Irresistible Greeks Collection. Кэрол Мортимер
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thought that, because they were all on a relaxed Greek island, it might be okay for her to wear a denim skirt and a T-shirt to dinner. Big mistake. Her mother-in-law had been decked in silk and pearls, her disapproval freezing the warm Greek air as she had studied the laid-back appearance of her new daughter-in-law.
Lexi glared at him, realising that she was going to be subjected to that level of disapproval all over again. His mother had been frosty enough towards her when they’d been newly-weds. What was her attitude likely to be towards a wife who had left her precious son? ‘I’d like to know what the plan is,’ she said. ‘When are we going to Rhodes?’
‘Eager to get there, are you, Lex?’ His blue eyes mocked her.
‘Not really. But the sooner it’s done, then the sooner I can erase this whole ghastly incident from my mind.’ She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wondering if her words carried the lack of conviction she felt inside. Walking over to the dressing table, she picked up a hairbrush. ‘I can’t believe I’m back in this damned house,’ she muttered as she stared at her pinched reflection in the mirror.
‘Can’t you?’ Xenon watched as she began to pull a brush through the tumble of her hair and suddenly he realised he had missed this indefinable intimacy of married life. Watching his wife get dressed—an experience almost as erotic as seeing the whole process later completed in reverse.
He’d missed the shared look which could convey the meaning of an entire sentence in a single glance. He had missed that easy shorthand more than he’d ever imagined. Perhaps that was why his next words came out in a rush, for he had not planned to say them. ‘I thought you might consider giving our marriage another go. Didn’t you ever think you might do that, Lex?’
Lexi’s hand stilled, mid-stroke. It was an unusually candid question and one she was tempted to brush off with a glib response. But something in the brilliance of his reflected blue gaze melted away her intention. She realised that she mustn’t allow pride to skew her judgement. Just because their marriage hadn’t worked out, didn’t mean that she had to devalue it completely, did it? Because once she had loved him. She had loved him so much that she’d walked around with the biggest, stupidest smile on her face. She had felt dizzy with it, as if she’d been struck down by a mystery malady for which there was no known cure.
But it was hard to see things in a balanced way once you started looking at them from a distance. She’d got out of the habit of remembering the good times and that had been intentional. You could never move on if you allowed yourself to wallow in something which you were never going to have again.
‘No, I didn’t think about that,’ she said. ‘Even though I did find life hard without you. For quite a long time, actually. You’re a big enough personality for the world to feel quite empty without you—and it did. But our marriage wasn’t working, Xenon. You know it wasn’t.’
He stared at her and his next words seemed to come from some dark and unknown place deep inside him. ‘Because of the baby.’ There. He’d said it. He’d confronted something which had been too unbearable to confront at the time. Two long years had passed since it had happened and he had thought that time would have blunted the impact—but he was unprepared for the wave of pain which hit him with the force of a tsunami.
Lexi saw him flinch and she felt distress clawing away inside her as the hairbrush slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered onto the dressing table. That old and familiar feeling of powerlessness swept over her and became all tangled up with her grief. She still felt guilty for the pain she had caused him by her inability to carry a child to term.
Thanks to her chronic insecurity and Xenon’s demanding work schedule, communication between them had broken down. The first miscarriage had left an emptiness deep inside her and the second seemed to have brought everything to a head. She would never forget the bleakness etched on his face when he’d finally arrived at the hospital, once it was all over. The way he’d found it difficult to look her in the eye as he’d sat stiff and unmoving beside her bed.
But why hurt him more than he was already hurting by reminding him of that bitter time? It wouldn’t change anything, would it?
Interlocking her fingers, she stared down at them and thought about all the games of cat’s cradle she would never play with her child. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Why not?’ He realised that his voice was shaking. ‘Lex, look at me. Please.’
She lifted her head and it was almost unbearable to have to meet that bleak gaze of his. Why was he doing this now? Now when it was much too late. It was like picking at a scar and making the cut so deep that it would never heal. And how could she possibly heal if she started to fool herself that he wanted to understand? Because she knew better than anyone that Xenon didn’t do understanding.
‘Because it’s too late,’ she said, her fingers gripping at the shiny surface of the dressing table, as if she needed that small piece of leverage to prevent herself from sliding to the floor.
Stubbornly he shook his head as he stared at her, with a sense of determination he rarely felt outside the boardroom. After two years of having this fester away inside him like something dark and unmentionable, didn’t it come as something of a relief to finally expunge it? ‘Don’t you think it’s time we said all this? Stuff we couldn’t bear to say at the time? Because you couldn’t bear me to touch you after the second miscarriage, could you, Lex? You couldn’t bear to let me near you.’
She got up from the dressing table and walked over to the window, wanting to put distance between them. Wanting to stop the pain which was twisting remorselessly inside her. She stared out as the first shadows of the evening began to deepen the summer night and they seemed to echo the darkness in her heart. ‘Because I saw that look in your eyes!’
‘What look?’
‘What look? What look? You know damned well what look! The look that said I’d failed you—only this time I’d done it in spectacular style. I mean, I was already aware of the shortfall in my attempts to be the perfect wife, but this was one thing I really couldn’t afford to get wrong, wasn’t it?’ She sucked in a ragged breath. ‘And I did. You’d married me essentially to be your brood mare and you realised too late that you’d chosen a weak and flighty filly who was never going to meet your requirements.’
‘Will you stop putting words in my mouth?’
She shook her head, resting her forehead against the coolness of the glass as her breath made it grow misty. ‘Don’t tell me that you haven’t thought all these things, Xenon, because I won’t believe you. Maybe in a way I don’t blame you. I can even understand why you would think that.’
‘Can you?’ he questioned. ‘You’ve added mind-reading to your sizeable list of accomplishments, have you?’
‘Think about it,’ she said, ignoring his sarcasm. ‘You’ve devoted your entire adult life to growing the Kanellis corporation. And you need a son and heir to take over from you, as once you took over from your father and he from his father before him. You’ve always put having a family of your own at the top of your list of requirements.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We both know that.’
Her words were met with silence. She hadn’t really expected a denial, but the lack of one hurt her more than she had expected. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to cry. But she never cried in front of anyone, because tears got you nowhere and they made you look weak. They took you back to that scary place—the one which made you look into the future, and think about everything you were missing.
Outside the window the shadows in the park were lengthening. She saw a street-light flicker on, and then another. A young couple, arm in arm and laughing, walked past. It was as if the world were conspiring to remind her of everything she no longer had. It could be a cruel old world sometimes.
But she was doing this for Jason—that was the thought she needed to hang onto. She was giving her little brother a last chance to get his mixed-up life back on track. And if she and Xenon could manage to close the