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.
‘You think I came here for a free holiday? That’s not what happened!’ Deeply offended by his interpretation, she leaped out of her chair, clutching the towel like a shield. ‘You were the one who insisted that I came.’
‘And you didn’t resist.’
Her heart was pounding. ‘I came because you led me to believe that it would make a difference to your father, and I care about him. He was very kind to me.’
‘So you made this enormous sacrifice for a guy you’d met once?’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You were doing me a favour by agreeing to fly by private jet to a secluded island for a few weeks of relaxation?’ He was tying her in knots and he knew it.
‘I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth. But you’re obviously so cynical and suspicious of women’s motives that you think there’s only one possible interpretation. Maybe you should give all your money away. Then you’d know, wouldn’t you?’ Still smarting with indignation, she blinked rapidly to clear the tears that had sprung into her eyes. He wasn’t worth crying over. No man was worth that. All she could do now was pick up the pieces and start again. And learn from her mistakes.
But first she needed to get out of here.
After what they’d just done she could no longer stay as his guest. It wasn’t possible.
Before she could move, Maria appeared on the terrace, an apologetic look on her face. She said something in Greek to Angelos and he gave a low growl, almost vibrating with impatience at the interruption.
‘Theos mou, not now—’ He raked his fingers through his glossy hair and then cast a look at Chantal. ‘I have been waiting for this phone call—the timing isn’t good, but I have to take it. We’ll finish this conversation later.’
Not if she had anything to do with it.
Still bruised by his total lack of sensitivity, she didn’t respond.
What was there to finish?
He’d made his feelings perfectly clear, and she really didn’t want to listen to any more.
He thought she was some sort of cold-blooded gold-digger.
Wrung out with the emotion of it all, Chantal watched in silence as he strode across the terrace. He was as cool and in control as ever. There was no evidence to suggest that he was a man caught up in the middle of an emotional crisis. Which was yet another fundamental difference between them, she thought numbly, her eyes clinging hungrily to his broad, muscular shoulders until they disappeared from view along with the rest of him.
She still wasn’t sure how the whole thing had happened, or why it had happened. All she knew was that she felt like a balloon that had been popped before the party started.
Apart from acknowledging her utter lack of experience, Angelos apparently hadn’t given a second thought to what had happened in the pool.
And yet she’d been unable to think of anything else. Every time he’d fired a question at her, she’d just wanted to say, ‘But what about the sex?’
It had been the most shocking,
