Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Alex might have been so addled with need that he’d lost his mind along with his control, but he wasn’t so far gone that Olympia’s tremulous but firm plea didn’t pierce the haze in his brain. It did. And the second it did, his blood chilled and he froze. He jerked his head up as if she’d slapped him, shock ricocheting through him, his breathing fast and harsh.
‘What’s wrong?’ he grated, scouring her face for some sort of clue as to what was going on. He couldn’t read her expression, but the fierce heat had faded from her gaze, he just about managed to note. The pressure of her hands on his shoulders was light but firm. Unmistakable evidence that she was not as into this as he was. But she had been. He was sure of it. So what had changed?
‘We need to stop.’
‘Yes, I got that,’ he said, perhaps a little sharply, but then he was confused, in physical pain and being battered by the concern that he was somehow at fault. ‘But why? Is it the baby?’
‘What? No. It’s not the baby.’ A faint frown creased her forehead. ‘It’s just that you’re not the only one who’s had a rethink.’
She pushed at him again, and with Herculean effort and a whole lot of discomfort, he lifted himself off her. Somehow, he made it to the sun lounger next to hers, watching uncomprehendingly as she picked up her robe and pulled it on. When she drew the sides together and tied the belt around her waist, hiding from sight the luscious body he’d planned to reacquaint himself with over the next two weeks, the disappointment that seared through him was like a punch to the gut. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘You’re right. Celibacy is the way forward. Maybe not for ever, but certainly for the time being.’
Denial careened through him fast and hard. Hadn’t they dealt with this? ‘It absolutely is not the way forward.’
‘It is for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t engage in casual sex right now. Or any sex for that matter. It’s not good for my recovery.’
He stilled and stared at her in bewilderment. What was she talking about? The sex, more intense and satisfying than any he’d ever known, and potentially continuing for years, would be anything but casual. And recovery? From what? ‘What do you mean?’
‘As I’m sure you’re aware, not so long ago I spent three months in rehab.’
Somehow he managed to nod. He’d read about it in the press at the time. But… ‘What does that have to do with this?’
‘While I was there I underwent a lot of therapy, which, among many other things, taught me that I use sex as a coping mechanism. To make myself feel less empty and not quite so rubbish about myself. Not all that often,’ she was quick to add. ‘I wasn’t nearly as promiscuous as the press made out. But enough for it to be a problem. And it never worked because the satisfaction was always fleeting. After the initial high wore off I would inevitably be back at square one.’
He frowned, shoved his hands through his hair and then rubbed them over his face, trying to compute what she was telling him, an almost impossible task right now. ‘Is that what happened in Switzerland?’ he asked, feeling slightly sick at the thought that sex with him might have had such an effect.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, and his stomach turned harder, even though by deploying the few brain cells that were still functioning he could just about understand on an intellectual level that it wasn’t him per se, although the way he’d dashed off that night couldn’t have helped. ‘You were right when you said that shouldn’t have happened. It really shouldn’t. I’d been so focused on work that I somehow managed to forget everything I learned on that front. And then afterwards, ironically, I was too preoccupied with the way it had made me feel to think about why. I only remembered it just now.’
‘Your timing is terrible.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But I can’t make the same mistake again. I need to break the habit and find my self-worth elsewhere. And that means steering clear of sex until I can value myself for being me. I apologise for giving you a different impression. I shouldn’t have led you on. I’m a work in progress.’
‘You didn’t lead me on,’ he said, thinking that it had been his decision to overturn his vow that there would be no sex in this relationship, no one else’s. She hadn’t forced him to abandon work and come out here. He’d done that totally voluntarily.
‘I don’t normally do yoga at the pool. That was purely for your benefit. It’s clear you neither like me nor approve of me and I was feeling a little insecure about your commitment to our baby. I thought I could strengthen it with the party, and when that didn’t work, through sex. But I shouldn’t have done it. It was manipulative of me and wrong and I apologise for that too.’
Right.
God.
What was it about this woman that turned him into such an unsuspecting fool?
‘You have no reason to doubt my commitment,’ he said, sweating at the thought of how easily he’d been seduced once again. ‘Thanks to your mother, I’ve witnessed first-hand the devastation the breakdown of a family can wreak, and there is no way on earth I would allow any child of mine to suffer like that. So we’re in this together until he or she can fend for itself.’
