The two men were still standing on the pavement. From the low grind of their voices Mia could tell their conversation was not nice. A
quick glance showed her that Nikos’s whole body was rigid with aggression and icy as hell. Mario seemed to be pressing some urgent point and looked very pale, though she did not know the wealthy formula-one mogul to know he did not always look that shade.
She looked away again, down at her trembling fingers where they lay locked together on her lap. Nikos was right—who needed a mother like that? she told herself dimly, and felt tears press hard at the back of her throat.
Nikos climbed into the car and tapped on the partition glass to tell their driver to go. As he sank back into the seat he did not glance at Mia. He couldn’t right now. He was too busy grappling with something he’d said to Mario in his initial volley of contempt that was still knocking him almost senseless.
Soulless marriage…
Isn’t that what he had been offering Mia? A soulless marriage with great sex and separate bedrooms afterwards?
Nikos shuddered in disgust. She possessed more integrity than her lousy mother by refusing what he was fast accepting had been a filthy insult of an offer. If Gabriella had held out against Mario Mattea, would she have won her man and kept her child—?
And even the thought was insultingly ar
rogant. For what would Mia be winning by getting him? Nothing more than he had been prepared to give her, which turned out to be nothing in the cold light of his new insight.
He should be getting down on his knees and thanking her for loving this cold and soulless bastard—
Love…Nikos backtracked, experiencing a fresh numbing clench of shock. She loved him. How long had he known that without allowing himself to acknowledge it? Desire, obsession, infatuation—he’d named it any other word he could grab. But she did—love him. And he did not deserve such an honour.
‘You know him,’ the silent figure beside him broke into the shattering train of his thoughts.
‘Sorry?’ he turned a questioning look on her and took the full weight of her importance to him like a blow to his gut.
‘You know Mario Mattea,’ she repeated, her blue eyes dull and dark in her pale face. ‘Why have you never said?’
Shot down but still functioning, Nikos recognised ruefully as her question pushed him out of one stark blinding revelation straight into the horror of another one. Did he tell her the truth or did he try to pass it off with a flippant comment.
Lie,
in other words.
He veiled his eyes and went for the half-truth.
‘I know a lot of business people,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Have you met my—Gabriella before?’
‘No.’ And that was honest, Nikos mocked grimly. If he had met Gabriella Mattea before he would have recognised the cold bitch in her and perhaps been able to save Mia from what just took place. As it was, Nikos knew, right down to his seething twisting gut, he was in trouble here.
‘He’s here in Athens to set up a series of meetings with high-end financiers.’ He chickened out of telling the full truth. ‘The credit crunch has bitten hard into the car industry. Mario is desperate for someone to finance his business and his formula-one team before both sink without a trace.’
‘You mean he’s here for a series of meetings with you, don’t you?’
Nikos let his tense mouth stretch into a brief rueful smile. ‘I’m—one of his best bets to cough up the money.’
‘Are you going to?’
He sent her a glinting look. ‘What do you think?’
‘Because of me?’
‘Yes, because of you.’ And that was the full damn truth.
‘But you can’t do that!’ Surprising him by
turning an aghast stare on him, she said, ‘They will know you turned away from them because of what happened tonight and they will blame me for it!’
His grim face toughened. ‘They should have considered that angle when they humiliated my future wife.’
‘I am not going to be your wife!’
‘What are you planning to be, then,’ he struck back, ‘the next Balfour scandal?’
W
RONG
thing to say. Nikos knew it the moment the smart shot left his mouth.
‘I am
not
a Balfour,’ Mia denied, hating him for saying that—hating everyone. ‘For why would I want to be a Bianchi or a Balfour?’
‘Then don’t be,’ he persisted. ‘Be a Theakis instead.’
‘So that you can treat me like an unwelcome interloper into your life too?’
‘You would not be an unwelcome interloper.’
