CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
P ORTIA SAT AT the end of the row, hands folded over the catalogue in her lap as the auctioneer discussed the finer points of the next item in the sale.
Even though she worked here, she felt out of place today at the famous London auction house.
Usually she was in a back room at a desk, dealing with paperwork. It was only occasionally that she helped in reception or brought refreshments into the hushed, refined rooms where experts met clients.
It wasn’t the wealth of the people around her that made her nervous. It was the fact that there were only a few more items until hers.
Her knee jigged up and down until she forced herself to still, drawing a deep breath. But she couldn’t be calm. So much rode on the sale. If it sold.
Of course it will sell.
It might not be a ‘significant’ painting, much less a masterpiece, but as the valuer said, there was a market for well-painted English landscapes. She’d get something for it.
Would it be enough?
After years of low-paid jobs, always worrying about money, this was her opportunity. With her hard-won savings, and a decent sale price, she’d take the plunge and get herself that university place she’d worked towards.
A degree in art history was hardly a guarantee of a secure career but Portia knew what she wanted.
Fate could steal all your happiness in a moment. She refused to give up this dream at least. It was the one thing that had kept her going.
Instead of being cowed by heartbreaking loss and her father’s vengeful fury, she’d grown more determined to fight for her dreams. Pursue what she felt passionate about.
Portia grimaced. Passion was something she’d left behind long ago. Except for art. That had brought some solace in the dark times.
So it was fitting that a painting might be the means to turn her life around.
Her hands clenched. It was one of fate’s typically nasty tricks that the one painting she’d inherited—presumably because her father had been advised he had to leave her something in his will—was the one painting she’d keep if she could.
The artist had captured the afternoon glow of sunset on old stone, the sparkle of mullioned windows and the froth of pale pink roses that made Cropley Hall look like an illustration from a storybook. Her mother had redesigned the old garden and planted those roses.
During Portia’s childhood it had been a magical place, full of joy and adventure. In those days her mother had been there, and Portia had rarely had much to do with her father.
Now the painting was her only possession that linked her to her mother.
‘And now we come to our last item.’
Adrenaline shot through Portia, her heart kicking so hard she started and the glossy catalogue slid to the floor.
This was it. No time for regrets.
She bent down and retrieved the booklet. By the time she settled back in her seat, bidding had begun. She saw a woman in green raise her hand. Then the auctioneer looked to someone further back and the price crept higher.
There was no bidding frenzy but there were two buyers, then a third. Portia craned her neck to see them. The white-haired man in the loud jacket was one of them, but the bidder at the back of the room remained elusive.
What does it matter who buys it? You can’t vet them to make sure it goes to a good home. You just want the money.
And yet... Her gaze returned to the painting displayed at the front of the room. She felt a tug of regret, a longing for what she’d once had and what might have been.
The sense of loss was so sudden and profound it overwhelmed her. She blinked down at the catalogue with hot eyes.
Memories whirled through her head. Snippets of the past. And with them, a host of emotions, making her heart ache and her stomach churn.
Portia kept her head bowed, struggling against the maelstrom.
It had been years since she’d felt distress this consuming. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Yet that prickling at the back of her nose and the thickening in her throat belied her composure.
By the time she had control of herself it was over. Women reached for handbags. Catalogues were tucked under arms and the noise in the room increased as people chatted and rose from their seats.
She jumped up, about to ask the man beside her about the winning bid on the last item, but he turned to talk to someone on his other side.
Portia stepped out of the row. Phil, the porter, caught her eye and smiled. She hurried over, just in time to catch him before he carried the painting away.
‘How much, Phil? I missed it.’
‘Missed it? With Mr Tomaras buying it? That was a bit of excitement. I didn’t think it would be his sort of thing.’
Her eyes widened at the idea of an ubersuccessful Greek tycoon being interested in her painting. But then Phil mentioned the final bid and that wiped everything else from her mind.
There’d be enough to support her through a degree, or most of it, so long as she worked part-time and was careful with her cash.
Relief buoyed her as she exited into the back rooms and made her way to her desk. Her supervisor had told her to leave early to make up for some recent long days. Even so, it took a while before she was ready to go.
This windfall would change her life. Yet nerves vied with elation. Some sixth sense warned her not to take her good fortune for granted.
