Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 27

‘ATHAN—what’s happening? What’s going on?’

Eva’s voice down the phone line from London sounded strained. Athan could hear the anxiety in it, the worry, and cursed inwardly.

‘Ian won’t explain—won’t tell me anything. But you and he have fallen out, haven’t you? I know you have.’

He took a breath and put on his most calming voice—the one he used to try and reassure her when she got stressed over things. ‘I don’t want you worrying—’ he began.

She cut across him, her voice rising in pitch. ‘How can I possibly not worry? I’m worried sick! My husband comes home and announces he’s resigned from his job! That he won’t work for you any more. Athan, what have you said to him? Why is he doing this?’

Athan’s hand around the phone receiver tightened. Ian had stormed out like a damn drama queen because he’d been shown up for the adulterous rat he was. But that was the last thing that Eva could ever know. Athan’s teeth ground together angrily. And to protect her he had to protect her husband’s dirty little secret.

‘Eva, it isn’t like that,’ he said soothingly. ‘It was a mutual decision,’ he lied. ‘Ian’s made it clear to me for some time that he’s restless, that he wants to quit.’

‘But why? I was so thrilled that you trusted him enough to take him on board!’

Athan rolled his eyes, glad his sister couldn’t see his expression. It wasn’t because he trusted Ian Randall that he’d taken him on. The complete reverse! It was because he’d wanted to keep him where he could see him—where he would have to toe the line. His mouth thinned. And that was just what he hadn’t done—and now Ian thought he could evade control by doing a runner.

Eva must not see it like that, though—that was essential. So he had to lie, to smooth it down, play it down.

‘I guess he felt a bit overpowered, Eva,’ he said. ‘It’s natural that he wants to try his wings out on his own—prove his own mettle. It could even be that he’s been head-hunted,’ he ventured placidly. ‘After all, a stint at one of the Teodarkis companies makes Ian very employable.’

His efforts to placate his sister, to assure her that her husband’s desertion was not a bad thing and did not indicate any falling out with his brother-in-law seemed to be working. Eva seemed to be calming down.

‘Well, I suppose that’s true,’ she said, her voice steadying and losing the nervous tension that had racked it when she’d first spoken. ‘But I was scared that he’d walked out because he’d quarrelled with you. You know he’s in awe of you, Athan.’ Her voice sounded sad. ‘I just want you and him to get on well together, that’s all.’

Athan said nothing. There were some things he couldn’t lie about. Like the fact that nothing could make him ‘get on well’ with the man who had married his sister against all his instinctive disapproval of the match. His sister deserved so much better than a philandering lightweight like Ian Randall.

As for what the man would do now—Athan had no idea. He’d trotted out that line about Ian being highly employable but he had no great belief in it. He knew perfectly well that others assumed Ian Randall held his prestigious position as director of marketing at one of the key subsidiaries within the Teodarkis organisation purely because his brother-in-law owned the company. He wouldn’t pick up another plum position like that out in the open market. No, without the shelter that he’d got from his brother-in-law Ian would find the corporate world a much harsher place. He might have enjoyed himself, storming out of his office, but reality would soon hit home. Athan’s lip curled. He’d take pleasure in seeing Ian come crawling back for his old job.

He gave an exasperated sigh. He’d get it, too—because Eva would be upset otherwise. In the meantime—well, Ian Randall could just stay out of his hair or do anything else he damn well liked.

With one exception.

He would not go anywhere near Marisa Milburne.

So far he hadn’t, and Athan intended it to stay that way. He didn’t believe Ian would try, now that he knew that his brother-in-law knew about her, but he wasn’t taking chances. On the other hand job-hunting should, Athan profoundly hoped, keep Ian’s mind off his intended mistress—former intended mistress, he reminded himself grimly—at least for the time being.

He sighed heavily.

I have to get over her! I have to put her away, in the past, and not let myself think about her or remember her and the time we had together. It’s over—gone, finished. She’s out of Ian’s life—out of mine.

For good.

But it was one thing to adjure himself to forget Marisa—to refuse to let himself go back down those tempting, dangerous pathways of his mind—quite another to achieve it. He stared out over the Athens skyline. Where was she now? he found himself thinking. She’d cleared out of London—out of the apartment Ian Randall had paid for—and gone. That was all he cared about—all he could allow himself to care about. The fact that she had disappeared. Disappeared as swiftly as she had appeared. Had she left London altogether? Or just gone to live somewhere else in the city?

Had she found another man? Another lover?

An image, hot and tormenting, leapt in his mind’s eye.

Marisa in another man’s arms—another man’s bed …

He thrust it out of his head, refused to let it back in. It was nothing to him—nothing!—whether or not she’d found another man to fill her life with. That was all he must remember—all he must allow himself to think.

