The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

him to feel like the worst man alive, then she was succeeding, he accepted as he stood beside her trembling figure while they rode the lift to the top floor.

      No oval lobby here, just direct access to his apartment proper.

      ‘Mia…’ he started to say huskily.

      She strode off towards the bedrooms with her taut slender spine telling him she did not want to listen to anything else he had to say.

      He watched her go, watched his chance to put this right walk away from him on those foolish high heels, winced when her bedroom door slammed shut in her wake.

      ‘Damn,’ he cursed, then added a few more rich words, and on a ferocious act of burning frustration aimed directly at himself and his own insecurities, he swung around and flung a clenched fist at the nearest wall.

      Kicking off her shoes, Mia sent them skidding across the bedroom floor, then spun to glare at the bed for a tear-stinging second before she threw herself face down on it. She hated him—again, she told herself fiercely, pressing her face into the pillow and trembling with anger and a million different layers of hurt.

      He was hard and cold and he did not deserve any of this aching love she was suffering on his behalf! He did not deserve her at all!

      Damage control…What kind of man was he that he could describe a marriage proposal as—

      Her door suddenly burst open. ‘All right, so the damage-control quip was a lousy, cruel, rotten cover-up!’ Nikos launched at her. ‘You are driving me crazy. You make me say things I don’t mean to say! I think I might be madly in love with you—does that make a difference?’

      Mia froze, and then twisted over to look at him. He was standing just inside the door, looking like a man who’d been subjected to torture to make him say that. Every bone, every muscle, every beautifully toned golden skin cell, flexed to its limits, and his eyes were firing fury at her as if she had been the one to inflict the torture!

      Had it been that painful for him to say it?

      ‘Explain this might be,’ she demanded. ‘You think it impresses me?’

      ‘No,’ he muttered, and did a strange thing then—he dropped the tension out of his shoulders and lifted a fist up to his mouth, wincing as if he was in pain. ‘Having never experienced any kind of love before, I can only offer a might be,’ he said.

      Dropping the hand out of its fist he flexed the long fingers. ‘You like to believe you are the only one to get a lousy deal in the parental stakes, agape mou,’ he imparted heavily, ‘but you don’t have a clue how bad it can get. My mother was a prostitute and my father was her pimp. Try comparing that coupling with your own less-than-perfect parents.’

      ‘But I thought you were—’

      ‘Born with a silver spoon in my mouth?’ he offered, skimming her a skin-peeling cynical glance. ‘Living in a one-bedroom cockroach-infested apartment deep in the heart of an Athens slum is not silver-spoon stuff, I promise you. It’s the same as living in hell. I need a drink,’ he said suddenly and turned back to the door.

      ‘Don’t you dare walk out of here after saying all of that!’ Mia shrieked. ‘I want to know what it is you’re talking about!’

      His wide shoulders clenched. Nikos bit out a curse, then spun to walk over to the window and stood there, glaring out at the view.

      ‘Down there,’ he husked, bringing Mia sliding off the bed to go and stand beside him, ‘beyond the bright lights where everything turns murky and dark.’

      Mia looked without seeing because seeing was not as important to her as what he was saying to her. She moved closer to him and was surprised when he let her, even shifting a tense arm to draw her in.

      ‘For the first six years of my life I believed it was normal to sleep in a bedroom cupboard,’ he provided gruffly. ‘They, my so-called parents, locked me in there so I would not embarrass my mother’s—clients when she brought them back to—ply her services. If I made a sound I was beaten.’

      ‘Oh, Nikos, no,’ Mia whispered in dismay.

      ‘They were heroin addicts,’ he delivered flatly. ‘Sometimes they would be so out of their heads they would forget about me for days. I still have nightmares about that filthy cupboard,’ he breathed grittily, then vented a short hard laugh. ‘Try sleeping a whole night in the same bed with me, cara, and you will know what it is I’m talking about. I cannot stand to be in small enclosed places, and locks and bolts give me the creeps. And don’t weep,’ he rasped when a sob of understanding broke free from her. ‘I will not be responsible if you start weeping. I have told no one this. So just stand here and listen. When I was nine, a—client discovered me. He decided it would be good to have a bit of fun at my expense…’

      He went so silent then that Mia worried what it was he was remembering that he could not bring himself to reveal. After a minute of it she could not stand still any longer and turned herself fully into his front, then hugged him tightly with her arms locked around his taut body.

      He ripped out a sigh and wrapped his arms around her too.

      ‘I ran away,’ he went on. ‘The police found me and I was delivered into the hands of the social services. I was never so glad about anything,’ he admitted. ‘For the first time in my life I had a real bed to sleep in and three meals a day, and most importantly, I felt safe. I was a model inmate because I was so scared they would send me back to my parents. I excelled at school and was willing to take on any chore if it earned me a smile of approval. I would have begged and crawled to remain where I was.’

      ‘Nikos—’

      ‘No, don’t say anything,’ he cut across her. ‘When I was thirteen I was accused of stealing provisions from the kitchens. It wasn’t me, I was stitched up, but since I couldn’t prove that, I was—punished. I vowed it would be the last time that anyone would lay a strap to my back and I ran away again. I spent the next six months living on the streets, sleeping in alleyways and surviving on meagre handouts. But I missed school. I had a desperate need to learn so I gave myself up to the authorities. From then on I was labelled a problem child and was sent to a home full of problem children…’

      He paused once again to take a minute to smooth out the roughened tone of his voice. And Mia took her chance, and brushed a soft trembling kiss to one of his taut cheeks.

      ‘I endured the life there,’ he continued, easing her closer to him. ‘I cannot be charitable and call it anything more than an endurance, but I had to stay if I wanted to attend school…The worst part was surrendering to my vow and allowing someone else to beat me,’ he roughed out. ‘On my sixteenth birthday I walked out of there and never went back.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

      ‘I am not after your sympathy,’ he lanced out. ‘I am merely trying to explain to you why I cannot tell if I love you or not.’ Since Mia was sure that nothing less than the desperation of love would have dragged any of this out of him, she just lifted her face from his chest and smiled up at him. ‘Well, I know I love you. So we can work on that.’

      Allowing himself to look down at her, Nikos quirked a flat black eyebrow. ‘Just like that?’

      ‘Sì.’ She nodded. ‘What happened to your parents?’ she then prompted softly.

      He cleared his throat. ‘They died when I was fourteen, from a lethal batch of heroin.’

      ‘And—and Oscar, how did you come to meet him?’

      This time he husked out a small laugh. ‘I was a real hustler by then. Good-looking, sharp-witted and too damn cocksure of myself for my own good. Waiting on tables of the rich was a good place to learn about business scams. I had become pretty successful at scamming others by the time Oscar wandered into my life. I tried a hustle on him,’ he admitted. ‘Oscar listened to my pitch, fed my ego with smooth questions I was able to answer without so much as a blink.