Painted the Other Woman

by Julia James

  The blade slid into his guts, twisting its sharp, serrated edge as he gazed at Marisa.

  Not mine. Never mine. Never—

  ‘Eva—’

  Ian’s voice jolted him. It was thin, but resolute. Athan stood beside his sister, waiting for the axe to fall so he could pick up the pieces when it did. His face was still, like granite. Marisa’s had no expression in it at all.

  She would not meet his eyes. Well, that was understandable …

  ‘Eva—’ Ian said his wife’s name again—stronger this time. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got something I have to say to you,’ he said.

  The puzzled look on Eva’s face deepened.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you something you will not like, that will be upsetting, but it has to be said. I asked Marisa here tonight for a particular reason. To tell you about her.’

  Athan could keep silent no longer. He started forward, placing his hand on his sister’s wrist, intending to speak Greek to her. He had to tell her himself—he could not let her bastard of a husband proclaim it.

  ‘No!’

  Marisa’s sudden interjection silenced him before he had even started. His head swivelled to her. For a moment he reeled. The expression blazing from her eyes was like a hundred lasers.

  ‘Ian will tell her,’ she bit out. Her face snapped round to the man at her side. ‘Go on! Tell her. Tell him.’

  There was something wrong with her voice, Athan registered. She had never spoken like that before. Even when she’d been ordering him from that tumbledown cottage of hers. This was like ice—ice made from the coldest water.

  Ian’s expression flickered, as if he was taken aback by her tone. Then he looked straight at his wife again.

  ‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ he said. ‘So I’m just going to say it straight out. Marisa—’ he said, and as he spoke he reached for her hand.

  She let him take it, curled her fingers around it, warm and familiar, stepping forward slightly, aligning herself with him. A couple. Together.

  Like a guillotine cutting down, Athan spoke. Contempt was in his voice, harsh and killing.

  ‘Marisa is his mis—’

  ‘—is my sister.’

  The words fell like stones from a great height, crushing Athan dead.

  Marisa looked at Athan, her face still completely, totally expressionless.

  ‘I’m Ian’s sister,’ she said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HAD the world stopped moving? It must have, thought Athan with what was still working in his brain, because everything else seemed to have stopped. Including his breathing. Then, explosively, it restarted.

  ‘His sister?’ Shock reverberated in his voice.

  Marisa’s gaze was levelled at him, still expressionless. Like a basilisk’s gaze.

  She might have laughed to see the shock on his face—but she wasn’t in the mood for laughing. She was in the mood for killing.

  Anger—dark, murderous anger—was leashing itself tighter and tighter around her. She had to hold it down—hold it tight down. Because it if escaped …

  ‘Ian’s sister?’ The voice this time was Eva’s, and all it held in it was complete bewilderment. ‘But Ian hasn’t got a sister.’

  Marisa’s eyes went to Ian, knowing that this was the moment they had dreaded but now had to face. She saw him draw breath, then open his mouth to speak.

  ‘I didn’t know—I didn’t know about Marisa. Not until very recently.’ He took another breath. ‘Look, maybe we should all sit down. It’s … it’s complicated, and it’s going to be … difficult,’ he said.

  He gestured towards the table and after a moment’s hesitation Eva went and took her place.

  Marisa did likewise. Her body felt very stiff. Immobile. She watched Athan stalk to the other side and sit himself down opposite her, while Ian took his place opposite his wife. Just like two couples settling down to a dinner party. As though a bombshell hadn’t just exploded in the middle of them.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a glass of wine,’ Ian said in a shaky voice, trying, Marisa knew, to keep it light.

  He reached for the bottle of white wine cooling in its chiller, and for the next few moments there was a hiatus while he poured four glasses and handed them round. Instinctively Marisa found herself taking a gulp.

  She needed it.

  As she set the glass back on the pristine white tablecloth she realised her hand was trembling slightly. Involuntarily, her eyes glanced across at the dark figure sitting opposite her. His face was like marble—showing absolutely nothing.

