Part 7 (1/2)

'You haven't answered my question.' Angelos's voice was implacable. 'What does your fiance-' he made the word mocking '-think about Kat Jones?'

Her silence was tangible. That and the whitening along her cheekbones revealed everything to him he needed to know. His eyes glittered darkly.

'You haven't told him.'

It was not a question.

For an endless moment his eyes simply hooked hers in their talons. She tried to tear them away, but could not-could only stand there while he eviscerated her with his eyes. With his words.

'You deceitful, manipulative little liar,' he said softly. 'You were going to marry him, weren't you? Knowing he was getting a mirage, a fake? Weren't you?'

The fury was naked in his voice, icing through her. She couldn't move-couldn't speak. Dread filled her.

And something more than dread. Something worse.

She could feel the adrenaline leap in her body and tried to crush it down. Not because it fed her anger-she didn't care about her anger, she welcomed it, needed it-but because it fed a quite different emotion. One that was deadly to her. Lethal. One she could not, could not, allow herself to feel.

She straightened her spine. 'Get out,' she said again. She could feel the pulse in her throat throb. It was loathing-that was all. Loathing that it was signalling. Nothing else. She wouldn't allow it to be anything else.

He didn't move. Stayed right where he was, occupying her sofa. Invading her s.p.a.ce. Her life. Forcing her nightmare past into the present she had made for herself-into the future she so desperately wanted with Giles.

Then he spoke. 'You have a choice.' His words cut like a knife through flesh. Her flesh. 'I will not allow you to inflict your deceit upon that hapless fool you've got in your toils. Either you tell him about Kat-or I will.'

'No!' The word broke from her-instinctive, urgent. Kat Jones was gone-gone for ever! She would never allow her back-never!

He smiled. The smile of a predator who had seen his prey trip and fall.

'Oh, yes, Kat. You'll tell him. Or I will do it for you. Do you really think-' his dark eyes rested on her with implacable condemnation '-I won't?'

No. She didn't think that. She knew exactly what Angelos Petrakos would do. He always did what he promised he would do-she knew that ... Oh, how she knew that!

Dread and rage surged in her. But there was something else as well-something that forced its way to the fore, cutting through both those turgidly swirling emotions.

She could never tell Giles what Angelos was demanding. Never! Because she knew that for Giles it would make no difference. Hollowness emptied her. Giles would abide by the code of his cla.s.s, and nothing on earth would make him abandon it! Whatever she told him, he would say that he had asked her to marry him and no power could make him retract that! He would stand by her even knowing what she had told him, despite all that ...

And she couldn't do it to him! She couldn't!

'Which is it to be, Kat?' Angelos's voice pierced her. 'You or I to tell that deluded English lordling of yours that you're a thief, a liar and a wh.o.r.e?'

'I never offered myself to you! Never! And you got your watch back!' she gritted. 'You got it back!'

A harsh rasp escaped him. Black rage showed in his face. 'You claimed it as payment. Painted me as a man who pays for s.e.x. You stole from me, Kat, and you lied about me. And you thought you could get away with it!'

Her hands were clenched. Heart hammering in her chest.

'You destroyed me! You took everything-everything from me! You took my livelihood, my career, even the lousy flea-pit I lived in! You took everything! You told me you'd finish me, and you did!'

Long lashes dipped down over his eyes. His voice was edged like a sharpened blade. 'But you didn't stay finished, did you, Kat? You've crawled back. And you're more ambitious than ever! But I won't permit you to make a fool of that poor, hapless sap of yours! He deserves the truth about you!'

'No.' Her rejection was absolute. She could not do it to Giles-could not condemn him to marry a woman like Kat, knowing her to be Kat, knowing what she was, where she came from, what she had done ...

And even though she would-must!-refuse to marry him, she could not bear to see the expression in his eyes when he realised how she had deceived him.

'No,' she said again, her voice tight as wire, garroting her.

