Tears stung her eyes. ‘Why do you delight in hurting me?’ she demanded, realising too late how vulnerable that made her sound. But Constantine didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘Don’t you think that hurt is an inevitable part of a relationship?’ he returned with a shrug. ‘Of all relationships?’
She disregarded his careless use of the word ‘relationship,’ because the clue was in the emphasised word and Laura seized on it. ‘Is that what happened with you, Constantine? You got hurt?’
‘I’ve seen how women can hurt and manipulate, yes.’
‘Girlfriends, you mean?’
‘No, not girlfriends,’ he answered scornfully.
‘You mean…your mother?’ she guessed, as she remembered the odd, strained look on his face when he’d mentioned her.
He shrugged in affirmation but didn’t bother to reply. Hopefully she might take the hint and quit interrogating him.
‘What happened?’
Did she never learn when to leave well enough alone—that her probing questions were unwelcome? ‘What happened happened a long time ago,’ he snapped. ‘So forget it.’
Laura leaned a little closer. ‘But I don’t want to forget it. This is Alex’s grandmother we’re talking about, and one day he may want to know. Won’t you tell me, Constantine? Please?’
What was it about her softly spoken question that sparked a need to reply—to confide about things he had never told another? he wondered, raking his dark hair back from his brow in frustration. He was a man who never confided, who was strong for everyone. The buck stopped with Constantine and it had done for many years, but now words came spilling from his lips like a stream of dark poison.
‘She was years younger than my father—decades, in fact. A beautiful, fragile beauty who bewitched him—and because he was almost fifty when they married her youth and her beauty hit him like a hurricane. When a man has never known passion until late in life it can take him over like a fever.’ He shrugged. ‘He neglected everything in pursuit of a love she was ill-equipped to return—but then she was incapable of loving anyone but herself.’
‘Even you?’ said Laura slowly.
Her question broke into the tumult of his thoughts, but Constantine was in too far to stop now. ‘Even me,’ he answered, and the admission was like a hammer blow—for was there not something almost shameful about admitting that the most fundamental bond of all, between mother and child, had simply not existed in their case? But the precise side of Constantine’s nature meant that he needed to attempt to define it.
‘She was one of those people who did not seem to be of this earth—she was too fey and too delicate, and she did not look after herself,’ he continued. ‘She partied and drank wine instead of eating—smoked cigarettes instead of breathing in the pure Greek air. And when she died her enchantment still did not end—for my father went to pieces. He became one of those men who are obsessed by a ghost and who live in a past which only really exists in their own imagination. It was only when I took over the business properly that I was able to see just how badly he had let things go.’
Laura stared at his hard and beautiful features, transformed now into a mask hardened by pain and memory. So even his father had not been there for him—which explained the lack of closeness between the two men. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said simply.
He turned, angry with her, but far angrier with himself for having unleashed some of the dark secrets of his soul. ‘I do not want your sympathy,’ he snapped.
‘But I think that—’
‘And neither do I want your advice—no matter how well intentioned! You are a woman from humble circumstances who knows nothing of this life of privilege which you have entered solely because you are the mother of my son! And you would do well to remember your place here!’
Laura reached for her sunglasses and rammed them down over her eyes before he could see the tears which were brimming up behind her lids. Remember your place here. How cheap did that make her feel? His words were barely any different from her own thoughts about them occupying different worlds—but, oh, how it hurt to hear them flung at her with such venom. He didn’t like women, she realised—and, while it was easy to see why, it wasn’t going to change, was it? Nothing she said would ever change it.
She saw Alex begin to stir—had their low but angry words wakened him? she wondered guiltily. But her primary feeling was of relief that she would no longer have to endure any more hurt provoked by Constantine’s cruel comments. And she would protect herself from further heartache by staying as far away from him as possible.
‘I think in view of what’s just been said that we should try to avoid each other as much as possible while I’m still here,’ she whispered.
Constantine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you crazy?’ he questioned silkily, and without warning he splayed his hand over the sun-warmed expanse of her thigh, watching with triumph as her lips parted involuntarily in a soundless little gasp of pleasure. He lowered his voice. ‘We may as well enjoy the one good, satisfactory thing which men and women do give each other. And—just for the record—I’ve done nothing but work in Athens; there have been no other women.’ His black eyes gleamed with predatory anticipation. ‘To be perfectly frank, your passion has left me unable to think of any other woman but you, agape mou.’
‘And should I be flattered by that?’ she questioned bitterly.
‘I think perhaps you should,’ he murmured.
But Laura was already scrambling to her feet and packing up the picnic basket.
‘Oh, and Laura?’ he said softly.
She looked up, some new steely quality in his voice warning her that what he was about to say would be more than another remark about their sexual chemistry. ‘What?’
‘I think it’s about time we told Alex who I really am, don’t you?’