Grimly he crossed to his drinks cabinet, yanking open the doors. Maybe a shot of alcohol would banish the image from his head. Give him the peace he sought.

I need another woman.

The crudity of his thought shocked him, but that, he knew, was what it boiled down to. There was only one way to get Marisa Milburne out of his consciousness and that was by replacing her in it. He took a heavy intake of breath. OK, so how about starting right now? He could fill every evening with a hectic social life if he wanted—and right now that seemed like a good idea. A whole lot better than resorting to alcohol, for a start.

Shutting the drinks cabinet doors again, he strode from the room.

An hour later, changed from lounge suit to dinner jacket, he was mouthing polite nothings in a crowded salon at a cocktail party, wondering whether he needed his head examined. At least three women, each of them stunningly beautiful, were vying for his attention, and he was trying to give none of them reason to think he was favouring any of them. None of them, nor any of the other women at the party, had the slightest allure for him. Even after a second glass of vintage champagne.

Restlessly he looked about him, hoping against hope that someone, somewhere, would catch his eye. But as his gaze ran over the assembled females dispassionately not a single one made him look twice.

‘ … in the Caribbean … ‘

The fragment of speech brought him back. One of the women—a voluptuous brunette with lush lips and a traffic-stopping figure—was talking, it seemed, about a proposed cruise. She was pausing invitingly for him to say something.

But he wasn’t seeing her …

He was seeing Marisa leaning against him, curled up beside him on the wide palanquin-style sun-shelter in front of their cabana, overlooking the beach, sipping a cocktail with him as they watched the sun go down in a blaze of gold and crimson. Her body so soft, so warm nestled against him. Her pale hair was like a golden rope down the backless sundress she was wearing. His mouth was brushing the satin of her hair, his hand cupped her shoulder, holding her close … so close.

The warmth of her body—the sweetness of its scent—the heady longing of desire, of possession, wrapping them together.

His mouth nuzzled at her cheekbone. She turned her face to his, caught his lips with hers, let him draw her down upon the soft, yielding surface …

‘What do you think?’

The brightly voiced enquiry roused him painfully, and he had to refocus his eyes, his mind. ‘Is a cruise around the Caribbean a good idea? Or is it better to be based on land?’

He gave an absent half smile. ‘I guess it depends how vulnerable you are to seasickness,’ he answered, hoping it was a suitable answer in a conversation he had paid no attention to.

‘Oh, I get horribly seasick,’ one of the other women contributed, and turned her eyes full-on to Athan. ‘There are so many gorgeous islands. Which one do you recommend? St Bart’s? Martinique? Barbados—though that is so over-popular now, alas!’

He answered at random. His thoughts were far away, across the ocean, on the only Caribbean island he cared about. St Cecile. The one that held all his memories of Marisa.

I want her back.

The words formed in his head before he could stop them. Burning and indelible.

He wanted Marisa back. That was all there was to it. Simple, and straight to the point.

I don’t care who she is—what she was to Ian—why I did what I did. I just want her back. I don’t care how impossible it is.

He had finally admitted it. Faced up to and acknowledged the truth he’d been trying to deny ever since he’d stalked out of her apartment, having told her that everything between them had been a set-up—a lie.

But he could deny the truth no longer. He wanted Marisa back again …

But I can’t—it’s impossible. Out of the question. It’s the most damn out-of-the-question thing in the world!

He had to put it out of his head. Put her out. Whatever it took. He looked anew at the bevy of beautiful women dancing attendance on him. He had come here tonight to this glittering social gathering, to where he was a familiar face, the Athenian high society circuit, with the specific purpose of finding another woman to take his mind off the one he couldn’t have. But the problem was he didn’t want any of them. Not a single one.

Dispassionately he assessed them, and those around him in the ornate salon. Even those not blessed with natural beauty were wearing haute couture numbers, shimmering with expensive jewellery, coiffed and manicured to the nines, looking fabulous and elegant whatever their age. Yet not one of them appealed.

Marisa could float in with just with a towel wrapped round her, not a scrap of make up and her hair in a ponytail, and she would still be the only woman I want.

With a heavy, self-accusing sigh at his own hopeless weakness, he rejoined the conversation. It was not the fault of the women here that he didn’t want them. At the very least he owed them courtesy and attention.

Somehow he got through the remainder of the evening until he felt he could bid his hostess goodbye and finally beat a retreat. Back in his own apartment, glad to be on his own again at last, he went out on to the balcony. Though it was still chilly, winter was over now. Spring would be blessing the land again soon, and then the heat of the Aegean summer. For now he welcomed the cool—welcomed looking out over the Athens skyline, polluted though the air was, and thinking his own thoughts.

