The Greek Bachelors Collection. Rebecca Winters
In that retraction, Krista’s misleading statements would be withdrawn.
Giannis sighed. ‘You have enough to worry about right now. Let it go, Pirro. Go home to your family. Let us forget this unpleasantness.’
The older man was embarrassingly grateful for such a level of understanding. It was clear that he was at his wits’ end about how to handle his daughter’s problems. With a final apology he took his leave.
‘The day I finished with Krista I saw her screaming at a maid,’ Giannis recalled. ‘Some time afterwards I recalled that, and questioned the housekeeper about the incident. But the maid had been dismissed. Krista said she had found the maid taking drugs in her bedroom. She was probably lying. That wrong must be righted.’
‘How could you have known?’ Maddie was feeling distinctly shellshocked, and rather naked without the wedding ring she had thrown at Giannis. He was innocent of infidelity and blame. She had believed Krista rather than him.
‘I’m sure you are wondering why I gave Krista a small fortune in diamonds. I had acquired the set as a gift for her, and I felt that she should still have it,’ Giannis breathed heavily. ‘I felt guilty. Neither she nor I were in love, but I should never have asked her to marry me. She got on my nerves. I was eager to be free of her. It might have been kinder if I had been more honest.’
‘I don’t think being told that she got on your nerves would have helped,’ Maddie sighed
‘But had I told her that I had fallen hopelessly in love for the first time in my life, she might at least have seen that trying to get me back was a complete waste of time.’
Maddie had a mental image of her ears perking up high like a rabbit’s. ‘Hopelessly in love?’
Giannis crouched down at her feet so that he could see her face. His beautiful dark eyes were usually unguarded. ‘I didn’t realise it until I married you. But you were never out of my mind for a moment from the first day I saw you. There has not been another woman in my arms since that day either…’
‘Are you serious?’ Maddie whispered, practically mesmerised by what he was telling her, and yet scared to believe in it as well.
‘My desire was only for you. I couldn’t control it. Yet I was still foolish to think it was just sex…I only thought in terms of sex…’
Maddie could not resist tracing the hard slant of one classic male cheekbone with a wondering forefinger. ‘Oh, I know that. You were very vocal on that score. But what I don’t understand is why you were ready to marry a woman you felt nothing for?’
‘I had given up believing that there was a perfect woman out there for me, so when you came along I didn’t recognise you.’ Giannis sprang upright and shrugged. ‘I was bored with dating. I didn’t want to give a woman anything but money and position, and Krista was content with that. I thought it was a sensible arrangement.’
‘You were lonely—’
Giannis froze. ‘No, I wasn’t!’
But Maddie was convinced that he had been lonely, looking for something more than casual affairs and hoping that the stability of marriage with Krista would somehow fill that lack in his life.
‘I suppose I was lonely after you disappeared,’ he ground out grudgingly. ‘But that was because I’d got used to you.’
Maddie was too kind to ask him how she had contrived to become such a necessity after a mere thirty-six hours with him in Morocco.
‘I should have been much more honest about Krista. I was an arrogant bastard, and I did behave badly. But when you said to me that I had been your hero as a teenager, it hurt. Those words of disappointment would not leave me alone,’ Giannis admitted. ‘I was ashamed, but still too stubborn to say what I should have said.’
‘Why am I hearing all this now?’ Maddie queried in fascination. ‘You’ve never talked to me like this before.’
‘You weren’t the only person who heard Krista being interviewed on live television last night. I heard soon afterwards, and there was this deep feeling of panic, agape mou.’ Giannis shot her a speaking appraisal. ‘I knew that because I had not been more frank with you it would be very hard to convince you that Krista was lying. I was afraid that you would never believe me. When I asked myself what I would do if you walked out on me, I felt empty. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to drag Pirro back to Greece with me to clear my name. I’ve been up all night…’
A rueful smile tugged at Maddie’s tense mouth, for she could see the strain etched in his lean dark features now that she knew to look for it. ‘Just like me. I couldn’t bear to lose you—’
‘Or I you,’ Giannis confided thickly. ‘What a fool I’ve been! All those weeks on Libos and we were so happy—and still I didn’t tell you how much I cared about you, or how important you had become in my life.’
But all the time he had been showing her that he loved her in so many ways, Maddie reflected ruefully. Unfortunately she had been too intimidated by the spectre of Krista’s apparent perfection to appreciate that Giannis was so attentive, caring, affectionate and possessive because he had fallen in love with her.
‘You’re telling me now. I’m better with emotions than you,’ Maddie told him sunnily. ‘I knew I was falling for you in Morocco—’
‘But you still wouldn’t have anything to do with me!’ Giannis protested.
‘It wouldn’t have been right to do anything else when you were still engaged.’
‘The only problem being that the minute I got unengaged, you vanished!’ he reminded her darkly. ‘I was shattered by that, and when I couldn’t find you I started not sleeping. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if you were with some other guy. I don’t ever want to live through an ordeal like that again.’
‘So behave,’ Maddie advised, relaxing enough to get cheeky. ‘I can’t credit that that’s how you really felt. You’re the man who told me that I had nothing to do with your decision to end your engagement.’
Giannis groaned at that timely reminder. ‘It had everything to do with you, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to you or myself.’
‘You’re so secretive,’ she scolded.
‘Not any more. You’ve got my every secret out of me,’ Giannis lamented feelingly.
‘It’s unhealthy for you to bottle things up,’ she said comfortingly. ‘You’ve got to know I’m mad about you.’
‘Barely ten minutes ago you flung your wedding ring at me!’
Maddie stuck out her finger for it to be replaced. He didn’t waste any time playing hard to get on that score.
‘I really, really love you,’ she told him earnestly.
‘Even after all that’s happened?’ he pressed. ‘And everything that’s gone wrong?’
Maddie pretended to think about that question, for her confidence was growing by leaps and bounds and she decided to tease him. ‘Well, there were times when I was worried it might just be sex…’
Giannis leapt upright and bent down to scoop her up like a parcel from the sofa. ‘We’ll go to bed and find out, shall we?’
‘Is that your answer to everything?’ Maddie giggled, thinking that they were wonderfully well matched in that department.
‘When you’re in my arms in bed you feel one hundred per cent mine. It feels amazingly good,’ Giannis confided, and he kissed her long, slow and deep, until her toes curled inside her shoes.
She wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘Hmm…’
‘I’m never going to let you go, agape mou,’ he swore, with satisfying fervour.
Almost eighteen months