Eligible Greeks: Tycoon's Revenge: Proud Greek, Ruthless Revenge / The Power of the Legendary Greek / The Greek Millionaire's Mistress. CATHERINE GEORGE
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found the situation mildly amusing.’
The expression in his eyes chilled her to the bone. ‘But why?’she choked. ‘What have I ever done to—?’She broke off and stared at the photograph of a young woman that he had pushed across the desk—for a second her heart stopped beating.
‘I believe you have met my sister?’Thanos asked, in a dangerously soft tone.
‘I…’ Tahlia groped for words, her brain in freefall.
‘I imagine it was not a long meeting. And there would have been a certain awkwardness to the situation, seeing that you were in bed with Melina’s husband at the time. Of course my sister no longer looks as she does in that photo,’ Thanos went on, in the same chilling tone of barely suppressed aggression. ‘And it is unlikely she will ever dance again—which is a pity because, as you can see from the picture, she loved to dance.’
Tahlia could not formulate a reply as she stared at the photograph of the beautiful young woman whose face was so shockingly familiar. In the picture her dark hair was swept up into a chignon, rather than falling in a mass of curls around her shoulders as it had been on the night Tahlia had seen her, but there was no mistaking that this was James’s wife.
‘Melina was distraught after she caught you and Hamilton together. She fled from the hotel, and as she dashed across the road she was hit by a car,’Thanos said harshly. ‘Eyewitnesses said she was thrown at least twenty feet into the air before she hit the ground. She was in a coma for three weeks, both her legs were broken, and she suffered spinal damage.’ He ignored Tahlia’s horrified gasp and went on remorselessly, ‘For a while the doctors believed she would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Thankfully her last round of surgery was successful, and she is having intensive physiotherapy to help her to walk, but she will never dance again,’ he finished grimly, a nerve flickering in his cheek as he picked up the photo of his sister and stared at it.
The silence in the room screamed with tension, until at last Tahlia forced herself to speak. ‘I…I didn’t know,’she whispered.
Thanos gave a savage laugh. ‘You mean you didn’t hear the ambulance sirens? Or you did hear them but you were not sufficiently interested to go and find out who had been injured? Presumably you and Hamilton continued with your sexual gymnastics after Melina left?’ he snarled contemptuously. ‘Neither of you had the decency to follow her, even though it must have been obvious—even to a heartless bitch like you—that she was devastated at finding the man she loved in bed with his whore.’
Tahlia bowed her head while Thanos’s savage fury crashed over her. His anger was no less than she deserved, she acknowledged sickly, and her mind relived that terrible night six months ago, which had started off so wonderfully.
She had felt excited and a little nervous when James had checked them in to the hotel he had booked for a romantic weekend.
‘Just one key?’she’d queried tremulously, her heart thumping.
‘One key, one room—one bed,’ he’d replied, with that disarming grin that melted her heart. ‘You know I love you, Tahlia,’ he had murmured when they’d reached their suite, and he had pulled her into his arms and kissed her. ‘And you love me—don’t you, baby? Making love is the next step in showing our love for each other.’
She had been unable to resist him: good-looking, easygoing James, who had swept her off her feet. She had been ready for them to become lovers, and when James had started to undress her she had not hidden her eagerness. But as they had tumbled onto the bed the door had burst open, and a woman had stumbled into the room.
She would never forget the look of shock on the woman’s face, the tears streaming down her cheeks and her voice crying brokenly, ‘How could you, James? How could you? I am your wife…’
‘I didn’t know about your sister’s accident,’ she insisted shakily, dragging her mind back to the present. ‘I left James almost immediately.’ After his sulky confirmation that, yes, he was married—‘but that’s no reason to get hysterical, Tahlia.’ ‘I ran down to my car, parked at the rear of the hotel. Melina must have run out of the front of the hotel, and I drove home along a different road. I don’t remember hearing sirens or anything—but I was in shock,’ Tahlia said falteringly, remembering how she had driven away, desperately trying to hold back her tears until she reached her parents’ home. ‘I had no idea that James was married.’
‘Liar.’
The solitary word cracked through the air like a whip, and Tahlia jumped. ‘I swear I didn’t know—’ she began, but Thanos silenced her with a savage glare.
‘Of course you knew. Just as you knew that the actor you’ve been having an affair with recently was married. Far from attempting to hide your relationship with him, you brazenly flaunted it, allowing yourself to be snapped by the press leaving a hotel with him.’ Thanos’s lip curled. ‘Tell me, do you enjoy a feeling of power when you have sex with other women’s husbands? Women like you disgust me.’
Women like his father’s mistress, Thanos brooded grimly. Wendy Jones had known that his father had a wife and children, but that had not stopped her flirting with Kosta Savakis and pursuing him with single-minded determination, uncaring of the pain and destruction their affair caused. Wendy and Tahlia were two of a kind—predatory, heartless bitches who lacked any moral decency. His hatred of the woman who had become his stepmother had burned inside him for years, and as he stared across his desk at Tahlia’s pale face his fury threatened to choke him.
The icy anger in Thanos’s eyes sent a shiver down Tahlia’s spine, and she said frantically, ‘I promise you I did not know James was married. If I had I would never have dated him, let alone agreed to spend a weekend with him.’ She jumped to her feet and gripped the edge of the desk, breathing hard so that her breasts rose and fell jerkily. ‘When your sister burst into the hotel room and announced that she was James’s wife I felt terrible. I felt as though I were the lowest life form on the planet.’
‘An apt description,’ Thanos snapped, his jaw hardening. ‘And I have no doubt that you felt terrible—you’d just been caught out, and you knew James was likely to end his affair with you so that he could try and persuade his wealthy wife to forgive him. I don’t understand what you saw in my brother-in-law,’ he added scathingly. ‘James Hamilton is a penniless, talentless waste of space. But, according to the press reports, you seem to get a kick out of sleeping with other women’s husbands.’
The colour leached from Tahlia’s face, and for a second she was tempted to flee from the room, but she forced herself to meet Thanos’s cold stare. ‘The reports in the tabloids about my supposed affair with Damian Casson are a complete fabrication,’ she said stiltedly. ‘And I have instructed my solicitor to proceed with legal action against the papers involved.’Her eyes dropped to the photograph of Thanos’s sister and she swallowed. ‘I am so sorry,’she whispered. ‘I wish I could apologise to Melina, and explain to her that James deceived both of us.’
‘Do you think I would allow you anywhere near my sister?’ Thanos demanded harshly. ‘Melina has suffered enough, without having to hear your lies.’
He had also risen to his feet, and was surveying her with visible contempt. She could understand why he was angry, Tahlia conceded, but his refusal to listen to her and his determination to believe the worst of her sparked her temper.
‘I am not lying,’ she told him with quiet dignity. ‘And I am not the woman portrayed by the tabloids. I had no idea that James had a wife.’ Tears stung her eyes, and she lowered her head so that Thanos would not see them. She had felt a fool that night in the hotel, when James’s treachery had been revealed, but her emotions were of little significance compared to the pain—both mental and physical—that Thanos’s sister must be suffering.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated shakily. She had been an innocent pawn in James’s game, but she still felt responsible for his wife’s terrible accident.
‘It’s too damned late