Angel wasn’t his sardonic know-all self she snuggled up to him, revelling in the intimacy that now bonded them. Maintaining a controlled distance wasn’t possible with a man as unashamedly physical as the one she had married. Angel had no limits. He would go and work for a couple of hours in his home office and then sweep down on her wherever she was and cart her off to bed again as if he had been parted from her for at least a month.
‘I missed you,’ he would say, replete with satisfaction while her pulses still pounded and her body hummed in the aftermath.
‘I could work with you,’ she would say.
‘You’re my wife, the mother of my child, no longer an employee.’
‘I could be a junior partner,’ she had proffered pathetically.
‘We can’t live in each other’s pockets twenty-four-seven,’ Angel had pointed out drily. ‘It would be unhealthy.’
No, what Merry sometimes thought was unhealthy was the sheer weight of love that Angel now inspired in her. That was a truth she had evaded as long as possible: she loved him.
Only because she loved him and her daughter had she been willing to give Angel one last chance, she acknowledged ruefully. There were still a thousand things she wanted to punish him for, but she knew that vengeful, bitter thoughts were unproductive and would ultimately damage any hope of their having a stable relationship. In that line, she was sensible, very sensible, she acknowledged ruefully. Unfortunately, she only became stupid when it came to Angel himself.
Sometimes she had to work uncomfortably hard to hide her love. She would see him laughing over Elyssa’s antics in the bath, amusement lightening and softening his lean, darkly handsome features, and she wouldn’t be able to drag her eyes from him. He had taken her down to the village taverna above the harbour and dined with her there, introducing her to the locals, more relaxed than she had ever seen him in company, his usually razor-edged cynicism absent. He had tipped her out of bed to climb the highest hill on the island to see in the dawn and told her off for moaning about how tired she was even though he had drained her energy at the summit with al fresco sex. But of course she was tired, making love half the night and half the day, physically active in all the hours between as she strove to match his high-voltage energy levels.
Ironically, complete peace had engulfed the Valtinos house the day after the wedding once Angel had revealed that his mother and her boyfriend had departed at dawn for an unknown destination, leaving the other half of the house in a fine mess for the staff to deal with. Merry had felt relieved and then guilty at feeling relieved because, like it or not, Angel’s challenging and difficult mother was family and had to somehow be integrated into their lives or become a continuing problem.
They had gone sailing on the yacht, visiting other islands, shopping, picnicking. They had thrown a giant party at the house attended by all Angel’s relatives, near and distant. She had met his second cousin who lived in London and had heard all about Angel’s visit to her home before he first met Elyssa, and Merry had laughed like a drain when she’d recognised how wily he had been to find out a little more about babies before he’d served himself up as a new father to one.
‘What’s your favourite colour?’ she asked drowsily.
‘I’m not a girl. I don’t have a favourite,’ Angel parried with amusement.
‘Birth sign?’
‘Look at your marriage certificate, lazy-bones,’ he advised. ‘I’m a Scorpio, but I don’t believe in that sh—’
‘Language,’ she reminded him, resting a finger against his parted lips.
‘Prim, proper, prissy,’ Angel labelled without hesitation.
‘Your first lover? What age were you?’ she pressed, defying that censure while wondering how on earth he could still think of her that way after the time they had spent together.
‘Too young. You don’t want to know,’ Angel traded.
‘I do want to know,’ Merry argued, stretching indolently in the drenching heat, only vaguely wondering what time it was. They had spent the morning swimming and entertaining Elyssa on the beach and then Sally had come down to collect their daughter and take her back up to the house for lunch and a nap. Now the surf was whispering onto the shore a hundred yards below them while the cane forest that sheltered the orange grove from the coastal breezes concealed them entirely from view.
‘I was fourteen. She was one of my mother’s friends,’ Angel admitted grimly.
Frowning, Merry flipped over to stare at him. ‘Seriously?’
‘You’re still so naïve,’ Angel groaned, lifting up on his elbows to study her, hard muscles flexing on his bare bronzed torso, the vee at his hipbones prominent above the low-slung shorts as he leant back. Just looking at that display of stark masculine beauty made her mouth run dry and her heart give a sudden warning thud, awareness thundering through her at storm-force potency.
‘What do you think it was like here when I was an adolescent with Angelina in charge?’ he chided. ‘I came home for the summer from school and there were no rules whatsoever. Back then it was all wild, decadent parties and the house was awash with people. Believe it or not, my mother was even less inhibited in those days and, being an oversexed teenager, I naturally thought the freedom to do anything I liked was amazing and I never let my father know how debauched it was.’
‘So, your first experience was with an older woman,’ Merry gathered, determined to move on past that sordid revelation and not judge, because when he had been that young and innocent she believed he had been more sinned against than he had been a sinner.
‘And the experience was disappointing,’ Angel admitted with derisive bite. ‘It felt sleazy, not empowering. I felt used. When the parties here got too much I used to go down and camp out with Roula’s family for a few days.’
‘She lived here on the island back then?’ Merry said in surprise.
‘Still does. Roula was born and bred on Palos, like me. This is her home base too. She runs a chain of beauty salons, comes back here for a break. Unlike me, she had a regular family with parents who were still married and their home was a little oasis of peace and normality... I loved escaping there,’ he confided. ‘Rules and regular meal times have more appeal than you would appreciate.’
‘I can understand that,’ Merry conceded ruefully. ‘My mother was very disorganised. She’d want to eat and there’d be nothing in the fridge. She’d want to go out and she wouldn’t have a babysitter arranged. Sometimes she just left me in bed and went out anyway. I never told Sybil that. But when I was with Sybil, everything was structured.’
‘Thee mou... I forgot!’ Angel exclaimed abruptly. ‘Your aunt phoned to ask me if there was any chance we’d be back in the UK in the next couple of weeks because your mother’s coming over to stay with her for a while and she wants to see you. I said I’d try to organise it.’
Merry frowned, reluctant to get on board with yet another reconciliation scene with her estranged mother. Natalie enjoyed emotional scenes, enjoyed asking her daughter why she couldn’t act more like a normal daughter and love and appreciate her, not seeming to realise that the time for laying the foundation for such bonds lay far behind them. They had missed that boat and Merry had learned to get by without a mother by replacing her with the more dependable Sybil.
‘You’re not keen,’ Angel gathered, shrewd dark golden eyes scanning her expressive troubled face. ‘Sybil made it sound like it was really important that you show up at some stage. I think she’s hoping you’ll mend fences with her sister.’
Merry shrugged jerkily. ‘I’ve tried before and it never worked. Sybil’s a peacemaker and wants everyone to be happy but I always annoy Natalie by saying or doing the wrong thing.’
‘Try giving her another chance,’ Angel urged, surprising her. ‘I don’t get on with my mother either, but then she doesn’t make any effort to get on with me. At least yours is