The two men were still standing on the pavement. From the low grind of their voices Mia could tell their conversation was not nice. A quick glance showed her that Nikos’s whole body was rigid with aggression and icy as hell. Mario seemed to be pressing some urgent point and looked very pale, though she did not know the wealthy formula-one mogul to know he did not always look that shade.
She looked away again, down at her trembling fingers where they lay locked together on her lap. Nikos was right—who needed a mother like that? she told herself dimly, and felt tears press hard at the back of her throat.
Nikos climbed into the car and tapped on the partition glass to tell their driver to go. As he sank back into the seat he did not glance at Mia. He couldn’t right now. He was too busy grappling with something he’d said to Mario in his initial volley of contempt that was still knocking him almost senseless.
Soulless marriage…
Isn’t that what he had been offering Mia? A soulless marriage with great sex and separate bedrooms afterwards?
Nikos shuddered in disgust. She possessed more integrity than her lousy mother by refusing what he was fast accepting had been a filthy insult of an offer. If Gabriella had held out against Mario Mattea, would she have won her man and kept her child—?
And even the thought was insultingly arrogant. For what would Mia be winning by getting him? Nothing more than he had been prepared to give her, which turned out to be nothing in the cold light of his new insight.
He should be getting down on his knees and thanking her for loving this cold and soulless bastard—
Love…Nikos backtracked, experiencing a fresh numbing clench of shock. She loved him. How long had he known that without allowing himself to acknowledge it? Desire, obsession, infatuation—he’d named it any other word he could grab. But she did—love him. And he did not deserve such an honour.
‘You know him,’ the silent figure beside him broke into the shattering train of his thoughts.
‘Sorry?’ he turned a questioning look on her and took the full weight of her importance to him like a blow to his gut.
‘You know Mario Mattea,’ she repeated, her blue eyes dull and dark in her pale face. ‘Why have you never said?’
Shot down but still functioning, Nikos recognised ruefully as her question pushed him out of one stark blinding revelation straight into the horror of another one. Did he tell her the truth or did he try to pass it off with a flippant comment. Lie, in other words.
He veiled his eyes and went for the halftruth. ‘I know a lot of business people,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Have you met my—Gabriella before?’
‘No.’ And that was honest, Nikos mocked grimly. If he had met Gabriella Mattea before he would have recognised the cold bitch in her and perhaps been able to save Mia from what just took place. As it was, Nikos knew, right down to his seething twisting gut, he was in trouble here.
‘He’s here in Athens to set up a series of meetings with high-end financiers.’ He chickened out of telling the full truth. ‘The credit crunch has bitten hard into the car industry. Mario is desperate for someone to finance his business and his formula-one team before both sink without a trace.’
‘You mean he’s here for a series of meetings with you, don’t you?’
Nikos let his tense mouth stretch into a brief rueful smile. ‘I’m—one of his best bets to cough up the money.’
‘Are you going to?’
He sent her a glinting look. ‘What do you think?’
‘Because of me?’
‘Yes, because of you.’ And that was the full damn truth.
‘But you can’t do that!’ Surprising him by turning an aghast stare on him, she said, ‘They will know you turned away from them because of what happened tonight and they will blame me for it!’
His grim face toughened. ‘They should have considered that angle when they humiliated my future wife.’
‘I am not going to be your wife!’
‘What are you planning to be, then,’ he struck back, ‘the next Balfour scandal?’
Chapter Eleven
WRONG thing to say. Nikos knew it the moment the smart shot left his mouth.
‘I am not a Balfour,’ Mia denied, hating him for saying that—hating everyone. ‘For why would I want to be a Bianchi or a Balfour?’
‘Then don’t be,’ he persisted. ‘Be a Theakis instead.’
‘So that you can treat me like an unwelcome interloper into your life too?’
‘You would not be an unwelcome interloper.’
Mia released a soft bitter laugh. ‘I am a figure of pity to you right now. Tomorrow I will be a chain tied around your neck. Do you think I don’t know the way that it goes? Gabriella handed me over to my aunt, then walked away from me. She visited once a year for the first ten years of my life. She stopped visiting me when I asked her if she only came to give Tia money for my keep. You wish to hear her answer?’
‘No,’ Nikos muttered.
‘She admitted to my face it was so, then left. Tia’s money came by post from then on.’
A soft curse raked Nikos’s throat. ‘She is a selfish bitch with—’
‘Sì,’ Mia cut in on him quickly because she did not need him to tell her what her own mother was. ‘Oscar was more subtle. He allowed me to stay so long as I hid in the kitchen and played his housekeeper.’
‘He was protecting Lillian—’
‘You think I don’t know and appreciate that?’ she choked out. ‘Do you think I resented him protecting his poor wife’s feelings over mine? Do you think I did not understand when his other daughters must resent and blame me for the scandals which erupted later—or that I do not blame myself for those same events? But did he appreciate how I was feeling?’ she delivered with a hurt that until now she had kept buried deep inside. ‘Did my feelings stop him from sending me away again as quickly as he could?’
‘Oscar wanted you to learn to—’
‘He wanted me to act like a Balfour or stay away,’ she wrenched out. ‘Well, I have no wish any longer to be a Balfour.’ And she meant it—she really meant it! ‘They are not my kind of people. You are not my kind of people.’ It was a life-changing moment to realise that and it grew like a balloon inside. ‘Oscar said he wanted me to learn integrity…’ And suddenly she understood what integrity meant to her. It meant being true to herself. To the person she wanted to be not the one everyone else wanted to mould her into! ‘Well, I don’t want his integrity if it means dressing up in fine clothes and wearing false smiles. I don’t want to be married to you because I have conceived your baby and you are worried about what Oscar might think. That is for your integrity to deal with, Nikos. Mine is telling me it is time to walk away and just be myself.’
‘I do not give a damn what Oscar thinks!’ Nikos protested.
‘Liar,’ she shook out. ‘You have already said it with your damage-control quip.’
It was like being hit from behind. Nikos had not expected it. He had no ready defence.
The car drew up outside his apartment, and Mia threw his sternly handsome face a single glance, then unlocked her seat belt and scrambled out of the car, leaving Nikos sitting there, knowing he was in danger of missing probably the only opportunity