Page 16 of Seasons of Sin

The pain was unexpected. It lanced her sharply. She felt it like a hot blade, but she nodded.

He mistook her silence for doubt and expelled an impatient sigh. “What more do you want,Zafeiri?” He demanded, using the Greek pronunciation of her name. It sent threads of warmth knotting through her.

“I want …” She shook her head. “I want to call my friend,” she mumbled, pushing out of the bed.

He watched her walk across the room. Naked, as she’d been almost the whole time they’d spent together. “You will stay.”

It wasn’t a question, but she spun around anyway. “Yes,” she expelled the word as though not saying it might have harmed her. “I’ll stay until then.”

Thad fell back against the pillows, his expression impossible to read and his feelings difficult to decipher.

For Saphire’s part, she paused outside his bedroom only to grab a robe from the adjacent bathroom. She wrapped it around herself and cinched it at the waist before padding downstairs. Her handbag was in the entrance way, where it had been since arriving. She lifted her phone out as though it were a bomb.

Still switched off from the flight, she brought it to life now with a sinking feeling. Sure enough, it began to beep almost instantly. Message after message spurted onto the screen. Anita, Anita, Anita, Jordan, Jordan, Anita, her mother, Jordan, Jordan, Anita. Her stomach rolled.

She clicked into one randomly.

Baby, I’m worried. Call me.

Yeah, right. She deleted it angrily and tapped to the next one.

Saffy, darling, I can explain everything if you’ll only listen to me.

Somehow she doubted that.

Saffy, I love you.

Love was as love did, she thought bitterly. And his behavior was not that of a loving spouse. As for hers? Well, in some ways, though it sounded ludicrous, she was the one making a sacrifice so that they could make their marriage work.

How had her parents known he was so untrustworthy? She shook her head. They’d been adamant that she’d regret the marriage. Ice trickled down her spine. Had they known something? Had they, mortifyingly, observed him with Anita in the past? Worse, someone else? How many women had he screwed behind her back? Was her best friend the beginning? Or the end?

Saff, you’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose you.

Yeah, right. She erased the message without hesitation.

Her fingers shook as she pulled up her husband’s name in the phone. His face grinned back at her from the top of the screen. She’d taken the picture on their honeymoon.

What a joke! They’d gone to Barcelona and spent the whole time walking through the beautiful city; she should have felt alive and enraptured, but she’d simply felt hot and sticky for the most part. They hadn’t even slept together because he’d had a middle ear infection that he claimed affected his balance.

It began to ring and she lifted the device to her ear and then stepped out of the front door, onto the sand spotted grass lawn that was at the front of the mansion. She walked across the warm ground slowly, right to the edge of the cliff. It was met by spiky trees and bushes; in the distance she could see the watermelons that Thaddeus had told her about, scrambling wildly in thecracks of the cliff. She crouched down and ran her fingers over a blade of grass, pleased when the sharp edge sliced her skin.

“Saff!” His voice was torn from him and in that moment, she didn’t doubt that he had been genuinely worried. “Where the hell are you? I’ve been calling and calling and getting your damned voice mail.”

She swallowed. “I’ve gone away.”

A beat of silence. “You’re angry. I get it.”

She pulled a face. “Do you? Somehow I doubt that.” She ran her finger over another frond and then plucked it from the base of the tree. “So? What happened?”

She could hear his anxiety. He was a lawyer, and a damned good one. He was working out how much to reveal. Would the complete truth disarm his wife? Or should he drip-feed her the information.

“It was a mistake.”

Ah, excellent. Misinformation. He wasn’t going to admit to anything, then.

“How many times did you make thismistake?” She pushed, surprised by how calm she was able to sound.

“Not often.” He was employing his most charmingly reasonable tone.