They’d liked it least of all when she’d stopped taking their calls.
“You ungrateful child!” her father had boomed at her only a few months back when she’d refused to attend a dinner party he was throwing, where he’d wanted to use her presence to impress some of his associates as all things Betancur did, and Susannah had foolishly allowed her assistant to connect his call. “You wouldn’t be where you are if not for me!”
“If I’d listened to you I would have married Leonidas’s dour old uncle when he demanded it three years ago,” she’d replied, happy all of Europe sat between her and her parents’ home outside London. “Somehow, I can live with the consequences of the choice I made.”
The conversation had disintegrated from there.
But invitations to the Betancur Ball were highly prized and fought over across the world, and there was no keeping her own parents off the list. What Susannah couldn’t believe was that somehow she’d forgotten they’d be coming tonight.
You’ve been so consumed with Leonidas you hardly know your own name, she accused herself. And she knew it was true.
It was one more reason she had to put distance between them. Because she knew all too well that the day was fast approaching when she wouldn’t want to do anything of the kind, and then she might as well lock herself away in a tower somewhere before he grew bored of her and did it himself.
Leonidas came to a stop before her parents, and Susannah didn’t know if it was because he recognized them or simply because they dared to block his path.
“You remember my parents, of course,” Susannah said for his benefit. She thought perhaps Leonidas was lucky to forget so many things. She’d like to forget her parents herself. Particularly on a night like tonight when she knew that they’d come with every intention of cutting her down to size. Right here in public where she was unlikely to make a scene or even respond too harshly.
Leonidas inclined his head, but said nothing when Susannah slipped her arm through his. She felt the dark gaze he slid her way, but he still said nothing, so she moved closer to him as if she intended to use him as a human shield.
Perhaps she did.
“Your husband has been resurrected from the dead,” her mother said coolly instead of condescending to offer a conventional greeting to either her daughter or the man whose funeral she’d attended. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have expected a call, Susannah. Or was it your intention that your only flesh and blood should learn of this miracle in the press like everyone else?”
“What my mother means to say, Leonidas,” Susannah said in mild reproof, her gaze on her mother, “is ‘welcome home.’”
Leonidas gave her another swift, dark look she thought was a little too much like a glare, but he didn’t say anything. He certainly didn’t indicate that their relationship had effectively ended just moments before on the dance floor.
Instead, he smiled in that way he did sometimes, that made it seem as if he was bestowing a great gift upon the receiver, and then he shook her father’s hand. The two men started one of those endlessly tedious masculine conversations that purported to be about business and was in fact a clever little game of one-upmanship, which left Susannah to her mother’s manicured talons.
But she still held tight to Leonidas’s arm.
“Imagine my surprise to discover that the tabloids knew more about my daughter’s life than I did,” Annemieke continued, and Susannah doubted anyone would be fooled by the little trill of laughter her mother let out as punctuation.
“Given that you and Father were exhorting me to remarry only a few months ago, I didn’t think you would be the best person to take into my confidence on this matter.”
Annemieke sniffed. “You knew he was alive all this time and yet you played your deceitful games. With everyone. You are a sneaky creature, aren’t you?”
She raised her voice when she said it, because, of course, it was for Leonidas’s benefit. And something swept over Susannah, hot and prickly. Because her mother didn’t know that she was planning to leave this man who had only just returned to her. Her mother didn’t have the slightest idea what their relationship was like. Even if she believed that Susannah had spent years knowing that Leonidas was alive and pretending otherwise, it was obvious they hadn’t spent any time together. How could they have when the world thought he was dead and Susannah had been busy acting as the face of the Betancur Corporation?
Which meant her mother was deliberately trying to undermine Susannah in front of Leonidas. She wanted to malign Susannah in his eyes.