OK, he reasoned, for a change marshalling his brainpower to a purpose, not of corporate affairs or the economic problems besetting the world, but to his own dilemma. He had to be blunt about this. He wanted a woman it was impossible to have. Impossible because it would damage his family, jeopardise his sister’s shaky marriage. Having anything more to do with the woman who had nearly destroyed it was unthinkable.

Yet when he had tried to divert his attention to another woman—any woman!—he had found to his dismay that he might as well have been gazing at a cardboard cut-out.

There was, therefore, only one solution. It was staring him in the face, but it wasn’t one he was particularly attracted to. But still there it was.

Celibacy.

Going without.

Abstinence.

He took a heavy breath. It would be hard, but it was his only option right now. Somehow he had to purge the last influences of Marisa Milburne from him, and living like a monk was his only effective method. And what he would have to do in order to ensure that he could achieve that purging was refuse to think about her, remember her, long for her. He’d fill his head up with other stuff.

Work would be good ‘other stuff’ …

He gazed out bleakly, glimpsing the ancient rock of the Acropolis crowned with the ruins of the Parthenon. A temple to Athena. The patroness of Athens. A virgin goddess. The goddess of wisdom and fortitude.

He would need both those qualities in quantity from now on.

Marisa watched the dark blue car wind its way slowly down the narrow lane from the cottage back towards the village and the road beyond that led out of Devon, back towards the motorway that headed for London. Her heart was heavy and torn, but she had done the right thing—she knew she had.

Ian had pleaded with her, but she had held firm—cost her though it had.

I had to do it—I had to convince him that I just can’t be part of his life any more. Not now—not ever.

He had arrived, despite all her pleas to him by text and phone not to, that morning. He had been aghast that she had moved out of the flat in London he’d leased for her, begged her to reconsider, change her mind—come back.

But of course she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Athan Teodarkis had made that impossible. Unthinkable.

Going back to her old home, her old life, was the only thing that was possible. Here at the very least she could hide. Hide from everything—and everyone. Ian insisting on confronting her here had been an ordeal, but draining though it had been, and upsetting, she knew that it had had to be done to convince him she’d made her decision and was going to stick to it. So now—painfully—he’d gone, leaving the knowledge that she could not possibly tell him what his brother-in-law had done to her burning inside her like acid.

As she watched Ian’s car disappear around the curve of the lane she shut her eyes, feeling a kind of relief at his departure that was at odds with the wrench of watching him leave her life. She felt breathless and suffocated by all the emotion pressing down upon her. On an impulse she went back inside the cottage and changed her indoor shoes for a stout, well-worn pair of ankle boots, grabbed an anorak and the cottage keys, and headed out of the back door.

A pathway led from the garden up through the last of the fields below the moor, then broke free onto the moorland itself. It was a cloudy day, with a westerly wind sending the clouds scudding, and drops of rain shaking down from time to time. But the weather didn’t matter—only getting out of the cottage. It was a familiar walk—she’d done it a thousand times in her youth. Sometimes with her mother, sometimes on her own. It had always given her refreshment. There was something about the moorland, up above the farmed fields, directly under the sky, that opened her up, let out the feelings and emotions that troubled and oppressed her—whatever those troubles and oppressions were.

And now she was walking here again, into the wild air, across the infertile land where only heather and gorse and rough grass flourished, up across the uneven, curving terrain towards the distant tor—the granite outcrop that loomed on the horizon.

It took an hour of brisk walking to get there, and she was out of condition after all her time in London, but she got there in the end and found her familiar nook amongst the rocks, sitting herself down on a horizontal shelf of granite, facing out over the vast expanse of moorland beyond. The westerly wind keened over the land and through the gaps in the rocks, winnowing her face. Rain blew in on the wind, but her cheeks were already wet—wet with the tears she was shedding.

Tears for so much. For her mother, who had been deprived of the love and happiness she’d sought, and who’d had to make do with a constricted, unfulfilled life here when she’d once hoped for so much more.

Just like I did—so short a time ago.

But those hopes had been crushed and brutally exposed for the folly they always had been.

I should have known that I could never be part of Ian’s life—never be accepted, never tolerated.

She gazed bleakly over the bare landscape. Her mother had warned her—warned her about the world she sought—but she hadn’t believed her, hadn’t wanted to believe her. Her mother had been burnt, too, expelled and rejected, and that was why she’d sought refuge here, in this lonely place, accepting a life austere and alone, instead of the life she had once hoped for.

Her mother’s hopes had been cruelly dashed.

So, now, had her own.

Marisa’s eyes darkened. She had had days now to try and accept what Athan had done to her—to join together the two utterly different people he seemed to be, to accept that the man she’d thought she’d known, the man she’d come to trust, to give herself to, had been nothing like that at all.

Ruthless. Brutal. Lethal.

