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‘That—’ he pointed to the mirror ‘—is what a woman who leaves my room looks like.’
He let her go and she stumbled. The heat of him, gone. Everything, cold. He looked at her with a face which told her nothing. No sign of the kiss that had almost destroyed her marred his perfect features.
‘Now you’re ready to see my father.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE OLD MAN was hunched in a wheelchair in the oppressive wood-panelled library, a blanket round his legs, living the wheezing, broken half-life left to him by his dying heart. Though none of that stopped his rheumy eyes scrutinising Thea with an intensity belying his age and ill health.
Christo leaned against a dark-stained bookcase. She was executing her role as new bride to perfection. Hector would never guess their arrangement, so superb was her performance.
She was pandering to his father. And every glorious, gracious smile was driving Christo to hell.
He’d sworn never to succumb to Hector’s weakness for a beautiful woman, only to find himself trapped by a viper cleverly disguised. Yet here he was, teetering on the brink. And all because of a kiss which had been meant to challenge Thea’s claim that there was nothing he could teach her.
Vanity—that was what it had been about. The moment their lips had touched, when she’d responded as if he was everything she’d always craved, reason had escaped him. And now he couldn’t think of anything but the drugging wonder of her plush mouth. Of immersing himself in her body till he drowned. Never coming up for air.
Her throaty, musical laugh dragged him to other thoughts. To the memory of her curves in his arms. To the smell of sweet spice and a warmth that had curled inside and licked at the cold heart of him.
He’d left the flame kindling for a while. Soaked in that tempting heat before extinguishing it. There were things about Thea he mustn’t forget. His investigations into her former bodyguard, Alexis, proved she was a woman held together by lies. Cleverly woven, but lies nonetheless.
He knew all about lies. About a war of attrition being fought through a child.
‘If your mother comes for your birthday, I’ll buy you a puppy.’
As if he’d ever had any control over what his mother did. But he’d asked, and begged. Like any little boy wanting something badly enough. Extracting promises that had always been broken. His mother had never come. He’d never owned a dog. He’d been raised on lies, like tainted sugar stirred into his milk.
Christo clenched his teeth against the burn of acid in his gut.
‘We should leave, Hector. You seem tired.’ He motioned to a nurse hovering nearby.
‘When I’m dead I’ll have all the rest I need.’
His father didn’t look at him. Only at Thea, sitting opposite. Ignoring Christo like he always did.
What irritated him more than discovering Thea’s untruths was her obvious belief that he wouldn’t find out. Did she think him a fool?
She laughed at something Hector said and his father gazed back, mesmerised. Yes, she did. Thea believed she could con them all.
Soon enough he’d show her how easy she’d been to expose.
‘You’re kind to an old man,’ Hector said, patting her hand, which sat on his knee. ‘A rare and precious beauty.’
She shone like an angel, perfect in a cream sheath dress that skimmed her curves and highlighted her honeyed skin.
‘Not too old to pretend to charm,’ Christo muttered.
Hector peered up at him, dusky lips stretched in a thin, disapproving line. A look so familiar it was etched for ever in Christo’s brain. This was the father he knew—the one who had constantly reminded him he was a mistake. A child that no one wanted. A child who should never have been born.
‘I speak the truth. She is beautiful like Maria.’
Christo pushed away from the bookcase. This can of worms shouldn’t be opened. Not here. Not now. He suppressed a snarl. He’d never let Thea know the extent of his indebtedness to her father, because that would give her a power over him he couldn’t allow. He wouldn’t lose Atlas to his father’s foolishness.
His eyes narrowed in warning, but Hector focused his attention on Thea.
‘You knew my mother?’ she asked. She toyed with a thin chain clasped at her throat, the hunger for any morsel of information written in wide-eyed desperation on her face.
‘We all knew each other back then.’ His father smiled wistfully.