  Emotion spiked in her, but she crushed it down. She mustn’t let anything out—nothing at all. She was here to support Ian, that was all. And he, poor lamb, looked drawn. She watched him take a generous mouthful of wine, then he straightened his shoulders, looked straight across at his wife, and started.

  ‘Marisa is my half-sister,’ he said. ‘We share the same father. But Marisa’s mother—’ He stopped.

  Across the table, Marisa could see Athan tense. Her eyes went to his. For one brief moment they met, and in them she could see that he knew exactly what was going to be said next.

  And it would have to be by her. It wasn’t fair to get Ian to say it.

  ‘My mother …’ She swallowed, turning her gaze to include Eva. ‘My mother was Ian’s father’s mistress.’

  She dropped her gaze, unable to continue for a moment. Emotion welled in her like a huge, stifling balloon.

  Eva said something. It was in Greek. Even to Marisa’s untrained ears it sounded shocked.

  But she dimly realised it didn’t sound surprised …

  Ian was talking again, and she could hear in his voice what she had heard before so often when they had talked about themselves and their backgrounds: a weary resignation.

  ‘You both know what he was like—Eva, you of all people know because of your mother’s long friendship with mine—how she supported my mother through so many unhappy years. Even when my father threatened your parents’ marriage with his troublemaking.’ He took another mouthful of wine, as though he still needed it. ‘Marisa’s mother wasn’t the first of his mistresses and she certainly wasn’t the last. But she was …’ He paused, and now he reached his hand out and slipped it comfortingly around Marisa’s wrist. ‘She was the only one who made the terrible mistake of falling in love with him.’

  Marisa spoke. Her voice was low, and she couldn’t look at Eva—let alone Athan. Above all not Athan.

  ‘I don’t exonerate her. She knew he was married. But she told me that he always said it was a marriage wherein both partners understood—’ her voice twisted ‘—understood that it was primarily about business and property, preserving wealth and inheritance and so on, and that he had never married for love.’ Marisa took another breath, lifting her eyes this time and they were filled with a bleak, sad pity for her foolish, trusting, self-blinded mother. ‘She chose to believe him. He pursued her relentlessly because she’d said no to him.’ Her voice twisted again. ‘He wasn’t a man who liked women to say no to him, so he told her whatever he considered effective in getting her into bed. He told her his wife had met someone else and asked for a divorce.’ Her voice became tight. ‘When she had yielded to him, and subsequently found herself pregnant, he suddenly didn’t want to know any more. And she realised far too late how stupid she had been.’

  She took a heavy breath.

  ‘He gave her a lump sum—enough to buy the cottage I was brought up in—and a small income to go with it. He got her to sign a document waiving all claims to official child support from him. She was too devastated to refuse, and she went along with being bundled out of his life and kept quiet. She moved to Devon and disappeared. I grew up having no idea who he was—only that he was “the great love of her life,” as she used to say. After she died I came to London to try and find him. But I had no name and nothing to go on but a photograph my mother had kept—’

  ‘Which is how she found me,�
� Ian interjected. ‘It was total, absolute chance. Marisa took a job at a cleaning company and my office was one of their contracts. One evening I was working late. She saw me, stared at me—and that’s how we found each other.’

  ‘Of course,’ Eva said slowly, comprehension dawning. ‘Ian looks the image of his father … and presumably the photo was of a man around his age?’

  Marisa nodded. She could say no more.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ Eva breathed. ‘To have absolutely no idea that you had a sibling.’ She turned to her brother. ‘Athan, imagine not knowing you even existed—it would be dreadful.’

  He didn’t respond. Then, abruptly, he got to his feet.

  ‘Excuse me. I must—’

  He stopped. There was nothing he ‘must’ do except get out of there.

  ‘Athan?’

  Eva’s voice was bewildered, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help anything right now. He just had to walk out.

