Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
Oh, dear God , thought Olympia, watching in abject horror as her mother sashayed along the jetty as if she were on the red carpet at some international film premiere. What the hell was she doing here? Why wasn’t she in Argentina with her cattle billionaire? And how on earth had she found out about the party?
More pressingly how was she—Olympia—going to handle it? Unsurprisingly, in a crowd of two hundred, Leo and Zander—who were more used to dealing with this than she was—were nowhere to be seen. But a quick glance at Alex, standing there on the beach, frozen to the spot, his jaw so tight it looked as though it might be about to shatter, told her that despite his claims to the contrary, he evidently wasn’t as blasé about the affair as he’d tried to make out. And, therefore, she knew without the shadow of a doubt that her mother could not stay.
Having no time to ponder the fact that her loyalty fell so unquestionably in his camp, or to wonder what that might mean, she galvanised into action, hurried down the steps and onto the jetty, to intercept Selene before she could do too much damage.
‘Darling,’ cried her mother expansively, as she threw open her arms for a hug that she had never earned and was never going to get. ‘I heard you were having a party to celebrate your engagement. The last of my children to fly the nest. My littlest one. I’ve come to offer you my congratulations. A whirlwind engagement and a baby on the way. Quick work. That’s my girl. I’m so proud. And to think I was worried you’d become boring.’
This outpouring of maternal interest—all for show, of course—did not faze Olympia in the slightest. Nor did the dig about the changes she’d made to her life, or the suggestion that they were alike. The only thing she was interested in was containing the chaos that Selene whipped up wherever she went, and then finding out if Alex was all right.
‘You need to leave,’ she said, taking her mother by the arm and wheeling her back in the direction she’d come.
‘But I’ve only just arrived.’
‘You weren’t invited.’
‘I assumed it was an oversight.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Well, this wasn’t the welcome I was expecting, I must say,’ protested her mother with a pout. She broke free and tried to bypass Olympia to join the party. ‘But no matter. I’m here now to liven things up.’
‘Get back on the boat and off my island, Selene.’
The sudden appreciative gleam in her mother’s eyes, as much as the cold clipped tones, told Olympia that Alex was behind her. A fierce streak of protectiveness swept through her and she instinctively inched closer to him.
‘Are you the groom?’ asked Selene, running her gaze over him with such outrageously blatant interest that Olympia wanted to push her into the sea. ‘Well done, Olympia. He’s very handsome. In fact,’ she said, tilting her head suddenly and giving him as thoughtful a look as her overly Botoxed face would allow, ‘he looks like someone I used to know a long time ago. Let me think…’
‘I really wouldn’t,’ Olympia warned, glancing at Alex, noting both the ice-cold fury burning in his eyes and the seething tension he radiated.
‘Nikolas Andino, I believe it was,’ said Selene, blithely blind to the danger she was in. ‘Any relation?’
‘I’m his son.’
‘Ah, yes. Now I remember. Weren’t you once a friend of Leo’s?’
‘Until you blew my family apart.’
‘Did I? Well, these things happen,’ she said with a dismissiveness that was shocking, even for her. ‘But goodness,’ she added, a hideously inappropriate twinkle now lighting her eyes, ‘if I were twenty years younger and you weren’t marrying my daughter and I didn’t have scruples… Now, who’s going to get me a drink?’
‘No one,’ he said. ‘You are not staying.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Olympia put in, feeling sick to her stomach at her mother’s callousness and her flirting. Scruples? If only. ‘I’m having trouble making her listen.’
‘No problem.’
Without preamble, he stepped forward and picked Selene up in his arms and then dumped her back in the boat. ‘Take her back,’ he said to the driver, in a tone that had the man nodding frantically and hastily loosening the lines. ‘Do not return.’
‘Well. I don’t think I’ve ever been treated so rudely,’ Selene exclaimed as he pulled in the fenders and fired the engine. ‘Do not expect my presence at the wedding.’
‘We won’t.’
