Mia's Scandal

‘You know him,’ the silent figure beside him broke into the shattering train of his thoughts.

‘Sorry?’ he turned a questioning look on her and took the full weight of her importance to him like a blow to his gut.

‘You know Mario Mattea,’ she repeated, her blue eyes dull and dark in her pale face. ‘Why have you never said?’

Shot down but still functioning, Nikos recognised ruefully as her question pushed him out of one stark blinding revelation straight into the horror of another one. Did he tell her the truth or did he try to pass it off with a flippant comment. Lie, in other words.

He veiled his eyes and went for the half-truth. ‘I know a lot of business people,’ he said with a shrug.

‘Have you met my—Gabriella before?’

‘No.’ And that was honest, Nikos mocked grimly. If he had met Gabriella Mattea before he would have recognised the cold bitch in her and perhaps been able to save Mia

from what just took place. As it was, Nikos knew, right down to his seething twisting gut, he was in trouble here.

‘He’s here in Athens to set up a series of meetings with high-end financiers.’ He chickened out of telling the full truth. ‘The credit crunch has bitten hard into the car industry. Mario is desperate for someone to finance his business and his formula-one team before both sink without a trace.’

‘You mean he’s here for a series of meetings with you, don’t you?’

Nikos let his tense mouth stretch into a brief rueful smile. ‘I’m—one of his best bets to cough up the money.’

‘Are you going to?’

He sent her a glinting look. ‘What do you think?’

‘Because of me?’

‘Yes, because of you.’ And that was the full damn truth.

‘But you can’t do that!’ Surprising him by turning an aghast stare on him, she said, ‘They will know you turned away from them because of what happened tonight and they will blame me for it!’

His grim face toughened. ‘They should have considered that angle when they humiliated my future wife.’

‘I am not going to be your wife!’

‘What are you planning to be, then,’ he struck back, ‘the next Balfour scandal?’

Chapter Eleven

WRONG thing to say. Nikos knew it the moment the smart shot left his mouth.

‘I am not a Balfour,’ Mia denied, hating him for saying that—hating everyone. ‘For why would I want to be a Bianchi or a Balfour?’

‘Then don’t be,’ he persisted. ‘Be a Theakis instead.’

‘So that you can treat me like an unwelcome interloper into your life too?’

‘You would not be an unwelcome interloper.’

Mia released a soft bitter laugh. ‘I am a figure of pity to you right now. Tomorrow I will be a chain tied around your neck. Do you think I don’t know the way that it goes? Gabriella handed me over to my aunt, then walked away from me. She visited once a year for the first ten years of my life. She stopped visiting me when I asked her if she only came to give Tia money for my keep. You wish to hear her answer?’

‘No,’ Nikos muttered.

‘She admitted to my face it was so, then left. Tia’s money came by post from then on.’

A soft curse raked Nikos’s throat. ‘She is a selfish bitch with—’

‘Sì,’ Mia cut in on him quickly because she did not need him to tell her what her own mother was. ‘Oscar was more subtle. He allowed me to stay so long as I hid in the kitchen and played his housekeeper.’