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But of course she was. And the relief he was feeling was completely understandable. The situation was already complicated enough as it was. ‘Why didn’t you say that at the time?’
‘I panicked. I suppose I thought it wouldn’t matter, because you were just returning my folder, but now it does matter.’ Her pupils flared. ‘I don’t like telling lies. It’s wrong and it always ends up hurting someone.’
Stung by the unspoken accusation in that sentence, he said nothing, just let the silence stretch out and swallow up the memory of her words. ‘In that case,’ he said at last, ‘I wonder why you’ve agreed to this. Actually, you don’t need to explain.’ His body tensed as he realised he already knew and irrationally hated the answer. ‘I’m guessing the money has helped overcome your normal scruples.’
‘It isn’t like that.’ Effie stared at Achileas, feeling the ripple of his anger move through her and beyond to the darkening sky, feeling her own anger rising in her throat. ‘You’re trying to make me feel guilty about a situation that you engineered,’ she said, as calmly as she could.
Except she did feel a kind of shame for the lies she had already told and the lies she was going to have to keep telling.
‘Is that so?’ he said, mildly enough, but there was a dark gleam in his blue eyes like a shark’s fin cutting through the surface of the waves.
She felt her breath catch. ‘Yes, it is. I do feel bad about lying to people. And, yes, I am marrying you for the money, because that’s what we agreed. But it’s not the only reason. If you were just performing this charade out of self-interest I wouldn’t have agreed for any amount of money.’
Was that true? She quickly searched her soul, panicked suddenly that she had become by stealth the kind of person she most feared becoming. Someone who lied not just to other people but to themselves.
But it was true. She couldn’t have agreed to lie to Achileas’s father for some scurrilous, self-serving motive any more than she could have burgled his home.
‘You’re lying to make your father happy. You’re trying to give him what he wants the only way you can. That’s why I’m here. Because you’re trying to be a good son.’
And she understood that impulse. She would have done anything for her father. She still would. Not that any kind of intervention would work now. And maybe that was why, deep down, she had agreed to this crazy fake marriage. She might not be able to help Bill, but she could help Achileas make his father happy.
‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ His blue gaze rested on her face, dark now in the fading light. ‘But I can see that might not have been immediately obvious at our first meeting.’
Their first meeting. A shocking point of contact like a fork of lightning. His iron grip on her arm. Her caught breath and that uncontrollable shiver of longing that had left her dizzy and aching.
Pushing away the memory, she nodded. The movement seemed to unlock her rigid body and gratefully she stood up. ‘It’s been a long day, so I think I might turn in—’
She spun round, intending to walk away.
‘Why did you panic?’
Her feet stuttered to a halt, her head spinning madly at the sudden shift in conversation. Turning, she felt her stomach knot as she saw that Achileas had got to his feet and was staring at her, his gaze boring into her so that suddenly she wanted to turn and run. But her body was rooted to the stone terrace as if she was part of it.
‘Earlier? You said that was why you lied about who Sam was.’ He took a step closer. ‘You said you panicked.’
Looking up into his beautiful face, she felt a jolt. The skin over his cheeks was pulled taut, like a fitted sheet over a too-big mattress. Only it was not with anger or impatience, but some other emotion that she couldn’t name.
‘You said you weren’t scared of me.’
‘I’m not.’ She spoke without hesitation. She wasn’t. Not in the way he meant, anyway, she thought a moment later. Only how could she put into words what she had felt? Why she had felt it.
‘Then why panic?’
She stared at his lush mouth, feeling utterly off balance, as if she was a pendulum, swinging between a need to keep her personal life hidden from him and a need to lay it bare.
‘I wasn’t expecting you. You just turned up on my doorstep uninvited. And, in case you’ve forgotten, the last time we’d met you’d bundled me off the street into your car.’
‘So you were scared.’
The knot in her stomach tightened. His voice had a way of demanding, commanding answers, and she knew he wouldn’t stop until his questions were satisfied.
Inching backwards, away from the force field intensity of his will, she shook her head. ‘Not scared. I just didn’t want to give anything of myself away. I suppose I didn’t want you to know that I’d never had a boyfriend. Never done anything...’
Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence.
A muscle worked in his jaw. ‘By “never done anything”, you mean you’re a virgin?’
Suddenly the silence was thick enough to slice. He was staring at her as if she had announced she was a mermaid. Was it that unusual? Surely she couldn’t be the only virgin he had met in his life?
