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‘How easy it is for people to be dismissive of the power of money, when they’ve been cushioned by wealth all their lives,’ he offered coolly.
She was conscious of his gaze raking over her unruly curls. ‘I didn’t have wealth,’ she defended hotly. ‘Not really. You met me on one of my annual visits to see my grandfather—you had no idea what my life was like back in England.’
There was a pause. ‘So why don’t you tell me what it was like?’
The question took her by surprise, because it sounded as if he really wanted to know. As if he were genuinely interested in her background, in a way he’d never been before. Why had that been? How could they have agreed to marry when they’d known so little about each other?
Because they’d both been on a high—too preoccupied with the fluctuation of youthful hormones and the lure of the sex he seemed intent on denying her.
Facts had taken second place to feelings and she had been completely captivated by those. Mia tried to cast her mind back to a young woman blinded by need and romantic illusion—and that person was someone she could barely recognise.
‘Yes, we lived in a big house but it had hardly any furniture in it,’ she said slowly. ‘Because my father gambled away most of his inheritance and after he died, my mother frittered away what little was left. So my grandfather paid my school fees and arranged for grocery deliveries to be made. He provided all the basics, but nothing more.’ She shrugged. ‘And my mother resented him because she wanted more. It’s why she used to let me come over and stay with him during the summer holidays, even though she hated him. She thought I might be able to soften him up. Her dream was that I would return to England with a fistful of euros. But that never happened.’
‘Your grandfather has many assets,’ he observed thoughtfully. ‘But cash has never been one of them. Most of his wealth is tied up in the land.’
‘As I was soon to discover for myself,’ she said, the sharp reminder of his betrayal making her forget her determination not to be bitter.
‘Mia—’
‘No!’ she interjected, with a fierce shake of her head. ‘You asked me a question and you need to hear my answer without any attempts to absolve yourself.’
‘Absolve myself?’he echoed.
‘That’s what I said!’ But defiance was a new-found weapon in her armoury and it took a little getting used to, and Mia found herself sinking onto a leather seat, her legs feeling strangely wobbly ‘I met you that summer when I was seventeen and I’d...’
‘What?’ he prompted softly as her words tailed off.
She thought about sugar-coating it. About making it sound as if it had meant nothing. But that would be a lie told to salvage her own ego. And hadn’t she lost enough already because of her failed marriage? Surely the truth shouldn’t be another casualty.
‘I’d never felt like that about anyone before,’ she admitted. ‘Perhaps because I’d never really had the chance to meet any men. Despite my mother having been a model, I’d led quite a sheltered life and went to an all-girls school.’ She pulled a face. ‘And, like I said, there was never enough cash to splash on school trips or new clothes, so I was always the odd one out.’ There had been another reason for her almost hermit-like lifestyle, which had little to do with poverty. Because the willowy ex-supermodel who had given birth to Mia could never quite get her head around having produced such an ugly duckling of a child. The little girl who had been intended as an accompaniment to complement her mother’s remarkable beauty had been hidden away at home—while all methods intended to improve her appearance had been doomed to disappoint.
If she tried—which these days she never did—she could still hear her mother’s tinkling English accent as she’d trilled out her various observations.
Surely you’re not going to eatthat? No wonder you’re so chubby, darling!
If you don’t move a bit more, Mia, then you’llneverget rid of that spare tyre!
‘I know you married me to get the land, Theo. I know that,’ Mia reiterated. ‘And it sort of makes sense now. I couldn’t understand at the time why someone like you...who could have had anyone...should have wanted...me,’ she finished, trying very hard not to gulp.
He stared at her and the silence which followed seemed to go on for a very long time. ‘Your mother told you that, did she?’
Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Mia nodded as the hateful words came spiralling back down the years.
Surely you don’t think a man like Theodoros Aeton would marry a little fatty like you, if he weren’t being paid?
‘She told me when I was changing for the evening party.’ Mia hadn’t thought it possible to hurt that much. To feel as if a knife had ripped open her chest and a ragged-nailed hand had reached inside the gaping cavity to tear her heart out. She’d been standing in front of a full-length mirror at the time, in her too-tight white wedding dress. She had felt like a white, bloated maggot and she had looked like it, too.
‘And you believed her?’ Theo demanded.
‘Why wouldn’t I? She told me you’d struck a deal with my grandfather.’
His gaze was very steady, but there was a glint of something hard and bitter in the depths of those black eyes. ‘But you didn’t stop to find out my side of the story, did you, Mia? That didn’t occur to you?’
Mia chewed on her lip. Of course she hadn’t. How could she explain how naïve she’d felt when the facts had fallen into place and she’d finally understood why the most devastatingly gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on had asked her to be his wife? If he’d explained from the outset that he was courting her because it was financially advantageous for him to do so, then maybe she could have accepted it. She had adored him so much that she thought she would have accepted whatever scraps he deigned to throw her. But he hadn’t. He had spun his silken words like a spider spinning a golden web and she had become enmeshed in them. So she had melted when he’d husked into her ear that he’d never desired a woman as much as her. He hadn’t mentioned love, but that hadn’t seemed to matter. Because she’d believed in her love forhim, imagining she had enough for both of them and it was strong enough to withstand anything fate had in store for them. But she had fallen at the first hurdle, because betrayal and deceit were powerful weapons when you held them up against something as fragile as love.
‘Why bother,’ she questioned, her words tinged with acid, ‘when it was true?’
Theo felt the erratic pound of his heart as impatience vied with an anger which had suddenly become red-raw. Surely she should know that life was never that cut and dried. But facts were facts and he couldn’t change them now. On one level he had been aware that she had idolised him more than was healthy, but she had been so sweet about it that he had accepted it. He hadn’t wanted to crush her dreams, because in a way he had been caught up in them himself—for the first and last time in his life.
