“You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Callista. It was a tragic accident.”
His voice deepened alarmingly. “You know nothing about it.”
“Dorinda told me. Your sister crashed your car trying to rush Diablo to the vet. It’s as simple as that. It was a tragedy but not your fault. You have got to stop blaming yourself for it and move on.”
“You discussed me with Dorinda?” He shot her a look of disgust. “What makes you think she knows everything that happened that day?”
Kizzy opened her mouth to try and calm the inner forces that were making him look so angry, but it was clear he was not going to allow her to speak.
“I’ll spell it out to you once and for all. I couldn’t be bothered to take the bloody cat to the vet myself—I was too busy. I was always too busy trying to better myself, to make more money, to be the best. Callista went on and on about the cat until I got so annoyed I threw her the keys and told her to get on with it. She was just like you, Kizzy. Stubborn and rebellious to the end. She took the keys and, well, you know the rest.”
He stooped to pick up a stray paintbrush from the floor and put it carefully in an earthenware jar. “She’d only been driving a year and couldn’t control a car as powerful as the Lamborghini. I might as well have doused her with gasoline and set her on fire myself.”
“Oh no, stop.” She made a grab for his hand. “This is all wrong—”
“Don’t lecture me, Kizzy!” he said, pulling away. His voice shook. “You have no idea what it feels like to lose a sister and know that you are responsible.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she replied, and heard an answering tremor in her own voice. “I lost a sister too. A half-sister. Alice came into the world a month too early and I only had a few minutes to love and hold her before she slipped away.”
“Not your fault, Kizzy,” he said and rubbed the back of his neck ferociously. “No comparison.”
“But I think it is! Mum only stayed with my stepfather because of me. He gave us a roof over our heads, a chance of an education for me, an awful sham of stability. I never told her that I didn’t care about those things and that I wished we could just run away.”
Kizzy took a step toward him, desperate for his touch, some morsel of warmth to soothe away the terrible ache building to a crescendo inside her body. But all she could register was the dull, black look in his eyes that spoke of something beautiful that had died before its time. Or was just about to.
“She stuck it out and protected me from some terrible things—my stepbrothers were animals—but she paid a terrible price for that protection.” A tear began to seep from the edge of her lashes. “Alice was violently conceived and her death was just as brutal. My stepfather pushed Mum down the stairs during one of his drunken rages, and she went into premature labor.”
…
Andreas saw the acute pain and bewilderment on her face and his stomach constricted.
Kizzy was hurting and he couldn’t help her, because he was in as much pain himself, selfishly consumed by his own raw feelings. She had forced him into an emotional corner, drawn out the hidden poisons that had dominated his life for so long, and now he just wanted to get away from her, to hide his vulnerability. But that wasn’t how Andreas Lazarides worked.
He felt his heart pulse with renewed shame and humiliation. He was used to fighting back. Fighting dirty. He was used to slamming down the lid of the sarcophagus that held his heart.
“I’m sorry about your sister. I had no idea—any more than you knew the secrets of my life, the details you’ve just forced me to reveal. Things I wanted to keep secret.” He took a sharp breath. “It was a bad idea to get into all this, and it only happened because you refused to trust me. It should all have remained unspoken—buried in the past. You should have trusted me, Kizzy. You should have let it all be.” He paused. “I hope you’re satisfied now.”
Andreas turned and walked silently to one of the open windows. He leaned both hands on the rough ledge and stared out to sea, the light breeze lifting his hair. He couldn’t face her a moment longer, was unable to bear the revulsion that would inevitably overshadow her face. He couldn’t keep looking at those deep blue eyes, knowing he would only add to the distress and suffering within them. His unrestrained anger and resurgent feelings of uselessness would chip away at her, catching at the open wounds she already had.
And she wouldn’t be the first person he would ruin. His sister had died because of his negligence, his mother following closely behind, consumed by grief. Even his own father despised him with the few functioning brain cells he had left.
Yet he loved Kizzy.
Andreas loved her more than anything he had ever known, and it would be like ripping out his own heart to allow her to leave.
But he had to. It suddenly became clear to him that the best way to demonstrate his love was to let her go before he polluted her any further with the darkness in his soul. Somehow he had to stop himself from taking her in his arms and telling her that he would take care of her and make everything wonderful. Because he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t end up making her life as miserable as her mother’s had been.
He had already tried to force Kizzy into marriage so that she would stay with him. So he could keep her in close captivity like a beautiful, caged bird.
“You’re right, Kizzy. I should have listened to you from the start. Of course we shouldn’t marry—it would be a disaster. Not because I would stray, but because I simply don’t have the time to work at it.” His fingertips scraped the stone of the window frame until he felt the skin split and bleed. “A marriage between us could never work.”
“But, Andreas, it can work!” she replied breathlessly and took a hesitant step toward him. “Now we have no secrets, now that I know I can trust you—”
“Trust me?” He uttered a harsh and brittle laugh as he realized just how cruel he was going to have to be to her. “Now that you’ve forced me to my knees and ground whatever pride I had left into the dust, you’ve decided we can forge ahead with a futile marriage after all? Is that what you mean by trust?”
