A Stormy Greek Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page A

readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands, she felt curiously more in control again.
    ‘How did you know? How did you guess?’ she suddenly pressed, unable to resist asking that question.
    ‘You told me. You betrayed yourself by the expression in your eyes, your face, your very responses. You looked and acted guilty.’
    ‘Because that’s how I feel and it’s really not fairbecause not all of this is my fault,’ Billie reasoned with a defensive edge of defiance. ‘You can’t be so judgemental about lies. Not everything is that black and white.’
    ‘Spare me the moral philosophy speech,’ Alexei derided. ‘You may be my wife but one thing hasn’t changed: I still expect a straight answer to a direct question.’
    ‘You asked me who my first lover was but, quite honestly, you have no right to ask me that question!’ Billie dared, flashing that answer back to him in retribution.
    Alexei dealt her an arrested appraisal, her insubordination clearly coming as an unwelcome surprise to him.
    Billie was trembling. ‘I mean, how do you even dare to ask me that question?’
    His golden gaze was splinteringly hard and unyielding. ‘I dare because you’re my wife and nothing in your life should be hidden from me.’
    Billie tried and failed to swallow at that bold, startlingly idealistic expectation. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was flickering wildly. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten the taut dryness of her full lower lip. ‘ You were my first lover…but you don’t remember the time we spent together—’
    His ebony brows drew together. ‘What the hell kind of nonsensical claim is that?’ Alexei demanded, his raw impatience unhidden.
    ‘It may sound like nonsense to you at this moment, but it’s still the truth. On the night of your parents’ funeral, when everyone else had gone home, you had been drinking and you went to bed with me,’ Billie recounted, her agitated fingers knotting into the too long sleeves of her robe and tugging in a restive motion at the cuffs.
    ‘Any moment now you’ll be telling me that you were abducted by aliens! Are you crazy?’ Alexei jibed, tossing back the bedding and springing from the bed, a tall, powerful figure all the more daunting unclad. ‘Or are you drunk? That’s the only explanation I can come up with!’
    ‘We made love in the guest suite where I was staying at the time. We had no contraception. You were heading back to your own room for condoms when you tripped and fell down the steps by the swimming pool. When you came round, you didn’t remember that you’d been with me…’ Billie’s taut voice quivered with tension as he came to a halt, wheeled round and stared at her with frowning questioning force: she had finally won his full attention. ‘You thought you’d been in the swimming pool because your hair was damp but you’d only been in the shower…’
    Dark eyes blazing wrathful gold, he studied her, his lean, strong visage clenched into forbidding lines. ‘No, Billie,’ he cut in icily. ‘You’re very ingenious but I won’t fall for a story like that. You tell me that we slept together on the one night of my life that I can’t fully recall and you expect me to believe you? How stupid do you think I am?’
    In a growing state of confusion, Billie gazed back at him. She had known it would be a challenge to make him believe her, but it had not crossed her mind that he might suspect her of fitting fictional facts to an actual event to provide back-up for what he deemed to be lies. ‘But we really were together that night.’
    ‘So, according to you, unlike every other woman I have ever met, you gave me your body and expected nothing in return—not even an acknowledgement fromme?’ Alexei slashed back at her with incredulous scorn. ‘At least come up with lies that make some sense!’
    Anger licked like a hungry flame out of her bone-deep