That was the true Athan Teodarkis. That was the man she had to see him as. No matter what dreams came in the night, beguiling her. No matter what memories tried to seep into her consciousness, tormenting her.

She lifted her face into the wind, the oncoming rain. Her hair was plastered to her head but she didn’t care. She was used to the weather—glad of the punishing elements battering her. She deserved them to be lashing her.

I was a fool—a trusting, self-deceiving fool—who fell for a man who was all surface, all temptation …

Just as her mother had done.

The realisation hit her like an intake of breath. She shut her eyes, rocking with the ugly, accusing truth of it. The pain of recognition scalded her.

Her mother had been a fool once, hoping for her dreams to come true—but she’d founded her hopes on a man who had made a fool of her.

Just as Athan has made a fool of me …

Pain seized her. Racking her body. She forced herself to be still, to wait it out, to let it pass. She’d been doing that for days now, every time the memory of that nightmare conversation in the apartment leapt to malevolent, vicious life in her head—his denouncement of her, telling her that he’d set up everything between them for the sole purpose of separating her from Ian.

The last of the louring clouds passed overhead and sunshine, bright through the rain-washed air, pooled over her. It was pale and had hardly any heat in it—a frail, fleeting lightening of the grim, bleak day.

Not like the hot, fierce sun of the Caribbean, beating down on my bare shoulders like a physical force, soaking into me as I lay on a sun lounger, idly chatting to Athan lying beside me. Filtering through the louvered windows when we retired to our cabana after lunch to make love …

The pain came again, but she quenched it. Quenched it by will power, by the power of the shame that she had fallen for such a ruthless, heartless masquerade. Because, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, he had lied to her from the very start, and nothing—not the slightest thing about him—had been true.

She got to her feet, scrambling down from her perch in the rocks of the tor and jumping down onto the wet ground. She paused to gaze around her at the vast expanse of open moor. On a rise a few hundred yards away she could see the low outline of stone-edged walls, almost obliterated by heather and time. It was a Bronze Age village, thousands of years old, and it was a familiar part of the landscape to her. Now, as she looked across at it, she wondered at the people who had once, so very long ago, lived there, made their lives there. They had loved and lived and worked and died, each little life as important to its owner as hers was to her. Yet all there was left of them was a few stones.

My life will be like that one day. Leaving not even a shadow on the land. So what does it matter if I am hurt or humiliated or angry or anguished? Soon the pain I feel will pass—soon I will feel nothing.

It had been true for her mother, surely, that a time had come when the man who had treated her so badly no longer had the power to wound her?

I’ll make it true of me, too. I have to.

Slowly, she made her way back down off the moor. The sunshine remained, thin and pale, but better than the rain. The wind was softer here, in the lee of the moor, and there was the scent of spring in it. Winter was nearly over.

All she needed was time. Time to let him fade like a bad dream, to let him go, to move on, forward into a life that she was yet to make. What that new life would be she didn’t know—couldn’t even envisage. She had thought when she’d left the cottage to go to London that her life was just starting—now she was stranded back here again, with no way forward that she could think of.

But I’ll find one—I can. I must. And I can be strong—I have to!

Resolution filled her. With a firmer step she headed down the trackway that led off the moor, climbing the stile that gave on to the dead end of the lane that went back past her cottage to the village a mile or so beyond. The light was fading now, the sun sunk below the tor behind her, and she wanted to get back to the cottage before evening closed in. But as she rounded the final bend of the narrow lane she stopped short.

A car was parked in front of the cottage. For a moment she thought it must be Ian, returning despite her refusal to go back to London with him, but then she realised it was another make of car, and even in the dusk she could see the colour was different. It was an expensive car, though, as Ian’s had been—sleek and powerful-looking. But it wasn’t until the driver’s door opened that she realised just who had come to call …

Athan unfolded his tall frame from the confines of the car he’d been sitting in since his arrival half an hour ago, and watched Marisa walk towards him. His emotions were tamped down—under strict control. They had been ever since he’d got the phone call from his security agency—the call he’d been steeling himself against, hoping he would never get it. But, as predictable as a greedy child stealing from the candy jar, Ian Randall had done exactly what Athan had feared he would do.

Icily he’d heard out the phone call, taking in the bare, bald details provided. Time, route, venue. It was all he’d needed to know. Now, though, he needed to know a hell of a lot more …

She walked up to him. She had nerve, he gave her that. Or perhaps it was her lover’s presence that was giving her confidence. Not that there was any sign of Ian, or his car.

His voice, harsh and rough, cut through the chilly air.

‘Where is he?’ It was a curt demand, and he wanted an answer.

