by Julia James
‘You prefer the alternative? For him to know who you really are? Not that sanitised, whitewashed fairy tale you’ve concocted about yourself?’ He got to his feet, walked to the door, and as he twisted the handle he turned. ‘Be grateful that I make you this offer. This way the Honourable Giles need never know about Kat Jones. And once he’s free from you, you can keep your shiny new image, your lucrative new career.’ He paused, letting his gaze rest on her one more time, his eyes like granite.
‘The choice is yours, Kat. And you have twenty-four hours in which to make it. If you’re not at my hotel tomorrow evening at nine I shall know what you’ve chosen—and act accordingly.’
Then he was gone.
Alone, Thea stood quite, quite still. Then slowly, very slowly, she wrapped her arms about her body. Very, very tight. In front of her the pit stood gaping. And she had no choice, no choice at all, but to step into it.
She could feel herself falling, feel the air being sucked from her lungs as she plummeted down into the pit that Angelos Petrakos had opened beneath her feet. Her guts were hollowed out, muscles in her legs seizing up. She was in some kind of shock, she knew. In disbelieving, aghast denial—desperately trying not to believe what had just happened and yet knowing with every particle of her being that it was true.
Angelos Petrakos had destroyed her—again.
Her arms clutched around her body. Her eyes were bleached with stricken emotion.
She might not love Giles—what was love? She’d never known it in her life—but she cared for him, and she would never, never hurt him by telling him how she had deceived him. She had no choice—she must let him go. Let go her dream—the one that she had yearned for, striven for, and so very, very nearly achieved.
Anguish at what she was losing twisted in her. Then, in its wake, came anger—blind and hot, seeking a target. She heard Angelos Petrakos’s caustic voice— ’You didn’t stay finished, did you?’
No, she hadn’t! Despite everything—everything he’d done to her—she’d got out of the pit he’d thrown her into! Made a new life for herself!
Her eyes hardened and she loosed her protective cradling of her body, her hands instead forming fists, tensed at her sides. She lifted her chin, unseeing as her gaze burned with the bright, intense light of pure will, pure determination. Resolution seared through her.
I’ve survived Angelos Petrakos before, and I will do it again!
For a long, timeless moment she went on standing there, hands clenched, face like stone, as emotion burned in her. Then, as if with a slow exhalation of breath, she let it go. With a strange, preternatural calmness in her breast she went to put away her library books and resume her interrupted evening. Tomorrow, everything would change, but this last night she would spend as she had planned—a quiet supper, a Mozart CD, and a good book to read.
Enough to gather her strength for the ordeal ahead. The ordeal she would survive. The ordeal she must survive.
But for all her resolution, telling Giles when he returned to London the next morning that she could not marry him was a slow agony. The pain in his eyes crucified her. But she had to inflict it. There was no other way. She could not—could not—tell him the truth. Yet to stop him wanting to honour his offer of marriage, as she knew he would, she had to hurt him with another lie—and such a monstrous one. Of all the people in the world, it was the one she loathed with all her being whom she now had to lie about! The lie mocked her with whips—and so did Giles’ response.
‘You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?’ said Giles.
Thea couldn’t speak, could only nod. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘So terribly, terribly sorry. I lied to you in that restaurant, denying I knew him, because I desperately wanted it all to be over between him and me. But … he came to me last night and—’ She couldn’t go on. The vileness of the lie she had to tell was too great for that.
‘I’m just so sorry,’ she whispered again.
He patted her hand. A jerky movement. His face was not showing much. He never let emotions show. Not deep ones. But she knew he felt them. He was a good, kind man. A decent, honourable man. A man she would have striven with every fibre of her being to be a good wife to.
And now—
It was over. The dream she had dreamt was over before it began. Despair racked her. And anger and shame, and a regret for what could never now be so powerful that it crushed her.
‘I can only wish you every happiness,’ said Giles.
