Tallia cried like a watering can on her eighth day home. The week was up, and Costa never showed. She supposed she should have expected it, after everything Emmy told her, yet it still hurt to have her doubts confirmed.
After coming back to London and learning the truth about Costa, she braved the Internet and what she found there had shaken her to the core. The computer told her everything her sister warned her about Costa, and then some.
Of course, none of the horror she felt at reading about all his legion of flaws did anything to deaden the way she felt about him. She loved him just as madly and foolishly as ever. All she could think about was her time on Seleni and the man who had swept her off her feet. She just couldn't believe that man wasn't real, from his big, strapping exterior perfection to his hidden, sensitive soul.
In her love struck heart, she held out hope that Costa would come for her and prove himself. She even stayed cooped up in Emmy's frightfully stylish apartment for days, so she wouldn't miss him, but he never came.
All through the seventh night she lay in bed with dry, burning eyes, too upset to even cry. Now the proverbial dam had broken, and she couldn't stop the tears. She had been a fool and made a cake of herself over a heartless playboy, who had only been pretending.
She couldn't say what Costa's motivation had been. Was he just too lusty to keep his hands off of any woman who spent enough time around him? Or had he wanted to hurt Emily through her, or punish her for trespassing on his beautiful island? She supposed it didn't matter. Costa had taken what he wanted with the ruthlessness she knew he was capable of, and then walked away.
Devastated by his betrayal and her own naïve foolishness, she stayed abed for the next week, wallowing in self-pity, resisting all Emmy's entreaties for her to get up and go out. Her sister fussed and begged, but nothing would budge Tallia. She retreated into sleep, where she could dream about Costa without feeling guilty for doing it.
Eventually Tallia’s natural, pragmatic nature kicked back into effect and forced her to get up and get on with her life. Whenever she felt like lying down and curling into the fetal position, she told herself that she couldn't let one stupid mistake ruin her life. She was better now. The weeks in the sun and Calamini's excellent cooking had put her firmly on the path to recovery. Physically she was feeling a lot like her old self, now it was time to get on with living. She was certain Costa had gone back to his life, as if nothing happened. She pushed that thought aside as soon as it formed, resolving not to think about him again.
With a mind to the future, she called the head at her previous job and made a lunch date to discuss returning to work. She and the older woman, who ran the academy where she taught before the accident, had always got on like a house on fire. There was no question of Tallia simply stopping in for a meeting. They hadn't seen each other since she went into hospital, and her old boss insisted on taking her out for a bite so they could catch up.
Tallia was cheered by the prospect of a lunch date with a friend. She had received numerous cards and phone calls from all her colleagues while she was recuperating, though few had been able to visit due to the severity of her injuries and the bother of getting into London in the middle of the school term. Now that it was summer things were more relaxed, and she was hoping to get her old position back. Fleetingly, she thought of how Costa mentioned there was a school on Tanos where she could teach, if she wanted to keep working once they were married. Tallia almost wept at the thought.
Little bits of memory like that would come back to her sometimes leaving her confused and reeling with pain, and making her wonder all over again why Costa had gone to such lengths to humiliate her. She offered him her body on a silver platter, yet he had not been content to merely use her. He had felt some perverse need to create a warped fantasy in which they would marry and live happily ever after.
Dealing with the loss of his affection was painful enough, she could hardly stand thinking of how he had pulled the wool over her eyes and convinced her they had a future together. Had he been motivated by guilt? Did he feel that by dressing her seduction up that he could make his deflowering of a virgin, which seemed to genuinely trouble him at the time, more palatable? Or had he thought it would make her more biddable, passionate and eager to please?
Unanswered questions like those plagued Tallia every waking moment and brought her low. She didn’t want to consider the very real possibility that Costa had been having a royal joke at her expense. Perhaps he’d been amusing himself by watching her fall hopelessly in love with him, and congratulating himself privately for his prowess in deceiving women.
Burning with mortification at the thought of what an idiot she was, Tallia dug through her bag of travel clothes for something to wear, but found nothing suitable. It was cold in London, as was so often the case, and it was raining. All the beautiful things Emmy bought her for Greece were ridiculously light and sexy, not at all appropriate for lunch with a staid, older woman of conservative tastes.
Tallia knew the head hired her a few years back out of necessity, as a young woman fresh out of teaching college, with no experience, she had not been a very sought-after commodity. But the academy had been desperate for a replacement when one of the teachers abruptly decided not to return to the school just before the term was set to start. While she had never done anything to make her boss regret the decision, Tallia had always taken care to tone down her more bohemian leanings, as she knew they made the older woman uncomfortable. In truth, she earned the older lady’s respect and friendship.
All of Tallia’s old clothes were boxed up in storage somewhere, and Emmy was off on a three-day shoot in the Maldives. Tallia didn't want to trouble her by calling to ask exactly where the storage was and how she could get to it. She didn’t even have time to bother with that. With no other options, she dashed into Emmy's room to raid her sister’s closet.
Luckily she and Emmy were almost the same size. While growing up, they often wore each other’s clothes. Smiling ruefully, Tallia admitted that she wore Emmy's clothes, since her sister was a clotheshorse, whereas Emmy shunned her less fashionable togs. Even as a child Emmy possessed a huge wardrobe of gorgeous things. Now that she was a famous model, Emmy had two walk-in closets as big as most people’s family rooms, over-flowing with all sorts of goodies. Emmy owned every designer label imaginable and received most of her outfits for free. She had countless friends in her industry.
