by Anne Mather
‘I—I’m sleeping with you—what did Chris do for you?’
Angelos’s harsh crack of laughter made her flinch inside, it was so coldly, brutally cynical, with no trace of any humour in it.
‘Well, he sure as hell isn’t pleasuring me …’
‘Then why …?’
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Angelos moved. Striding into the room, he crossed to the bed and snatched up her short white cotton robe that lay there and tossed it at her. Her hands came up instinctively to catch it.
‘Put that on,’ he commanded. ‘If we have to have this conversation, then at least cover yourself up. That way, I might actually be able to think straight.’
‘And why do you need to think straight?’ Jessica challenged, ignoring the command to dress. ‘What is it that you have to hide?’
Something flared in his eyes—something dark and dangerous and infinitely threatening to her fragile grip on her self-control. Just for a second there was something else as well, something that she couldn’t grasp or recognise before he blinked hard and it was gone and he was back in control again, expression carefully blanked off, eyes opaque.
‘We had an argument like this once before, Princess,’ he drawled cynically. ‘With you dressed—or should I say undressed—very much as you are now …’
His burning gaze seared over her exposed body in the white bra and knickers and she felt as if it had scoured off a much needed protective layer of skin wherever it had touched. It was a look that stripped away years too, taking her right back to the night in the tiny flat above the stables when she had tried so gauchely to seduce him. He had scorned her then and the memory of his rejection was enough to reduce her to a similarly uncertain state all over again.
‘And I lost that one—’
‘Lost!’ Jessica cut in on him, her voice rising sharply. ‘Oh, come on, yes, I was wrong—and selfish—to make you lose your job. But it was a job that you really didn’t need, apparently.’
‘Apparently?’ Angelos questioned and a strange, inexplicable note twisted his voice on the question in a way that made all the hairs at the back of her neck lift in wary, apprehensive reaction, though she had no idea exactly why.
‘Well, look at this …’
The wild gesture of her hand took in the luxurious bedroom, the open door that led to the superbly fitted en suite bathroom and, out beyond the balcony, the huge oval swimming pool, the gardens—the island itself.
‘You’re hardly desperate for money—you own the island, for heaven’s sake! So are you telling me that even seven years ago you actually needed a job as lowly as being a stable hand for my stepfather?’
She didn’t know what she had expected his response to be, but his silence was all the answer she needed. It was what he wasn’t saying—what he couldn’t say that gave him away.
‘You see!’
‘It depends what you mean by “needed”,’ Angelos said at last, pushing one strong hand through the shining darkness of his hair. ‘But no, I didn’t take that job for the money.’
‘Then …’
Honesty forced Jessica to break off, rethink. A guilty conscience pushed her into the words she should have said far sooner than this.
‘Angelos, I admit that I didn’t behave the best way that night and I’m so sorry. I’ve felt so bad about it ever since. I was young, I was foolish—selfish—naïve. I know I didn’t tell the exact truth but I was scared. I couldn’t bear to see how Marty would react if he thought that I’d led you on—that I was responsible for the way he found us. He was the closest thing I had to a father—I thought of him as my dad …’
‘I can understand that,’ Angelos put in roughly, but Jessica needed to go further, make him really understand.
‘But I admit that I also told myself that you’d be able to handle it. You were so much older than me—more worldly.’
‘And that made it all right that you should take everything?’
‘No, of course not. But you admit you didn’t need that job, Angelos!’
‘I didn’t just lose the job. I lost my honour—and …’
His voice scared her. It was so low and cynically ominous that it made cold shadows of fear skitter across her skin. And his face was just a closed off mask—rigid, withdrawn, totally distant. Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was heavy, oppressive, like the heat and pressure that developed before a violent storm. And yet Jessica felt shiveringly cold. So cold that she now reached for the white robe he had flung at her and hurried herself into it. She felt too exposed—too naked—with his eyes on her now, and she desperately needed the extra protection the white cotton provided.
‘Honour? But—but there was no dishonour in flirting with me—kissing me, Angelos. I wanted that. I know Marty was furious, but …’
‘There was when I had given my word that I wouldn’t come near you. That I would—as Marty said—keep my hands to myself and my thoughts locked inside my head.’
‘Marty made you promise that?’ Jessica managed, too stunned to put much strength into her voice.
A swift, curt nod was Angelos’s silent confirmation of her words.
‘He said he’d seen the way I looked at you—the way I couldn’t take my eyes off you—and that that wasn’t going to happen. Not between you and a stable boy.’
He’d seen the way I looked at you. So now, of course, she was looking back and seeing Angelos’s behaviour—that coldly cynical behaviour—in a very different light. She was seeing his deliberate flaunting of Lucille, his callous rejection, that cutting ‘I don’t play with little girls’, as something that Marty had clamped down on fast.
‘You—you fancied me?’ she managed and winced as Angelos gave another of those cold, mirthless cracks of laughter. ‘Did Marty get that right?’
‘Completely right.’
