The Good Greek Wife? (3 page)

‘What…?'

‘One of the stupid maids being clumsy, I suspect,' Jason commented dryly, shrugging off the interruption. ‘I suspect that means that our coffees will now be delayed. Penny…'

‘And the girl will have to replace the broken crockery out of her wages,' Hermione added snappishly, frustration at the fact that things were not going her way obviously showing in her voice.

Pushing back her chair, she got to her feet and headed for the door, obviously determined to reprimand the poor girl severely at the very least. And it was that small action that pushed Penny out of her inertia, reminding her forcefully of just why she had made her decision last night. Why she so wanted to get out of here.

‘You're so right, Jason,' she declared with force. ‘Zarek's gone and Odysseus Shipping is all mine to do with as I please. So once the formalities are over—if we can work out terms—then the company is yours, Jason.'

And she would be free to live her own life.

Reaching for the glass of water in front of her, she lifted it, tilting it in Jason's direction in mockery of a toast, not daring to lift it to her lips for fear that her throat had closed up so badly that the water would choke her.

‘The king is dead,' she proclaimed, making her voice sound as light and careless as she possibly could. ‘Long live the king.'

Her words fell into a strange and disturbing silence. A silence that seemed to reach out and enclose her, tangling round her throat and making it impossible to breathe.

Suddenly Jason wasn't looking at her. He had turned away and was staring in the opposite direction. They were all staring that way. Everyone in the room had their eyes fixed on where the door had swung open, pushed firmly but not violently from the other side so that it created a wide, wide space. And everyone was staring into that wide space, shocked, stunned, almost as if they had seen a ghost. Even Hermione had come to a complete halt, one long, elegantly manicured hand going up to her throat in a gesture of horror.

‘Jason…' Penny began, but the name died on her tongue, shrivelled on it by the realisation of just what was happening in the same moment that a voice—an impossibly, unbelievably, shockingly familiar voice—spoke, cutting across her in a rough, sardonic drawl.

‘Long live the king? I think not,
agapi mou
…'

A sensation like a blow to the head made Penny's thoughts spin sickeningly, the room blurring before her eyes as she struggled to turn and look too. To make her gaze focus on the dark, powerful shape of the man in the door.

It couldn't be. It just couldn't be! There was no way this was possible. It had to be a dream—or a nightmare—or both at once. Because there was no way it could be happening that…

‘Because to make that follow, then, as you say, the first king must actually be dead…'

And fixing his eyes on her shocked face, his burning gaze seeming to be drawing out all the blood that Penny could feel had drained from her face so fast that she thought it must leave
her looking like a ghost, the new arrival took a couple of steps forward, moving further into the room.

‘And as you can see,
gineka mou
, I am very much alive.'

‘I—you—'

Penny tried to get to her feet but abandoned the attempt after only a moment, finding that her legs were too weak to support her. Her feet seemed to be balanced on a floor that was strangely uneven, rocking and swaying beneath her as if a huge flood had suddenly come along and lifted the house from its foundations, carrying it out onto the wildest swirling sea. And the look Zarek turned on her was cold and dark, one that killed any impulse to fly into his arms, even after the distance of these two dreadful years. It was a silent, black reminder of the fact that the last time they had been together they had ripped the fragile camouflage covering off their marriage and exposed the lies and deceit that were at the centre of it. Exposing it for the lie it was.

Slumping back into her seat, she shook her head faintly, sending her hair flying out around her face, then passed a shaking hand in front of her eyes, rubbing at them to clear them of this impossible hallucination.

But when she blinked hard and looked again he was still there. Dark and powerful and strong as ever with a forcefully carved face and deep burning eyes that seemed to flay off a much needed layer of skin, leaving her feeling painfully raw and vulnerable, totally exposed.

