Michelle Reid - Greek Affairs - To Take a Bride - The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

He didn’t like that. The way he stepped away from her told her that he didn’t like it. It was much too close to the truth. ‘I simply want back what they took from us.'

The moment he gave her some space to breathe Louisa felt a hot tingle spring out along her arms and shoulders. She rubbed at them absently. ‘We are two different people now. It would be like trying to relive a past that just doesn’t exist.’

‘Are you daring to tell me that our son did not exist?’ His sudden burning blast of fury shook Louisa to the core.

‘Of course I’m not!’ she cried out. ‘But you cannot recreate Nikos in another child, Andreas! That’s just—'

He went as white as a sheet and walked away from her.

Oh, dear God. Louisa closed her eyes. She should not have said that. Shaking badly inside and out now, she pushed herself away from the wall and tracked after him. He’d gone back into the kitchen and was standing in front of one of the units with his dark head dipped and his shoulders braced and he was holding on to the marble work-surface with a white-knuckled grip.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was a terrible thing for me to say.'

‘Some terrible things have been said all round,’ he uttered with an odd dry rasp. ‘It is what comes of waiting five years to say most of them.'

‘Yes,’ Louisa sighed out. ‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, Andreas. Surely you must see that?'

‘No, I do not see that.’

‘Stubborn,’ she mumbled, forced to switch her attention from their fight to herself because she’d put a hand up to her forehead and discovered it was burning hot, yet she was starting to shiver she felt so cold.

‘I am going to make coffee. Do you want some?’ he asked calmly, as if it was perfectly normal to drink coffee in the middle of a heated argument.

An odd-sounding laugh surged up from her throat. ‘Actually,’ she heard herself say almost curiously, ‘I don’t think I feel very well …'

AT LEAST it brought him round to face her, she noticed hazily as both he and the room began to fog in and out. There was a moment of complete stillness followed by a curse and a dizzying blur of movement before her hand was snatched away from her forehead so that Andreas could place his hand there instead.

‘You are burning up!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you say something?'

‘We were too busy fighting.’

The next rash of curses rattled in his throat as he lifted her off her feet.

‘Put me down,’ she protested. ‘I’m not so ill I can’t walk!’

‘Shut up,’ he gritted, striding for the steps to the lobby.

‘I’ve got a terrible headache,’ she confessed on a groan. ‘And I’m all hot but I can’t stop sh-shivering.'

‘It is called sunstroke,’ he clipped out in disgust. ‘Do you feel nauseous?'

She nodded. ‘Been sick once already. Sorry,’ she added and let her head droop onto his shoulder and hated herself for feeling so good about being able to put it there. A few seconds later and the soft feel of a bed arrived beneath her with the cool touch of fine linen that made her shiver all the more.

‘Look at your shoulders and your arms,’ he said angrily.

‘They’re just a bit hot.’

‘You need a doctor—’

‘Oh, that’s right,’ Louisa sighed out, ‘bring in Dr Papandoulis and let’s start that great scandal you were so concerned about, when he discovers your estranged wife lying in the bed you usually reserve for your stupid mistresses!'

‘Parakaló?’ He straightened up with a violent jerk.

‘You might well beg my pardon!’ she shivered out, feeling so cold now she just wanted to crawl beneath the pale blue bed covers and curl up in a tight little ball. ‘The last magazine I saw with you splashed across it you had some lush little starlet hanging on to you like a limpet as you set off for your island retreat!’

‘I don’t bring women here.’ Blood surged into his taut face as he said it.

Not believing him, Louisa wanted to hit him. Then she suddenly shot upright and to her feet as another thought hit her full-on.

‘Did you sleep with her in this bed …?’

She was staring at the bed in horror.

‘No—You—’

‘Is that why you’ve had this villa built—so that you can bring your women here? Keep them separate from the family?’ She was becoming hysterical and she knew it but just didn’t care! ‘No wonder this place is barely furnished—you only needed a bed! Did you ever have cause to bring Dr Papandoulis out to one of them while they lay sick here?’ ‘Louisa, you—’

‘Don’t speak to me.’ Shaking as well as shivering now, she continued, ‘Y-you’ve already said enough. How dare you demand the last five years back when within weeks of deserting me you were shacked up with some woman while I hid and wept?'

He’d gone from red to white in as many seconds. ‘Agape mou, don’t—'

‘I can’t believe we did what we did on the hill the other night,’ she shook out. ‘I can’t believe I let you touch me at all after I’ve had to read every rotten detail of every rotten other woman you’ve been with in the last five years!'

‘It was not like that—’ He reached for her.

‘Don’t touch me!’ She pulled back. ‘I don’t feel well. I w-want to go h-home.'

‘You’re not well enough to go anywhere,’ he told her anxiously.

‘Well, I am not getting into that bed!’

‘Theos!’ he exploded. ‘The bed is new!’ Leaning past her, he tossed the pale blue covers back. ‘I had it flown in yesterday along with all the other furniture because I knew you would not want to stay with me at the family villa!—This house is not even ready for occupation!’ he added tautly as he straightened up again. ‘But I thought we could manage with the essentials. And I have never brought any woman to this island!’ he barked. ‘And you should know better than to believe everything you read in some sick glossy rag! Now, get into that bed before I murder you, Louisa!'

With that he turned and slammed out of the room, leaving her to sink weakly down on the bed in a mess of shaken limbs and emotions.

She had not even wanted to say any of that yet it had all just come pouring out! Fresh shivers overtook her, her burning skin quivering with prickly heat. On a low, angrily frustrated groan she just about managed to remove her skirt and top before she keeled over onto the cool linen then tugged the covers up to her chin. Her head was pounding, her stomach joining in, and hating Andreas for all she was worth only made her wriggle restlessly in the bed, which in turn made her wince when the movement irritated her burnt skin.

As soon as she was feeling fit enough she was getting out of here, she vowed fiercely. And he could take his lousy revenge-ridden proposition and his philandering self and offer them to some other woman—a woman who was probably as overused as him!

‘Here,’ a stiff voice prompted.

Peeling her heavy eyes open, Louisa discovered Andreas standing over her like some dark entity.

‘What?’ she mumbled aggressively.

Nothing flickered on his hard mask of a face as he held a glass out towards her. ‘To help the dehydration,’ he said.

Sending the liquid in the glass a dubious look, Louisa pulled herself up and took it from him.

‘And this …’ His open palm showed her a small pill. ‘Antihistamine to help cool your blood and take the sting out of your sunburn,’ he explained in the retracted tone of someone in no mood to take another argument.

‘I’m not sure if I should be taking …’

‘I checked with a doctor friend in Athens,’ he inserted. ‘The antihistamine might make you drowsy but it will not be harmful in any other way.’