From Dirt to Diamonds

Then he spoke.

‘Go on, Kat,’ he said. His voice was measured, but with a note in it that curdled her. ‘“When out in the street was …”?’

She wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t. Heard again the sick, twisted words that Mike had spoken to her so long ago.

‘Tell me, Kat.’ Angelos’s voice pulled her back to the present. ‘Why did you steal from me? Not out of temper and pique—so why? What made you risk breaking the law, a gaol sentence—worse?’ His mouth twisted. ‘My anger at you?’

Her face contorted. Words broke from her. ‘I was desperate, that’s why! I needed money, that’s why! That’s why I came to your suite! That’s why I crawled to you, grovelled to you and begged you to give me back that job you’d taken away on a bloody whim! Because I needed money! Money the job would pay me—money I could give to a sick psycho so he wouldn’t take his razor to me! He was waiting for me downstairs, on the street outside the hotel, and I had to give him something. Either the promise of a lucrative job so I could use the money to pay him with—or something else. Anything else! Anything that would have placated him—bought me time! Kept his razor off my face!’

For an endless moment there was complete silence. Then she began to shake.

Slowly, as if her arms weighed heavy like lead, she wrapped them around her body, as if to hold herself upright. Angelos stepped forward. His hands closed around her arms as they bound her. Words came from his mouth, but she did not understand them. Then he spoke again, in English this time. His voice was controlled. Very, very controlled.

‘Who was this, Kat? Who was threatening you?’

She spoke through gritted teeth, a throat that would hardly let breath pass. Her eyes stared past Angelos, back into the past.

‘His name was Mike, and he was a photographer. He was always creepy, but a friend persuaded me to let him do my first model portfolio. What he wanted …’ her voice shook a moment ‘… was to take porn shots—and to pimp me to other men. If didn’t co-operate he … he … threatened to cut my face. I knew he would carry out his threat.’ She swallowed. It was like swallowing glass. ‘Because he’d already cut my friend—scarred her for life, to punish her. So—so I had to buy him off. It was all I could do. I needed that job you’d offered me. It would have paid me enough money to keep him happy for a while. When you kicked me off the shoot I came to you to beg for it back. When you refused, I panicked—I stole your watch. It was something—anything—to give to Mike, waiting outside on his motorbike. I knew it would be worth a few thousand—it must be, or a rich man like you wouldn’t wear it. It would keep Mike happy. Buy me time.’

She stopped talking. There was silence. Only the dim noise of the cars outside on the street below.

Angelos’s grip around her arms was like steel. ‘What happened when you left the police station? Did he find you?’ There was no emotion in his voice. Only the question.

There was none in hers as she answered him. She could not look at him, only stare beyond him at the far wall. Into the past.

‘No. He was dead. He smashed his bike into a brick wall, following me down to the police station when I was arrested. I heard a traffic cop telling the desk sergeant. I saw the photo on his driving licence.’ She was silent. Then, ‘So it was all for nothing. I stole from you for nothing. I tried to save my skin, knowing that with Mike dead it was the law I had to fear having stolen. So I lied my way out of being charged with theft. And then …’ Her voice hollowed. ‘Then I discovered there was still something else to fear—your vengeance. Destroying everything I’d made of myself. Pushing me back into the pit I’d climbed out of. Leaving me with nothing. All over again.’

Silence stretched between them. Unbridgeable. Angelos’s hands fell from her and she felt herself sway, as though he had been keeping her upright. Then, slowly, as if forcing himself, he spoke.

‘Why did you never tell me this?’

Now she looked at him. His face was stark, etched from stone.

Her voice sliced with scorn. ‘What possible reason would I have for thinking you could be moved by pathetic pleas from me? I’d already begged you to give me back the job you’d taken from me—hiring me one day and chucking me away the next! What would you have cared about a psycho out to get me?’

The expression in his face changed. ‘Do you not know why,’ he asked slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, ‘I dropped you from the campaign?’

She turned away, shrugging, breaking eye contact. It disturbed her.

‘I was too mouthy. Too common. A street rat—just as you called me when you stopped me marrying Giles.’

‘None of those things. I dropped you, Kat, for the same reason I took you to Switzerland.’

She rounded on him. ‘I know why you took me there! So you could throw it in my face, rub my nose in it, that you could make me want you! And you did,’ she finished bitterly.

‘Just as,’ he replied, ‘you’d made me want you five years ago.’ His mouth twisted. ‘You were like no other female I’d ever met. Oh, not just that incredible body and that face of yours—that beauty you wear as carelessly as if you didn’t know you had it! But the woman behind the beauty. The one with the attitude, the raw edginess, the beautiful, insolent mouth that answered me back, that made me think there was only one way to silence it. That’s why I dropped you from that campaign.’

His eyes were branding her, boring into her.

‘I didn’t want a woman like that in a publicity campaign for one of my businesses.’ His eyes held hers for one moment longer. ‘I wanted her in my bed.’ He took a sharp, indrawn breath. ‘But I never mix business with pleasure, Kat. I never let the women I take to my bed use me for their careers. Never. So I knew that if I wanted you for myself I could not let you do that shoot. When I made my decision to make my relationship with you personal, not professional, I countermanded my instructions to my campaign director. He’d already notified your agency of my first decision, and so had to issue a cancellation. I was going to contact you the following day, and tell you, but you,’ his voice turned into a blade, ‘pre-empted me by arriving at my suite that same evening. Offering me your body to get the job back.’ Now the blade of his voice was cutting his own flesh. ‘I did not realize how desperate you had cause to be. I only knew that I was angry, so very angry with you, because you’d made it impossible for me to have an affair with you by showing me how you would try and use it to advance your career.’

There was contempt in his voice, but it was not for her.

She was staring at him. ‘I never,’ she said slowly, each word biting, ‘never offered myself to you! You accused me of it, but I never did. I never would.’ She took a painful scissoring breath. ‘I told you my mother was a junkie, my grandmother an alcoholic.’ She looked at him. Looked at him unflinchingly. ‘How do you think they funded their addictions?’ She paused. ‘They were prostitutes—both of them. Raised in care, like I was. And when I discovered that about them—I vowed I would never be like them! So I started to make something of myself—started modelling, because there was nothing else I was qualified to do. But I never touched a drop of alcohol, or touched drugs of any kind, and I never, ever let sex anywhere near me. Never! Until—’

She stopped, shame flooding through her like a drowning tide. Shame like she had felt when she had stolen from him. But then she’d had desperation, terror, to fuel her theft. What had fuelled her into falling into Angelos’s arms, his bed, that night in Switzerland?

He gave her the answer himself.