  Without another word he left the room, ignoring Eva’s astonished rush of Greek at him, asking what on earth he was doing. Like an automaton he strode to the bank of lifts, jabbing at the button, willing the doors to open and let him escape. Leave. Get away. Away from her.

  Away from what he’d done to her …

  Inside the private dining room Eva was still staring, nonplussed, at her brother’s empty place.

  ‘What on earth—?’ she began.

  Her bewildered gaze came back to her husband, then moved on to Marisa. She started to speak, but Marisa spoke instead.

  ‘I’m sorry—I have to—’ Her voice was staccato and she couldn’t finish. All she could do was get to her feet, roughly pushing back her chair, seize up her clutch bag and leave the room.

  She could hear her half-brother call her name anxiously, but she ignored it.

  Outside, the hotel corridor was deserted.

  All except for the tall, dark figure standing by the elevator.

  Sudden slicing memory knifed through her. Herself emerging from the elevator on her way back to the apartment Ian had leased for her, seeing the tall, dark figure striding towards her, asking her to keep the doors open for her.

  A set up. That was all it had been. A calculating, carefully timed set-up with one purpose only.

  To snare her. Captivate her.

  Seduce her.

  Seduce her away from the man he’d assumed she was having an affair with. A married man. His own brother-in-law.

  Emotion buckled through her—hot and nauseating. Icy and punishing.

  ‘Wait!’

  Her voice carried the length of the deserted corridor, made him turn instantly. His expression froze. She strode up to him. The anger she’d kept leashed so tightly inside her while she’d sat at the table and told of her relationship with Ian, leapt in her throat. She stopped dead in front of him. Of its own volition her hand lifted, and she brought it across his face in a ringing slap.

  ‘That’s for what you thought I was!’

  Then, in a whirl of skirts, she pushed past him into the lift that was opening its doors behind him, jabbed the ‘close’ button urgently.

  But he made no attempt to follow her—made no movement at all. Only turned very slowly and watched her as the doors closed and the elevator swept her up to the bedroom floors. Her heart was pounding. In her vision seared the image of his face. Like a dead man’s, with a weal forming across his cheekbone. Livid and ugly.

  Marisa was walking. She did a lot of walking these days. Miles and miles. All over the moor. But however far she walked she never got away from what was eating her. Consuming her.

  Destroying her.

  Round and round the destructive thoughts went in her head. Over and over again she tumbled them.

  How could she not have realised what it was that Athan thought about her? How could it not have penetrated through her thick, stupid skull that he had jumped to the conclusion about her that he had?

  With hindsight—that most pointless and excruciating of all things—it was glaringly, blazingly obvious that that was what he had assumed all along

  She’d replayed every line of that conversation—their ugly, utterly misbegotten conversation—where she had completely failed to understand just what he’d meant about her relationship with Ian.

  I assumed he meant he’d discovered I was his sister. I never dreamt he thought anything so sleazy about me—anything so vile.

  But that was exactly what he had done.

  Right from the start.

  She wanted to scream and yell and denounce him to the world. But there was no one she could tell. All she could do was swallow it down herself and keep it down. Keep totally out of everyone’s way. Bury herself down her in Devon again—for ever this time.

  The way she should have done first time around.

  I should never have let Ian persuade me to go up to London to tell Eva about me. Because of what Athan did—because I can’t tell Ian what he did—I can’t have anything to do with him and Eva anyway. I can’t ever look at Athan again—I can’t bear to!

  Emotion seared in her, hot and scalding.

  How can I ever have anything more to do with a man like that? A man I hate with every fibre of my being.

  Because of course she hated him. What else was it possible to feel about Athan Teodarkis now? Nothing. Only hatred. Black and venomous.

  All consuming.

  All destroying.

  She trudged on. The rising slope had peaked, and now she was on the low crest looking down onto the half-buried remains of the Bronze Age village below the tor. Someone was standing in the middle of the site, which wasn’t fenced off—there was very little damage walkers could do to such meagre remains.

