A
SOUND
awoke Mia as the quiet light of dawn was drifting in through the window. She continued to lie there for a few seconds, grappling to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings, then she remembered and her heart gave a thump. Twisting her head on the pillow she saw that the place beside her in the bed was empty, and she sat up with a jerk, a hand going up to push her tumbled hair from her face. The sound came again and she focused on Nikos, who was standing with his back to her on the other side of the room.
He was already dressed in one of the dark business suits he favoured, and was snapping his paper-thin watch to his wrist. He looked so breathtakingly handsome that tender muscles deep in her abdomen responded with a pulse of awareness at the same moment she picked up the clean male scents permeating the room which told her he had recently showered.
The sheer novel intimacy in their situation suddenly engulfed her in a rosy hue of shyness. Realising she was also very naked beneath the thin sheet had her clutching at its fine linen edge and drawing it up to her chin before she could fight a drowning wash of self-consciousness to speak.
‘What—what time is it?’ she asked huskily.
The way his wide shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice sent her teeth biting down into her soft lower lip. Perhaps he was not quite comfortable with their new situation yet either, she allowed.
‘Five o’clock,’ he answered without turning. ‘Go back to sleep—it’s too early for you to get up.’
‘You are up,’ Mia pointed out to him.
He said nothing, his long fingers reaching out to pick up his mobile phone, which he placed in his jacket pocket, followed by some other bits and pieces Mia followed without really registering what they were. Beginning to frown now, it was slowly dawning on her that he did not want to look at her. That the tension gripping his wide shoulders also repeated itself in the sharp movements of his fingers, and from the small amount of his profile she could see, the muscle that angled his strong jaw was clenched.
‘I am about to leave,’ he announced suddenly,
making Mia blink slowly. ‘I have business to attend to in Rome. My plane is on standby. Enjoy the rest of your day here if you wish. When you are ready to go back to London, let Lukas know and he will have my helicopter come and collect you.’
Every word, every cool flat businesslike word, arriving like the cold tip of a knife’s blade forced Mia to recognise what he was doing. He had taken her to his bed; now he was distancing himself. In true Nikos Theakis tried-and-tested tradition he was letting her know without needing to say the words that this—this soulless departure in the pale hours of the morning marked the end of what they had shared!
Beginning to tremble, Mia shut her eyes, struggling with a nauseating sense of hurt that made her burst forth with the shaken words, ‘Don’t do this to me, Nikos.’
He moved, twisting the long length of his body to lance her a brief shuttered glance. ‘Don’t beg, Mia. It’s unbecoming.’
Beg—? Her eyes flicked open in time to watch him turn away again, every lean hard elegant inch of him so contained she began to feel dizzy now as well as sick.
‘I am not begging,’ she denied on a wounded choke. ‘We—we just slept together!’
‘A—mistake. It should not have happened.’
‘But it
did
happen.’
‘True.’ He seemed to be inordinately interested in what was inside his wallet now. ‘However, it will not be happening again.’
‘Just like that?’ Beginning to squirm with self-loathing for even trying to discuss this with him, Mia folded her arms around her knees and crushed them to her chest. ‘You—you make love to me, then just—just throw me aside as if my feelings do not count?’
‘
Theos!
We did not make love, we had sex!’ He spun on her angrily. ‘We had wild hot amazing sex—Mia!’ he repeated harshly. ‘Where was the love in what we did in that bed last night? I did not bring it there! And if you did, then you were—’
His nostrils flared as he snapped his lips together, drawing back from what he had been about to say next. His dark eyes blazed at her frozen expression of horror, then with a muttered curse he turned his back to her again.
‘I was w-what?’ she prompted sickly, feeling like someone living a nightmare she could not wake up from. She found she could not let him stop there even if the rest was going to break her in two. ‘Naive? Stupid? Ready for it? Begging you for it?’
His lean profile clenched. ‘I was not going to say any of that.’
‘Then what were you going to say!’ she fired out.
‘Nothing.’
The liar, the cruel wicked liar!
‘I hate you so much now I will never forgive you for doing this to me,’ she whispered. ‘No doubt you are relieved and pleased to hear me say it!’
