Painted the Other Woman

He must keep it that way. That was what was important. Essential. Keeping everything closed down.

As he descended in the lift, walked across the lobby, out into the road, reached for his mobile phone to summon a chauffeured company car to take him back to his own apartment, words went round in his head.

It’s done.

That was all he had to remember.

Not Marisa at his side, his arm wrapped around her shoulder as they walked along the beach at sunset, the coral sand beneath their bare feet, the foaming wavelets washing them as they walked, and the majestic blaze of the sun sinking into the gilded azure sea.

Not Marisa beneath the stars, her beautiful swan neck stretched as she lifted her starlit face, her hair cascading like silk down her back, as he pointed out constellations to her. Not the sudden tightening in his loins as he framed her face with his hands, cupping her head, lowering his mouth to hers, lowering her body to the waiting sand beneath …

Not Marisa with her arms around him, her beauteous naked body pressed to his, crying out in ecstasy …

He wrenched his mind away, his hand around his suitcase handle clenching like steel.

He went on walking, with the biting winter all around him.

Inside him.

Marisa was packing. One suitcase was packed already. She’d packed it on another continent, in another lifetime. The suitcase she was packing now was a new acquisition—one she’d bought that morning, from the nearest shop that sold luggage. Methodically, unthinkingly, she opened drawers, took out clothes, folded them into the suitcase. It didn’t matter what order they went in—any order would do. It mattered only that she went on folding and packing. Folding and packing. Once the drawers were empty she moved on to the closet, performing the same office with its contents.

There were some other things as well as clothes, but those could follow later. She would box them up and have them sent on. Things like the pretty ornaments she’d acquired during her time in London, souvenirs, books, CDs. Bits and pieces.

Everything else stayed with the flat—all the kitchen goods, all the furniture, all the bedding. All she was taking were her clothes and her personal effects.

And memories.

She couldn’t get rid of those. They were glued inside her head. With a glue that ate like acid into her brain.

But they were false memories. Every one of them. False because they had never happened. Because the man in the memories was not the man she had thought he was.

Her throat convulsed. Whatever her wariness over him, over what he wanted of her, she had thought she was at the least a romantic interlude for him—someone to while away a Caribbean idyll with, share a passionate affair with, enjoying their time together however transient. But she hadn’t even been that. Not even that.

A lie—the whole thing had been a lie. A lie from the moment he’d asked her to keep the lift doors open for him. A set-up. Staged, managed, manipulated. Fake from the very first moment. With no purpose other than to bring her to the point she was now—cast out of Ian’s life.

Because there was no going back—she knew that. She could never be any part of Ian’s life now. Not even the fragile, insecure part that she had once so briefly been.

His wife is Athan’s sister … Ian is his brother-in-law …

She hadn’t known—hadn’t guessed—hadn’t suspected in a million years. And obviously Ian had not thought it necessary for her to know that his wife’s brother was Athan Teodarkis, because it would mean nothing to her—why should it?

But it didn’t matter, she thought tiredly. It didn’t matter who had known or not known who was what to whom. All that mattered now was that Athan Teodarkis—Ian’s wife’s brother—knew about her—knew what she was to Ian.

Anguish writhed inside her.

Why didn’t Athan just confront me straight off? It was all he had to do. If he knew about Ian and me he could just have threatened to expose me. Why did he do what he had gone and done?

The answer was bleak and brutal. The method Athan Teodarkis had chosen was far more effective. Far more certain.

He’d been right about that. She was out of Ian’s life now—and she would stay out. Nothing else was possible now. Nothing at all …

Unthinkingly, methodically, she went on with her packing.

The intercom on Athan’s desk flashed repeatedly, and his secretary’s voice, when she spoke, sounded flustered and apologetic.

‘Kyrios Teodarkis—I am so sorry! It is Kyria Eva’s husband! He insists on seeing you. I told him you had a board meeting in ten minutes, but—’

‘It’s all right,’ Athan interrupted her. ‘I’ll see him.’ His voice was grim. So was his expression. He had half expected this. Ian Randall would not lightly give up his intended mistress.