  At first when saw the solitary figure from the distance she was at she took no notice. On a warm day like this, in full Dartmoor spring, fellow walkers and ramblers on the moor were commonplace. But as she headed along the path that would take her past the site she stilled. There was something very familiar about the motionless figure.

  He was looking towards her. Hands in his jacket pockets, legs slightly apart. The wind was ruffling his hair. His eyes were slightly narrowed against the sun behind her.

  In a kind of daze—a mental suspension that kept one foot moving after another—she carried on down the slope towards the ancient village where once a whole community had thrived—living, loving, dying …

  Now not even their ghosts remained to haunt the sunlit, windswept air.

  He moved towards her, intersecting her path. Waiting for her.

  She came up to him. Said nothing. Did nothing. Only stood there, her hands plunged into her anorak pockets, her face a mask.

  Like his.

  ‘Ian told me you were back here.’ His voice was terse. Low.

  Strained.

  ‘I gave you time,’ he said. ‘I gave us both time. But now we have to talk.’

  She looked at him. Just looked at him. ‘There is absolutely nothing to say,’ she stated.

  She was calm. Very calm. Amazingly calm, considering the seething tumult that had been inside her only moments ago, racking through her with all the unbearable impossibilities of the situation, the destructive morass of it all.

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ he contradicted her.

  Something flared in her eyes, then died again. Quenched.

  ‘Well, what is there to say, then?’ she threw at him, hands digging deeper into her pockets.

  This was unreal—unreal to be standing here, beside a place where people had once lived and loved and died, nothing more than shards of bone in the earth now, who could feel no pain or loss any more, no emotions—nothing. Unreal to be standing in such a place and confronting the man who had driven her back here.

  ‘What is there to say?’ she demanded again. She stared at him, unblinking. Unflinching. ‘You thought I was Ian’s mistress, so you seduced me to take my mind off him while he went back to his wife—your sister. Now you’ve discovered that actually I wasn’t his
mistress after all. I’m his sister. And because I can’t stomach having any more contact with you, it means I can’t have anything to do with Ian or Eva, so telling Eva about me actually turns out to be have been a totally pointless exercise all round! There.’ She took a sharp, incising breath, glaring at him. ‘Does that just about sum up why there isn’t the slightest thing more to be said on the subject?’

  Expressions worked in his face and his jaw tightened. ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘You know it doesn’t. It doesn’t even begin to get to the reason why we have to talk.’

  He took her arm. She tried to shake it off, but he simply led her to a nearby lichen-covered drystone wall and sat her down on it, lowering himself beside her. She edged away and she knew he could see she’d done it, and she was coldly, savagely pleased. She was still calm—still amazingly, icily calm. It was like being inside an iceberg, and it suited her fine—just fine. She waited for him to drop his grip on her, but he didn’t. She wouldn’t flatter him by shaking herself free. She would just endure that tight, hard clasp. It would remind her of how much she hated him.

  He turned to look at her. She closed her face. She wanted to close her eyes, but again that would have shown him that she was affected by him. And she wasn’t affected—not at all.

  She never would be. Never again.

  He spoke abruptly. ‘This is what I don’t understand. That you didn’t realise I’d thought Ian had set you up as his mistress. Surely to God you must have done?’ His face worked. ‘Why the hell else would I have done what I did—said what I said? Why else would I have done or said those things to you? Just because you were Ian’s sister? Why the hell did you and Ian hide your relationship from everyone?’

  Marisa’s eyes widened. ‘How can you even ask that? You know how close Eva is to Ian’s mother—her godmother. How she’s become like a second mother to her, taking her own mother’s place. That’s why we were so reluctant to tell Eva. Because it would have torn her loyalties in two. How could she have anything to do with her husband’s sister when that sister was living proof of just how much Sheila Randall was hurt and betrayed by her husband?’