Free Stormy the Way by Anne Hampson Page B

of his words about there still being a home for her with him and Joan. So shocked Joan had been, while Tara herself had so confidently passed off the remark.
    And now she must go back - at least, as soon as Leon made Paul's money over to him. Stewart would say 'I told you so; I suggested you were acting on the rebound.' Well, she had asked for it. Mature and levelheaded? She had acted like a scatterbrained schoolgirl, falling madly in love with a handsome face - a classical Greek face whose black eyes could at one moment burn with pagan savagery, and at another glitter with icy contempt and disdain.
    At least she was saved one aspect of the humiliation that might have been hers: Leon had no idea she loved him; he truly believed she had married him for his money - and he should continue to believe so.
    Never would one unguarded moment occur where he might make a guess at her emotions.
    He looked at her long and hard when they met at the breakfast table.
    Savvas was all sly smiles, his tawny eyes glancing from Tara to Leon and back again all the time. The Greek men thought about nothing else but sex, she thought disgustedly, realizing that nothing would afford her greater pleasure than to slap the sniggering servant across his face.
    'Madam is pale this morning,' he observed, and she glared at him.
    Leon should have said something to the man, die thought, but he was busy sprinkling sugar on his grapefruit.
    Towards the end of the silent meal Tara said coldly,
    'Perhaps you will tell me what I have to do - in the house, I mean?
    Savvas and his wife do the work,, I know, but must I supervise at all?'
    The black eyes opened very wide. Their expressionseemed to be an admonishment at her coldness towards him and her chin lifted. Did he think it was all to be one-sided? - that he could treat her with frigid civility and she not retaliate? He would soon learn differently!
    'I have managed very well up till now,' he commented at length, helping himself to more coffee. Tm a well-organized person, as you have probably observed. However, I suppose Savvas and Margarita will expect to receive their instructions from you now.' He flipped a hand negligently. 'Just do what you like. So long as my house is kept as it is, my meals produced on time and the garden kept immaculate then I shall be satisfied.'
    Her mouth tightened. There had been no need for all that! He knew very well that things would continue as they had before she came.

    'There is little for me to do, in effect?'
    'I shouldn't have thought you were interested in work of any kind?'
    'I'm used to working for my living,' she reminded him frigidly.
    He shrugged.
    'There's no need to work now. Just do what you were doing before -
    go for a swim, or sunbathe on the lawn, or something.' He glanced at her plate. 'Eat your breakfast.'
    'I shall not!' The retort shot out before she had time to .think; he glanced at her in some amusement and said,
    'Please yourself. I expect you'll eat when you've got over the shock.'
    Her grey eyes met those black ones, glintingly.
    'We need not keep on referring to the fiasco of our marriage, Leon.'
    And she just had to add, for her own particular satisfaction, 'One day it's you who'll get a shock, and it will be just as great as mine.'
    His dark head lifted.
    'And what,' he inquired with sudden interest, 'do you mean by that remark?'
    'I have no intention of expanding on it at the present time. I said one day - and that day doesn't happen to be yet.'
    Another shrug. Probably he considered shfe was bluffing. So the shock would be all the more mortifying when it did come, she thought vindictively.

    He disappeared immediately after breakfast, going to a smart stone building nestling on a small rise at the far end of the garden, which was shaded from the west winds by a belt of Aleppo pine trees. Up the walls of the building climbers had been trained and it was a delightful mass of colour from the bougainvillaeas and passion flowers, and of course the