She clenched her hands together, twisting her fingers tightly in her misery. She made herself meet those blank dark eyes that were resting on her with a weight she could not bear. Crushing the air in her lungs, making it impossible to speak. Yet speak she must. Her eyes were huge, imploring him to understand.
‘So, you see, Xandros...’ She faltered once more, and then went on—because what else was there to do now but play it out to the bitter end? Even though it was tearing her into ragged shreds. ‘When your mother told me about Ariadne... Well, it’s all worked out for the best, hasn’t it?’ Her voice flattened, and she forced herself on. ‘Everything has come together just the way you originally wanted! And for my father, too—so he won’t delay things any more. You’ll get your merger and you’ll get the wife you always planned to have—the one your mother wanted for you, who she said was ideally suited to you—and my father will get his Lakaris grandson. And you will also get the next Lakaris heir to continue your bloodline.’
She swallowed again, felt razors in her throat.
‘It’s a happy ending all round,’ she said.
Except for me.
She felt herself give a silent cry of anguish. But then it had never been going to be a happy ending for her, had it? And not just because of her father’s ultimatum.
Because even with the merger Xandros would have terminated our marriage after six months. I would have lost him anyway. So what’s the difference if that loss has happened sooner and I have to bear seeing my half-sister get the life that I would give everything to have...?
The pain was just the same.
She took another razored breath, feeling the torment of seeing Xandros again—parting from him again—knife through her.
Xandros was looking at her, his dark eyes holding hers. Yet suddenly they were veiled. Unreadable.
‘The next Lakaris heir...’
His deep voice echoed hers. Something shifted in his eyes, in those dark, lambent depths. Something she could not recognise. She saw him take a breath, heavy and incised, and then he spoke again, his shoulders flexing minutely.
‘Yes, well...’ he said, and there was a heaviness in his voice that made no sense. ‘That won’t exactly be the case.’
Rosalie swallowed. ‘I suppose Ariadne’s baby might be a girl,’ she heard herself reply—as if discussing its gender were just a passing topic of conversation, instead of a nail in the lid of the coffin of her stupid and pathetic hopes, a nail driven into her breaking heart.
‘It can be anything it likes!’ Xandros retorted.
Something shifted in his eyes again—something that seemed to ignite in them.
‘Because it isn’t mine.’
Rosalie could only stare, uncomprehending, feeling a flame deep within her that was like a searing point of light...a laser that shot with blinding brilliance.
She was staring at him, her face blank. It took all Xandros’s strength to hold her gaze to tell her what she needed to hear.
‘It would be a biological impossibility for it to be so,’ he went on, his eyes never leaving her gaunt, strained face.
He saw her face work.
‘But the timing—your mother told me. Ariadne’s into her second trimester, so her pregnancy must have begun while she was still...still engaged to you...’
His jaw steeled. ‘Rosalie, why do you think Ariadne refused to marry me? I thought it was simply because she balked at doing her father’s bidding. But there was another reason.’ He took an incising breath, his mouth pressed tight. ‘A reason I had already started to suspect, and which she has now confirmed to me. She met someone else. Someone who fathered her baby. There can be no doubt about it! Her baby cannot be mine, because the most I ever shared with your half-sister was a goodnight kiss!’
He looked at her. Her grey-green eyes were distended. Those eyes that had captivated him from the first—that still did. That always would...
‘So now it’s you who must see, Rosalie.’
But what did she see? What did this woman who had fled from him really see?
Too much and not enough.
He felt emotion crush his lungs. Emotion he needed to hold back.
‘My mother got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Ariadne arrived out of the blue at the house, her pregnancy showing, and my mother jumped to what to her was the obvious conclusion. The wrong conclusion! When Ariadne realised what my mother had assumed she phoned me straight away. But it was too late.’ His voice changed. ‘You’d gone. Disappeared to London. Filed for divorce.’
He got up suddenly, striding restlessly to the window and back again, wheeling around to look down on her where she was sitting limply, immobile, white as a sheet.
‘A completely unnecessary divorce,’ he said quietly.
He saw the expression in her eyes change, saw something moving in them. And for the first time since Ariadne had phoned him at the airport in Thessaloniki he felt hope.
But then it was gone. And her voice, when she spoke, was as strained as it had been before, stumbling over her words.
‘But it is still going to be necessary,’ she said heavily. ‘Our divorce. Because of what my father threw at me. His impossible demand that unless... Until...until I’m pregnant the merger you married me to get will never happen.’
He plunged his hands into his pockets. Steeled his jaw. Took a breath before saying what he had to say now.
‘There won’t be a merger,’ he said. ‘I’m pulling out of it.’
Xandros was looking at her. He was silhouetted against the drawn window drapes, hands plunged into his trouser pockets, his stance stiff, face expressionless. And yet in his eyes...
Rosalie felt a pulse start to thump in her throat. Hammering in her veins.
‘You’re pulling out?’ she echoed, her voice as blank as her face. ‘But why?’
‘Why? Because I never...never...want you to doubt the reason I say this to you now.’
Something flashed across his face and the pulse at her throat thumped more strongly yet. The set of his broad shoulders seemed different, somehow, but still tense.
‘Why,’ he asked slowly, his eyes never leaving her, ‘do you call your father’s demand “impossible”?’
She swallowed. There were still razor blades in her throat, drawing blood...
‘Because...because...we were only meant to be married for half a year! My getting pregnant would have been a disaster!’
His eyes were resting on her...so dark. So unreadable.
‘Would it?’