Picking through the first closet, Tallia quickly found a long black skirt that would do and a very chic blouse in a soft shade of green with which to pair it. Shoes were not an issue, as Emmy's second closet was reserved just for footwear. Once she settled on simple flats, Tallia continued to pick out some matching accessories to make herself look as professional as possible.
Just as she was about to leave her sister’s room, a tray of lovely Venetian perfume bottles lured her to Emmy's gorgeous vanity. The colorful little bottles were arranged neatly on top of the elegant piece of furniture. Tallia never wore perfume and hardly touched makeup, but Emmy's vanity, a lovely art deco piece that was probably the only antique in the entire apartment, was hard to resist. Lacquered in buttery smooth layers of white paint, it had three mirrors fixed to the dainty tabletop adorned with flower-shaped lights all over, providing a glow of flattering light.
Tallia sniffed suspiciously at the bottles and decided that they were pretty, but perfume was still not for her. There were little drawers in the vanity, and she didn't think twice about sliding them open and poking around. She was awed at the loads of lipstick and eye shadow crammed inside. A makeup novice, she never imagined so many shades of blush existed, as she picked through a veritable rainbow of different colors.
When Tallia opened the last drawer of the vanity, her breath sawed out on a pained cry as her eyes lit upon a long velvet box. Emmy had pounds of jewelry in her closet, some of it even valuable. But that was not what made Tallia’s insides freeze. It was the gilt seahorse embossed on the decadent box. Tallia would never forget that elegan
t logo; it had been imprinted on each velvet tray of glittering rings Mr. Androssi presented to her in Costa's office.
She slammed the drawer shut as if it were Pandora's box, her whole body beginning to shake in reaction. For a minute she sat in frozen shock, telling herself she was being silly. Emmy probably had jewels from all over the world, and it was just a coincidence she had something from Androssi. Maybe Fidelio bought Emmy something while they were in Greece, she reasoned.
Only Tallia was certain Fidelio never bought Emmy anything. Her sister would have told her if he had. Fidelio had never even gotten around to giving Emmy the diamond ring, a ring Tallia knew he bought for their engagement in London because he showed it to her while she was still in hospital.
The presence of the box in Emmy's makeup table only made her more suspicious. Emmy was such a slob that she abandoned dishes in the sink till they smelled. She left appalling messes for her cleaning lady all over the apartment. And she turned the bathroom into a scene out of a horror movie every morning. However, Emmy was scrupulously, in fact neurotically tidy when it came to her clothes, jewelry and makeup. Everything in Emmy’s closets was always in its proper place, and she had an entire standing wardrobe where she kept all of her jewelry.
Very slowly, Tallia opened the drawer again and withdrew the velvet box. She set it on the vanity and just stared at it, unable to lift the lid and see what lay inside. Bleak reality tore through her, because she knew what this was. This must have been Costa's 'parting gift', the final insult to all the other injuries he inflicted so callously on her. Somehow, Emmy had to have intercepted the ‘gift’ before Tallia could receive it. Her sister surely tucked the offensive thing away in a place where she thought Tallia would not be likely to find it.
Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, Tallia felt her eyes start to burn and her lip begin to tremble. She couldn't believe anyone could be so cruel. What had she ever done to Costa to deserve such treatment? Thank God she never had to see him again.
“I am never,” she sobbed, “trusting another man in my entire life!”
She tore her eyes from the revolting box, and they caught on her reflection in the vanity. All three mirrors threw back the image of a pale, drawn, devastated woman. The sight shocked her. She couldn't believe that the pathetic, sniveling woman in the mirror was really her!
Tallia didn't imagine she had looked half so pitiful when she lay in hospital, paralyzed from the neck down, with doctors clucking sympathetically over her, telling her how she would learn to adapt and how she was lucky to be alive. She had never cried as she was told all the rot that she supposed was meant to make her feel better when her entire life had just been snatched from her. Yet now she was falling apart over something as stupid as a man!
Worse, she had always wanted to marry and have children, and she was ready to throw that away because of one conniving bastard. She had let Costa walk all over her, stomp on her pride and reduce her to a hopeless wretch. And it wasn’t just him, she had been afraid of men most of her life.
Tallia knew her father, the bounder, who had run off when she was a child, had set the tone. Then had come Kevin, the verbal molester, who she had run from at the first chance, and had yet to seen again even though it meant severing all ties with her mother. Now Costa had come along, and finished the job of making her see the opposite sex as dangerous and best to be avoided. She had been let down by all the men in her life and it was turning her into the exact kind of person she most hated, a narrow minded, spineless ninny who painted all men with one brush.
Grabbing the box, she bolted to her room. Flinging open the drawer of the bedside table, she didn't even care that she ripped it right out of the small unit and sent the contents spilling over the floor. She found what she was looking for immediately, her passport and the black box in which she had put Costa's damned ring. Now she finally knew what to do with the cursed thing.
Yanking on the first clothes that came to hand, she flew out of the apartment. Her head was so hot with rage that she started marching down the pavement automatically, before she realized that walking to Heathrow was not an option. Checking belatedly for her wallet, Tallia hailed a cab and curtly told the driver where to take her.
She was still fuming hours later when she landed in Athens.
For Your Love Only Page 24