But why was she so hurt? That was what scared her the most. Why did she feel so rejected? Naturally he didn’t want her to conceive, but had he had to turn pale as death at what was surely only a small risk? She didn’t want a baby either, of course she didn’t-well, at some time maybe in the future with the right person, and Lysander Metaxis was most decidedly not the right person. Her hunger for him had nothing to do with feelings, she reasoned fiercely. It was disgusting that it should be that way and she was ashamed of it, but she was not remotely like her mother. No, she wasn’t, she absolutely wasn’t. She was too intelligent to get fixated on a man who would never love her, who would never offer her exclusive affection or fidelity and who would never want to walk down the street with her and show her off. Much, much too intelligent…
CHAPTER SEVEN
I T WAS late afternoon the following day before Lysander and Ophelia finally landed in Greece.
A late seasonal fall of snow the night before had led to a cessation of flights and long delays. Hiring accommodation at an airport hotel, Lysander used the extra time to work with his business team and ensured that Ophelia didn’t get the chance to talk to him in private again. Indeed, faced with his cool detachment, she felt like the invisible woman. Listening to dialogues that centred solely on the stock market, derivatives and interest rates did not improve her mood. Once or twice, when she looked at Lysander, she found herself helplessly reliving the raw heat of their lovemaking the previous afternoon; his aloofness since then could only make her feel furiously ashamed of that episode. In the early hours she took a nap in the bedroom of their suite while still fully clothed.
Overlooked in the excitement of the stock market opening, she was the last person to be roused and she missed out on breakfast and the chance to change out of her creased clothing, so had to take care of that necessity when they finally boarded the jet. By then she was in a defiant mood and, disdaining the more dressy options in her suitcase, she pulled on casual combats and a T-shirt. Lysander had insisted that they pretend that their marriage was normal. He had threatened her with court action, then had wrenched her from her home, her garden and her parrot while persistently refusing to offer her the smallest explanation for his behaviour. But when was he planning to start acting like a newly married man? Or were his staff already aware that his marriage was an empty charade? Albeit a charade with a little sexual action thrown in for colour, Ophelia reflected, squirming with self-loathing.
When she emerged from the luxurious cabin an odd little silence fell and absolutely nobody looked in her direction, while her husband’s attention seemed welded to his newspaper. It was a response that did nothing to relieve her suspicion that on board a Metaxis jet non-working personnel ranked as the lowest of the low in the pecking order.
Lysander, however, was gripped by the article on his bride in the newspaper for which Matt, Pamela Arnold’s brother, was a writer. Unfortunately the old link between the Metaxis and Stewart families-the wedding that never took place between Aristide and Cathy-had been dug up and given a fresh melodramatic airing. Lysander hoped his mother didn’t come across the item, since she tended to be sensitive about that episode and he was determined to keep her spirits up during her medical treatment.
Ophelia’s interview was only the jewel in the crown of a spread that contrived to flatter her from every possible angle. The dialogue had been polished clean of the smallest hint that Ophelia might regard gifts of very expensive jewellery as the best bit of having married a billionaire. Indeed in the published version Ophelia now waxed lyrical about how she hoped to use her privileged position to do some good in the world and came across as a thoroughly nice girl with traditional values.
He was very surprised to learn that until the age of sixteen years she had lived in a tough housing estate with a mother who had problems with alcohol and unsuitable men. Social Services had been frequent callers. There was a photograph of Ophelia about the age of ten clutching a dark-haired toddler. They looked like half-starved waifs.
‘Ophelia was a great little mother to her sister. Took her to school, did everything for her, but then she didn’t have a choice, did she?’ a former neighbour was quoted as saying. ‘Her ma, Cathy, was more of a child than she was.’
Lysander wondered if the little sister had died with the mother in the train crash as there was no further mention of her. Without doubt, as sob stories went, it was a blinder and the unnamed contributors must all have been close friends, for nobody had a bad word to say about his bride. Had her difficult childhood made her avaricious? Or had her troubled mother and scheming, embittered grandmother tainted her with a desire for revenge?
Why did nothing about Ophelia add up? Why was she such a mixture of opposing traits? She had trained for three years to be a low-earning horticulturist and there was a picture of her dressed like a scarecrow-albeit one with shining eyes and a happy smile. Yes, she liked getting muddy and clearly always had. He found it hard to equate that Ophelia with the woman who had posed in lace stockings and with a vacuous smile for the camera. Why had she claimed to want out of their marriage when, just twenty-four hours later, she had done her utmost to attract the very worst kind of publicity?
When Lysander handed Ophelia a newspaper she felt bewildered-until she saw the picture of herself and Molly. Her tummy went into a nervous spiral, a reaction that only got worse as she ploughed through the article that laid bare her chequered childhood. Her late mother’s inadequacy as a parent was now revealed for all to see and it filled Ophelia with shame. But what she hated most was the raking over of Cathy’s doomed romance with Aristide Metaxis and she blamed herself for being stupid enough to court publicity in the first place. A lesson had been learned, she conceded painfully.
‘I’m afraid I have some matters to take care of before I can join you on the island,’ Lysander murmured as they disembarked the plane.
‘What island?’ Ophelia enquired stiffly without looking at him.
Even Lysander’s tough hide was pierced by the ramifications of that leading question. ‘I bought an island a few years ago.’
Her expression stony and unimpressed, Ophelia pursed her pink lips as if she were sucking on a lemon. ‘I suppose it’s surrounded by sea and very private?’
‘Ne…Yes.’
‘How thrilling,’ Ophelia droned in a not-thrilled voice, imagining herself marooned on a giant sun-baked rock without occupation while he enjoyed himself elsewhere. ‘Please don’t worry about me. I may well be as dried-up as an Egyptian mummy by the time you deign to take notice of my existence again. But no doubt if someone props me up in a corner you’ll be quite happy with the remains rather than the demanding reality of a living, breathing wife!’
‘Very funny,’ Lysander countered flatly.
‘You ignored me all the way here-you didn’t even tell me where we were going-’
&n
bsp; ‘We are in the middle of a stock-market crisis,’ Lysander growled in an incredulous undertone. ‘While you were sleeping, I was working!’
Shimmering eyes the colour of pale blue ice landed on him. ‘So?’ Ophelia challenged just as a plethora of cameras went off behind security barriers in the airport arrivals hall that prevented the paparazzi from getting any closer to their quarries.
Wholly disconcerted by a counter-attack of a type he had never previously received, because the importance of making money had always provided an acceptable catch-all excuse, Lysander gritted his perfect teeth. ‘Smile for the cameras,’ he told her in a sardonic undertone.
‘Oh, dear, my battery’s gone flat,’ Ophelia responded. ‘Nothing to smile about either-’
‘You’re the one who set off this media circus!’
Ophelia paled at that blunt reminder and contrived a rather hunted curve of the lips. In truth she was genuinely shocked when it finally dawned on her that the heaving crush of shouting people behind the barriers was comprosed of members of the press waiting solely on their arrival.
In the limousine, Lysander turned bronzed eyes of censure on her. ‘I expect you to behave in public!’
‘I expect you to behave in private,’ Ophelia responded with spirit. ‘You told me to act like a wife and that’s what you’re getting. No bride in her right mind would put up with this kind of treatment on what is supposed to be her honeymoon!’