She stopped dead. Absently, Athan wondered at her appearance. She looked totally different from the way he was used to seeing her. She had a baggy pair of trousers on, mud-spattered boots, and a voluminous anorak that was as unflattering as it was obscuring of her figure. Her hair was sopping wet, and dragged back off her head with a clip. She looked a sodden mess.

But her face—her face was as breathtaking as ever. Her eyes, flashing with anger, were luminous, her mouth kissed by the rain …

‘He’s gone.’ Her voice was as curt as his. She knew exactly who Athan meant. Knew exactly why he was here. Anger spiked in her, because it was obvious that the only way Athan Teodarkis could have known where his brother-in-law had gone was if he’d had him tailed.

‘Didn’t your spies spot him heading back to London?’ she threw at him caustically.

Athan’s face tightened. No, they hadn’t—or at least he hadn’t had a report to that effect. He’d told them to keep a discreet distance—presumably it had been too discreet. But even so the point was clear. Despite everything he’d said to Ian, the man had still come chasing after his mistress like a dog on heat …

He strode towards her.

She flinched, but held her ground. Shock waves were detonating through her, but she had to ignore them. Had to ignore more than just the shock of seeing Athan Teodarkis, tall, forbidding and grim-visaged, here outside her home. The juxtaposition was jarring. Athan Teodarkis didn’t belong here in this rural backwater, in this bleak, stark landscape dripping with the dregs of winter. But, however jarring, it was not that which was consuming her self-control.

Emotions were hurtling through her—tumbling and overwhelming her.

Athan! Athan here—now! Right in front of her! So close … his presence overpowering her senses.

She almost reeled from the impact of it.

I didn’t think I would ever see him again!

But he was here, and she could feel her treacherous blood leaping in her veins, emotion pouring through her …

She had to subdue it—had to make herself realise that he was here for one reason and one reason only. Because Ian had come to her. That was all. That was why he was here—angry. Accusing.

But this time her conscience was clear. His accusations could reach no target—none.

‘So whatever you think you’re doing here—you can clear off!’ she said. ‘He isn’t here.’

His eyes narrowed—eyes that had once looked at her with hot, melting desire … now filled only with cold anger.

‘But he came here all the same.’

Her chin lifted. ‘And now he’s gone—for good.’

Athan stilled. ‘Did you tell him about us?’

Marisa’s lip curled in scorn. ‘Of course I didn’t.’

No, thought Athan, of course you didn’t. You wouldn’t want him to know how easily I seduced you … took you away from him.

He smiled in grim satisfaction. His anger was ebbing now. Anger fuelled by much more than fury at his philandering brother in law. Fuelled by a far more powerful impulse. The impulse that had brought him here, powering down the motorway relentlessly, as driven as the car bringing him here. Driven by a force he could no longer suppress—no longer wanted to suppress.

He nodded at the cottage. ‘I need to talk to you—and not out here.’ He stamped his feet. His Italian leather handmade shoes were fine for the city. Not fine for a cold evening in the wilds.

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’ Marisa’s voice was still curt. Shock was still detonating through her.

He looked at her. In the dusk his expression was saturnine. ‘But I,’ he told her, ‘have something to say to you.’ His expression changed slightly. ‘You look frozen,’ he said.

For a moment the breath caught in her throat. There had been concern in his voice—caring.

The way he’d once sounded when he spoke to her …

Brutal truth sliced down, forcing open her throat. He’d lied to her from the beginning—lied with every caring, affectionate, casual word. That was what she must remember.

Not the way he used to look at her—the way his mouth would quirk with that half smile of his, the way his dark, lambent eyes used to rest on her …

She cut off the memory again. No, not that way at all.

She shivered under the anorak. He was right—she felt frozen. Stiffly she went up to the front door and opened it with the key taken from the map pocket in her anorak. He followed her in. Immediately the small cottage felt smaller. She didn’t want to let him in—didn’t want him here. Didn’t want him anywhere near her within a thousand miles.

Liar! Liar—liar—liar!

The words in her head accused her, betrayed her. Again she had to call on the cold, emotionless self-control she’d faced him with outside the cottage. It didn’t matter where he was—he was nothing to her. The same nothing to her that she was to him.

She would let him say whatever it was he had to say—another reinforcement about her staying out of Ian’s life was all it could be—and then she would send him packing. He could find his own way back to the village, his own way back to the motorway. What did she care? Nothing—that was what she cared. All that was left of her feelings for him …

Nothing.

She went into the kitchen, feeling relief at the warmth from the wood range enveloping her. Shrugging off her wet anorak, she draped it around one of the chairs at the scrubbed wooden kitchen table and opened the door to the range, restacking it with wood. Then she filled the kettle and set it on one of the rings to boil. Familiar tasks that gave her hands and brain something to do while she tried to assimilate the fact—jolting, bizarre, impossible—that Athan Teodarkis had sat himself down at the kitchen table in a tiny cob-walled cottage that had been a haven for her mother after the ruination of her happiness.