Portia shook her head, pushing away that premonition of trouble. She didn’t believe in premonitions. She believed in working hard and pursuing opportunities.
She walked through the elegant front rooms with their exquisitely curated displays of jewellery and fine art. Her steps slowed. Not because she cared about the palpable air of luxury, but because of the remarkable pieces on display. One day maybe, she might work here as an art expert. Or in a gallery or museum.
Excitement burst through the strange wariness that had engulfed her.
It’s going to be all right. Better than all right.
Its going to be wonderful.
She lengthened her stride, clutching her shoulder bag close. She smiled at her colleagues on the reception desk and headed out. The auction house sat back from the street, and she entered the long entrance corridor with landscaped courtyards on either side.
Ahead cars passed, their lights on against the fading December afternoon. She’d almost reached the footpath when a figure stepped out, blocking her way.
The man stood with the light behind him, tall, broad-shouldered, with curling hair that brushed the collar of his short leather jacket. Jeans covered his long legs.
Portia’s heart seemed to stop.
Not out of fear. She was still in one of the world’s most prestigious auction houses, and the chances of being mugged in Mayfair at this time of day were low.
What slammed her to a halt was the overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
But she didn’t know him. He was broader across the shoulders, taller too, and those thighs...
She looked sharply away, rather than peer up at him in the dim light.
The boy she’d known had been all whipcord strength but lanky by comparison with this man. It was just the hair and the jacket that made her think of him. She blamed the painting of Cropley for bringing the past back to life again.
She hitched a shaky breath and stepped to one side, ignoring her rocketing pulse.
He sidestepped too.
‘Pardon.’ She moved to the other side of the corridor just as he moved that way.
Portia paused, deciding it was better to stand and let him enter rather than try dancing around him.
Except he didn’t move, just stood, stopping her exit.
‘Well, well, well. Imagine meeting you here, Princess.’
Heat doused her in a rush that made her cheeks burn. A second later the burn became a chill so absolute it felt like she’d turned to ice.
That voice. Once familiar. But she’d never heard it sound like this. So harsh.
Only one person had ever called her Princess. It had been their secret joke. He’d likened her to Sleeping Beauty, trapped in a castle surrounded by roses, waiting to be woken.
You woke all right. You lost your na?veté quickly.
In the end she’d rescued herself from her thorny prison.
Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her head while her heart beat a sickening tattoo high in her throat.
The clouds that had blocked the daylight filtering through the courtyards must have lifted. Or the staff had noticed how dim the lights were in the walkway and brightened them.
Whatever the reason she saw him clearly now.
Denim blue eyes against olive skin and glossy black hair. The unusual combination had always been incredibly captivating. His remarkable bone structure didn’t hurt either, all honed, spare lines and strong, almost arrogant features. All except for his mouth which was wide and beautifully sculpted.
And incredibly soft.
She remembered the feel of it against hers.
It took every scintilla of self-possession not to press her hand to her chest. She struggled to breathe.
She felt winded. Like on the day after her mother’s funeral when she’d saddled her mother’s horse to escape across the fields and taken a bad tumble at a high gate.
A voice came from far away. It was so reedy it took a moment to recognise it as her own. ‘Lex? What are you doing here?’
The stern lines of his features didn’t soften. The only change was the slight rise of slashing black eyebrows.
As if surprised she’d question him?
Once they’d been...
No, don’t go there.
Because now as her lungs and her brain started working again, she remembered he’d feel no pleasure at seeing her.
Instead of answering he stooped to pick something up.
‘You should take more care of your purse.’
Portia looked down to see her bag in his broad hand. She hadn’t even noticed it drop.
‘As for what I’m doing here.’ Now he smiled, his mouth curling slowly. But it wasn’t a smile of welcome or approval. It looked...sharp. Razor-sharp. ‘I was buying some artwork, what else?’
Of course he’s not here to see you. He didn’t even know you were here.
A man spoke from behind her shoulder. ‘Mr Tomaras, I thought you’d left.’ Portia turned to see Piers Jameson, the director of the auction house. ‘Can I help you with something...?’
She didn’t hear the rest because she was too busy grappling with what he’d said.
Tomaras.
But his name wasn’t Tomaras! It was Moran. Lex Moran.
