She wished desperately that she had told him the truth instead of running out on him. He was right that she’d never given him a chance. She had made assumptions.
But if she had stayed and taken her chances with the truth then she strongly suspected the outcome would have been everything that had stopped her revealing it. He would have felt duped whether she had told him then or not.
They would never have had a chance.
The car stopped beside her. The driver’s window slid down with a soft burr.
Their eyes met.
Her heart bloomed.
‘Get in.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s not safe for me to park here.’
Blinking furiously, she hurried round to the passenger side and climbed in. The interior smelled of leather and Giannis’s spicy cologne.
He put the car in gear and they roared off.
‘Where have you been?’ Giannis asked tightly. The fresh air pouring in from the open window pushed away the faint trace of Tabitha’s scent his greedy nostrils had detected when she’d sat beside him but that did nothing to stop his pulses reacting to her close proximity.
To distract himself some more, he pressed the button that opened the roof.
He’d called home after his second meeting to be told by his housekeeper that Tabitha had been gone for four hours. An hour later she still hadn’t returned and, unable to shake the angst that gnawed away inside him, he’d cut his day short and taken the small plane he used to commute between Santorini and Athens back home. Finding that she still hadn’t returned, he’d jumped in the car and set about finding her, cursing himself for not taking her phone number.
‘Shopping,’ she answered.
He glanced at the thin plastic bag she clutched on her lap and loosened his clenched jaw. ‘You didn’t tell Zoe where you were going. She was worried about you.’
‘I couldn’t. She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Greek.’
He looked again at the bag on her lap and swallowed back his rising temper. ‘You’ve been gone for seven hours.’
‘Am I on a curfew?’
The roof now fully open, her long hair caught in the breeze. Although he knew intellectually that he couldn’t smell its fragrance, his senses reacted as if they did and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. ‘You should have told someone.’
‘Told who? None of your staff speak English and, in any case, since when do I need to account for my movements?’
‘Next time, leave a note.’ He couldn’t stop himself from adding, ‘You haven’t got much to show for seven hours’ worth of shopping.’
And that cheap, thin plastic bag should not make his heart ache. All the women in his family went shopping and returned with their goods packed in pretty boxes and carried in smart designer bags.
‘That’s because I haven’t got much money,’ she retorted icily. ‘Would you like a blow-by-blow account of my movements?’
‘You are carrying my child.’
‘And? Do you think it gives you autonomy over me?’
He sighed as he slowed for a bend and changed to a lower gear. ‘I listen to you speak and I wonder how I thought you uneducated. You’re quick. Literate—’
‘And you’re changing the subject.’
‘I don’t want another argument.’
His home gleamed bright on the clifftop in the near distance but, instead of taking the right turn that would have led to his driveway, he continued on the road they were already on.
Having to concentrate on the road before him meant they could talk without his thoughts being entirely consumed by ripping her clothes off.
Theos, he still couldn’t get what had happened on the terrace last night from his mind. He’d had no fulfilment for himself but it hadn’t mattered. Tabitha’s uninhibited, wanton responses to his touch had been as heady and fulfilling as anything he had ever experienced.
‘Okay, but before we stop arguing I would like to point out that not going to university does not make someone ignorant or uneducated.’
‘I’ve seen your résumé, remember? You had no educational qualifications. That makes you uneducated by anyone’s standards but I listen to you and I can’t square the circle. You went to one of the best schools in the world. Why no qualifications? Why have you only worked in hotels?’
This was what he wanted to talk about. The mystery of who Tabitha really was.
‘My stepmother kicked me out on my eighteenth birthday and stopped paying the school fees.’
She said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for the implications of what she’d said to penetrate.
Giannis swore under his breath.
He’d considered calling Niki earlier for any recollections she might have of the teenage Tabitha but had concluded it would only make her query why he was asking and lead her to make assumptions. She’d already sent him a cheeky message:
Tabitha would make a great sister-in-law. Just saying!
Just saying? If he hadn’t avoided responding to the message he would have teased her about her English slang usage.
He did not want to feed any speculation about their relationship until Tabitha consented to marry him.
He kept his eyes fixed on the road. ‘Why did she do that?’
‘Because she hates me,’ she answered flatly before he felt the weight of her gaze fall on him. ‘She’s like your wife. She married my father for his money. The only saving grace I have is that he died not knowing what she was really like.’
His grip on the steering wheel tightened so much his knuckles turned white.
‘What happened with her?’
Her silence was broken with a jaded laugh. ‘Nothing.’
‘She kicked you out for no reason?’
‘She kicked me out so she could keep the inheritance for herself and her daughters.’
‘Your inheritance?’
