Chapter Seven
Five Days Later…
Paris buzzed with an undercurrent of activity. Lights flickered on every street. The Eiffel Tower blazed in its night-time illuminated splendour.
Poppy reached for her hot chocolate, held it between her palms, and sipped.
She should be frantic—worried.
Tonight was the Versailles Masked Ball, and she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t dressed. She sat on the wraparound balcony of Konstantinos’s penthouse Parisian home, in her fluffy white towelling robe, and her flannel PJs.
Tonight, the PR facade would be back in play for all to see. They would appear united. A team.
They were not united. He didn’t want to talk. He hadn’t in the car. He hadn’t before. But she needed to. She needed to talk to him. Tonight. Before they went back into the spotlight.
She’d upset Konstantinos, she knew, but she’d upset herself, too.
She was upset.
Everything had been moving so fast, from being on the run, to capture, to her imprisonment. She hadn’t had a moment to breathe. To think. She’d just reacted. Responded. To him.
The last few days without him… He’d avoided her.
Tangled himself in immovable meetings. Supposedly.
But she understood what he was doing. It would be easy for her to do it.
Distract herself from what had happened.
What was happening. But she had thought about it.
She’d made herself think. Analyse her every decision.
Control. That night at the ballet, they’d both demanded it, locked behind their walls, guarded by the impenetrable need to win it from the other. But their marriage was over. There was no winning. There was no going back. They needed to be adults about this, and…talk.
‘Why aren’t you dressed?’
She turned, and there he stood. His navy-blue tie wrenched free from his throat, exposing the four undone buttons of his crumpled white shirt.
‘Why aren’t you?’ she countered.
‘I’m not dressed,’ he said, stepping onto the balcony, ‘because I was informed you’d sent the team of stylists away, and were sitting in your pyjamas out here, staring into the void.’
‘I wasn’t ready for them.’
‘And is the reason you’re not ready out there?’ he asked, waving to the sky. ‘What exactly are you waiting for?’
She swallowed. ‘You.’
His nostrils flared. ‘Me?’
‘We need to talk.’
His gaze flicked to the silver face of the watch on his wrist. ‘There is no time to talk.’
Her eyes travelled over the tightness in his shoulders, making them appear broader—bigger.
‘We need to make time.’
He stepped closer. ‘And what is it you wish to speak about?’ His voice snapped sharply like a thwacked belt. ‘Do you want to tell me I’m an unfaithful bastard again? Do you want to tell me how much you hate me? Do you want to talk about Isabella?’
‘Why would I want to talk about her?’
‘Because she is the woman you believe I was unfaithful with.’ His whole body radiated with a barely contained energy.
‘And are you now sick to your stomach, Poppy, that you let me put my treacherous fingers on your body?’ He took a step closer.
‘Does it make you ill? How such a cruel man, a lying bastard, could make you come so sweetly?’
‘I…’ she almost choked. So consumed had she been by protecting herself. Safeguarding herself with contracts and rules… She’d thought it, but she hadn’t told him she believed him.
‘I know you weren’t unfaithful.’
‘You know—’ his face twisted ‘—what?’
‘Isabella—she’s your PA—’
‘Was,’ he corrected. ‘I let her go the day my father died.’
He’d let her go? She shook it off. It didn’t matter.
‘You were working together…’ she continued, picking up her train of thought. ‘She may have wanted you—who doesn’t want you?’
‘My wife,’ he countered too quickly.
Her throat constricted. She did want him. Physically, at least.
‘I know you pushed her away… I believe you.’
He didn’t reply, but his eyes were shuttered.
There was just…nothing.
‘I’m sorry about your dad, Konstantinos. I’m sorry he died and—’
‘I do not need your condolences,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘I require you to get dressed.’
‘I will.’ She swallowed. Her body was too tight. Too conflicted. This wasn’t how she’d imagined this conversation would go. She didn’t want it to be like this. ‘After you tell me how long he was sick for.’
‘My father?’
Neck stiff, she nodded.
‘What does it matter?’
‘I want to know.’
‘Months. Pancreatic cancer.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she breathed, because she was. ‘I know you hated him,’ she said, because they both hated their fathers…this she knew.
They hadn’t swapped stories of trauma before bed, but they knew the facts that mattered to each other.
