Ellie gazed back at Helena Teriakos in appalled disbelief.
'One million? I am an extremely wealthy woman and I'm prepared to be generous,' Helena spelt out with icy calm. 'You can always tell Dio you had a miscarriage. I won't even insist that you get out of his life. You can still be his mistress. Believe me, you won't last five minutes as his wife!'
'I don't want your money...and I'm not getting rid of my baby,' Ellie asserted strickenly, unnerved by the other woman's total lack of emotion.
'But you can't possibly marry him! Can you imagine the headlines? "Dionysios Alexiakis marries a cleaner"?' He¬lena suggested widi a little shudder of revulsion. 'He's a very proud man. You'll be nothing but an embarrassment to him. And by the time the newspapers have finished hauling out the sordid circumstances of your birth and all your former lovers, Dio will have begun to hate you.'
'What do you know about the circumstances of my birth?' Ellie demanded with a raw edge to her strained voice.
'I know everything there is to know about you, Ellie. Money buys information.' Helena dealt her stricken face a pitying appraisal. 'You're in love with Dio. Thankfully I have never felt the need to indulge myself with such messy emo¬tions. Well, make your choice. If you marry Dio, it'll end in the divorce court. True, you'll get the kudos of being his first wife, but you'll lose him completely.'
‘I’m not going to marry him,' Ellie framed numbly.
'Now you're being sensible.' The other woman awarded her a cool smile of satisfaction. 'When you trap a man into marriage, it can only end with him hating you. As for the child—you should learn by your own foolish mother's mis¬take. It didn't do her much good bringing you into the world, did it? All those pathetic years of loyalty, only to be rewarded by the sight of your father marrying a secretary half his age the minute he was free!'
Savaged by that cruel attack out of the blue, Ellie scram¬bled dizzily up and started to get out of the car. ‘I’m not listening to any more of this—'
‘The door's locked. I'm not finished yet. I do not want you to have this child—'
'My child is my business!' Ellie exclaimed in angry dis¬trust. 'Now open this door and stop threatening me!'
With a languid hand, Helena Teriakos signalled her chauf¬feur. 'Think about what I've said. I make a very bitter enemy, and you will discover that Dio has tremendous respect for me.'
Ellie practically fell out onto the pavement in her eagerness to escape. She hurried through the shop and upstairs to her bedsit. But when she got there the tears didn't come. Instead, the kind of outraged and inexpressible pain which Ellie hadn't felt since her mother's death began to mount inside her.
Dio had not been honest with her. She had been dragged into a situation in which she had no defence but that of her own ignorance. She was pregnant by a man who had been virtually engaged to another woman. She had unwittingly poached on another woman's territory and was now being blamed for the entire ghastly mess which had resulted. As for Dio...as for Dio, with his wretched sense of honour and his cold, malicious witch of a future wife—well, Helena Ter¬iakos was welcome to him! And the sooner Ellie told him that, the better she would feel!
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELLIE heard Dio come home. She listened to him exchanging a handful of terse words with his manservant, no doubt learn¬ing that she was waiting to see him. Having come over to his apartment the instant she finished work, she had been awaiting his return for almost two hours.
And Ellie now felt like unstable gelignite. The more in¬consistencies she recalled in Dio's past behavior, the more she understood, and the deeper her frustrated pain stabbed.
Dio strode into the airy drawing room, his lean, strong face grim, black eyes flat and unfathomable. He emanated stress and tension like a forcefield.
'I understand that Helena paid you a visit,' Dio drawled icily, immediately knocking the ground from beneath Ellie's feet by admitting his knowledge of that fact. 'It was a very generous act on her part, but only what I have learnt to expect from her.'
Thoroughly thrown by that opening, Ellie gasped. 'A gen¬erous act? Are you out of your mind or just plain stupid?'
Dio stilled, his darkly handsome features emanating a freezing distaste that cut Ellie to the bone. 'She offered you her support and assistance. You were rude and offensive. I did not enjoy having to apologise for your behaviour.'
'Having to apologise for my behaviour...?' Ellie repeated almost incoherently, registering that she had seriously under¬estimated the older woman. Support and assistance? The abortion package? Helena had clearly got hi first with her own version of events, and Ellie wondered why she herself should even care. 'She offered me a million pounds to have an abortion.'