Marriage of Convenience

Chapter Nine

Her face was burning, and it wasn't from the effects of the sun. It was a shame. Shame and humiliation both. He, no doubt bored by this empty charade of marriage but bound by his agreement to her condition. And he had done so, and to add the final telling insult had walked away, showing her how completely unmoved he was by her obvious arousal. He could take her or leave her—that was the message his actions had transmitted, loud and clear.

She didn't think she would ever forgive him for that. Ever. And the ease with which he had physically dominated her would make her shy away from him in the future more than ever before!

Back at the white one-story villa, Freya helped herself to a tall glass of fresh lemon juice, gulping it down thirstily, her stormy eyes darting around the cool gleaming kitchen as if she expected someone to leap out of the shadows and attack her.

Someone? Theo, of course! His hands-on her body had been a form of attack—insidious, almost unbearably erotic, but an attack all the same!

But gradually she relaxed, her eyes calmer, her hands almost steady as she rinsed her glass. Theo would be back on the beach, or still swimming. Either way, she had again put distance between them. However, a nasty little voice

Intoned maliciously, deep in her brain, she wouldn't always be able to keep her distance. And he wouldn't always drawback at the moment of capitulation, not if he wanted children, he wouldn't.

And beginning a family had been the reason he had decided to marry, and the Dexter Securities shares had meant that she had been the woman he had chosen to bear his children. Suddenly, the idea was mortifying. She had thought she was doing the right and sensible thing when she'd suggested they marry, but now she wasn't so sure. She seemed to be pulling herself out of one mess, only to find herself entangled in one which was worse!

She had always admired Theo for his ability to remain aloof, cool, and for the way he was always in total control. But as she flounced from the kitchen and down a cool corridor to her room she could see the other side of that ability of his—the darker, cruel side.

The way he had shown her how he could bring her to the point of begging for his lovemaking—despite the absence of the love she had always believed to be essential—had left her shaking with unfulfilled need and self-disgust. A potent mixture, poisonous. And that very ability of his, which she had once so admired, now sickened and frightened her.

Stripping off her bikini and stand under the shower, sluicing away every last trace of the sun- cream, as if his fingerprints still lingered in the oily substance. She hoped that their children when they arrived, would look like her—grey-eyed blondes—with not one trace of their father's dark, cruel beauty. They would be her children, not his! Hers! She would make them so, and that would be the final irony. She hated him at this moment, she really did, and she didn't want to give him one damned thing — not even children that resembled him in the slightest!

Freya heard the maid arrive in time to prepare the evening meal, bringing the fresh fish, fruit, and vegetables she bought from the village each day.

she put aside the book she'd been trying to read and walked from the terrace through the arched doorway that led to her room, pushing the silvery tumble of silky hair back from her face.

Theo was late. It only ever took the middle-aged Greek woman an hour to make their meal, sometimes less. So where was Theo?

Catching sight of the frown-line between her huge grey-eyes, she turned away from the revealing mirror reflection. She couldn't actually be worried about him, could she? A few hours earlier she hadn't cared if she never saw him again!