Heaviness crushed her. Truth, insistent and brutal, forced itself upon her. Like blows on her head. Reality slammed into her and hatred burned in her eyes for Angelos Petrakos. Hatred not just for him, but for what he was forcing on her-making her accept, bitterly, reluctantly. She could not deceive poor Giles, could not use him the way she had-for what else could it ever have been to let him marry a woman not knowing what she once had been?

The garrote tightened around her neck, choking her.

Angelos could see her expression, see her horror, her fury. Something s.h.i.+fted in his eyes again, curved the thinned line of his mouth.

'Or you can have one more choice, Kat,' he said. His eyes glittered darkly with black fire. 'I'll let you keep the fiction you've created about yourself, but if you haven't the guts to tell him that you're really Kat Jones then you can release him from your toils another way.' The malevolent glitter of his eyes speared her. 'Tell him you've changed your mind about marrying him.'

'Why would he believe me?' She forced the words from her narrowed throat.

He smiled, his mouth mocking, obsidian eyes alight with an unholy light. 'Why? Because, Kat, the love of your life has just walked back into it ...'

She could only stare. 'You're insane,' she breathed.

'An effective fiction-and it will serve the purpose I intend. To convince him, Kat, and to remove yourself from his vicinity after you've told him that-alas-you can no longer marry him, you'll come to me. Spend the night at my hotel.'

'I will never do that-never!' Her face and her voice were stark.

'You prefer the alternative? For him to know who you really are? Not that sanitised, whitewashed fairy tale you've concocted about yourself?' He got to his feet, walked to the door, and as he twisted the handle he turned. 'Be grateful that I make you this offer. This way the Honourable Giles need never know about Kat Jones. And once he's free from you, you can keep your s.h.i.+ny new image, your lucrative new career.' He paused, letting his gaze rest on her one more time, his eyes like granite.

'The choice is yours, Kat. And you have twenty-four hours in which to make it. If you're not at my hotel tomorrow evening at nine I shall know what you've chosen-and act accordingly.'

Then he was gone.

Alone, Thea stood quite, quite still. Then slowly, very slowly, she wrapped her arms about her body. Very, very tight. In front of her the pit stood gaping. And she had no choice, no choice at all, but to step into it.

She could feel herself falling, feel the air being sucked from her lungs as she plummeted down into the pit that Angelos Petrakos had opened beneath her feet. Her guts were hollowed out, muscles in her legs seizing up. She was in some kind of shock, she knew. In disbelieving, aghast denial-desperately trying not to believe what had just happened and yet knowing with every particle of her being that it was true.

Angelos Petrakos had destroyed her-again.

Her arms clutched around her body. Her eyes were bleached with stricken emotion.

She might not love Giles-what was love? She'd never known it in her life-but she cared for him, and she would never, never hurt him by telling him how she had deceived him. She had no choice-she must let him go. Let go her dream-the one that she had yearned for, striven for, and so very, very nearly achieved.

Anguish at what she was losing twisted in her. Then, in its wake, came anger-blind and hot, seeking a target. She heard Angelos Petrakos's caustic voice- 'You didn't stay finished, did you?'

No, she hadn't! Despite everything-everything he'd done to her-she'd got out of the pit he'd thrown her into! Made a new life for herself!

Her eyes hardened and she loosed her protective cradling of her body, her hands instead forming fists, tensed at her sides. She lifted her chin, unseeing as her gaze burned with the bright, intense light of pure will, pure determination. Resolution seared through her.

I've survived Angelos Petrakos before, and I will do it again!

For a long, timeless moment she went on standing there, hands clenched, face like stone, as emotion burned in her. Then, as if with a slow exhalation of breath, she let it go. With a strange, preternatural calmness in her breast she went to put away her library books and resume her interrupted evening. Tomorrow, everything would change, but this last night she would spend as she had planned-a quiet supper, a Mozart CD, and a good book to read.

Enough to gather her strength for the ordeal ahead. The ordeal she would survive. The ordeal she must survive.