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She shook her head, tucking strands of loose hair behind her ears. She hadn’t tied it back this morning, and the ends dusted the line of her bare neck and shoulders. Something inside him clenched, and he forced himself to drag his eyes away from the sensual marriage of bare skin and whispering hair.
‘I can’t bear to read any of it.’
‘Mayor Goldfinch has been arrested. Seems he was hooking up with Della-Bosca to have access to the foundation’s fund. They both wanted a slice of that pie. It looks like the end of that career.’
‘Bastards! Both of them!’ she said, so emphatically that he looked up in surprise. But jail was nothing more than they both deserved. And to think she’d felt sorry for Grace when she’d discovered what kind of man he really was!
‘How could they steal money away from children’s hopes and dreams like that?’ she asked. ‘How could they do that? And why did he even need to? He’s already got a huge property development fortune.’
‘Not any more. He’s been losing money for years, living in debt and relying on cash flow, waiting for another big success to take him out of it. Della-Bosca was good at masking what she’d been doing with the foundation funds, but not that good. Once he found out about her misappropriation of funds, he demanded equal access to keep his mouth shut. Between the two of them the foundation didn’t stand a chance.’
He watched her curiously for a few moments, and she wondered what he was thinking. No doubt he believed that she should be in jail too.
And then she remembered what she’d done that awful morning, before Grace’s house of cards had collapsed around her, when she’d called Loukas demanding he pay up his promised one-million-dollar donation and keep his promise to the children.
Her eyes fell shut and she breathed deep on a long blink. Oh, God, no wonder everything was such a mess. She had forgotten completely about his money.
‘Loukas,’ she said, licking her lips, buying herself time as if it might find her some courage, ‘I’m not happy with how you treated me—how you used me like you did. But there’s one thing I need to apologise for. About the foundation.’ She paused for a few moments then. ‘You made that donation like you said, didn’t you?’
‘I told you I had.’
‘And they stole it—along with the rest of the money?’
‘So it appears.’
‘Then I’m sorry. I was angry when I called you. I thought you hadn’t paid…’
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ he said, rising from his chair and turning towards the windows, hands on hips. ‘It was your call that made me decide to confront Della-Bosca myself. That’s why I was there. That’s why I was lucky enough to find Olympia.’
And that was why he’d found Jade standing over his sister next to a madwoman, and looking for all the world as if she had been the one intending to operate. Her throat tightened. ‘You know…I wasn’t…’
‘I know,’ he said, his voice thick and strained, as if he was trying to keep it under control. And looked away, as if he would rather change the topic completely than continue this conversation.
Her tongue found her lips again, fighting a losing battle to keep them moist. She needed to press on. There were still more things she needed to say, whether or not he wanted to hear them. They had to be said before she changed her mind.
‘And I’m sorry for not believing all those things you said about Grace too. You were right.’
He spun around in an instant and rounded the table towards her, ramming his fist into the air, his face masked with fury.
‘Don’t you think it’s too late for that now? My sister could have been scarred for life, or worse—she could have been killed by that lunatic! And yet you did nothing—nothing!—to stop her!’
She took a step back, blinking at the sudden speed of his approach. He was right. She had done nothing. And it hardly seemed to matter now that it was because she had believed nothing could possibly be wrong.
He’d been such a champion for his sister, fighting both to save her and to avenge his late fiancée. What would it feel like to have someone fight so hard for you, to defend you so stridently, to care for you that much?
