Bridal Bargains

It happened sooner rather than later, too. Unexpected and unprepared for it, she walked out of the chemist shop armed with her only purchase—and stopped dead in her tracks as she came face to face with her aunt.

‘Aunt Laura?’ she gasped in delighted surprise.

Dressed to her usual sharp, immaculate standard, Aunt Laura looked so thoroughly disconcerted to see Claire standing there that there was a heart-stopping moment when Claire actually suspected she was going to turn away as if she didn’t know her!

‘Aunt Laura? It’s me—Claire,’ she inserted hurriedly, feeling just a little stupid for declaring herself like that.

Her aunt must have thought so too, because her expression was derisive. ‘I know it’s you,’ she sighed. ‘I’m not blind.’

But she had been going to turn away from her; Claire was certain about that now. And it hurt. Hurt almost as much as the realisation that if her aunt was right here in Rafina, then Andreas knew about it but hadn’t bothered to tell her.

Her aunt was looking her over now, the derision more pronounced as her cool grey eyes took in the quality of Claire’s casual linen jacket worn with a simple straight skirt and skinny top that still managed to shriek designer at her.

‘Well, you certainly fell on your feet,’ she commented tightly. ‘You’ve caught yourself a rich man with a rich lifestyle—so who the hell can blame you for not caring if it is all just one big sham?’

‘It isn’t a sham,’ Claire denied, stunned by the bitterness filtering through her aunt’s voice. ‘We’re in love with each other.’

‘Love?’ Her aunt made a scoffing sound. ‘A man like Andreas Markopoulou doesn’t fall in love, Claire. He makes clear-cut, coldly calculating business decisions.’

‘Stop it,’ she responded, not understanding why her aunt was being so nasty. Besides Melanie, they were the only living relatives either of them had left in the world. Surely it had to count for something? But then, it never had before, had it? Claire reminded herself heavily. ‘Andreas is your boss,’ she said a little shakily. ‘I thought you admired and respected him.’

‘My—what?’ Aunt Laura gasped, staring at her niece as if she’d grown an extra head. ‘He isn’t my boss,’ she denied. ‘Where the hell did you get that idea from?’

It was like standing on the edge of a precipice; Claire felt a frightening tingling sensation slither through her body right down to her toes. ‘Don’t play games with me.’ She frowned. Why else would they bump into each other here, in Andreas’s home town of all places? ‘You were both on your way abroad on a business trip the first time I met him!’

‘Is that what he told you?’ Claire’s own confused expression gave her aunt the answer to that question, and she huffed out a tightly sardonic laugh. ‘You have to give it to the ruthless swine,’ she allowed. ‘He doesn’t miss a trick. Has he told you anything, Claire?’ she then asked cynically. ‘Or has the smooth, slick devil managed to con you into his life and into his bed, and get what he really wanted from you—which was really only ever Melanie—without having to let a single family skeleton out of the family closet?’

She fell off that precipice. Standing there beneath the Greek winter-blue sky and with her feet planted firmly on solid earth, she felt herself beginning to fall a long, long way into a cold, dark place as she heard herself whisper, ‘What are you talking about?’

Aunt Laura’s angry gaze shifted restlessly away as if she was trying to decide whether to say any more. Then she looked back at Claire—and her face hardened. ‘Why not?’ she decided. ‘He deserves his come-uppance, and I owe him one. So, come on …’ she urged. ‘Let’s find somewhere less public for this, because you’re in for a bad shock, and by the look of you it may be better if you receive it sitting down …’

Nikos kept sending her strange glances via his mirror as he drove her home. Claire didn’t really blame him for looking at her like that. For the bright-eyed, happy person he had dropped off at the shops only an hour before had gone, and in her place was someone else entirely: a sad, pale, haunted-looking creature he had once seen before, lying in a road after she had been knocked down.

‘Are you all right, kyria?’ he enquired concernedly.

Claire’s eyelashes flickered in an attempt to bring her glazed eyes into focus, but she wasn’t very successful. ‘Yes,’ she nodded, and tried to swallow the huge lump that was blocking her throat—she wasn’t very successful there either. ‘A small headache, that’s all. I’ll be fine once I get back and take something for it.’

But she wasn’t going to be fine. She knew it—and perhaps Nikos knew it, because she saw him lift his mobile phone to his ear and begin talking in Greek just before she shut herself away inside her own head again.

He was calling Andreas, she was sure. In a way she was glad. For the quicker Andreas was brought back to the house to find out what was the matter with her, the quicker she could leave it.

It wasn’t far from Rafina to the house. Fifteen minutes at most. As Nikos drew the car to a stop, Claire climbed out, walked in through the front door and up the stairs without so much as glancing sideways.

In her room—her room, not the one she had been sharing with Andreas for the last few months or so—she came to a stop in the middle of the carpet, then coldly and precisely began stripping off the casual but chic clothes she was wearing. Leaving them to lie where they fell, she then wal

ked naked into the dressing room hung with the kind of clothes most women only dreamed of owning. When she came back out again a few minutes later, she was wearing her old jeans and a tee shirt. In her arms she carried the rest of the clothes that she had brought with her from London and never worn since.

Now she was shutting the door on the extravagant dressing room knowing that she would never be wearing a single garment in there again.

For he could pay through the teeth for the privilege of having Melanie for his daughter, but he would never pay for the privilege of having Claire again!

She heard a car come racing up the driveway as she placed the stack of clothes on the bed, ready for packing. It was Andreas, she was sure of it, though who he had got to bring him home she had no idea—nor cared. By the time he swung in through her bedroom door, she was just placing her rings in the little velvet jewellery box where she kept all of the things his grandmother had given her.

She didn’t bother to turn and look at him, but could sense him taking in at a glance the mound of discarded clothes on the floor and what she was now wearing. Only a fool would have missed the significance in the change, and Andreas was no fool.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Explain to me what this is about.’

‘I’m leaving,’ she said. Not, I’m leaving you, for she no longer acknowledged there was a him to leave. The man wasn’t human. He was cast from some hard, impenetrable metal that gave him the will to do unspeakable things just to get his own way.