Part 15 (1/2)

She stepped towards him, hands clenching, face contorted. 'Take your hand? Take your hand? After what you'd done to me?'

His expression changed. Color drained from his face, leaving it stark and gaunt.

'I didn't know,' he said. His voice was stiff, dragging, as if he didn't want to say what he was saying. 'I had no idea-none.' His eyes met hers, with that same reluctance in them. 'I had no idea you'd been served alcohol at dinner.'

She stared blankly. Not understanding.

A brief, humourless laugh came from him as he enlightened her, his voice still harsh.

'You didn't realise? But why should you? You have no idea of the effects of alcohol, have you? No idea how it can ... lower resistance to temptation.' His eyes rested on her. He inhaled sharply. 'You drank apfelwein-apple wine. Not apfelsaft-apple juice-that night. Johann served you, and he didn't know you never drink alcohol. And you-you didn't know the difference because you've never tasted alcohol, have you? And then I saw you inhaling my cognac fumes. Did you try drinking any of that as well?' He saw her expression and nodded. ”Thee mou! Cognac-neat spirits-on top of wine, and your system totally unused to alcohol! No wonder you-'

He stopped. Took another sharp, razored inhalation, his eyes boring into hers like spears. Knives were slas.h.i.+ng inside him. They had been at work since he'd been told she'd walked out of the clinic and, all the time since then, waiting to hear from his security staff the moment, the moment she appeared at her flat again, as he had been counting on her to do. And now-finally-she was here, and he was-finally!-confronting her with the truth.

The truth he'd discovered far too late ...

She was staring at him. Her face was without expression, her voice without expression as she finished the sentence for him.

'No wonder I came on to you the way I did.'

Angelos's voice was heavy, forced from him. 'If I had known, I would not have touched you.'

She looked at him, her eyes withering. 'No-you'd have saved it, wouldn't you? You wouldn't want me to have the excuse that I was drunk when I fell into bed with you!' Her mind was in a tumult, emotions scything inside her head-what Angelos had done to her, what she had let him do, and, pouring in over the top of that, what his disclosure had done to her. Words blurted from her, anguished and tormented. 'But you've won more than you ever dreamt!'

His brows snapped together. 'Won?'

She gave a high, demented laugh, eyes wild. 'Yes! Your triumph is even greater than you know! You wanted me back in the gutter, back down in the pit I'd crawled out of, and now you can boast you've done it again! You've proved everything you could possibly want to prove! That I can never, never escape my past-never escape!' Bitterness scoured her mouth. 'I'm like my mother, and her mother before her! As weak as they were! Self-indulgent and self-destructive!'

'What are you talking about?' Angelos demanded. He took a step towards her, but she lurched backwards.

'You didn't know, did you?' Her eyes were blazing with loathing, but it was not for him alone. 'My G.o.d, you missed a trick there! You could have threatened me with so much more than you did! Threatened to expose me to Giles for even more than what I did to you as Kat!' Her words were vicious, stinging like hornets. 'My mother was a junkie, my grandmother an alcoholic!'

He stilled. 'That's why you never drink.' It was not a question. It was a statement.

'I wasn't going to go their way-I was never going to go their way!' Her voice was low and bitter, and filled with loathing. Loathing for her mother's weakness, her grandmother's weakness. Her own weakness. Her own deadly, fatal weakness that had brought her to this pa.s.s.

He held up a hand. 'Two gla.s.ses of wine and a taste of cognac does not make you an alcoholic!'

'No,' she answered. 'It makes me a fool ...' Self-loathing choked her. 'A fool,' she repeated, excoriation in her voice. 'A fool who let you show me the truth about myself-that I was too weak to resist you even after everything you'd done to me. That my stupid, pathetic protest to you, claiming that I couldn't bear for you to touch me, was just empty bravado! You knew you could prove otherwise! You knew for five years! Ever since I stood there in your hotel suite and let you help yourself to me, kiss me and touch me and call me a wh.o.r.e!'

Her chest was heaving, breath like razors in her lungs, eyes distended as she was emptied, silenced.

Angelos stood there quite motionless, only the muscle above his cheekbone working.

'But you weren't, were you?' he said. There was nothing in his voice, nothing at all. As if that were the only way his words would come. 'Because how could you have been a wh.o.r.e, Kat, five years ago-when you were a virgin?'

The silence was absolute. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. He was speaking again, and still there was nothing in his voice.

'When you left my bed to escape me I saw the evidence. I didn't want to believe it-how I didn't want to believe it-but it's the truth, isn't it? Isn't it?'

He saw the answer in her eyes, and now his voice was harsh as he went on.

