Stranded with Her Greek Tycoon Page 16

  He was six feet two of dark-haired, green-eyed temptation enticing her into forgetting everything she’d learned about what she needed while they’d been apart. ‘But I have a job in Australia. A good life.’ A hard-won life of security and certainty, a private life of answering to no one but herself.

  A lonely life with no Cristos to warm her bed and her heart.

  ‘You can have a better life with me,’ he said dismissively. ‘A new job in Europe.’ She’d forgotten how arrogant he could be. How certain he was about the decisions he made. But then he bowed his head. ‘I can’t lose you again, Hayley.’ Along with that arrogance was a hint of uncertainty, of vulnerability, that tugged at her heart. It was one of the reasons she had fallen so deeply in love with him back when they’d been students.

  ‘I don’t want to lose you again either.’ She was suddenly very sure of that. She had never wanted any man but him. But she had to weigh up the costs of—again—giving up her life for him.

  With all the soul searching this morning, she found herself digging deeper into her own motivations. Was this what she’d secretly wanted all along—from the time she’d packed her bag back in Sydney? She hadn’t needed to deliver the divorce documents in person—in fact she’d been advised against it. Deep down had she hoped, by her coming to Greece, she and Cristos would rediscover what they’d lost?

  That they would fall in love again?

  ‘We’ve wasted so much time already,’ he said. ‘Why waste any more spent apart?’ His hands rested possessively on her shoulders. ‘We were happy at the start. We can be happy again. I guarantee it. Say yes, Kyria Theofanis, like you said yes when I asked you to marry me the first time.’

  It had been so long since she’d been called Mrs. Yes, she wanted to be his wife again. She couldn’t risk losing him a second time.

  She took a deep breath. Excitement rippled through her. Time to commit. To reclaim the man she loved as her husband. ‘Cristos, I want—’

  His phone sounded again, its shrill tone intruding on the quiet and privacy of the honeymoon suite. He uttered one of those interesting Greek swear words. ‘Alex again. I don’t have to answer it to know he wants me downstairs. It must be pandemonium with everyone wanting to get home.’

  She frowned. ‘Why does he need you? I know he’s your cousin and your friend. But surely there are others who can help him.’ Wasn’t being here with her more important?

  ‘Because I’m co-owner of the resort. I’m as much responsible for whatever is happening as he is.’

  Hayley struggled to get enough air to fill her lungs. This was a multimillion-euro property. ‘Since when?’

  ‘I invested in Pevezzo Athina early, when it was just a dream in Alex’s hotelier heart. It’s an investment that’s paid off handsomely already.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  More secrets.

  ‘We hadn’t had the opportunity to have the money conversation yet.’

  ‘What do you mean? You said you were comfortable. But you must be more than comfortable to be able to afford a place like this.’

  ‘You could say that. Dell likes to call me the secret millionaire. Multimillionaire is a more apt description. As my wife, you won’t have to worry about money ever again, koukla.’

  She stepped back to release his hands from her shoulders. ‘Were you testing me? Keeping your millions out of the equation in case they swayed my decision to reconcile with you?’

  He frowned. ‘Of course not. Why would you think that? My fortune is not something I boast about but I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I was lucky to be in at the beginning of exciting new developments—shopping apps and transport-sharing apps, pretty-much-anything-sharing apps. The internet couldn’t get enough of them back then. I sold my initial investments at the top of the market.’

  His phone rang again. Then again. And again. He scowled. ‘I have to get down there. Just to see what’s so urgent. Don’t go anywhere, Hayley. Stay here. Please. I’ll be back.’

  She was too shocked to say anything other than yes. She watched as he hastily dressed in the clothes she had wrestled off him last night and tossed on the floor.

  More secrets and lies.

  She’d thought he’d spilled all his truths the night before. She had nothing more to lay on the table. But not her husband.

  Her multimillionaire husband.

  What else hadn’t he told her?

  ‘Kiss me, Hayley. I know the bank balance comes as a shock. But not a bad kind of shock, right? Remember how skint we were when we were first together?’

  ‘It just takes some getting used to.’

  ‘Everything I’ve done was for you, koukla. And without you, I’m worth nothing. Not a cent, penny or lepton.’

  She rose up on tiptoe to kiss him on his mouth. Even that swift touch made her shudder with pleasure. His eyes darkened and he returned the kiss, hard and possessive. ‘I’ll call you on that kiss when I get back,’ he said, his voice deep and husky and laden with promise.

  He slammed the door shut behind him. Hayley heard his footsteps disappear down the marble corridor towards the stairs. In a daze, she looked around the room. The rumpled sheets. Her silk pyjamas discarded on the floor. His glass of water on the table beside the bed. An empty bottle of health drink from the fridge. He’d joked he needed to restore his stamina after their third—or was it their fourth?—bout of lovemaking. She’d insisted on sharing it because she’d needed the stamina too. His scent—their mingled scents—hung in the air. The room already had the familiar scent of the rooms they’d shared during their married life. It echoed with his absence.

