The Darkest of Secrets (15 page)

‘A very refreshing way to start the day,’ he confirmed. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Yes.’

‘It took you a long time to go to sleep.’

Surprised, her grip loosened and the throw slid down revealingly. She hitched it up again. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I just sensed it, I suppose.’

‘It felt strange to sleep next to someone,’ Grace admitted. ‘But nice.’

‘Good.’ Without a modicum of self-consciousness, Khalis dropped his towel and began to dress. Grace watched as he pulled on a pair of faded jeans, his legs long, lean and sprinkled with dark hair. ‘Where did you get those clothes?’ she asked, more to distract herself from the sight of his naked body than any real sense of curiosity.

‘I brought a bag with a change of clothes for both of us.’ He gave her a quick grin. ‘Just in case.’

‘Rather confident, weren’t you?’ she said, smiling and blushing at the same time.

‘I like to be prepared.’ He reached for a T-shirt and Grace leaned back against the pillows and watched him dress. It was a glorious sight. ‘I thought we could have a look round the island this morning,’ he said as he fastened his jeans. ‘Not that there’s much to see.’

‘That sounds nice.’ Anything to extend their time together.

Khalis sat down next to her on the pillow, his expression turning serious. He rested one hand on her knee. ‘And tonight I want to fly back to Paris with you.’

Shock rendered her momentarily speechless. ‘You. what?’

‘I put a call in to the head of my legal team,’ Khalis continued, ‘and asked him a few questions. There’s no way this custody arrangement is legal, Grace. We can fight it. We might even be able to dig something up on Christofides. I don’t think he’s squeaky clean. My team is researching it now—’

Grace just stared at him, her mind frozen. ‘How did you know his last name?’ she asked. ‘I never told you.’

‘I did some research.’

‘I thought you didn’t like internet stalking.’

His expression hardened. ‘Sometimes it’s justified.’

She let out a short laugh. ‘Is it?’

‘What’s wrong, Grace? I thought you’d be happy to hear this. I want to fight for you. And your daughter.’

She shook her head, wanting to deny the fierce hope his words caused to blaze within her. ‘You should have told me you were doing those things.’

‘I wanted to have some information before I said anything—’

‘I don’t like being bossed around.’ Her words came out sharply—sharper than she intended. ‘I
really
don’t like it.’

Khalis was silent for a moment. ‘Is that what he did to you?’ he asked quietly. ‘Ordered you around? Kept you imprisoned on some island?’

Grace stared at him, the fierce light in his eyes, the hard line of his mouth. ‘Something like that.’

‘I’m not your ex-husband.’

‘I know,’ she snapped. This conversation was scraping her emotions raw, making her feel more exposed than ever. Exposed and hidden at the same time, for everything about their relationship was a mess of contradictions. A paradox of pleasure and pain. Secrets and honesty. Hope and despair. She took a deep breath. ‘I know,’ she said again, more quietly. ‘But, Khalis—it’s not that simple. You should have told me what you were doing before you interfered.’

‘Interfered? I thought I was
helping
you.’

‘There are things—’ She stopped, bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. ‘Things I haven’t told you.’

‘Then tell me. Whatever it is,
tell
me.’

She stared at him, trying to find the words. Form them. A few simple sentences, that was all, but it could change everything. And even now, when she’d lain sated in Khalis’s arms and he’d wiped away her tears, she was desperately afraid.

‘Grace,’ he said quietly and reached for her hand. His hand was warm and dry and strong, and hers felt small and icy in it. Still she didn’t speak. ‘Whatever it is, whatever happened between you and your husband, I can handle it. I’ve seen a lot of things in this world. Terrible things.’

‘You’re talking about your father.’

‘Yes—’

‘But you walked away from him. From all that.’

‘Of course I did.’ He was silent for a moment, struggling for words. ‘I don’t know what your husband did to you,’ he said quietly, stroking her fingers, ‘but I hate him for it. I’ll never forgive him for hurting you.’

Slowly Grace lifted her gaze to his. He looked intent and utterly sincere. He’d meant his words as some kind of comfort, an assurance that he was on her side. He didn’t realise just how cold that comfort was.
I’ll never forgive him for hurting you. I’ll never forgive. Never forgive.
She heard the relentless echo of that hard promise in her mind, and she pulled her hand from his.

