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Almost, Athan charged after him. Charged after him to seize his shoulders and shake him like the rat he was. But he wouldn’t soil himself on the man. As for his threatened resignation—he’d never do it. The position he had was far too cushy a number. And if he tried to go it alone, escape from Athan’s scrutiny—necessary scrutiny, as he’d amply demonstrated—Eva would kick up. She wouldn’t want any bad feeling between her husband and her brother.
Grimly, Athan made himself sit back in his chair, his face like thunder. Let Ian rush out and vent his spleen! Do whatever the hell he wanted. Anger bit through him. Damn the man—damn him and double damn him!
Angrily, he swung in his chair, his eyes stormy, unforgiving. If Eva’s philandering husband had had the slightest moral backbone Marisa Milburne would never now be plaguing him the way she was.
Never haunting him the way she was.
Filling his memory. Tormenting him.
Tormenting him with wanting her. That was the damnation of it—the thing he was trying to crush out of his mind, his memory. Because what was the point of letting it torment him? There was nothing he could do about it—nothing. He had to accept that. He’d decided on his strategy to ensure that his wretched, faithless brother-in-law would be severed from the woman who had beguiled him, and now he had to abide by the consequences of that strategy.
But I didn’t think it would be like this.
That was the devil of it. He’d never for a moment imagined that he’d be left feeling like this.
Cheated. That was the word. The emotion. Cheated of a woman who’d turned out to be someone not just easy to seduce but … memorable. Memorable in so many ways. All of them incredible.
Cheated … The word twisted in his head again. He knew it was a pointless word—a pointless emotion for him to feel. He’d gone into this with his eyes open, his mind made up, his strategy planned and flawlessly executed. He had succeeded completely, achieved his aim, finished his mission. It should be the end of the story. It was—for her and Ian. But not for him.
I still want her. I want her, and I don’t want it to be the end. I want to have her back again
I can’t. It’s as simple as that—and as brutal. I seduced her to take her away from Ian—not for myself. It was never about her, it was only about Eva.
Moodily, he stared ahead of him, seeing not his plush office but the silver sand beach, the swaying palms, the turquoise sea. And Marisa.
Always Marisa.
Tormenting him.
Slowly, Marisa climbed out of the taxi and handed the driver the fare. It was a horribly large amount, and in her pre-Ian days she would never have dreamt of taking a taxi from the railway station some twenty miles away. She would have waited for the local bus, which ran four times a day and no more, and then got out at the village and walked the remaining mile up to the cottage. But now she could afford the luxury of a taxi from the station—all thanks to Ian.
But she mustn’t think about Ian. Not now. Ian belonged to a world she had never been part of—not even on the fringes, where she had clung. Athan Teodarkis had prised her from where she had been so hopelessly clinging. She should be glad of it—glad that he had shown her with callous brutality just how much she was not any part of that world.
She looked about her as the taxi turned around and headed back down the narrow lane, out of sight. She shivered. Winter still clutched the land, making the air clammy with cold, and the bare trees shivered in the chill wind that blew off the moor. It was dank and drear, and the late afternoon was losing its light, closing down the day. In front o
f her the cottage looked forlorn and ramshackle. A slate had come loose, she could see, and water dripped from a leaf-blocked gutter. The garden looked sodden, with the remnants of last autumn’s leaves turned a mushy brown on the pathway to the front door.
With a heavy sigh and a heavier heart she heaved up her suitcases and the bag of groceries she’d bought and opened the creaking wooden gate. She walked up to the front door. As it opened to her key the smell of damp assailed her. Inside was colder than outside. She gave another shiver, set down her cases, and went through to the kitchen with the carrier bag. The ancient range was stone-cold, not lit since the day she had left for London months before. The cob walls and small windows made it darker than ever, and she turned on the electric light—which only showed up the dust on the kitchen table, illuminated the dead flies on the windowsill.
Depression closed around her like a cold, tight blanket. Numbly, she went about the tasks required to make the cottage habitable: turning on the fridge and putting the fresh food away in it, relighting the range, wiping down the dusty surfaces, trying to keep her mind on the mundane tasks, not on anything else. Not on the empty dreariness of the cottage, on the bleakness in her heart.
The cottage was so empty—so absolutely and totally empty. Grief filled her—grief for the mother no longer there, her absence palpable. Grief for Ian, whose life she could no longer be even the barest part of.
And grief for something else—something that she dared not allow lest it consume her.
Overwhelmed, she felt her throat tightening, the emotion welling up inside her, and she sank down on one of the kitchen chairs, her head sinking on her folded arms. Hot, shaking sobs filled her. She cried out all her loneliness, all her grief. And one more emotion too. Fiercer, sharper—like a needle flashing in and out of her, over and over again, weaving through her in a thousand piercings. Questions, accusations—self-accusations—tumbled about in her. Jumbled and jostled and fought for air.
How could he do that to me? How could I fall for it? How can it hurt so much? How can it matter so much? How could I mind so much?
How, how, how …?
Anguish consumed her. Why had he not simply confronted her and told her she must have nothing more to do with Ian? Been up-front, honest—brutal from the start?
Not at the end. Not after luring her with soft words, false smiles …
False kisses …
And more, far more than kisses.