Mia released a soft bitter laugh. ‘I am a figure of pity to you right now. Tomorrow I will be a chain tied around your neck. Do you think I don’t know the way that it goes? Gabriella handed me over to my aunt, then walked away from me. She visited once a year for the first ten years of my life. She
stopped
visiting me when I asked her if she only came to give
Tia
money for my keep. You wish to hear her answer?’
‘No,’ Nikos muttered.
‘She admitted to my face it was so, then left.
Tia’s
money came by post from then on.’
A soft curse raked Nikos’s throat. ‘She is a selfish bitch with—’
‘Sì,’
Mia cut in on him quickly because she did not need him to tell her what her own mother was. ‘Oscar was more subtle. He allowed me to stay so long as I hid in the kitchen and played his housekeeper.’
‘He was protecting Lillian—’
‘You think I don’t know and appreciate that?’ she choked out. ‘Do you think I resented him protecting his poor wife’s feelings over mine? Do you think I did not understand when his other daughters must resent and blame me for the scandals which erupted later—or that I do not blame myself for those same events? But did
he
appreciate how I was feeling?’ she delivered with a hurt that until now she had kept buried deep inside. ‘Did my feelings stop him from sending me away again as quickly as he could?’
‘Oscar wanted you to learn to—’
‘He wanted me to act like a
Balfour
or stay away,’ she wrenched out. ‘Well, I have no wish any longer to be a Balfour.’ And she meant it—she really meant it! ‘They are not my kind of people.
You
are not my kind of people.’ It was a life-changing moment to realise that and it
grew like a balloon inside. ‘Oscar said he wanted me to learn integrity…’ And suddenly she understood what integrity meant to
her.
It meant being true to
herself.
To the person
she
wanted to be not the one everyone else wanted to mould her into! ‘Well, I don’t want his integrity if it means dressing up in fine clothes and wearing false smiles. I don’t want to be married to you because I have conceived your baby and you are worried about what Oscar might think. That is for your integrity to deal with, Nikos. Mine is telling me it is time to walk away and just be
myself.
’
‘I do not give a damn what Oscar thinks!’ Nikos protested.
‘Liar,’ she shook out. ‘You have already said it with your damage-control quip.’
It was like being hit from behind. Nikos had not expected it. He had no ready defence.
The car drew up outside his apartment, and Mia threw his sternly handsome face a single glance, then unlocked her seat belt and scrambled out of the car, leaving Nikos sitting there, knowing he was in danger of missing probably the only opportunity he was going to get to put right something he should never have said in the first place.
Throwing open his door he climbed out of the car and followed her into the building. If she
wanted him to feel like the worst man alive, then she was succeeding, he accepted as he stood beside her trembling figure while they rode the lift to the top floor.
No oval lobby here, just direct access to his apartment proper.
‘Mia…’ he started to say huskily.
She strode off towards the bedrooms with her taut slender spine telling him she did not want to listen to anything else he had to say.
He watched her go, watched his chance to put this right walk away from him on those foolish high heels, winced when her bedroom door slammed shut in her wake.
‘Damn,’ he cursed, then added a few more rich words, and on a ferocious act of burning frustration aimed directly at himself and his own insecurities, he swung around and flung a clenched fist at the nearest wall.
Kicking off her shoes, Mia sent them skidding across the bedroom floor, then spun to glare at the bed for a tear-stinging second before she threw herself face down on it. She hated him—again, she told herself fiercely, pressing her face into the pillow and trembling with anger and a million different layers of hurt.
He was hard and cold and he did not deserve
any
of this aching love she was suffering on his behalf! He did not deserve her at all!
Damage control…What kind of man was he that he could describe a marriage proposal as—
Her door suddenly burst open. ‘All right, so the damage-control quip was a lousy, cruel, rotten cover-up!’ Nikos launched at her. ‘You are driving me crazy. You make me say things I don’t mean to say! I think I might be madly in love with you—does that make a difference?’
Mia froze, and then twisted over to look at him. He was standing just inside the door, looking like a man who’d been subjected to torture to make him say that. Every bone, every muscle, every beautifully toned golden skin cell, flexed to its limits, and his eyes were firing fury at her as if she had been the one to inflict the torture!