She gazed at him with stricken eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again. ‘And I hope and pray with all my heart that you find a woman more worthy of you.’
He would never know just what she meant by that. But she would know, and the knowledge incised deep into her. Only the certain knowledge of her own misery could assuage the pain she was inflicting.
Sadly, guiltily, she kissed his cheek and left him.
Back in her flat, depression hit her like a huge wave. She let it break over her, knowing there was nothing she could do—nothing. The future she had thought to have was gone. It could never return. Giles was gone—driven back up to Yorkshire to tell his parents she had called it off. She kept busy, cleaning her flat like one possessed. She had no appointments that day, which was just as well, as she could face no one—not even her booker.
She was signed with a different agency from the one where she had started her career as Kat Jones. This one had branches all over the world—all over the U.K. Even in Manchester.
That was where she had gone when Angelos Petrakos had destroyed her the first time around. She had gone there with Katya, both of them making a new life for themselves. They’d worked as cleaners—menial work to pay the rent, to eat, to survive. More than that had been beyond her. All she’d been able to bring herself to do was just keep going—nothing more than that. Then Katya had met a fellow Pole, Marek, to whom Katya was not just scar tissue, and who had said only one thing when Kat had told him how Mike had met his end—’He got lucky.’
Kat had seen the murderous look in Marek’s eyes and known that Katya was safe now. She’d been happy for Katya—but when she’d gone she’d sat alone in their bedsit and stared at the walls.
They had started to move in on her. Slowly, inexorably, crushing the air out of the room, the breath out of her lungs, the life out of her veins. Shabby walls in a grimy flat on a grim street in a rundown part of the city where she spent her days as an office char, cleaning up other people’s dirt.
Well, what do you expect? Two generations of losers, and you’re the third. You tried to get out—and you lost. Accept it. You’re not going anywhere any more. You’re in the pit—so make yourself at home. It’s where you belong, Kat Jones.
Then, out of the depths, the thought had come.
But I don’t have to be Kat Jones …
She’d sat very still as the thought had formed in her head. Formed and shaped and grown.
I can be someone else. I can be anyone I choose. Anyone.
But it wasn’t just a name she’d needed. If all she’d taken was a new name Kat Jones would still have been underneath. She’d needed to be a new person. Someone a million miles away from Kat Jones—raised in care, daughter and granddaughter of prostitutes, alcoholics and junkies. In her mind’s eye she’d seen the sleek, glossy models who had been chosen by Angelos Petrakos. Not like her—with her Estuary English and her abrasive style and her pig-ignorance. But well-bred, well-spoken, well-behaved, well-educated.
Classy.
There had been a strange light in her eye. A burning light.
It was one that had lit her way through the years ahead.
Could that light still burn now, even through the dark, dark shadow of Angelos Petrakos? She knew there was only one answer she must give.
Yes. Yes. She could survive what he was doing to her—overcome it! She wasn’t the raw, ignorant, penniless wannabe she’d been five years ago. She was Thea Dauntry, who owned a flat in Covent Garden, who had savings in the bank
Whatever Angelos Petrakos tried to do to her, he could not take that away. She was Thea Dauntry—and Kat Jones was gone for ever!
Yet, for all her resolution, it was hard—hideously hard—to pack an overnight case, lock her flat, and make her way, as she had been ordered, to his hotel. The same one, with vicious mockery, he had been staying at five long years ago—the same suite always reserved for him whenever he wanted to be in London.
Heart as heavy as lead, her mind studiedly, deliberately blank, she stepped inside the hotel, inside the revolving doors where, five long years ago, she had first set eyes on Angelos Petrakos. The man she hated with all her being and always would …
Angelos stared at the screen of his laptop. He wasn’t reading what was on it—his thoughts were elsewhere. Doing something they rarely did. Questioning himself. A frown creased his brow. Why was he doing this? Why should he care whether some unknown man ended up married to the likes of Kat Jones? He’d finished with her five years ago …
There was no need to do what he was doing.