Once again Angelos raked a hand—both hands—through his hair and Jessica had the strangest feeling that he was doing it just for the moment when his face, and particularly his eyes, were hidden from her underneath his palms. She could almost sense him adjusting his expression behind their shield.
‘I did more than “fancy” you. I wanted you like hell. And you were always there—always hanging round the stables. You were so damn persistent; I couldn’t get rid of you. You think you were easy to give up, Princess? Think that I could just switch off the way I felt and forget about it? But I’d given my word.’
You think you were easy to give up, Princess? Think that I could just switch off the way I felt and forget about it?
Jessica was starting to feel as if she were on a wild emotional roller coaster ride. One moment those words were lifting her spirits way up high at the thought that he had felt that way. The next they were plunging way, way down with his use of that ‘were’ and the realisation that everything he was talking about was in the past. Nothing of what he said touched the present.
‘But you didn’t need the job. So why do as Marty said?’
Something flickered in those deep dark eyes, alerting her to the fact that she had unknowingly come close to the real heart of things—to the real problem. And suddenly she was hearing over again in her head Angelos’s words of just moments before.
I didn’t just lose the job. I lost my honour—and …
But she had cut him off before he could complete the sentence.
‘“… a job … my honour—and …”?’ she said carefully, her heart twisting when she saw his dark frown and knew she’d hit the mark. ‘And what Angelos? What else did you lose?’
If she’d needed any proof that she was closing in on the real reason behind all this then it was there in the way that he swung away from her, paced across the room and then back again, finally coming to rest beside the huge French windows that opened on to the balcony overlooking the sea. Behind him, the slowly setting sun turned his long, powerful body into nothing but a silhouette, totally black, his face and its expression hidden from her.
‘Think about it,’ he flung at her. ‘Think
about why something would matter so much that you’d follow any path, obey any stupid, tyrannical rules if you thought it would get you what you wanted. Why did you lie about me?’
‘But that was because of Marty. Because I loved him. As I said, he was the closest thing I had to a father …’
Some change in Angelos’s position, a sudden movement, as if he had been stung, caught her attention. Every instinct springing to red alert, she moved, adjusting her position so that she was no longer blinded by the sunset but could once again see his face clearly. And the change in him shocked her. He looked drawn and tense, harsh lines round his nose and mouth, and new shadows seemed to have appeared under his eyes.
‘Angelos …’
‘You were afraid of losing the man who was the closest thing you had to a father; I understand that so well. And do you know why I understand? Because I was afraid too—afraid of losing the man I knew to be my father.’
Because I was afraid too—afraid of losing the man I knew to be my father.
‘No!’
Jessica felt as if his words had taken all the strength from her legs so that they would no longer support her. Unable to stay upright, she staggered back and sank down on to the bed, shaking her head in desperate denial.
‘No …’
But, even as she said it, she was remembering the way that Angelos had looked when Marty had appeared, the way he had lost colour until even his eyes seemed washed out and pale. The way he had taken everything the older man had thrown at him.
‘Are you saying that Marty was your father?’
She didn’t need an answer. It was there in the cold, bitter set of his face, the way that his eyes were shuttered against her.
‘Marty couldn’t have children …’
‘Marty’s wife couldn’t have children. Marty certainly could. He had a short affair with my mother when he was visiting Greece. I was the result. But by the time she found out she was pregnant he had already gone home and married the woman he’d been engaged to all the time. I didn’t know that until she died. In one of our very last conversations she finally told me who my father was. That was when I came looking for him.’
‘Why didn’t just you tell him who you were?’
‘I didn’t want to just announce it cold. That’s why I took the job—any job. I needed to see how the man treated his servants. How he treated anyone. And, besides, at that stage I was not totally sure that I would even want to acknowledge him—or if he would acknowledge me. I wanted to get to know him and have him get to know me. So I came to Manorfield.’
She couldn’t doubt his story any more. The truth of it was etched into his face. And in the back of her mind was the image of the day in the stables when, seeing Angelos with Charlie, she had suddenly thought him so like Marty—so like his father.
‘And you found me there, installed as Marty’s adopted child, in the place you should have occupied. You must have been furious.’
‘I might have been if it hadn’t been you. But I took one look at you and I wanted you. I fell in love three times that day—with my father—with Manorfield—and with you.’
Fell, Jessica noted miserably. Past tense again. Fell in love. And her own foolish, selfish way of behaving had destroyed all that.
‘I wanted you but at the time I wanted my father more. I would have done anything he ordered just for a chance to get to know him.’
And she could understand that, couldn’t she? Wasn’t that how she had felt herself when Marty had come into her life, the only father figure she had ever known?
‘And, besides, I thought that if I waited—played it safe—then maybe one day I could have it all. Have Marty and Manorfield—and eventually you.’
‘Instead of which, I messed it up for you. Angelos, when he told you to get out—why didn’t you just say …?’
