‘I left it to the school to fill you in on what your sister had been up to.’
‘The school…?’ Fresh fury wiped the ashen complexion from her face. ‘The headmistress didn’t give us even two minutes of her time. All she told us was that drugs had been found in Violet’s personal effects and that she was expelled. She kicked her out just like that.’ She snapped her fingers for emphasis. ‘You should have called me as soon as you found them. I was her guardian. I should have been told.’
Andreas hardened himself to the guilty feeling pooling in his stomach and rose to his feet, walking over to look her in the eye. ‘After the stunt Violet pulled I wanted nothing more to do with either of you. If I am being honest I assumed she had learned her tricks from you…’
Almost too late he saw the hand come flying towards him and only just managed to snatch hold of the wrist before the fingers connected with his face.
CHAPTER SIX
HOLDING HER STRUGGLING wrist up in the air, Andreas stared into the furious hazel eyes. ‘Let me finish. At the time I made the assumption she had learned to seduce a man through watching you, her older sister. That was my mistake and I apologise for it—I was angrier than I have ever been and incredibly worried for my niece, who told me the next morning that Violet had been in and out of different boys’ beds for months. What would you have done in my position? What would you have done if it had been Natalia running wild and dragging Violet down with her?’
She’d stopped her struggle against his hold. For a moment the anger disappeared to be replaced with sadness. ‘If it had been the other way round I would have told you. Violet needed help not condemnation. If I had been told then…’ She sighed, seeming to deflate with the motion. ‘It probably wouldn’t have made any difference. The damage had already been done. Violet had been sleeping around—the naïve fool thought it would make James jealous. She was desperate for him to take her back, totally unable to accept they were over, and she had no one to talk to about it. He’d made her keep it a secret and I think that screwed with her head as much as anything but she’d been completely under his spell. I only discovered the truth after the expulsion.’
And now, as she recalled the horror and despair she’d felt when Violet had made her confession, she felt the same guilt that she’d been so unaware that her darling baby sister had had an affair with a rich man old enough to be her father and who had fed her all the drugs she could consume.
Slowly it penetrated that Andreas’s hold on her wrist had loosened and slid down to cover her hand. She shook it off and stepped back. She didn’t want his sympathy.
Even with all the anger and hate that had flown between them there had still lived in Carrie a basic toxic awareness of him that her brain had no control over. Her hand zinged from his hold, causing a thrashing in her chest that echoed loudly in her ears.
She forced out a long breath and fought to think clearly.
She mustn’t let his touch affect her thoughts.
But he didn’t even need to touch her to make her react.
Moments ago she’d been inches from hitting him. She’d never hit anyone before, never even come close, and the violence she felt towards him terrified her as much as anything else.
When she next spoke, she did everything she could to keep her tone more moderate. ‘Why did Violet say you set her up if it wasn’t true? She was adamant about it. I took her home after that awful meeting with that condescending witch of a headmistress and she swore you had planted the drugs. That’s when it all came out about James.’
‘Revenge?’ he suggested with a deep sigh. ‘For rejecting her? For informing the school? For telling her she wasn’t welcome in my home any more? For telling her to keep away from Natalia?’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ she admitted heavily. ‘She hates you as much as she hates him.’
Andreas inhaled. As much as he felt for the screwed-up Violet and the atrocious, immoral way she had been used by that monster, he couldn’t rid himself of the anger that Carrie had thought of him in the same light, had been willing to think him corrupt and immoral too, had used her position as a journalist to get vengeance for something in which he was innocent.
‘You know, it would have saved a lot of grief if you had confronted me with Violet’s allegations when she made them.’
‘Truth or lie, you would have denied it,’ she answered flatly. ‘I wouldn’t have trusted your answer.’
‘Natalia would have confirmed it if you had asked.’
‘Natalia hero-worshipped you. She would have said anything you told her to.’