From Dirt to Diamonds

‘Which is it to be, Kat?’ Angelos’s voice pierced her. ‘You or I to tell that deluded English lordling of yours that you’re a thief, a liar and a whore?’

‘I never offered myself to you! Never! And you got your watch back!’ she gritted. ‘You got it back!’

A harsh rasp escaped him. Black rage showed in his face. ‘You claimed it as payment. Painted me as a man who pays for sex. You stole from me, Kat, and you lied about me. And you thought you could get away with it!’

Her hands were clenched. Heart hammering in her chest.

‘You destroyed me! You took everything—everything from me! You took my livelihood, my career, even the lousy flea-pit I lived in! You took everything! You told me you’d finish me, and you did!’

Long lashes dipped down over his eyes. His voice was edged like a sharpened blade. ‘But you didn’t stay finished, did you, Kat? You’ve crawled back. And you’re more ambitious than ever! But I won’t permit you t

o make a fool of that poor, hapless sap of yours! He deserves the truth about you!’

‘No.’ Her rejection was absolute. She could not do it to Giles—could not condemn him to marry a woman like Kat, knowing her to be Kat, knowing what she was, where she came from, what she had done …

And even though she would—must!—refuse to marry him, she could not bear to see the expression in his eyes when he realised how she had deceived him.

‘No,’ she said again, her voice tight as wire, garroting her.

Heaviness crushed her. Truth, insistent and brutal, forced itself upon her. Like blows on her head. Reality slammed into her and hatred burned in her eyes for Angelos Petrakos. Hatred not just for him, but for what he was forcing on her—making her accept, bitterly, reluctantly. She could not deceive poor Giles, could not use him the way she had—for what else could it ever have been to let him marry a woman not knowing what she once had been?

The garrote tightened around her neck, choking her.

Angelos could see her expression, see her horror, her fury. Something shifted in his eyes again, curved the thinned line of his mouth.

‘Or you can have one more choice, Kat,’ he said. His eyes glittered darkly with black fire. ‘I’ll let you keep the fiction you’ve created about yourself, but if you haven’t the guts to tell him that you’re really Kat Jones then you can release him from your toils another way.’ The malevolent glitter of his eyes speared her. ‘Tell him you’ve changed your mind about marrying him.’

‘Why would he believe me?’ She forced the words from her narrowed throat.

He smiled, his mouth mocking, obsidian eyes alight with an unholy light. ‘Why? Because, Kat, the love of your life has just walked back into it …’

She could only stare. ‘You’re insane,’ she breathed.

‘An effective fiction—and it will serve the purpose I intend. To convince him, Kat, and to remove yourself from his vicinity after you’ve told him that—alas—you can no longer marry him, you’ll come to me. Spend the night at my hotel.’

‘I will never do that—never!’ Her face and her voice were stark.

‘You prefer the alternative? For him to know who you really are? Not that sanitised, whitewashed fairy tale you’ve concocted about yourself?’ He got to his feet, walked to the door, and as he twisted the handle he turned. ‘Be grateful that I make you this offer. This way the Honourable Giles need never know about Kat Jones. And once he’s free from you, you can keep your shiny new image, your lucrative new career.’ He paused, letting his gaze rest on her one more time, his eyes like granite.

‘The choice is yours, Kat. And you have twenty-four hours in which to make it. If you’re not at my hotel tomorrow evening at nine I shall know what you’ve chosen—and act accordingly.’

Then he was gone.

Alone, Thea stood quite, quite still. Then slowly, very slowly, she wrapped her arms about her body. Very, very tight. In front of her the pit stood gaping. And she had no choice, no choice at all, but to step into it.

She could feel herself falling, feel the air being sucked from her lungs as she plummeted down into the pit that Angelos Petrakos had opened beneath her feet. Her guts were hollowed out, muscles in her legs seizing up. She was in some kind of shock, she knew. In disbelieving, aghast denial—desperately trying not to believe what had just happened and yet knowing with every particle of her being that it was true.

Angelos Petrakos had destroyed her—again.

Her arms clutched around her body. Her eyes were bleached with stricken emotion.

She might not love Giles—what was love? She’d never known it in her life—but she cared for him, and she would never, never hurt him by telling him how she had deceived him. She had no choice—she must let him go. Let go her dream—the one that she had yearned for, striven for, and so very, very nearly achieved.

Anguish at what she was losing twisted in her. Then, in its wake, came anger—blind and hot, seeking a target. She heard Angelos Petrakos’s caustic voice— ’You didn’t stay finished, did you?’

No, she hadn’t! Despite everything—everything he’d done to her—she’d got out of the pit he’d thrown her into! Made a new life for herself!

Her eyes hardened and she loosed her protective cradling of her body, her hands instead forming fists, tensed at her sides. She lifted her chin, unseeing as her gaze burned with the bright, intense light of pure will, pure determination. Resolution seared through her.