Chapter Six #2
He shook his head with another rumble of laughter.
‘Then I shall live out my existence married to my business. I’ve studied your father enough to see how marrying the wrong woman can be fatal.
He built his own business like I did, but he was too intent on having a good time and maintaining that pointless vendetta with the Antoniadises to protect it.
If your brother hadn’t stepped in and taken control, you could all have lost everything. ’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ she agreed with an easiness she no longer felt on the inside.
‘But marriage wasn’t the cause of it. I hate Rebecca as much as anyone, but she’s not to blame.
Life has always been one big party to him.
My father thinks with his cock—when he’s not screwing it into any woman who catches his eye, he’s waving it at his rivals…
’ Her voice trailed away, and she whispered, ‘But you already know that.’
The lightness that had sparkled in Draco’s eyes throughout their conversation had vanished.
‘The day it happened, my mother’s father died.
Your father took advantage of her grief but he never screwed her.
It never went that far, and yet it was she who lost her livelihood and her home and had her name blackened. ’
She felt the last of the lightness drain out of her, her heart tightening the way it always did whenever she thought of Cora Manolis.
‘I’m sorry. Rebecca spoke so vilely about her, and my father has had so many affairs and flings over the years…
’ She shook her head to clear a sickening image that had flashed in her mind, of the time she’d gone to the spa of their yacht when they’d been on a family holiday and caught her father with one of the crew.
He’d barely broken his stride, telling her to come back in five minutes.
Her appetite gone, she put her cutlery down and finished what she’d been saying. ‘I assumed the same thing happened to your mother as it did to all the others.’
Athena, Draco knew, was an expert at faking contrition. There was nothing fake about the remorse evident in her green eyes now.
‘You were a child,’ he said evenly, speaking through a rock that seemed to have lodged itself in his throat.
‘I know, but that doesn’t excuse how I spoke about her that time. I really am sorry for that.’
‘You’ve already apologised.’
‘I just felt it needed saying again.’
‘Put it behind you. I have.’
Her stare, so much more intelligent than she wanted people to believe, intensified. ‘Have you really?’
There was an unbearable impulse tingling in his fingers to cover her hand. He could still feel the imprint on his skin from where her hand had slipped into his while she’d slept. ‘Yes.’ He took a heavy breath. ‘My mother would want me to put it behind me. She still thinks the world of you.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Really?’
He nodded, would have passed on the message his mother had asked of him if the rock in his throat hadn’t expanded.
‘I…’ Now it was as if the same rock had lodged in her throat. ‘I still think the world of her too.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be sure to tell her that.’
‘Thank you.’ Her lips pulled together before forming a tremulous smile. ‘She must be so proud of you.’
‘Probably the proudest mother in Greece.’
‘I knew it.’ Her smile softened into something so beautiful his heart clenched. ‘She used to tell me about you. Lamb was your favourite food.’
‘You remember that?’ Of everything she’d said to shock him, this rose straight to the top.
Draco’s early memories were like snapshots taken with an out-of-focus camera.
He couldn’t remember any conversations below the age of seven, maybe even eight, let alone the favourite food of someone he’d never met, and it came to him that not only did Athena have a prodigious memory but that she really had loved his mother.
‘I don’t know why, but that always stuck with me. And…’ she hesitated a moment ‘…that your father died before you were born.’
Dumbstruck, it took a beat for him to respond. ‘Yes. There was an accident at sea—he was a fisherman.’ But he could see from the expression in her eyes that she already knew this. That she remembered his mother telling her.
‘Is that why you have her surname?’
‘Yes. She made that choice when I was born because she knew the two of us would be a unit until I became an adult.’
Her head made a slow inclination, the green eyes that saw much more than she wanted people to believe flickering with her thoughts.
‘Why did you buy my father’s company, Draco?
It’s so far apart from your other businesses that it might as well be from the moon, and from what I’ve read it’s the only business in your portfolio you haven’t built from the ground up. Did you buy it to destroy my father?’
