Painted the Other Woman

by Julia James

  How could he do that to me? How could I fall for it? How can it hurt so much? How can it matter so much? How could I mind so much?

  How, how, how …?

  Anguish consumed her. Why had he not simply confronted her and told her she must have nothing more to do with Ian? Been up-front, honest—brutal from the start?

  Not at the end. Not after luring her with soft words, false smiles …

  False kisses …

  And more, far more than kisses.

  She lifted her head, staring sightlessly out over the kitchen. Once so familiar to her, now it was like an alien landscape. In front of her was not the cottage with its thick cob walls, its old fashioned cupboards and furniture, the smell of damp and mustiness.

  Heat and blazing sun, and the lapping of azure waters, the feel of the sand beneath her feet and her heart full.

  She felt her lungs tighten as though they must burst.

  How could he do it to me? How?

  How was it possible that he should have been able to take her in his arms, make love to her, and all the while it was just some cruel, calculating manoeuvre to get her out of his brother-in-law’s life?

  Her tears dried on her cheeks, leaving dampened runnels and her expression like stone.

  He deceived me from the very first—fooled me and conned me and lied to me. Lied in word and deed.

  Grimly she stared blindly ahead. Lies, lies, lies. Foul, deceiving lies. Smiling while he lied. Kissing her while he lied. Making love to her while he lied.

  She jumped to her feet as if to banish all the hot, angry, anguished thoughts from her head. Nothing could change what had happened. It was as if she’d swallowed a snake—a poisonous snake that was now biting at her with its fangs inside, injecting its venom into her blood.

  Angrily she strode through the narrow corridor to the front door, seizing up her suitcases, and heading up the creaking stairs to her old bedroom. It was freezing upstairs, and the smell of damp prevailed. But what did she care? What did she care about anything any more?

  He can go to hell! Go to hell and stay there!

  Hatred seared through her as venomous as the poison in her veins, seeking only one target—Athan Teodarkis. The man who had brought her to this. Taken her to paradise—and then smashed her into the ground.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘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.