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But the terrible sense that she had no right to do that any more, not after what had happened, kept her fixed in her place. The fear that if she even tried then he would reject her with cold and hostile disdain weighted her down even more. She couldn’t make herself move though her heart raced in confused excitement and her eyes were fixed in hungry yearning on the dark, lean—too lean, she noted in some distress—form of the man before her.

‘There’s nothing I want to say here.’

Because now it seemed as if just holding onto the tumbler was the only thing that was keeping her under control. As if the hard glass were some sort of lifeline that she was clinging onto in desperation and if she let go then the tidal wave of emotions that had been building up inside her all day would break loose and swamp her completely.

‘I don’t think we should discuss our private business in front of everyone.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Zarek nodded unexpectedly. ‘What we need to talk about is private and personal. We don’t need to share.’

The last remark was made with pointed emphasis and an equally pointed flick of black, thickly lashed eyes in the direction of Jason and his mother and brother. The three members of the Michaelis family were lingering between Zarek and the door, clearly unsure as to what their next move should be. In public, before the other members of the meeting, they had needed to show a united front, to make it look as if they were delighted to see Zarek back and welcomed him unreservedly. That they were glad to have his hands back on the controls of Odysseus Shipping. But now, when everyone else had left, an uneasy calm descended on the room. An uneasiness that Zarek was aggravating by his comment about keeping things private.

‘We all need to talk…’

It was Jason who put the words into the silence, the disquiet that Penny felt she could actually breathe in from the atmosphere.

‘We need to know what happened…’

‘And you will learn—in good time.’

Zarek spoke without taking his darkly burning gaze from Penny’s face, the words almost tossed over his shoulder at his stepbrother. Jason was saying the things she should be saying. The words she couldn’t find the strength or the courage to form on her tongue.

‘But for now you will surely acknowledge that there are some things that are private between husband and wife and are not to be shared with anyone else?’

Was she deceiving herself, Penny wondered, or had that deep, slightly husky voice subtly emphasised that ‘husband and wife’ as if deliberately driving home the fact that here was something in which Jason’s presence was not at all welcome? Staking a claim, so to speak, like some powerful wolf moving in to demonstrate possession of his mate, the wild hairs along his spine lifting in open challenge.

‘Of course, but—’

‘In good time,’ Zarek repeated, reaching out a hand to the edge of the door and pulling it open wide, the meaning of his message clear. He wanted everyone out of here and Jason would be a fool to ignore the signs. They were dismissed and that was it.

But still he lingered, looking across at Penny, a question in his eyes.

‘Penny?’ he queried, appearing to check how she felt.

How did she feel? She supposed to some it would seem wonderful that her husband, this man who had been away missing for so long—who had once been believed to be dead—would lay claim to her like this. To them it might appear that he was still so ardently in love that he couldn’t wait to be alone with his wife, to restore the links of their marriage, renew their relationship.

But recalling what had happened between them before he had left, the rifts that had opened up between them, dividing them from each other, she knew she couldn’t see it that way at all. Oh, yes, Zarek wanted to be alone with her but for his own personal, darker reasons rather than any loving reunion. And she could only begin to guess at just what those reasons might actually be.

But, ‘It’s fine, Jason,’ she said, exerting every ounce of control she could manage to keep her voice firm and even when inside her nerves were quailing at the thought of how far from fine everything was. ‘Absolutely fine.’

Was there some light of approval in the flash of the dark eyes he turned in her direction? The niggling worry that there was also something else had her shifting in her seat, finding herself able to move at last. Her brain seemed to have started working again too, sending the message Zarek is back—Zarek is back!—into her thoughts in a mixture of wild delight and shuddering apprehension. What was she to think? Yes, Zarek was back—but just who was this man who had been missing for two years? And what had happened to him while he had been away?

Exactly who had come home to her?

Chapter Four

PENNY pushed herself to her feet as Jason, Hermione and Petros made their way out of the door, tight knots forming in her stomach at the thought of being alone with her husband for the first time in so long.

She had never felt like this before, not even in the very beginning when she had first known him and had become his bride so very soon after that. Then she had been fizzing with excitement, just waiting for everyone else to go and leave them alone so that she and Zarek could become truly man and wife.

She had been so sure then. Sure that he wanted her—that he loved her. After all, he’d married her, hadn’t he? At barely twenty-two she had been so very young, so naïve in matters of the heart, and even more innocent of the force of physical desire. It was only later that bitter disillusionment had set in and she had come to realise that Zarek was more than capable of wanting without any sort of love.

