The Good Greek Wife? (13 page)

Looking at her now, at the way she lay curled under the covers, her dark hair splayed across the pillows, her face relaxed, he was so strongly tempted to slide back into the bed and gather her close to him. To haul her up against him, and kiss her until they were both delirious with need just as he had wanted to do last night.

Then he had wanted to kiss the lying words ‘I don't want it. I don't want you,' from her mouth and crush them back down her throat. And then he would have taken her to the bed—to their bed, their marriage bed—and made love to her until every last thought of ‘not knowing' him was driven from her mind.

And he still wanted to do just that. Wanted it so much. All that was feminine in her called to every masculine sense in his own body, making him harden until he burned with need, ached with the frustration of holding it in check. But he was going to hold back if it killed him. He had been caught that way before, in the early days of their marriage. He'd rushed her into bed without taking time to find out who she really
was and what she truly wanted. And they had ended up at the opposite sides of a wide, gaping chasm as a result.

A chasm that his dreams had told him was still there. Perhaps even wider than ever.

‘I might not want to be married to you any more…'

Argus whined again and Zarek dragged his thoughts back to the present, opening the wardrobe to find something comfortable to run in. And once more his mind came to a sudden and jolting stop as he considered the packed interior of the cupboard.

She had kept all his clothes. Every item that he had left behind. They had all been carefully folded and replaced as if he had just set out for a simple business trip and was expected home at any minute. Would a woman who never wanted to see her husband again do anything like that?

The question nagged at him as he dressed. It burned in his thoughts as he pounded along the stony beach, Argus running ecstatically beside him. It was still there, still troubling him when he finally admitted that he could run no more and made his way back to the house, to shower in another bedroom so as not to wake Penny if she was still asleep, change into the clothes he had brought from the bedroom earlier.

And still he couldn't find any answer to the confusion of his thoughts.

He had to find some work to do. Work would distract him and focus his mind on other things. Work had always been his salvation in the past when he needed a distraction from the speed with which his marriage had gone to rack and ruin. The total change in the woman he had married.

His private office appeared just the same as when he had left it, with nothing touched, nothing moved. The computer and every other piece of equipment was in exactly the same place, unchanged. It had been kept clean and dusted so that
again he had the unnerving feeling that it was as if he had just walked back in after being away for a day or so.

But it was when he unlocked one of the drawers and pulled it open that he found the first evidence of change, the first sign that someone had been in the office in his absence and had used the desk for anything more than just sitting at.

‘What the…?'

Pulling the folder of papers from the drawer, Zarek opened it and spread them out over the polished top of the desk, staring in disbelief as he moved them around with his fingertips.

‘I don't believe it.'

There was no doubt whatsoever who had been busy with these documents. Everywhere was the evidence of Penny's handwriting, easily recognisable even after all this time. But it seemed impossible that his wife would have anything to do with these…

And that was not the only puzzle. Once more he sorted through the papers before him, studying each one closely. There was something not quite right here. Something that didn't fully make sense. So many of the documents had been corrected, changed, with alterations made and then erased again, new ideas added all the time. And yet she could have handed over the first set and it would have been fine.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs alerted him. The study door was partly open as Penny came slowly down the wide curving staircase. He saw how she noticed the way it was standing ajar and paused, hesitating noticeably.

So if he said hello—spoke at all—would that encourage her or would it simply send her running again, heading back up the stairs or along the hallway into the big empty kitchen, away from him? He didn't have time to consider the question for long before she gave the door an uncertain push and appeared in the doorway.

‘Kalimera.'

He kept his greeting cool and indifferent with an effort. It was impossible, unbelievable, but somehow it almost seemed as if the short time they had spent apart had actually been longer than the months they had been separated before yesterday. It was as if he was looking at her afresh, with brand-new eyes, and seeing her more clearly than ever before.

Seeing the changes he had not fully noticed in all the hours they had been together on the day before.

When he had met her she had been so young. Barely twenty-two, just a girl, working in her first job. Her face still had the softness, the faint roundness of youth, and her tall, slender figure had been almost boyish in its narrow shape. She had grown up in the past two years, her face thinning, her features refining so that she had the most devastating high, slanting cheekbones under her beautiful almond-shaped blue eyes. And her body had filled out slightly, adding gentle curves to an almost too-slender shape so that now she was no longer a girl but all woman, a woman just coming into her fully feminine prime and fulfilling all the stunning promise of her youth.

Dear heaven, but she even made the well-worn pink tee shirt and faded, shrunken jeans she wore look fantastic. No silken designer gown or elegant evening dress could look any better or flatter that glorious body any more. Briefly Zarek had to wonder if she had simply pulled on the nearest things to hand or whether the slightly shabby clothing had been chosen to distract him, disguise the sensual appeal of her body. If that was the case then she had failed dramatically. The way that the shrunken top clung to the curves of her breasts and narrow ribcage, riding up to reveal an inch or two of smooth golden skin, was pure temptation. And the denim, washed soft by
repeated laundering, clung to her hips and thighs in a way that made his pulse pound, his body tightening in instant response.

‘Good morning.'

Her response was cooler even than his own. And she was back to being the ice maiden again, with her face frozen into a distant mask, those blue eyes seeming to look straight through him without a flicker of emotion.

‘It's a beautiful day.'

Oh, this was ridiculous, Penny told herself. They were speaking to each other as if they were near strangers. And yet she had fallen asleep, naked, in his arms.

And woken to find him gone.

‘Did you get any sleep in the end?' Oh, how formally conventional could she get?

‘No.'

