Vanessa took a slow intake of breath. He knew instantly who had told her she was his future mother-in-law, and that tiny extra confirmation was like a weight crushing her down.
‘The day I left,’ she said.
Emotion contorted in his face again. He fought visibly for control. And failed. Greek burst from him then, and with a ragged breath he swapped to English.
‘I don’t believe this. I just do not believe it! On the strength of some uncorroborated statement from a complete stranger, you take it as gospel that I’m about to get married? God Almighty, how stupid can you be? Not to mention—’ his face contorted again ‘—the little issue of trust! Christos, how could you? How could you just walk out on me because of what a stranger tells you, without even coming to me to ask if it’s true?’ A hand slashed through the air, sharp and violent. ‘Thee mou, how could you even think it was true? Haven’t I made my views on marriage crystal-clear? I will not be pressured into marriage. I have no intention of marrying—ever.’ His face hardened and his eyes bored into her like knives of steel. ‘I told you to your face, that very day, that I would never marry.’
Vanessa’s hand had tightened around her glass, nails whitening.
‘Are you telling me you’re not marrying Constantia Dimistris’s daughter?’
It was difficult to get the words out. Each one seemed to grate in her throat like the edge of a razorblade.
‘That,’ he bit out savagely, ‘is exactly what I’m telling you. And that you should have believed it for an instant makes me so angry I could—’ He broke off, lips pressing together. ‘How could you believe her?’ he asked, his voice low and deadly.
There was a hollow inside her, like a chasm opening up.
‘She was very convincing.’
‘She lied.’ His voice was flat, unarguable.
‘Then why—?’ She rested her eyes on him unblinkingly, while inside the chasm was swallowing her whole. ‘Why did she give me twenty-five thousand pounds to “expedite my departure”? Why did she pay me off if what she’d told me wasn’t true?’
‘You took her money?’ The anger flared again in Markos’s voice.
Vanessa shut her eyes, then opened them again.
‘I tore the cheque up and flushed it down the lavatory. Then I packed and left.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to stick around long enough to ask me if what she’d told you wasn’t a pack of lies?’
‘How could it have been a pack of lies? She’d just parted with twenty-five thousand pounds. She wouldn’t have done that if what she’d told me wasn’t true.’
Both his hands flew up in a gesture of incomprehension and anger.
‘It was to get you to go! And you fell for it like a complete patsy!’
‘It was twenty-five thousand pounds!’
‘So? Cheap at twice the price if it meant getting you out of my apartment to make way for the daughter I had no intention of marrying in the first place!’
Vanessa could only stare. ‘But she couldn’t possibly have handed over so much if what she told me wasn’t true! Twenty-five thousand pounds is a fortune!’
Markos pressed his mouth together.
‘Only to someone like you, Vanessa.’
She chilled. The way he had spoken sent slivers of ice down her spine. She looked around her for a second. The bright, cheerful, sunlit room, filled with furniture bought from catalogues and local homestores was a universe away from the kind of decor, the kind of apartment, that Markos Makarios—and his prospective brides and their families—were used to.
Markos was speaking again, dragging her attention back.
‘And so, on the strength of a single uncorroborated claim, an attempt to bribe you so clumsy a child could see through it, you walked out on me. Without a word. Without an explanation. You took off, went to another man and got yourself pregnant.’
He glanced around. ‘And to no purpose, I see. If this is your pay-off, you could have done a lot better for yourself. Were you counting on more, Vanessa? A wedding ring? Or, failing that, at least sufficient palimony and child maintenance to keep you in a villa in the south of France?’
She got to her feet.
‘Please leave, Markos. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you anywhere near me.’