From the corner of his eye he saw her wipe her hair from her face. ‘My father put his fortune in a trust. I don’t know how things work in Greece but trusts are very common in England for those who want to preserve their wealth through the generations. The trust he had written was for the benefit of myself and Emmaline.’
‘Emmaline’s your stepmother?’
‘Correct. Emmaline was also named as one of the trustees. The trustees control how the money is spent. My father’s wishes were just that—wishes. Legally, I had to be supported by his estate and my education paid for until I turned eighteen. I turned eighteen during the first half-term break of my final school year. She was no longer obliged to pay the fees, so she didn’t, and I didn’t complete my secondary education.’
‘Didn’t the other trustees object?’
‘There was only one other trustee. My father’s best friend. Emmaline was sleeping with him. She had her claws in him as greatly as she’d had them in my father.’
Thinking her father must have been an incredibly weak man, but not voicing this private opinion, Giannis said, ‘None of this sounds legal. Whether it was held in a trust or not, your father’s wishes should have been carried out. Didn’t you fight?’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ he asked incredulously. ‘I’m certain any lawyer worth anything—’
‘I had nothing,’ Tabitha interrupted. A deep, itchy feeling had formed beneath her skin just to remember how helpless she had felt. ‘When she threw me out she’d already packed a case for me. All I had was seventy pounds. It didn’t cross my mind that I could fight her.’
‘Why ever not?’
Hating the incredulity in his voice, she tried to explain. ‘Because overnight my life became a matter of survival. Don’t you understand that? I had nowhere to go and no one I could turn to for help. Both my parents were only children, all my grandparents were dead.’
/> ‘What about friends?’
‘They were schoolgirls the same as me. What could they do? My closest friends weren’t even English so I could hardly knock on their door and beg for help, could I?’
There was a long pause before he asked, in a softer tone, ‘What did you do?’
‘Hitched into Oxford and slept in a hostel for a couple of nights. It was the owners there who helped me find a live-in job at a small hotel in Northamptonshire. The pay was awful but I had a bed to sleep in and they fed me too. Fighting back...?’
Hating the memories that were swarming out of her, Tabitha clasped the bag in her hands and twisted tightly. ‘You have no idea what Emmaline is like. She puts on a façade that is so believable but beneath it she’s rotten.’
‘You are frightened of her?’
She had to swallow the dry lump in her throat before she could answer. These were things she had never spoken about. ‘My father married her when I was ten. I was so excited and happy that I was going to have a new mummy and two sisters. I was desperate for siblings. They were older than me but really sweet to me. Emmaline was lovely to me too. It wasn’t until after the marriage that their masks began to slip and I learned how rotten they were.’
‘What did they do to you?’
‘Lots of little cruel things. Fiona liked to hide pictures of clowns under my bedsheets. She knew I was scared of them. The first time she did it, I went running to my father and he scolded them. Fiona and Saffron both said sorry but then later that night they came into my room and woke me up. They stood either side of my bed and both pinched me hard on the underside of my arms. They said if I ever told on them again they would drown my cat. I believed them. I never told on them again.’
‘They did more?’
‘They couldn’t touch me when I was at school—they went to a different one, thank goodness—but holidays were torture. They would bide their time and then when I was least expecting it do things like throw ink over my clothes or hide photos of horrible things like clowns and autopsies and stills from horror films in my drawers or bedsheets. Things that would either freak me out or get me into trouble.’
‘And your father knew nothing of this?’
‘I was too scared to tell him and I’d begun to be afraid of Emmaline. Her mask slipped too, but not as blatantly as her daughters’...nothing that anyone would notice. My father certainly didn’t and there was nothing specific I could say to justify my feelings. It was more the way she looked at me when we were alone than anything. Like I was something unpleasant the cat had brought in. When he died there was no need for her to keep the façade up. The day after his funeral, she took down every photo of my mother and when I asked where they were she laughed.’
It still made her skin crawl to remember the coldness in that laughter. ‘She still did her legal duty in feeding and clothing me but she acted like I was invisible. The times she did talk to me...’ A shiver ran down her spine. ‘She was like an ice sculpture that had come to life. She was cruel.’
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘And say what? And who could I have told? I was sixteen when my father died. I just kept telling myself all I had to do was work hard at school, get the grades I needed in my A Levels and then I could go to university and be free of her. I thought once I reached eighteen or went to university they would pay me enough of an allowance out of the trust that I wouldn’t need to ever go back.’
‘You wanted to leave your home to her?’
‘I wanted to be free of her. I just assumed that one day she would die and I would be able to move back into my family home. I never thought for a minute she would go as far as to kick me out of it.’ Hot, fat tears she’d been fighting back suddenly broke free and once they’d started she couldn’t stop them.
Embarrassed at her weakness, she covered her face with her hands and pressed herself tightly against the window.
