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‘Were you planning it deliberately?’ The snarl was in his voice, in his contorted face. ‘Flaunting that dress in front of me—in front of my mother!’
Ann’s face worked. ‘I didn’t have the faintest idea of—’
He thrust her away. ‘No? Then why choose to bring it here?’ he demanded.
‘Because it’s a beautiful dress, that’s all!’ she answered agitatedly. ‘I didn’t know—’ She took a heavy, ragged breath. ‘I didn’t know you’d recognise it….’
Her mind raced on. How had he recognised it at all? How on earth should he know what dress her sister had been wearing when she’d met his brother?
A sound came from his throat. It was one of revulsion.
‘Oh, I would recognise that dress, all right.’ His voice was like a razorblade. Dark eyes bored into hers. ‘It’s indelibly etched on my memory.’ The razor scraped across her flesh. ‘Especially when your sister was taking it off in front of me…’
Ann stared. There was ice formin
g in her stomach.
Nikos’s eyes were dark. Black, like pits. He started to speak.
‘Andreas and I were guests on a yacht, cruising off Monte Carlo. The owner—a business associate we were currently in negotiation with—was the kind of man who liked to have a lot of girls on tap for any guests who might not have brought their own partners for the occasion. I don’t have to tell you what kind of girls they were, do I?’ His voice was mordant, his eyes still boring into hers. ‘The kind that like to party at other people’s expense. But let us say they pay for their passage in their own way…’
A breath was raked into him. ‘Your sister targeted me right from the outset. Girls like her are amateurs only in name—she had done her research. She knew exactly who I was, how much I was worth, and that on that occasion I had no female partner with me. Her mistake, however—’ his voice twisted ‘—was in thinking I would have any interest in a girl like her. My indifference didn’t put her off, though—she took it as a personal challenge.’ His lips curled. ‘On the last night, as we headed back to Monaco, I went back to my cabin and she was there, waiting for me. Wearing that dress.’
His eyes flicked to the vivid heap of material on the floor. Then they whipped back to Ann. His voice dropped to Arctic.
‘She came on to me, stripping the dress off her body, determined to seduce me—determined to get into my bed and get the reward she wanted for it. When I turned her down, telling her to get dressed and get out, she spat at me that she’d make me sorry. I threw her out and thought I’d done with her. The next day—’ his expression was like granite ‘—I woke to discover she’d taken off with Andreas.’
His eyes narrowed to slits as he iced his words at Ann. ‘Your bitch of a sister helped herself to my brother out of spite. Because I refused to take her as my mistress and drape her in the diamonds she sold her body for!’
As his ugly words fell into the silence between them Ann felt sick. Through the agonising tightness in her throat, she forced herself to speak.
‘She cared for Andreas—I know she did. I saw them together.’
‘She cared for his money, that was all. The Theakis wealth. That’s what she got pregnant for.’
His stark, cruel denunciation stabbed as punishingly as it had done four years ago, when Nikos Theakis had come to take Ari from her. She looked away, down at the crumpled dress on the floor. Slowly she bent to pick it up. She couldn’t wear it now. She stared at it a moment. Then she turned back to Nikos. His face was still stark.
Was that really what Carla had done—tried to get Nikos to make her his mistress, and then turned to Andreas out of spite when she was rejected?
It was horrible to think of—horrible to think of the world Carla had lived in—a world where she had been regarded as some toy by rich men, as one of any number of girls provided for entertainment. Paying her way on a luxury yacht by making herself sexually available, out to get what she could, any way she could, from the rich men there…
I never wanted to think about Carla like that. It was always too horrible—too sordid. But that’s the way Nikos saw her—with his own eyes…
Sombrely she put the dress away, smoothing down its folds. ‘I won’t wear it,’ she said in a low voice.
But words grated from him. ‘No—wear it, Ann. Wear it and look in the mirror when you do. And see the woman you are. Like your sister—beautiful on the outside, but on the inside—’
He stopped, mouth tightening. For a moment his eyes burned into hers, and she felt slain by them. Then, without another word, he walked from her room.
Her thoughts that day remained sombre, disturbed. Nikos had ripped a veil from her—a veil she had kept in place of her own volition. She had known what was beneath, but had not wanted to look. But it was there, all the same. Indelible. Staining her sister’s memory.
No wonder he hated her so much.
The words formed in her mind, weaving in and out of her thoughts, haunting her. She tried not to hear them, but they would not leave her.
She did her best, though—busying herself first with Ari, who was getting progressively more excited as the day went on, then with greeting Tina’s family, and then with the enlarged company for dinner. She remained unobtrusive, for the focus of attention was—as it should be—on Tina. For herself she was more than happy to stay on the sidelines, and take care of Ari.
The following day was very similar, with Tina’s family relaxing, making the villa seem very full. Sam came over for lunch, and Ari was in his element, introducing him to any of Tina’s family who had not already met him.