The bits that had brokered the terms of their marriage.
She understood his relationship was complicated with his father.
So was hers. Her father was unfaithful. His was a cruel tyrant.
But still, she’d grieved for her father.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked quietly, because she needed to know—to understand why he kept a secret from her he hadn’t needed to.
His jaw firmed to a shadowed line. ‘Your behaviour—you were sick. You didn’t need to know. What would it have achieved to tell you a man you cared nothing for was dying? I needed closure from his death. You would have gained nothing from the knowledge of his passing.’
‘Did you get it?’ she asked. ‘Closure?’
He shook his head. A single swipe.
She sighed. Whatever his reasons were for not telling her about his father, he had no justifiable excuse for withdrawing from her over Isaak’s death. His decision to do that, it would hurt her for ever.
‘Were you ever going to tell me he was ill?’
He stared at her. His gaze was empty. Vacant. But for the first time, Poppy noticed the bruises beneath his eyes.
‘The day he died,’ he said flatly, ‘I was going to tell you about my father, but you’d vanished.’
His words were a knife in her chest.
He’d needed her, and she hadn’t tried to talk to him.
She hadn’t tried to communicate with him at all.
She’d left him all alone.
He’d had no one.
She was no better than Konstantinos, was she?
She was to blame for the end of their marriage as much as he was.
He turned on his heel.
‘Get dressed, Poppy.’
The string quartet’s song echoed from the high vaulted ceilings. It kept time with the clink of glasses and complemented the hum of conversations spoken from painted lips to ears. Discussions that only happened in private where deals were brokered with champagne and music.
Conversations Konstantinos hadn’t been a part of for too long.
He understood tonight was the perfect way to reintroduce himself into rooms he hadn’t wanted to grace without her.
Tonight the press was locked out.
The tall golden gates had closed behind them and shut them out.
This ball was only for the élite. A secret event.
There were two yearly masquerade balls at the palace.
One was for the public, with tiered tickets.
This ball did not have tiers. It did not have tickets printed from black and white machines, but invitations delivered by white-gloved hands in black velvet envelopes with the words written in gold silk.
He should pay attention.
He was present, but he wasn’t here.
What had happened on the balcony. Her confession. She believed him. It had shaken him. He was still shaken, because he didn’t know what it meant. She trusted he’d kept his vows, and yet everything was still the same.
She was still leaving him.
Do you want her to stay?
He repressed the growl building in his chest.
He wanted her to want to stay. To admit she was wrong. To admit he hadn’t broken his promise to be faithful. To be the man she could rely on. He wanted her to regret her decision to leave. Regret the day she’d turned her back on him.
You couldn’t protect her or Isaak. Why would she regret walking away from a man who couldn’t protect his family?
He’d done all he could.
She was alive.
Konstantinos understood he shouldn’t stand here alone.
He should ‘work’ the room. But he looked at only her.
She was faultless. Perfection. And she blinded him to the sea of bodies surrounding her.
She sparkled beneath the teardrop-diamond chandeliers. Her throat was bare, his mark healed, or concealed, he didn’t know.
A cape, intricately embellished with sequins and crystals, guarded her silhouette from the pointed flourishes at her shoulders to sweep to the floor to meet the spike of a gold heel. The gold sequinned gown beneath accentuated every line. Every dip of her body.
It was silk, gold armour.
He was too far away to hear what she was saying, but he watched her lips move. Unpainted, they glistened with the sheer shine of the moisture from the tip of her pink tongue. He watched it disappear. Her lips meet. He watched her head lift. Turn. And behind her sequinned mask, her eyes met his.
All night, she’d done her duty. Kept her promise.
She’d worked the room. Danced. Talked. Smiled.
She did not smile now.
The current between them pulsed too strongly. Too heavily.
It was magnetic. The drag, urging him closer.
Like in London?
No. In London it had been an explosion of repressed desire. Now? He desired his wife. He wanted her, just as desperately. Just as viscerally. But it wasn’t like their first time together.
He’d never intended to take her to bed in London.
He’d never intended to keep her in it until they both came up for air, exhilarated.
Exhausted. Only to do it again. And again, because as soon as she’d agreed to an affair—agreed to let him taste the body he’d coveted for months—he’d lost the fight to stay away from her.
But this was…different.
