A Passionate Marriage

‘You’re asking for trouble dressed like that,’ Silvia Cunningham announced in her usual blunt manner.

Isobel took a step back to view herself in the mirror. ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ All she saw was a perfectly acceptable brown tailored suit with a skirt that lightly hugged her hips and thighs to finish at a respectable length just below her slender knees. The plain-cut zip-up jacket stopped at her waist and beneath it she wore a staunchly conventional button-through cream blouse. Her hair was neat, caught up in a twist and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. She was wearing an unremarkable flesh-coloured lipstick, a light dusting of eye-shadow and some black mascara, but that was all.

In fact she could not look more conservative if she tried to be, she informed that hint of a defiant glint she could see burning in her green eyes.

‘What’s wrong with that suit is that it’s an outright provocation,’ her mother said. ‘The wretched man never could keep his hands off you at the worst of times. What do you think he’s going to want to do when you turn up wearing a suit with a definite slink about it?’

‘I can’t help my figure!’ Isobel flashed back defensively. ‘It’s the one you gave to me, along with the hair and the eyes.’

‘And the temper,’ Silvia nodded. ‘And the wilful desire to let him see what it is he’s passing up.’

‘Passing up?’ Those green eyes flashed. ‘Do I have to remind you that I was the one who left him three years ago?’

‘And he was the one who did not bother to come and drag you back again.’

Rub it in, why don’t you? Isobel thought. ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said and began searching for her handbag. ‘I have a meeting to go to.’

‘You shouldn’t be going to this meeting at all!’

‘Please don’t start again.’ Isobel sighed. They had already been through this a hundred times.

‘I agree that it is time to end your marriage, Isobel,’ her mother persisted none the less, ‘and I am even prepared to admit that the letter from Leandros’s lawyer brought the best news I’d heard in two long years!’

Looking at the way her mother was struggling to stand with the aid of her walking frame, Isobel understood where she was coming from when she said that.

‘But I still think you should have conducted this business through a third party,’ she continued, ‘and, looking at the way you’ve dressed yourself up, I am now absolutely positive that coming face to face with him is a mistake!’

‘Sit down—please,’ Isobel begged. ‘Your arms are shaking. You know what they said about overdoing it.’

‘I will sit when you stop being so pig-stubborn about this!’

A grin suddenly flashed across Isobel’s face. ‘Pot calling the kettle black,’ she said.

Her mother’s mouth twitched. If Isobel ever wanted to know where she got her stubbornness from then she only had to look at Silvia Cunningham. The hair, the eyes, even her strength of will came from this very determined woman. Though all of those features in her mother had taken a severe battering over the last two years since a dreadful car accident. Silvia was recovering slowly, but the damage to her spine had been devastating. Fortunately—and her mother was one for counting her blessings—her mind was still as bright as a polished button and unwaveringly determined to get her full mobility back.

But Sylvia had a tendency to overdo it. Only a few weeks ago she had taken a bad fall. She hadn’t broken anything but she’d bruised herself and severely shaken her confidence. It had also shaken Isobel’s confidence about leaving her alone throughout the day while she was at work. Then Leandros’s letter had arrived to make life even more complicated. It had been easier to just bring Silvia with her than to leave her behind then worry sick for every minute she was away from her.

On a tut of impatience Isobel went to catch up the nearest chair and settled it behind her mother’s legs. Silvia lowered herself into it without protest, which said a lot about how difficult she’d been finding it to stand. But that was her mother, Isobel thought as she bent to kiss her smooth cheek. She was a fighter. The fact that she was still of this world and able to hold her own in an argument was proof of it.

‘Look,’ Isobel said, coming down to her mother’s level and moving the walking frame out of the way so that she could claim her hands. ‘All right, I confess that I’ve dressed like this for a reason. But it has nothing to do with trying to make Leandros regret this divorce.’ It went much deeper than that, and her darkened eyes showed it. ‘He did nothing but criticise my taste in clothes. When he did, I was just too stubborn to make even one small concession to his opinion of what his wife should look like, wear or behave.’

‘Quite right too.’ Her beautiful, loyal mother nodded. ‘Pretentious oaf.’

‘Well, I mean to show him that when I have the freedom to choose what the heck I want to wear, then I can be as conventional as anyone.’

A pair of shrewd old eyes looked into their younger matching pair, and saw cracks a mile wide in those excuses just waiting for her daughter to fall right in.

A knock sounded at the door. It would be Lester Miles, Isobel’s lawyer. With a hurried smile, Isobel got up to leave. But her mother refused to let go of her hand.

‘Don’t let him hurt you again,’ she murmured urgently.

Isobel’s sudden flash of annoyance took Silvia by surprise. ‘Whatever else Leandros did to me, he never set out to hurt me, Mother.’ Mother said it all. For Silvia was Mum or sweetheart, but only ever Mother when she was out of line. ‘We were in love, but were wrong for each other. Learning to accept that was painful for us both.’

