For Revenge...Or Pleasure?

by Trish Morey

  A bitter taste assailed him—the bitter taste of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

  ‘You’re living with someone?’

  His bold accusation took her by surprise. Was that jealousy she saw in his face? Or simply inconvenience? The latter was much more likely. But how appealing a prospect anyway.

  ‘You should have let me know you were coming. Did you think I could drop everything at such short notice?’

  She could almost see him grinding his teeth together.

  ‘Then Maxwell can come too,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we can find a table for three somewhere in Sydney.’

  She smiled then, almost sorry for the aggravation she was causing him. Almost.

  ‘There’s no need. Maxwell will be perfectly happy so long as I get home and dish up his favourite food.’ Her smile grew wider as Loukas’s scowl deepened. ‘Maxwell is a cat, Loukas. What on earth were you thinking?’

  ‘How is your sister now?’

  They were sitting out on her small terrace, Maxwell curled up warily on one chair, surveying Loukas with a contemptuous eye.

  The two of them had grabbed a bowl of pasta at the local trattoria and come back for coffee, both of them seemingly uncomfortable with discussing whatever it was that they needed to discuss in the company of others.

  ‘She’s well,’ he said. ‘Although Kurt didn’t hang around for long once she made it clear she was staying at the house.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, not entirely surprised. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was hardly unexpected. The good news is that she’s had time to talk to Con—Dad. He’s finally realised that she’s an adult, with her own life to lead. All this time she’s been bucking against his control and going about it the wrong way, but now that he’s acknowledged that she doesn’t belong to him their relationship is really changing. I think they have a chance to work things out between them now.’

  ‘And what about your father’s run for the White House?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? He pulled out of the race.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘I know. Nobody expected it. But he made the decision suddenly, a few weeks after Olympia came home. He’s going to take a cruise next year with Stella—my stepmother. A long one.’

  ‘You never told me what happened to your mother.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ He looked out over the view—at everything, at nothing. ‘She died when I was four. A brain aneurism. I don’t remember much of her.’

  She shivered. ‘I know how that feels.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his eyes on hers, steady, compassionate. ‘Anyhow, as a teenager I didn’t take too well to having Stella around when my father remarried. And I know I always resented having a kid sister.’

  ‘How’s that going now? Is Pia talking to you yet?’

  He smiled. ‘Now that Kurt’s out of the scene, more than she was before.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you couldn’t tell her why you were so opposed to cosmetic surgery. Didn’t she know about Zoë?’

  His lips tightened and added a question mark to his frown. ‘She did and she didn’t. She was barely fourteen when Zoë died. Naturally we tried to protect her from what was happening as much as we could. And when she got to the stage of wanting surgery for herself it was part of her alliance with Kurt and part of her rebellion against her family, because she knew how much we disapproved. But I don’t think she ever appreciated why—until what almost happened to her.’

  Jade dropped her eyes to the ground. If she’d thought Loukas’s sister would be a safe topic of conversation, she’d all too quickly been proved wrong.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ she offered. ‘But I’m glad she’s okay now.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Olympia told me what you said.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She told me that you tried to talk her out of having the surgery. She said that Della-Bosca overruled you and booked her in regardless.’

  Jade nodded. So finally he believed her.

  ‘Is that what you came all this way to tell me?’

  ‘Partly,’ he acknowledged.

  ‘Only partly?’ she whispered. ‘There’s something else you want to tell me?’

  He pushed himself away from the balustrade and hunkered down in front of her. ‘There is, as it happens,’ he said, before collecting both of her hands together, cocooning them within his own.

  ‘Jade,’ he said, his voice low and rich, ‘I need to know. Will you marry me?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT FELT good saying it. Better than good. He hadn’t planned on blurting it out like that—in fact he hadn’t been entirely sure what he was intending to say—but now that he’d uttered those four simple words it felt surprisingly right.

  It was almost as if all the issues and problems he’d been wrestling with for months, jagging into his thoughts on the long flight over, had neatly sorted themselves out and filed themselves away. At last his mind seemed clear, his purpose defined.

  ‘Marry me, Jade,’ he repeated, more boldly this time, getting used to the feel of the words in his mouth and liking the way they tasted.

  Her eyes were wide and almost luminescent, their clear blue light searching his own eyes. ‘I…I’m not sure I understand.’

  He shook his head and squeezed her hands. ‘I know I have no right to ask, not after all I’ve put you through.’

  ‘You’re not the only one who was at fault. We both made some bad judgement calls. But I live in Sydney now, and I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself here. You don’t need to feel responsible for me any more.’

  ‘Is that what you think? That I’m trying to make up for what’s happened?’

  She took a deep breath and pulled her hands away, pushing herself up from her chair and stepping around him. At the end of the small terrace she turned and gazed down at him, her hands clenched in front of her.

  ‘Well, aren’t you? You feel badly about what happened between us and you feel you should do something to compensate. But I’m not sure why you’ve decided marriage is the answer.’