No need to bring her here again.
His expression shifted minutely. Need was not the only driver for his decision, he knew. Something else was impelling him.
It was anger, that was all, he told himself. Anger that she was set on deceiving an innocent, trusting man who did not deserve it. Anger that she had dared to do so and saw nothing wrong in doing so. That was the only reason he was doing this.
He would allow it to be for no other reason.
Not because of her luminous beauty that drew the eye disturbingly … evocatively …
The soft tones of the house phone sounded. He glanced at his watch. The watch she had once stolen from him. Two minutes to nine. He picked up the phone. It was Reception. Kat Jones was right on time.
Thea was calm. She would not allow herself to be anything else. She was in lockdown. It was essential. Essential in order to be able to walk into the suite, to see Angelos Petrakos again. She stood quite still, like a statue, staring ahead while the bellboy set down her case and then left. Angelos was looking at her, she could see. She would not look at him. But she could feel his presence like a dark pressure all around her.
‘So …’ his voice incised into the silence, deep and accented ‘… have you given your lordling his release?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was dead. Unemotional.
‘Good. Well, by tomorrow morning he will be permanently safe from you—even if you reneged on your rejection of him and went after him again he would have no wish to take my mistress for his wife, would he?’
‘No.’ The same deadness was in her voice.
He paused. Then in measured tones he spoke again. ‘I am glad, Kat, that you understand that. There is no going back for you. Your ambitions in that direction are over. Permanently.’
He walked away from her, and from her eyeline she could see him cross to a drinks cabinet on the far side of the lavishly appointed suite. A terrifying surge of déjà vu suddenly swept over her, as if time had collapsed and she was once more standing here in that nightmare confrontation five years ago.
No! The lockdown on her mind tightened. No memories. None.
She made her eyes rest on him as he reached for a bottle and unstoppered it. She made herself look at him. Tall, powerful—brutal. Incised features, hard body, dark tanned skin, the darker hue of his black hair, the blacker shade of his handmade business suit—all created the aura he was projecting. Not a man to mess with, not a man to defy—not a man to cross.
A man she could only … survive.
‘What would you like to drink?’
The casual enquiry seemed at odds with the reality of the situation. As if there was anything sociable, anything normal in what she was doing here. Not like the grim, harsh truth of the situation.
‘Mineral water,’ she answered. Her voice was clipped. It sounded unreal, even to her, and she knew that she could still feel the shades of her once-rough accents haunting her. But that was Kat—and she was no longer Kat. She was Thea, and Thea spoke with pure Queen’s English. No one looked down on her socially any more.
‘Still or sparkling?’
‘I couldn’t care less,’ she replied indifferently.
He finished pouring and then came back towards her, a tumbler of malt whisky in one hand, a tall glass of mineral water in the other. She set her handbag down on the coffee table and took the glass he proffered. She still didn’t want to look at him, but she forced herself. She must not let him see she did not want to look at him. That would give him a satisfaction she must deny him. He would get nothing from her—no reaction at all.
Angelos Petrakos raised his tumbler.
‘To our time together,’ he said, and took a mouthful of the whisky. His eyes washed over her.
Thea’s mouth suddenly felt dry as bone. She wanted to drink, wanted to drop her eyes away from him. But she forced herself to do neither—forced herself to let him look. She was used to being looked at—it was her profession, hate it though she did.
Did he see it in her eyes? He must have. Suddenly his eyes narrowed, as if she had done something to surprise him. Or remind him.
‘You still don’t like it, do you?’ he observed. ‘You don’t like being looked at.’ He took another, ruminative mouthful of his whisky. ‘It was what I noticed about you when you auditioned for the Monte Carlo campaign. That you don’t like being looked at.’ His expression changed minutely, and it seemed to Thea that his stance eased. ‘Curious,’ he said.