It had been so long since she had seen him in the flesh, rather than in the photographs she studied every day, that it was almost like seeing him for the first time. Seeing how devastatingly attractive he was, how big and powerful, his lean, rangy figure in the plain white shirt and steel-grey suit easily dominating the room and making everyone else look so very small and insignificant.

‘Zarek …' she croaked, her throat closing up around the sound so that she could barely get it out. ‘Y—you…'

‘Indeed,
agapiti mou
…'

His response was a small, cynically mocking bow of acknowledgement, his probing gaze not leaving her face for an instant.

‘Zarek Michaelis. Your absent husband. Home at last.'

H
OME
at last.

Who was he trying to kid? Zarek wondered. Even as he spoke the words he knew that there was no way this return felt at all like coming home.

Of course he was back on Ithaca, back inside the family house, the place where he had lived from his childhood and where he'd always looked forward to returning to whenever he'd been away. But somehow this time nothing felt the same. Nothing had that feeling of rightness, of completeness that it had had before.

Which was hardly surprising. After all, he had just walked in on a discussion of a plan to have him legally declared dead. With that on their minds, none of them was going to be glad to see him walk through the door large as life and infuriatingly, unfortunately alive.

Not even Penny.

Not even his wife, who had actually been toasting the fact that he was dead as he opened the door. And was now staring at him as if he was her nightmares come to life.

But what had he expected? That she would run to him on a cry of delight, fling herself into his arms? He'd be every kind of a fool if he'd even dreamed of that. She'd told him as much
to his face. And last night would have taught him that dreams of her waiting for him were nothing to base his future on.

But forewarned was forearmed and so there was little to surprise him in the way that she just sat in her chair, slim and elegant in a dark green sleeveless linen dress, eyes wide, staring at him as if he had indeed risen from the dead right before her. If anything she seemed worse—even more appalled than Hermione, and his stepmother looked as if the devil incarnate had just risen up from hell to appear before her.

‘So,' he drawled cynically, injecting dark mockery into his voice as the silence lengthened and dragged out. ‘Is this any way to greet the prodigal son? I was expecting the fatted calf at least.'

‘Then you should have let us know that you were coming!'

Hermione had managed to regain some control but the hiss of fury in her words betrayed the way she was feeling deep inside.

‘Or even that you were alive—it would have been nice to know.'

‘I did not know myself—that I was coming.'

Zarek couldn't be unaware of the way that his answer had only incensed her further, the flare of her nostrils, the flash of fury in her eyes revealing just what she thought of his response. But quite frankly he didn't give a damn. And he had no intention of launching into the lengthy and complicated explanation of how he came to be alive, and why he hadn't let them know about it until now. Not here and not in front of everyone including Odysseus Shipping's lawyer, their accountant and half the assembled members of the board, it seemed.

‘I thought that I might wait awhile longer—and learn as much as I could about the home I was to return to. It has been an interesting experience to say the least. But suffice it to say that I am here. And I am staying. So…'

Leaning forward, he picked up a pen that was lying on the polished wood of the table together with a sheet of paper that held, as he knew it must, a precise order of business as prepared by Leander, whose obsessive concern for detail had not, it seemed, eased up any in the time he had been missing.

‘So this…and this…'

With a rough slashing movement he scored the pen through the first point of business and then another and another. All of them dealing with the plans to have him declared dead and transfer the management of Odysseus Shipping to his stepbrothers, just as he had expected.

‘…can go—and this…'

A couple more decisive strokes of the pen and the entire proceedings for the meeting had been obliterated apart from…

‘“Any other business”,' he quoted cynically. ‘Well—is there any other business?'

One swift glance at the stupefied faces all around him gave him his answer and he screwed up the agenda into a tight ball and tossed it in the general direction of the waste-paper bin, heedless of whether it actually landed there or not.

‘Then I now declare this meeting at an end. And you…'

His pointed look was directed at everyone not the immediate Michaelis family.

‘Can go home.'

