The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

Yes? Sì? Ne?’ His sarcasm ripped like a razor through Mia’s trembling flesh. ‘I was about to add emotionally,’ he incised with deliberate precision. ‘High maintenance emotionally,’ he repeated. ‘And a bloody irritating pain in the neck!’

      ‘Don’t forget juvenile!’ Mia tagged on for herself.

      The car came to a standstill. Without uttering another word Nikos opened his door and threw himself out. Mia continued to sit, simmering in silence, while she waited for him to come around and open her door. She could have got out under her own steam but she did not want to. If she had been given a choice—and he had allowed her very few choices over the past twelve hours—she would be staying right where she was!

      ‘Leave the temper in the car,’ he rasped as she arrived in front of him.

      Refusing to give such a command mind space, Mia tossed her hair back from her face with an icy defiance that made Nikos grit his teeth.

      Women were an absolute blast, he thought angrily as they walked together across the pavement towards one of the most exclusive eating establishments in town. They did not know when to behave themselves—or when a man had taken enough of their unbelievably volatile and inconsistent nonsense! She had not been so argumentative when he’d brought her down to straddle him during the flight over here and kissed her snappy mouth.

      And, Theos, this was not the time to be recalling what they’d done next, when she was already firing him up again, because she looked nothing short of dazzling in full angry flow! Her eyes were alight, her mouth pumped and pouting because he’d cornered her just before they left his apartment and tried to kiss her out of her stubbornness. The kiss had been yet another ground-shaking experience—without the satisfying follow-up because her stubborn shell remained fixed in place.

      But her sensational mouth still wore his kiss on it in defiance—and he wanted to kiss it again, right now!

      ‘Take care,’ he husked, taking hold of her arm as she went to negotiate the shallow step in front of the restaurant entrance.

      She was wearing the usual lethal high heels and he made a silent promise to himself that he was going to chuck them all out the first opportunity he got! She was pregnant, for God’s sake. Carrying his baby. One accidental stumble off those ridiculous heels and it could all be over—

      Something shockingly like panic struck down through his body, pulling him to a shuddering halt. Mia glanced up at him in frowning surprise and his heart made a weird kind of dive down to his toes.

      ‘What?’ she asked, glaring at him as if she was expecting yet another row to erupt.

      ‘Nothing,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘I just remembered something I should have done before we left,’ he lied, feeling strangely light-headed as he reached around her to open the restaurant door.

      She walked ahead of him into the foyer with a curvaceous glide of purple satin, short and fitted and fashionably edgy, her fabulous hair a silken stream of black waves that brushed her tense narrow back.

      Purple for poison or purple for passion, he mused grimly. Tonight she was both.

      The owner of the restaurant came hurrying up to greet him. He had to pull on his social face when he did not want to, smiling pleasantly while Mia stood beside him, thankfully donning her social smile too. So he’d taught her something, Nikos thought with bleak satire.

      They were about to move on through to the restaurant proper when the door flew open and a group of newcomers came in. It was instinct that made him turn to send them a fleeting glance.

      Nikos froze as an icy shaft of instant recognition locked up his muscles. No, he thought, this cannot be happening. He tried to deflect Mia’s attention when she turned to see where he was looking, but he was too late and she froze too.

      ‘We will leave,’ he husked, already reaching out to draw her protectively towards him.

      ‘No.’ Feeling as if the ground beneath her feet was trembling, Mia let him hold her for a moment.

      But it wasn’t the ground, it was she who was trembling, shivery chills of shock tingling up and down her spine.

      Gabriella.

      Gabriella was right here in this place, in this city, standing a short metre away from her. Her mother, looking so agonizingly familiar to her because she saw that face in the mirror each time she looked at herself.

      Her heart began to thump out of kilter. She felt Nikos trying his best to block her view with the long length of his body and his wide shoulders. And she knew he was doing it because she must have turned the colour of milk.

      ‘I’m going to speak to her,’ she whispered. The decision came without her even knowing she wanted to do such a thing.

      ‘No—Mia, don’t,’ Nikos advised gruffly. ‘You—’

      But she was already stepping round him on legs that did not feel like they belonged to her any more. Mario Mattea glanced at her and he knew—that quickly he knew who it was he was looking at.

      Tall and lean, strikingly attractive for a man in his sixtieth year, he touched his wife’s arm to gain her attention. ‘Gabriella,’ he murmured in a low warning voice.

      Gabriella Mattea turned her luxurious dark head and looked into the pale face of the daughter she had not set eyes on in ten long years.

      Silence poured into the gap between them. Mia felt her heart take on a thick pounding beat in her ears. Somewhere in the hazy distance she was aware of Nikos’s tension and of Mario’s. There were other people around them but they were invisible; she only saw her mother’s face.

      Feeling as vulnerable as the small child she had been when she last stood this close to her mother, she whispered tremulously, ‘Ciao, M-Mama.’

      Eyes like black glass looked her over. Mia watched the beautiful face in front of her freeze. ‘For goodness’ sake, will someone get this person away from me?’ Gabriella drawled out in cold Italian. ‘Is it impossible to eat out without being set upon by strangers these days?’

      A stunning silence fell around the foyer. In the middle of it Mia slowly died. Then Nikos’s arm was a fierce brace across her shoulders. And Mario was bursting into speech.

      ‘Nikos,’ he greeted tensely. ‘I did not expect to see you—’

      ‘Excuse us,’ Nikos cut in coldly and walked them to the door.

      The restaurant owner leapt to open it for them, murmuring apologies in a shocked anxious voice. They made it onto the pavement. So coldly furious he could hit something, Nikos speared a glance up the street, looking for where his driver had parked.

      Turning his shaking frozen package towards him he wrapped her in one supporting arm, pressing her close against his body, while he located his mobile phone. Keeping his anger in check cost him control of his voice as he ordered his driver to come and get them.

      ‘Nikos, please.’ Mario appeared on the pavement beside them. ‘Let me explain to you why that unfortunate scene happened,’ he begged urgently. ‘My wife—’

      ‘An explanation is not required,’ Nikos sliced through the other man, his arm banding Mia all the tighter to him. ‘It happened because you gave Gabriella a choice and she chose you, your wealth and your lifestyle over her own child.’ As Nikos spoke, Mia quivered in fresh hurt as he outlined the stark cold truth of it. ‘It happened,’ he continued, ‘because you and your wife are soulless, with a soulless marriage, which in my view makes you well suited. Mia might not appreciate this right now but she has been better off without knowing either of you.’

      ‘Because she has Balfour to turn to now?’ Mario’s sudden harsh derision cut into Mia like a knife.

      ‘No,’ Nikos countered. ‘Because she has me.’

      The car swept to a stop beside them, and Nikos reached out to open the rear door. There was a new atmosphere