Kizzy halted in her tracks. “It’s not like that,” she said.
“It will be,” Andreas replied hollowly. “I can never become the husband you want or deserve, Kizzy. It’s impossible. You’ve made me see that now.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she pleaded. “Listen to me.”
“Oh, I’m never wrong, Kizzy,” he replied, his smile tight and ironic. “Don’t you remember that? And I’ve listened to quite enough today.”
Andreas closed his eyes briefly. Somehow, he had to find the strength to rip out both their hearts and destroy their hopes of a happy ending. He knew it was for the best. She, at least, would eventually recover from this and meet a better man than he could ever be.
“You said you trusted me before today, but you were lying, telling me things I wanted to hear, sweet, poisonous little nothings.” He ignored the determined shake of her head and thrust her small hand away. “You couldn’t leave it, could you? You couldn’t resist sticking in the knife and twisting it to see how far you could push me?”
“This is madness!” she cried.
“I agree, but this is as far as the madness goes. I don’t want to be your husband. Or your lover. It’s been difficult recently. Maybe it’s the pregnancy. I don’t know. Please leave now, Kizzy, it’s for the best and we both know it.”
“I can’t believe you mean that,” she whispered hoarsely.
He looked at her, forcing a light contempt into his tone. “Just give it up, will you? Desperation is very unattractive in a woman.”
He watched tears fall heavily from her cheeks, and turned away before the despair in her eyes sliced any deeper into his heart.
The raw hum of silence between his shoulder blades urged him to provoke her into a response. Perversely, he wanted Kizzy to fight him, to hurt him back, to hate him with everything in her soul. Not stand silently by whi
le he destroyed what they had built together.
“I will provide financially for the baby, of course, and in return expect full access and rights. And don’t think for one moment that you can run off with my child—I have contacts all over the world.” He waited for a shrill, ferocious outburst but it never came and now he just wished for darkness and oblivion, a place where he could hide from the terrible things he was saying and didn’t mean.
Andreas waited for a response, his blood pulsing nauseously around his body as he felt the weight of what he had just done collapse like a tower of blocks onto his shoulders. She would speak soon, she had to.
The heavy wooden door at his back clicked softly shut and he knew that she had gone.
Chapter Fourteen
“Right.” Nurse Walczak folded her equipment back into her bag and smiled gently. “Everything’s fine, but I do recommend you make an appointment for your first scan in a few weeks.”
“Scan?” Kizzy was feeling shell-shocked at the speed everything was happening. “Oh that, yes. I will.”
“It’s perfectly routine, nothing to worry about, and a wonderful opportunity to see baby for the first time.” She patted her lightly on the hand and smiled. “Perhaps you’d like to take a friend along with you? Or I can arrange to be present if you prefer?”
Kizzy shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you’ve got my cell number.” The midwife slid a bundle of forms across the table. “You also need to fill these in before your next appointment—nothing complicated, take your time.”
Nothing complicated…
Kizzy had told the midwife that her baby’s father wasn’t around anymore, as she knew she would need all the support she could get as a single mother. But Nurse Walczak was her sole confidant. Kizzy hadn’t gone into detail about Andreas and hadn’t been pressed, but it had been a small step in her new isolated world.
She still had time, she thought erratically. It would run out, but at this stage she still had time. She flicked through the forms. Basic details, like home address, next of kin…
What would she put there?
Birth plan. Who did she want to be there when her baby was born? Any genetic history?
Kizzy closed her eyes.
She had no one. There was no one! She really was completely alone apart from her new neighbors and coworkers.
Kizzy suddenly wanted her mother.
And she wanted Andreas more than she wanted to continue breathing.
But she couldn’t have either, so she swallowed down her misery and got to work.
“Water—need to fetch more water.”
She would have a wash, do the dishes, and scrub the place to within an inch of its life—that would occupy her this Friday afternoon, now that work had finished for the day. It was just as well there was no Internet connection, or she’d be tempted to e-mail her friends back in the UK. But that wouldn’t be fair. She’d made her bed and she would be fine in it.
However, she was starting to worry about bringing a newborn back to this place eventually. This must have been what it was like for her mother, she thought. A baby, no fixed home, and no visible support network. History repeating itself…but she’d make it better this time. She’d do all she possibly could for their baby, a child who would be unquestionably beautiful. With Andreas’s looks and brains and her unconditional love and devotion it would be perfect—a little demigod even.
And a strict march to the communal tap in the midday sun would be the beginning of her new resolve not to feel sorry for herself in the slightest.
…
Andreas had let her walk out of his life with a modicum of dignity, Kizzy reflected as she filled a large water container from the tap. She still suffered a sickening sense of awfulness that the love she had been nurturing so silently was not reciprocated. His intimate revelations in the tower had been distressing to hear, and she had longed to reach out and comfort him. Yet at the same time she had also recognized that this was his only way of letting her in. Making her a part of his damaged life.