Her gaze went to the man sitting at her kitchen table who could reach out with a single finger and with a single touch melt her like honey. Who could quirk a slanting smile at her and weaken her bones. Who could wind his hand around the nape of her neck and lower his mouth to hers, and take her to a paradise she had never dreamt of …

A man who had never—not once until that bitter, scathing denouement—said an honest word to her.

She took a breath. ‘You said you had something to say—so say it. Say it and go.’

Gimlet eyes snapped to her. He’d been looking around him, taking in the room they were in. It had come as a shock to him, seeing how poor a place it was.

No wonder the world Ian moved in had seemed so tempting to her—no wonder she’d been so impressed by him, beguiled by him. Coming from a place like this, to her Ian’s world must have seemed glittering and luxurious beyond anything she could have hoped for.

It sobered him. He couldn’t deny it.

His gaze went back to her. His mind split instantly into two. One half was taking in just how shabby she looked—the other was simply drinking her in like a thirsty man in a desert. Even without a scrap of make-up, with wet, stringy hair and atrocious clothes, she still made his pulse leap!

‘Well?’

Her voice refocused him. ‘Do you need any money?’ The question came out more bluntly than he’d intended. Nor was it the question he’d wanted to ask her—but after seeing this rundown place it had come out of his mouth without thinking.

‘What?’

Athan looked slightly awkward. He really hadn’t meant to sound that blunt, but it was too late now. He took a breath.

‘Look, I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see there’s one hell of a difference between your lifestyle in London and what you’ve got here. So, if you need something to tide you over I can easily—’

He got no further. She slammed the mug she’d been about to fill with coffee down on to the wooden table.

‘No! I do not want your stinking money!’ Her eyes were like lasers, and he had to shield himself from their glare.

‘It was an offer—nothing more than that.’ He had to mitigate. ‘If Ian’s seen you all right then you won’t need anything from me.’

‘You’ll be glad to know,’ she said, as sweetly as acid, ‘that Ian does not continue to fund me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said evenly, taking the fight back to her. ‘And it’s just as well—he is about to become unemployed. No,’ he said, holding up a hand to silence her, ‘it was not my doing. He’s resigned from the company.’ He paused. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

Marisa was looking pale. ‘No. But … but why?’

Athan spelt it out, keeping his gaze on her to assess her reaction. ‘He wishes to cut the apron strings from me. Assert his independence. Which is why,’ he went on, his voice tinged with sarcasm, ‘you will doubtless understand my concern that he has high-tailed it down to find you. I don’t want him thinking he is now free to take up with you again.’

‘Well, he isn’t, is he?’ she retorted. ‘You’ve seen to that. How can I possibly look him in the face knowing what his own brother-in-law did to me?’

‘Indeed,’ Athan’s voice was smooth now. ‘So—’ he took a breath ‘—he’s accepted he cannot see you again? You told him that? Made it crystal-clear?’

‘Yes.’ Her monosyllabic reply was clipped, unemotional. But her emotions were running all the same—like a deep, underground river, cutting through the rocks and obstacles in her mind. Obstacles she had to keep in place. Absolutely had to …

‘Good.’

He sounded satisfied. But there was something in his voice that alarmed her. It was not the satisfaction of a man who had disposed of an embarrassing and unwanted family problem.

‘In which case …’ he said, his eyes resting on her. ‘In which case,’ he repeated, ‘I have something else to say to you.’

She stared. Her heart-rate had started to quicken, but she didn’t want it to. As she didn’t want to see what she was seeing in his eyes.

He’s too close. This kitchen is too small. I can’t breathe—can’t find fresh air …

He was still sitting at the kitchen table, but his presence dominated the room—dominated her senses, her vision. She tried to think straight, but she couldn’t. Everything about him focussed her on him, and deep within her still that powerful subterranean river of emotion was coursing, seeking its way upwards, out of the depths of her mind …

‘It’s this.’

He was speaking again, and she heard his words—heard the accent in them that had so worked on her, drawn her to him, just as everything about him had drawn her hopelessly, ineluctably, irresistibly …

His sloe-dark eyes were resting on her, delving into her, winding her gaze on his like a spool, so she could only look back at him, her eyes widening, melting …

‘I want you back.’

His words fell into the space between them. The space that would soon no longer be between them …

Because it was quite clear in his head now. Crystal-clear. It had taken till this morning to crystallise—and it had done so instantly, irreversibly, when his phone had rung and he’d been told that Ian Randall was heading down to Devon.

In that instant he’d known—known with a spike of emotion that was like a punch to his guts—that he would never allow Ian or any other man to take Marisa from him. That whatever it cost he would take her back. However impossible, he would smash those problems to pieces and get what with every cell in his body over this punishing absence had grown more and more and more impossible to deny.

