‘I believe he cares more about you.’
Unconvinced by that startling claim, Lucy returned to the city villa with nerves run ragged by the strain of pretending for Iola’s benefit that everything was fine between her father and her. She had been surprised that Jax hadn’t objected to her visiting Kreon and Iola and then relieved because her father was still her father even though he was imperfect. Imperfect? Manipulative, sneaky, quick to jump on a golden opportunity even if it entailed blackmail, Lucy’s brain added unhappily. But until she had met her father and learned about the existence of her sisters, she had believed that her father was her only living relative and his support and acceptance had meant a great deal to her. That he was capable of going to such lengths to secure a very rich husband for her still devastated her because of course it had to make a difference to her marriage and the light in which Jax saw her.
If Kreon hadn’t interfered, who knew what might have happened? All right, they would clearly not have got married, she allowed ruefully, but at least Jax wouldn’t have felt forced into doing something he didn’t want to do.
Lucy had only just finished drying her hair when Jax strode into the bedroom. He paused for a second, appreciating the sight of her small slender figure in a summery blue dress, tumbling ringlets framing her piquant face. ‘You look ridiculously pretty,’ he heard himself say stiltedly, and he almost winced at that ill-timed opener because he had come upstairs to give her the investigation file.
Lucy angled her head to one side and gave him a questioning look. ‘You never pay me compliments. What’s wrong?’
He had called her pretty, not beautiful, and she was more than happy with that, well aware that her looks weren’t on the beauty level. In marrying Jax, she had boxed above her weight because he was the beautiful one in their relationship, standing there in his exquisitely tailored silver-grey suit, his stunning bone structure accentuated by a shadow of black stubble, gorgeous green eyes glittering like stars in his lean bronzed face.
‘Never?’ Jax was taken aback by her claim, only belatedly recognising that she was right. He thought such things but he very rarely voiced them out loud. ‘I have something for you to read.’
He looked so very serious that Lucy’s heart gave a sudden lurch inside her chest. ‘OK,’ she said apprehensively.
He extended the file. ‘My father sent this to me two years ago in Spain. It’s why I didn’t turn up that last night.’
Lucy grasped the slim file and sank down heavily on the foot of the bed. ‘Your father?’ she queried with a bemused frown.
‘He had discovered who your father was and apparently he was determined to break us up,’ Jax explained flatly. ‘The file is filled with what I now know to be lies about you.’
Lucy lowered her shaken gaze to the file, thoroughly off balanced by what he was revealing because it was coming at her out of nowhere. Suddenly he was talking about what had happened in Spain and admitting that he hadn’t ditched her simply because he had got bored. ‘You now know…?’ she questioned with an uncertain questioning glance.
‘I had my own investigation carried out,’ he admitted smoothly.
And Lucy was even more shaken at the enormous amount of stuff that Jax had been hiding from her, not to mention the lowering reality of just how much his father had not wanted her in his family. She swallowed hard and, breathing in bracingly, she opened the file and straight away she could not credit what she was reading. It was a seriously exaggerated character assassination in print, from the outrageous allegation that she had convictions for drug dealing and soliciting sex to the fact that her age was quoted as being twenty-five.
‘But how could you possibly have believed any of this?’ she heard herself whisper with incredulous emphasis.
‘It was in the early stages of my new relationship with my father and I trusted him. I had no reason to be suspicious of his motives because I had no knowledge of his acquaintance with your father or his dislike of him,’ he pointed out flatly.
Lucy shook her head very slowly, an almost dazed light in her luminous blue eyes as she focussed on him. ‘You misunderstood my question. I’m not asking why you believed your father but how on earth you could believe that kind of nonsense about me? Soliciting sex? I was a virgin when we met!’ she reminded him with sudden resentful heat. ‘And you knew that!’
Jax compressed his lips, wearing the aspect of a male who would have liked to be anywhere but where he was at that moment. He shifted his feet uneasily. ‘A woman can fool a man over stuff like that. She can pretend,’ he began uncomfortably.
‘Then you must have assumed my acting ability rivalled your mother’s!’ Lucy slotted in a little shakily because anger was rising now to cut through the shock of what she was learning. ‘I just don’t know what to say about all this…stuff!’ she selected jaggedly, tossing the file down on the floor in disgust. ‘I thought you knew me—’
‘I thought I knew you too until I read that file,’ Jax admitted curtly. ‘But I had no good reason then to suspect my father of setting me up.’
‘So, you’re telling me then that he was responsible for me losing my job?’
‘I didn’t go into that with him… I was far too angry,’ Jax confessed. ‘But it’s probable that he was responsible for that and for the manner in which you were treated as you were put off the yacht. If I had stayed long enough to get into that kind of detail I probably would have hit him…’
‘Oh…’ Lucy was a long way from forgiving him for having had so little faith in her but she was certainly mollified by that little speech.
‘You were pregnant,’ Jax pointed out, still stuck on that offence with an anger she could see making his lean, darkly handsome features rigid. ‘You could have been seriously hurt. He could have killed his own grandchild…we could have lost Bella!’
Lucy warmed up to him a little more in response to that additional really quite emotional exclamation. Jax had only known her for six weeks in Spain. Six weeks and a handful of dates. They had finally become intimate during the final two weeks of that time frame. Why would he have distrusted his father? The father then riding high on the wave of finally deciding to accept and welcome the younger son he had once ignored?
Lucy felt that she had to be fair to Jax. After all, she had not distrusted Kreon when she first came to Greece, had she? It occurred to her that Jax was probably feeling much as she had felt on their wedding day, angry and hurt and defensive while wondering how someone he cared about and respected could have done such a thing to him.
‘I think the very least you could have done was speak to me about the file and give me the chance to answer those allegations,’ Lucy told him firmly. ‘There is no excuse whatsoever for you failing to tell me about that file two years ago.’
And Jax’s long, lean, powerful physique went rigid, shoulders squaring, legs straightening. ‘Actually there is…’
‘No, there’s not.’ Lucy could
understand and forgive a great deal but he could not justify his complete failure to tell her what was going on either in the past or the present. ‘You didn’t even send me a text in Spain to tell me we were finished, for goodness’ sake!’ she exclaimed.
‘I had my reasons,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone, his eyes gleaming like polished gems.
‘Unacceptable reasons.’ Lucy refused to give way. She often gave in to Jax because he had a very forceful personality but she knew she couldn’t go through life without disagreeing with him occasionally. ‘You owed me an explanation of some kind—’
‘I owed you nothing!’ Jax shot at her with sudden derision. ‘I did come to see you the night after I received that file.’
Her brow had furrowed because she was beginning to feel a little lost in the dialogue, as though she had misinterpreted some crucial sentence. ‘You didn’t come to see me—’
‘And do you know why?’ Jax’s hands knotted into fists because he felt like a volcano about to spew lava and somewhere in the back of his mind lurked a tiny voice asking him if he really wanted to say what he was about to say. But Jax didn’t back down, had never learned how to back down. He only knew how to come out of a corner fighting and how to win. He had had a hell of a day and it wasn’t getting better the way it was supposed to, it was only getting worse and that thought did nothing to cool his temper. He had done nothing wrong with Lucy, he was, in his own opinion, the injured party. He was not a vengeful man but he would not be accused of something he wasn’t responsible for.
‘If I did, I wouldn’t be arguing with you or trying to get you to see my point of view,’ Lucy parried.