‘What happened?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘I’d like to understand.’
‘Yes, well, I’d like a cold shower.’
‘Of course,’ she said, reddening. ‘I’m sorry.’
And now, unfathomably, he was the one to feel like a heel. ‘Whatever your reasons for starting this, you never need to apologise for changing your mind.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure,’ he confirmed because, on that point at least, he was. What he was going to do about the crucifying sexual frustration, the continuing befuddlement and the frighteningly weak defences he had against her, however, he had no idea. Removing himself from her unsettling orbit seemed like a good place to start, so he got to his feet, gave her a nod and said, before turning on his heel and heading back into the house, ‘Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.’
* * *
The relief that Olympia felt at Alex listening to and respecting her position on the subject of sex was immense. She hadn’t been sure how he’d react. Other men of her acquaintance might not have been quite so accommodating, although to be fair she’d never put a stop to proceedings before so she couldn’t say for sure. She felt that he, on the other hand, really was a man of strength and integrity and tolerance, because his disappointment had been obvious. And to take her confession that she’d been out to seduce him so lightly, well, that had been a relief too, although unexpected. But perhaps he appreciated her candidness.
However, over the course of the following day it became apparent that he was not handling the situation as well as she’d assumed. Her attempts at conversation were met with increasingly terse replies. Her enquiries into what effect her mother’s affair with his father had had on him, something she just couldn’t seem to let go, were stonewalled entirely. Eye contact deteriorated and he kept vanishing into his study.
On Monday morning she woke to an empty house and the petrifying thought that she’d pushed him too far. That—thanks to her bid to satisfy her insatiable curiosity about his past and her crippling insecurities, which meant she was now the one blowing hot and cold—he’d finally had enough.
Her heart thudded loudly in the eerie silence as she searched for him in vain. Where could he have gone? Had he been in such a hurry he couldn’t even leave a note? What did that mean for her and the baby?
Back in the kitchen, but feeling too sick for breakfast, she brought up his number on her phone. Not altogether surprisingly, the call went to voicemail. So she sent him a text, and after thirty agonising minutes of pacing up and down, wondering whether she’d blown things for good with her reckless impulsivity and persistence, her phone pinged with a reply.
He was at the office. Apparently, because of a truncated Friday afternoon and disrupted weekend, he’d had a mountain of work to get through before the markets had opened this morning. He wasn’t sure when he’d be back. Tuesday, perhaps, or Wednesday. He would mostly likely be uncontactable for much of the time, but his housekeeper was on hand for anything she required.
That all sounded very much like an excuse, Olympia thought, her hands shaking a little as she filled a glass with water. He’d spent much of the weekend holed up in his study here, precisely for the purpose of catching up. And Athens wasn’t so far it necessitated an overnight stay. He was avoiding her. That much was obvious. Because he was having second thoughts? Or could he be after a woman who wouldn’t lead him on and then change her mind? None of that bore thinking about.
So what was she going to do?
Well, she could follow him into the city and demand to know what he was playing at, which was what her instincts were urging her to do. On the other hand, the more circumspect voice in her head—which sounded a lot like one of her therapists in rehab—insisted that she might be wise to exercise caution. Patience wasn’t something she’d ever been particularly good at, but look at where a lack of it had got her. Fretting and stressing and potentially abandoned. Applying more pressure to an already fragile situation could turn out to be a terrible idea. She couldn’t blame him if he needed some time to get his head around everything that had happened recently. She did too. It had been pretty intense. Hard to be believe it had been only three days, really. And she knew she was a handful.
So as much as it went against her natural inclination to track him down, she would give him the space he needed and trust that he wasn’t wrapped around some uncomplicated woman who he didn’t dislike. She’d keep herself occupied for the next day or two—somehow—and if he hadn’t reappeared by the middle of the week, she’d reassess. She’d use the time to revisit everything she’d learned in rehab with a view to the future. She’d call her brother and see if he had any insight into the impact of the affair. She’d turn her thoughts to how she’d like to raise her baby, and consider the extent to which her mother was, in fact, going to be a problem. She’d take it easy and refuse to catastrophise.
