when she’d really needed him, he’d let her down so badly she had been unable to forgive him. Deep down, he had been unable to forgive himself.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he said, keeping his voice low.
‘I wanted to see you face to face. But I wasn’t sure you’d welcome me if I warned you.’
Banked up from years of frustration his words flooded out. ‘Of course I’d want to see you. I need to know what happened. You left the hospital without telling me where you were going. I tried to find you. Your parents wouldn’t tell me where you were. Or your friends. Your sister slammed the door in my face.’
She put her hand up to stop him. He noticed it wasn’t quite steady. ‘Stop. Not here. Not with an audience. What I have to say should be said in private. It’s why I had to see you in person rather than—’
‘Just say it,’ he said through gritted teeth.
She played with the strap of her designer handbag—another gift from him—twisting it until he thought it would snap. Then she looked up at him. ‘I want a divorce.’
He glared at her. ‘The sooner the better,’ he said.
* * *
Hayley took a step back and looked up at her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Why, oh, why had she come here? She’d thought she could handle seeing Cristos again. In light of the love they’d once shared, surely it was the right thing to deliver the divorce papers in person rather than have them served on him by her lawyer?
But the moment she’d seen him standing under that tree in his dark coat staring moodily out to sea, she’d known it was a mistake. She’d been slammed by her impossible attraction to him with such force she’d had to plant her booted feet on the ground to keep herself steady. Dry-mouthed, heart pounding, she’d been unable to do anything but stare at him, stricken with hopeless longing.
He was now twenty-nine, and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Perhaps beautiful wasn’t the right word. But handsome, good-looking, striking, even gorgeous were not adjectives enough. Not for this man. Not for six feet two of broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped masculine perfection. Not for thick black hair, smooth olive skin that was a delight under a woman’s stroking fingers, the surprise of pure green eyes.
Cristos could have modelled for the marble statues of the ancient Greek gods she had admired in Athens on their honeymoon. Instead just six months later, on a weekend break in London, he’d been scouted by an international model agency. As a macho Greek male, he’d scorned the idea. But they’d needed money badly and she’d talked him into at least trying it. He’d been booked for a prestigious job the first day he’d reluctantly signed the agency contract.
That was when she’d begun to lose him, Hayley reflected now, when he’d started to slip slowly away into a world that’d had no place for her. Pushing him into it was the stupidest thing she’d ever done. She had become the insignificant peahen to the glorious peacock of her magnificent husband. And he had allowed it to happen. He had left her alone to tend the nest while he strode with masculine insouciance the catwalks of the fashion capitals of Europe, shot advertising campaigns and commercials, all the while hobnobbing with the wealthy and well-connected. Every time she’d questioned him, he’d told her everything he did was for her and their financial security. For a while she’d believed him. Before she began to doubt him.
She gritted her teeth. The longing that surged through her wasn’t for this Cristos. It was for the Cristos she’d fallen in love with as a student back in that pub in Durham when she’d been barely twenty-two. After her gap year, she was a year older than most of the people in her class and something about the group of older students had caught her attention. He’d been laughing with some fellow exchange students. The flash of his white teeth against his olive skin, the humour in those amazing green eyes had caught her attention then mesmerised her. He’d looked across to her and their gazes had connected. For a long moment there had been nothing—no one—else but him. The sounds of the pub had receded, the chatter and the clinking of glasses, until it had just been her and him, drinking in each other’s eyes, their souls connecting. Or that was how it had seemed. Then his brow had furrowed in a quizzical frown. He’d put down his glass and left his friends behind to make his way to her side.
Even back then he’d been good at masking his feelings—she hadn’t known for days he’d been as instantly smitten by her as she’d been by him. It was an attribute that had served him well in his unexpected new career. He’d easily been able to slip into the varied persona required of him as a successful male model. Smouldering and sophisticated in a tuxedo, or sporty and athletic on a yacht, he’d always looked the part on billboards all over Europe.
He’d got so good at donning those masks that towards the end she’d begun to wonder had she ever seen the true Cristos. But at the word divorce his mask slipped and the raw anguish that momentarily darkened his eyes made her heart skip a beat. But it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it.
‘Nothing about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing—all you want to do is demand a divorce,’ he said in a forced, neutral tone. But the tension in his jaw, the shadow in his eyes told her he wasn’t as cool about it as he appeared.
She swallowed hard. ‘It can’t come as a surprise. We’ve been separated for two and a half years. That’s more than enough grounds to dissolve our marriage.’
‘So my lawyer told me when I instructed him to instigate proceedings two years after your desertion. The separation was proof the marriage had irretrievably broken down. That’s all that’s required.’
His words sounded so grim, so final. The excitement and passion of their early years together had disintegrated into disillusionment. Yet now, just looking at her husband made her remember exactly why she’d defied her family to marry him, given up her own dreams to let him follow his. But that was yesterday. She had to be strong. Good sex and fun weren’t enough to build a lifetime on. She’d learned that on a heart-wrenching night in Milan two and a half years ago, alone in a hospital in a country where she didn’t speak the language as she’d miscarried in pain and anguish, tears streaming down her face for all she had lost.
She cleared her throat. Although she’d practised the words over and over, they didn’t come easily. ‘I want to be free, to perhaps marry again one day.’
His mouth set in a tight line. ‘Is there someone else?’
‘He’s just a friend at this stage.’
Steady, reliable Tim, as different from Cristos as it was possible for a man to be. There had not been one word of romance expressed between them but Hayley had sensed Tim wanted to grow the friendship into something more. She wanted security, stability, not the tumult her life with Cristos had been.
‘Where did you meet this man?’
‘In Sydney. But he’s not—’
‘You’ve been living in Australia?’ He hissed a string of curse words in Greek. During their time together she’d worked to learn his language, but he’d refused to teach her the curses—such language was not befitting his wife. If he only knew it was nothing to what she heard in her job as a mechanical engineer—a woman in what was still essentially a man’s world.
‘I didn’t think to look for you in Australia, of all places,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘It was as far away from you as I believed I could get. I have an aunt there. My parents arranged it.’
He was silent for a long moment as he looked down at her, searching her face. ‘Did I hurt you that badly?’ His voice was low and hoarse.
She nodded, too choked to risk attempting to speak.
His words sounded as though they were being torn from him. ‘So many times I’ve regretted the way I left you alone that day, that I wasn’t there when you needed me. I—’
Hayley had tried to block that final scene