GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 36

'You can't leave when you don't have anywhere to go!' Edward argued fiercely. 'You have to take care of yourself now that you're pregnant!'

'Oh, please, don't pretend you actually care,' Bella countered with withering sarcasm, her bitterness out from below the surface before she could prevent it from showing.

'If you would just listen to me and stop being so unreasonable,' Edward bit out.

'I don't need to listen. I already know what you are and that's a dirty, lying, cheating scumbag without an ounce of integrity!' Bella shot at him, green eyes suddenly flaring brightly as angry stars because he had dared to call her unreasonable.

'I broke off my engagement so that I could come back here and ask you to marry me!' Edward launched at her in outrage, fury surging up inside him like lava inside a volcano about to erupt. He had never felt so angry in his life and it was an unnerving experience. He didn't get angry; he didn't do angry. Nothing and no one had ever been capable of sending him over that edge because to get angry you had to care and he was not supposed to care.

Bella slowly shook her head at him in apparent wonderment, an attitude that enraged Edward even more because no woman had ever dared to look at him like that. 'Well, the answer to that proposal would've been a very firm no once I found out what you had been hiding from me. Honesty and reliability are hugely important to me, Edward, and you score nil on both counts. I saw today what you did to Marina and I'm afraid that was quite enough to convince me that you're a very arrogant, selfish personality with very few saving Bellas...no pun intended.'

'Is that all you've got to say to my suggestion that we get married?' Edward growled, hardly able to credit what he was hearing because nobody, least of all a woman, had ever found him wanting on any score. So prejudiced against him was Bella that it almost felt to him as though she saw some mirror image of him that was another person entirely. And then he remembered her history and somewhere inside his head an alarm bell clanged, putting him right on target.

'Yes, that's all I've got to say. Once the baby's born, I'll get in touch with you at this address,' Bella assured him flatly. 'But be warned...I have no plans to hand my child over to you or anything like that because you're not my idea of a father in any way.'

Edward could literally feel himself freezing into an ice pillar while still wanting to strangle her into silence. Did he deserve such a character assassination? Well, so much for the winning power of a marriage proposal and a rich and powerful husband! But offended and infuriated as he was by Bella and the awareness that he had seriously underestimated her temper, he was more fixated on where she planned to go when she appeared to have neither money nor any suitable friends or family to live with. Recognizing that Bella needed to cool off before he could even hope to reason with her, he reached into his wallet to withdraw a card and extended it.

'I own the hotel. It's small and discreet and you only need to show the card at Reception to be accommodated. My driver will take you there...'

In the grip of frantic thought and the blistering emotional turmoil that their encounter had provoked, Bella accepted the card. She had to go somewhere and she had no place else, she thought wretchedly and ditched her pride. 'OK.'

A shard of relief speared through Edward's almost overwhelming sense of rage and raw frustration. She wouldn't listen to him, she refused to listen, refused to let him talk...how fair was that? He hated feeling powerless, an unfamiliar sensation because she was the only person who had ever had that effect on him. Even so, it was of paramount importance to Edward that he knew where she was and that she was safe and well looked after. She had got him wrong, so wrong, he thought bitterly.

In Edward's limo, Bella dug out her phone to check it and called back her aunt.

'I need to see you urgently,' Della Donovan said in an unusually constrained voice.

Bella wondered what on earth had happened to make her aunt approach her because she was fairly certain that Jenna's dislike of her had initially been learned from her mother. Compressing her lips, she agreed to meet up for coffee that afternoon. Had her uncle pressured his wife into burying the hatchet and healing the breach? The suspicion worried her. Declan Donovan was a kind man but, sadly, such feelings couldn't be forced.