“No.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
He lifted his prosecco and sipped it thoughtfully. “This reminds me of the first night we met.”
Her cheeks infused with color, as he’d expected they would.
“It’s nothing like that night,” she assured him candidly. “In the past, our corporate sponsors have included …”
“Enough,” he said, shaking his head. “Business later.”
Saphire nodded but her heart was dropping. He was going to say no. He wasn’t interested in the charity; not really.
“Are you wasting my time?” She said slowly. “Or playing with me for your own sick reasons?”
“No, and no,” he responded.
“Then what are you doing here?”
He took another sip of his drink. “Do you find it so hard to believe I might have an interest in philanthropy?”
“No,” she bit down on her lip. “I googled that too. I know you’re generous with your corporate donations.”
“Indeed.”
“I just don’t know if you intend to be generous with Hope Renewed.”
“I emailed Melania, didn’t I?”
She toyed with the stem of her flute. “Yes. The timing is a little coincidental though. After all, I just ran into Rocco a couple of nights ago and then bam! You appear out of nowhere …”
“Coincidental,” he said with a small smile.
“He told you?” She demanded softly.
Thaddeus inclined his head.
“And that’s why you’re here.”
He lifted his flute of wine and sipped it without dropping the hold he had on her eyes. “It is part of why I’m here,” he conceded finally.
Saphire expelled a breath angrily. “Then you are wasting my time. And your own. I have nothing to say to you on … our personal matter.”
His laugh sent daggers dancing down her skin. “Liar.”
She lifted her chin angrily. “Do you have any more relevant questions?”
“You don’t think Melania sent you to meet me because she wanted to exploit our history?”
“She doesn’t know about our history,” Saphire retorted tightly.
Thaddeus felt his footing slip a little. “You didn’t tell her?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Even when I emailed?”
“Of course not! Are you kidding me? I’m twenty six and this is the first job I’ve ever had. I’m not going to stuff it up by prattling on about my failed relationships.”
The pain in his chest was for her vulnerability. The admission made a tenderness swell inside of him that he had thought long gone.
“You have done volunteer work for the charity for years …”
“Volunteer work,” she spoke slowly, to spell it out for him. “This is a proper, paid position. And Melania wants to make it more permanent. I don’t want her to think I can’t handle a simple negotiation with a man who’s appeared out of thin air begging to give us money.” She closed her eyes. “So if your plan was to see me again, and to use my position in Hope Renewed to get me here, then you’re potentially ruining my reputation at work for no good reason.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I would never dangle a carrot to a charity and not follow through. Of course I intend to donate.”
Saphire felt strange. Adrenalin had spiked and dropped, and now she was deflated and a little queasy. “Donate. Don’t donate. It’s your decision.” She stood up slowly and reached for her bag. Her eyes met Tony’s and she offered him the hint of apologetic smile. Before the waiter could arrive, Thaddeus shook his head.
“Sit back down.”
“I can’t.” She stepped away from the table. “I really need to go.”
She dipped into her wallet and pulled out more than enough Euro to cover the meal they’d never share. She threw them down onto the table with fingers that weren’t quite steady. When her eyes met his, he was instantly reminded of a hunted animal, terrified and in a corner. “Please don’t call me. I’ll have someone else get in touch tomorrow to explain the options open to you.”
His heart was thudding in his chest.
He watched her walk out and swore, then jerked out of his seat and moved swiftly after her. The night air was the slap of reality he needed. She was moving quickly down the footpath, and though he couldn’t see her face, he could tell her arms were folded over her chest.
He ran to catch her and when he spun her around tears were gliding down her cheeks as they had been that last night they’d spoken; the disastrous night in Athens.
“Saphire,” he groaned, lifting his hands and cupping her face. “Where are you going?” She shrugged out of his touch and for good measure pushed her hands against his broad chest.
“Don’t touch me,” she said angrily. “For God’s sake, just leave me alone.”
“I want to talk to you. Not about work. About you. And me.”
“There is no you and me,” she said with disbelief.
“I didn’t think so either.”
She dashed her tears away and stared down the street.
“You said you loved me. Love does not simply disappear.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to love, aren’t I? You know, that night I came to see you in Athens, I learned something really damned important. I thought I loved you. And I thought you loved me. Just like I thought I loved Jordan. But you know what? I am a terrible judge of character. Like, the worst. I’m useless. I wouldn’t know love if it bit me on the arse.”
He stared at her with a mix of consternation and amusement. “A tempting thought,” he assured her finally.
“You don’t get it,” she was weary now. “It’s too late. A month ago, I wanted nothing more than to talk about you and me. But seeing you with her …” she shuddered. “Is that a man’s solution for everything? Sex? Because it’s how Jordan dealt with things. It’s obviously how you deal with everything.”
“You are the one who wanted to screw me to pay your husband back,” he reminded her gently.
“Yeah. The one time in my life I make a spontaneous decision and look where it gets me.” She shook her head. “I came to you straight from my husband’s office. I told him I wanted a divorce and then I got on the first flight I could. To you. Because all I could think about was how much I’d stuffed up by walking away from you. How I’d had the best thing in my hands and I’d let it go.”
