Clearly he was so appalled that he’d flown a cleaner out to his island on his private jet that he couldn’t even find the words to express his disgust. She gave a tiny shrug and tried to ignore the pain that tore at her insides.
‘It’s all right.’ She tried to sound dismissive. Casual. ‘Go ahead and say what’s on your mind.’ After all, she was used to it. Used to being judged and instantly dismissed. Struggling to close her armour around her. She lifted her eyes to his and she found him watching her from beneath thick dark lashes that concealed his expression.
‘I’m still waiting for you to explain how you came to have the ticket.’ He spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘I’m assuming that if I wait long enough you will get to the point in the end.’
‘I’ve reached the point.’
He rubbed his fingers over his forehead, as if to ease the tension. ‘Chantal—that is your name, isn’t it?’ He spoke slowly and softly, as if he were hanging onto control by a thread. ‘I’m not a very patient man. If a member of my staff had taken as long to tell me something as you have, I would have fired them by now.’
She stiffened defensively. ‘I just told you I was working as a cleaner.’
‘I heard you. At the moment I’m not interested in your career choice. What I’m still waiting to hear is how you came by the ticket.’
‘But—’
‘I’m not good with long, involved stories,’ he informed her, his tone exasperated. ‘Get to the point, please, before we both age any further.’
Chantal opened her mouth to say that she’d thought that the fact she was actually a cleaner was the point, but the burning impatience in his eyes made her think twice. Obviously he wanted more. ‘I was cleaning her room. She was having a complete tantrum about what she should wear—flinging clothes all over the place and expecting me to pick them up. I thought she needed help, so I told her which dress I thought suited her best, and she just exploded in a rage. What did someone like me know about how to dress for an event like that? What did I know about attracting a rich man? I suffered fifteen minutes of verbal abuse, and then she decided that she wasn’t going at all. So she flung her ticket in the bin and checked out of the hotel. I think she left Paris that same afternoon.’
‘So you took the ticket out of her bin?’ He condensed her lengthy confession into a few very blunt words.
‘It sounds bad, I know. But—’
‘—But you wanted to prove her wrong about not being able to attract a rich man?’
Affronted, Chantal glared at him. ‘Of course not! It was nothing to do with attracting a rich man. It was a confidence thing.’ She subsided in her seat. ‘She made me feel so small—as if I were a completely different species to her.’ She could have told him the rest of her story, of course, but there was no way she was doing that, when she’d already told him far, far too much about herself. As far as she was concerned she’d given him everything he was having. The rest was staying locked inside. She straightened her shoulders. ‘And that’s why I took the ticket. It wasn’t about meeting men. I needed to prove to myself that she was wrong about me. Just for one night I wanted to dress up and be in her world.’
‘You borrowed one of her dresses?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I would never have fitted into one of her dresses—and anyway, I wouldn’t have done something like that. I made my own dress.’
‘In the space of a few hours?’
Stung by his disbelieving tone, Chantal frowned at him. ‘I’m good at sewing.’ She’d had to be. It was the only way she could afford to dress the way she wanted to dress.
‘So you turned up at the ball, like Cinderella, just to prove to her that she was wrong?’
‘It wasn’t about her at all. It was about me. I was proving it to myself. She made me feel—’ The confession sat like a leaden lump in her mouth. ‘She made me feel worthless. Less than her. I wanted to prove to myself that the people at the ball were just people. That I could mix and mingle in that world.’ It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was all he was getting from her.
‘So that explains the bizarre conversation we had on the night of the ball when you wouldn’t tell me who you were,’ he muttered. ‘Finally I understand all that rambling about stereotypes and people not judging other people.’
‘That’s what they do,’ Chantal said simply. ‘People judge all the time, based on a number of superficial factors and their judgements are almost always wrong.’
‘I don’t suppose it occurred to you to tell me the truth?’
‘You’re joking! Of course not. You would have had me thrown out. And anyway, you were furious when you saw I’d been talking to your father.’
‘Not because you were talking to him, but because you gave him the impression that we were seriously in love. The fact that you are here today is purely a result of the lies you told that night.’
She stared at him numbly. The warmth and passion they’d shared only moments ago had gone. ‘I sat next to your father because he was the only friendly face in the place. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know who you were. And then he and I started to talk and—’
‘And?’
She was silent for a moment, unwilling to confess that her imagination had run away with her. She didn’t want him to know the impact he’d had on her at their first meeting. ‘It was just a misunderstanding,’ she said lamely, and he muttered something in Greek under his breath.
‘You let me carry on believing that you were Isabelle, despite having had ample opportunity to tell me the truth. And I suppose the reason for that is all too obvious.’ His tone was suddenly cool. ‘I was offering you an all-expenses-paid holiday on a Greek Island. No wonder you stayed silent.’
It was the worst thing he could have said to her.