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There was no ambiguity about that statement and Cat felt the coldness inside her turn to the searing white heat of fury. There was a ringing in her ears and a surge of adrenalin that was truly scary. She didn’t fully understand what was going on here but one thing was clear—Nicholas was setting up some kind of honey trap. He was using her—deceiving her. There was no difference between him and all the other men in her life. She felt sick with the knowledge.
‘OK, Demetrius, I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you later.’ He put the phone down. ‘Sorry to be so long, Catherine.’ He switched to English with fluid ease.
She didn’t answer him immediately—her brain was racing as she wondered how she should play this.
‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’
The phoney concern was the last straw. ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine, Nicholas.’ Her voice was brittle.
‘Good, well, let’s relax and have some lunch—’
‘Actually, why don’t you just ask me now?’
‘Ask you what now?’
‘Ask me to marry you, of course, and get it over with.’
He leaned back in his chair and said nothing. Silence stretched between them, as tense as an elastic band drawn back as far as it could go and almost at breaking point. She could almost see his brain ticking over. ‘What makes you think I’m going to ask you to marry me?’
‘What makes you think that I don’t understand Greek?’ She switched to his native tongue and watched his expression darken.
‘I didn’t know you spoke my language,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, I’m well versed in your language.’ Her voice was scathing. ‘But I’m not talking about Greek now. I’m talking about the language of deceit. I take it you and my father and half-brother are in on this together.’ Her voice held a catch that was painful. She suddenly wanted to cry but she was damned if she would do that in front of him. She hated him—hated him with a fervency that she had never known before. She wanted to smack his smug arrogant face. But she just stood there, her hands curled into tight helpless fists
at her sides.
He frowned. ‘Why would you think I’m in on anything with your father and brother?’
‘You must think I’m really stupid.’
‘I don’t think that for one minute, Catherine. And I can assure you that I am not in on anything with—’
‘Don’t bother to try and lie your way out of this, Nicholas. I can see the resemblance. You are just like them. All my life I have put up with their deceit and their lies as they used me to get what they wanted—namely money. I’ve endured their cold-hearted scheming. I’ve tried to fix the dreadful scams they have pulled. I even came back here to Crete last year to try and pay back money that they had conned out of unsuspecting people!’ Her voice splintered with feeling.
Something changed in the darkness of his eyes as he looked at her. ‘I didn’t know—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, save it, Nicholas!’ She cut across him fiercely. ‘I was actually starting to think that you were different. I can’t believe that you took me in; I can’t believe that I haven’t seen it before. Because in reality you are just like them.’
‘I’m nothing like them.’ His voice was vehement.
‘Well, at least you are no longer trying to pretend that you don’t know them.’
The contempt in her voice lashed over him and suddenly he felt utterly ashamed for all the times he had tried to convince himself that she was scheming and conniving and just like her family. One thing was suddenly abundantly clear—he couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘What I can’t understand is why.’ Her voice softened and for a second her anger receded like the tide, giving a glimpse of raw pain in the green depths of her eyes. ‘You don’t need the money and yet you were prepared to use me like … like some kind of pawn in a game.’
The knowledge that he had misjudged her and hurt her like this was almost unbearable. He stood up from his chair. He needed to take her into his arms; he needed to try and explain that what she had overheard wasn’t what it seemed—yes, his affair with her had started out as just a plan for revenge—but his feelings for her had changed and grown so much that he hadn’t wanted to go through with that. He needed to make her see that he loved her! ‘Catherine, we can sort this out.’
‘I don’t think so!’ Her anger rushed back with the force of a tidal wave and blindly she reached and swept the papers from his desk. Files and papers spilled at her feet and amongst them she could see photographs of her, photographs taken as she was shopping and as she was walking into the building where she worked.
She bent down to pick one up with shaking hands. It was a snap of her having coffee with a work colleague, taken almost six months ago, certainly well before she had met Nicholas.
‘You bastard!’ Her voice was no more than a whisper. ‘You had me followed as you made your plans—or did Michael do that? It’s one of his little specialities—selling unsavoury ideas with a colour photo or two. He’s been hounding me for ages to get married, using tactics just like that.’
‘Catherine, I am not in league with your family.’ He started to come around towards her.
‘Keep away from me.’ She backed towards the door.
