She could not take it in. It had to be some kind of joke. “If this is your idea of a marriage proposal, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

Sensual lips twisted in a grimace. “Do not be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” She wished her brain would start working again, but she couldn’t think in the face of his words.

“You are a career woman as you’ve shown time and again over the past year.” He slashed the air with one cutting hand. “A woman with your ambitions would not make a proper wife for the heir to the Petronides empire.”

She shivered with a chill that went clear to the marrow of her bones. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I am getting married and naturally our liaison must come to an end.” The sick paleness of his features did nothing to alleviate her personal pain.

“You told me our relationship was exclusive. You told me I could trust you. You would not make love to another woman while I shared your bed.” She jumped out of that bed, feeling dirty and used, the passion they had shared soiled with his revelation.

Running his long fingers through the black silk of his hair, he sighed. “I have not had sex with another woman.”

“Then who are you marrying?” she practically shrieked.

“No one you know.”

“Obviously.” Alexandra glared at him, wanting to kill him, wanting to scream, very afraid she would cry.

He sighed again. “Her name is Phoebe Leonides.”

Greek. The other woman was Greek and probably meek, proper and brought up to marry money. “When did you meet her?” Though the pain was tearing her apart, she had to know.

“I’ve known Phoebe most of my life. She is the daughter of a family friend.”

“You’ve known her most of your life and you just decided you loved her?”

A cynical laugh erupted from him. “Love has nothing to do with it.”

He said love like it was a dirty word. Neither of them had ever spoken of love, but she adored Dimitri with every fiber of her being and had hoped that he had returned those feelings at least in some small way. Enough to make a marriage and family between them work now that she was pregnant with his child, but he quite obviously didn’t believe in the emotion.

“If you don’t love this woman, why are you marrying her?”

“It is time.”

She swallowed convulsively. “You say that like it’s something you’d always planned to do.”

“It is.”

Blood roared to her head, making her feel flushed and weak. She swayed.

He said something vicious in Greek and grabbed her upper arms to steady her. “Are you all right, pethi mou?”

What planet was he from? How could she be all right? He’d just told her he planned to marry another woman, a woman he’d always intended to make his wife while he’d spent the past year using Alexandra as his whore.

“Let. Me. Go,” she got out between clenched teeth.

He dropped his hands, his face registering affront and she wanted to slap him so much it was an ache in her muscles. He took a single step back.

She glared up at the face that had been more beloved than any other since they met fourteen months ago. “Let me get this straight. You always planned to marry another woman?”

Indigo eyes narrowed. He didn’t like repeating himself. “Yes.”

“Yet you seduced me into your bed. You made me your tart knowing you never intended our relationship to be anything more than sexual?”

He reared back as if she’d struck him. “I did not make you my tart. You are my lover.”

“Ex-lover.”

His jaw clenched. “Ex-lover.”

“Why…” She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She couldn’t ask this, but she had to. “Why did you make love, I mean… have sex with me just now?”

He spun away from her, his magnificent body sending messages to her own even amidst the carnage of their discussion.

“I couldn’t help myself.”

She believed him. She hadn’t been able to help herself with him from the very beginning. She’d still been a virgin at the ripe age of twenty-two, but her innocence had been no barrier to the feelings he ignited in her.

He’d been shocked by her virginity, but not deterred in his resolve to make her his lover. She’d loved him and after two months of holding him off, she’d given in. It had been fantastic. He had made her feel cherished and there had been times over the past year when she had even felt loved.

“I don’t believe you want to let me go.” He couldn’t.

“It is time,” he said again, as if that explained it all.

“Time to marry the woman you intended to marry all along?” she asked, needing to make it very clear in her own mind.

“Yes.”

Suddenly she felt her nakedness even through the mists of her anger and it shamed her. She had shared her body without inhibitions with this man for a year…a year during which he knew he planned to marry another woman.

She spun on her heel and headed to the bathroom where she jerked on the toweling robe she kept hanging on the back of the door. When she came back into the bedroom, Dimitri was gone. A search of the apartment revealed he had not merely left the bedroom, he had left her.

She stood in the middle of the living room and let the emptiness of the apartment sink into her consciousness until it was so heavy it forced her to her knees. Her head dropped, feeling too heavy for her neck and the sting of tears began in the back of her throat.

Soon their acid heat burned their way down her cheeks and neck to soak into the lapel of the heavy Turkish robe.

Dimitri was gone.

Dimitri leaned against the wall in the hallway outside the apartment. He’d forced himself to leave when Xandra went into the bathroom. If he hadn’t, he would never have made it out the door. Even now, the temptation to go back to her and tell her it was all a mistake rode him hard.

But it was not a mistake. If Dimitri did not marry Phoebe Leonides, an old man whom Dimitri loved more than his own life or personal happiness, would die. His grandfather had refused to back down from his ultimatum and even now sat weakly in a wheelchair, refusing necessary surgery until Dimitri set a wedding date.

His fist jabbed viciously into the palm of his other hand. Why had Xandra mentioned marriage between them? Why taunt him with the impossible? She did not want marriage. She could not. If she had, at least one time over the past year, her career would have come second and he would have come first. It never had. Not once.

Xandra was angry right now, her feminine pride bruised. It had upset her to realize he had planned to marry another woman all along, but he could not take seriously the idea she thought their liaison would end in marriage. She’d made her independence too much an issue for that. However, she had obviously believed he had no plans at all in that direction.

More guilt added to the already swirling cauldron of emotions inside him.

He had not intended to make love with her again, but he’d lost his cool and his control the moment she went into seductive mode. For all her worldly sophistication, Xandra was not an aggressive lover. She was affectionate and responsive, more responsive than any woman he’d ever known, but she initiated lovemaking rarely and even then, she did so subtly. Her seduction just now had been anything but subtle and it had undermined his defenses with the impact of an invading army.

Afterward, it had been harder than he thought possible to tell her of his upcoming marriage while her body remained warm and fragrant from their intimacy.

He forced himself away from the wall and toward the elevator. A clean break was the only way.

Alexandra waited thirty-six hours to call Dimitri’s cell phone, sure with the passing of each hour, the man she loved, the father of her child, would come back to her.

He had made love to her. She was sure he hadn’t planned to do it, but he had. He’d never slept with Phoebe. He had said he didn’t love the other woman and equally important, he couldn’t possibly need her the way he had needed Alexandra for the past year.