It was thirty-six hours max, she told herself, concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply until the panic subsided. Not long at all. How hard could it be?
* * *
Despite innumerable cold showers and many frustratingly futile hours locked away in his study, by Sunday night Alex had known that he couldn’t stick around at the villa any longer.
To his intense frustration, he was unable to get his response to Olympia under control. His dreams were filled with alternative endings to Saturday afternoon by the pool, visions that had her not pushing him away but pulling him in. Fielding her increasingly probing questions had become so stressful that his muscles ached with tension.
His nerves were fraying. The constant wariness and the unassuaged desire made him feel tense and on edge. He had tried to keep his distance, but she’d drawn him like a magnet nonetheless. The air had seemed to be filled with her scent. He’d been aware of her even when he couldn’t see her.
And, as if managing that wasn’t enough of a challenge, he couldn’t get to grips with various aspects of her personality and his inability to read any of them. She tied him in knots, which no one had ever done before. It was draining and bewildering.
His self-control had never felt so under threat. He hadn’t liked any of it, which was why he’d got up at the crack of dawn, having barely slept a wink anyway, and driven back to Athens. But he might as well not have bothered because, by late Tuesday afternoon, restlessness was kicking in and his conscience was giving him grief. He’d worked precisely nothing out and he still dreamed of her, he was still obsessing over the questions she’d thrown at him, so what had been the purpose of escape? Didn’t avoiding her like this smack of cowardice? And what was he planning to do? Stay out of her way for ever? Well, that wasn’t going to work. At some point he was going to have to face her again and he’d never been one to procrastinate.
He had to get over himself, he thought grimly as he snatched up his phone and keys and stalked out of the office because staying here in the city was no longer feasible. He had no choice. He couldn’t keep dashing off whenever she hurled him off balance. Where would that leave their child? He had to make his relationship with Olympia work, and he’d come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve that was to find out what made her tick. Only by knowing her would he understand her, and only by understanding her would he be able to anticipate her moves and regain control.
Of course, by embarking on such an enterprise he’d probably end up learning far more about the Stanhopes than he’d ever be comfortable with. Containing how he felt about her mother might be tricky. But it wasn’t as if he’d be sucked into any sort of emotional connection with her, and he was in a permanent state of discomfort anyway. If push came to shove he could answer any questions she may have about him with the baldest of facts. He needn’t disclose anything of importance. They needn’t discuss him at all. This course of action would be one hundred per cent about her. He would unravel her secrets if it was the last thing he did. He wasn’t used to failing and he wouldn’t in this.
* * *
By Tuesday evening, Olympia was practically climbing the walls. She’d discovered that patience was far harder to implement than she’d anticipated. There was only so much taking it easy she could stand. Leo had had no insight into anything. Within hours she’d been itching to hop in the car and drive to Alex’s office to demand to know what was going on.
However, by drumming up the strategies she’d learned in rehab to curb her impulses, she’d resisted. She’d swum so many lengths of the pool she could practically have reached Crete. Every time her thoughts turned to what he was getting up to and who with, or what he might be planning, she closed her eyes and practised the mindfulness that would stop them spinning out of control. No good would come of second-guessing his intentions. Confronting him in person could make matters worse. All she could do was wait. For a little while longer, at least.
But it hadn’t been easy. Her nerves were stretched to their absolute limit. And, when she heard the slam of the front door, shattering the silence, the tension drained from her body so fast she went dizzy.
God, it was good to see him, she thought when a few moments later he appeared on the terrace, where she sat trying to concentrate on a book while the sun set in front of her. He looked so handsome in a dark suit and white shirt, which was unbuttoned at the top to reveal a tantalising wedge of chest. A light stubble covered his jaw and his hair was dishevelled as if he’d been ploughing his hands through it.
And she’d missed him, she was surprised to realise. Which was ridiculous when she’d only moved in five days ago, but what a rollercoaster of a ride those five days had been. The first three had been so energising and thrilling—the last two so flat and dull.
