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She shook her head, terribly afraid that the sobs that caught in the back of her throat might pour out now, whether she wanted them to or not. She felt jagged and broken andhurt, and she didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about any of it.
“You’re the bloody king, Orion. Surely you could have made this—madehim—go away.”
His mouth twisted, and there was something so savage in his eyes then it made her heart skip a beat.
“It’s not my father’s sins that worry me,” he belted out. “It’s my mother’s.”
She gaped at him. He muttered something that might have been a curse, then dragged his hands over his face. Then he pressed the button that allowed him to talk to his driver and ordered the man to pull over to the side of the road.
When the car stopped, Orion threw open the door and the sea rushed in.
Calista was breathing too hard. As if she’d been running all the way down the long island road from the villa instead of sitting in his car.
And she didn’t want to follow him out. She didn’t want to hear any more of his secrets. Because she’d told him he couldn’t trust her, but worse than that, she didn’t trust herself.
She was terrified, not that he would tell her more secrets that she would feel compelled to tell her father.
But that he would tell her enough of his secrets that shewouldn’tshare them with her father.
And Melody would pay the price.
What would any of this have been for?
Calista could hear the crash of the winter sea against the rocks. She told herself that was what lured her out, crawling carefully from the car and closing the door behind her. And taking a moment, then, to lean against the side of the vehicle and wait for her eyes to adjust.
When they did, the stars were so bright in the night sky above her it took her breath away.
And when she angled her gaze away from the resplendent sky, it was to see Orion standing there on a flat rock overlooking the rocky shore, like a dark dream made real.
She was as drawn to him now as ever, she understood with a little jolt inside, no matter if it was against her will. Especially now he knew exactly how perfidious she was. The lengths she was willing to go.
The betrayer she’d become to fight a man who had made her in his image after all. Because all thewhysdidn’t matter. She’d sold Orion out.
Though, tonight, all the things she’d been telling herself for years to keep herself focused on felt flat inside her. Like paltry little excuses.
In order to save one person who mattered to her she’d lost another.
She didn’t know how she was meant to live with that.
He didn’t turn around to see what she was doing, and maybe that was why she felt so drawn to him. His certainty. How sure he was of himself, so that when he’d actually made love for the first time in his life, she would have sworn that he’d had decades of experiences.
She had let him get close to her. Close enough to shame her, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to cope with that. How she was supposed to carry on doing what she’d always done when she knew that this sickening current of self-disgust could just...bloom inside her the way it did?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered when she reached him.
But the December wind, cool enough to make her shiver, if not cold in any real sense, took her words away.
Orion was staring out at the dark water, as if he was fighting his own battle while standing still.
“What your father has on me is a portfolio of pictures,” he told her, matter-of-factly. As if it was part of some royal decree.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Calista said, feeling wretched. “Surely by now you should know better than to want to.”
“It’s an old roll of film, with twenty-four exposures. The portfolio contains both prints and negatives. Your father assured me that no copies had ever been made.”
“Even if there were, he likely would have found them and destroyed them,” she said, clearing her throat as she thought about the squalid little bargains Aristotle called “business.” “Because the value in a damaging image is lessened if there are copies. If anyone can have leverage, the leverage itself is lessened.”
She felt her face go hot when Orion slanted a look her way. “Yes, these are the sorts of things I learned at my father’s knee. Don’t act so surprised, Orion. Surely you didn’t think he sang us nursery rhymes?”
