husband. Opposite the woman who was never going to be anything more to do with him—who was going to take his sister’s husband from her.
He should have felt rage. Fury. Black murderous anger for his sister’s sake. For his own. But all there was inside him was an empty, bleak hollow. His eyes went to Marisa. She was looking so pale. So pale and so incredibly beautiful. She was standing beside Ian. They made a startlingly handsome couple—both so blond and blue-eyed, with their English complexions. A matched pair—a foil for his and his sister’s dark, Mediterranean looks.
The blade slid into his guts, twisting its sharp, serrated edge as he gazed at Marisa.
Not mine. Never mine. Never—
‘Eva—’
Ian’s voice jolted him. It was thin, but resolute. Athan stood beside his sister, waiting for the axe to fall so he could pick up the pieces when it did. His face was still, like granite. Marisa’s had no expression in it at all.
She would not meet his eyes. Well, that was understandable …
‘Eva—’ Ian said his wife’s name again—stronger this time. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got something I have to say to you,’ he said.
The puzzled look on Eva’s face deepened.
‘I’ve got to tell you something you will not like, that will be upsetting, but it has to be said. I asked Marisa here tonight for a particular reason. To tell you about her.’
Athan could keep silent no longer. He started forward, placing his hand on his sister’s wrist, intending to speak Greek to her. He had to tell her himself—he could not let her bastard of a husband proclaim it.
‘No!’
Marisa’s sudden interjection silenced him before he had even started. His head swivelled to her. For a moment he reeled. The expression blazing from her eyes was like a hundred lasers.
‘Ian will tell her,’ she bit out. Her face snapped round to the man at her side. ‘Go on! Tell her. Tell him.’
There was something wrong with her voice, Athan registered. She had never spoken like that before. Even when she’d been ordering him from that tumbledown cottage of hers. This was like ice—ice made from the coldest water.
Ian’s expression flickered, as if he was taken aback by her tone. Then he looked straight at his wife again.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ he said. ‘So I’m just going to say it straight out. Marisa—’ he said, and as he spoke he reached for her hand.
She let him take it, curled her fingers around it, warm and familiar, stepping forward slightly, aligning herself with him. A couple. Together.
Like a guillotine cutting down, Athan spoke. Contempt was in his voice, harsh and killing.
‘Marisa is his mis—’
‘—is my sister.’
The words fell like stones from a great height, crushing Athan dead.
Marisa looked at Athan, her face still completely, totally expressionless.
‘I’m Ian’s sister,’ she said.
HAD the world stopped moving? It must have, thought Athan with what was still working in his brain, because everything else seemed to have stopped. Including his breathing. Then, explosively, it restarted.
‘His sister?’ Shock reverberated in his voice.
Marisa’s gaze was levelled at him, still expressionless. Like a basilisk’s gaze.
She might have laughed to see the shock on his face—but she wasn’t in the mood for laughing. She was in the mood for killing.
Anger—dark, murderous anger—was leashing itself tighter and tighter around her. She had to hold it down—hold it tight down. Because it if escaped …
‘Ian’s sister?’ The voice this time was Eva’s, and all it held in it was complete bewilderment. ‘But Ian hasn’t got a sister.’
Marisa’s eyes went to Ian, knowing that this was the moment they had dreaded but now had to face. She saw him draw breath, then open his mouth to speak.
‘I didn’t know—I didn’t know about Marisa. Not until very recently.’ He took another breath. ‘Look, maybe we should all sit down. It’s … it’s complicated, and it’s going to be … difficult,’ he said.
He gestured towards the table and after a moment’s hesitation Eva went and took her place.
Marisa did likewise. Her body felt very stiff. Immobile. She watched Athan stalk to the other side and sit himself down opposite her, while Ian took his place opposite his wife. Just like two couples settling down to a dinner party. As though a bombshell hadn’t just exploded in the middle of them.
‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a glass of wine,’ Ian said in a shaky voice, trying, Marisa knew, to keep it light.
He reached for the bottle of white wine cooling in its chiller, and for the next few moments there was a hiatus while he poured four glasses and handed them round. Instinctively Marisa found herself taking a gulp.
She needed it.
As she set the glass back on the pristine white tablecloth she realised her hand was trembling slightly. Involuntarily, her eyes glanced across at the dark figure sitting opposite her. His face was like marble—showing absolutely nothing.
Emotion spiked in her, but she crushed it down. She mustn’t let anything out—nothing at all. She was here to support Ian, that was all. And he, poor lamb, looked drawn. She watched him take a generous mouthful of wine, then he straightened his shoulders, looked straight across at his wife, and started.
‘Marisa is my half-sister,’ he said. ‘We share the same father. But Marisa’s mother—’ He stopped.
Across the table, Marisa could see Athan tense. Her eyes went to his. For one brief moment they met, and in them she could see that he knew exactly what was going to be said next.
And it would have to be by her. It wasn’t fair to get Ian to say it.
‘My mother …’ She swallowed, turning her gaze to include Eva. ‘My mother was Ian’s father’s mistress.’
She dropped her gaze, unable to continue for a moment. Emotion welled in her like a huge, stifling balloon.
Eva said something. It was in Greek. Even to Marisa’s untrained ears it sounded shocked.
But she dimly realised it didn’t sound surprised …
Ian was talking again, and she could hear in his voice what she had heard before so often when they had talked about
