Jane Porter
For Randall Toye—thank you
for the friendship and support.
“WELCOME HOME, MY WIFE.”
Morgan froze inside Villa Angelica’s expansive marble and limestone living room with its spectacular floor-to-ceiling view of blue sky and sea, but saw none of the view, and only Drakon’s face.
It had been five years since she’d last seen him. Five and a half years since their extravagant two-million-dollar wedding, for a marriage that had lasted just six months.
She’d dreaded this moment. Feared it. And yet Drakon sounded so relaxed and warm, so normal, as if he were welcoming her back from a little holiday instead of her walking out on him.
“Not your wife, Drakon,” she said softly, huskily, because they both knew she hadn’t been his anything for years. There had been nothing, no word, no contact, not after the flurry of legal missives that followed her filing for divorce.
He’d refused to grant her the divorce and she’d spent a fortune fighting him. But no attorney, no lawsuit, no amount of money could persuade him to let her go. Marriage vows, he’d said, were sacred and binding. She was his. And apparently the courts in Greece agreed with him. Or were bought by him. Probably the latter.
“You are most definitely still my wife, but that’s not a conversation I want to have across a room this size. Do come in, Morgan. Don’t be a stranger. What would you like to drink? Champagne? A Bellini? Something a little stronger?”
But her feet didn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t carry her. Not when her heart was beating so fast. She was shocked by Drakon’s appearance and wondered for a moment if it really was Drakon. Unnerved, she looked away, past his broad shoulders to the wall of window behind him, with that breathtaking blue sky and jagged cliffs and azure sea.
So blue and beautiful today. A perfect spring day on the Amalfi Coast.
“I don’t want anything,” she said, her gaze jerking back to him, although truthfully, a glass of cool water would taste like heaven right now. Her mouth was so dry, her pulse too quick. Her head was spinning, making her dizzy from nerves and anxiety. Who was this man before her?
The Drakon Xanthis she’d married had been honed, sleek and polished, a man of taut, gleaming lines and angles.
This tall intimidating man in front of the picture window was broader in the shoulders and chest than Drakon had ever been, and his thick, inky brown and black hair hung in loose curls to almost his shoulders, while his hard fierce features were hidden by a dark beard. The wild hair and beard should have obscured his sensual beauty, rendered him reckless, powerless. Instead the tangle of hair highlighted his bronzed brow, the long straight nose, the firm mouth, the piercing amber gold eyes.
His hair was still damp and his skin gleamed as if he’d just risen from the sea, the Greek god Poseidon come to life from ancient myth.
She didn’t like it. Didn’t like any of this. She’d prepared herself for one thing, but not this….
“You look pale,” he said, his voice so deep it was almost a caress.
She steeled herself against it. Against him. “It was a long trip.”
“Even more reason for you to come sit.”
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She hated being here. Hated him for only seeing her here at Villa Angelica, the place where they’d honeymooned for a month following their spectacular wedding. It’d been the happiest month of her life. When the honeymoon was over, they had left the villa and flown to Greece, and nothing was ever the same between them again. “I’m fine here,” she