A desire intensified by time—by knowing her more intimately than he knew himself.
Their desire…trust intensified it. It always had. They understood in this room full of strangers: they had each other. And they knew they had each other’s back.
He was conflicted by that truth.
She made him conflicted. She hadn’t needed proof of his fidelity. She’d taken him at his word and needed nothing else. And yet she needed her contract. Her divorce.
Konstantinos longed to tear his eyes from hers. To feign indifference. But he couldn’t.
Relief eased his shoulders as her eyes dipped back to the companion at her side.
A blur of purple beside her. Her white teeth appeared from behind lifting lips.
She nodded. Moved. Claimed two glasses of champagne from a passing server.
She walked beneath frescos painted on the vaulted ceilings.
The dangling lights of chandeliers guided her with every footfall.
The hall of mirrors created an optical feast of light.
It made her image endless.
She stood in front of him. Handed him a glass of champagne. He reached for it. They paused. Their hands aloft. Their fingers met.
It burnt.
‘The fireworks are about to begin.’ He nodded towards the black-waistcoated hosts, handing gold-cupped candles to gloved hands beside the exit at the end of the hall.
‘We should make our way outside,’ he said, because her scent…
It was everywhere. He needed air. He needed out.
He needed to put space and people between them.
‘Let’s drink our champagne first.’ She took a slow, controlled sip. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘I’m sorry you thought you couldn’t tell me about your father.’
‘I do not need your apologies, glikia mou,’ he dismissed with a flick of his wrist. But his chest. It spasmed. At her proximity. Her sincerity.
For days, Konstantinos had kept his distance.
Locked himself in his world of boats and business.
He’d kept away from her because he’d wanted her to pine—to yearn.
He’d been waiting for something. A call, a text to tell him she needed more than his hands.
His fingers. She needed him. But she hadn’t called.
She had not texted. His team had. They’d told him.
There she sat, all alone, despondent, looking out at a view with eyes that did not look. Did not see.
He’d seen her this way too many times. He’d watched her from the doorway of too many rooms when she’d refused to speak, to get dressed.
He’d watched his mother do the same. Refuse to eat, talk—get dressed. He’d gone to his mother and sat at her knee. Waited for her to see him. She never had. No matter what he said—how many times he tried to hold her.
Physical comfort was nothing but a physical display of emotion that helped no one.
Physical comfort would not have helped Poppy. She’d needed the professionals his mother hadn’t had. She had not needed his arms.
But he didn’t want to see Poppy like that again. Lost.
But when he’d seen her tonight… She was…calm. At peace. So different from the Poppy he’d been confronted with every day after Isaak’s death.
She wasn’t sad any more.
She wasn’t lost to despair.
She was not like his mother. She had felt her feelings and dealt with them. She had not been consumed by them. They had not killed her.
His eyes travelled over her mask. Her face was in two halves.
One half was made of hard gold and crystals, the other…
His eyes lingered on her mouth. So soft.
So vulnerable. Had she always had two halves?
Yes, she was vulnerable—soft—but so strong was she, to have felt her grief—mourned so hard—and yet here she was. Fighting.
‘But I’m sorr—’
‘Do not apologise again.’ Konstantinos placed his glass down on a nearby table. ‘I don’t want or need it. We are here. The night is almost over. Tonight was a success. That is all that matters.’ He moved towards the few remaining people leaving.
Fingers, featherlight, caught his wrist.
She shook her head, her eyes flicking to the hosts gathering everyone still lingering, and leading them out into the garden for the night’s finale.
She put her finger to her lips. Her hand moved. Her fingers speared between his, and led him through the arched exit behind them.
And he let her lead him into the dark.
A windowless antechamber.
Her breath quickened as did his.
‘Stay quiet,’ she whispered.
‘Why are we hiding?’ he whispered back.
She held a finger to her lips.
Curiosity assaulted him, so he played along.
He didn’t speak again, nor did she.
They listened.
The baroque music from the string quartet faded in the adjoining room.
The lights dimmed.
And in the dark, he stayed hidden with her.
Konstantinos waited for her to tell him why she wanted to hide with him, because it didn’t feel sexual. It did not feel like a promise of the delights the dark could give them.
They stood, side by side, in a darkened corner, going nowhere.
And somehow…
It felt like escape.