She’d never wanted to cry over her stepfamily’s actions ever again but telling Giannis about it all had brought the pain back and made her realise how pathetic she had been.
Only when she felt a strong arm hook around her neck and haul her against his hard chest did she realise Giannis had pulled the car over. The unexpected comfort, and from Giannis of all people, only made her cry harder.
Giannis pressed his mouth into the cloud of hair beneath his chin and breathed deeply, trying hard to fight the rage swirling inside him that wanted to fly straight to England and destroy the woman who had destroyed Tabitha’s life.
This Emmaline was as duplicitous as Anastasia had been but with added cruelty.
‘She took everything,’ Tabitha sobbed, her slender frame shaking in his arms, her tears soaking into his shirt. ‘She took my home and my past and my future, and I let her.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I did. I never fought back because I was too scared. I never even went back to clear the rest of my bedroom. I told myself she would only have burned it all but the truth is I was too scared to face her, just like I was too scared to face you that morning. The truth is I’m a coward and I hate myself for that.’
Unwilling to listen to Tabitha castigate herself, he gently took her face in his hands and stared intently at her. ‘Do not blame yourself for things that were out of your control, koritzi mou. What that woman did to you is despicable.’
And it would not go unavenged.
Her lips trembled, tears spilling over his fingers.
Hating to see her misery, he did what felt like the most natural thing in the world to give her comfort. He slipped his hands around to cradle the back of her neck and kissed her.
This kiss was nothing like the kisses they had devoured each other with before but a gentle, lingering brush of his lips to hers.
When he broke away her tears had stopped and she looked at him with an expression of bewilderment.
He pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, inhaling the wonderful fragrance that made every cell in his body come alive.
After long moments had passed he heard her take a deep inhalation before pulling away.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Parakalo.’
They sat in silence, no longer touching, until she said, ‘Giannis...if we marry...’
His heart gave a sudden leap.
There was no longer bewilderment in the bloodshot eyes now staring at him as intently as he’d been staring at her.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘That if you do one thing for me, I will marry you.’
‘What is that one thing?’ He drew the line at setting a hitman on her stepmother. That would be too kind.
‘I want you to write a will or contract that explicitly states that, if you die, everything you have goes to our child. It has to be cast-iron. Nothing ambiguous or open to interpretation. A cast-iron guarantee that, if anything happens to you, our child will be protected.’
‘What about you?’
She gave a fierce shake of her head. ‘I don’t want anything other than the right to be a mother to our child until he or she comes of age. If I die first then you will be the only parent. I know nothing is irreversible but—’
‘I will get it done,’ he interrupted, understanding why she was asking this of him. Her father had thought he’d protected his only child but it hadn’t been enough to stop her stepmother taking everything. ‘Our child will be named as my successor in my business and my sole heir.’
Her shoulders loosened and her head bowed. ‘Thank you.’
Then their eyes met again and the spark that always flickered when he was with her flashed between them.
Knowing that now was the time to push aside the torrid emotions flowing through him, and harness the cool logic that had served him so well his whole adult life, Giannis turned the engine back on and pulled out of the spot where he’d car
elessly parked.
‘I will speak to my lawyer when we get home and get the wheels in motion,’ he said conversationally. ‘The documents will be drawn up and signed by the end of the week. We can marry next week. We will invite my family and leave it at that. Unless there is someone you would like to have there too?’ He couldn’t imagine who she would invite. She had no real family left.
There was a long pause before she sighed heavily and said, ‘Actually...there is someone I would like to invite. My benefactor. Her name is Amelia Coulter and she’s a live-in resident at your hotel.’
He had to concentrate hard to stop the car swerving off the road.
He’d forgotten all about Tabitha’s mysterious benefactor, and it was the reason why he’d forgotten all about her existence that had him struggling to keep his concentration.
Without even realising it, he’d taken Tabitha at her word about her benefactor. He’d believed her without seeking proof as he always did.
Amelia Coulter was a name he’d become familiar with in his search for Tabitha, it having been on the guest list for his masquerade ball.
Keeping his voice as steady as he could manage, he said, ‘She gave you her invitation?’
‘She bought it for me.’
‘Why?’
‘As a thank you for taking care of her when she was sick.’
‘That’s an extravagant way to thank the hired help.’
He saw a slim shoulder rise in a shrug. ‘There’s sixty years between us but we’d become friends. She’s mostly estranged from her family. They live in England. Her husband’s buried in Vienna and she loves the city too much to want to leave it.’
‘And what did you get from the friendship?’ Only a day ago he would have added, ‘Apart from a rich benefactor?’ to his question but such cynicism would be wrong now.
‘She reminds me of my grandmother.’ There was a wistfulness to her voice and he found he didn’t need her to explain any further.
Tabitha’s life must have been lonely.
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