Page 32

Could he feel the way her pulse tripped in her wrist?

“I would never admit we swam naked, even if it was true.” She withdrew her hand and tucked it into her lap.

“That is not all we did.” He was still laughing at her. “But I don’t kiss and tell.”

He sat back as their first course arrived. The dish was both sculpture and painting. Seared scallops were arranged with caramelized endive leaves, thin slices of blood orange and cucumber frills, all beneath a lace veil of pastry upon a canvas painted with a graceful arc of green sauce accented with dots of pink and yellow.

While Alia blinked in astonishment at how beautiful it was, Spiro accepted the new pairing of wine before asking, “Then what?”

“Pardon? Oh. You went back to Athens and went out with someone else.” She lifted a shoulder. “Khristos asked Florian to go through your calendar, so we could line up dates that you and I might have seen each other. Lambros is right, though. You were seeing other people.”

“But I called you.” He sounded as though he was defending himself over real events. “After we went skinny-dipping and made love on my yacht? What sort of man do you think I am? I asked you to come to Athens. You refused.” What was he supposed to do, his tone asked. Beg?

“I had Yaya to consider,” she repeated.

He frowned in puzzlement. “Yet you got involved with me. Why? Because I’m rich?”

“Ew. No.”

“Because you’re inexperienced,” he said with quiet understanding. “And you trusted me. Because of Julian.”

“That makes me sound very naive,” she said with annoyance.

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” she said crossly.

He shrugged as if to say the jury was still out. “How did things progress?”

She debated arguing how sophisticated she really was and figured she would lose so she gave in.

“There was a weekend where we had a tourist stay at the pension who was roughly your build and coloring. He mostly went hiking so no one in the village got much of a look at him. It lined up with a weekend that you didn’t have anything on your calendar so I said you came to see me and we went on a picnic.”

“Lambros could drive a truck through these holes in your story,” he said with mild disgust. “I do not go on picnics, Alia. I certainly don’t fly to the Dodecanese Islands for one. Anyone who knows me would find that incredulous. No. We’ll say I returned because I wanted to survey your grandmother’s property, thinking I might buy it. You walked into the hills with me. We found somewhere shady to make love, away from prying eyes.”

“That does sound shady,” she agreed snippily. “What is your obsession with when and where we might have had relations?”

“We can’t say you were holding out for marriage, can we?” he challenged. “Not when Khristos has already floated the possibility you’re pregnant. We must have been involved to warrant how quickly we got engaged. When did that happen?”

“You surprised me with a ring the third time you came to see me. We went out on your yacht again. I agreed, but I couldn’t leave Yaya so you went back to Athens alone.”

“Three dates and I’ve decided to marry you? And between all of this I’m taking other women on dates? I can see why Khristos brought up the possibility you were pregnant. That is why we became engaged, Alia.”

“It is not!” she said mutinously. “I don’t want anyone to think that, especially because it will be obvious very soon that I’m not.” She dropped her gaze to her unchanged waistline. “I don’t want people to think I lied and took advantage of you.”

His brows lifted in a silent, Didn’t you?

“Then divorce me,” she hissed. “Or annul it. I don’t care how you do it, but end it.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth behind his closed lips, considering her. After a moment, he spoke in a conciliatory tone.

“Sadly, your distress over my condition had tragic consequences.”

“That makes it worse!” she protested.

“No one will believe I was so in love after three dates that I wanted to lock you down.”

“Because I’m poor, plain and inexperienced?” she asked in an angry whisper. “No one who knows me would believe I’d have an affair with someone I’d only just met and let myself get pregnant by him.”