inside Merry’s tight chest as she recognised how foolish and naïve she had been to dream that Angel could eventually come to care for her. He had only married her for Elyssa’s sake. She would never be important to him in her own right, never be that one special woman in his eyes, never be anything other than second best to him. He could have had any woman, and a woman like Roula Paulides, who shared his background and nationality as well as a long friendship with him, would have had infinitely more to offer him. He wouldn’t have had to talk about having to work at being married to anyone else. In fact her mind boggled at the concept of Angel being prepared to do anything as dully conventional and sensible as work at a relationship.
‘I don’t want to work at it,’ she heard herself say, and it was truthfully what she felt at that moment because her pride could not bear the idea of him having to suppress his natural instincts before he could accept being married to her and staying faithful.
‘You don’t get a choice,’ Angel spelled out grimly. ‘We’ll fly back to Palos in the morning—’
‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m not returning to Greece with you!’
‘You’re my wife and you’re not leaving me,’ Angel asserted harshly. ‘That isn’t negotiable.’
Merry tossed her head, dark hair rippling back from her flushed cheeks, pale blue eyes icy with fury. ‘I’m not even trying to negotiate with you... I already know what a slippery slope that can be. Our marriage is over and I’m staying in the UK,’ she declared fiercely. ‘I’ll move out of here as soon as I decide where I’m going to be living.’
Angel stared back at her, his hard bone structure prominent below his bronzed skin, his eyes very dark and hard. ‘You would just throw everything we’ve got away?’ he breathed in a tone of suppressed savagery that made her flinch. ‘And what about our daughter?’
Merry swallowed with difficulty, sickly envisioning the likely battle ahead and cringing from the prospect. ‘I’ll fight you for custody of our daughter here in the UK,’ she told him squarely, shocked at what she was saying but needing to convince him that she would not be softened or sidelined by threats.
Angel froze almost as if she had struck him, black lashes lifting on grim dark eyes without the smallest shade of gold, his lean, strong face rigid with tension. ‘You would separate us? That I will not forgive you for,’ he told her with fierce finality.
Ten seconds later, Merry was alone in the room, listening numbly to the roar of a helicopter taking off somewhere nearby and presumably ferrying Angel back to London. And she was in shock, her head threatening to explode with the sheer unbearable pressure that had built up inside it, her stomach churning sickly. Tears surged in a hot stinging tide into her eyes and she blinked furiously but the tears kept on coming, dripping down her face.
Their marriage was over. Hadn’t she always feared that their marriage wouldn’t last? Why was she so shocked? Yes, he had denied that Roula Paulides was his mistress but she hadn’t believed him, had she? When she had packed her bags on the island she had known she wasn’t coming back and certainly not to a marriage with a husband who had to work at being married to her!
MISERY AND GUILT kept Merry awake for half the night. She had threatened Angel just as he had once threatened her and now it lay like a big rock of shame on her conscience because she had witnessed the depth of his attachment to Elyssa, had watched it develop, had even noticed how surprised Angel was at the amount of enjoyment he received from being a parent. He did not love his wife but he definitely did love his daughter.
All her emotions in free fall after the sensitive family issues that had been explored at Sybil’s house, she had been in no fit state to deal with Angel. She had drawn up battle lines for a war she didn’t actually want to wage, she acknowledged wretchedly. A divorce or separation didn’t have to be bitter and nasty and she hadn’t the smallest desire for them to fight like cat and dog over their daughter. Angel was a good father, a very good father and she would never try to deprive him of contact with his child. Just because she couldn’t trust him with the Roulas of the world didn’t mean she was blind to his skills as a parent or that she wasn’t aware that Elyssa benefitted as much as Angel did from their relationship. She wasn’t that selfish, that prejudiced against him, was she?
Anguish screamed through her as she sniffed and blew her nose over her breakfast in the dining room. She was a garish match for her elegantly furnished surroundings, clad as she was in comfy old pyjamas and a silky, boldly patterned kimono robe that had seen better days. She had left her fancy new wardrobe behind on Palos as a statement of rejection that she wanted Angel to notice. She had wanted him to appreciate that she didn’t need him or his money or those stupid designer clothes, even if that was a lie.
Her real problem, however, was that pain and hurt magnified everything and distorted logic. She had told Angel that she was leaving him because pride had demanded she act as though she were strong and decisive rather than betray the reality that she was broken up and confused and horribly hurt.
The thwack-thwack of a helicopter coming into land made her head ache even more and she gulped down more tea, desperate to soothe her ragged nerves. She heard the slam of the front door and she stiffened, her head jerking up as the dining-room door opened without warning and framed Angel’s tall, powerful form. She could not have been more appalled had he surprised her naked because she knew she looked like hell. Her eyes and nose were red, her hair was tangled.
‘Will you come into the drawing room?’ Angel asked grimly. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’
‘I’m not dressed,’ she protested stiltedly, her head lowering to hide her face as she stumbled upright, desperate to make a quick escape from his astute gaze.
‘You’ll do fine,’ Angel told her callously, dark eyes cold and treacherous as black ice.
‘I can’t see anyone looking like this,’ Merry argued vehemently, striving to leave the room and flee upstairs by sidestepping him, but she found him as immoveable in the doorway as a rock.
‘You’ll be in very good company. I swear she’s cried all the way from Greece,’ Angel informed her incomprehensibly, gripping her elbow with a firm hand and practically thrusting her into the room next door.
Merry’s feet froze to the floor when she saw the woman standing by the window. It was Roula, looking something less than her usually sophisticated and stylish self. Her ashen complexion only emphasised her swollen eyes and pink nose and she was convulsively shredding a tissue between her restive fingers.
‘I’m so...so sorry!’ she gasped, facing Merry. ‘I lied to you.’
Angel shot something at the other woman in irate Greek and she groaned and snapped something back, and then the door closed behind Merry and when she turned her head again, Angel was gone, leaving them alone.
‘You lied to me?’ Merry prompted in astonishment.
‘I was trying to frighten you off. I thought if you left him he might finally turn to me,’ Roula framed shakily, her voice hoarse with embarrassment and misery.
‘Oh,’ Merry mumbled rather blankly. ‘You’re not his mistress, then?’
‘No, that was nonsense,’ Roula framed hoarsely. ‘We’ve never had sex either. Angel’s never been interested in me that way, but because we were such good friends I thought if you broke up with him he would confide in me and maybe start seeing me in a different light. But it’s not going to happen. He said the idea of me and him ever being intimate was disgusting, incestuous. I wish I’d worked out that that’s how he saw me years ago. I’d have saved myself a lot of heartache.’
Merry experienced a very strong desire to pat the blonde’s shoulder to comfort her and had to fight the weird prompting off. She could see that the other woman felt humiliated and guilty and very sad. ‘Did Angel force you to come here and tell me this?’