LITMIR.BIZ

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still he hadn’t finished with this torture, coming to place that hand back on her spine, he ignored her stiffened rejection of it this time and made the hand a stubborn arm which propelled her across the living room to a door that, she recalled to her sinking horror, led through to the other rooms in this vast and elegantly sprawling place.

      ‘Don’t …’ she couldn’t stop herself from quivering out when he stopped outside the door to their old bedroom.

      Still keeping her trapped by that controlling arm, he flung the door open and urged her inside. For the next thirty seconds she just stopped functioning, her knees went hollow, her throat closing up. Everything was the same in here—everything, right down to the huge bed with its snowy white linen she only had to take a fleeting glance at to need to push a hand up to cover her mouth. Once again the only things missing were the littered signs of occupation.

      ‘The last time you came here I would have willingly died rather than let you see what you did,’ his voice came deep and gruff from behind her, ‘but I was out of it, beyond the point of being any use to anyone, including a wife who deserved to find a man waiting here for her, not a stoned-out-of-his-head wimp.'

      Well, he said it, Louisa thought starkly, pressing her fingers up to her lips, only to feel them tremble against her chattering teeth.

      ‘I want to beg your forgiveness.’

      Right here at the scene of his crime? ‘Not a good venue for begging me for anything,’ she whispered.

      ‘An explanation, then,’ he persisted tautly. ‘Will you accept an explanation?'

      Oh, God, did she have to? ‘Look,’ she spun round, aiming her hurt gaze at a point somewhere between his tense left shoulder and the door, ‘y-you don’t need to do this. I had already accepted wh-what I’d seen here or I would not have let you—'

      ‘Stop lying to me,’ he ground out.

      She knew her face was white because it felt white! She knew her lips were trembling and her heart was pounding and—'I don’t need you to do this, Andreas! I don’t want you to do this! I just w-want to get out of here—'

      ‘Well, I need to do this!’ He reached out to catch hold of her shoulders, two tense hands gripping her as if they wanted to give her a damn good shake. ‘It cannot hurt you to listen,’ he said roughly.

      No? ‘Confession might be good for your soul but it does absolutely nothing for mine!'

      ‘I love you!’ he raked out. ‘I have always loved you! I never stopped loving you. I don’t want to stop loving you! Does that make your soul feel good?'

      With a rasping sigh he let go of her, pacing away across the room like a man who regretted saying all of that now it was out and it was too late.

      Totally silenced, Louisa stared after him, watching as he lifted a clenched fist as if to send it grinding into the wall in front of him—then he changed his mind and turned.

      ‘Do you remember Lilia?’ he asked huskily.

      Lilia? Louisa found she couldn’t remember anything. ‘You love me?’ It came out in a thick, breathless jerk.

      ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘Do you remember her?’

      Lilia … Y-your cousin?’ She nodded, managing to pull up an image of a beautiful creature with gorgeous dark eyes and a fabulous figure. ‘Why didn’t you say sooner—a-about loving me?'

      ‘Because I was waiting for you to say it first,’ His mouth twisted into a grimace that he turned into a sigh. ‘It was Lilia you saw me with.'

      ‘You went to bed with your cousin Lilia?’ The shock and the horror of it almost knocked Louisa off her feet.

      ‘What do you take me for?’ He tensed up angrily.

      ‘A drunk?’ she suggested wildly. ‘Y-you went to bed with your cousin Lilia because you were drunk, and you think this kind of confession is good for your soul?'

      ‘I did not go to bed with her!’ He sighed. ‘Why don’t you just shut up and listen to what I have to say?'

      It was all she could do to get her shaky legs to carry her the couple of steps needed to sink down on the nearest chair. Listening at this moment was very much beyond her while she was trying to recall what she had seen that day.

      But all that would come to mind was Andreas lying there on that bed, naked from what she could tell by the way the sheet rode low on his hips, while his beautiful companion lay beside him apparently wrapped in what was left of the sheet. She’d had a naked arm curved around his shoulders, and her face had been pushed up close to his sleeping face with the long mane of her glossy black hair tumbling out behind her over the pillow.

      ‘Lilia rescued me from drowning in a sea of booze and self-pity,’ his deep voice impinged, making her blink into focus on him. He’d moved again and was leaning against the wall now, with his fists shoved out of sight in his trouser pockets, his expression oddly rueful even while it was tense.

      ‘I came back from trying to see you in England and locked myself away in here with a crate of whisky and no desire to see anyone,’ he went on. ‘I switched off my mobile and unplugged the phone. I hated myself. I hated you. I had sunk so low I was quite content to waste away right here in this apartment, and I would have done it if Lilia had not turned up and bullied the janitor to let her in. She was tough …’

      A hard-crusted businesswoman who’d inherited her father’s stake in the Markonos empire and had been determined to hold on to her share of power, Louisa recalled.

      ‘She found me sprawled on the bed fully clothed and out cold with a bottle of whisky still clutched in my fingers. She shook me awake and generally shouted and bullied me until I agreed to get up and take a shower. I was a mess,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t even walk straight, never mind stand upright, so Lilia did it. She all but carried me into the shower then got in there with me—stripped my clothes off and somehow managed to keep me propped against the wall until the freezing cold water started to sober me up. Then she pulled me out of the shower and told me to dry myself and get a shave while she took one of the towels and went back into the bedroom to get out of her wet clothes. I cut myself,’ he recalled, lifting a hand out of his pocket to touch his jaw as if the cut were still there. ‘By the time I put in an appearance in the bedroom she was wearing the towel and had stripped the bed and was smoothing out the clean sheet …'

      He stopped speaking for a moment, the hand lowering back into his pocket, then he gave a shake of his head.

      ‘I still don’t understand why it happened,’ he continued huskily. ‘I mean, you are so fair and Lilia is so dark, but—when she glanced up and smiled at me, that smile reminded me so much of you that I just … fell apart. I sobbed like a baby.’ He roughed out the confession. ‘I cried for you, I cried for myself, I cried for Nikos …’

      Unable to just sit there when she could see he was struggling, Louisa got up and went to slide her arms around him. ‘You don’t have to say any more,’ she whispered painfully. ‘I know how you felt,’ because she’d been there, oh, she’d been there …

      But Andreas didn’t want to stop. ‘Once I let the floodgates open I could do nothing to close them again. Lilia somehow managed to get me to the bed, though the hell knows how she managed it. Then she lay down beside me and held me. She just held me while the storm raged until eventually we both must have fallen into an exhausted sleep.'

      ‘I wish I’d had a Lilia,’ Louisa murmured. ‘Instead I got panicked parents who called the doctor and had me taken away.'

      ‘I wish I had been there to be your Lilia.’ His arms came around her, strong and tense. ‘We could have poured it all out together as it should have been, and the last five years of hell would not have happened.'

      His tone had toughened. Louisa looked at him anxiously. ‘Don’t go down the revenge track again,’ she begged.

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