by Julia James
Her voice sounded tired, very tired.
‘I’ll go—’ he bit out each word ‘—when I have the truth from you—and not until then. Tell me his name. The name of the man who got you pregnant. Then I’ll go.’
She looked at him, the man she had loved so devotedly, so besottedly. But whom she could not love any more.
‘That you even have to ask is…is…’ She stopped, defeated.
‘But it must be someone! I have to know. I have to know who you went to—who you left me for. I have to know!’
There was a snarl in his voice and it made her flinch.
‘This is absurd,’ she said. ‘Quite absurd. Insane.’
Then, as if a light had switched on inside her head, she understood. It was something inside him so primitive, so instinctive, that he could not see it in the rational light in which she—so agonisingly—could see it. For him, the logic was plain. He could get engaged to another woman, he could regard the woman who had shared his life for over half a year as nothing but a mistress to whom he owed nothing, not even honesty about his intention to marry, but she, the mistress kept in deliberate ignorance of her protector’s intention of making another woman his wife, was expected to keep her favours for him alone, never stray to another man. She was expected to be faithful; for him the term did not exist. How should it? A mistress had no business knowing anything about a fiancée or a wife. He would expect—demand—that she keep to her appointed role as his mistress, reserving herself exclusively for his pleasure until such time as he chose to dispense with her services. And if she did not, he was entitled to feel betrayed by her, the woman he had honoured by choosing her for his bed.
Sickness filled her. Sickness and bile. But she knew it for the truth, for all that.
‘Just tell me. For God’s sake—tell me who it is!’ His voice cut through her bitter reverie. ‘If you are trying to protect him, then I give you my word—’he spoke through gritted teeth, in an extremity of emotion ‘—that I will not go after him.’ He paused, chest heaving. ‘I just have to know. You owe me that, at least.’
Vanessa’s eyes rested on him dispassionately. Pitilessly.
‘I don’t owe you anything, Markos.’ Her word fell like stones. ‘Not a thing.’
‘Not even the truth?’ he snarled.
She felt her chin lift again. ‘As much truth as you owed me. It’s a two-way street, whatever you think to the contrary.’
His brows snapped together again, face darkening.
‘What the hell do you mean? What two-way street?’
She took a heavy breath, laying her hand flat on the surface of the table.
‘I’m not having this. I’m not dealing with your—your medieval attitudes.’ Her lungs rasped. ‘You may have thought of me as your mistress—well, I can’t do anything about that. I can’t change you, and I don’t even want to. You think what you like, Markos. But I don’t have to believe what you believe—and do you know? I don’t. You can think of me as your mistress, but I never did and I never will. So I don’t care if there are things you’ll tell your mistress about and things you don’t consider are any part of her business, because, after all, she’s just your mistress. Just a convenient bed-warmer, someone to make you look good, someone to drape over your arm, a bejewelled, fashion-plate accessory! Just a rich man’s toy. Not someone to tell anything important to! Oh, no, not that.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ There was incomprehension in his voice, and it might have made her laugh if she’d been in the mood for laughing. But she wasn’t.
Her lips tightened.
‘I’m talking about what was important to you, Markos! The little fact about you getting married!’
It was his turn for shock to immobilise him. She watched it happen, saw how the impact heightened his cheekbones, toughened the line of his jaw.
‘What?’ The word shot from him in total stupefaction. Then, as she watched, his eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you that?’ There was intense wariness in his voice; she could hear it.
For a moment she was silent. She did not want to remember that horrible episode in his apartment that last hideous day, when everything had come crashing down about her as if in an earthquake. But why should she shield him from what she had been put through so insultingly, so callously?
‘It was your mother-in-law to be,’ she said.
She saw the shockwave jolt through him. ‘What?’
‘She wanted…’ Vanessa’s voice was steady, yet there was a hollowness in her tone that made it hard to speak. ‘She wanted to expedite the preparation for your forthcoming nuptials. She felt my continued presence in your life was…superfluous.’
Anger clenched through Markos’s face.
‘When the hell did Constantia Dimistris get hold of you?’ It was not just a question, it was a demand.
Vanessa took a slow intake of breath. He knew instantly who had told her she was his future mother-in-law, and that tiny extra confirmation was like a weight crushing her down.
‘The day I left,’ she said.
Emotion contorted in his face again. He fought visibly for control. And failed. Greek burst from him then, and with a ragged breath he swapped to English.
‘I don’t believe this. I just do not believe it! On the strength of some uncorroborated statement from a complete stranger, you take it as gospel that I’m about to get married? God Almighty, how stupid can you be? Not to mention—’ his face contorted again ‘—the little issue of trust! Christos, how could you? How could you just walk out on me because of what a stranger tells you, without even coming to me to ask if it’s true?’ A hand slashed through the air, sharp and violent. ‘Thee mou, how could you even think it was true? Haven’t I made my views on marriage crystal-clear? I will not be pressured into marriage. I have no intention of marrying—ever.’ His face hardened and his eyes bored into her like knives of steel. ‘I told you to your face, that very day, that I would never marry.’
Vanessa’s hand had tightened around her glass, nails whitening.