Heart pounding and head spinning, Olympia watched the boat disappear into the distance, then turned to the big angry man beside her, whose opinion of her mother was now blindingly obvious.
‘So that was clearly as horrendous for you as it was for me,’ she said, awash with concern for him—for them—and the need to do whatever it took to make this right. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, and off he stalked.
* * *
But Alex wasn’t fine. He wasn’t fine at all. He felt as if he was about to throw up. Pass out. As if he were having an out of body experience. Somehow he managed to hold it together as he weaved his way through the guests, smiling here, muttering a suitable response there. But the minute he reached his study, all semblance of composure disappeared.
With shaking hands, he cracked open a bottle of whisky he’d swiped from the kitchen en route through the house. He filled a glass and knocked it back, but the alcohol that burned down his throat and hit his stomach did nothing to numb the shock of seeing the woman who’d destroyed his parents’ marriage and wrecked his life.
The second he’d laid eyes on her he’d been slammed back to the past, to the arguments and the tears, the giving up of his place at university, the devastating realisation that his father was human, just as susceptible to all the frailties that implied as anyone else. He was filled with the fiery cocktail of emotions that he’d told Olympia about but hadn’t experienced in years—guilt, anger, resentment, fear. If he’d had any doubt whatsoever about how he still felt about Selene Stanhope, it had gone. He seethed with rage. He loathed her with a passion. Twenty years seemed to have vanished, just like that.
The door opened. He first stiffened, then jerked his head round to see Olympia walk in.
‘I’m so sorry about that,’ she said before he could tell her to get out and leave him alone. ‘I had no idea she was going to turn up. I genuinely thought she was safely several thousand miles away.’
He poured himself another measure and downed that in one too. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I know you don’t,’ she said, the concern he detected in her voice as unwanted and unwelcome as the pity he could see on her face. ‘But I think you should.’
‘No.’
‘Please. Tell me how you feel. You need to deal with this.’
He did not need to deal with this, he had too many feelings to manage, and he did not need her telling him what to do. ‘Stop it,’ he said, his pulse hammering at his temple so loudly he could hear it. ‘Stop trying to get inside my head.’
‘I want to help.’
But he didn’t want her help. Not now. Not ever. He never had, yet somehow she’d demolished every one of his carefully erected barriers so that he was doing everything she asked of him. Suddenly it was all too much. He was being thwacked over the head with the terrible realisation that history was repeating itself. Everything he’d feared had come to pass. Look at how swiftly he’d fallen under her spell. How easily he’d been seduced. She’d wrapped him around her finger with no trouble at all, even though he’d sworn that that would never happen, and he’d been so overwhelmed by lust, by her, he’d just let it all happen. He’d even told her she could have whatever she wanted. What the hell had he been doing this past week?
‘I’m done dancing to your tune,’ he said, suddenly feeling very cold and numb.
She paled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your mother implied that you were like her, and she was right. You have the same allure, the same power. Just as she trapped my father in her web, you’ve caught me in yours. You’ve had me doing things I never had any intention of doing. You’ve turned me into someone I don’t recognise, and I won’t allow it to continue.’
For a moment, she appeared to have nothing to say. Her eyes swam with hurt and confusion, and he steeled himself not to care.
‘Is that really what you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s not very fair.’
His brows snapped together. ‘What?’
‘You don’t strike me as a man who does anything he doesn’t want to,’ she said with a jut of her chin, the hurt and confusion morphing into resolve right in front of him. ‘You’re not passive in any way. You don’t let things happen to you. If you go along with something it’s because you want to. I admit to provoking you into action on occasion, but you didn’t have to suggest marriage. You didn’t have to buy me a ring. And you certainly didn’t have to put in a good word with Zander, although I am grateful for that. I may resemble my mother, and I may have once behaved a bit like she does, but I’m not like her. I refuse to be. Not just for my own sense of self, but because I want my child to have a better start in life than I did. I want it to know love and security, to have a better mother than I do, and to never have to question its self-worth. We’ve moved way beyond this, Alex. So don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing here.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re deflecting.’
He scowled at her. ‘What makes you the expert?’
