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‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Costa spoke to me after the wedding.’
Her face lost all colour.
‘He was concerned about what might happen, as was I.’
‘Galen, we hadn’t spoken for nearly two decades—don’t play the white knight here. You didn’t give a damn until Costa asked you to step in. If he hadn’t asked you to hire me, then Nemo’s arrest would have been something you skimmed through on the news.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely yes. You cut off contact the day you left. This was nothing more than a favour to Costa.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Galen refuted.
‘I don’t recall you sending flowers when Dimitrios died. I don’t recall—’
‘He was just some guy from home who died on a boat,’ Galen snapped back. ‘Boo-hoo.’ He stopped himself from voicing his emerging thoughts on her husband. ‘You’re wrong, Roula, because, had I read this news I’d have been on your to-do list to call.’
‘Rubbish!’ She was furious. ‘Do not move me around like a chess piece! You don’t get to decide when I’m in trouble, or...’
Her anger was white-hot, and perhaps out of proportion. Irrational, even. But this hurt at a level he could not know. Where had White Knight Galen been when she’d really needed him? Where had her friend been then?
‘My God, Galen!’ She was close to shouting—close to telling him that this was nothing,nothingcompared to what she’d endured. ‘Don’t you dare control my life. Don’t you dare play God with my career.’
‘Damn it, Roula...’
She had her phone out now and was calling for a taxi, or trying to. She was shaking with anger.
‘Don’t go like this.’
‘Oh, I’m going.’
She was. Galen could see that.
Seriously, she was going to walk right out onto the street in pyjamas and in a rage.
He said the only thing he could think of. ‘I’ll drive you.’
Roula told him what he could do with that suggestion, and not politely. But he would not let her leave like this.
‘I’m driving you. I will not talk. I will not ask to come in. I will apologise. In fact, I’ll do that now. I am sorry. However...’ Galen took a breath. ‘You are in pyjamas, and I think it best that I see you safely back to your apartment.’
She looked down to her candy-striped pyjamas and bare feet and he saw a tiny flicker of logic occurring in her angry mind.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I don’t accept your apology.’
It wasn’t the gentlest end to their hideaway.
Galen kept to his word and said nothing as he drove her the short distance home, and Roula sat there, angry, embarrassed and hurting.
And conflicted.
The raw edges of her anger were receding, but instead of calm invading her there was a new and unfamiliar turbulence rattling her. His car glided through the streets, yet she felt as if there should be oxygen masks dropping down and bells pinging.
She’d never been so angry in front of someone.
Never dared to be.
And certainly she had not expected to be driven home.