So he had let instinct—hot, overpowering instinct—take over. Take him from his desk, his office, London, and into his car, pressing pedal to the metal and storming his way westwards.

And now he was here—and so was Marisa, so was everything he wanted. Everything he was going to have.

No one and nothing was going to stop him. Not any more …

‘You’re out of Ian’s life now, and that was what I had to achieve.’ He looked at her, said what he knew he had to say. ‘I didn’t like what I was doing, Marisa, but I had to do it. Family is everything—and I had to protect my sister from the threat you represented to her. You can have no share in Ian’s life. But,’ he went on, ‘you’ve accepted that, and I’m relieved to hear it—drastic though my method was. I acknowledge that.’

He held up a hand again, as if to brush aside the means he’d adopted to part his brother in law from her, and continued, getting to the most important part of his communication. The essential part. The part he’d driven over two hundred miles to deliver.

‘Now we’re free—both of us. Free to do what I have wanted to do since the moment I left you in your flat on our return.’

He got to his feet, crossed towards her. The narrow space between them disappeared. He reached out his hand, sliding it around the nape of her neck. The tendrils of damp hair were like silk on his fingertips. The scent of her body was like incense. The flush in her cheeks like roses. Her parted mouth was like honey waiting to be tasted … claimed … reclaimed …

‘This,’ he said, and his eyes poured down into hers like a golden haze, so that she was dizzy, blinded. Triumph surged in him—triumph and sweet, sweet possession …

He lowered his mouth to hers and bliss consumed her. She had dreamt of his kisses, yearned for them, craved them like an addict—and now it was happening. Here, now …

Bliss, sweet golden bliss.

He was drawing away from her again, but his hands were cupping her head, his body close against hers, his eyes still pouring down into hers.

‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said. His voice was a husk. ‘I can’t do without you. And now, with you severed from Ian, I’ve realised I don’t have to! I am free to take you back—to have again what I had before.’

His mouth started to lower again.

But, as if wires had jerked every muscle in her body, she yanked away. Stumbled around the corner of the table, getting it between them. Her eyes were wide and staring.

‘Are you mad?’ Her voice would hardly work and she had to swallow to make any sound come out. ‘Are you mad?’ she said again, louder now. Stronger.

Her mind was reeling. Reeling the way her body was. Her senses were aflame. But now water had been poured on them—an icy, frozen douche that doused them utterly. Emotion was knifing through her—but not the one she had just experienced, the bliss of his kiss. This was the one that had been coursing its way from deep, deep underground. That broke through now in a terrifying roar in her head.

‘You lied to me from beginning to end! You lied to me and manipulated me and played me like a total idiot. How can you possibly think I would just take up with you again? That I would meekly go back to you after what you did to me? I’d have to be certifiable to do that.’ She took a shuddering breath. ‘Get out! Get out of here! I’ve done what you wanted me to do—given up Ian. So you’ve got no right—no right at all!—to come here and dare to say what you have.’

If he was reeling from her onslaught he didn’t show it.

‘You’re angry with me—it’s understandable,’ he began. ‘But—’

‘Get out!’ Her hands clenched the edge of the table. ‘I don’t ever want to see you again. I don’t want anything to do with you ever again.’

His expression changed. ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘You can’t deny. It’s impossible for you—just as it is for me, Marisa—to deny the effect we have on each other. Don’t you think I curse the fact that I had to deceive you the way I did? I wish to God you’d never had anything to do with my damn brother-in-law in the first place. I wish I’d met you in any other circumstances. Because the effect you have on me would have been the same.’

He paused, his expression changing yet again. The molten, liquid lambency was back in his eyes, and his body language was charged with a voltage she would have to be blind, insensible not to recognise … to respond to.

‘I might have lied to you about why I inveigled an acquaintance with you, lied about what purpose I had—but nothing else was a lie.’ His eyes were resting on her, pouring into her. ‘I never lied to you with my body … ‘

Breath rasped in her lungs, and her nails dug into the wood of the table’s edge.

‘Go!’ she got out. ‘I just want you to go.’ She couldn’t cope with this—she just couldn’t. Ever since she’d seen him get out of his car she had been mentally shaking. But this—what he was saying … proposing …

‘Marisa—listen to me.’

His voice sounded urgent. She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear him being here, saying such things to her—asking such things of her.

She took another shuddering breath, not letting him speak as she cut across him. ‘No! There’s nothing on this earth that would ever make me even consider even for a single second what you are saying to me! How could you even think I would? Just how stupid do you think I am? After what you’ve done to me—said to me.’