‘I did. After you’d gone. When he took you back to the house, I followed. I waited until he had you settled for the night and then I forced my way in and I told him. He didn’t believe me. He said he always believed that it was his fault he and his first wife couldn’t have children and besides …’
Angelos paused, his mouth twisting. He was obviously having trouble saying what came next.
‘He said that no son of his would ever force himself on a young girl the way that I had done to you.’
‘The way that I’d claimed you’d done. Angelos—I’m so, so sorry.’
She longed to go to him, to put her arms round him, hold him, ease the bleakness from his eyes. But everything about him—the steps he took away from her, his expression, the tautness of his muscles, his very stance—screamed silent rejection of her and anything she tried to say or do.
‘Now I see what you meant about what I took from you.’
She understood everything. Every last, savage bit of it.
‘You thought that I had taken everything from you and so, in revenge, you set out to take everything from me. And you succeeded. You took my home, the inheritance I thought was mine. You bought off my fiancé so that he broke our engagement. You even took my self-respect when you made me your mistress.’
‘I didn’t see you fighting me off when I took you in that bed last night.’
Angelos’s angry gesture took in the wide king-sized bed where she had spent every night held in his arms, her limbs entwined with his. The memory stabbed at her, making her want to fold her arms around her body, to protect herself from the pain. Instead she lashed out again in self-defence.
‘Just because you can make me want you doesn’t mean you can make me care!’ she flung at him as he moved towards the door. ‘You’ve brought me as low as you wanted—so I hope you’re satisfied. All that I want to know now is—have you achieved all you set out to do? Have you had enough?’
‘Enough?’ Angelos echoed the word, his voice dark with the cynical contempt that flared deep in his eyes. Long fingers grasped the door handle, pulling it open as he spoke. ‘Have I had enough? The answer to that, my dear Princess, is no—never. Where you are concerned, nothing will ever be enough. But for tonight, yes. Tonight I’ve had as much as I can take.’
It was a deliberate exit line, that much was obvious. He was determined to go—to get out of here as fast as he could. And Jessica didn’t have the strength, mental or physical, to try to call him back.
She didn’t dare, she acknowledged as the door slammed to behind him. If he stayed she would only say something that would give herself away completely. If he had said anything more, pushed any harder, then she would have been unable to hide from him just how much he had really taken from her.
And that he had succeeded far better than he had ever dreamed.
But the one thing she must never let him know was the way that he had also taken her heart. If he was to realise that, then his triumph would be darker and deadlier than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT took Jessica just five minutes to reconsider.
At first she paced up and down the room, fighting back bitter tears, struggling to find a way to handle the pain that Angelos’s callous words had inflicted on her. If she could have found a way off the island, she would have packed her bag and left. But the fact that there was only the helicopter that would take her anywhere, and that was at Angelos’s command, totally under his control, forced her to stay where she was. It was when she realised that her actions were so like the ones when Angelos had walked out on her that night at Manorfield, that she suddenly came to a halt, new found resolution flooding through her.
That night she had known what she must do. She had told herself that she would face Angelos, that she could no longer play the coward and hide behind the beliefs she had let shield her from reality seven years before. Then she had let Marty treat her like a child, putting her to bed while Angelos faced the full impact of what had happened.
She couldn’t do that now. She was not a child any more. And she couldn’t hide behind Marty’s protection.
She had to go to Angelos and face
him as an adult. Admit that she had been wrong—so very wrong—in the way that she had behaved. Only then could she go into the future knowing she had done her best to put things right.
Flinging aside the white robe, she grabbed the turquoise silk dress and pulled it on. It was hardly the thing for a hunt through the house, but at least it gave her a little extra self confidence that she would need when she found Angelos. If she could find Angelos.
In the end it didn’t take her as long as she had feared. Looking out of the bedroom window, she saw his dark figure down below her on the beach, hands pushed deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched as he stood at the edge of the sea, staring out at the far horizon. There was something about his stance that reminded her of the last words he had flung at her.
But for tonight, yes, he’d said. Tonight I’ve had as much as I can take.
… as much as I can take. Not as much of you as I can take.
It wasn’t much, but it was all that she had to go on.
The beach was growing dark when she made her way down there. In the shadow of the cliff, she could hardly see a thing and for a moment she hesitated, unsure of quite where he might be now.
‘Angelos …’ Her voice was weak, strained, the sound of his name breaking in the middle.
At first there was no response, just the still silence broken only by the faint lapping of the waves. But then she heard his response from further down the beach.
‘I’m here.’
There was no welcome in the words, but then she had hardly expected one. But at least they were not openly aggressive. And he hadn’t told her to get the hell out of there, which was what she had most expected.
‘What do you want?’
He was still standing at the edge of the shore, his shoes kicked off and the sea water lapping at his bare feet. But he didn’t seem to give a damn about the damage that the salt water was inflicting on the fine material of his trousers and his dark eyes were fixed on her face. In the shadows she could barely read their expression so she couldn’t tell if there was anything there to encourage her to go on or not.
