Mia and the Powerful Greek

‘Have you met my—Gabriella before?’

‘No.’ And that was honest, Nikos mocked grimly. If he had met Gabriella Mattea before he would have recognised the cold bitch in her and perhaps been able to save Mia from what just took place. As it was, Nikos knew, right down to his seething twisting gut, he was in trouble here.

‘He’s here in Athens to set up a series of meetings with high-end financiers.’ He chickened out of telling the full truth. ‘The credit crunch has bitten hard into the car industry. Mario is desperate for someone to finance his business and his formula-one team before both sink without a trace.’

‘You mean he’s here for a series of meetings with you, don’t you?’

Nikos let his tense mouth stretch into a brief rueful smile. ‘I’m—one of his best bets to cough up the money.’

‘Are you going to?’

He sent her a glinting look. ‘What do you think?’

‘Because of me?’

‘Yes, because of you.’ And that was the full damn truth.

‘But you can’t do that!’ Surprising him by turning an aghast stare on him, she said, ‘They will know you turned away from them because of what happened tonight and they will blame me for it!’

His grim face toughened. ‘They should have considered that angle when they humiliated my future wife.’

‘I am not going to be your wife!’

‘What are you planning to be, then,’ he struck back, ‘the next Balfour scandal?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WRONG thing to say. Nikos knew it the moment the smart shot left his mouth.

‘I am not a Balfour,’ Mia denied, hating him for saying that—hating everyone. ‘For why would I want to be a Bianchi or a Balfour?’

‘Then don’t be,’ he persisted. ‘Be a Theakis instead.’

‘So that you can treat me like an unwelcome interloper into your life too?’

‘You would not be an unwelcome interloper.’

Mia released a soft bitter laugh. ‘I am a figure of pity to you right now. Tomorrow I will be a chain tied around your neck. Do you think I don’t know the way that it goes? Gabriella handed me over to my aunt, then walked away from me. She visited once a year for the first ten years of my life. She stopped visiting me when I asked her if she only came to give Tia money for my keep. You wish to hear her answer?’

‘No,’ Nikos muttered.

‘She admitted to my face it was so, then left. Tia’s money came by post from then on.’

A soft curse raked Nikos’s throat. ‘She is a selfish bitch with—’

‘Sì,’ Mia cut in on him quickly because she did not need him to tell her what her own mother was. ‘Oscar was more subtle. He allowed me to stay so long as I hid in the kitchen and played his housekeeper.’

‘He was protecting Lillian—’

‘You think I don’t know and appreciate that?’ she choked out. ‘Do you think I resented him protecting his poor wife’s feelings over mine? Do you think I did not understand when his other daughters must resent and blame me for the scandals which erupted later—or that I do not blame myself for those same events? But did he appreciate how I was feeling?’ she delivered with a hurt that until now she had kept buried deep inside. ‘Did my feelings stop him from sending me away again as quickly as he could?’

‘Oscar wanted you to learn to—’

‘He wanted me to act like a Balfour or stay away,’ she wrenched out. ‘Well, I have no wish any longer to be a Balfour.’ And she meant it—she really meant it! ‘They are not my kind of people. You are not my kind of people.’ It was a life-changing moment to realise that and it grew like a balloon inside. ‘Oscar said he wanted me to learn integrity…’ And suddenly she understood what integrity meant to her. It meant being true to herself. To the person she wanted to be not the one everyone else wanted to mould her into! ‘Well, I don’t want his integrity if it means dressing up in fine clothes and wearing false smiles. I don’t want to be married to you because I have conceived your baby and you are worried about what Oscar might think. That is for your integrity to deal with, Nikos. Mine is telling me it is time to walk away and just be myself.’

‘I do not give a damn what Oscar thinks!’ Nikos protested.

‘Liar,’ she shook out. ‘You have already said it with your damage-control quip.’