  Breath rushed out between his teeth and he twisted up to stand facing her. He held one hand palm up between them. ‘I’m not doing this out of duty, Jade. I’m doing this because I want to be with you. I wanted you the first night I saw you and I’ve wanted you ever since. I haven’t thought about anything in the last few months beyond how I could get you back.’

  ‘You wanted me? I don’t believe you. You wanted to avenge Zoë’s death. You wanted to save your sister from the same fate and you wanted to pull Grace down. I never figured in the equation except as a conduit to achieving those goals.’

  ‘Then believe it. That first night at the ball I did want you. I came to meet you, I admit, but I never had plans to make love to you until that night—until I’d seen you and I knew in an instant that I had to have you. I’m not proud of the way I handled it, or what I did, but I knew I wanted you so very much. And I knew that there was something between us even then. Because I saw the way you reacted. I know you felt it too.’

  She frowned, her arms crossed over her chest. ‘But you used me. You went to bed with me simply to get to Grace. You used me as a way to get to her.’

  He rubbed his forehead with his hand. ‘I know. That’s what I had planned. I thought I could seduce my way into getting your co-operation, and expected to be able to walk away afterwards.’

  ‘Which is exactly what you did.’

  ‘No, I blew it completely. I thought that if I got close to you and seduced you you’d tell me everything I needed to know. But after three nights with you I was angrier than ever. I’d planned to sweet-talk the information out of you after we’d made love—when you were most accommodating, when you would least expect it—’

  Her eyes flashed blue fire up at him. He felt her pain at his betrayal and her anger that he’d brought it all back.

  ‘I told you I’m not proud
of what I did. But I couldn’t go through with it. Like I said, after three nights I couldn’t bear the thought that you were like her, that you might be turning into another Della-Bosca.’

  ‘But I wasn’t!’

  His eyes held hers. ‘I know that now. But back then I was going crazy. I’d heard Olympia was back in the country, and word was she was about to have surgery. Which meant I’d run out of time with you.’ He sighed and ran one hand through his hair. ‘But I wasn’t ready to give you up.’

  ‘You mean you hadn’t got the evidence you wanted.’

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That was what I convinced myself of, certainly. But what was more important was that I didn’t want to lose you. I was angry with Olympia because she was coming back too soon, so that my time with you was limited.

  ‘And I was angry with you,’ he continued, ‘because after spending time with you I wanted so much for you to be different from the person I feared you were. So instead of treading softly-softly, instead of taking things as slowly as I could with what time I had left, instead of gently eking out any details I could before you realised what I was about, I blew it. And then, of course, the more you defended Della-Bosca, the angrier I became.’

  She thought back, her mind returning to that night he’d collected her after work and driven them to the beach house, his mood volatile, his eyes dark and hostile. And yet they’d enjoyed their most tender lovemaking yet. Only for the magic to descend into that sudden outburst—his demands to know what was going on with his sister, his seemingly mad accusations against Grace.

  That night had signalled the end for them. He’d used her and deceived her and shredded her feelings in the process.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. You were never going to have much time. And yet you had three nights, and you never once asked about Grace or the clinic. I had no idea what you had in mind. Why did you wait so long if you were so desperate to save your sister?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to risk making you suspicious. I wanted you just the way you were.’

  She turned towards the harbour view and she laughed, low and bitter, into the balmy night air. ‘You mean naïve, gullible, and easy to be taken for a fool.’

  ‘No!’ She heard him cross the terrace till he pulled up behind her. ‘I mean warm, sensual, and every part a woman.’

  She felt his breath stir the ends of her hair; she felt his words as low vibrations in her senses.

  ‘I thought I’d found something special—someone special—and I wasn’t prepared to lose you then. And the way you felt in my arms…’ He rested one hand on her shoulder. ‘I thought you felt something too.’

  Warmth flooded her from where his hand rested, flowing through her flesh, his proximity triggering a tingling awareness in her skin. It was all she could do to fight the urge to be drawn against him.

  She battled to hold herself stiff, trying to ignore the fact that with one small turn she would be in his arms, the one place she’d been dreaming about being for months. But she was sick of unhappy endings. Why would this time be any different just because Loukas had a guilty conscience?

  ‘I thought I did,’ she admitted, not wanting to give too much away, but wanting him to know something of what he had cost her—had cost them both.

  ‘Then marry me,’ he said, his hand squeezing gently, his fingers setting up a gentle massage. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I’ll show you how sorry I am for causing you such pain.’

  A chill iced her veins. With a quick twist she ducked away from his hand, putting distance between them on the terrace. ‘No!’

  ‘No?’

  She pulled open the French doors and stepped from the terrace into the sitting room, unwilling to share this conversation with the entire neighbourhood and knowing without doubt that he would follow her inside. ‘No, I won’t marry you. Why is this offer any different to the offer you made before I left LA? You wanted me to stay then because you felt bad about what you’d done. Because you felt bad.