‘...old acquaintances.’
Portia only caught the last couple of words when both men turned to look at her. Piers Jamieson with an expression of mixed delight and surprise. Lex with an unreadable stare that nevertheless told her that after all this time he hadn’t forgotten. Or forgiven.
‘Well, what a coincidence.’ Jameson gave her an assessing look. ‘I won’t hold up your reunion. But I’ll send you that modern sculpture catalogue, Mr Tomaras.’
The catalogue Portia was in the process of proofreading before publication.
Alone now with this grim stranger, she was tempted to spin around and go back to her desk, using that as an excuse to avoid further conversation.
Except this was her only chance to see Lex, talk to him. They had unfinished business.
The thought made her throat constrict and her stomach quiver. So much had changed since then.
‘You look as wide-eyed as a rabbit in the spotlight.’
There was no humour in his expression, only a piercing yet distant curiosity, as if she were a specimen ready for dissection. Suddenly she wished they hadn’t met. Even though she’d wished, prayed for this opportunity for years.
Of course he doesn’t care. The past is just that, over and done with.
She shrugged. ‘It’s a surprise, seeing you again.’
‘Don’t you mean, seeing me here ? A working-class lout among the well-heeled?’
Her cheeks turned fiery at his sarcastic tone. But who could blame him? It was a direct quote, after all. Her father hadn’t kept his prejudices to himself.
Suddenly Portia was too bone weary to face this.
‘You look like you need reviving. Come on.’
He tucked his hand beneath her elbow and turned towards the street. Instantly her blood fizzed and her pulse leapt. His fingers tightened convulsively around her as if he felt it too, before he eased his grip. She was aware of a swift, sideways glance, so intense it scorched.
So it’s still there, after all this time.
She’d told herself the attraction was no more than a memory. She couldn’t believe the man beside her felt anything but cold curiosity. As for her own feelings... They were too confused to decipher.
Liar.
Portia found herself walking beside him, incredibly aware of his size, his heat, and a tantalising hint of cologne that made her think of white sand beaches in the sunshine and toned male flesh.
A shiver ripped through her and again his hand tightened. Holding her captive or supporting her?
A bubble of laughter rose in her throat and she wondered if it was hysteria. She felt strange, the street and the other pedestrians blurring as if unreal. The only reality was the man beside her and the queasy mix of excitement and distress roiling in her stomach.
They entered a bar, a famous, exorbitantly priced place that Portia had never visited. The furnishings were opulent and the service discreet as they were led to an alcove booth upholstered in smoky grey velvet.
‘What would you like to drink?’
Lex didn’t use her name, she noticed. ‘Water’s fine.’
He turned to the waiter, asking for a glass of wine that she knew by reputation alone. It seemed he’d developed a taste for fine wine in the years since she’d known him. And deep pockets.
Could it be true, what Phil had said? ‘Tomaras? Is that really what you call yourself now?’
Something flashed in his eyes. Something hard and dangerous.
But Portia wasn’t scared of him. What did she have to be scared about? He had never hurt her. Yet that coolly assessing stare felt like a honed blade scraping her skin.
‘It’s my name.’
His voice was deeper than she remembered, burring across her skin and raising goosebumps. Making her aware, at a cellular level, of him as a man . Despite the circumstances, she felt a softening deep inside. The liquid warmth of a woman reacting to a desirable man.
If she were going to be totally honest, she’d felt it from the first, even in that moment of shocked disbelief.
She sat straighter, her voice unintentionally harsh as she fought her own body. ‘Alexandros Tomaras? That’s who you really are?’
It didn’t make sense. She’d known him. Known everything about him. He wasn’t Greek. He was English, with Irish ancestry.
‘That’s who I really am.’ When she didn’t respond he continued with more than a touch of impatience. ‘Shall I show you my passport?’
The waiter arrived with a glass of red, a glass of sparkling iced water with a slice of lime, and some snacks.
Portia almost wished she’d ordered alcohol, something to soothe her strung-out nerves. But she needed all her faculties.
She reached for her glass. ‘If you say it’s your name, then it is. But how?’
‘So you’re interested now ?’
Portia stiffened, hearing his emphasis on the last word. As if she wouldn’t have been interested in the past. It shouldn’t surprise her, yet she wasn’t ready for the blast of distress and regret.