She had believed she could help him mend, and that if they had worked at their marriage she could have loved him from a safe distance. She had hoped that maybe his feelings for her would grow into something stronger, maybe even love one day.
But even that hope had been forlorn.
Her stomach turned over at the memory of how horrified she had been at his declaration of the way things were now going to be. Spoken to the sea and sky, not even directly to her—her very presence had become repulsive to him, it seemed. She had also realized with growing terror that she had no cards to play in this nasty new game.
If only she had just said yes when he’d insisted on marriage, seized the proposal with both hands. Then it almost seemed as if her worst fears were coming to life and sneaking up on her in physical form, as a shadow fell over the white plastic canister.
Just a cloud, surely?
She needed to get more sleep when the morning sickness eased, she decided—it rarely rained out here. Now her mind was playing tricks on her.
“What are you doing here, Kizzy?”
Andreas?
She did not turn around. She had recognized his voice immediately, but could hardly believe it was him. Her body rigid with tension, she had to force herself to reply.
“I’m living here until the school kitchen is finished, just like everybody else.”
“But I terminated your position,” he replied flatly. “For the baby’s safety.”
“And I ignored that piece of paper when it reached me here.” She roughly screwed on the water bottle lid. “No one else seems bothered.”
“You haven’t even looked at the villa I arranged for you.”
“No.” She heard the gravel underfoot crunch as he took a step closer.
“Not good enough for you?” Was that a sneer in his voice? “It’s usually rented out to millionaires, oligarchs—”
Angry now, she turned to face him. He looked terrible. “It’s been a good couple of weeks since you dismissed me from your presence, Mr. Lazarides, so why the sudden concern?”
He looked at her without speaking for a moment, his face oddly haggard, a dark shadow about his jaw as though he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning.
“I’ve only just found out that you aren’t where you were supposed to be,” he muttered.
“As I thought,” she responded sourly. “I was clearly at the forefront of your mind.”
“My father died, Kizzy.”
She blanched at that news, wishing she could call back her too-hasty words.
“The phone call from the nursing home came almost immediately after you left,” he said, looking away from her. His face was grim. “They said he didn’t have long, so I had to fly straight to Athens. I only just made it. We had a few hours together before he died.”
“Oh no,” Kizzy whispered and without thinking cupped his rough jaw in her palm. She closed her eyes briefly as he turned his head to kiss her wrist.
“He was lucid at the end and we made our peace,” he said quietly. “He apologized for being so hard on me as a child—he’d wanted me to grow up a strong man, not a drunken loser who sponged off his wife like he did. He regretted so much, just hadn’t been able to swallow his pride and admit it. He was smaller than I remember—frail and helpless.”
He took Kizzy’s hand and threaded their fingers softly together.
“Dad told me about my mother too, about her secrets. She wasn’t as pure as she’d led everyone to believe.” He looked down at Kizzy’s feet, shod with cheap, simple sandals. “She had affairs, lots of them, but there was one man in particular. He was an artist. Dead now but—but most probably my natural father.”
Kizzy’s mouth fell open. “You had no idea?”
He shook his head and his voice cracked “And Mum never told me she was ill either—cancer. I always assumed she’d died of a broken heart when she lost my sister, that her death was
my fault as well.”
Kizzy nodded as a fat tear coursed down her cheek, unable to speak a word of comfort. Nothing seemed sufficient at that moment.
“The funeral took place straightaway. That was what my father had wanted. Quiet, discreet. I wanted to rush back to you, but there were things I had to do first. I had to build my case before asking, begging you to come back to me.” His face contorted. “It’s not much of an excuse, but from the day I returned until this morning I’ve been in the tower trying to sort my life out.”
“All that time? Then it’s no wonder you look such a mess.” Her face crumpled as she touched the dark, rough stubble on his jaw. “Have you finished it? The painting, your punishment?”
“Yes.”
“Is it beautiful?”
“It was. Briefly. Until I set fire to it once and for all.”
“You burned it? All those months of work?”
He stroked the top of her brow. “Don’t look so shocked. I burned it and started something new. Something I’d like you to see.”
“You can’t mean that, Andreas,” Kizzy murmured, not daring to believe that even after such dramatic events, there could be a grain of hope for them. “I can’t go back to your house, not after everything that’s happened and was said. It’s over between us, you made that quite clear.”
“I was an angry, bitter, egotistical mess. I didn’t know what I was saying. It was the only way I could get you to leave before I showed myself up by breaking down. I lost control, don’t you see? You’d taken me to the point where I felt totally exposed and I couldn’t cope with it. It was wrong, I was wrong, and I realized that very quickly after you’d left.”
He reached out to brush her mouth with his thumb, but she moved her chin away, her deep blue eyes questioning and wary.
“You hurt me badly, Andreas. I’d been hoping you’d feel more for me than that, but—”
Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire Page 15