‘Actually, I’m not—’ his voice remained cool ‘—I…care about you, Mia. But I’m a loner. I always have been. I don’t do the kind of relationship you are going to expect. You will not believe this right now but I’m doing you a big favour calling a halt now—’
‘As you do with all the other women who have shared this bed with you?’ she flung out. ‘Take w-what you want from them, then toss them to one side like yesterday’s rubbish?’
‘Exactly like that,’ he confirmed.
Stunned that he had dared to admit it as coolly at he had, Mia stared at him for a second, then pushed her face into her knees and hugged self-loathing to her like it was her closest friend. She’d never felt so cheap, so used and discarded. And whatever it was he had tried not to say, the real truth crucifying her right now was she
had
been asking for it—
begging
him for it—for weeks before he gave in!
Now here she sat in the middle of his
rumpled bed consigned to the low ranks of a one-night stand.
Which was probably her just deserts for being such an easy tramp!
‘Why don’t you just go,’ she whispered when she sensed him still hovering.
‘I…need to know you are going to be all right.’
So he wanted reassurance now? ‘I’m all right.’ She gave it to him with the taste of bitterness in her mouth.
And still he hovered! Why—? Was he going to ask for a litre or two of her blood next?
‘Look…’ he said heavily. ‘I’m—sorry I let this happen.’ He actually sounded it too. ‘It was all my fault. I should not have given in to what was happening between us. You’re young and inexperienced in these things but I am not, and I should have…’
‘Say anything else m-more disgusting to me and I will be sick!’ Mia wrenched out.
‘It was wrong!’ he lashed out suddenly. ‘I dishonoured you and I dishonoured your father—’
That brought her head flying upwards. ‘Don’t you
dare
bring Oscar into this!’ she lashed back, dizzy at the unexpected hot flare of awareness she experienced when she looked at him. ‘How dare you stand there and speak his name to me
as if you have some right to hold him up against me!’
His taut profile paled. ‘I did not mean—’
‘I do not care what you did not mean! I do not care that you feel guilty now that you’ve had Oscar’s daughter in this bed! I gave myself to you willingly and freely. It is you who finds this a shameful thing, not me!’
Standing rigid with shock, he looked as if he’d been turned into rock, and Mia decided she’d had taken enough of this. With an infuri-atingly uncontrollable sob, she coiled her fingers around the sheet and snaked off the bed, dragging the sheet with her as she went.
‘Mia…’
‘No,’ she husked out. ‘Don’t speak another word to me. I
hate
you. I will hate you for ever.’
Those black feelings vented, she ran into his bathroom and slammed the door shut, then just sank in a puddle of white linen to the floor.
Go away and learn to honour yourself, Oscar had said to her. Well, she had shot that ideal in the foot, for where had her sense of honour been when she had lusted after Nikos Theakis? Where was it in recognising that she had just turned into the one person she had always vowed she would never turn into—her high-class whoring mother!
And she would never forgive Nikos for
making her aware that this was what she had done to herself.
She heard the telltale sound of the helicopter lifting off the ground as she still sat in her huddle on the bathroom floor.
He’d gone. Her aching heart turned over. He had not bothered to hang around for a second longer than he absolutely had to and she hated him for doing that too.
A few minutes after she had been delivered back to her apartment via helicopter, then a chauffeured limousine, which left her feeling cynically unimpressed, Sophie called her.
‘Have you seen the papers today? Someone had an interesting time last night,’ she teased. ‘Did you go skinny dipping in the D’Lassios’ pool because you were hot?’
Mia sank into the nearest chair and closed her weary eyes. So, despite assurances from Santino, her trip into the pool had found its way into the press.
‘Explain this skinny dipping,’ she requested.
‘Self-explicit turn of phrase,’ Sophie said. ‘OK, so you had all your clothes on,’ she conceded, ‘but the photo of the great and gorgeous Nikos hauling you out of the pool without so much as splashing himself looks impressive, while you looked kind of—wet and helpless and cute.’
Cute. Mia pressed her lips together because they wanted to tremble.
‘What happened?’
‘I—slipped in the crush,’ she lied. ‘Is there anything else in the papers I should know about?’ she then asked.
