Boulevard.
‘You don’t mean that,’ she whispered, her heart pounding with fear.
‘Oh, but I do,’ he said grimly. ‘You think I’m your puppet, do you, Lex? That if you keep me dangling long enough I’ll dance exactly to your tune? Well, you had your chance and you blew it. Sorry.’
Lexi felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes. Hot, salty tears which mocked her and told her that she’d left it too late. Xenon didn’t want her any more and it really was over. For a split second she thought about turning and fleeing from the room and this terrible pain which was tearing at her heart. But she was through with running away and, besides, something about the way he spoke jarred. And not just in the way he spoke, but in the way he was holding himself, with his fists clenched and his shoulders now hunched. He looked like a man who was doing battle. Who was trying to fight something in himself.
She swallowed down the tears and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And that’s the only thing which seems to make sense right now.’ She saw him tense and now she couldn’t seem to stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. ‘I love you and I will never stop loving you, but I will go if you want me to.’
‘Good.’
‘But only if you turn around and tell me to my face.’
For a moment she thought he was just going to ignore her request and that she would be left standing there, like a fool. Then he gave a small snarl, like a wounded animal, and when he turned around she could see that his face was ravaged with pain.
He stared at her and she waited. Waited for him to say the words she prayed wouldn’t come. But the words he said were the ones she was least expecting.
‘You’re crying,’ he observed.
The stifled tears now became ugly gulps. ‘Of course I’m crying!’
‘But you never cry, Lex,’ he said and she could hear the note of surprise in his voice.
No, she never cried. Not all through those long nights when she’d lain awake to protect Jason and Jake, flinching with terror when she heard the drunks crashing around in the corridors outside their hostel room. Nor even during those times when she’d been coping with the miscarriages, when her dreams had been shattered. She’d been too scared to cry, for fear that once she started she might never stop.
‘What else am I going to do, when the man I love doesn’t want me?’
Xenon’s jaw tightened. He saw how tired her eyes looked, magnified behind her glasses. He saw the tracks of her tears, the creased jeans and a T-shirt which looked as if it had been slept in. And in that moment he loved her so completely and so powerfully that it took his breath away.
‘Oh, but he does,’ he said softly. ‘He wants you very much, but only if you promise never to leave him again, because that he really couldn’t bear.’
There was a moment before she said anything because her throat was so choked with emotion that she wondered if she’d ever be able to speak again. And when she did, the words burst from her lips, like water from a dam—strong and straight and true. ‘Oh, Xenon, I’ll never leave you. Never, never, never.’ There was a pause as she saw the blue glitter of his own tears. ‘Because I love you. Oh, I love you so much.’
‘Then you’d better come right over here and let me kiss you,’ he said unsteadily. ‘Because I don’t think I can wait much longer.’
Her legs felt shaky. It was like walking in shoes a size too small, but somehow Lexi made it across the sumptuous carpet and into Xenon’s arms, her body shaking. He pulled a handkerchief from his suit jacket and removed her glasses, tenderly wiping her face dry before replacing them.
And then he started to kiss her. He kissed her until she was dizzy with longing and when he let her go she was so happy that she wanted to dance around the fancy suite. But then she noticed that he was glancing at his watch and that he was frowning.
‘You know, I really do have to be downtown very soon,’ he said. ‘If it was any other engagement, I’d break it—but this film means a lot of things to a lot of people and I want to put a very positive image of Greece out there. But if you want me to stay—’
‘Go,’ she said, lifting her hand to his cheek and stroking it. ‘I can wait here until you get back.’
‘Well, you can. Or you could ride across town with me to where a great deal of the world’s press will be assembled, and we could give them a picture which will tell the world that we are very definitely back together. Because I have this insane and very uncharacteristic desire to want to shout it from the rooftops.’
Lexi looked down at her crumpled jeans and T-shirt, before lifting her gaze to the pristine appearance of his tuxedo. ‘You mean, like this?’ she questioned doubtfully.
He smiled. ‘I mean exactly like that.’
‘When every other woman there will be dripping in sequins and diamonds?’
‘Who cares? There’s no woman to compare with you—no matter what you wear.’
‘Oh, Xenon. You do say the most gorgeous things.’
‘Well, that’s only because you are the most gorgeous thing.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘So come along, Mrs Kanellis. Because the sooner I take you out, the sooner I can get you home.’
THE SUNLIGHT FELT warm on his eyelids and her thigh felt cool against his. Lazily, Xenon stretched his arms above his head and yawned.
‘So you’re awake at last.’
Lexi’s soft words filtered through the air towards him, like the breeze which floated in from the park outside. The uncharacteristically hot, English summer they’d been having meant that most nights they slept with the windows wide open. Sometimes Xenon even woke up imagining he was back in Greece!
He opened his eyes to find Lexi leaning over him and her long hair tickled his chest as she reached over to retrieve her glasses.
‘Actually, I’ve been awake for a while,’ he murmured, sliding his hand around her waist and pulling her close, so that he could breathe in her particular scent of violets and vanilla. ‘Enjoying this rare lie-in and just counting up all my blessings.’
‘Oh?’ Lexi snuggled closer. ‘And what blessings might they be?’
‘You know perfectly well what they are,’ he teased. ‘Because you’re my perfect wife who gives me a perfect life.’
She touched her fingertips to his jaw and began to stroke reflectively at the dark, new growth there. ‘I’m not perfect, Xenon.’
‘Yes, you are. Perfect for me.’
Lexi hugged him very tightly as she kissed his bare chest, brushing her lips over the whorls of dark hair there and letting her tongue trace tiny patterns over the hard, salty flesh. Sometimes this all felt so good that she almost had to pinch herself to believe it was happening. But it was. And Xenon had been right all along. Two people who loved one another could live a contented and fulfilled life with or without children. Her inability to carry a child had not damaged their relationship. On the contrary, the heartache they had suffered had ended up bringing them closer together.
And then something had happened which had changed their lives completely, in a way they could never have foreseen. Lexi had been watching a TV programme about the shortage of foster parents and had been deeply affected by the plight of some of the children featured. It hadn’t taken much for her to persuade Xenon to donate a significant amount of money to The Children’s Society, nor for her to become involved on a volunteer basis. But neither of them expected to be so enchanted by a nine-month-old baby who’d been orphaned in a car crash, nor for their offer of a temporary home