It was as if the command, and the general flurry of movement, with chairs pushed back and people getting to their feet, had broken the spell that had held almost everyone frozen in shock. Suddenly Jason—
Jason
—was coming towards him, his hand held out in greeting.

‘It's good to have you back. Amazing.'

He actually sounded as if he meant it, Zarek reflected cynically, and if the grip that enclosed his hand was just a little
too much, a degree over the top, then that was only to be expected. Jason had always been good at playing the brother card, the friendly smiling brother, when Zarek knew that deep down the younger man hated his guts for being the oldest son, the real son. The only one who would inherit.

Petros on the other hand, like his mother, could not conceal his displeasure and disappointment at the return of the man he must have hoped had gone out of his life for good, leaving the way open to a far wealthier future than he had ever dreamed of. He looked as if he couldn't get out of there fast enough and quite frankly Zarek would be glad to see him go. To see all of them go and leave him alone.

All of them except Penelope.

His wife was still sitting just where she had been when he had walked into the room. In that very first moment she had made a tiny movement, a sort of jump in her seat, and all colour had drained from her face as her eyes widened in shock. That was all.

And now she might as well be carved from marble, she sat so still and pale. It was impossible to read what was going on in her head, behind those clouded eyes. And it was almost impossible not to turn and walk out of the room, leaving all of them—but most of all leaving her—behind him.

Was that the face of an innocent woman? A woman who had been mourning the supposed death of her husband, living with his loss for the past two years? Or was it the face of a woman who, if the scene he had witnessed last night had anything to do with it, had been looking forward to moving on, taking with her the fortune she had earned through a few short months in his bed?

Where was the warm welcome that any husband had a right to expect under such circumstances? Where was the
gasp of relief, the rush into his arms, the ardent embrace that told him how much he had been missed? That she was so glad that he was home safe. That she was so glad that he was alive and had come back to her.

But this was just what he should have expected from her on his return. Hadn't she threatened—promised—him that this was how it would be?

‘If you go, then don't expect me to be here waiting for you when I get back!'

Once again Penny's angry voice, the furious words she had flung at him, echoed down through the years from the day he had left Ithaca and set out on the
Troy
.

‘This marriage isn't worth staying for as it is. If you walk out that door then you are saying it's over…'

But he had walked out of the door. Of course he had. The trials for the
Troy
were important, vital if they were to get the new design completed and on the market. And he'd thought he was giving them both room to breathe, to think. But then he'd believed he'd be gone and back again in a couple of days. Not a couple of years.

So why was
she
still here? Why had she stayed? For him in the hope that he would come back and they could start again, try to do something to redeem the hell that their marriage had become? Or had the news of his ‘death' reached the island soon enough to stop her from leaving as she had said she would? And what had she stayed for? The vast inheritance that would now be hers rather than the part-share that would have come to her in a divorce settlement? Or the closeness with Jason that perhaps had been there all the time, but he had been too blind to see?

The scar along his right temple throbbed and ached, making him rub at it in discomfort, and he caught the sudden
twist of Penny's head in sharp reaction. So if she hadn't known who he was last night, she did now.

And it worried her, that much was clear from the look—of guilt?—of apprehension that flashed across her face.

‘Welcome back…'

‘Good to see you safe…'

The conventional greetings, the slightly tentative slaps on the back, a shake of his hand, were the instinctive responses of the men who had worked for him. But he barely really heard them, acknowledged them only in an abstracted way. His attention was focused solely on the woman at the opposite side of the room.

‘And what about you, sweet wife?'

Zarek turned towards where Penny still sat at the far end of the table, an empty water glass gripped in a hand that was clenched rather too tight, with the knuckles of her fingers showing white.

‘Wh—what about me?'

‘Nothing to say?' he challenged.