His heart was cracking with the strength of his feelings. “We need to talk about this.”
“No,” she pushed his chest again. “You don’t understand. Seeing you with her … I can’t … I won’t ever let myself be with a man I don’t trust. This isn’t a month ago. I don’t feel that now. I don’t want you. I don’t want you. I don’t want you.” The words fell from her mouth as tears poured from eyes. “He hurt me. And you hurt me. And now I just don’t want to be hurt for a while.”
Thaddeus nodded but he couldn’t accede her point. “What if I tell you I won’t? What if I tell you I just want to talk? We did not eat dinner. Let’s go and find something, somewhere, and talk.”
“No.” She blinked, trying desperately to stem the flow of tears. “I don’t want to eat.”
“Saphire …”
“It’s too late. Don’t you see that?”
“You left me and I was angry. Very angry.”
“I know.” It was a whisper. “I told you, I regretted it. As soon as I got back to London I knew what a mistake I’d made. It was like a horrible dream.” She blotted her eyes with her fingertips. “I couldn’t go home. I stayed in a hotel, trying to sort the mess of my life out. And all I could think about was you. And the island. And the fact I’d never felt happier.”
“It’s still there,” he groaned, the words shocking him as much as they did her.
“No, it isn’t! Don’t you get that? If I ever went to that island again a part of me would die. It’s all wrapped up in you. I came to Athens needing, above all, a friend, and instead I
got the worst version of you. A version of you I didn’t even know existed.”
The charge hurt for its truth was undeniable. “I have never experienced a loss like your departure.”
“But I came back. As soon as I was free to be with you, I came back.”
He leaned against the wall. The fight was leaving him. “I can’t lose you.” A simple statement; and also a request.
She nodded, but her heart was hard to him now. “You already did. You lost me a month ago when you let me walk away. When you told me I was just sex to you and that you’d replaced me with her.”
“I should never have said that.” He swallowed and a muscle jerked in his cheek. “I wanted to make you feel like I had. It was petty. I regret being so childish and unkind.”
“I don’t care.”
He reached for her hips and pulled her against him. To his surprise, she came. The second her body melded to his he felt a lightning bolt of comprehension; everything fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle clicking without any effort.
“Cassandra left after you did. She did not come to my bed.”
Saphire stared at his lips; she was mesmerized. She would stand up again soon; she would put the vital distance between them. But not yet. “If I hadn’t been waiting for you, she would have though.”
They were moving into a dangerous territory. “I had spent every moment since you left imagining you making love to another man. I was almost out of my mind with jealousy.”
“So you were going to try my trick? You were going to punish me by sleeping with someone else?”
“Actually, I was hoping to forget you.”
She nodded, and now she pushed up from him, stepping back on the footpath. A car hurtled past but neither of them heard its rumbling engine.
“I think that’s the right idea. We should forget each other,” she said with an attempt at coldness.
“That is never going to work,” he remarked simply.
“Eventually it will.” She shook her head. “Or maybe it won’t. But I can’t go through this again. Don’t you get it? I’m in the middle of a divorce. My life is a mess. I’m finally doing something that I love, for the first time ever, and I just want to be good at it. I want to wake up in the morning and smile; not to feel like I have this weight pressing down on my chest.” She squeezed her eyes shut on the emotions that were slamming into her. “I miss you so much it hurts but I know I can’t make this mistake again.”
“If you miss me then give me time. Let’s start with dinner tonight.”
“No.” She took another step backwards, and now she lifted her hand in the air to hail a taxi. One blinked its lights from a distance away. “I’m so tired, Thaddeus. I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of feeling like this.”
“Then don’t.”
She opened the door to the taxi but he put a hand on it also, holding it steady and preventing her from slipping inside. “Remember how you felt on my boat? Remember how we danced beneath the stars? Remember how everything in our world was perfect and right? Come back in time with me. Dance with me. Feel like that again.”
“Can you go back in time?”
“We can,” he promised her throatily.
She shook her head. “It’s a fantasy.” She reached up and pressed a kiss against his cheek and then sat down in the taxi. “It was all a stupid fantasy.”
He watched her drive off with a sense of despondency unlike anything he’d ever known. Thaddeus had been a reluctant bedfellow with rejection. He could count on one hand, with fingers spare, the number of times he’d failed in either his personal or professional lives.
He felt it now, though. He had failed. But if there was one thing Thaddeus Konstanides didn’t accept willingly, it was failure.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You must have knocked his socks off,” Melania’s voice was still hoarse.
“When are you going to kick this thing?” Saphire asked, grimacing at the clunky subject change.
“I’m getting better. But listen, what the hell did you promise this guy? I’ve never seen a pledge like it.”
Saphire swallowed. “What did he offer in the end?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” she shook her head, easing herself into Melania’s chair. She clipped the phone under her ear and stared at the view of downtown Rome. “He said he’d sort the details out later.”
“Well, you must have put him in a pretty generous mood.”