The glass paused halfway to her lips and her eyes sought his. They were narrowed, gleaming slits of... No, she couldn’t read his expression.
Or you don’t want to.
She lifted her shoulders as if his disapproval didn’t matter, then sipped her water, forcing it down her tight throat. Ignoring the pain that bloomed in response to what she knew must be scorn.
He lifted his wineglass, swirled it slightly and inhaled before drinking. Portia tugged her gaze away from that sensuous mouth and the way his throat moved as he swallowed.
With the utmost care, she placed her glass on its silver coaster, her hand reaching for her bag.
‘I found my father.’
Her head jerked up, eyes widening. ‘Your father? Really?’
Excitement made her smile. Lex had never known his father and his mother had been evasive on the subject. She remembered how frustrated that had made him. But her smile faded as she met his unblinking stare. He didn’t look pleased.
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘On the contrary, he was one of the first truly decent people I knew.’
Lex’s gaze drifted to a plate of snacks and he took his time selecting one before popping it into his mouth.
Which gave her time to consider his expression and his words. The implication was clear. That there was no one in his life when they knew each other that he’d call decent .
Including you.
Intellectually Portia had known he might feel that way. Yet his disdain was hard to bear.
‘He was delighted to meet me. It was the best day of my life, discovering him. I have a family now.’
Despite her pain, she couldn’t begrudge him that. Though he’d always been stoic, she’d witnessed what life was like with his difficult mother and knew how he’d yearned to discover the truth about his father.
She’d heard the taunts, not just from her father, who’d claimed he was shifty and idle, inheriting bad ways from an unknown traveller father. Taking their lead from her father, half the locals had been prejudiced against the precocious boy with dark olive skin and a mother who refused to comply with village expectations.
‘I’m glad for you both.’ Was that a flicker of surprise? ‘So you took his name.’
‘Actually, I always had it. It turns out my mother lied. She was married when she had me.’
Portia felt her eyes widen. Lex had grown up with a single mother, using her surname when all the time he was entitled to another. They’d lived in straightened circumstances, sharing a tiny cottage belonging to his mother’s ageing uncle by marriage who worked in the stables at Cropley Hall.
‘I don’t understand.’
He shrugged, the fluid movement dragging her gaze to those imposing shoulders.
‘She left my father without warning. He searched for us for years, mainly in Ireland where she came from and America where she had relatives. He wondered if she’d run away because of postnatal depression and an inability to adjust to a new life in a foreign country.’ He paused. ‘We’ll never know now she’s dead. But she lied and caused us both tremendous pain. Some people are like that.’
Bright eyes bored into hers. There it was, the contempt she expected.
She opened her mouth to explain but words wouldn’t come. How could she explain to this judgemental stranger, this man who’d been so hurt because of her?
Portia had been strong for so long, but the reality of Lex’s disdain punctured something inside her. She felt unbearably weary. What was the point, anyway? He wouldn’t believe her and even if he did it wouldn’t change anything.
But one thing she had to know. ‘Did you come to the auction because you knew I’d be there?’
His grimace answered her. ‘I had no idea you’d be there. I saw the painting of Cropley Hall and decided to buy it.’
She swallowed, the movement jerky. Maybe, after all, he had some fond memories of that time. ‘Why?’
Another shrug. This time the movement looked somehow Mediterranean. As if the boy she’d known had never existed and Alexandros Tomaras had lived all his life in the Greek sunshine.
‘A whim.’ He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘But I’m having second thoughts. I won’t keep it. I never did like the place. Maybe I’ll burn it.’
His tone was soft and even, the look in his eyes deliberately cruel. He knew how much she’d always loved the place, even in those last years under her father’s increasingly stern rule. He understood her love of art too, and how the idea of destroying it horrified her.
Realisation swamped her. Coming here was a mistake. Talking with him would bring no closure, only hurt.
Portia understood his anger but refused to be a whipping boy. She’d had enough of cruel men.
She blotted her lips with a linen napkin and slid from her seat. ‘Thanks for the drink, Alexandros.’ Lex, the boy she’d known, was long gone. ‘I’m glad things worked out well for you.’
She turned and threaded her way through the tables towards the exit, back straight, chin up and without daring to look back.