The door was shut, everyone else was gone. Shifting from one foot to another, Penny nerved herself for whatever was to come. At least standing upright she felt better equipped to face him. She had always been considered too tall by most men, but never for Zarek Michaelis. Somewhere in his past family history there had been an ancestor—probably his Irish great-great-great-grandfather who was always referred to as The Giant—who had brought a gene for height into the family and Zarek had inherited that in maturity. Even at five feet ten, Penny had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his eyes.

‘So now…’ she said as he closed the door a little too firmly for her mental comfort. ‘What…?’

But the words caught in her throat as if a knot had tied tight around them, preventing her from getting them out. She could only stand and stare as Zarek lifted a hand to the right side of his face, just by his temple, and rubbed at the skin as if something there was troubling him.

‘Are you all right?’ she questioned sharply. ‘Is something wrong?’

When he didn’t respond but simply stood, back stiff, shoulders tight, head turned away from her, she felt the rush of memory like a sort of stinging mental pins and needles flood into her mind.

Someone else had done just that. And not too long ago. The memory seemed to dance at the corners of her thoughts, slipping away whenever she tried to get a grip on it. But right now she had other, more important concerns on her mind.

‘What is it? Zarek? Do you have a headache?’

Still he didn’t answer but stood motionless as a statue so that she launched herself towards him, covering the short space between them in a matter of seconds and whirling round in front of him.

‘Tell me what’s wrong?’

Without pausing to think, she reacted instinctively, lifting her hand to cover his where it still lay against his face, pressing her fingers over his as she looked up into his dark, shuttered face, seeing the way his heavy lids had come down over the darkness of his eyes. Hiding them from her.

‘Tell me!’

For the space of a couple of jerky heartbeats he didn’t move a muscle, but then at last he shifted slightly, moving the weight of his body from one foot to another, and drew in his breath on a slow, deep sigh. The warmth of his flesh reached her through the fine cotton of his shirt and the movement brought a waft of a deeply sensual scent, the ozone from the sea, sunshine on skin, and underneath it all the warm, musky scent that was personal to Zarek alone.

And in a split second the mood of the moment had changed. Where there had been nerve-twisting apprehension there was suddenly a heart-stilling tension. In Penny’s veins the blood seemed to pulse infinitely slowly, shockingly heavy. Her breath too seemed frozen, leaving her with her mouth slightly open, unable to inhale, unable to think.

All she was aware of was the feel of Zarek’s skin under her fingers, the heat and the softness of it, with the power of muscle and bone beneath the supple flesh. It was as if sparks had flown from his skin to hers, holding her melded to him, unable to move.

And the burn along her nerves reminded her only too painfully of how it had once been between them. The way that she had never been able to resist his touch, his kiss. The way that her body was yearning for it, reaching towards him even now.

‘Zarek…’

His name was just a whisper across lips that were suddenly parched and dry, her tongue seeming to tangle on the sound so that she had to swallow hard to ease the discomfort in her throat. ‘Zarek…’

‘No…’ Zarek said, his eyes still closed against her, his voice rough and seeming slightly ragged at the edges. ‘Don’t…’

‘Don’t what?’

But then he opened his eyes and looked down into her face and she knew exactly what he meant. What exactly he did not want her to do.

He didn’t want her to touch him. He was rejecting without words the feel of her hand on his, the connection of skin on skin. He didn’t have to say a word; it was there in his face, in his eyes.

And that was when she realised just what a terrible mistake she had made. Impulse and concern had made her break through the barriers that she had felt between them. The barriers that she had erected in her mind in self-defence because of the need to protect herself from the shock of his sudden arrival, the memory of all that had been between them before he had left.

‘So your wife is not allowed to touch you?’

‘My wife…Were you ever truly my wife?’

His eyes burned into hers as he raised his other hand to fasten around her fingers, clasping them tightly under the warmth and roughness of his palm. And as he pulled at it, bringing it down and away from his face, the force of his hold made her wince as her fingers were squeezed together.

But a moment later the slight discomfort was forgotten as shock ricocheted through her thoughts, making her head spin.

‘You!’

She spat the word at him as she fought for control, struggled with the need to lash out with the hand that was free or launch herself straight at him, pounding her fist on his chest.

‘It was you!’

She had seen the long white line of the scar before but then it had gleamed in the cold burn of the moonlight, the only visible part of a face that had been hidden by a cap, the fall of long dark hair, a heavy beard. The last time she had seen that scar it had been on the face of the man she had believed was a fisherman.