He could lie or refuse to answer but there was something in the atmosphere of honesty cloaking them that forced his tongue to speak the truth.
‘I wanted to. Destroying your father was my prime motivator in those early years. I used to dream of having enough money to force a buyout of Tsaliki Shipping. I was going to dismantle it so everything your father had built would be gone and his legacy no longer existed.’
‘Do you still intend to do that?’
‘Those were dreams fuelled by fury and bitterness. I’m not going to put tens of thousands of people’s jobs at risk for revenge. I’m still going to erase his legacy, but in a way that will only injure him.’ He smiled at the thought. ‘And injure his wife.’
‘How?’
He narrowed his eyes meditatively. ‘Can I trust you?’
‘No.’
Her reply was so immediate and sparky and decisive that amusement burst free. ‘Then you will have to wait like everyone else.’
The creasing of Draco’s eyes lifted Athena’s spirits straight back up and loosened the tightness that had been coiling her insides again, the creasing a signal that she could move on from a conversation that was heavier—much heavier—than she ever allowed.
As wonderful as she was starting to admit to finding Draco, this was unfamiliar territory and she was struggling enough pretending her whole body wasn’t alive with awareness of him and that if she moved her foot two inches it wouldn’t brush against his, without wishing a plague on her father and Rebecca for the way they’d treated Cora and without trying to decipher how it felt to be exchanging confidences with someone because she never, ever exchanged confidences.
It was disconcerting how badly she wanted to know even more about Draco, how there had to be a dozen questions about his life queueing on her tongue, and she bit them all back to produce a wide smile and airily said, ‘I can wait until the launch party, no problem.’
The expression on his face was the giveaway and she laughed, a laughter that came from her belly and not her throat like her laughs normally did.
‘What else could it be?’ she giggled when she had better control of herself.
‘I thought you were excluding me from the planning meetings out of spite but it’s because you don’t want me to know what you’re up to, isn’t it—don’t tell me!
’ she hastened to add when he opened his mouth.
‘I’m terrible at keeping secrets. And don’t confirm or deny about the party, even though I know it has to be that, seeing as anyone who’s anyone is invited, including my father and Rebecca…
’ A thought occurred to her. ‘When you say injure…’
He gave a rueful half-smile. ‘Injure their pride. Nothing more.’
‘You promise?’
Sincerity rang from his eyes. ‘I promise.’
Satisfied, she grinned and picked up her cutlery.
‘You don’t care?’ There was none of the contempt he usually showed when he asked if she cared about something, only curiosity.
Appetite regained, she piled the dissolve-on-the-tongue cod onto her fork. ‘After the way they treated your mother, they deserve whatever it is you’re planning to throw at them.’
His piercing stare held hers, the intensity of it sending electricity through her skin. And then he smiled. ‘You are constantly full of surprises.’
She winked. ‘I like to keep people on their toes.’
‘You certainly keep me on mine,’ he murmured.
The tingles of electricity increased.
They finished their meal with light, easy conversation that steered well away from anything else that was remotely personal, Athena doing her best to entertain him so she could hear that wonderful deep rumble of laughter again, whilst also doing her best to pretend her heart wasn’t racing and that there wasn’t a heated charge flowing through her veins.
When their waiter appeared to clear their table she experienced a pang of mingled relief and regret that their meal was coming to an end.
The pang deepened when she caught Draco indicating something with his eyes which the waiter nodded at before carrying their plates away without asking if they would like to see the dessert menu.
She lifted her chin and squashed the undeniable disappointment. She had nothing to be disappointed about. This wasn’t a date—she would never have agreed to it if it had been. Draco had taken her out to cheer her up out of a sense of duty and now his duty was done he…
A sparkling flame caught her eye and cut away her despondent thoughts. One of the waitresses had stepped onto the terrace carrying a plate with a chocolate bomb on it, one of those sparkler candles in its centre. To Athena’s astonishment, the waitress placed it in front of her.
Gobsmacked, she met Draco’s stare.
He smiled and softly said, ‘I know it’s a day late, but Happy Birthday, Athena.’