‘There’s no point in discussing this,’ she said, and struggled up from the bed of pillows, wished she was wearing more than a cashmere throw. ‘Did you say you brought me some clothes?’

Khalis had gone very still, his grey-green stare tracking her movements as she hunted for the bag of clothes. ‘Why is there no point?’

With relief Grace pulled a pair of trousers and a T-shirt from a duffel bag. She straightened and turned to face him, the clothes clutched to her hard-beating heart. ‘Because I don’t want you to fly to Paris with me. I don’t want you to call your legal team and tell me what to do. I don’t want
you
.’ She stared at him, each word a hammer blow to her heart—and his. They were lies, and yet she meant them. This, Grace thought numbly, was the worst contradiction of all: she was breaking the heart of a heartless man. She loved someone who couldn’t love her back, even if he thought he did.

He didn’t know her.

Khalis didn’t answer for a moment. His face was devoid of expression, although the corners of his mouth had whitened. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said finally.

‘Do I have to spell it out for you?’

‘You’re afraid.’

‘Stop telling me what I feel,’ Grace snapped. ‘Stop deciding just what it is between us. You keep telling me what I feel, as if you know. Well, you don’t. You don’t know anything.’

‘If I don’t know something,’ Khalis answered, his voice so very even, ‘it’s because you haven’t told me.’

‘And maybe I haven’t told you because I don’t want to,’ Grace retorted. How could she feel heartbroken and furious at the same time? She was afraid he’d reject her if she told him the truth, and yet at that moment she was angry enough to reject him. Nothing made sense. ‘Just take me back to Alhaja,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll find my way back to Paris myself.’

Anger sparked in Khalis’s eyes, turning them golden-green. ‘And how will you do that? Swim?’

‘If I have to,’ Grace flashed back. ‘If you think you can keep me on that damned island—’

‘I told you before,’ he cut her off icily, ‘I am
not
your ex-husband.’

‘There’s a startling resemblance at the moment.’ As soon as she said the words Grace knew she didn’t mean them. Khalis was nothing like Loukas. He’d been so gentle and kind and
loving
, and she was the one pushing him away. Pushing him away because she didn’t want to be pushed away first.
Coward.

The silence between them felt taut with suppressed fury. Khalis stared at her for a long moment, his face unreadable, his chest heaving. He drew a deep breath, and Grace watched as he focused his anger into something cold and hard. ‘I thought,’ he said, staring into the distance, his body now angled away from her, ‘we had something special. That sounds ridiculously sentimental, I know. I didn’t really believe in
special
until I felt it with you.’ He turned to face her and Grace flinched from the bleakness in his eyes. ‘But all that
we sense each other’s emotions
stuff, this connection between us—that was just crap, wasn’t it? Complete rubbish.’

Grace didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength to deny it, and yet she could not tell him the truth. She wasn’t even sure what the truth was any more. How could she fall in love with someone who was so hard and unyielding? How could she truly believe in his gentleness and all the good things he’d shown her? ‘There’s no point to this conversation,’ she finally said flatly. ‘We could drag it all out, and do a post-mortem on everything we’ve ever said, but since we’re not going to
have
a relationship—’ she drew in a ragged breath ‘—why bother?’

‘Why bother,’ he repeated softly. ‘I see.’

She forced herself to meet his icy stare. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think you do.’

He stared at her, his face so blank and pitiless. Slowly he shook his head. ‘I thought I knew you, or was at least coming to know you, but you’re really a stranger, aren’t you? A complete and utter stranger.’ He might as well have said
bitch
instead. ‘I don’t know you at all.’

‘No,’ Grace agreed softly, ‘you don’t.’ She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Now I think you should take me back to Alhaja, and then I’ll go home.’

He stared at her, and for a moment he looked like a different man, everything about him hard and unyielding and angry. The core revealed. Grace had known it was there, had known he possessed it, yet that cold, hard fury hadn’t been directed at her … until now.

‘Fine,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll get the boat ready.’ And in two swift strides he’d left the tent, disappearing down towards the beach.

