Rumours: The Dishonoured Copelands: The Fallen Greek Bride (The Disgraced Copelands) / His Defiant Desert Queen (The Disgraced Copelands) / Her Sinful Secret (The Disgraced Copelands). Jane Porter
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she whispered, reaching out to him, her hand settling on his arm. “Don’t do that, don’t. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did, shouldn’t have said it how I did. It was wrong. I was wrong. I was upset.”
His body hardened instantly at her touch, and he glanced down at her hand where it clung to his forearm. He could feel her warmth through the softness of the cashmere, and the press of her fingers, and it was nothing at all, and yet it was everything, too. Nothing and everything at the same time.
He looked away from her hand, up into her eyes, angry with her all over again, but also angry with himself. How could he have not known how she felt? How could he have not realized that she didn’t enjoy … him … them?
“Rest assured that I will not take advantage of you while you are here,” he said, trying to ease some of the tension rippling through him. “You are safe in the villa,” he continued, hating that he suddenly felt like a monster. He wasn’t a monster. Not even close. It’s true he could be ruthless in business, and he had a reputation for being a fierce negotiator, a brilliant strategist, an analytical executive, as well as a demanding boss, but that didn’t make him an ogre and he’d never knowingly hurt a woman, much less his wife. “You are safe from me.”
“Drakon.”
“I’ll have your bag taken up to the Angelica Suite,” he said. “It’s the second master suite, on the third floor, the suite one with the frescoed ceiling.”
“I remember it.”
“It’s in the opposite wing of where I’m staying but it should give you privacy and I think you’ll find it quite comfortable. I can show you the way now.”
“There’s no need to take me there,” she said hoarsely. “I remember the suite.”
“Fine. Then I’ll let you find your way, and as I have quite a few things to do, I’ll eat as I work, and I’ll have a light lunch sent to you in your room, but we’ll need to meet later so I can fill you in on the arrangements I’ve been able to make for your father.”
Morgan was glad to escape to her room, desperate to get away from Drakon and that intense physical awareness of him….
She’d hurt him. What she’d said earlier, about their sex life, about their marriage, it’d hurt him terribly and she felt guilty and sorry. So very sorry since she knew Drakon would never do anything to hurt her. He’d always been so protective of her but he was also so very physical, so carnal and sexual and she was a little afraid of it. And him. Not when she was with him, making love to him, but later, when he was gone, separated from her. It was then that she analyzed their relationship, and what they did and how they did it and how little control she had with him.
It frightened her that she lost control with him.
Frightened her that he had so much power and she had so little.
It had niggled at her during their honeymoon, but their picnics and dinners out and the afternoon trips on his yacht were so fun and romantic that she could almost forget how fierce and shattering the sex was when he was charming and attentive and affectionate. But in Athens when he disappeared into his work life, his real life, the raw nature of their sex life struck her as ugly, and she became ugly and it all began to unravel, very, very quickly.
Upstairs in her suite, Morgan barely had time to open the two sets of French doors before a knock sounded on the outer bedroom door, letting her know her overnight bag had arrived. She thanked the housemaid and then returned to the first of the two generous balconies with the stunning view.
She had never tired of this view. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could tire of it.
The Amalfi Coast’s intense blues and greens contrasted by rugged rock had inspired her very first jewelry collection. She’d worked with polished labradorite, blue chalcedony, paua shell, lapis lazuli and Chinese turquoise, stones she’d acquired on two extensive shopping trips through Southeast Asia, from Hong Kong to Singapore to Bali.
It’d been a three-month shopping expedition that big sister Tori had accompanied her on for the first month, and then Logan came for the second month, and Jemma for the third.
By the time Morgan returned to New York, she’d filled two enormous trunks of stones and had a briefcase and laptop full of sketches and the first orders from Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. The designs were pure fantasy—a stunning collection of statement-making collars, cuffs and drop earrings—and had cost her a fortune in stone. It had tested her ability to execute her ideas, but had ended up being worth every stress and struggle as the Amalfi Collection turned out to be a huge success, generating significant media attention, as well as the attention of every fashion designer and fashion publicist of note, never mind the starlets, celebrities and socialites who all wanted a Morgan Copeland statement piece.
Morgan’s second collection, Jasper Ice, had been inspired by her love of the Canadian Rockies and ski trips to Banff and Lake Louise. The collection was something that an ice princess in a frozen tundra would wear—frosty and shimmering pieces in white, silver, blush, beige and pale gold. The second collection did almost as well as the first, and garnered even more media with mentions in virtually every fashion magazine in North America, Europe and Australia, and then photographed on celebrities and young royals, like the Saudi princess who had worn a gorgeous pink diamond cuff for her wedding.
Morgan was glad Jasper Ice did well, but the cool, frozen beauty of the collection was too much like her numb emotional state, when she’d been so fiercely, frantically alive and in love with Drakon Xanthis.
Drakon, though, was the last person she wanted to think of, especially when she was enjoying the heady rush of success, and for a while she had been very good at blocking him out of her mind, but then one October day, she had been walking with Jemma to lunch and she had spotted a man in a limousine. He’d had a beard and his hair was long but his eyes reminded her so much of Drakon that for a moment she thought it was him.
She had kept walking, thinking she’d escaped, but then a block away from her shop, she’d had to stop, lean against a building and fight for air.
She’d felt like she was having a heart attack. Her chest hurt, the muscles seizing, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air, couldn’t even speak. She opened her mouth, stared at Jemma, wanting, needing help, but she couldn’t make a sound. Then everything went black.
When she woke up, she’d been in an ambulance, and then when she woke again, she was in a bed in the emergency room. She’d spent the next ten days in the hospital, six in ICU, being seen by cardiac specialists. The specialists explained that her extreme weight loss had damaged her heart, and they warned her that if she didn’t make immediate and drastic changes, she could die of heart failure.
But Morgan hadn’t been dieting. She didn’t want to lose weight. She had just found it impossible to eat when her heart was broken. But she wasn’t a fool, she understood the gravity of her situation, and recognized she was in trouble.
During the day they’d fed her special shakes and meals and at night she’d dreamed of Drakon, and the dreams had been so vivid and intense that she’d woke desperate each morning to actually see him. She made the mistake of telling Logan that she was dreaming about Drakon every night, and Logan had told their mother, who then told the doctors, and before Morgan knew it, the psychiatrists were back with their pills and questions and notepads.
Did she understand the difference between reality and fantasy?
Did she understand the meaning of wish fulfillment?
Did she want to die?
It would have been puzzling if she hadn’t been through all this before at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and then at the Wallace Home for a year after that. But she had been through it before so she found the doctors with their clipboards and questions and colorful assortment of pills annoying and even somewhat amusing.
She’d refused the pills. She’d answered some questions.