AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Coming from the wrong side of the tracks is one thing,’ Alessandro said brusquely. ‘Lying about it is quite another. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?’ His sense of betrayal overshadowed every other emotion, including anger.
‘What would have been the point?’ Chase asked defiantly. ‘As you pointed out...as we agreed...it’s not as though we were ever going anywhere with this relationship. Why would I have spoiled things with lots of truths I know you wouldn’t have wanted to hear?’
Alessandro’s jaw hardened. He took in her beautiful, stubborn face and had a very vivid image of the teenager she must have been: wild, drifting, incredibly bright, incredibly good-looking. ‘Shaun...’ Just uttering her ex-husband’s name left a sour taste in his mouth. ‘Must have thought he had won the lottery the day he met you—clever kid who could be his passport out of whatever dead-end life he was looking forward to leading.’
Chase looked up at him with some surprise. ‘I never thought about it that way,’ she said truthfully. ‘I...’ Was that how he had seen her, whilst making her believe that it had been the other way around? That she had been the lucky one to have been noticed by him? ‘I met him when I was fifteen. He was the leader of the pack, so to speak. Everyone looked up to him even though he was younger than nearly all the guys in the gang. He was fed up living on the outskirts of Leeds. He said he wanted more. He said that London was the place to be.’
‘And of course, he encouraged you to sign up to university life he knew that it was the best way out for him.’
‘I don’t know how I managed to get through all my exams, and I did them all a year ahead of everyone else,’ Chase confessed. ‘Maths, further maths, economics, geography...’ But she had. Her teachers had seen to it that she’d sat them all. They were the ones who had insisted on university, who had filled in all the applications on her behalf while she had been busy having fun and running wild.
She had landed herself a place at one of the top universities in the country and had been amazed that she had accomplished such a feat. Only in retrospect had she appreciated the energy behind the scenes that had got her there.
‘So you went to university and you got married.’
‘The other way around, actually. I got married. Yes. And I went to university. I never expected to meet someone like you. Or anyone, for that matter.’
‘And yet you did. And, instead of being truthful, you thought that it would be a much better idea to concoct a fairy-tale story about yourself.’
Chase heard the undercurrent of contempt mixed with bewilderment in his voice and inwardly winced. She was not the person she had pretended to be and that mattered to a man like him, a man who occupied a stratosphere of wealth and power that few could even dream about.
She wanted to shout at him that he didn’t have a clue, that he couldn’t possibly understand, but shouting wasn’t going to do. Losing control wasn’t going to do. She would offer him the explanation he deserved to hear with detachment and lack of passion. She would demonstrate that she was already breaking away from him, just as he was with her. She would leave with her dignity intact, as much as it could be. She would save her tears for later.
‘Yes.’ She tilted her chin up and steeled herself to meet his eyes squarely and without apology. ‘I was young. I just...gave in to the temptation to turn myself into someone I wasn’t. I made up the background I always wanted for myself.’
Alessandro felt another unwelcome, piercing tug of compassion at the thought that a middle-class background could have constituted her dream life. Most girls would have dreamt up stories of money, overseas holidays and parents with fast cars. She, on the other hand, had dreamt of what most other young girls of her age would have grumbled about and considered normal and boring.
He squashed any notion of compassion as fast as it raised its inappropriate head. The bottom line was that she was a compulsive liar, not to be trusted, never to be believed. He had come to get some truths out of her and he was getting them—in shed-loads.
‘Which brings us to that piece of rubbish who was filling bin bags with your possessions.’
Getting to the heart of the matter and the reason he had shown up on her doorstep, Chase thought. Because, the faster he could wash his hands of her and clear off, the better.
‘When we went to Italy, one of the girls who used to hang out in our gang was at the airport. I didn’t see her.’ But then, she hadn’t had eyes for anyone but the man silently judging her now.
‘She took pictures of us on her phone and posted them on a social networking site. Brian saw them, clocked the Louis Vuitton luggage and the chauffeur-driven car and decided that he would turn up on my doorstep and squeeze me for money. I don’t know how he got my address, but there are so many ways of finding people; I don’t suppose he had much trouble. He may just have gone to the place we were renting before Shaun died, got in touch with the landlord and got the forwarding address I gave him all those years ago. Who knows? He threatened to tell the people at work about my background... It would have spelled the end of my career. And he might have done a lot more besides...’