‘You were spying on me!’

The memories of the previous night, the recollection of Jason’s arms around her, and the thought of those dark burning eyes watching her put a new tension into her voice.

‘Spying?’ Dark cynicism rang in Zarek’s voice. ‘That word implies that you have something to hide.’

‘As opposed to you who was hiding from me.’

She shouldn’t be doing this, Penny told herself. She shouldn’t be taking the conversation down this route. What she should be doing was asking Zarek where he had been, what had happened to him. She should want to find out—she did want to find out—just how he had come by that dreadful scar and what had happened to him. But she couldn’t make her mouth actually form the questions. Her tongue seemed to have frozen and her throat wouldn’t work on those words. Instead she heard the provocative and aggressive words come out as a challenge.

The thought that he had come home earlier but had not let her know that he was alive burned in her heart. That he had hidden from her, watched her, waiting—for what?—for her to betray herself in some way, was like a knife twisting in the wound. She had once been convinced that when she knew that he was alive and well she would be so happy, and had even allowed herself to think they might just have a chance to start all over again.

And now this…

Did she need further proof that, whatever else had happened while he was away, nothing had changed his mind about their marriage? He still regarded her with suspicion, as someone who was not to be trusted. Not as the woman he had loved and missed. But then of course she had known that that was the case from the start.

‘Don’t you think that I had the right to find out just what had been happening while I was away?’

‘You didn’t want to see me? Ask me.’

Another of those darkly blazing looks told her that he didn’t need to ask. That in his mind she was already tried and condemned without a chance of appeal.

‘“I want to get away from here, start living again,”’ he quoted cynically, leaving her in no doubt that he had heard every word of her talk with Jason. ‘“I’m tired of treading water.”’

‘You really shouldn’t listen in to other people’s conversations,’ she flashed back, knowing with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach just how he would have interpreted it. ‘Don’t you know that it’s a fact that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves?’

‘I’m sure that most never actually overhear their wife planning to have them declared dead.’

‘You were dead! At least—I—we thought you were.’

‘And that was how it suited you.’

His grip on her tightened as he spoke, crushing her fingers. But it was not the biting pressure that shocked her, rather the rush of wild electricity up her arm, tracking a burning pathway along her nerves that frightened her with its instant and shocking reaction. How could he still affect her in this way when deep inside she knew the truth about the coldness of his heart?

‘I don’t want this,’ she managed, tensing her muscles against his hold, pulling herself away from him as far as she could while he still kept her hand prisoner.

She had to get away, to find some space and quiet in which to collect her thoughts and decide how to go forward.

‘Let me go!’

If he reacted against her, if he held her tighter, pulled her close, then she did not know what she would do. The swirl of ambiguous feelings inside her head was like a tornado, throwing her off balance and leaving her unable to think.

‘I said let me go!’

The speed with which he released her added to the sense of shock, making her sway and stumble, almost fall. But it was fear that he would come for her again that had her reeling away, grabbing out at a nearby chair for support.

‘Don’t come near me! I don’t want you near me!’

Oh, you liar, you liar, her conscience reproached her bitterly. You weak, cowardly liar. She wanted nothing so much as his arms around her, his body close to hers, to hold her and comfort her, to warm her and melt away the hard core of ice that seemed to have formed at the centre of her heart.

But Zarek simply folded his arms across his broad chest and regarded her coldly through eyes that seemed to have been formed from burnished steel, polished so hard that they were opaque and closed off against her.

‘Of course not,’ he drawled with bitter cynicism. ‘After all, you never really wanted me back.’

It was only what she’d told him. If you go, don’t expect me to be waiting here when you come back. Bitter pain had made her lash out at the time, knowing she would rather die than have him realise just how much she had loved him when he had seen her only as a willing body to warm his bed—and a brood mare to conceive his child. But it still stung viciously to have her wild, unthinking words turned against her in this way.

‘You’ve sprung this on me—appearing from the dead. I— need some time,’ she managed, trying for appeasement but getting nowhere with it if the cold burn of his gaze was anything to go by. And the way those powerful arms were crossed tight over his chest was like a rigid shield, deflecting any appeal she might direct at him.

‘Then take it.’

‘What?’

With her own defences ready formed for battle, his sudden capitulation was so unexpected that it took all the defiance from her, leaving her limp as a deflated balloon.

‘Take it.’

