.

the top of your shoes because you’d outgrown them.

      In Xenon’s world there had been relatives—far too many of them in her opinion—and servants, who had all doted on him. He’d never had to go to the police station to bail out his drunken mother and then to lie about it to social services, terrified that the family would be split up if the truth ever emerged. He’d never had to hold a terrified and sobbing child who had woken up from yet another nightmare to discover that the real world could be infinitely worse.

      ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, I think I do,’ he said coldly. ‘Jason has found that the well of easy money you’ve always provided has run dry—so who better to turn to than his wealthy brother-in-law?’

      The thudding of her heart increased. ‘What does he want money for?’

      ‘Why do you think? To mop up the mess he’s made of his life with his gambling addiction.’

      Lexi closed her eyes as a terrible sense of inevitability crept over her. She’d tried everything to help Jason with his gambling habit. In the early days she had sat down and talked to him and he had lied through his teeth and told her he’d quit. She’d believed every word he’d said as she’d signed over yet another cheque supposed to help put him back on the straight and narrow. Or maybe she had just wanted to believe it. Later, she had paid for the first of many visits to the rehab clinic—until he was kicked out of the last one for starting up a poker school with his fellow patients.

      She opened her eyes to find Xenon studying her. ‘I expect that you told him no and sent him away,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m rather hoping you did. The last counsellor I spoke to told me that I should “withdraw with love”.’ She saw the perplexed look on Xenon’s face as he heard the term and she remembered how disparaging he’d been about people who had sought professional help for their problems. ‘It means you have to stop giving him money and bailing him out. It’s supposed to make him take control of his own life.’

      ‘Actually, I didn’t send him away.’

      ‘You didn’t give him money?’ Her voice rose in alarm. ‘That’s what’s known in the business as “enabling”.’

      ‘I don’t give a damn what it’s known as!’ he bit out. ‘I’m more concerned with the consequences of his actions.’

      Her fear growing by the second, Lexi blinked at him from behind her glasses. ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘I’m talking about the fact that Jason has borrowed money. Lots of it. Against your name—and against mine as it happens, since we are still legally married and the Kanellis connection is like liquid gold.’ Resolutely, he ignored the horrified widening of her eyes. ‘He has built up the kind of debts which made even my eyes water—and I’m no stranger to large sums of money—’

      ‘How much?’ she butted in.

      He told her and Lexi blanched because she didn’t have that kind of money. Not any more.

      ‘And the kind of people he’s borrowed it from tend to get rather...angry if they don’t get their loans back,’ he continued.

      Lexi’s hand flew to her mouth. She could feel the hot rush of breath against her fingers as Xenon’s blue gaze iced into her. ‘What are we going to do?’

      Xenon nodded as a grim feeling of satisfaction washed over him, because that was the first sensible thing she’d said. We. ‘It looks like I’m going to have to pay off his debt for him—’

      ‘But—’

      ‘There’s no alternative, unless you happen to have the money sitting stashed away. That is, unless you want his pretty face altered out of all recognition?’ His eyelashes suddenly narrowed, so that his eyes looked like shards of blue ice. ‘These people can be dangerous, you know.’

      Lexi knew about danger. She’d grown up surrounded by it. And hadn’t that been one of the best things about her sudden fame—that she’d been able to escape from the dark and seedy side of life? The last thing she wanted was for Jason to be catapulted back to that place, where nothing seemed safe. She looked at Xenon’s hard features, realising that he was offering to help. ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Don’t thank me until you’ve heard what it entails,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay off his debt for him—but this time, he doesn’t go back to his old life and repeat the same old pattern. And neither does he go into some fancy clinic where he uses that abundance of Gibson charm to manipulate his counsellors.’

      ‘So what are you proposing he does?’ she questioned. ‘Apply for a personality transplant?’

      ‘Nothing quite so drastic. My solution is simple. He needs to change. To work his body like a man. To see the sun come up in the morning and put his head on the pillow at night, instead of spending it in the casino, like a zombie.’ His eyes bored into her. ‘And maybe he wants to change because he has agreed to go to work for one my cousins in Greece.’

      ‘Are you serious?’

      ‘On one of the family’s vineyards,’ he continued. ‘Your darling brother has agreed to do some hard, physical labour for the first time in his life.’

      She stared at him in disbelief. ‘He’s agreed?’

      ‘I didn’t give him very much choice in the matter,’ he snapped. ‘It was my condition for bailing him out.’

      Lexi felt a worrying see-saw of emotions as she took in what he’d just told her. He could be so hard and indomitable that it was all too easy to forget his streak of kindness.

      But he hadn’t been kind when she’d most needed him to be, had he? He hadn’t been there for her at all when she’d reached out for him. He had pushed her away until there had been nothing but distance left between them any more.

      ‘So...why come here and tell me all this?’ she questioned.

      He gave a cold, hard smile. ‘No ideas, Lex? You think I should bail out your brother just out of the goodness of my heart?’

      She met the obdurate look in his eyes and a whisper of fear began to creep over her skin as she realised what lay behind his words. ‘You mean...there’s a price?’

      ‘There is always a price,’ he said softly. ‘I would have thought you’d have learned that by now. And the price is that I want you back as my wife.’

      Lexi’s lips opened as if in slow motion, though no words emerged. She could feel the sudden thunder of her heart and a great rush of unexpected excitement because hadn’t some rogue part of her always dreamt of just this moment? That Xenon would come back and tell her he was willing to forgive her for walking out. Willing perhaps to try again.

      But even as hope flared inside her with a bright, sharp heat, she forced herself to quash it. Because their marriage could never be saved. She knew that. The past held too much sorrow and there could be no future. They might go through the motions of reconciliation—but now a darkness lay at the heart of what they’d once had. And Xenon would never be able to tolerate it.

      ‘Your wife?’ she echoed.

      His mouth hardened. ‘There’s no need to look so horrified,’ he said. ‘It’s purely a short-term measure.’

      Lexi only just stopped herself from shuddering at her own foolishness, terrified that he would know the crazy thoughts she’d been entertaining. Did she really think that Xenon would be willing to try again? That a man that proud and powerful would be willing to forget the fact that she’d ‘humiliated’ him with her desertion.

      Blankly, she stared at him. ‘But why? Why on earth would you want to resurrect our marriage?’

      Xenon watched the way she lifted her shoulders in confusion and the gesture made the fabric of her shirt ride over the generous curve of her breasts. The eyes behind her glasses were the silver-green colour of eucalyptus leaves—only right