Irresistible Greeks Collection. Кэрол Мортимер
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wanted to introduce you to her.’ He finished heavily, his words biting and accusing, ‘That way I might just manage to protect her from the sordid truth of your existence. After all—’ his lip curled ‘—better that you are my mistress than her husband’s.’
He made to steer her back towards the dining room..
But she wouldn’t move.
She was looking at him. Staring at him. Just staring.
There was no emotion in her face. None whatsoever. Then slowly, very slowly, she peeled his fingers off her arm, and stepped away. He looked down at her, frowning. What the hell was she playing at now?
‘Athan! Come back in!’
He slewed round sharply. Eva was in the dining room doorway, beckoning to him. Ian was standing beside her. Athan’s head whipped back. Marisa had started to walk forward, towards the couple. There was purpose in her steps.
As they all went back inside the dining room and he closed the door on the four of them a sense of doom came over Athan. It was going to happen. The ugly, painful disclosure of the ‘sordid little secret’ that he’d gone to so much trouble to keep hidden from his sister. And all for nothing. For this—for his sister to be humiliated and her heart broken. Well, at least he would be there for her. Ready to let her sob on his shoulder after her husband had walked out on her with his mistress on his arm.
His mouth twisted, but there was no humour in it.
The mistress I want for myself …
But that wasn’t going to happen. All that was going to happen was the destruction of his sister’s fragile marriage. Well, better it ended now than later. Better never to love than to have love smashed to pieces …
He should know …
A blade like a vicious shard of ice slid into his side. He watched Marisa walk up to his sister. Watched Ian smile at her reassuringly.
Intimately.
Watched his sister frown wonderingly.
He went to stand beside her, opposite her husband. Opposite the woman who was never going to be anything more to do with him—who was going to take his sister’s husband from her.
He should have felt rage. Fury. Black murderous anger for his sister’s sake. For his own. But all there was inside him was an empty, bleak hollow. His eyes went to Marisa. She was looking so pale. So pale and so incredibly beautiful. She was standing beside Ian. They made a startlingly handsome couple—both so blond and blue-eyed, with their English complexions. A matched pair—a foil for his and his sister’s dark, Mediterranean looks.
The blade slid into his guts, twisting its sharp, serrated edge as he gazed at Marisa.
Not mine. Never mine. Never—
‘Eva—’
Ian’s voice jolted him. It was thin, but resolute. Athan stood beside his sister, waiting for the axe to fall so he could pick up the pieces when it did. His face was still, like granite. Marisa’s had no expression in it at all.
She would not meet his eyes. Well, that was understandable …
‘Eva—’ Ian said his wife’s name again—stronger this time. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got something I have to say to you,’ he said.
The puzzled look on Eva’s face deepened.
‘I’ve got to tell you something you will not like, that will be upsetting, but it has to be said. I asked Marisa here tonight for a particular reason. To tell you about her.’
Athan could keep silent no longer. He started forward, placing his hand on his sister’s wrist, intending to speak Greek to her. He had to tell her himself—he could not let her bastard of a husband proclaim it.
‘No!’
Marisa’s sudden interjection silenced him before he had even started. His head swivelled to her. For a moment he reeled. The expression blazing from her eyes was like a hundred lasers.
‘Ian will tell her,’ she bit out. Her face snapped round to the man at her side. ‘Go on! Tell her. Tell him.’
There was something wrong with her voice, Athan registered. She had never spoken like that before. Even when she’d been ordering him from that tumbledown cottage of hers. This was like ice—ice made from the coldest water.
Ian’s expression flickered, as if he was taken aback by her tone. Then he looked straight at his wife again.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ he said. ‘So I’m just going to say it straight out. Marisa—’ he said, and as he spoke he reached for her hand.
She let him take it, curled her fingers around it, warm and familiar, stepping forward slightly, aligning herself with him. A couple. Together.
Like a guillotine cutting down, Athan spoke. Contempt was in his voice, harsh and killing.
‘Marisa is his mis—’
‘—is my sister.’
The words fell like stones from a great height, crushing Athan dead.
Marisa looked at Athan, her face still completely, totally expressionless.
‘I’m Ian’s sister,’ she said.
HAD the world stopped moving? It must have, thought Athan with what was still working in his brain, because everything else seemed to have stopped. Including his breathing. Then, explosively, it restarted.
‘His sister?’ Shock reverberated in his voice.
Marisa’s gaze was levelled at him, still expressionless. Like a basilisk’s gaze.
She might have laughed to see the shock on his face—but she wasn’t in the mood for laughing. She was in the mood for killing.
Anger—dark, murderous anger—was leashing itself tighter and tighter around her. She had to hold it down—hold it tight down. Because it if escaped …
‘Ian’s sister?’ The voice this time was Eva’s, and all it held in it was complete bewilderment. ‘But Ian hasn’t got a sister.’
Marisa’s eyes went to Ian, knowing that this was the moment they had dreaded but now had to face. She saw him draw breath, then open his mouth to speak.
‘I didn’t know—I didn’t know about Marisa. Not until very recently.’ He took another breath. ‘Look, maybe we should all sit down. It’s … it’s complicated, and it’s going to be … difficult,’ he said.
He gestured towards the table and after a moment’s hesitation Eva went and took her place.
Marisa did likewise. Her body felt very stiff. Immobile. She watched Athan stalk to the other side and sit himself down opposite her, while Ian took his place opposite his wife. Just like two couples settling down to a dinner party. As though a bombshell hadn’t just exploded in the middle of them.
‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a glass of wine,’ Ian said in a shaky voice, trying, Marisa knew, to keep it light.
He reached for the bottle of white wine cooling in its chiller, and for the next few moments there was a hiatus while he poured four glasses and handed them round. Instinctively Marisa found herself taking a gulp.
She needed it.
As she set the glass back on the pristine white tablecloth she realised her hand was trembling slightly. Involuntarily, her eyes glanced across at the dark figure sitting opposite her. His face was like marble—showing absolutely nothing.
Emotion