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‘I...’ He stalled, trying to order his thoughts. Knowing what needed to be done and yet somehow wanting to put it off, if only for a moment. ‘Thank you. For this evening.’
Célia nodded, but said nothing. He could sense a storm brewing behind that burnt amber gaze. It vibrated from her, lashing against his skin from across the space between them. Her cupid’s bow lips had thinned, emotion had painted rose-coloured slashes on her cheekbones, and he welcomed it. Welcomed the fight he desired as much as she seemed to. Anything to release all this pent-up, unspent adrenaline.
‘Out with it,’ he commanded.
‘It has absolutely nothing to do with me, Mr Liordis.’
He gave her a look that communicated the exact thought of,Oh, come on.
‘Fine. Really? You leave a deeply distraught ten-year-old girl with a nanny who, by all accounts, was on the phone to her boyfriend for half the bloody night, while you were out there schmoozing with celebrities for what? Restoring your all-important reputation?’
‘If you’ll remember, one of your conditions about holding the event in the first placedictatedmy presence.’
‘Not to the detriment of the peace of mind of achild.’
‘Yet when Ididdo precisely as you ask on the night of the Kinley charity event, I was lambasted by both the pressandyou,’ he ground out, barely able to keep the frustration from his tone.
Brows furrowed, Célia seemed to take in this new piece of information.
‘Why not just say it was because of your daughter?’
‘She’s not my daughter.’ He’d known that would have been her conclusion. It would have been anyone’s conclusion. Especially for someone with his reputation. ‘She is my sister.’ He took a deep breath, knowing that he had no other choice but to come clean with the entire story—something he hadn’t done with his closest friends, let alone a stranger. Though he couldn’t really say that Célia felt like a stranger as such. But if he was to get her to agree to his plan, he would have to explain.
‘My half-sister,’ he clarified. ‘Meredith, our mother,’ he said, barely able to say the words without scorching disdain dripping from every syllable, ‘had her five years after my parents had divorced.’
‘Who is...?’ Célia trailed off, appearing to regret her interruption.
‘The father?’ He shrugged. ‘If Meredith knows, she’s never said. I would imagine that he’s not an option, otherwise Annabelle would never have ended up with me. Three years ago she was dropped off on my doorstep, with no belongings, clothing, books, toys or otherwise and I was told by Meredith, as she practically leapt into the waiting car, to “take care of her”.’
‘Annabelle has not seen Meredith or heard from her since that day. Until six months ago. Her lawyers got in touch with mine to demand her return. As if she was a package to be sent back to its sender.’
Loukis leaned forward into the space between them, placing his elbows on his knees. ‘For three years, Annabelle has lived with me. I have seen to her every need from schooling, to holidays, to play dates, and music lessons. She barely remembers Meredith, aside from the ache of abandonment, and I have no intention of letting my sister be taken away to another country by a mother who all but eschews any semblance of maternal instinct.’
Célia seemed to consume the information readily enough, even though he knew that she could barely conceive of the part that she would, now, have to play in his obscene family drama.
‘That is why you’ve been working to redeem your reputation.’ It was a statement rather than a question, but he nodded anyway.
‘But why keep everything such a secret?’ she queried.
‘Because I know what Meredith is like. I know how she twists and turns things, how her scheming little mind works,’ he concluded, thrust back into the sealed records of his parents’ divorce. How she had turned everything around to make every act, every word a mirror of what it had been in truth. ‘And because I know, with everything in me, that this is just about money. She doesn’t care about Annabelle one bit,’ he said, concluding silently that the reason he knew this was because she had never cared abouthim. Meredith had eventually shown her true colours, and he half hoped that she would do so again, if it wouldn’t inflict further pain on his sister.
‘Then why are you telling me?’ Célia asked, her amber gaze once again warily watchful.
‘I need you to take a look at something for me.’ He offered her his phone, open to the search engine tab that displayed the shocking headlineLiordis At It Again With Mystery Woman!
The three grainy photos showed Loukis ushering Célia into the limousine, the car doing its sudden, urgent U-turn, and the two of them rushing into the house. The speculation about the urgency of their desire for each other was bald and blatant.
The shock that crossed Célia’s features as she read, the way her hand went to her lips as if to stifle some inaudible gasp soothed a little of the anger coursing through his veins. Little, but not enough. Everything he had done in the past three years, all of the attempts to redeem his impossibly tarnished reputation, had burned to dust.
Célia took in the headlines and the black and white photos of herself and Loukis. She hated that some unseen person had followed them, had taken pictures of such a vulnerable moment for Loukis. When she was a child, her father had gone to great lengths to keep her and her mother away from the prying eyes of the press. But attending boarding school, she had seen so many students cowed and buckled under the weight of the paparazzo gaze. Every painful, awkward, embarrassing moment pulled out for inspection. And in her darkest nightmares, the moment that her crimes were published for the world to see brought an unimaginable terror to her. Even the thought that they might discover her father’s identity, as shielded as it possibly could be, scared her, deepening her dependence on denial. They wouldn’t, couldn’t find out. She’d worked so hard to separate her life from before from her life now.
But it was precisely these thoughts that prevented her usually quick mind from putting two and two together to understand what any of what Loukis was saying had to do with her.
She looked up at him then, his fierce gaze studying her intently. The steely line of his jaw, tense, his hands braced as if forewarning her of some life-changing moment.
‘What is it?’
‘I cannot risk any further damage to my reputation. Not with Annabelle’s happiness and future at stake. Iwillnot let Meredith get her hands on her, even for a minute.’