‘Are you telling me you’re not marrying Constantia Dimistris’s daughter?’
It was difficult to get the words out. Each one seemed to grate in her throat like the edge of a razorblade.
‘That,’ he bit out savagely, ‘is exactly what I’m telling you. And that you should have believed it for an instant makes me so angry I could—’ He broke off, lips pressing together. ‘How could you believe her?’ he asked, his voice low and deadly.
There was a hollow inside her, like a chasm opening up.
‘She was very convincing.’
‘She lied.’ His voice was flat, unarguable.
‘Then why—?’ She rested her eyes on him unblinkingly, while inside the chasm was swallowing her whole. ‘Why did she give me twenty-five thousand pounds to “expedite my departure”? Why did she pay me off if what she’d told me wasn’t true?’
‘You took her money?’ The anger flared again in Markos’s voice.
Vanessa shut her eyes, then opened them again.
‘I tore the cheque up and flushed it down the lavatory. Then I packed and left.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to stick around long enough to ask me if what she’d told you wasn’t a pack of lies?’
‘How could it have been a pack of lies? She’d just parted with twenty-five thousand pounds. She wouldn’t have done that if what she’d told me wasn’t true.’
Both his hands flew up in a gesture of incomprehension and anger.
‘It was to get you to go! And you fell for it like a complete patsy!’
‘It was twenty-five thousand pounds!’
‘So? Cheap at twice the price if it meant getting you out of my apartment to make way for the daughter I had no intention of marrying in the first place!’
Vanessa could only stare. ‘But she couldn’t possibly have handed over so much if what she told me wasn’t true! Twenty-five thousand pounds is a fortune!’
Markos pressed his mout
‘Only to someone like you, Vanessa.’
She chilled. The way he had spoken sent slivers of ice down her spine. She looked around her for a second. The bright, cheerful, sunlit room, filled with furniture bought from catalogues and local homestores was a universe away from the kind of decor, the kind of apartment, that Markos Makarios—and his prospective brides and their families—were used to.
Markos was speaking again, dragging her attention back.
‘And so, on the strength of a single uncorroborated claim, an attempt to bribe you so clumsy a child could see through it, you walked out on me. Without a word. Without an explanation. You took off, went to another man and got yourself pregnant.’
He glanced around. ‘And to no purpose, I see. If this is your pay-off, you could have done a lot better for yourself. Were you counting on more, Vanessa? A wedding ring? Or, failing that, at least sufficient palimony and child maintenance to keep you in a villa in the south of France?’
She got to her feet.
‘Please leave, Markos. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you anywhere near me.’
Her voice was dead.
He didn’t budge. His eyes rested on her, cold as iron.
‘Not till you tell me his name. Then I’ll go. I won’t break his neck, or beat him to a pulp. After all…’ He gave a stark, hollow laugh, with no humour in it. ‘You went to him willingly.’
She shook her head slowly, decisively.
‘Just go.’
For one long, hideous moment she held his gaze. Then, with an abrupt turn of his heel, he strode to the door. She felt completely frozen.
He wrenched open the door. For a moment she thought he was just going to walk straight through. Then at the last moment he wheeled round.
The expression on his face shocked her.
‘Oh, God, Vanessa—why did you do it? How could you have believed her? How could you have trusted me so little? We had so much together, and you threw it all away. All of it!’
Almost, she pitied him. Then, deep within her, she felt her child move and flex. Her hand clasped her abdomen, sheltering it.
‘Please go,’ she said.
And this time he did.
Markos reached out his hand and closed it like a vice around the bottle of whisky. But before he could refill his glass another hand grasped his wrist, pinioning him.
‘Getting plastered won’t help.’
Markos swore. It was in Greek, rich and inventive.
‘Lay off me, Leo!’ he finished.
His cousin prised his fingers off the bottle and removed it.
‘Damn you to hell,’ said Markos, and slumped back in his chair. ‘And damn Vanessa, too. Especially her.’ His eyes flicked to his cousin, sitting opposite him in the London apartment. ‘How could she do it, Leo? How could she believe that manipulative harpy? How could she just walk out on me? Without a word! Without giving me a chance to explain what the hell Constantia Dimistris and my father were cooking up!’ His face contorted. ‘If she’d just trusted me, I’d have told her in a second it was just a lie. If she’d just trusted me enough to ask—’
‘And what would have happened after you’d answered her, Markos?’
The voice that spoke was not his cousin’s. It was female, sharp as a stiletto. His head swung in the direction of the voice.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he demanded.
Anna Makarios folded her arms across her chest.
‘It’s a simple enough question. Supposing Vanessa had come running to you, and you’d explained that, no, as it happened you were not about to get married to Apollonia Whatever-her-name-is—what would have happened next?’
Markos stared at her. ‘What do you mean, what would have happened? Everything would have been all right again. That’s what would have happened.’
Anna pressed her lips together. “‘Everything would have been all right again,”’ she echoed. ‘How very convenient for you. Vanessa would have kissed you besottedly, and gone on being devoted and adoring. The best mistress you’d ever had—wasn’t that what you called her?’
