A light knock sounded on the bedroom door while she was repacking her case. 'Bella...you have a visitor,' Sheila told her.
Bemused by the announcement when even Matt didn't have her address, Bella followed Sheila down to the hall to see a tall, very attractive brunette with a wealth of mahogany hair and dressed in a very fashionable outfit, who frowned at Bella in apparent astonishment. 'My goodness, you're not at all what I expected!' she exclaimed, extending a slim beringed hand. 'I'm Marina Kouros...and you can only be...Bella?'
'YES. Am I supposed to know who you are?' Bella asked the tall brunette awkwardly.
'Edward didn't mention me?' Marina Kouros prompted.
'I'm afraid not.'
'Coffee, Miss Kouros?' Sheila proffered from the kitchen doorway.
'No, thanks...we'll be in the sitting room,' the brunette said with easy authority, strolling confidently ahead of Bella, making it clear she knew her way around the apartment before she paused for an instant to firmly close the door.
'Why should Edward have mentioned you?' Bella asked stiffly as she hovered by the wall of windows, insanely conscious of her worn jeans and a plain chain-store sweater when compared to her companion's expensive separates.
Marina's discomfiture was, for an instant, too obvious to be misinterpreted. 'Because Edward and I have been engaged for the past three years and we're getting married in six weeks' time...or, at least, we were until you came along.'
Bella's jaw felt frozen and unwieldy as she struggled to speak through underperforming facial muscles. 'Engaged?' That single word was literally all she could squeeze out of her deflated lungs because her whole body felt as if it had gone into serious shock.
'I'll keep this brief. I'm not here to see you off...well, I suppose that's a lie. If you were to vanish into thin air right now, it would suit me very well, but I know you're pregnant and that it's not quite that simple.'
'Edward told you that I'm pregnant?' Bella whispered in even greater shock.
'He's very upfront like that but I must say you are a surprise. I was expecting a blonde bombshell with a pole dancer's wardrobe,' Marina admitted with a distressing candor that suggested Edward's infidelity was more normal than worthy of note. 'But look, I won't prevaricate. I'm here for one reason only. I don't want you to screw up Edward's life and mine and I was planning to offer you money to go away.'
Like an accident victim, Bella was frozen in place, her face as pale as milk, her eyes wide with consternation, and haunted by too many powerful reactions to enumerate. Marina evoked so many different reactions in Bella; anger, mortification, guilt, and pain were ailing her on all levels. Edward had lied to her. Edward had pretended to be single and unattached, and an engaged man on the brink of his wedding was anything but unattached. He had been engaged for three years? That was not a recent or a casual commitment.
'If Edward had told me he was engaged this wouldn't have happened because I would never have been with him in the first place,' Bella framed with desperate dignity. 'I'm genuinely sorry that anything I have done has upset you and that this situation is affecting you as well, but there is no way I would accept money from you.'
'I've known Edward all his life. He had a horrendous childhood and, because of it, he will never turn his back on his own child,' Marina informed her grimly. 'But I don't think he should have to sacrifice his whole life and all his plans because of that child. Somewhere, somehow there has to be a happy compromise for all of us.'
'I don't know what to say to you,' Bella framed sickly, her mind glossing over that reference to Edward's childhood because she could barely cope as it was with the overload of information and thoughts already bombarding her. 'I don't know what I can say...other than, how can you still care about a man who cheats on you?'
'I think that's my business.'
'Just as the baby's mine,' Bella countered quietly. 'I don't know what you want from me, Marina. But I won't be staying on in this apartment.'
YOU ARE READING
GREEK HUSBAND
Romance'This was more than a little push,' Bella censured. 'I don't know why you're doing it either. You can't want me as a wife that much.' 'Why not?' 'I'm just ordinary.' 'I don't see you that way, meli mou,' Edward countered. 'I see you as different, as...