‘Only this amazing picture of you leaving later wearing the sexiest dress I’ve ever seen on you. Was it Nina’s?’
‘Sì’.
‘She has fabulous taste,’ Sophie gushed. ‘You went from fairy princess in floating blue silk chiffon to wet and helpless to dramatically slinky all in one evening. I wish I could wear a dress like that,’ she sighed out wistfully.
‘You could if you only stopped trying to hide your lovely figure under metres of fabric,’ Mia murmured impatiently.
‘Oh, come on, Mia. I’m five foot three inches high to your five-eight,’ Sophie pointed out. ‘Long and slinky I am not and never will be. Besides the unplanned dip, did you enjoy the rest of the evening or did you need to take the courage pill halfway through?’
Just like that her half-sister guided the subject away from herself as she always did, Mia noticed. Then she felt her insides curl up and sink because the rest of the evening did not bear thinking about.
‘The rest of the evening was—OK,’ she mumbled.
‘You’re distinctly unimpressed, then, that Nikos spent a cool half-million at the auction on a diamond bracelet.’
He did? Mia blinked. They had left before the auction had even started! He must have placed his bid before they left, she decided, murmuring out loud and cynically, ‘Perhaps he collects them to give out to his one-night stands as they leave.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Sophie murmured. ‘Now that sounded bitter.’
Mia was glad to hear it confirmed. She hoped to build on the bitterness she felt towards Nikos Theakis until it had successfully wiped out these other feelings of hopeless, useless love and hate and hard, crushing hurt.
Pride alone made her turn in for work on Monday morning to find herself the sinecure for a battery of wary glances and terribly reserved smiles. It was only then that she remembered the bruising kiss in a sunny car park which she discovered was now the property of every employer in the building and had effectively wiped out all the natural friendliness she had been gifted with in the preceding weeks.
‘What did you expect?’ Fiona asked her. ‘You can’t indulge in a relationship with the
boss and expect everyone to continue to treat you like one of them. You’re a Balfour. He’s a billionaire. You’ve confirmed their original expectations of you and now they feel duped.’
What could she say in her own defence? That the kiss had been a form of punishment because she’d likened him to a donkey called Tulio? Or that he’d used the kiss to warn off the guy from accounts because Nikos believed he’d stood her up on a date? The first was really stupid and unbelievable in the cold light of a new day. And the second excuse exposed her own lie to Nikos in the first place.
By the end of the week she’d closed herself off inside a steel case of protection so that nothing else could threaten her very shaky composure. Nikos had not returned to London and she had stopped eating. In truth she felt too wounded and raw to eat. Fiona was constantly sending her worried glances. Even her aunt noticed the difference in her voice when they talked on the phone.
‘Is something wrong, Mia?’ she asked her.
‘I’m missing you,’ she said, and it was the truth. She was missing Tia and Tuscany, and the quiet calm simplicity of the life she’d led there.
‘But otherwise you are happy with your exciting new life?’
Tia Giulia wanted her to say yes. She needed
to be reassured that she had not made a big mistake telling Mia about Oscar. So Mia gave her that assurance and tried after that to sound much brighter when she phoned.
On Saturday, she bumped into one of Kat Balfour’s friends in the street. Bethany was a bright, beautiful, lively creature much like her half-sister Kat. They chatted about the D’Lassio party for a while, which Bethany had been unable to attend for some reason Mia could not recall two minutes after she’d had it explained to her. Her mind was like that right now, unable to sustain any thoughts that did not contain the name Nikos Theakis in them. Bethany invited her to join her and a few other friends for a drink that night and Mia thought emptily, why not?
When she arrived at the Chelsea wine bar the place was so crowded she almost chickened out and went away again, but Bethany saw her and waved her over. Bathany’s group of friends were lively and noisy and Mia was surprised an hour later to discover that she was almost—almost—enjoying herself. Most of them were going on to dinner, then a nightclub, but the thought of eating anything made her stomach go queasy so she declined with a smile and some excuse that was something else she could not recall minutes afterwards.
The following Wednesday, she climbed out of bed and immediately had to run to the bathroom where she was sick. When the same thing happened the next few mornings, she decided it was time to start eating proper, regular meals again.