AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS A NIGHTMARE.
It couldn’t be happening.
But it was. It was happening right now and right here.
Marnie’s first clue that something was wrong was an early-morning phone check to discover dozens of missed calls from numbers she didn’t recognise, including several from Pansy, who never called at this time in the morning.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, she raked her hair out of her eyes and stared down at the screen, but even in the midst of such unusual telephone activity her thoughts were flitting elsewhere and there was no mystery about who was dominating them.
Leon.
She puffed out a sigh of sheer pleasure. He had taken his jet to Paris at some unearthly hour and she must have fallen asleep after he’d gone, but not before he’d kissed her with a hard stamp of possession which had made her toes curl. Her finger hovering above the call button, she couldn’t prevent a smile of satisfaction from creeping over her lips.
They’d only arrived back from Greece late last night, leaving his father’s house straight after the wedding—thank goodness—and then taking a yacht down to Leon’s new property in Thessaloniki. And she had loved it. Just loved it. Its spectacular position on the edge of the sea was the only thing the house had in common with Leon’s forbidding childhood home. With light-filled and airy rooms, it had been the antithesis of the cold mansion they’d just left.
In the warm October sunshine, they had picnicked on the beach and swum in the sea. Marnie had sailed for the first time in her life and surprised herself by enjoying it, although Leon was an excellent and very patient teacher. They’d even had a midnight skinny dip in his enormous infinity pool, with a giant moon reflected silver in the rippling waters. And they’d been having sex. Non-stop sex, actually.
Marnie leaned back against the pillows and stared dreamily at the ceiling. At times, she’d thought Leon had been almost...
Loving?
No. Surely that was nothing but wishful thinking. But he had definitely been behaving differently towards her. For a start, he had practically ravished her on the dance floor at the wedding—something she hadn’t been expecting. And it hadn’t stopped there. It was difficult to put it into words, exactly, but his behaviour had made her decide that maybe she didn’t need to walk away from the relationship quite yet. As long as she kept her emotions in check—and surely she’d had enough practice to be able to do that?—and they continued to be discreet now they were back in England, there was no reason why this blissful state of affairs shouldn’t continue for a little while longer.
She stared at her phone but before she’d a chance to hit the call button an icon of a pouting Pansy began flashing on the screen and Marnie answered immediately.
‘Morning,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Have you seen the online edition of the Daily View?’ demanded her twin, without bothering to return her greeting.
‘You know I never read the tabloids.’
‘Well, maybe you should. In fact, I would study that one with particular care. And then you’d better call me back. And just to let you know—one of the stylists from Hair Heaven has put a link to the piece on social media and it’s already had hundreds of “likes”.’ There was a short, tense pause. ‘Oh, Marnie, what have you got yourself into? I knew getting yourself mixed up with Leon Kanonidou was only ever going to end in tears. Have you told him?’
‘Told him what?’
‘About Mum.’
There was a pause as a trickle of fear started sliding down Marnie’s spine. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, I’ve never told him.’
‘Why not? When are you going to get it into your thick head that it’s not your fault, Marnie?’
‘He doesn’t need to know,’ she answered, her voice hollow.
Pansy gave a laugh which sounded bitter. ‘Well, good luck with that. I think he’s about to find out—if he doesn’t know already.’
Now in a state of terror, Pansy cut the call and went straight into the sitting room to find her laptop. Plonking herself down on the sofa, she scrolled to the free, online version of the Daily View newspaper, which apparently had one of the biggest circulations on the planet.
It didn’t take long to find it—not when it was splashed all over the top of the page. Marnie’s stomach twisted into a writhe of knots as she stared at it. Because there, in glorious Technicolor, was a photo of her dancing with Leo
n at his father’s wedding. Only dancing didn’t seem a very accurate way of describing what the camera had captured. They were all over each other. As if their bodies had been joined together with superglue. There were accompanying comments from some of the other guests saying how close they’d been, along with snatched photos which had obviously been taken on people’s phones.
It was bad, but the headline made it even worse.
Upstaging his father’s wedding!
Marnie’s heart contracted as she read the piece.