It was more of a command this time, snapped at her with contempt that was like a slap in the face. It seemed that he had had enough of baiting her, for now at least. That shocking, taunting mood seemed to have evaporated, leaving instead something that sounded disturbingly like a cynical weariness.

‘If you need the time to adjust to the fact that the husband you hoped was dead—’

‘Never hoped!’

She couldn’t let that pass. No matter how terrible things had been between them, she had never once hoped he was no longer still alive. And she was appalled that he might even think so.

‘How could I ever hope that?’

‘Hoped was never coming back…’ Zarek amended without even the tiniest amount of a concession in his tone. ‘Then take that time. I know that I sprung my arrival on you and heaven knows I too need some space.’

It was like a slap in the face, making pain twist in her stomach. She felt as if the room were closing in on her, crushing the breath from her body, making her feel sick with distress. He had been back—what?—barely an hour, and already he wanted space—to escape from her.

‘To accustom myself to being here again. It has been a long time.’

Something in his tone brought Penny up sharp, made her look at him more closely. Only now did she see the evidence of new lines about his nose and mouth, the tiniest flecks of grey in his hair at the temples. Evidence that hinted at the fact that his life hadn’t been totally easy while he had been missing. She had forgotten everything that the counsellors had told them, the advice they had been given at the beginning of all this, when they had believed that Zarek might be found and might be on his way back to them before the end of the year.

Wherever he’s been, they’d said, whatever has happened to him, he will need time and space to adjust. He was held hostage, his life was in danger. It was unlikely that he would be able to just walk into the house and take up his old life where he had left off.

The wave of reaction that swept over her at the thought made her feel sick and ashamed, a terrible sense of guilt pushing her into rash, unguarded words.

‘I’m sorry—I should have thought—do you need anything—want anything? Have you eaten? A sandwich? Some coffee perhaps?’

She sounded like the most inexperienced and gauche hostess greeting a complete stranger for the very first time. And obviously Zarek thought so too from the way that his beautiful mouth twisted and his dark eyes gleamed with something dangerous and cruel. One long, tanned hand lifted in a flicking gesture of dismissal.

‘No—nothing. If I need anything, I can find it for myself— or get one of the staff to see to it. I do still have the staff in the house, I take it?’

‘Of course you do.’

Flinging the answer back at him, she emphasised the you so as to make sure he realised that she had heard and noted that arrogant ‘I’, which made it plain that he was back here in his role as owner of the villa, MD of Odysseus Shipping, lord of all he surveyed.

And her husband.

And what of her then? As his wife did she still have a place in this house? And for how long? While Zarek had been missing she had had a role to play, but now that he was back…

Did he even still want her as his wife?

‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’

And with that she was dismissed. As if she needed the message rammed home he turned his back on her, walking across the room to stare out of the window, one hand pushed deep into his trouser pocket, the other lifting once again to press against the scar above his eye.

In the doorway, Penny paused, half turned back to him.

‘Zarek…’

But his only response was an impatient gesture of his dark head, repulsing without hesitation the tentative approach.

‘Go!’ he said and it was a command she would be a fool to ignore. ‘Just go.’

Well, what had she expected? Penny asked herself as reluctantly she turned away again and made herself move away, letting the door fall shut behind her.

Zarek Michaelis. Your absent husband. Home at last.

The mocking words he had tossed at her sounded in her head as she walked down the long, sunlit hall, heading for the stairs.

He was home, but it was obvious that nothing had changed. And because of that the wonderful joy and delight she should have been able to find in his return were totally missing. Zarek was back in body perhaps, but in his mind, and most of all in his heart, he was as lost to her as ever.

Perhaps more so. Because at least the Zarek who had gone away had put on a good pretence of being her husband when they were together. He had made it plain that in one sense at least—the sexual one—he wanted her.

He had wanted her in his arms, in his bed. He had barely been able to keep his hands off her and at least that way she had been able to get close to him. Able to keep him with her.

But that had been before the dreadful row they had had; now it seemed that even that had waned, taking with it the only chance she had of holding him.

‘Don’t,’ he had said when she’d touched him. And he’d kept his eyes closed to reinforce the rejection in his words.

Zarek had only ever wanted her sexually, never loving her. He had hidden it in the past, but it seemed that he was no longer taking the trouble to hide anything any more. His cold dismissal of her just now proved that. Even that wanting seemed to have died in the time he had been away.

She had got him back from the dead and finally lost him for ever all in the same moment, it seemed.