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‘It’s not obvious,’ Leonidas added lazily. ‘I think it’s more a trick of expression. Your smile reminded me of her.’
Maribel kept on bravely smiling at that news, even though she felt much more like crying. The coolness inside her was spreading like clammy shock through her limbs and chilling her to the bone. In what way could she possibly resemble the late and very beautiful Imogen? She scarcely needed to be told that it could only have been a trick of expression. After all, Imogen had been six inches taller with classic features, long blonde hair and a slender, perfect figure that looked fabulous in even the most unflattering outfit. When Hermione Stratton had pointed out that Maribel could not compare to her late daughter in looks or personality, she had only spoken the truth. Maribel had always accepted that reality. But she was totally devastated when the man she loved told her that she reminded him of Imogen. Had Leonidas slept with her the night that Elias was conceived, purely because of her elusive similarity to her late cousin? In short, had Leonidas been much more attached to Imogen than Maribel had ever been prepared to acknowledge? Slowly, she eased her limp fingers out of his.
A silence stretched that was heavy and long and when the phone buzzed it sounded incredibly loud. Darkness having chasing the gold from his hard gaze, Leonidas sat up in an impatient movement and reached for it. He switched from English to French. ‘Josette?’
Maribel also spoke fluent French and she had no trouble working out who the female caller was. Josette Dawnay, the supermodel, was, according to popular report, one of Leonidas’ long-term lovers. A gorgeous brunette with reputedly the longest legs on the catwalk, she had most recently accompanied Leonidas to the Cannes film festival. Her risqué reputation had only been heightened by her well-documented loathing of wearing undergarments with the very short skirts that she favoured.
‘At your apartment?’ Leonidas murmured sibilantly. ‘Why not? I won’t make it much before ten, though.’
Maribel breathed in so deep, she felt light-headed. It did not clear the leaden sensation of nausea coiled in her sensitive tummy. She scrambled out of bed. She crawled over the floor, got her dress, forced her way into it and stood up, wriggling violently to do up the zip. All the while, Leonidas talked in idiomatic French and watched her with cool dark eyes as though she were the floor show put on to entertain him.
As she straightened and walked round the side of the bed he murmured, ‘What are you doing now?’
Maribel said nothing. She lifted the water decanter from the cabinet and upended it on his lap.
With a growl of disbelief, Leonidas sprang out of the bed and finished his call. As magnificent naked as a bronzed Greek god, he shook off water and surveyed her with outrage. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘You’ve had your deal sweetener and that’s as far as it goes. I think you could term this the cooling-off period. If you decide that you still want me to marry you, we need to get one fact straight beforehand,’ Maribel breathed with ringing scorn. ‘I will not sleep with you while you are sleeping with other women.’
‘Theos mou…you presume to dictate terms to me?’ Leonidas raked at her with sizzling bite.
‘Don’t be so prejudiced. This could well be the best offer you’ve ever had, so think long and hard before you refuse it,’ Maribel advised, violet eyes flashing with angry warning. ‘Let our marriage be platonic and I will ignore your affairs, because I will not consider you to be my husband. Insist on anything more intimate and I will watch your every move and make your life hell if you betray me!’
‘Even as my wife, you will not tell me what to do,’ Leonidas intoned with all the chilling assurance of his forceful, arrogant character. He stared at her as she reached for the door handle. ‘Walk out of this bedroom before morning and I will be angry with you, hara mou.’
‘Then you’re going to be angry.’ After listening to that dialogue with Josette Dawnay and having her every worst fear fulfilled, Maribel was too indignant and upset to linger beneath his shrewd scrutiny. ‘I’ll check on Elias and sleep in one of the other rooms. Goodnight.’
‘As you wish.’ His lean, darkly handsome face set in forbidding lines of condemnation, Leonidas made no further attempt to dissuade her from leaving.
Maribel went in to see her son, who was slumbering peacefully in his cot. Exchanging a valiant smile with Diane, who had appeared in the doorway of the connecting room, she departed again. She chose a bedroom just across the corridor and closed the door behind her. She felt dead inside, but her mind was going crazy throwing up wounding thoughts and images.
