From Dirt to Diamonds

Did he see it in her eyes? He must have. Suddenly his eyes narrowed, as if she had done something to surprise him. Or remind him.

‘You still don’t like it, do you?’ he observed. ‘You don’t like being looked at.’ He took another, ruminative mouthful of his whisky. ‘It was what I noticed about you when you auditioned for the Monte Carlo campaign. That you don’t like being looked at.’ His expression changed minutely, and it seemed to Thea that his stance eased. ‘Curious,’ he said.

His eyes rested again on her face. She schooled her expression to be immobile, feeling the muscles in her body tighten. Stop looking at me! she wanted to scream at him.

He could see her tension, snapping from her like static. Felt himself respond to it. Immediately he clamped it down. If there was one thing he must not do it was respond to her! Yet memory crowded him, vivid and searing. She had stood just there, in that very spot.

Offering me her body. Letting me touch her, caress her … kiss her.

Like a guillotine falling, he cut the memory. With a jerking movement, he tossed the last of the whisky down, then replaced the tumbler on the tray.

‘Let’s go.’

She stared.

‘Dinner,’ he elaborated. ‘To show the world you are keeping me company. That is, after all, your purpose here.’

She made no rejoinder to his sardonic remark, merely setting down her untouched glass and picking up her handbag. Stiffly she followed him from the room. She had dressed neutrally, in an aubergine-coloured dress that would do in most situations. Her hair was in its customary chignon, her make-up subdued.

Déjà vu was hitting her over and over again. Following Angelos Petrakos down to the hotel dining room was what she had done five years ago, but this time she was not fazed by her surroundings. She took them in her stride, along with the attentiveness of the waiters, murmuring her thanks and picking up her menu. She glanced down it with confidence—these days to her French menus were not incomprehensible and daunting. She glanced around. The décor was the same. Angelos Petrakos was the same. But she—she was different. Kat Jones had been ignorant—fatally ignorant. Oh, not of wine waiters and French menus. But of something that had proved her total undoing.

A strange look came into Thea’s eye.

What if I’d just slapped him when he came on to me that nightmare night? Somehow dragged myself out of that zombie state he reduced me to when he kissed me and slapped him so hard that even he, in his colossal arrogance, would have got the message. That I wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t ‘leading him on’?

Would it have saved her? she wondered.

No—his monstrous ego would have taken offence at that, as well. He would never have given me that job back. I’d have been thrown out all the same, whatever I’d done.

Whatever I hadn’t done …

Bitterness was like gall in her throat.

The waiter was hovering, and she made her selection. ‘The grilled sole, please, with a green salad.’

‘Is that all you intend to eat?’ Angelos Petrakos’s harsh tones cut across the table.

‘Yes,’ she replied. She said nothing more as he gave his own order, followed by a discussion with the sommelier. Then his eyes came back to her. She endured his surveillance.

‘You’re not as thin,’ he remarked.

‘These days I can afford food,’ she said.

‘Looking for sympathy, Kat?’ he drawled.

‘From you?’ she returned scathingly.

‘Still the mouth,’ he observed. ‘Do you really never learn, Kat?’

‘Only the important things. But then, I had a good teacher,’ she said. Her eyes were like poison darts.

‘But then,’ he echoed deliberately, ‘you were in urgent need of a lesson …’

She felt her anger rise, felt it heat her veins—and then, with absolute control, she forced it down. She reached for her water.

‘Still no wine?’

‘No.’