of the apartment.
Her hair was no longer confined but soft and silky about her shoulders, her eyes bright and glowing; there was a slight blush of colour in her cheeks, and she was wearing a fitted black T-shirt and jeans.
Darius smiled slightly as he saw that her feet were once again bare. ‘You don’t do shoes much, do you?’
‘Too many years of spending hours in ballet slippers,’ she dismissed. ‘Shall I make coffee?’
‘Not yet.’
‘So, how is your brother?’ she asked to fill the silence.
‘How do you do that?’ He frowned.
She looked slightly bewildered. ‘Do what?’
‘Know what I’m thinking about and strike straight to the heart of it?’
‘I didn’t mean to...’ Andy gave Darius a searching glance, noting the shadows in his eyes, the pallor to cheeks so tightly drawn they might have been etched by a sculptor. ‘This morning, when I asked your mother about Xander, she didn’t seem to think there were going to be any complications with his recovery.’
‘From the ribs or broken leg, no.’ Darius sighed heavily. ‘Unfortunately, as you are already aware, Xander has emotional wounds that may take longer to heal.’ He grimaced. ‘But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves,’ he continued briskly. ‘I still want to know what that Bellamy woman was doing here, and why she’s upset you so much.’
Once again Darius displayed that dogged persistence Andy found so unnerving. A persistence she found she couldn’t withstand. ‘I don’t know if your mother’s told you, but I’ve decided to dance at the gala next month, after all.’
‘She did.’ His eyes glowed his approval. ‘But I thought I would wait for you to tell me before saying anything. I hope this doesn’t sound in the least patronising, because it isn’t meant to—’ he smiled warmly ‘—but I am so proud of you.’
Andy’s breath caught in her throat. ‘You are?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned. ‘To the point that I’ve already told my mother I’ll be joining her and Charles in their box at the theatre that night.’
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of Darius being part of the audience watching her perform in public for the first time in four years. ‘Tia wants me to withdraw from the performance.’
Darius shook his head. ‘And what the hell gives her the right to ask you to do anything, let alone something as important as this undoubtedly is?’
‘She didn’t ask, Darius, she threatened.’ Andy lowered her lashes, unable to look up at Darius right now.
Darius became very still as an icy calm settled in his chest. ‘Her visit today is only half the story, right?’
Andy drew in a shaky breath as she nodded. ‘If you would like to sit down, I’ll tell you the rest of it.’
Darius wasn’t sure he wanted to sit down—in fact, he knew that he didn’t—but Miranda seemed to need him to. And if that was what she needed right now, he wanted to give it to her.
And so he sat and listened, his hands tightening into fists as Miranda told him what had really happened four years ago. How her injury had allowed Tia, as her understudy, to take over the lead in Swan Lake. And how Tia had repeated the threat, just now, of further violence if Miranda didn’t withdraw from the gala.
Andy couldn’t fail to notice the chilling anger in the rigid pallor of Darius’s face as she told him Tia had admitted to having deliberately caused her accident four years ago. His eyes took on a cold and dangerously amber glitter as she told him of Tia’s renewed threat if she didn’t withdraw from the gala.
She took a step back now as Darius surged angrily to his feet the moment she had finished talking. ‘I’m not going to withdraw, Darius,’ she assured him quickly.
‘I wouldn’t let you even if you tried,’ he bit out harshly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘My God, when I think of how close that woman came to killing you...!’ He drew in a shuddering breath as he obviously sought to control the coldness of his temper. ‘You have to go to the police with this, Miranda.’
‘And tell them what? I have no proof that any of it actually happened, and it will be my word against hers.’
‘Don’t you see, Miranda? The woman has no conscience, no sense of remorse, no barometer of what’s right or wrong.’ He stepped forward to grasp both of her hands tightly in his as he looked down at her intently. ‘If she was capable of doing this to you to further her own ambitions, then there’s no reason to suppose that she hasn’t done something similar to others in the past. Or that she won’t do so again to others in the future. And possibly next time she won’t just ruin someone’s career, she might actually succeed in killing them!’
Andy hadn’t looked at it in quite that light before. And Darius was right: the Tia who had spoken to her today, threatened her, was totally without conscience, and more than capable of doing whatever it took, whatever was needed, to ensure her own ambitions, whatever they might be.
‘We’ll do this together,’ Darius encouraged huskily. ‘And I guarantee that the police will at least listen if I confirm that she threatened you today,’ he added grimly. ‘Enough to speak with Tia Bellamy, at least.’
‘Why would you want to do that for me?’
That moment of truth again, Darius realised.
Except he still hadn’t told Miranda about his own past...or explained the continuing repercussions of that past. And he owed it to Miranda to do that, before he dared even think of broaching any sort of future together for the two of them. There was always the possibility she might not want to have anything more to do with him once she knew exactly what a messed-up family he had!
He would get to that in a moment; for now he was still so stunned by what Miranda had just told him. ‘I still can’t believe anyone could deliberately do what Tia Bellamy did to you four years ago.’ Reaction was starting to set in now, at the realisation of how close he had come to never meeting Miranda at all. Never knowing her. Never kissing her. Never making love to her. Never falling in love with her...
Because Darius had realised after these few days of forcing himself not to call her, to see her, to be with her, that he did love Miranda. More than anything else. More than his twin. More than any of his family. More than life itself.
His hands clenched at his sides. ‘I want to strangle that Bellamy woman with my bare hands for what she did to you!’
‘But you won’t.’ Andy gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I’ve made something else of my life now, Darius. Something I enjoy just as much.’ Andy realised even as she said it that it was the truth; she did enjoy teaching ballet—still had the dream of one day discovering her own future Margot Fonteyn or Darcy Bussell. She had a life. ‘And I’ve decided that there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t dance again, just not professionally. But definitely at galas like your mother’s—if I’m asked.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, my mother will ensure that you are,’ Darius drawled dryly.
She