Zarek's response brought her up short. Such honesty was the last thing she had been expecting. What she had anticipated was that the conversation was going to carry on in the way it had started, with the pair of them dancing round the reality of their situation, resorting instead to meaningless inanities.

No man should have the right to look so good this early in the morning, she thought, taking in the loose navy shirt he wore with black denim jeans, the way that his hair, still damp from the shower, curled slightly around his ears and at the nape of his neck as it began to dry in the heat. Particularly not after a sleepless night. Lying awake herself, she had heard him get up at a ridiculous hour and go downstairs, Argus pattering happily behind him.

When the front door had opened she had gone to her own bedroom window and looked out to see him setting off towards the shore, dressed only in black running shorts and a pair of battered trainers. The rising sun had gilded the jet-
black hair, the olive skin of his long back, the powerful shoulders, and the lean, muscled length of his legs. All of which had featured in the heated, erotic dreams that had burned into her brain through the little sleep she had had. She had watched him hungrily as he ran down the narrow path, unable to drag her eyes away. Her throat had been dry and tight with longing; the memory of the feel of that skin under her fingers, the musky male scent of it in her nostrils made her heart clench with longing.

The long lonely hours at the beginning of night had brought home to her just how much she had lost without Zarek in her life. The physical hunger was like the bite of acid deep in her stomach, eating away at her and at her resolution to hold herself apart from him, the determination that she needed emotional love before she could give into the fury of sexual need that he awoke in her. Then when she'd slipped into his bed the feeling that had tugged at her heart had been one of perfect rightness, a sense of coming home. She had known then that if he had tried to seduce her she wouldn't have been able to resist it. She wouldn't even have tried.

But he hadn't touched her. Instead he had been intimate with her in a very different way, by opening up to her as she had never expected he would. And she had drifted asleep held close in his arms.

‘But I'm glad that you made up for your earlier restlessness,' Zarek told her. ‘I heard you pacing around your room. It seems that Argus was the only one who slept all night.'

He dropped a hand onto the big dog's head and rubbed it softly and, as before, Argus pushed himself against the caressing touch, his eyes closing in ecstasy. Once again Penny thought that she knew exactly how he felt, and the sight of those long, bronzed fingers ruffling the thick black and white
fur had her compressing her lips tightly against the whimper of need that almost escaped her.

The thought of him lying awake listening to her prowling restlessly round her bedroom was tying her stomach into tight painful knots. Had he guessed at the yearning hunger that had kept her awake, the need that had made it impossible even to lie still in her bed? Penny's heart kicked up a gear at the thought, her pulse beating erratically at her temples and the base of her throat.

‘Have you had any breakfast?'

Back on the conventionally polite track once again, she acknowledged. It was safer that way. Far less dangerous than trying any other sort of conversation that might let her foolish tongue betray her terribly.

‘Should I get you something—that is unless the staff are back today? No?' she questioned as Zarek shook his dark head.

‘No. I told them I would let them know when to come back. Until then they are all on paid leave.'

‘So—so we're alone?' Her apprehension at the thought showed in the way that her voice quavered on the last word.

‘We're alone and there is no need for this incessant desire to feed me. You don't have to keep demonstrating that you have benefited from the cookery lessons you've taken. I'm much more interested in the other skills that you seem to have acquired.'

‘What other skills exactly?'

For a shocking moment, with her own thoughts still clouded by sensual hunger, she thought he actually meant some sort of skills in the bedroom and felt the hot blood rush into her cheeks as a result. But just in time she saw the plans he had in his hands and caught back the hasty words that rushed to her tongue.

‘It was you who worked on these? The plans for the
Calypso
?'

She couldn't tell just what his tone meant, but there was no point in denying the truth when it was so obviously there in her handwriting, her notes.

‘Yes… Yes, I worked on them.'

His response was the last thing she expected. He actually laughed. Not in mockery or even real amusement. It was a laugh of disbelief and he shook his head in obvious bemusement at the same time.

‘You did all this?'

‘I said I did.'

‘No need to get so defensive,
glikia mou
. I'm amazed—and impressed. I never knew you had such talent or the knowledge to use it. I'm sure that you didn't when I left.'

‘I listened to you, and then I studied—two years is a long time.'

‘So it seems. You continue to surprise me. So what else will I discover that I never knew about my wife? What else did you learn while I wasn't here?'

When he smiled at her like that she found it impossible to think of anything else. When his mouth softened and curved, and his eyes warmed in genuine delight, there was only one thought that formed inside her head, one feeling that she recognised at all. It was the lesson she had learned with the most pain and difficulty from the day that Zarek had walked out of the house and set out for the
Troy
. The one that had been reinforced with every hour he had been absent and all the terrible days when she believed that he was dead. And it was a lesson that had been driven home again with dreadful brutality as she had lain alone last night, trying desperately to sleep and fearing that no rest would ever come.

The one thing the past two years had taught her was that
life without Zarek in it was not
living
. It was nothing more than existing, dragging herself through the days without meaning, without hope, without joy. Loving Zarek was what gave her life its purpose, its significance, its delight. She could go through her days without him and even make a reasonable go of things. She'd done that, hadn't she? She had learned new skills, discovered strengths she'd never known she had, and she had thought that she was managing well. But he had only to walk back into her life, to be part of her life once again for—what, was it really not quite twenty-four hours?—and everything became so much brighter, the world so much better simply because he was in it.

She loved him totally and completely. He was the essence of her world, the breath in her lungs, the sun coming up in the morning. And last night, lying lost and alone without him, she had learned the most painful, most powerful lesson of all.