The two women glanced up, saw Leandros standing there and looking as if he had been for quite a long time.
‘Every minute of every waking moment,’ he added smoothly. ‘Every minute of every moment I spend lost in my dreams. You have a serious problem with your dreams, Diantha,’ he told her sombrely, then without waiting for a reply he looked at Isobel. ‘Shall we go?’
She didn’t even hesitate, walking towards this man who was her life, with her eyes loving him and his loving her by return.
But Diantha was not about to give up so easily. ‘Just because these photographs are not real, it does not mean we did not sleep together,’ she threaded in stealthily. ‘Tell her, Leandros, how we spent the nights upon your yacht. Tell her how your mama thinks she is a tart and your sister Chloe despises every breath that she takes. Tell her,’ she persisted, ‘how your whole family knew she was having an affair with some man while she was here last, and how you tried to discover who he was and even believed the child she was carrying belonged to this other lover!’
Isobel’s feet came to a shuddering standstill. Her eyes clouded as she searched his. She was looking for sorrow, for a weary shake of the head to deny what Diantha was saying! For goodness’ sake, she begged him; give me anything to say that she’s still manipulating me here!
But he’d gone as pale as she’d ever seen him. His fingers trembled as he lifted them up to run through
his hair. Most damning of all, he lowered his eyes from her. ‘Come on,’ he said huskily. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Someone else was standing just behind him, and as Leandros moved Isobel saw Chloe looking white-faced. ‘Diantha, stop this,’ Chloe pleaded unsteadily. ‘I don’t understand why you—’
‘You don’t understand.’ Diantha turned on her scathingly. ‘What has it got to do with you? Your brothers used me and I will not be used!’
Brothers? Each one of them looked at her when she said this. She was no longer calm and collected, Isobel noticed. The veils of control had been ripped away and suddenly Diantha was showing her true cold and bitter self.
‘All my life I had to watch you, Chloe, being worshipped by your family of men. You have no idea what it is like to be unloved and rejected by anyone. My father rejected me because I was not a desired son. Your brother rejected me because I was not what he wanted any more.’
‘Diantha, I never—’
‘Not you,’ she flashed at Leandros. ‘Nikos! Nikos rejected me four years ago! He said we were too young to know what love was and he did not even want to know! But I knew love. I waited and waited in Washington for him to come for me. But he didn’t,’ she said bitterly. ‘You came instead, offering me those pleasant messages from home and not one from Nikos! So I came back here to Athens to make him love me! But when I arrived he was planning to marry Carlotta. I was out in the cold and there you were, Leandros, hiding in Spain with your broken heart! Well, why should we not mend together? You were thinking about it, I know you were. You can lie to her all you like, but I know that it was for me that you told Uncle Takis to begin divorce proceedings with her!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘So Takis has been talking out of line,’ he murmured silkily.
‘No!’ she denied that. ‘I have discussed this with no one.’
‘Then how did you know there was no pre-nuptial agreement?’ Isobel inserted sharply.
Diantha floundered, her mouth hovering on lies she could not find.
‘I think this has gone far enough,’ yet another voice intruded. It was Diantha’s father. ‘You have managed to stop the photographs being printed in the newspaper, Leandros?’ he enquired. At Leandros’s grim nod, he nodded also. ‘Then please leave my house and take your family with you.’
Mr Christophoros had clearly decided that his daughter had hurt enough people for one day.
The journey away was completed in near silence. Chloe sat sharing the passenger seat in Leandros’s Ferrari with Isobel, her face drawn with shock and dismay. Leandros took his sister home first, pulling up outside a house that was three times the size of his own. As she climbed out of the car, she turned back to Isobel.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered urgently. ‘I never meant—’
‘Later, Chloe,’ her brother interrupted. ‘We will all talk later but now Isobel and I have to go.’
‘But most of this is my fault!’ she cried out painfully. ‘I encouraged her to believe that she was meant for one of my brothers—’
‘Childhood stuff,’ Leandros said dismissively.
‘I let her know how much I disliked Isobel!’
Isobel’s chin went down on her chest. Chloe released a choking sob. ‘I confided everything to her and she took it all away and plotted with it. I can’t tell you how bad that makes me feel.’
Isobel could see it all. The two girls sighing over Leandros’s broken heart—as Diantha had called it. The two of them wishing that Isobel had never been born.
‘But I never knew a thing about her and Nikos,’ Chloe inserted in stifled disbelief.
‘It was nothing,’ her brother declared. ‘They dated a couple of times while you were away at college, but Nikos was made wary by her tendency towards possessiveness. He told her so and she took it badly. He was relieved when her family went to live in Washington—and I would prefer you not to mention this to him, Chloe,’ he then warned very seriously. ‘He will not appreciate the reminder at this time.’
He was talking about Nikos’s coming marriage. Chloe nodded then swallowed and tentatively touched Isobel’s arm. ‘Please,’ she murmured, ‘can you and I make a fresh start?’