Page 28 of The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Barely two hours later she had been on her way home, leaving her married life lying in pieces behind her.

‘Love!’ Andreas’ harsh voice, with its cruelly cynical emphasis on that vital word, echoed down from the past, sounding so loud and clear inside her thoughts that she almost believed for a moment that he had come into the room and thrown the word at her.

‘I don’t love anyone—least of all you! I doubt if I’m capable of the feeling…’

They had arrived on the island late in the afternoon after the flight from England. Becca was still floating on a cloud of happiness after the delight of their wedding, the bliss of the thought of being Andreas’ wife. And she truly was his wife. He had wasted no time in making sure of that. They had been barely through the door before he had carried her upstairs to his bedroom, stripped her of the elegant trouser suit she had worn for travelling and made passionate love to her with all the ardour and the heat of which he was capable.

Later, when Andreas had reluctantly been obliged to go to his office to deal with a fax that had come through unexpectedly, Becca had changed into the lavender-coloured one-piece swimming costume and headed for the pool.

‘I’ll join you there as soon as I can,’ he’d promised.

He was much longer than she had anticipated. She was tired and bored, and thinking of getting dressed again before he came back onto the terrace where he stood, hands on hips, his face almost white with some fierce emotion that made his eyes glitter like polished jet.

‘Get dressed.’

It was an order, an autocratic command delivered with such savagery that her blood ran cold, icy pins and needles prickling her skin in spite of the heat of the day.

‘I want to talk to you.’

The words had barely left his lips before he turned on his heel and walked away, either not hearing or deliberately turning a deaf ear to her shaken question, her nervous request for an explanation as to his sudden change in mood.

She hardly dared take the time to dry herself thoroughly, discarding the swimming costume and hauling on jeans and a T-shirt, pushing her feet into flip-flops, barely pausing for breath as she almost ran from the pool house and into the office, where Andreas was standing by the window, silhouetted against the setting sun, as he waited for her.

‘What’s happened? Is there something wrong?’

‘You tell me.’

There was nothing of the ardent, caring husband in his tone; nothing of the passionate lover who had torn himself so reluctantly from her arms and from their bed just a short time before. What could have happened to have changed his mind and his mood so terribly?

‘Andreas? What’s happened? What’s this about?’

‘You tell me what it’s about. Tell me about Roy Stanton.’

He flung the name at her like a weapon, watching through narrowed eyes so that he caught the way she flinched, the sudden step she took backwards in uncontrolled shock.

‘So you do know the name, then?’

It was too late to deny it. Her reaction had already given her away.

‘How—how did you…?’

‘How did I find out?’

An arrogant flick of his wrist tossed away the question as so obvious that it didn’t need an answer.

‘An investigation into these things is easy to arrange.’

‘You—had me investigated!’ She sounded as appalled as she felt. And she felt even worse when Andreas shrugged off that question too, with even less concern than he had given the first.

‘I have every right to know what my prospective wife is doing with the small fortune I’ve given her. And I do not believe that you have the right to judge my actions when what you did was give that money to some other man. Or are you claiming that that’s not true?’

‘No…’

Becca sank down onto one of the wooden benches in the changing room as the bitter memories of that day took all the strength from her legs. Andreas hadn’t given her a chance to explain. He had bombarded her with questions like some brutal counsel for the prosecution, demanding answers to a new one even while she was still stumbling over the answer to the last. And all the time she had been bound by the promise she had made to Macy. The promise to her newly discovered sister. The sister she had never known she had until just a few short weeks before.

At first Macy had wanted nothing to do with her but then suddenly she had phoned, asking to meet, asking for help. But she had made Becca promise that she wouldn’t tell a soul.

‘No, I’m not claiming that.’

‘You gave this man money?’ Andreas had thundered. ‘All the money I gave you, by the look of it.’

‘You said it was mine!’

‘You know damn well that I gave that to you to buy your wedding dress and anything else you wanted for—’

‘Are you saying that the dress I wore wasn’t good enough?’ Becca rushed in, jumping to the defensive in a panic as she struggled to think of some explanation she could give him.

Her mind was reeling in shock at just the thought that Andreas had found out about Roy Stanton. There was no reason at all that he should even know the man’s name. And so she tried to stall him, using any argument she could to distract him while she tried to work out just what was happening and how she could possibly answer him at all.

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