‘Anna…’ Her husband’s voice was placating. ‘Look, I know you don’t like the word, but—’
She didn’t even look at him as she spoke. ‘Shut up, Leo. This is important. It’s not about a word, it’s about an attitude. Your cousin had what to common-or-garden people like me and Vanessa was a relationship. For God’s sake, they lived together for half a year—she shared his life! She wasn’t his bloody mistress. At the very least she was his live-in lover, his partner, and calling her his mistress is a disgusting insult! Yes—’ she cast a quelling look at Leo, who was trying to speak ‘—I’m well aware there are women who are mistresses, who leach off rich men to get a lifestyle they can’t afford themselves, who trade sex for diamonds. But if you dare tell me that Vanessa was one of them I swear I’ll clock you! She hasn’t an avaricious bone in her body. She was just besotted with Markos, hopelessly in love with him—that’s all!’
Viciously, Markos reached for the whisky bottle, which Leo had incautiously let go of, and refilled his glass. He knocked back a large mouthful and slammed the glass back on the coffee table.
‘So besotted she walked out on me straight to another man!’
Two pairs of eyes turned on him incredulously.
‘Excuse me?’ Anna’s voice was blank and Leo said something in Greek.
Markos’s eyes were hard as steel. ‘You heard me,’ he said, his voice harsh, merciless.
‘I heard you,’ said Leo slowly, in English, ‘but I don’t believe you.’
‘Make that two of us,’ echoed Anna. ‘There is just no way Vanessa would take up with someone else that fast. She’d have been crying into her broken dreams for months before anyone would have had a chance of mopping her up!’
Markos’s chin lifted. His eyes flashed like swords.
‘Oh, yes? Well, I’m afraid your touching faith in her attachment to me is misplaced, my dear Anna.’ He gave a smile as savage as a wolf’s and as bitter as gall. ‘Or how come she’s carrying another man’s child?’
For a moment there was nothing but complete silence in the room. Then Anna spoke.
‘Vanessa’s pregnant?’
There was disbelief in her voice. Markos heard it, and his face hardened.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Leo echoed his wife’s doubt.
Markos’s eyes flashed, and he took another mouthful of whisky.
‘Yes,’ he said savagely. ‘I am sure.’
‘How do you know?’ Anna demanded.
‘I’m not blind. She’s pregnant.’
‘How did you find out?’ Leo amended.
Markos turned to him. ‘She did some modelling for a designer. Maternity wear. I saw the photos in an in-flight magazine. And when I finally tracked her down through the agency they’d used and confronted her, she didn’t deny it. She even taunted me to guess who’d got her pregnant! Who it was she’d sought consolation with after she walked out on me!’ The savagery in his voice was vehement.
‘Did she tell you who?’ Anna’s sharp voice was jabbing at him in places he didn’t want jabbed—places that were raw and bleeding inside him.
Markos’s head swung towards her.
‘She’s protecting him. I said I’d break his neck, and though by the end I promised her I wouldn’t touch him—’ bitterness saturated his voice ‘—after all, she’d gone to him willingly—she still wouldn’t tell me who it was. Not that it’s done her any good. He’s dumped her—paid her off with a box of a house in the back of nowhere, where she can’t cause any trouble!’
Anna’s folded arms clenched a moment. But her voice when she spoke was very controlled.
‘Tell me something—how many months pregnant is she, Markos?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ he said tersely.
‘Don’t you?’ she said. ‘Although she’s visibly pregnant? You know, I think you should care. I really think you should.’
His face darkened again. ‘And what the hell do you mean by that?’ he challenged.
Leo snarled in Greek, not liking the tone of his cousin’s voice towards his wife. Markos’s jaw tightened. But before he could say anything, Leo went on.
‘Because you need to know, little cousin,’ he said, very clearly, as if speaking to a child, ‘for the following reason.’
Then he explained what that reason was.
Music pounded in his ears, heavy metal thudding through his bones, even though it was being torn away in the wind rushing over the open top of the car as it sped down the motorway, heading southwest. Markos let the noise saturate him, obliterating his thoughts. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to feel. Didn’t want to do anything except reach his target. And even that he didn’t want to reach.
But every mile eaten up by the powerful engine brought him closer.
This journey, though physically the same as he had made that first time, at the beginning of the week, was totally different. Then, rage had fuelled him. Rage and outrage that the woman he’d devoted himself to had held him so cheap that she had gone straight into another man’s arms—and got pregnant by him.
Now, a completely different emotion soaked through him. Far, far worse than outrage.
No! His mind cut out. He must not think—must not feel. Must not do anything, anything at all, except keep his foot hard down on the accelerator, giving the engine its head, riding it as if it were a surfboard in a hurricane.
The miles disappeared under the long, sleek bonnet. The junctions slipped by, one after another. Then it was the junction he needed. He slewed off the motorway, scarcely braking to move on to the road heading down to the coast.
He would be there soon, at a destination he did not want, but could not avoid.
It was déjà vu all over again.
The same neat terrace, the same sash windows, the same two steps to the front door, the same bright splash of flower boxes and doorstep tubs. He drew up in the space in front and cut the engine. Was she home? Walking along the seafront again? Having a check-up with her obstetrician?
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