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Sasha couldn’t help but be impressed. ‘That’s a lot of offices. You must have worked very hard.’
He looked utterly relaxed but she could sense the tension in his form. He said, ‘For as long as I can remember.’
‘Did you study for it?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, but I worked on sites at the same time, so I got my diploma while I was working my way up the ranks. I didn’t want to waste any time going to college full time.’
Apollo went still. He hadn’t come here to chat with his treacherous wife who may or may not be feigning amnesia, but if she was faking it then he had to hand it to her for stamina. She hadn’t let her mask slip all week.
Rhea and Kara had told him that she’d been as civil and polite as much as she’d been selfish and rude in the recent past. There seemed to be no glimmer of that earlier incarnation of his wife this evening. Just those huge blue eyes looking at him guilelessly.
He wanted to get up and walk away. So he did get up. But instead of walking away he went over to the low terrace wall and sat on that.
She’d turned in the seat to look at him. She was wearing a white shirt-dress with a gold belt. The dress was buttoned up to a modest height.
Previously, Sasha would have had a dress like this buttoned so low that her underwear would have been visible. Then it had aroused nothing more than irritation. Now, though, all he could see were those little buttons and think about how easy it would be to undo them, baring her breasts to his gaze.
He could see her pale legs. Long and slender. Together and slanted to the side, ladylike.
He would have laughed if he’d been able to muster up a sense of humour. Not too long ago she’d been involved in activities very unbecoming to a lady.
He diverted his mind away from her dress, her legs. Abruptly he found himself saying, ‘My father used to be a foreman for one of Greece’s biggest construction companies. He got injured on the job, and became paralysed from the waist down.’
Sasha put a hand to her mouth, visibly shocked.
A familiar sense of rage that hadn’t been dulled by time settled in Apollo’s belly. ‘He never really recovered. All he knew was how to manage a construction site. He could have done that in an office, in a wheelchair but everyone turned him down. His own employer refused to give him any compensation. His pride was in tatters. He couldn’t support his wife and two sons.’
She frowned, ‘You have a brother?’
Apollo ignored that. He felt ruthless as he told her the rest, watching her reaction carefully. ‘My father killed himself when I was eleven and my brother was thirteen. My mother got cancer not long afterwards and died within a couple of years. My brother and I were sent to into foster care. My brother got involved with a drugs and gang crime. He was stabbed to death when he was sixteen.’
Apollo’s eyes were glowing with intensity. Like dark green jewels. Sasha felt pinned to the spot by them. By his words. She couldn’t speak. Anything she thought of saying felt too trite. Ineffectual.
Apollo continued. ‘I made it my life’s mission to go after the man who had employed my father and cast him aside like a piece of unwanted trash. And I succeeded. It didn’t take much to dismantle his business because he was corrupt to the core. As soon as he went down, hundreds of disgruntled ex-employees came out of the woodwork looking for compensation and that’s what ruined him in the end.’
He was looking at her now as if he expected her to be shocked. And she was. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like to lose so many when you were so young. I don’t know about my family...when my parents died.’
Apollo was reeling that he’d let all of that tumble from his mouth. A bare handful of people knew about his past, and yet he’d just told Sasha everything. The one person in the world that he should trust the least. He waited for the mask to slip, for her to take advantage of sharing his sad story. But it didn’t.
She’d gone pale. And her eyes were huge. And she was frowning now. ‘You said my parents are dead, and I’ve no siblings?’
He nodded. ‘You told me that your mother was a single parent. Your father left when you were small. You looked for him but found out that he’d died some years ago and then your mother died a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh...it’s so strange not to be able to remember my mother. Or looking for my father.’
She seemed to be genuinely tortured. Biting her lip. Apollo had a sudden flashback to kissing her for the first time, feeling the cushiony softness of her mouth opening under his, allowing him to delve deeper...all the way... His hands curled tight around the lip of the wall in a bid to douse the growing inferno in his blood.
He stood up. ‘I have some work calls to make. Goodnight, Sasha.’
She looked distracted. ‘Goodnight.’
He was walking out but he couldn’t get those huge bruised-looking eyes out of his head. He stopped at the door and looked back. She cut a curiously vulnerable figure on the large couch.
‘I’m sorry about your parents.’
She turned around and some of that vivid gold and red hair slipped over her shoulder. ‘Thank you.’
Desire squeezed Apollo like a vice. He wanted to go back over there and pull apart that flimsy dress material and spread it wide so he could see her pale beauty. He wanted to force her to admit that she was just acting. Messing with his head again. He wouldn’t make love to her. He’d have her begging for it and then he’d leave her there, panting and admitting who she really was.