However, how he looked and how she felt about it was irrelevant. All that mattered was that he’d returned. And from now on, she vowed, she would do her level best not to rock the boat further. She would shove a lid on her insecurities and bury the attraction that hadn’t diminished one bit. She’d draw a line under everything that had happened to date and start again. She’d be cool and composed, as compliant as she could manage, and channel the mature, responsible adult she was trying to become. The security of her baby depended on it.
‘You’re back,’ she said, reduced to stating the obvious from the sheer relief that perhaps she hadn’t screwed up after all. ‘How was the city?’
‘Busy,’ he said, as he pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.
‘Did you get done what you needed to get done?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We need to talk.’
At that, Olympia stilled. Her heart plummeted and she briefly thought she might throw up, because that was a phrase no one ever wanted to hear. But she swallowed down the flare of panic that threatened her control, and she fought back the urge to throw herself at him and beg for forgiveness. ‘I apologise for my behaviour on Saturday,’ she said, just about managing to keep her emotions contained. ‘I’ll endeavour to do better in future. You have my word.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Do I?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Good to know.’ He sat back and studied her for a moment with his dark glittering gaze, as if the self-doubt she was riddled with was written all over her face. ‘I thought we could start with you.’
She stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
‘I’m interested in hearing more about those family dynamics you mentioned.’
Her heart skipped a beat. Now her eyebrows were the ones to shoot up. ‘You actually want to talk?’
‘Yes. That’s what I said.’ He frowned. ‘Why? What did you think I meant?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, getting a grip and silently cursing the low self-esteem that made her immediately imagine the worst. ‘Ignore me. Pregnancy hormones making me a little loopy, that’s all. I just feared you might have given me up as a lost cause, that’s all.’
‘I would never abandon my child.’
She flushed. ‘No, of course not.’
‘And talking was your idea in the first place, as I recall.’ He sat back and stretched out his legs. ‘So shoot.’
‘Now?’
‘You advocated getting a move on.’
Yes, she’d done that too. So why was she hesitating? Nothing about her life to date was a secret, and she still believed that them getting to know each other was the best chance their relationship had of success. Once she’d answered his questions, he could finally answer hers, and they could move forward. There was no cause for concern.
‘Right,’ she said, reminding herself that she’d been through it a dozen times in therapy and this would be no different. ‘Well. As you must know, I’m the youngest of six. Leo’s ten years older than me. Zander, Thalia, Atticus and Daphne are in between. Our parents weren’t exactly what you might call nurturing. To be honest, they were so negligent that, if they hadn’t had money and status, they’d probably have been in jail. My mother is selfishness personified and my father was the stiff-upper-lip type who believed that children should be seen and not heard. Apart from Leo, of course, who he was grooming to take over the family business. The rest of us were mainly brought up by nannies.’
‘That must have been difficult.’
‘I didn’t know any different at the time,’ she said with a shrug that belied just how traumatic it had been. ‘And materially we wanted for nothing, of course, so I’m aware I’m playing the world’s tiniest violin. Nevertheless, as the baby of the family, I got virtually no attention from anyone. I was always overshadowed by my older siblings. I could never work out where I fitted in. None of my accomplishments were original. Things like learning to ride a bike or swim—the others had done it all before. No one was ever impressed by anything I did. Or even vaguely interested. I was virtually invisible.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ he murmured, running his gaze slowly over her before returning it to hers.
She ignored the flush of heat his perusal had provoked and forced herself to concentrate. ‘Nevertheless, it’s true.’
‘You don’t lack attention now.’
‘No, well, I’ve devoted a lot of time and effort to getting it.’
‘How?’
‘It’s not a pretty story,’ she said with a wince.
‘Let me be the judge of that.’
But that was what she feared. Him sizing her up and finding her lacking. It was bad enough when people she didn’t know did it, but how would she handle the father of her child, her husband-to-be, thinking her even more shallow and pointless than he already did? ‘Why don’t we talk about your upbringing instead?’
‘Because mine wasn’t very interesting.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ she said, her curiosity piqued by the metaphorical doors slamming shut around him. ‘You implied that my mother caused the breakdown of your family. What happened? I’d like to know.’
‘Maybe later,’ he said vaguely. ‘Right now, however, I’d like to know more about you .’
Her heart gave a little jump, but she managed to keep it under control. ‘For the baby’s sake.’
