Carole Mortimer - The Balfour Legacy

Beginning to tremble, Mia shut her eyes, struggling with a nauseating sense of hurt that made her burst forth with the shaken words, ‘Don’t do this to me, Nikos.’

He moved, twisting the long length of his body to lance her a brief shuttered glance. ‘Don’t beg, Mia. It’s unbecoming.’

Beg—? Her eyes flicked open in time to watch him turn away again, every lean hard elegant inch of him so contained she began to feel dizzy now as well as sick.

‘I am not begging,’ she denied on a wounded choke. ‘We—we just slept together!’

‘A—mistake. It should not have happened.’

‘But it did happen.’

‘True.’ He seemed to be inordinately interested in what was inside his wallet now. ‘However, it will not be happening again.’

‘Just like that?’ Beginning to squirm with self-loathing for even trying to discuss this with him, Mia folded her arms around her knees and crushed them to her chest. ‘You—you make love to me, then just—just throw me aside as if my feelings do not count?’

‘ Theos! We did not make love, we had sex!’ He spun on her angrily. ‘We had wild hot amazing sex—Mia!’ he repeated harshly. ‘Where was the love in what we did in that bed last night? I did not bring it there! And if you did, then you were—’

His nostrils flared as he snapped his lips together, drawing back from what he had been about to say next. His dark eyes blazed at her frozen expression of horror, then with a muttered curse he turned his back to her again.

‘I was w-what?’ she prompted sickly, feeling like someone living a nightmare she could not wake up from. She found she could not let him stop there even if the rest was going to break her in two. ‘Naive? Stupid? Ready for it? Begging you for it?’

His lean profile clenched. ‘I was not going to say any of that.’

‘Then what were you going to say!’ she fired out.

‘Nothing.’

The liar, the cruel wicked liar!

‘I hate you so much now I will never forgive you for doing this to me,’ she whispered. ‘No doubt you are relieved and pleased to hear me say it!’

‘Actually, I’m not—’ his voice remained cool ‘—I…care about you, Mia. But I’m a loner. I always have been. I don’t do the kind of relationship you are going to expect. You will not believe this right now but I’m doing you a big favour calling a halt now—’

‘As you do with all the other women who have shared this bed with you?’ she flung out. ‘Take w-what you want from them, then toss them to one side like yesterday’s rubbish?’

‘Exactly like that,’ he confirmed.

Stunned that he had dared to admit it as coolly at he had, Mia stared at him for a second, then pushed her face into her knees and hugged self-loathing to her like it was her closest friend. She’d never felt so cheap, so used and discarded. And whatever it was he had tried not to say, the real truth crucifying her right now was she had been asking for it— begging him for it—for weeks before he gave in!

Now here she sat in the middle of his rumpled bed consigned to the low ranks of a one-night stand.

Which was probably her just deserts for being such an easy tramp!

‘Why don’t you just go,’ she whispered when she sensed him still hovering.

‘I…need to know you are going to be all right.’

So he wanted reassurance now? ‘I’m all right.’ She gave it to him with the taste of bitterness in her mouth.

And still he hovered! Why—? Was he going to ask for a litre or two of her blood next?

‘Look…’ he said heavily. ‘I’m—sorry I let this happen.’ He actually sounded it too. ‘It was all my fault. I should not have given in to what was happening between us. You’re young and inexperienced in these things but I am not, and I should have…’

‘Say anything else m-more disgusting to me and I will be sick!’ Mia wrenched out.

‘It was wrong!’ he lashed out suddenly. ‘I dishonoured you and I dishonoured your father—’

That brought her head flying upwards. ‘Don’t you dare bring Oscar into this!’ she lashed back, dizzy at the unexpected hot flare of awareness she experienced when she looked at him. ‘How dare you stand there and speak his name to me as if you have some right to hold him up against me!’

His taut profile paled. ‘I did not mean—’

‘I do not care what you did not mean! I do not care that you feel guilty now that you’ve had Oscar’s daughter in this bed! I gave myself to you willingly and freely. It is you who finds this a shameful thing, not me!’

Standing rigid with shock, he looked as if he’d been turned into rock, and Mia decided she’d had taken enough of this. With an infuriatingly uncontrollable sob, she coiled her fingers around the sheet and snaked off the bed, dragging the sheet with her as she went.

‘Mia…’

‘No,’ she husked out. ‘Don’t speak another word to me. I hate you. I will hate you for ever.’

Those black feelings vented, she ran into his bathroom and slammed the door shut, then just sank in a puddle of white linen to the floor.

Go away and learn to honour yourself, Oscar had said to her. Well, she had shot that ideal in the foot, for where had her sense of honour been when she had lusted after Nikos Theakis? Where was it in recognising that she had just turned into the one person she had always vowed she would never turn into—her high-class whoring mother!

And she would never forgive Nikos for making her aware that this was what she had done to herself.

She heard the telltale sound of the helicopter lifting off the ground as she still sat in her huddle on the bathroom floor.

He’d gone. Her aching heart turned over. He had not bothered to hang around for a second longer than he absolutely had to and she hated him for doing that too.

A few minutes after she had been delivered back to her apartment via helicopter, then a chauffeured limousine, which left her feeling cynically unimpressed, Sophie called her.

‘Have you seen the papers today? Someone had an interesting time last night,’ she teased. ‘Did you go skinny dipping in the D’Lassios’ pool because you were hot?’

Mia sank into the nearest chair and closed her weary eyes. So, despite assurances from Santino, her trip into the pool had found its way into the press.

‘Explain this skinny dipping,’ she requested.

‘Self-explicit turn of phrase,’ Sophie said. ‘OK, so you had all your clothes on,’ she conceded, ‘but the photo of the great and gorgeous Nikos hauling you out of the pool without so much as splashing himself looks impressive, while you looked kind of—wet and helpless and cute.’

Cute. Mia pressed her lips together because they wanted to tremble.

‘What happened?’

‘I—slipped in the crush,’ she lied. ‘Is there anything else in the papers I should know about?’ she then asked.

‘Only this amazing picture of you leaving later wearing the sexiest dress I’ve ever seen on you. Was it Nina’s?’

‘Sì.’

‘She has fabulous taste,’ Sophie gushed. ‘You went from fairy princess in floating blue silk chiffon to wet and helpless to dramatically slinky all in one evening. I wish I could wear a dress like that,’ she sighed out wistfully.

‘You could if you only stopped trying to hide your lovely figure under metres of fabric,’ Mia murmured impatiently.

‘Oh, come on, Mia. I’m five foot three inches high to your five-eight,’ Sophie pointed out. ‘Long and slinky I am not and never will be. Besides the unplanned dip, did you enjoy the rest of the evening or did you need to take the courage pill halfway through?’

Just like that her half-sister guided the subject away from herself as she always did, Mia noticed. Then she felt her insides curl up and sink because the rest of the evening did not bear thinking about.