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Mia sank into the nearest chair and closed her weary eyes. So, despite assurances from Santino, her trip into the pool had found its way into the press.
‘Explain this skinny dipping,’ she requested.
‘Self-explicit turn of phrase,’ Sophie said. ‘OK, so you had all your clothes on,’ she conceded, ‘but the photo of the great and gorgeous Nikos hauling you out of the pool without so much as splashing himself looks impressive, while you looked kind of—wet and helpless and cute.’
Cute. Mia pressed her lips together because they wanted to tremble.
‘What happened?’
‘I—slipped in the crush,’ she lied. ‘Is there anything else in the papers I should know about?’ she then asked.
‘Only this amazing picture of you leaving later wearing the sexiest dress I’ve ever seen on you. Was it Nina’s?’
‘Sì.’
‘She has fabulous taste,’ Sophie gushed. ‘You went from fairy princess in floating blue silk chiffon to wet and helpless to dramatically slinky all in one evening. I wish I could wear a dress like that,’ she sighed out wistfully.
‘You could if you only stopped trying to hide your lovely figure under metres of fabric,’ Mia murmured impatiently.
‘Oh, come on, Mia. I’m five foot three inches high to your five-eight,’ Sophie pointed out. ‘Long and slinky I am not and never will be. Besides the unplanned dip, did you enjoy the rest of the evening or did you need to take the courage pill halfway through?’
Just like that her half-sister guided the subject away from herself as she always did, Mia noticed. Then she felt her insides curl up and sink because the rest of the evening did not bear thinking about.
‘The rest of the evening was—OK,’ she mumbled.
‘You’re distinctly unimpressed, then, that Nikos spent a cool half-million at the auction on a diamond bracelet.’
He did? Mia blinked. They had left before the auction had even started! He must have placed his bid before they left, she decided, murmuring out loud and cynically, ‘Perhaps he collects them to give out to his one-night stands as they leave.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Sophie murmured. ‘Now that sounded bitter.’
Mia was glad to hear it confirmed. She hoped to build on the bitterness she felt towards Nikos Theakis until it had successfully wiped out these other feelings of hopeless, useless love and hate and hard, crushing hurt.
Pride alone made her turn in for work on Monday morning to find herself the sinecure for a battery of wary glances and terribly reserved smiles. It was only then that she remembered the bruising kiss in a sunny car park which she discovered was now the property of every employer in the building and had effectively wiped out all the natural friendliness she had been gifted with in the preceding weeks.
‘What did you expect?’ Fiona asked her. ‘You can’t indulge in a relationship with the boss and expect everyone to continue to treat you like one of them. You’re a Balfour. He’s a billionaire. You’ve confirmed their original expectations of you and now they feel duped.’
What could she say in her own defence? That the kiss had been a form of punishment because she’d likened him to a donkey called Tulio? Or that he’d used the kiss to warn off the guy from accounts because Nikos believed he’d stood her up on a date? The first was really stupid and unbelievable in the cold light of a new day. And the second excuse exposed her own lie to Nikos in the first place.
By the end of the week she’d closed herself off inside a steel case of protection so that nothing else could threaten her very shaky composure. Nikos had not returned to London and she had stopped eating. In truth she felt too wounded and raw to eat. Fiona was constantly sending her worried glances. Even her aunt noticed the difference in her voice when they talked on the phone.
‘Is something wrong, Mia?’ she asked her.
‘I’m missing you,’ she said, and it was the truth. She was missing Tia and Tuscany, and the quiet calm simplicity of the life she’d led there.
‘But otherwise you are happy with your exciting new life?’
Tia Giulia wanted her to say yes. She needed to be reassured that she had not made a big mistake telling Mia about Oscar. So Mia gave her that assurance and tried after that to sound much brighter when she phoned.
On Saturday, she bumped into one of Kat Balfour’s friends in the street. Bethany was a bright, beautiful, lively creature much like her half-sister Kat. They chatted about the D’Lassio party for a while, which Bethany had been unable to attend for some reason Mia could not recall two minutes after she’d had it explained to her. Her mind was like that right now, unable to sustain any thoughts that did not contain the name Nikos Theakis in them. Bethany invited her to join her and a few other friends for a drink that night and Mia thought emptily, why not?
When she arrived at the Chelsea wine bar the place was so crowded she almost chickened out and went away again, but Bethany saw her and waved her over. Bathany’s group of friends were lively and noisy and Mia was surprised an hour later to discover that she was almost—almost—enjoying herself. Most of them were going on to dinner, then a nightclub, but the thought of eating anything made her stomach go queasy so she declined with a smile and some excuse that was something else she could not recall minutes afterwards.
The following Wednesday, she climbed out of bed and immediately had to run to the bathroom where she was sick. When the same thing happened the next few mornings, she decided it was time to start eating proper, regular meals again.
Monday, she still felt so nauseous Fiona noticed her sickly pallor.
‘I think I’ve caught a bug,’ she confessed and explained that she’d been sick on and off for days.