His eyes rested again on her face. She schooled her expression to be immobile, feeling the muscles in her body tighten. Stop looking at me! she wanted to scream at him.
He could see her tension, snapping from her like static. Felt himself respond to it. Immediately he clamped it down. If there was one thing he must not do it was respond to her! Yet memory crowded him, vivid and searing. She had stood just there, in that very spot.
Offering me her body. Letting me touch her, caress her … kiss her.
Like a guillotine falling, he cut the memory. With a jerking movement, he tossed the last of the whisky down, then replaced the tumbler on the tray.
‘Let’s go.’
She stared.
‘Dinner,’ he elaborated. ‘To show the world you are keeping me company. That is, after all, your purpose here.’
She made no rejoinder to his sardonic remark, merely setting down her untouched glass and picking up her handbag. Stiffly she followed him from the room. She had dressed neutrally, in an aubergine-coloured dress that would do in most situations. Her hair was in its customary chignon, her make-up subdued.
Déjà vu was hitting her over and over again. Following Angelos Petrakos down to the hotel dining room was what she had done five years ago, but this time she was not fazed by her surroundings. She took them in her stride, along with the attentiveness of the waiters, murmuring her thanks and picking up her menu. She glanced down it with confidence—these days to her French menus were not incomprehensible and daunting. She glanced around. The décor was the same. Angelos Petrakos was the same. But she—she was different. Kat Jones had been ignorant—fatally ignorant. Oh, not of wine waiters and French menus. But of something that had proved her total undoing.
A strange look came into Thea’s eye.
What if I’d just slapped him when he came on to me that nightmare night? Somehow dragged myself out of that zombie state he reduced me to when he kissed me and slapped him so hard that even he, in his colossal arrogance, would have got the message. That I wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t ‘leading him on’?
Would it have saved her? she wondered.
No—his monstrous ego would have taken offence at that, as well. He would never have given me that job back. I’d have been thrown out all the same, whatever I’d done.
Whatever I hadn’t done …
Bitterness was like gall in her throat.
The waiter was hovering, and she made her selection. ‘The grilled sole, please, with a green salad.’
‘Is that all you intend to eat?’ Angelos Petrakos’s harsh tones cut across the table.
‘Yes,’ she replied. She said nothing more as he gave his own order, followed by a discussion with the sommelier. Then his eyes came back to her. She endured his surveillance.
‘You’re not as thin,’ he remarked.
‘These days I can afford food,’ she said.
‘Looking for sympathy, Kat?’ he drawled.
‘From you?’ she returned scathingly.
‘Still the mouth,’ he observed. ‘Do you really never learn, Kat?’
‘Only the important things. But then, I had a good teacher,’ she said. Her eyes were like poison darts.
‘But then,’ he echoed deliberately, ‘you were in urgent need of a lesson …’
She felt her anger rise, felt it heat her veins—and then, with absolute control, she forced it down. She reached for her water.
‘Still no wine?’
‘No.’
His eyes rested on her. ‘Still the appearance of virtue. Did it help you reel in your captive lordling? How did you meet him?’ he asked conversationally.
‘It’s none of your business and I won’t discuss him with you.’
Angelos stilled. ‘Your nerve is breathtaking.’
Thea set down her water with a jolt. ‘You don’t really imagine,’ she bit out, ‘that I care a fig about what I say to you, do you? I won’t discuss Giles with you, period. He’s a good, decent man, and because of you I’ve had to hurt him badly!’
His eyes darkened. ‘Better that than marrying you!’
Emotion bit. She could feel it in her throat. It should be anger—anger at yet another insult. But it wasn’t anger.
‘I’d have made him a good wife,’ she said tightly. Too tightly—as if her throat had suddenly narrowed. She felt a sudden ludicrous sting in the back of her eyes at his naked contempt. Even as it happened she fought it. She wouldn’t, wouldn’t feel what she did—she wouldn’t feel, dear God, of all things, hurt.
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