Khalis didn’t speak to her again except for a few terse commands when she boarded the boat. She glanced at him, his jaw bunched as he stared out at the endless blue horizon, and again she felt that ridiculous, desperate longing for things to be different. To tell him everything, to take a chance. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe he’d accept and understand and—

She watched as his eyes narrowed against the now-blazing sun and all the things he’d said tumbled back into her mind. He didn’t forgive. He didn’t want to forgive. He was a man with high and exacting standards for himself as well as everyone else. She fell far short of them and nothing could change that. Nothing could change the fact that she didn’t deserve his love.

Tears thickened in her throat and stung her eyes and, furious with herself, Grace blinked them away. Was she really going to have a pity party
now
? The notion was ludicrous, idiotic. And far too late.

Alhaja Island loomed in the distance, a green crescent-shaped speck, and then the walls with their barbed wire and broken glass became visible, the ugly concrete compound behind.

Khalis docked the boat and cut the engine and in the sudden silence they both sat there, neither speaking or even looking at each other.

‘Get your things,’ he finally said. ‘I’ll have someone take you back to Paris.’

‘I can get transport from Taormina. If someone could just—’

‘I’ll get you home,’ he told her brusquely. He paused, and as he turned to her Grace saw a welter of emotion in his agate-coloured eyes and its answer rose up in her chest, a silent howl of anguish and loss. If only things could be different. If only
they
were different. His lips twisted in something close to a smile and he lifted his hand, almost as if he were going to touch her. Grace tensed in anticipation and longing, but he didn’t, just dropped it back to his side. ‘Goodbye, Grace,’ he said, and then he vaulted out of the boat and strode down the dock.

Fury drove Khalis to the pool. He needed to work off his frustration … and his pain. Stupid, to feel so hurt, like a kicked puppy. And it was his own damn fault.

He dived in and cut through the water with sure, swift strokes, his emotions driving him forward. Even as he swam he winced. He’d been so sentimental, so stupidly romantic, and she’d been the one to spell it out.
I don’t want you.
He felt pathetic. Pathetic and bruised.

He’d blinded himself all along, he knew, turned deaf ears to what she was saying.
I couldn’t be in a relationship with you.
He’d thought she was just afraid, wounded by her ex-husband, and maybe she was. Maybe it was fear that had made her reject him, but the fact still remained, hard and heartless. She didn’t want him. He’d wanted to rescue her as if she were some princess in a tower, but she didn’t want to be rescued. Or loved. And, really, did he even know her at all? How could you fall in love with someone so quickly and suddenly? Wasn’t it supposed to grow over months and years, not a mere matter of days?

Khalis completed another lap and hauled himself, dripping, onto the side of the pool. Even now, his chest heaving and his lungs burning, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Those chocolate eyes, dark with pain or softened with humour. Her mouth, swollen and rosy from being kissed. The pure, clear sound of her rare laughter, and the way she looked at him, her attention so focused and complete it made him feel a hundred feet tall. The pliant softness of her body against his, and the way he’d felt when he’d been inside her, as if he’d finally found the home he’d long been looking for.

With a groan of frustration Khalis pushed off the side of the pool and started swimming again, harder and faster than ever, as if exercise could obliterate thought. In the distance he heard the sound of the helicopter taking off.

An hour later, showered and dressed, he strode into his office. His frustration and hurt had hardened into something cold and steely that lodged inside him like a ball of iron.

Eric was waiting for him with a sheaf of papers as he sat behind his desk. ‘You look,’ Eric remarked mildly, ‘like you want to rip someone’s head off. I hope it’s not mine.’

‘Not at all.’ He held out one hand for the papers. Eric handed them to him with his eyebrows arched.

‘If not me, then who?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Wait, I think I can guess.’

‘Don’t,’ Khalis said, cutting him off. ‘It’s not up for discussion.’

‘This island is really doing a number on you, isn’t it?’

Khalis suppressed his irritation with effort. Eric was one of his oldest and most trusted friends, and he generally appreciated his levity. Yet, since coming to this island, tension had been wrapping itself around him like a steel band, choking all the life and hope from the air. Grace had distracted him, he realised. She’d
helped
him. And her rejection had made everything worse, the memories darker, the pain more intense.