He shook his head. ‘For my sake. I can’t work you out. You repeatedly confound me. It’s been driving me mad. That’s why I left. And why I’ve come back. To find out what makes you tick.’
This time, her control was no match for her emotions. This attention he was paying her was for her. Not for the baby, but for her. She’d had so little of it in her life, how could she possibly resist telling him everything he wanted to know? She might never get another chance to be the sole object of his focus, and the need to string it out for as long as possible drummed hard and fast inside her.
‘I guess we do have to be open and honest with each other if we’re going to make a success of this,’ she said, her chest so tight it was making her dizzy.
‘Exactly.’
‘And you’ll keep an open mind?’
‘Yes.’
All right, then. She drew in a couple of deep steady breaths to ease the pressure on her lungs and braced herself. ‘I must have realised at quite an early age that if I didn’t want to disappear entirely I’d have to make myself visible, so I started acting up.’
‘In what way?’
‘The usual look-at-me things,’ she said, recalling fragments of behaviour that had begun innocently enough but had become increasing self-destructive. ‘When I was a kid, I was always putting on shows for anyone who would watch. Plays, musicals, anything really. I was the ultimate extrovert. Lots of friends, the leader of the gang, that sort of thing. But that didn’t work—my family still more or less ignored me—so as I got older I devoted myself to accomplishments that were original.’
‘Such as?’
‘I began shoplifting. Not for the money, obviously. Not even for the high. I think I wanted someone to catch me, although no one ever did. I skipped school and disappeared for hours. Occasionally the alarm was raised, but by the time I was born the nannies had pretty much given up on discipline altogether so nothing ever came of it.’
‘You were pushing against boundaries that weren’t even there.’
‘Right,’ she said, marvelling a little at his perceptiveness. ‘I had no one to build me up or set me straight. No one who cared. It was a confusing time. And then it got worse.’
‘How?’
‘When I was twelve and she was thirteen, Daphne was diagnosed with cancer.’
He frowned. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It was kept out of the press. It shook us all up. Even our parents managed to put aside some of their self-interest until she went into remission. And I’m really not proud of this,’ she said, swallowing down the hot lump of shame that had lodged in her throat, still crushing after all these years, ‘but it occurred to me that if I wanted the attention she’d had I’d have to get ill, which was when I really went off the rails.’
‘What happened?’
‘I developed a mild eating disorder, and when that didn’t achieve the desired result I started drinking and dabbling in drugs. Again nothing too serious. Just enough to blot the pain, I guess, because that seemed to make things better. It made me stop caring quite so much. From then on, I gave up trying to attract the attention of my family and dedicated myself to having fun, something I got very good at indeed.’
‘Did no one seriously know what was going on?’ Alex asked, his tone even, giving nothing away. ‘Not even one of your siblings?’
Olympia shook her head, knowing that they weren’t to blame. ‘I masked what I was really feeling exceptionally well. But even if they had, it had to be me who wanted to change. That’s how I ended up in rehab. One of my friends was hospitalised after an overdose. She was fine but it pulled me up short. I saw how my life might turn out if I didn’t do something to fix it, so I checked into the clinic in Arizona, and the rest, as they say, is history.’
Done with her story, she stopped, but Alex seemed to have nothing further to say and a heavy silence fell. She searched his face, unable to tell what he was thinking. But she hoped to God it wasn’t appal. Or disgust. She hoped he’d kept that mind open and could understand that, despite its inauspicious beginnings, she was trying to turn her life around.
Because what if he didn’t? What if he thought her a complete narcissist like her mother, or believed she presented some sort of danger to their child? Might he try and take it away from her? Could he even do that?
Perhaps she’d made a massive mistake in involving him and agreeing to this marriage. Perhaps she ought to leave and find support elsewhere. Surely one of her siblings could give her the help she would need?
But no. She was being ridiculous. That would never happen. Of course he wouldn’t take her baby away. This wasn’t Victorian England. What was she thinking? What she’d told him was a lot to take in, that was all. She’d needed three months to work it through, and still hadn’t fully. He’d had it dumped on him in less than five minutes. It was bound to take time to process.
‘So there you go,’ she prompted when the silence became too thick to bear. ‘That’s me and my mad family dynamics. Quite something, right?’