‘Nikos—’
‘No, don’t say anything,’ he cut across her. ‘When I was thirteen I was accused of stealing provisions from the kitchens. It wasn’t me, I was stitched up, but since I couldn’t prove that, I was—punished. I vowed it would be the last time that anyone would lay a strap to my back and I ran away again. I spent the next six months living on the streets, sleeping in alleyways and surviving on meagre handouts. But I missed school. I had a desperate need to learn so I gave myself up to the authorities. From then on I was labelled a problem child and was sent to a home full of problem children…’
He paused once again to take a minute to smooth out the roughened tone of his voice. And Mia took her chance, and brushed a soft trembling kiss to one of his taut cheeks.
‘I endured the life there,’ he continued, easing her closer to him. ‘I cannot be charitable and call it anything more than an endurance, but I had to stay if I wanted to attend school…The worst part was surrendering to my vow and allowing someone else to beat me,’ he roughed out. ‘On my sixteenth birthday I walked out of there and never went back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘I am not after your sympathy,’ he lanced out. ‘I am merely trying to explain to you why I cannot tell if I love you or not.’ Since Mia was sure that nothing less than the desperation of love would have dragged any of this out of him, she just lifted her face from his chest and smiled up at him. ‘Well, I know I love you. So we can work on that.’
Allowing himself to look down at her, Nikos quirked a flat black eyebrow. ‘Just like that?’
‘Sì.’ She nodded. ‘What happened to your parents?’ she then prompted softly.
He cleared his throat. ‘They died when I was fourteen, from a lethal batch of heroin.’
‘And—and Oscar, how did you come to meet him?’
This time he husked out a small laugh. ‘I was a real hustler by then. Good-looking, sharp-witted and too damn cocksure of myself for my own good. Waiting on tables of the rich was a good place to learn about business scams. I had become pretty successful at scamming others by the time Oscar wandered into my life. I tried a hustle on him,’ he admitted. ‘Oscar listened to my pitch, fed my ego with smooth questions I was able to answer without so much as a blink. He agreed to the deal, handed me a cheque for an astonishing amount of money, then he proceeded to hustle me with an offer of a stake in some irresistible venture of his own if I could come up with the required cash, which was, of course, double what he had given me. I handed him back his cheque plus every penny I had in the world and the scammer had been beautifully scammed by an expert at it.’
Mia laughed. ‘You mean there was no irresistible venture?’
‘No.’ Nikos smiled to himself, recalling what Oscar must have seen when he’d stared thoughtfully across the desk at the twenty-year-old hustler he had been back then. ‘Oscar fleeced me cold with a relaxed smoothness that can still make me squirm to recall it,’ he confessed.
Yet, for all of it, Oscar Balfour had seen something in him that he’d liked.
‘Instead of slinging me out, humiliated and penniless, he offered to show me how to play the hustle from the right side of the law,’ he went on softly. ‘He was my saviour from a life of crime and probably regular imprisonment. Everything I am today I owe to him. He’s—special. Never underestimate him, agape mou, for Oscar never puts any plan into action unless he has a very sure idea what the outcome will be.’
‘You’re talking about you and me now, aren’t you?’ Mia frowned up at him.
‘Right down to the Brunel incident,’ he drawled sardonically.
Mia widened her eyes. ‘No,’ she denied.
‘Brunel went overboard with his brief when he tipped you into that pool, and Oscar was angry. But it was Santino D’Lassio’s security people who tracked Brunel down and—urged the truth out of him. Oscar does not know that I know,’ he added. ‘I am keeping that piece of information to myself for a while longer.’
‘Don’t you dare hurt my father!’ Mia flared up instantly.
Looking down at her, Nikos prompted dryly, ‘Not hating him so much now?’
Mia shifted restlessly against him. ‘I don’t hate Oscar,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t even hate my mother…’ Her blue eyes shadowed over on the hollow ache she experienced. ‘I was hurting when I said all of those things in the car. Oscar has been good to me—kind, even when my arrival caused him so much trouble.’
‘Trouble you had a right to cause, Mia.’
‘That’s what he said to me,’ she whispered, feeling guilty now that she had maligned the man who’d tried his very best to make her feel welcome and wanted. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what was Oscar planning for you and me?’
‘Oh, the full works, I should imagine.’ Nikos smiled ruefully. ‘Throw you in my way every damn day. Wind me up with some macho protectiveness and jealousy to aim me in the direction he wanted me to go.’
‘Which was where?’
‘White lace and wedding bells,’ he enlightened. ‘But without the premature baby conception… I will have let him down there.’
‘You did not do so on your own,’ Mia pointed out. ‘I helped—a lot.’
At last she made his strained mouth stretch into a real proper grin. Reaching up she traced that wide warm mouth with a finger. ‘You know what you need,’ she ventured softly, long black eyelashes hiding away the sparkle in her blue eyes. ‘You need a trial run sleeping with me in a bed for a whole night or two. I can live with no locks on the doors but I refuse to marry a man who insists on separate bedrooms because he thinks I will scare him into nightmares…’
The way she put the last part froze Nikos for a second or two before he threw back his dark head and laughed. Then with a groan he crushed her up against him, and claimed the pouting invitation of her lush mouth.