  She was back in that tiny apartment in Milan. Cristos off at work doing his thing, her left on her own, kept out of the picture. Pushed firmly right back down on the lowest rungs of the decision-making perch. Once again she felt like that little brown peahen pecking away at her life in the shadow of her glamorous peacock husband. Nothing had changed. He hadn’t changed.

  But she had. Back with Cristos, it would be too easy to lose herself again. Now she was used to a different life. A life she’d fought hard for, where she sat proudly on the top perch when it came to determining how she lived it. Had Cristos grown too rich and powerful to ever want to share it with her? Too used to having his own way? She couldn’t go back there. And the longer she stayed with him, the more difficult it would be to leave.

  There would be a boat going back to Nidri this morning. She needed to get down to the dock so she could be among the first to leave the island.

  It would take her five minutes to pack everything she had into her handbag. She would take only what she’d come with. Even Dell’s pink dress and the beautiful shoes from Penelope she would leave behind. She wanted nothing that would remind her of her time on Kosmimo.

  * * *

  As Cristos had predicted, it was chaos downstairs with everyone who wanted to get off the island determined to be in the first boat. He’d got immediately caught up in it, especially as he was not only a co-owner of the resort, but also captain of a boat with the capacity to carry a good number of passengers.

  He wished he’d brought Hayley down with him to help. After all, she would have a stake in the resort too. Not to mention a calm, efficient manner. Then the truth of what he’d done hit him with the impact of a sledgehammer. He totally ignored a friend of Alex’s who was demanding to be first on board. Why the hell had he left Hayley back up in that room by herself? As he’d done back in Milan. He cursed himself under his breath for his stupidity. Only it couldn’t have been under his breath as the guy he was dealing with took offence and kicked up a stink about his rudeness.

  He didn’t care. The only thing to concern him was what an idiot he’d been. Hayley hadn’t even said yes to his new proposal and he’d slid right back into the behaviour that had driven her from him. He understood now that it wasn’t just th
e day she’d lost the baby that he’d let her down. It was also the build-up to that day, as he had so relentlessly pursued a policy for the future without consulting her. What had she said about being booted off the perch?

  He had to get back up to that room. Apologise. Grovel. And explain how different things would be if she took him back. How they would go back to the equal partnership that had started their marriage. When they’d been happy.

  But she wasn’t in the room. Her jeans, her sweatshirt and the pink dress were neatly folded on the bed. Everything she’d acquired on the island, in fact, was still in the room. Her blue coat and her smart boots were gone from the closet. Of course she could have gone outside to wave goodbye to the guests departing the island. But the echoing emptiness of the room didn’t suggest that. He took the marble stairs two at a time.

  He checked the common areas downstairs. No Hayley. There were still a good number of people milling about. Including Arianna, who immediately approached him. ‘Are you looking for your wife?’ asked Arianna.

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly, not trusting himself to say more to the spiteful woman who had been so rude to Hayley.

  ‘I saw her heading down to the dock with the others leaving on the boat to Nidri. She was all dressed up to go. Sorry it didn’t work out with you two.’ She didn’t sound sorry at all.

  Cristos brushed past her without a further word, not caring if she thought him ill-mannered. He didn’t want this woman on Kosmimo or anywhere near him. If Penelope wanted him to fix things with Hayley, she could get Arianna out of their hair. Not that he needed his grandparent’s urging to fix things with his wife. He’d made that decision all on his own. And then totally stuffed up the execution of it.

  He ran down the steps that led to the bay, heedless of the puddles of melting snow. Immediately he saw Hayley, not waiting on the dock with the others, but sitting a good distance away to the side on a rustic bench Alex had placed there because it was such a pleasant place to sit in summer. It seemed a lonely place to be in winter.

  The Ionian Sea stretched out ahead of her, the wooded hills of the island behind. She looked small and vulnerable in the landscape, and very alone. Cristos fisted his hands beside him. He could tell by the slump of her shoulders and her stillness that she was hurting.

  His fault.

  She shouldn’t be sitting there alone and melancholy. They had wasted too many years apart. She should be with him, cherished and loved and making a new life together. But it seemed he still had some work ahead of him to convince her of that.

  He didn’t immediately alert her to his presence, just took the moments before she would sense he was there to observe her.

  She was wearing the blue coat he’d bought her back in Italy from a favourite designer he’d walked for at Milan Fashion Week. He’d thought it would be perfect for his lovely wife. But Hayley hadn’t been as excited about the expensive gift as he’d thought. She had only just had her pregnancy confirmed and hadn’t been showing at all but she might already have been suffering from depression.

  Was she depressed now? With her head bowed she certainly looked it. But what did he know about depression? Only that it meant more than just feeling down sometimes, that it was an illness. No matter, he would love and cherish her all the more.

  She needed him.

  He cleared the distance to the bench. She must have heard him but she didn’t turn around. ‘May I sit next to you, Lady in Blue?’ he asked, not taking anything for granted.

