon and he could return to check on Tessa.
Originally he’d intended to bring her here to the celebrations on the opening of the new school library. It would have been a good way to begin easing her into the local community. Though, from the comments he’d received, it seemed half the local matrons had found an excuse to visit his housekeeper lately, and to size up his wife in the process.
All approved of what they’d found.
As they should. Tessa would fit in anywhere, be it at a school fair, entertaining his friends at the small dinner party he’d organised for next week, or keeping his father amused. But most of all, she fitted in his life. In fact she seemed to have taken it over. He found it difficult to think of anything but her. Especially since she was still pinched and pale this morning, obviously feeling the after-effects of last night’s headache.