“Yes. Your fortune always attracts those kinds of men.”
A sigh escaped her, but she wasn’t spitting in fury as he had imagined. As if he were the despot she could hate again. “And of course, you know everyone and their intentions best.”
“No, I know Philip Cosgrove better than you do. He has had two broken engagements—one with an American candy heiress and the other with a princess from a minor South American nation. He has also been having an affair with a client.”
Hands on hips, she looked like a wildcat. “You had him investigated?”
“You should know the truth about him.”
“Truth about his personal life? He’s a friend and my lawyer, Stavros. Not my lover. If he was going to be one, I’m sure he would have volunteered that information. And even if he didn’t, it’s my decision to make.”
The thought of Leah with any man...he wasn’t prepared to ponder his reaction to that. “Now you know what decision to make.”
“About whether I want to screw him or not?” she said crudely, even as color darkened her cheeks. “You don’t have the right to police me on who I sleep with.”
“Discussing my rights and privileges when it comes to you is not a conversation you will like, agape mou.”
“No, I won’t. Because you’re a hypocrite. Do you tell your lovers that you have a wife you hide as if she were a stain on the very fabric of your life, Stavros?” Her fingers clutched his hand and pulled it up, a startling tremble in it. The contact jolted through him. “Do you take it off when you undress your lover? Do you—”
“I don’t have to tell them anything,” he whispered, dragging her against him. She was stiff against him, yet just the drag of her body set his muscles curling with need.
Ever since she had entered his life, there had been no escape from the shackles his own sense of honor bound him with.
Strange then that he had resented it and fought it for so long.
Was it because, as he had always known, Leah would never be the kind of wife he had imagined for himself—someone calm and dependable like Helene? Even then, had he known that she would incite him to this kind of reckless, unwise need?
“Anyone who’s someone knows I have a wife. Which also means I don’t have to fend off women with marriage on their mind...”
She stared, unblinking. Her nostrils flared. “You’re...disgusting.”
It was addictive to play her own game with her, so compelling to watch the different expressions pass through her eyes. In that moment, there were no lies she could tell him. In that moment, the connection between them was as explosive and destructive as the wildfire that had wrecked through the surrounding acreage a few years ago.
A fire that was going to need feeding soon if he didn’t it to want it to consume him, as it had already begun to...if he didn’t want to lose all sense of right and wrong.
And what was wrong with wanting his own wife in his bed? Maybe if he gave in to the fire, he could function normally again.
“You wanted to know,” he goaded her.
“No, I didn’t. I was just trying to make a point.”
“You sounded like a nagging, jealous wife. Just what I wanted my marriage to be.”
All color fled from her face, leaving her gaze stricken. Tears pooled in her eyes. And the sight of those big brown eyes brimming with moisture punched him in the gut.
“Theos, Leah—”
“I hate you. I hate that you’re keeping me here. I hate that you have so much power over my life and that you use it at every turn to put me in the wrong. And I’m such a pathetic coward that I still stand here, day after day, hoping that you will change your mind. I forget that all you want is to punish me, and yourself, for what happened to Calista.
“That’s all this is, isn’t it? Duty, righting a wrong...nothing touches you beyond that.”
She cast another desperate glance at him, swiped her hands roughly over her eyes and walked away.
Her words sliced at Stavros rendering everything she said about him a lie.
It did hurt, he realized with a strange new awareness. What she said about him mattered because he hadn’t meant to hurt her today. Christos, he had never meant to hurt Leah.