A Passionate Marriage. Michelle Reid

honour-bound to treat her as such while she was here. But his senses stirred in response to those cool fingers—only to settle down again the moment they were removed.

      ‘You know what I think, Leandros,’ she said gently. ‘I think you have been here for too long. Living the life of a lotus-eater has made you lazy—which makes it a good time for you to return to Athens and move on with your life, don’t you think?’

      ‘Ah, words of wisdom,’ he smiled. It was truly uncanny how Diantha could tap in to his thinking. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘After the San Estéban celebration I have every intention of returning to Athens and…move on, as you call it,’ he promised.

      ‘Good,’ she commended. ‘Your mama will be pleased to hear it.’

      And with that simple blessing she moved away again, walking gracefully back into the stateroom in her neat blue dress that suited her figure and with her glossy black hair coiled with classical Greek conservatism to the slender curve of her nape.

      But she did so with no idea that she had left behind her a man wearing another frown because he was seeing long, straight, in-your-face red hair flowing down a narrow spine in a blazing defiance to everything Greek. Isobel would have rather died than wear that neat blue dress, he mused grimly. She preferred short skirts that showed her amazing legs off and skinny little tops that tantalised the eyes with the thrust of her beautiful, button-tipped breasts.

      Isobel would rather have cut out her tongue than show concern for his mother’s feelings, he mentally added as he turned away again and took another grim pull of his beer. Isobel and his family had not got on. They had rubbed each other up the wrong way from the very beginning, and both factions hadn’t attempted to hide that from him.

      Diantha, on the other hand, adored his mother and his mother adored her. Being such a close friend to his sister, Chloe, she had always hovered on the periphery of his life, though he had only truly taken notice of her since she had arrived here a week ago to step into the breach to help organise next week’s celebration because Chloe, who should have been here helping him, had become deeply embroiled in Nikos’s wedding preparations.

      It had been good of Diantha in the circumstances. He appreciated the time she had placed at his disposal, particularly since she had only just returned to Athens, having spent the last four years with her family living in Washington, D.C. She was well bred and well liked—her advantages were adding up, he noted. And, other than for a brief romance with his brother Nikos to blot her copybook, she was most definitely much more suitable than that witch of a redhead with sharp barbs for teeth.

      With that final thought on the subject he took a final pull of his beer can, saw a man across the quay taking photographs of the yacht and frowned at him. He had a distinct dislike of photographers, not only because they intruded on his privacy but also because it was what his dear wife did for a living. When they had first met she had been aiming a damned camera at him—or was it the red Ferrari he had been leaning against? No, it had been him. She had got him to pose then flirted like mad with him while the camera clicked. By the end of the same day they’d gone to bed, and after that—

      He did not want to think about what had happened after that. He did not want to think of Isobel at all. She no longer belonged in his thoughts, and it was about time that he made that official.

      The man with the camera turned away. So did Leandros, decisively. He suddenly felt a lot better about leaving here and went inside to…move on with his life.

      Isobel’s own thinking was moving very much along the same lines as she sat reading the letter that had just arrived from her estranged husband’s lawyer giving her notice of Leandros’s intention to begin divorce proceedings.

      She was sitting alone at a small kitchen table. Her mother hadn’t yet risen from her bed. She was glad about that because the letter had come as a shock, even though she agreed with its content. It was time, if not well overdue that one of them should take the bull by the horns and call an official end to a marriage that should have never been.

      But the printed words on the page blurred for a moment at the realisation that this was it, the final chapter of a four-year mistake. If she agreed to Leandros’s terms, then she knew she would be accepting that those years had been nothing but wasted in her life.

      Did he feel the same? Was that why he had taken so long to get to this? It was hard to acknowledge that you could be so fallible, that you had once been stupid enough to let your heart rule your head.

      Or was there more to it than a decision to put an end to their miserable marriage? Had he found someone with whom he felt he could spend the rest of his life?

      The idea shouldn’t hurt but it did. She had loved Leandros so badly at the beginning that she suspected she’d gone a little mad. They’d been young—too young—but oh, it had been so wildly passionate.

      Then—no, don’t think about the passion, she told herself firmly, and made herself read the letter again.

      It was asking her if she would consider travelling to Athens to meet with her husband—in the presence of their respective lawyers, of course—so they could thrash out a settlement in an effort to make the divorce quick and trouble-free. A few days of her time should be enough, Takis Konstantindou was predicting. All expenses would be paid by Leandros for both herself and her lawyer as a goodwill gesture, because Mr Petronades couldn’t travel to England at this time.

      She paused to wonder why Leandros couldn’t travel. For the man she remembered virtually lived out of a suitcase, so it was odd to think of him under some kind of restraint.

      It was odd to think about him at all, she extended, and the letter lost its holding power as she sat back in the chair. They’d first met by accident right here in England at an annual car exhibition. She’d been there in her official capacity as photographer for a trendy new magazine—a bright and confident twenty-two-year-old who believed the whole world was at her feet. While he was dashing and twenty-seven years old, with the looks and the build of a genuine dark Apollo.

      They’d flirted over the glossy bonnet of some prohibitively expensive sports car. With his looks and his charm and his immaculate clothing, she’d assumed he was one of the car’s sales representatives, since they all looked and dressed like a million dollars. It had never occurred to her that far from selling the car they were flirting across he owned several of them. Realisation about just who Leandros was had come a lot later—much too late to do anything about it.

      By then he’d already bowled her over with his dark good looks and easy charm and the way he looked at her that left her in no doubt as to what was going on behind his handsome façade. They’d made a date to share dinner and ended up falling into bed at the first opportunity they were handed. His finding out that he was her first lover had only made the passion burn all the more. He’d adored playing the role of tutor. He’d taught her to understand the pleasures of her own body and made sure that she understood what pleasured his. When it came time for him to go back to Greece he’d refused to go without her. They’d married in a hasty civil ceremony then rushed to the airport to catch their flight.

      It was as he’d led her onto a private jet with the Petronades logo shining in gold on its side that she started to ask questions. He’d thought it absolutely hilarious that she didn’t know she’d married the modern equivalent of Croesus, and had carried her off to the tiny private cabin, where he’d made love to her all the way to Athens. She had never been so happy in her entire life.

      But that was it—the sum total of the happy side of their marriage was encapsulated in a single hop from England to Greece. By the time they’d arrived at his family home the whole, whirling wonder of their love was already turning stale. ‘You can’t wear that to meet my mother;’ his first criticism of her could still ring antagonistic bells in her head.

      ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’

      ‘The skirt is too short; she will have a fit. And can you not tie your hair up or something, show a little respect for the people you are about to meet?’

      She had not tied her hair