‘No…'

Nothing she could manage to get her thoughts under control enough to put into any sort of order, Penny told herself privately. Her head was still spinning, her mind totally unfocused. Now she knew exactly why the maid whose scream they had heard had reacted as she'd done, dropping the tray of coffee cups in shock at Zarek's unexpected and unbelievable appearance. In that first moment that he had walked through the door, Penny felt she might actually do the same and send the glass she held flying to the floor to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces, and it was only the polished surface of the table underneath it that saved it from destruction.

She had reacted on a violent sense of shock in the moment she had first seen him, half rising to her feet and then sinking back down again just as sharply, frozen in a whirling storm of complete disbelief, bewilderment and not knowing what to do. And just like the maid who had reacted so forcefully to Zarek's arrival home, she didn't know if she wanted to scream out loud in an ecstasy of joy or express a wild rush of fear at what she saw.

The first impulse—to get to her feet, dash towards him and fling herself straight into his arms—had barely formed when a sudden powerful blast of reality hit her in the face with the memory of how they had parted. The shock of it was what had had her staying in her seat when every yearning sense in her body wanted to drive her close to this man, to feel the warmth of his body, inhale the scent of his skin. She wanted to have his arms close around her, know their strength supporting her as they had done in the past.

But the terrible sense that she had no right to do that any more, not after what had happened, kept her fixed in her place. The fear that if she even tried then he would reject her with cold and hostile disdain weighted her down even more. She couldn't make herself move though her heart raced in confused excitement and her eyes were fixed in hungry yearning on the dark, lean—too lean, she noted in some distress—form of the man before her.

‘There's nothing I want to say here.'

Because now it seemed as if just holding onto the tumbler was the only thing that was keeping her under control. As if the hard glass were some sort of lifeline that she was clinging onto in desperation and if she let go then the tidal wave of emotions that had been building up inside her all day would break loose and swamp her completely.

‘I don't think we should discuss our private business in front of everyone.'

‘No, you're right.' Zarek nodded unexpectedly. ‘What we need to talk about is private and personal. We don't need to share.'

The last remark was made with pointed emphasis and an equally pointed flick of black, thickly lashed eyes in the direction of Jason and his mother and brother. The three members of the Michaelis family were lingering between Zarek and the door, clearly unsure as to what their next move should be. In public, before the other members of the meeting, they had needed to show a united front, to make it look as if they were delighted to see Zarek back and welcomed him unreservedly. That they were glad to have his hands back on the controls of Odysseus Shipping. But now, when everyone else had left, an uneasy calm descended on the room. An uneasiness that Zarek was aggravating by his comment about keeping things private.

‘We all need to talk…'

It was Jason who put the words into the silence, the disquiet that Penny felt she could actually breathe in from the atmosphere.

‘We need to know what happened…'

‘And you will learn—in good time.'

Zarek spoke without taking his darkly burning gaze from Penny's face, the words almost tossed over his shoulder at his stepbrother. Jason was saying the things she should be saying. The words she couldn't find the strength or the courage to form on her tongue.

‘But for now you will surely acknowledge that there are some things that are private between husband and wife and are not to be shared with anyone else?'

Was she deceiving herself, Penny wondered, or had that deep, slightly husky voice subtly emphasised that ‘husband and wife' as if deliberately driving home the fact that here was something in which Jason's presence was not at all welcome? Staking a claim, so to speak, like some powerful wolf moving in to demonstrate possession of his mate, the wild hairs along his spine lifting in open challenge.

‘Of course, but—'

‘In good time,' Zarek repeated, reaching out a hand to the edge of the door and pulling it open wide, the meaning of his message clear. He wanted everyone out of here and Jason would be a fool to ignore the signs. They were dismissed and that was it.

But still he lingered, looking across at Penny, a question in his eyes.

‘Penny?' he queried, appearing to check how she felt.

How
did
she feel? She supposed to some it would seem wonderful that her husband, this man who had been away missing for so long—who had once been believed to be dead—would lay claim to her like this. To them it might appear that he was still so ardently in love that he couldn't wait to be alone with his wife, to restore the links of their marriage, renew their relationship.