“It was business,” Saphire said stiffly.
“Of course it was. I would never insult your professionalism by implying otherwise. But you did good business.”
“How much?” Sapphire murmured.
When Melania named the amount, Saphire almost sobbed. It was too much. It was his guilty conscience speaking.
“He’s just asked you to drop the contracts off today. Do you mind? I’d get Kate to do it but she’s got some thingamajig on.”
“Right,” Saphire nodded. She vaguely recalled Kate mentioning a personal commitment. “I can organize a courier.”
“No, it has to be you. Or me. They have to be signed and then brought straight to the solicitor. It’s too important to entrust to anyone else. Can you do it?”
Saphire felt a buckling of her will-power, but it was not in evidence when she answered. “Of course. I’ll just check the messages and then head over.”
“You are an absolute star. I’m so sorry about this. You’re doing three jobs at once.”
“It’s fine,” Saphire assured her. “I like being busy.”
“You’re a gem.”
Saphire rang off and punched the keyboard to life angrily. There were almost fifty emails to be replied to or earmarked for follow up, and it took the better part of the morning to deal with them all. She stood up right before lunch and grabbed the contracts she’d printed.
It was only when she got to the sidewalk outside that she realized she had no idea where she was going.
She dialed his office number instead of his cell and waited for it to connect.
It was not Thaddeus who answered and she was profoundly relieved. “I need to have some papers signed by Mr Konstanides,” she said crisply.
“May I ask who is calling?” His assistant spoke with an accented voice.
“Saphire Morrison,” she murmured, reverting to her maiden name.
“Excellent, Miss Morrison.” The assistant didn’t miss a beat. “Mr Konstanides advised me to expect your call. I can text you his current location for ease, if you’d like.”
She gritted her teeth together. “Yes. Fine.” And as an afterthought, “Thank you.”
The message came through almost instantly. She climbed into a passing cab and gave him the address. It was a long way from downtown Rome. The car climbed out of the city, closer and closer to where the gala had been held less than a week earlier. Only it forked into a different direction somewhere on the outskirts and climbed up a separate hill. Greenery was everywhere, the sky was blue, and on a different occasion Saphire might have found herself enjoying the scenery of urban affluence.
She ignored the rapidly escalating price of the meter. Nothing mattered except surviving the next twenty minutes of her life. Surely it wouldn’t take longer. They’d said all they needed to the night before.
She paid the driver and stepped out of the car, contracts clasped in hand.
The house was spectacular. Of course. It had mansion proportions but in a traditional Italian architecture; the walls were stonewashed a sort of lemon yellow, and geraniums and lavender brightened up the warm afternoon. The roof was covered in red tiles, and a happy little path dotted its way to the door. She moved along it as though she was being dragged towards the fires of hell.
Right before her finger could press the doorbell, he pulled it inwards.
Saphire forced her eyes to stay locked to his, rather than allowing them to drop to his bare chest and low-slung jeans.
“I should have called,” she murmured
with a hint of apology in her tone.
“Come in,” he said without responding to her statement.
She nodded, but her feet were glued to the spot. “I just have these contracts for you …”
“Come in and I will sign them.” A teasing smile hinted at the corners of his lips.
She was being childish and she knew it. Curtly, she nodded. “Fine. But I can’t stay long.”
“Understood,” he clipped two fingers to his head in a mock military salute that made her feel even more juvenile.
The entrance was a rustic and simple space, though discretely expensive touches were everywhere. She looked up at him, anxiety suddenly pulsing through her body. It was the first time they’d been truly alone in a long time. And suddenly, in the confines of his hallway, she felt a slick of desire through her body.
It shocked her.
She loved him.
And now it was obvious that she wanted him too.
She stepped back awkwardly, her expression pained. “I really just want to get this finished,” she said rudely, pushing the contracts towards him. Only he used the gesture as an opportunity to bring her to him.
His fingers curled around her wrist and he pulled on her arm, jerking her against his body. Her heart turned over with remembered pleasure as his warmth surrounded her. His chest was glorious. Perfect and sculptured and everything she’d been dreaming of.
“What are you doing?” She whispered, her expression haunted.
His eyes were hooded. “What do you want me to do?”
Her throat moved in a tangle as she swallowed nervously, and her eyes beetled closed. Long lashes fanned against her cheeks. “I’m here about work; for my boss.”
“Yes,” he murmured, dropping his lips to hers. He pressed them to her mouth so lightly that she wasn’t even sure he was kissing her. “Does that mean you cannot do anything other than work?”
She shook her head slowly, but her treacherous body was leaning into his, aching for more. “I can’t,” she murmured, as her hands lifted and tangled in his hair. “It would be foolish.”
“You are fighting yourself, not me.”
“I’m fighting us both,” she contradicted, but now her mouth searched for his, and she kissed him passionately and hungrily. “I’m so angry with you,” she whispered into his mouth, as her leg lifted and wrapped around his waist.
Seasons of Sin: Misbehaving in summer and autumn... (Series of Sin) Page 14