  She nodded wordlessly, shuffled along to make room for him. She was wearing not just the coat, but also the trousers, sweater and boots she’d worn the day she’d arrived on the island. Her travelling outfit. Her hands were clasped together on her lap. He noticed she was only wearing one of her fine leather gloves on her right hand. Her rings were still on her bare left hand, he noted with relief.

  ‘You’re only wearing one glove,’ he said. ‘Isn’t your other hand cold?’

  ‘One of the goats ate the other one when I was helping Penelope put them away before the storm.’ She gave a watery smile.

  Her answer was so not what he’d expected that he laughed. ‘Koukla, you always surprise me.’ He wanted to reach out and take her cold little hand and warm it between his. But her body language screamed, Don’t touch!

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Thinking about my next step.’

  ‘All by yourself? I’d hoped your next step would be taken with me,’ he said.

  ‘So did I.’ She heaved a great sigh. When she turned to face him he saw her eyes were red-rimmed. He felt gutted that he had upset her.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ she said. ‘If I went back to you it would be more of the same. You ruling the roost, me clucking along below with never a compromise from you.’

  ‘That’s not true. I have changed, even if I didn’t show it this morning by leaving you in the hotel room. But how much more honest could I have been with you last night and this morning? I shared things with you that I’ve never told anyone.’

  ‘I appreciate that. But would you ever make a life decision that was about what I wanted? I want to be with you, Cristos, make no mistake about that. But it means giving up my life again. You want me to throw away everything I’ve achieved in Sydney, my career, my prospects, to stay here with you. I’d be as miserable as I was in Milan.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ he said. ‘We could work out a way to be together that suits us both.’

  Her chin tilted upward; her eyes challenged him. ‘What if you came with me to Australia?’

  ‘That’s a great idea. I’ve always wanted to visit Sydney, see where Alex and Dell came from, the restaurant my great-uncle started. I could easily live there with you.’

  ‘Really? What about your work?’

  ‘I can run my business anywhere there’s WiFi and an international airport. I just want to be with you, living as husband and wife. I honestly don’t care wherever that might be in the world.’

  Now he did take her bare hand. It was icy cold and he rubbed it between his own much larger hands. ‘We only started to talk about this a few hours ago. As you said, we’ve still got a way to go.’

  She caught his hand and closed hers over his. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you. I hope you’re not having second thoughts about me.’

  ‘Never. Not since the day we pledged to spend our lives together.’

  She turned her face for his kiss. It was short and very sweet, a kiss of comfort and confirmation. He could carry on kissing her all morning but there was more that needed to be said.

  ‘There’s something else I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘One more thing my family keeps hidden because of the shame.’

  She raised her brows. ‘About your father?’

  ‘My father died in prison.’

  ‘Cristos, no. I’m so sorry. Did he...end his own life?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ he said. ‘He died in prison on the day he was due to be released. In a fight, protecting a younger inmate in a notoriously overcrowded and understaffed hell-hole.’

  She gasped and her grip on his hands tightened. ‘So it was an honourable death.’

  ‘Yes. He died with honour, although that was no consolation to us. My mother and I were waiting outside for him to come through those prison gates. I was holding a balloon saying “welcome home Dad”. We waited for hours but he never came. When eventually we were told what had happened, that’s when I—a thirteen-year-old boy—saw the moment my mother’s heart broke. Not for all the wrongs he did to us and to others. Not for when he had stolen money from her purse to place a bet on a “sure thing”. Or purloined my pocket money. But when she realised she would never see him again—the man she adored.’

  ‘And you?’ Her voice broke.

  ‘That’s when I vowed that no woman I ever loved would go through what my m
other went through. My wife would be honoured and cherished and want for nothing. That was my only motivation in our marriage—to look after you. I made mistakes and I’m sorry for them. But everything I did, the modelling, the investments, the risk taking was for us. To secure our future. And the future of our children. More than anything I want our futures to be spent together.’

  ‘Oh, Cristos, I don’t know what to say.’ Tears glistened on her lashes.

  He cupped her chin in one hand, gently wiped away the tears with his other. ‘That’s what Greek men do. We protect our women. We look after our families. It’s in our blood. Don’t say anything, except that you’ll stay.’

  She blinked away the remaining tears. ‘Before I do, there’s one more thing. Not a secret, a worry. You mentioned children.’

  He nodded. ‘You know I want a family with you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I long to have your baby. But I’m petrified of getting pregnant again. The depression was so frightening. Both during the pregnancy and afterwards.’

  ‘You’re quite over the depression now?’

  ‘Yes, thank heaven.’

  ‘What do the doctors say? Is it likely to happen again with another pregnancy?’

  ‘They can’t predict how my hormones will react. The depression might strike, it might not.’

  ‘That’s simple, then. We won’t have children. It’s not worth it if you—’

  She put up her hand to stop him. ‘No. I’m prepared to take the risk. But not if it would be like last time. I can’t be left on my own to cope with it.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Or not cope as I did then.’

  He put his hands on her shoulders to reassure her. ‘It would be very different next time. I work from home. I would always be there for you when you needed me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I mean, it might not happen but if it did, if I—’