GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 35

Bella lifted her chin. 'Yes, somewhere as far as possible from you,' she answered.

'Marina told me she'd come to see you.' His beautiful shapely lips compressed, a muscle pulling tight at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. 'She shouldn't have done that.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Bella fielded in a tremulous driven undertone that mortified her, frankly bemused by a relationship that crossed the expected boundaries. It was inconceivable to her that Marina would've told Edward she had been to see Bella. 'Considering the way you've behaved I thought she was remarkably restrained in what she had to say.'

'My relationship with Marina is not as straightforward as you probably assume it is. Nor does what it entailed matter now because I broke off our engagement earlier today.' Edward studied her with screened intensity, expecting an immediate lessening of the tension in the atmosphere.

Bella refused to react in any way because that announcement did not lessen her sense of betrayal in the slightest. 'You said you were single...you lied,' she condemned with quiet simplicity.

'Let's move this out of the hall and talk like grown-ups,' Edward suggested grittily.

'I've got nothing to say to you, Edward, so I suggest we stay where we are and you let me leave.'

'Diavelos...' Edward ground out, his frustration finally bubbling over in response to her pale composed expression and cold light green eyes. He had expected to find Bella distraught. Somehow he had expected her to shout and sob because he knew, or he had thought he knew, that like some chocolates she had a soft inner center and would be hurt about what she had learned about him. Instead, he was looking at a disturbingly controlled young woman, who refused to either shout or sob, and he didn't know how to deal with that at all. 'In the circumstances, you must have something to say to me.'

'But I doubt very much if you want to hear it.' So great was the strain of maintaining her tough, unfeeling façade, Bella could barely speak. Pain and disillusionment sat like a massive block, radiating toxic, wounding rays of insecurity, hurt, and rejection. He had devastated her, shattered her heart into a hundred pieces, but on another level, she was grateful for Marina's visit because at least she had found Edward out for the rat he was before she became any more deeply involved with him.

Edward thrust the door of the sitting room so wide that it bounced back noisily. 'I do want to hear it!' he challenged.

Reckoning that he was going to make it difficult for her to leave without a muck-raking confrontation and marveling that he could even want that, Bella trudged into the big room where Marina had faced her with the truth that had destroyed her dreams. Silly, sentimental, romantic dreams, utterly inappropriate dreams for a woman of her age, intelligence and background to have cherished: the dream that a man could be decent and honest and trustworthy.

With her parents' history before her, she should've known better, Bella thought painfully. Even her own father had lied and cheated rather than keep his promise to marry her mother. Soon after Bella's birth, her father had begun working with the woman who would eventually become his first wife and he kept his infidelity a secret while continuing to live with Bella and her mother. She had the vaguest possible memory of her father because he had walked out on her mother before Bella reached her second birthday.

Bella spun round to face Edward, her arms folded defensively across her slightly built body. 'Right, exactly what do you want from me? Forgiveness? Understanding? Well, sorry, you're not getting either!' she told him roundly.

'I want to explain.'

'No, I don't want to hear any explanations...a bit pointless at this stage!' Bella pointed out curtly. 'You lied to me and there's no getting around that. Don't waste any more of my time, Edward. Let me go.'

'To go where?'

'I don't know yet.' Bella was distracted by the buzzing of her mobile phone in the back pocket of her jeans and she dug it out and switched it off, noticing in forgivable surprise that it was her aunt calling her. Considering her aunt had told her never to bother her family again, what could she possibly want? Unless her uncle Declan, who had visited Bella at Matt's flat, had persuaded his wife to soften her attitude.