  ‘And now you’re here, hounding me to marry you, for heaven’s sake, on the basis that you can show me how sorry you are. What do you think I am, Loukas, your responsibility of the week? Someone to make you feel better? To make you feel useful?’

  ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Come on. You know you have an over-active sense of responsibility—look how you protected your sister, and fought to seek justice for what had happened to Zoë. And now Pia is safe, and you’ve avenged Zoë, so you need another cause—you need another responsibility. You want to save me from my disappointment, save me from my hurt, and you think marrying me will be a convenient way to do that and absolve your guilt!

  ‘Well, I don’t want to be your next project, thank you very much. And I certainly don’t want someone to feel like he should marry me to make up for the past.’

  He stared at her across the room, his dark features shadowed in the low light. ‘But that’s not the reason I want to marry you.’

  She blinked, waiting. ‘It’s not?’

  He was shaking his head, moving closer. ‘Although I can see why you might think that.’

  ‘But you said you wanted to make it up to me.’

  ‘And I do.’ He stopped in front of her and reached a hand out to cup her cheek, holding her face in his hand. ‘I want to take years and years to make it up to you. I’m planning on making it up to you for a very long time.’

  ‘But then…why?’

  His eyes held hers and she saw something new there, something deep and wonderful and powerfully magnetic that drew her closer.

  ‘Because I learned something after you’d gone.’ A second hand joined the first and she felt his fingers caress her skin, spreading their tingling heat to every part of her. ‘I recognised at last that all along, all the time I’d been thinking I was in charge, I had been falling further and further out of control.

  ‘I acted crazily because I was crazy. I was angry with you because I wanted you, and knew you would never want me after what I’d done; I dragged you to the beach house in a pretence of protecting my sister’s privacy because I couldn’t bear to let you go, and I asked you to stay because I was afraid I’d never see you again.

  ‘And it only occurred to me once you’d left why I was so desperate to keep you.’

  She held her breath as she still waited, afraid to break the spell of his eyes on hers, afraid to break the magic sound of his words.

  ‘I was mad with grief after you left. And I tried to forget you, telling myself that I’d get over you, that you hated me.’ His eyes searched her face. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’

  Her lips stretched tight. ‘Oh, I tried,’ she admitted. ‘I truly wanted to at times—but, no, I don’t hate you.’

  His features relaxed and he let his hands slip to her shoulders, his fingers hypnotically stroking her nape. She watched his mouth, now so close, as she breathed in his scent, everything working together to intoxicate her senses.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘because I couldn’t get over you. And then finally I worked out why.’ His hands slipped down her arms until he had each of her smooth hands in his own and he wove their fingers together.

  ‘Because I fell in love with you. And I fell so hard I didn’t even see what hit me. But I think I knew from the first moment we met that you were the one.’ He pulled her closer so that they were almost touching, his lips to her cheek, her mouth against the seductive rasp of his chin.

  ‘I love you, Jade, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to be my wife.’

  And then his lips dipped lower and his mouth sought hers, and she was lost in the heady feel of his kiss and the warm bloom of love that burst into life inside her.

  She wanted to give herself up entirely to the feeling; she wanted to let herself go in the wonder of his announcement. But there were more questions to be answered, more ghosts to put to rest, and breathlessly she pulled away, her senses reeling, her
bones close to fluid.

  ‘I don’t understand. I was so sure you still loved Zoë. I thought there was no room for anyone else.’

  He pulled back a little, his eyes thoughtful, one hand playing in her hair, absently running the length between his fingers. ‘I think I’ll always love Zoë. She’ll always be special. But I’ve done what I set out to do and that part of my life is closed now. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think I do. I went out to Yarrabee a few weeks after I came back. I went and walked around the town. I went back to my old school and to the place we once lived. I sat at my parents’ graves and I talked to them both for a while. I haven’t done that for so long. And it helped me to understand that I could finally put all the disappointments and bitterness about the past away. I didn’t have to change my accent and deny my origins. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else, to fit someone else’s pattern. I decided I could just be me.’

  She looked up at him. ‘You made me see that, Loukas. It was you who made me realise that I should just be myself.’

  He smiled. ‘You know, I never thought I could love again. I never thought I would trust myself to it. But then you came into my life and showed me how good life could be, and I had to have more. I had no choice but to fall in love with you, even though it took me a long time to recognise it.’

  He took both her hands again and held them between his as he searched her eyes. ‘And the way you kiss me tells me that you must still feel something for me.’

  She swallowed, nodding just enough to confirm that what he said was true.

  ‘Then say you’ll marry me? I don’t care where we live—whether it’s Sydney, LA, or any place in between. You’re everything I want in a woman, Jade. You’re everything I want in a wife.’

  She pulled away, out of his grip, her nails biting into the flesh of her arms. ‘But you don’t know that. You don’t know that at all.’

  ‘I know all I need to know about you to know that you’re the one. I want you—exactly as you are.’

  She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. ‘Please don’t say that. Not yet, at least.’