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‘It makes sense. I doubt that your father deliberately went out to have an affair, unless that sort of behaviour was the norm for him.’
‘As far as I know, it wasn’t. He was a conservative man. Why are we even talking about this on our wedding day?’ Ari demanded with a frown as he grasped her slender hand and squeezed it in emphasis.
‘I was being nosy.’
Ari laughed, his tension vanishing, his dark golden eyes gleaming. ‘You look incredible in that dress,’ he told her. ‘I like the fact that it’s more casual. It suits you.’
In a very grand function room, they greeted their guests. Cleo saw very few recognisable faces around her, but her impression that there was a great number of beautiful women increased, particularly once she had identified four, not from personal acquaintance but by the fact they were celebrities who were often in the newspapers. Two were models, one was a soap actress and another a very rich socialite. And from the amount of snooping she had done into Ari’s private life on the internet, she was also aware that at some stage he had been linked to all four women.
‘You invited ex-girlfriends,’ she remarked in a mild tone that could not be interpreted as censorious for she was reluctant to register an objection to that decision.
‘Most remain friends and discreet about our past connection,’ Ari parried without batting a magnificent curling black eyelash at her comment.
‘There seem to be quite a few of them,’ Cleo pointed out, very much aware of the extra degree of critical curiosity such ladies subjected her to and of their often overly familiar manner of greeting Ari. An avalanche of sultry looks, kisses and lingering touches had come his way, every woman vying with the next to claim that revealing physical bond. Their enthusiasm for touching him was a dead giveaway. Body language did reveal a great deal, Cleo conceded unhappily, far from content that Ari had chosen to invite so many of his former lovers to attend their wedding. Shouldn’therfeelings have been taken into account? What had happened to the bride’s right to enjoy a tranquil day of happiness?
‘How come they’re all still friends with you?’ she enquired, unable to swallow back that obvious question.
‘Why wouldn’t they be? I never promised them anything that I didn’t deliver.’ Ari parried that further question with perceptible impatience at her continuing interest in the subject. ‘Nothing was ever exclusive. It was casual. We’d go out, have a good time, enjoy a few intimate hours together. It was meaningless.’
Just asshemight have been had Ari not developed a greater hunger for her after their single encounter, Cleo found herself thinking wretchedly. Troubled by his entitled attitude, she visited the cloakroom to freshen up before they took their seats. She was in a cubicle when she heard several female voices belittling the bride and she stayed put, reluctant to embrace the embarrassment of meeting the rude guests but guessing that she was undoubtedly listening to Ari’s former lovers dissecting her. It was jealousy, envy, she told herself soothingly, but she could not forget that Ari was only marrying her to improve his credentials as a prospective parent for his niece, Lucy. That was a sobering slap in the face lest there was a risk of her getting too big for her boots.
‘I think she’s pregnant. She barely sipped the champagne and that hippy dress of hers is cut loose at the front,’ a woman chimed in confidently. ‘It’s the oldest trick in the book, but itwouldexplain why he’s marrying her.’
A door opened and then another, and the voices faded away. Cheeks flushed with temper and mortification, Cleo emerged from her hiding place, annoyed that she had remained concealed but all too conscious that Ari would not have thanked her for confronting friends of his about their nasty outlook and cruel comments.
It didn’t help her mood to return to the reception and find a lithe brunette in a daringly styled cerise-pink dress flirting like crazy with Ari. The bright smile already fixed to her generous mouth stiffened a little more at the sight.
As the brunette grudgingly gave way to her for them to take their seats at the top table, Cleo murmured, ‘Before you met me, you lived like a sultan with a harem, didn’t you?’
Straight ebony brows lowering over his spectacular tawny eyes, Ari shot her an incredulous glance. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘All those women vying for your attention, nobody daring to complain lest you lose interest, nobody demanding fidelity or anything else that might curtail your freedom,’ Cleo clarified with acid sweetness. ‘Marriage promises to be a big boring shock for you. How on earth are you planning to manage without your harem?’
Ari gazed back at her in disbelief. It had never once crossed his mind to see his sex life in such a light. He reckoned he could see some point in her censure. He had virtually picked women out of a wide selection of willing contenders, but what was that to do with Cleo now? At the point when he had been admiring Cleo’s wondrous lack of vanity, competitiveness and drama in comparison to other women he had known, she chose to blindside him with an attack he hadn’t foreseen, and he was very much taken aback.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SOWHATIFitwaslike that?’ Ari countered with a lethal cutting edge to his dark, deep drawl and a careless shrug of dismissal, as though his bride’s opinion of his past mattered not in the smallest way. ‘How I conducted my sex life prior to our marriage is, thankfully, not your problem.’
Cleo went white at his derisive tone, but she tilted her chin up in challenge. ‘You made it my problem when you chose to invite every darned one of them to the wedding,’ she retorted in a terse undertone.
Silence fell then and Cleo busied herself chatting to the elderly cousin who had been chosen, as Ari’s most senior surviving relative, to sit by her side. Ari’s best man made a very amusing speech, but that was the only speech, as her mother had had no desire to speak up amongst strangers and Cleo hadn’t had any bridesmaids. As the bridal couple stepped onto the dance floor to open the dancing, the silence between them thundered, but she could see that as long as they both spoke to other people and smiled readily, nobody was the slightest bit suspicious that the bride and groom might already have fallen out.
Beneath the show, however, she could feel Ari’s tension in the tautness of his lean, powerful body against hers and in the tightness at the corners of his sculpted lips. He held her lightly and did not pull her close, and as soon as the dance was over, he went off to socialise and Cleo joined her family. It was a ridiculouslycivilisedrow, she conceded ruefully.
The sunshine was fading softly into dusk when Ari suggested they leave. A full-scale party was taking place by then. Her family had gone down to the beach, where a barbecue was burning, a bar was operating and Caribbean music was playing.
‘I should get changed,’ Cleo said awkwardly.
‘I’m afraid you can’t yet. All your luggage has already been transferred to the house,’ Ari informed her, long fingers brushing her spine as he urged her in the direction of the exit.
Cleo had taken her leave of her mother when the whole group chose the informality of the beach party. Another SUV awaited them outside the hotel with the rear passenger door wide for their entry. Ari strode round the bonnet and climbed into the front passenger seat.
Clearly, she wasn’t exactly flavour of the month, Cleo acknowledged, but, rather than her feeling rebuked and put in her place, Cleo’s annoyance was growing. How dared he behave as though what she had said was unreasonable? Prior to meeting her, Ari had behaved exactly like a sultan with a harem, cherry-picking whichever willing beauty he chose from a wide pool of choice as and when he wanted without any need to offer anything more than a fun few hours. He had no experience with ordinary relationships. He was unable to see why she should feel angry and hurt by the presence of his previous lovers at what should have beenherspecial day. So, she would have to show him in terms that he could understand.
After a drive along the sea road, the SUV cut down a lane surrounded first by dense oak woods and then by orchards. She saw orange and lemon trees and other fruit trees she couldn’t identify before the car moved back into the fading sunlight to approach a very large and long stone-and wood-built house overlooking a secluded bay. It was a beach house, she reckoned, going by the many open patio doors and the wide surrounding terraces, but it was a Stefanos property and therefore it was a beach house on steroids.
They walked into the house, where Ari shared a brisk exchange in Greek with the older woman awaiting them. He introduced her as Delphine, who then took her leave.