Silvia held her tongue in check and accepted a second kiss on her cheek while Isobel wondered what the heck she was doing defending a man whose treatment of her had been so indefensible!

What was the matter with her? Was it nerves? Was she more stressed about this meeting than she was prepared to admit? Hurt her? What else could Leandros do that could hurt her more than he’d already done three years ago?

Another knock at the door and she was turning towards it, her mind in a sudden hectic whirl. She tried to fight it, tried to stay calm. ‘What are you going to do while I’m out?’ she asked as she walked towards the door.

‘Clive has hired a car. We are going to do some sightseeing.’

Clive. Isobel’s mouth tightened. There was another point of conflict she had not yet addressed. Clive Sanders was their neighbour and very good friend. He was also what Isobel supposed she could call the new man in her life. Or that was what he could be if Isobel gave Clive the green light.

Clive had somehow managed to invite himself along on this trip—aided and abetted by her mother, she was sure. The first she’d known about it was when she’d been in the hotel foyer last night and happened to see him arrive. Clive had just smiled at her burst of annoyance, touched a soothing hand to her angry cheek and said innocently, ‘I am here for your mother. You’re supposed to be pleased by the surprise, you ungrateful thing.’

But she had been far from pleased or grateful. Too many people seemed to believe they had a right to interfere in her life. Clive insisted the trip to Athens fitted in with his plans for a much-needed break. Her mother insisted it made her feel more secure to have a man like Clive around. Isobel thought there was a conspiracy between the two of them, which involved Clive keeping an eye on her in case she went totally off the rails when she met up with Leandros again.

But she knew differently. For all that she’d just defended Leandros, she knew there was not a single chance that seeing him was going to send her toppling back into the madness of their old love affair. She didn’t hate him, but she despised him for the way he had treated her. He’d killed her confidence and her spirit and, finally, her love.

‘Don’t let him tire you out,’ was her clipped comment to Silvia about Clive’s presence here.

‘He’s a fully trained physiotherapist,’ Silvia pointed out. ‘Give him the benefit of some sense.’ Which was her mother’s way of making it known that she knew Isobel disapproved of him being here. ‘And Isobel,’ Silvia added as she was about to pull the door open, ‘a brown leather suit is not conventional by any stretch of the imagination, so stop kidding yourself that you’re out to do anything but make that man sit up and take note.’

Isobel left the room without bothering to answer, startling Lester Miles with the abruptness with which she appeared. His eyes widened then slid down over the leather suit before carefully hooding in a way that told her he thought her attire inappropriate too.

Maybe it was. Her chin went up. Suddenly she was fizzing like a simmering pot ready to explode because her mother was right—she was out to blow Leandros right out of his shoes.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

Lester Miles just nodded and fell into step beside her. He was young and he was eager and she had picked him out at random from the Yellow Pages. Yes, she was dressed for battle, because she didn’t think she needed a lawyer to fire her shots for her—though she was happy for him to come along and play the stooge.

For today was redemption day. Today she intended to take back all of those things that Leandros had wrenched from her and walk away a whole person again. She didn’t want his money or to discuss settlements. She had nothing he could want from her, unless he planned to fight over a gold wedding ring and a few diamond trinkets that had made his mother stare in dismay when she’d found out that her son had given them to Isobel.

Family heirlooms, she recalled. ‘A bit wasted on you, don’t you think?’ his sister Chloe had said. But then, dear Mama and Chloe had not been in the bedroom when the precious heirlooms had been her only attire. They’d not seen the way their precious boy had decked out his wife in every sparkle he could lay his hands on—before he enjoyed the pleasure they gave.

Those same heirlooms still lay languishing in a safety deposit box right here in Athens. Leandros was welcome to them as far as she was concerned. It was going to be interesting to discover just what he was willing to place on the table for their safe return—before she told him she wanted nothing from him, then gave him back his damned diamonds and left with her pride!

The journey across Athens in a taxi took an age in traffic that hardly seemed to move. Lester Miles kept on quizzing her as to what was required of him, but she answered in tight little sentences that gave him no clue at all.

‘You are in such a powerful position, Mrs Petronades,’ he pointed out. ‘With no pre-nuptial agreement you are entitled to half of everything your husband owns.’

Isobel blinked. She hadn’t given a single thought to a pre-nuptial agreement or the lack of one, come to that. Was this why Leandros wanted to see her personally? Was he out to charm her into seeing this settlement thing from his point of view? The stakes had quite suddenly risen. A few family heirlooms didn’t seem to matter any more when you put them in the giant Petronades pot of gold.

‘Negotiations will stand or fall on which of you wants this divorce more,’ Lester Miles continued. ‘As it was your husband who instigated proceedings, I think we can safely say that power is in your hands.’

‘You’ve done your homework,’ she murmured.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It is what you hired me to do.’