‘But otherwise you are happy with your exciting new life?’
Tia Giulia wanted her to say yes. She needed to be reassured that she had not made a big mistake telling Mia about Oscar. So Mia gave her that assurance and tried after that to sound much brighter when she phoned.
On Saturday, she bumped into one of Kat Balfour’s friends in the street. Bethany was a bright, beautiful, lively creature much like her half-sister Kat. They chatted about the D’Lassio party for a while, which Bethany had been unable to attend for some reason Mia could not recall two minutes after she’d had it explained to her. Her mind was like that right now, unable to sustain any thoughts that did not contain the name Nikos Theakis in them. Bethany invited her to join her and a few other friends for a drink that night and Mia thought emptily, why not?
When she arrived at the Chelsea wine bar the place was so crowded she almost chickened out and went away again, but Bethany saw her and waved her over. Bathany’s group of friends were lively and noisy and Mia was surprised an hour later to discover that she was almost—almost—enjoying herself. Most of them were going on to dinner, then a nightclub, but the thought of eating anything made her stomach go queasy so she declined with a smile and some excuse that was something else she could not recall minutes afterwards.
The following Wednesday, she climbed out of bed and immediately had to run to the bathroom where she was sick. When the same thing happened the next few mornings, she decided it was time to start eating proper, regular meals again.
Monday, she still felt so nauseous Fiona noticed her sickly pallor.
‘I think I’ve caught a bug,’ she confessed and explained that she’d been sick on and off for days.
Fiona sent her home. Not wanting to go because being stuck in her apartment all day was only marginally worse than being stuck here waiting for Nikos to put in an appearance. He called daily but he only spoke to Fiona. In the time he had been away he’d called from Rome, Athens, New York and Busan. Understanding just where Busan was put him a long, long way away, which suited her, Mia told herself.
It did.
Wednesday, Fiona showed her an article from the financial pages of a broadsheet. It was about Lassiter-Brunel. Apparently the company had a new anonymous backer to bail them out of trouble. Good, she thought. Perhaps Anton Brunel will stop being angry with her for ruining his deal with Nikos.
Thursday she stood up from her desk too quickly and went so dizzy she almost passed out. Angry and concerned, Fiona insisted she go to see a doctor because the stomach bug was lingering too long. Having never needed to consult a doctor in her entire life before, she had no idea how to find one in London. So she had to call Sophie, who wanted to know what was wrong. After explaining, her half-sister directed her to the family physician. She took a taxi there. The moment she stepped into his private rooms, she knew she did not want to be there. Something—instinct maybe—filled her with a stark feeling of dread. Half an hour later she walked out again, so shocked and dazed she almost walked straight under the wheels of a car. She did not go back to the office. She did not go back to her apartment. She just walked and walked and walked, until eventually thirst and exhaustion forced her to hail a taxi and go home.
The mirrored walls in the lift showed her deathly colour. A trembling weakness in her legs had forced her to lean into the corner of the car.
‘Incinta…’ She watched her lips form a word that was still refusing to make proper sense to her.
She even tried mouthing the same thing in English but could not seem to remember the translation and her eyes looked like two sunken dark pools in her wan face. A fresh clutch of nausea was building, drying up her mouth and flattening her hands to her stomach in an effort to stop it from getting any worse.
The lift stopped and the doors slid open. Reeling her way out of it like a dizzy drunk she almost cannoned right into the big man himself. Dressed in a dark grey suit with a gold tie knotted against his bright white shirt, he looked staggeringly elegant, shatteringly attractive and felt so solidly real that Mia just lost it completely, and every shocked, scared, raw emotion she had been struggling with throughout the afternoon just exploded from her in a fit of helpless rage.
She hit out at him, managing to land a salvo of blows on his chest before he caug
ht firm hold of her fists to hold them still. Stopped from venting her feelings that way and panting in her fury she went for the jugular with the only other weapon left.
‘What are you doing here?’ She speared up at his surprised, disgustingly healthy-looking handsome dark face. ‘You should be feeling too ashamed to show your face!’
‘Mia—’
‘Don’t you dare say my name to me!’ she choked, yanking like a crazy woman at her imprisoned fists. ‘You turned me into my mother and I hate you for it! I will hate you for doing that to me for the rest of my life!’
With a final tug he let go of her, and the moment he did so she slithered round him, too engrossed in her own raw feelings to notice that, other than capturing her fists, he had been totally still throughout her attack.
Her legs felt wobbly when she tried to walk on them; the queasy feeling in her stomach had now reached her throat. She wasn’t really surprised that when she tried to focus on her apartment door, the oval-shaped walls of the lobby began to sway in and out. Reaching out for the nearest solid thing in an effort to steady herself, her trembling fingers closed around the hard-muscled strength of a silk-suited arm instead.
Mia tilted her head back, glazed blue eyes darkened by confusion staring at his fiercely frowning expression. She had not heard him move. Perhaps he had not moved at all and it was just an optical illusion like the moving walls and the swaying floor beneath her feet.
Then it all began to close in on her. ‘Nikos,’ she whispered just before she began to sink.
When she came around she was lying on a long soft leather sofa. Nikos was squatting down beside it, lancing Greek into his mobile phone while he held one of her hands trapped inside a tightly clenched grip.
He looked clenched all over, Mia observed dimly, gliding an unwilling glance over his taut profile and the fierce set of his shoulders inside his jacket. Nor did he look as elegantly turned out as he had done. He’d dragged the knot to his tie loose and undone two buttons of his shirt. Those two buttons looked as if they’d been yanked open to reveal a triangle of brown skin. There was tension in his strong neck muscles and his clenched jaw line. And as he bit out another line of Greek she noticed his blanched pallor and the lines of stress spoiling the shape of his wide sensual lips.
How long had she been out? Frowning, it took her several seconds to recall the full drama she had enacted before she’d swooned away at his feet. She’d attacked him like a madwoman. She had not even given him a chance to speak. She recalled his stunned frozen face when she’d vented her anger on him.
Then she remembered why she had reacted like that and a tiny sob escaped her lips.
His conversation stopped. He swung his dark head around to look at her. Fierce dark eyes that glittered with the oddest expression settled on hers and the fingers he had closed around her fingers tightened their grip.
‘You fainted,’ he told her as if she was too dense to work it out for herself.