Painted the Other Woman

He looked at her. In the dusk his expression was saturnine. ‘But I,’ he told her, ‘have something to say to you.’ His expression changed slightly. ‘You look frozen,’ he said.

For a moment the breath caught in her throat. There had been concern in his voice—caring.

The way he’d once sounded when he spoke to her …

Brutal truth sliced down, forcing open her throat. He’d lied to her from the beginning—lied with every caring, affectionate, casual word. That was what she must remember.

Not the way he used to look at her—the way his mouth would quirk with that half smile of his, the way his dark, lambent eyes used to rest on her …

She cut off the memory again. No, not that way at all.

She shivered under the anorak. He was right—she felt frozen. Stiffly she went up to the front door and opened it with the key taken from the map pocket in her anorak. He followed her in. Immediately the small cottage felt smaller. She didn’t want to let him in—didn’t want him here. Didn’t want him anywhere near her within a thousand miles.

Liar! Liar—liar—liar!

The words in her head accused her, betrayed her. Again she had to call on the cold, emotionless self-control she’d faced him with outside the cottage. It didn’t matter where he was—he was nothing to her. The same nothing to her that she was to him.

She would let him say whatever it was he had to say—another reinforcement about her staying out of Ian’s life was all it could be—and then she would send him packing. He could find his own way back to the village, his own way back to the motorway. What did she care? Nothing—that was what she cared. All that was left of her feelings for him …

Nothing.

She went into the kitchen, feeling relief at the warmth from the wood range enveloping her. Shrugging off her wet anorak, she draped it around one of the chairs at the scrubbed wooden kitchen table and opened the door to the range, restacking it with wood. Then she filled the kettle and set it on one of the rings to boil. Familiar tasks that gave her hands and brain something to do while she tried to assimilate the fact—jolting, bizarre, impossible—that Athan Teodarkis had sat himself down at the kitchen table in a tiny cob-walled cottage that had been a haven for her mother after the ruination of her happiness.

Her gaze went to the man sitting at her kitchen table who could reach out with a single finger and with a single touch melt her like honey. Who could quirk a slanting smile at her and weaken her bones. Who could wind his hand around the nape of her neck and lower his mouth to hers, and take her to a paradise she had never dreamt of …

A man who had never—not once until that bitter, scathing denouement—said an honest word to her.

She took a breath. ‘You said you had something to say—so say it. Say it and go.’

Gimlet eyes snapped to her. He’d been looking around him, taking in the room they were in. It had come as a shock to him, seeing how poor a place it was.

No wonder the world Ian moved in had seemed so tempting to her—no wonder she’d been so impressed by him, beguiled by him. Coming from a place like this, to her Ian’s world must have seemed glittering and luxurious beyond anything she could have hoped for.

It sobered him. He couldn’t deny it.

His gaze went back to her. His mind split instantly into two. One half was taking in just how shabby she looked—the other was simply drinking her in like a thirsty man in a desert. Even without a scrap of make-up, with wet, stringy hair and atrocious clothes, she still made his pulse leap!

‘Well?’

Her voice refocused him. ‘Do you need any money?’ The question came out more bluntly than he’d intended. Nor was it the question he’d wanted to ask her—but after seeing this rundown place it had come out of his mouth without thinking.

‘What?’

Athan looked slightly awkward. He really hadn’t meant to sound that blunt, but it was too late now. He took a breath.

‘Look, I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see there’s one hell of a difference between your lifestyle in London and what you’ve got here. So, if you need something to tide you over I can easily—’

He got no further. She slammed the mug she’d been about to fill with coffee down on to the wooden table.

‘No! I do not want your stinking money!’ Her eyes were like lasers, and he had to shield himself from their glare.

‘It was an offer—nothing more than that.’ He had to mitigate. ‘If Ian’s seen you all right then you won’t need anything from me.’

‘You’ll be glad to know,’ she said, as sweetly as acid, ‘that Ian does not continue to fund me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said evenly, taking the fight back to her. ‘And it’s just as well—he is about to become unemployed. No,’ he said, holding up a hand to silence her, ‘it was not my doing. He’s resigned from the company.’ He paused. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

Marisa was looking pale. ‘No. But … but why?’