Had it been that painful for him to say it?
‘Explain this
might be,
’ she demanded. ‘You think it impresses me?’
‘No,’ he muttered, and did a strange thing then—he dropped the tension out of his shoulders and lifted a fist up to his mouth, wincing as if he was in pain. ‘Having never experienced any kind of love before, I can only offer a
might be,
’ he said.
Dropping the hand out of its fist he flexed the long fingers. ‘You like to believe you are the only one to get a lousy deal in the parental stakes,
agape mou,’
he imparted heavily, ‘but you don’t have a clue how bad it can get. My
mother was a prostitute and my father was her pimp. Try comparing that coupling with your own less-than-perfect parents.’
‘But I thought you were—’
‘Born with a silver spoon in my mouth?’ he offered, skimming her a skin-peeling cynical glance. ‘Living in a one-bedroom cockroach-infested apartment deep in the heart of an Athens slum is not silver-spoon stuff, I promise you. It’s the same as living in hell. I need a drink,’ he said suddenly and turned back to the door.
‘Don’t you dare walk out of here after saying all of that!’ Mia shrieked. ‘I want to know what it is you’re talking about!’
His wide shoulders clenched. Nikos bit out a curse, then spun to walk over to the window and stood there, glaring out at the view.
‘Down there,’ he husked, bringing Mia sliding off the bed to go and stand beside him, ‘beyond the bright lights where everything turns murky and dark.’
Mia looked without seeing because seeing was not as important to her as what he was saying to her. She moved closer to him and was surprised when he let her, even shifting a tense arm to draw her in.
‘For the first six years of my life I believed it was normal to sleep in a bedroom cupboard,’
he provided gruffly. ‘They, my so-called parents, locked me in there so I would not embarrass my mother’s—clients when she brought them back to—ply her services. If I made a sound I was beaten.’
‘Oh, Nikos, no,’ Mia whispered in dismay.
‘They were heroin addicts,’ he delivered flatly. ‘Sometimes they would be so out of their heads they would forget about me for days. I still have nightmares about that filthy cupboard,’ he breathed grittily, then vented a short hard laugh. ‘Try sleeping a whole night in the same bed with me,
cara,
and you will know what it is I’m talking about. I cannot stand to be in small enclosed places, and locks and bolts give me the creeps. And don’t weep,’ he rasped when a sob of understanding broke free from her. ‘I will not be responsible if you start weeping. I have told no one this. So just stand here and listen. When I was nine, a—client discovered me. He decided it would be good to have a bit of fun at my expense…’
He went so silent then that Mia worried what it was he was remembering that he could not bring himself to reveal. After a minute of it she could not stand still any longer and turned herself fully into his front, then hugged him tightly with her arms locked around his taut body.
He ripped out a sigh and wrapped his arms around her too.
‘I ran away,’ he went on. ‘The police found me and I was delivered into the hands of the social services. I was never so glad about anything,’ he admitted. ‘For the first time in my life I had a real bed to sleep in and three meals a day, and most importantly, I felt safe. I was a model inmate because I was so scared they would send me back to my parents. I excelled at school and was willing to take on any chore if it earned me a smile of approval. I would have begged and crawled to remain where I was.’
‘Nikos—’
‘No, don’t say anything,’ he cut across her. ‘When I was thirteen I was accused of stealing provisions from the kitchens. It wasn’t me, I was stitched up, but since I couldn’t prove that, I was—punished. I vowed it would be the last time that anyone would lay a strap to my back and I ran away again. I spent the next six months living on the streets, sleeping in alleyways and surviving on meagre handouts. But I missed school. I had a desperate need to learn so I gave myself up to the authorities. From then on I was labelled a problem child and was sent to a home full of problem children…’
He paused once again to take a minute to
smooth out the roughened tone of his voice. And Mia took her chance, and brushed a soft trembling kiss to one of his taut cheeks.