He shook his head. Hell, this was all going wrong—totally wrong. He had to claw back somehow—anyhow. He had driven here with the devil on his tail, furious that Ian had dared to seek her out again, consumed with anger at his brother-in-law, consumed even more by an emotion he knew he had to name—could no longer deny.

Jealousy. Raw, open jealousy. Of Ian.

He’s not having her. Never again! She’s mine—and I want her back.

That was the stark, strident message he’d had to face up to as the miles had been eaten up by his foot on the accelerator. He had to get to her so that Ian couldn’t try and persuade her back to him.

So that he could persuade her back to him.

So that she wouldn’t haunt his dreams any more, or torment his memory, so that she could finally be to him what he wanted her to be—not the woman he’d had to sever from his brother-in-law but the woman he wanted for himself.

‘Do you think I wanted to do what I did?’ he demanded. ‘But it’s done now—finished. Over.’

Her eyes iced. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Finished. Over. And I don’t mean Ian—I mean you. So, like I said, go—just go.’

‘You don’t mean that.’ His voice was flat, disbelieving. ‘If you’re waiting for me to apologise for doing what I did the way I did it, then I can’t. You had no business getting involved with my brother-in-law, and nothing can change that.’ Again his voice changed. ‘But having now seen where you come from, seen the kind of background you have, I can understand the temptation to inveigle yourself into his life. Gain from him the affluence and comfort you certainly don’t have here.’

He looked around disparagingly at the cramped, shabby kitchen.

‘I can make allowances,’ he said. ‘Understand why you found Ian so tempting.’ His gaze swept back to her. ‘You don’t have to live like this, Marisa. Let me take you away from it all. We were good together. We can have it again—honestly, this time, with no more secrets.’

His eyes were blazing, rich and lambent, his voice deep, accented, sending vibrations through her.

‘I want you to go.’ Her voice was controlled. Very controlled over an emotion so strong that it might burst from her like an eruption. ‘I don’t want you here. I don’t want anything more to do with you. And for your information, I don’t want you to “take me away from it all”. This happens to be my home. It may be poor, but it is mine, and it is where I live, and where I will go on living now.’ She took a ragged breath. ‘It’s where I belong,’ she finished.

Because this was where she belonged. She knew that now. Not in Ian’s softly luxurious, pampering cocoon, kept secret from the world. And not—a jagged knife-thrust went through—dear God, not helplessly captive in Athan Teodarkis’s cruel web of lies and deceit that had killed anything that she might once have felt for him.

Stony-faced, insistent, she stood her ground. ‘So I want you to go,’ she said again

Before she cracked, broke down, gave in—gave in to the desperate longing in her to throw herself into his arms, to pretend that nothing had come between them, to pretend that he’d never deliberately set out to seduce her and then denounce her the way he had. To pretend that what she’d thought was true was—he had never set her up, deceived her, lied to her …

But he had, and nothing could undo that

He wasn’t saying anything. He was just standing there, tall and dark and so heart-stoppingly handsome that she could feel the power of it radiating like a force field. His face was a mask.

She’d seen it like that before when he’d confronted her on their return from St Cecile. When he’d closed himself to her, shut and locked the door, thrown away the key.

‘I see,’ he said. His voice was terse. Clipped. ‘Well, you’ve made yourself very clear. So, yes, I’ll go.’

Yet for a moment—a moment that seemed to hang in the air like a weight—he remained motionless. She stood frozen, behind the table that divided her from him—behind everything that divided her from him and always would.

Always.

Then, ‘I wish you well, Marisa. It would be … ungenerous of me to do less,’ he said. His voice had no emotion, no depth. Nothing. Nothing at all.

His face still blank, still closed, he turned and walked out of the room.

She couldn’t move. Could only wait while she heard his footsteps in the narrow corridor to the front door, and then the creaking door open and close behind him. For a few moments longer she waited. Only the crackling of the logs in the range was audible. Then another sound penetrated. A car engine gunning. Louder, then fading.

Fading completely.

He had gone.

Marisa went on standing there, quite motionless. Her eyes started to blink. Slowly, and then faster, tears began to run down her cheeks.

Along the narrow lane Athan drove—dangerously, recklessly fast. He had to. Had to gain as much distance from her as possible. He had arrived here a bare hour ago, driven by a demon he could not shake off his back. By the fear that she had succumbed to Ian Randall’s forbidden blandishments, his begging to resume their affair. A demon had bitten him with the venom of savage jealousy.

Now a different demon drove him. Worse, much worse, than the first.

He wanted her—and she would not come to him.

I’ve lost her.

The words fell into his head like stones. Stones he could not shift. Stones that sat there crushing his thoughts, his emotions, everything.

All around him, pressing on the glass of the car windows, was darkness.

Darkness outside him.

Inside him.

He drove on into the winter’s night.