'So hearing me denounce you like that in my hotel suite five years ago made you angry. Your temper got the better of you and you took my watch to get back at me, out of furious pique.'

Thea's breath incised her, eyes lashed at him. 'My G.o.d, you conceited fool!' she spat. 'You think I acted out of pique? When out in the street was-'

She stopped. Cold iced around her as memory hit. The terror that had possessed her, the shaking desperation.

In the total silence Angelos's eyes were suddenly alert. Super-focussed. Trapping her in a beam of laser light.

Then he spoke.

'Go on, Kat,' he said. His voice was measured, but with a note in it that curdled her. '”When out in the street was ...”?'

She wouldn't answer. Couldn't. Heard again the sick, twisted words that Mike had spoken to her so long ago.

'Tell me, Kat.' Angelos's voice pulled her back to the present. 'Why did you steal from me? Not out of temper and pique-so why? What made you risk breaking the law, a gaol sentence-worse?' His mouth twisted. 'My anger at you?'

Her face contorted. Words broke from her. 'I was desperate, that's why! I needed money, that's why! That's why I came to your suite! That's why I crawled to you, grovelled to you and begged you to give me back that job you'd taken away on a b.l.o.o.d.y whim! Because I needed money! Money the job would pay me-money I could give to a sick psycho so he wouldn't take his razor to me! He was waiting for me downstairs, on the street outside the hotel, and I had to give him something. Either the promise of a lucrative job so I could use the money to pay him with-or something else. Anything else! Anything that would have placated him-bought me time! Kept his razor off my face!'

For an endless moment there was complete silence. Then she began to shake.

Slowly, as if her arms weighed heavy like lead, she wrapped them around her body, as if to hold herself upright. Angelos stepped forward. His hands closed around her arms as they bound her. Words came from his mouth, but she did not understand them. Then he spoke again, in English this time. His voice was controlled. Very, very controlled.

'Who was this, Kat? Who was threatening you?'

She spoke through gritted teeth, a throat that would hardly let breath pa.s.s. Her eyes stared past Angelos, back into the past.

'His name was Mike, and he was a photographer. He was always creepy, but a friend persuaded me to let him do my first model portfolio. What he wanted ...' her voice shook a moment '... was to take p.o.r.n shots-and to pimp me to other men. If didn't co-operate he ... he ... threatened to cut my face. I knew he would carry out his threat.' She swallowed. It was like swallowing gla.s.s. 'Because he'd already cut my friend-scarred her for life, to punish her. So-so I had to buy him off. It was all I could do. I needed that job you'd offered me. It would have paid me enough money to keep him happy for a while. When you kicked me off the shoot I came to you to beg for it back. When you refused, I panicked-I stole your watch. It was something-anything-to give to Mike, waiting outside on his motorbike. I knew it would be worth a few thousand-it must be, or a rich man like you wouldn't wear it. It would keep Mike happy. Buy me time.'

She stopped talking. There was silence. Only the dim noise of the cars outside on the street below.

Angelos's grip around her arms was like steel. 'What happened when you left the police station? Did he find you?' There was no emotion in his voice. Only the question.

There was none in hers as she answered him. She could not look at him, only stare beyond him at the far wall. Into the past.

'No. He was dead. He smashed his bike into a brick wall, following me down to the police station when I was arrested. I heard a traffic cop telling the desk sergeant. I saw the photo on his driving licence.' She was silent. Then, 'So it was all for nothing. I stole from you for nothing. I tried to save my skin, knowing that with Mike dead it was the law I had to fear having stolen. So I lied my way out of being charged with theft. And then ...' Her voice hollowed. 'Then I discovered there was still something else to fear-your vengeance. Destroying everything I'd made of myself. Pus.h.i.+ng me back into the pit I'd climbed out of. Leaving me with nothing. All over again.'

Silence stretched between them. Unbridgeable. Angelos's hands fell from her and she felt herself sway, as though he had been keeping her upright. Then, slowly, as if forcing himself, he spoke.

'Why did you never tell me this?'

Now she looked at him. His face was stark, etched from stone.

Her voice sliced with scorn. 'What possible reason would I have for thinking you could be moved by pathetic pleas from me? I'd already begged you to give me back the job you'd taken from me-hiring me one day and chucking me away the next! What would you have cared about a psycho out to get me?'

The expression in his face changed. 'Do you not know why,' he asked slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, 'I dropped you from the campaign?'

She turned away, shrugging, breaking eye contact. It disturbed her.

'I was too mouthy. Too common. A street rat-just as you called me when you stopped me marrying Giles.'