ALEX rocked back on his heels as if Mia had struck him. He looked frighteningly angry and Mia couldn’t breathe—she didn’t dare to in case she released whatever it was she could see threatening to explode inside him. Her heart began to hammer, the world beyond his stone-like stance blurring at the edges. Then he moved, and so did she, sucking air into her starved lungs on a tension-packed gasp.
What she’d thought he’d been about to do to her she had no idea, but when he turned on his heel and strode away she stared after him with horror that verged on remorse.
Because it hit her—really hit her as she watched him go—that she had just inadvertently struck at the very he
art of him, though she did not know how or with what!
When she was ready to leave Suzanna, after eating her tea with the little girl, it was Carol who appeared in the doorway to the little room.
‘Oh, you have to be Mia’s sister because you are like two peas from the same pod!’ she declared, making Mia jump nervously and scan the empty space around Carol in the flesh-tingling fear that Alex would be there.
He wasn’t. For the next ten minutes Carol talked Suzanna into a blank daze as she produced, during her mindless chatter, little presents from the capacious black canvas bag she’d had slung over her shoulder when she arrived.
A pocket computer game. ‘From Alex,’ she explained to Suzanna. ‘He thought it may help to fill the time in when Mia has to rest. She’s making a baby—did you know she’s making a baby?’
Suzanna gave a nod about the baby, whispered a thank-you for the computer game and stared at the beautiful Carol with something close to star-struck idolisation as the other woman chatted on as if they’d known each other all their lives.
‘Now, I’ve been ordered by Uncle Alex to take Mia home and make her rest,’ Carol informed her latest conquest, ‘so she can be fresh as a daisy when she comes back here tomorrow.’
‘Will you come, too?’
Mia felt the wall around her heart crack, oozing a warm, sticky liquid called heartache for this child of hers who was so hungry for this kind of warm affection.
‘I’ll be coming to collect Mia after I’ve finished work.’ Carol nodded.
When Mia bent down to receive her goodnight kiss the little girl clung to her neck. ‘You will come back again, won’t you?’ she whispered anxiously.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Mia promised.
‘What did you say to put Alex in such a bad mood?’ Carol asked the moment they were inside her car. ‘He’s been stomping around the hotel like a demolition man all afternoon.’
‘You work there, too?’ Mia asked in surprise.
‘You think I’m a real blonde bimbo, don’t you?’ She grinned. ‘I’m not, you know. I am an interior designer. I work on all the Doumas projects.’
She changed gear with a flourish and changed lanes with the deftness of someone who was used to taking on London rush-hour traffic.
‘It’s called keeping it in the family,’ she explained. ‘Leon is the construction expert, Alex the one who makes every new project pay. We are in a rush to get this one in London completed so we can start on the island project once you’ve had this baby. Only the island will be a private renovation,’ she explained, oblivious or just completely indifferent to the way Mia had stiffened up at the fact Carol knew exactly why Alex had married her.
‘The house has been left to decay while your father has been in possession. The land around it has turned back to scrubland that only goats find idyllic. Once it was a beautiful place …’ she sighed wistfully ‘… and we intend to return it to its former glory. Now you know that I know exactly what goes on between you and Alex, will you tell me what you said to upset him?’
‘None of your damned business,’ Mia said abruptly, feeling angry, bitter and utterly, cruelly betrayed. And, worse than all that, feeling as if every rotten word she had thrown at Alex earlier had just been well and truly justified!
‘Since you seem to know all my business,’ she added angrily, ‘do you think I could have a bedroom of my own, please? Knowing it all must surely mean that you also know that Alex never sleeps in my bed! So let’s make life easier for him and give him his very own bed in his very own room so he doesn’t have to spend the night stretched out in the chair in my room!’
‘Oh my …’ Carol drawled after a long taut silence. ‘I think I’ve put my big mouth in it again! Did he really sleep in the chair?’ She had the cheek to giggle. ‘That’ll teach him not to play mind games with his next of kin!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mia said crossly.
‘I know,’ Carol laughed. ‘That’s what makes it all so amusing!’ The car pulled to a stop outside the white townhouse. ‘Are you sure you want a separate bedroom?’ she goaded teasingly. ‘He’s supposed to be a dynamic lover—so rumour has it. Won’t you miss him slipping between your sheets to have his evil way with you?’
Too angry to care any more, Mia retaliated spontaneously. ‘You have it all wrong,’ she snapped, grappling for the car door lock. ‘He will still slip between my sheets when the mood takes him. He just does not approve of spending the whole damned night with a whore, that’s all!’
As an exit line it was perfect, except she had nowhere to exit to. She hurled herself out of the car, certainly, but she had to stand by the closed front door and wait until Carol opened it with her key before she could make her real exit.
‘I’m sorry,’ Carol murmured as she stepped up beside her, and for once the other girl sound genuinely subdued. ‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to offend you,’
No? Mia thought. Well, you could have fooled me!