‘I learned all about it in rehab. It’s a defence mechanism. You’re in shock, being battered by painful memories, and you’re taking it out on me. And that’s fine. For now. I understand. But you need to get over the issues you have with my mother. And you must ,’ she entreated. ‘For the baby’s sake. For my sake and yours and ours. I know she’s a nightmare, and she’s caused you untold misery, but we have a real shot at this. Neither of us needs to be lonely any more. We have a connection that goes beyond the baby, and we can build on that. So put your past behind you as I did mine. Look forwards, not backwards. It’s been twenty years. Move on. Let it go.’
For a moment, Alex could do no more than reel. His breath was stuck in his throat. He felt as though he’d been hit with a hammer. Let it go? Was she serious?
‘I can’t let it go ,’ he said, so scathingly that she flinched. ‘It’s part of who I am and always will be. My entire adult life has been based on it. I never asked for an emotional connection and I certainly don’t want one. I won’t be enslaved by you, Olympia. I won’t be spat out when you’re done, as your mother did to my father. I hate the way you make me feel. The lust I have for you threatens my control and destroys my reason. That’s why I snubbed you the night we met. Why I left you in the stairwell in Switzerland. You make me do things I’m not proud of. Believing I could control it was a mistake. We are a mistake.’
She was as white as a sheet. ‘You can’t mean that.’
‘I do.’ He’d never meant anything more in his life. ‘But it’s not unfixable. You can move out of my house and back to yours. In due course, we will call off the engagement. There’s still plenty of time to come to some arrangement over the baby. There’s no reason we can’t be civilised about this. In the meantime, however, I’d like to be left alone.’
* * *
Stunned and shaken, Olympia left Alex’s study and stumbled to the cloakroom, where she was violently sick. Somehow she made it up the stairs, into the bedroom they were sharing and sank down onto the bed. Outside, the party was in full swing, but how could return to it when her world had just fallen apart? How could she chat and smile and radiate happiness when inside she was in pieces?
He resented her allure.
He hated the way she made him feel.
He didn’t want any sort of relationship with her.
How was she to stand it when, for her, with regards to all these points, the opposite was true?
She’d thought the prenup had caused her excruciating pain, but that was nothing compared with the indescribable agony she was feeling now. It was as if he’d reached into her chest and ripped out her heart. She’d never cried, not once, not even as a kid, yet now tears were leaking out of her eyes like the Haliacmon.
And it wasn’t because her reputation would suffer from a broken engagement. Or because she feared for the future of their child.
It was because she’d fallen in love with him.
Over the last week, he’d come to mean everything to her. He’d given her all the things she’d been missing her entire life. He’d built up her self-esteem and uncovered her worth. He’d fought in her corner and shown her respect. The protectiveness he’d displayed towards their child had assured her that her upbringing hadn’t been normal, and her response to it had not been her fault. He’d made her feel valued, special, cared for.
And to have it suddenly snatched away was like losing a limb.
He’d told her she could have whatever she wanted, but that wasn’t true. She wanted him and he wasn’t hers. But then why would he be? She was a bad return on investment and always had been. What had made her think she deserved to love and be loved anyway? To dream that, like Zander and Mia, she and Alex might find happiness after being brought together by an unexpected pregnancy? How could she have been so deluded?
But those were questions for later, she thought with a sniff and a blow of her nose. She could regret her loyalty, her defence of him and her stupidity another time. Right now, she had to figure out what to do. She couldn’t stay here with a man who didn’t want her. So she’d go back to the party and see it through. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d put on a show while dying inside. And at the end of the night, mercifully soon, she’d pack up her things and stow away on one of the ferries returning the guests to the mainland. Once home she would lick her wounds in private and figure out how to proceed from there.
Giving herself a shake and taking a deep steadying breath, Olympia got to her feet. She powdered her nose, fluffed out her hair and practised her smile until it looked natural not manic. And then, summoning up every drop of strength and composure she possessed, calling on resources she hadn’t had cause to use in a year, she headed downstairs.