‘I endured the life there,’ he continued, easing her closer to him. ‘I cannot be charitable and call it anything more than an endurance, but I had to stay if I wanted to attend school…The worst part was surrendering to my vow and allowing someone else to beat me,’ he roughed out. ‘On my sixteenth birthday I walked out of there and never went back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘I am not after your sympathy,’ he lanced out. ‘I am merely trying to explain to you why I cannot tell if I love you or not.’ Since Mia was sure that nothing less than the desperation of love would have dragged any of this out of him, she just lifted her face from his chest and smiled up at him. ‘Well, I know I love you. So we can work on that.’
Allowing himself to look down at her, Nikos quirked a flat black eyebrow. ‘Just like that?’
‘Sì’
She nodded. ‘What happened to your parents?’ she then prompted softly.
He cleared his throat. ‘They died when I was fourteen, from a lethal batch of heroin.’
‘And—and Oscar, how did you come to meet him?’
This time he husked out a small laugh. ‘I was
a real hustler by then. Good-looking, sharp-witted and too damn cocksure of myself for my own good. Waiting on tables of the rich was a good place to learn about business scams. I had become pretty successful at scamming others by the time Oscar wandered into my life. I tried a hustle on him,’ he admitted. ‘Oscar listened to my pitch, fed my ego with smooth questions I was able to answer without so much as a blink. He agreed to the deal, handed me a cheque for an astonishing amount of money, then he proceeded to hustle me with an offer of a stake in some irresistible venture of his own
if I
could come up with the required cash, which was, of course, double what he had given me. I handed him back his cheque plus every penny I had in the world and the scammer had been beautifully scammed by an expert at it.’
Mia laughed. ‘You mean there was no irresistible venture?’
‘No.’ Nikos smiled to himself, recalling what Oscar must have seen when he’d stared thoughtfully across the desk at the twenty-year-old hustler he had been back then. ‘Oscar fleeced me cold with a relaxed smoothness that can still make me squirm to recall it,’ he confessed.
Yet, for all of it, Oscar Balfour had seen something in him that he’d liked.
‘Instead of slinging me out, humiliated and penniless, he offered to show me how to play the hustle from the right side of the law,’ he went on softly. ‘He was my saviour from a life of crime and probably regular imprisonment. Everything I am today I owe to him. He’s—special. Never underestimate him,
agape mou,
for Oscar never puts any plan into action unless he has a very sure idea what the outcome will be.’
‘You’re talking about you and me now, aren’t you?’ Mia frowned up at him.
‘Right down to the Brunel incident,’ he drawled sardonically.
Mia widened her eyes. ‘No,’ she denied.
‘Brunel went overboard with his brief when he tipped you into that pool, and Oscar was angry. But it was Santino D’Lassio’s security people who tracked Brunel down and—urged the truth out of him. Oscar does not know that I know,’ he added. ‘I am keeping that piece of information to myself for a while longer.’
‘Don’t you dare hurt my father!’ Mia flared up instantly.
Looking down at her, Nikos prompted dryly, ‘Not hating him so much now?’
Mia shifted restlessly against him. ‘I don’t hate Oscar,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t even hate my mother…’ Her blue eyes shadowed over on the
hollow ache she experienced. ‘I was hurting when I said all of those things in the car. Oscar has been good to me—kind, even when my arrival caused him so much trouble.’
‘Trouble you had a right to cause, Mia.’
‘That’s what he said to me,’ she whispered, feeling guilty now that she had maligned the man who’d tried his very best to make her feel welcome and wanted. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what was Oscar planning for you and me?’
‘Oh, the full works, I should imagine.’ Nikos smiled ruefully. ‘Throw you in my way every damn day. Wind me up with some macho pro-tectiveness and jealousy to aim me in the direction he wanted me to go.’
‘Which was where?’
‘White lace and wedding bells,’ he enlightened. ‘But without the premature baby conception…I will have let him down there.’
‘You did not do so on your own,’ Mia pointed out. ‘I helped—a lot.’