AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I suppose so,’ she said reluctantly.
‘And yes, your grandfather can be an annoying and cantankerous old man,’ he said slowly. ‘But I have never forgotten the way he helped me, when I had nothing. I wanted to help him, and the bottom line is that he always wanted us to stay together, as man and wife. For some reason, he imagined we shared something which could work.’ He held his hand up, his lips hardening into a stony slash. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me you don’t share his opinion—I can read it on your face. For what it’s worth, I happen to agree with you.’
‘You do?’ she questioned.
‘Of course I do. Our marriage was a mistake. It should never have happened. You were too young and I was determined to do the right thing, because I knew how much it would hurt him if I simply had an affair with you. So I asked you to marry me.’
‘Right,’ she said, trying to tell herself that here at least she could silently commend him for his honesty, but stupidly enough—it hurt. ‘That’s the reason you wanted me to be your wife? You didn’t want to take my virginity without putting a ring on my finger, just to please your great mentor?’
‘What’s the point in raking over all that now?’ he questioned impatiently. ‘The past is just the past and the point is that he’s dying, Mia. We can both see that. And his greatest wish was—is—for us to stay married.’ He paused, his eyes narrowing as he met the stubborn expression on her face. ‘Couldn’t we give him what he wants—if only for a short while?’
‘What good will that do?’ she answered sulkily.
‘We could make an old man happy enough to reconcile with the granddaughter he loves and free you both from the chains of bitterness,’ he said roughly. ‘Don’t you want that to happen? Or will you go away from here with his angry words ringing in your ears, and live to regret the fact that he died without the two of you having made up?’
‘Don’t you dare play with my emotions!’ she howled.
‘I’m not playing with your emotions. I’m trying to use my own experience to prevent you from doing something which can never be undone.’
‘What experience?’ she questioned, her blue eyes suddenly growing hooded.
Theo delayed answering because this was a subject he never addressed. Not with her. Not with anyone. Why probe a sore which would be better left to heal on its own? Or shine a light on the shadows of his past and make him aware of just how grim that past had been?
But perhaps some sort of explanation was necessary—more as a bargaining tool than for any real desire for her to learn more about him, because it was too late for that now. Already she knew more than most people, yet she still thought the worst of him in any situation. But she didn’t know this bit. Nobody did. He had seen to that. Early on in his career, he had taken control of all available information about himself and deliberately sanitised his background. He had shaved away the facts until they were nothing but dull bullet points. Little of his life before Georgios Minotis had adopted him was known, except perhaps to this woman with the wary blue eyes.
‘My mother dumped me as a baby,’ he said harshly.
‘Yes.’ Her voice had softened now with husky affirmation. ‘I know that, Theo.’
And she had never talked about it, he realised suddenly. She might have used her knowledge as a weapon against him when she’d discovered that her grandfather had given him the land. Yet, despite her pain, she hadn’t brought those juicy facts into the public arena and capitalised on what she knew—she had stayed loyal to him. Other women in her situation might have been tempted to sell their story, but Mia hadn’t chosen that route. She had preferred to live in humble obscurity in London, rather than rake in the money she could have earned from some downmarket tabloid with an appetite for the secret lives of billionaires.
His jaw clenched, because this wasn’t supposed to be about concentrating on her good traits. It was all about winning her over to his idea. His mouth hardened. ‘Over the years, I’ve read enough literature to understand that such an abandonment can have a profound effect on the psyche of the child—’
‘How forensic you sound,’ she breathed.
He slanted her a cool and questioning look. Would she have preferred to see him go to pieces? To demonstrate the kind of frailties which might make him appear weak? Then she would be waiting a long time, he concluded grimly. He thought back to when she had run away and the bitter tang of emptiness he had experienced as a result. He had hated feeling that way—that sense of emotional dependence he’d never fallen victim to before or since. Was that why he had decided to discover more about his roots—as a way of distracting himself? As a way of getting Mia Minotis off his mind?
‘After the debacle of our wedding, I decided to seek out my mother,’ he told her. ‘To discover what circumstances had forced her to take such a desperate step.’ He could feel the rough catch at the back of his throat and wondered how, even after all this time, it still had the power to affect him. ‘I thought she must have been destitute. That perhaps she still was, and that maybe I ought to help her, as I had become a wealthy man. And don’t they say that altruism always makes a person feel better about themselves?’ he enquired mockingly.
‘I guess they do,’ came her response, toneless enough to barely register in his troubled thoughts.
‘But it seemed any altruism on my part was unnecessary,’ he continued, and a pulse began to thud angrily at his temple. ‘I discovered that my mother had married, and married well. She was an extremely wealthy woman herself, though childless. Maybe she never liked children.’ His lips curved with derision. ‘Why else would she have chosen to abandon a helpless infant in a torrential dockside gutter, where they were most likely never to have been discovered?’
There was silence for a moment as she absorbed this. ‘Oh, Theo,’ she said at last, but must have noticed his gaze warning her against sympathy, for she quickly changed tack. ‘You must have been so angry.’
He nodded. Angry, yes—but surprised, too. And the biggest surprise had been in finding out how much it had hurt. Like every child, Theo had painted vivid pictures in his imagination. He had imagined his mother as young and frightened and abandoned. A distraught woman at the end of her tether, who could see no way out other than to abandon her beloved child. What he had not expected was to find a face-lifted socialite, sipping cocktails on a vulgar yacht. With a little digging, he had discovered there had been a period of absence in the recorded story of her life. A year’s absence, to be precise. Long enough for her to have a secret baby and then to leave it on the ground, like a piece of rubbish.
‘So what did you do?’ she probed, her blue eyes wide and troubled. ‘Did you get in touch with her?’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ he negated. ‘Why would I? The thought of even being in the same room as her made my flesh crawl. So I left her to her privileged life and carried on with my own.’ He sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out. ‘Until one day I received word that she had died and I...’
‘What, Theo?’ she prompted as his words tailed off. ‘How did that make you feel?’
This was the kind of intrusive query women often liked to make, but when Mia asked it—with her voice so soft and concerned—Theo found himself answering, almost without meaning to. But he didn’t give her the uncensored version, because that would be a confidence too far. He didn’t tell her that he’d wanted to throw his head back and howl with rage and bewilderment.
‘I found myself regretting not asking her why she’d done it,’ he admitted. ‘Why she had made such a cruel and potentially dangerous decision. And I realised that now I would never get the chance. Because death really is final, Mia.’ His gaze bored into her. ‘Intellectually, it’s something we all know—but somehow we never really believe it’s true. I think you’ll regret not making up with the old man, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.’
The concern had left her eyes and in its place was the blue spark of mutiny. ‘And presumably you’ve told me all this to guilt-trip me into agreeing to your ridiculous scheme?’
