a reflexive movement, Tabby rejected the contact and folded her hands together on her lap. ‘After the way you behaved that last night and the fact that you haven’t been in touch since, I think holding hands would be a bit of a joke,’ she said bluntly. ‘You don’t need to pretend things you don’t feel to pacify or comfort me. As you noted, I’m unhurt. It’s been a horrible day but I’ll get over it without leaning on you.’
‘Maybe I want you to lean on me.’
Tabby raised a brow, unimpressed by that unlikely suggestion. ‘I’d prefer to fall over and pick myself up. I’ve been doing it all my life and I’ve managed just fine.’
Acheron compressed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I should have explained about her weeks ago but the subject of Kasma rouses a lot of bad memories...and reactions,’ he admitted with curt reluctance.
‘Kasma’s the reason you thought someone might have pushed me down the stairs at the villa,’ Tabby grasped finally.
‘Maybe she made me a little paranoid but she did destroy my relationship with my father before he died.’
‘And that’s why he wrote that crazy will,’ Tabby guessed.
‘I told you that I only met my father’s family about eighteen months ago. I only agreed in the first place because it seemed to mean so much to him. What I didn’t mention before is that the week before that dinner engagement took place at his home, I met Kasma without knowing I was meeting Kasma,’ he told her grittily.
Tabby frowned. ‘Without knowing it was her?’ she echoed. ‘How? I mean, why?’
‘I doubt if I could ever adequately explain why from Kasma’s point of view. She introduced herself to me as Ariadne. She certainly knew who I was,’ he delivered with perceptible bitterness. ‘I was in Paris on a stopover between flights and she was staying in the same hotel. I’ve never believed that was a coincidence. I believe I was set up. I was alone. I was bored. She targeted me and I fell for it...and you could not begin to understand how deeply I regret taking the bait.’
Tabby was studying him with confused eyes. ‘The bait?’
‘I had a tacky one-night stand with her,’ Acheron ground out grudgingly, dark colour accentuating his spectacular cheekbones, his jaw line clenching hard on the admission. ‘A couple of stolen hours from a busy schedule of work and travel. I’m being honest here—it meant nothing more to me. Although I treated her with respect I never pretended at any stage that I wanted to see her again.’
Tabby averted her eyes, reflecting that respectful treatment would not have compensated Kasma for his ultimate rejection, when presumably she had persuaded herself that she could expect a much keener and less fleeting response.
‘She picked me up in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards she started acting as though she knew me really well. To be frank, it was a freaky experience and I made my excuses and returned to my own room.’
Tabby was swallowing hard at a level of honesty she had not expected to receive from him. ‘But if she already knew who you were, why did she lie about her own identity?’
Acheron shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Obviously because I would never have touched her had I known she was my father’s precious little girl.’
‘His precious little girl?’ Tabby queried.
‘Her mother was widowed when Kasma was only a baby. My father raised Kasma from the age of three. She was the apple of his eye, his favourite child, and he couldn’t see any fault in her,’ Acheron advanced tautly, his lips compressing. ‘When I walked into the family dinner the week after the hotel encounter I was appalled to realise that Kasma was my father’s stepchild and furious that she had lied to me and put me in that position, but that wasn’t all I had to worry about. Before I could even decide how to behave, she stood up and announced that she had been saving a little surprise for everyone. And that surprise—according to her—was that she and I were dating.’
‘Oh, my word...’ Tabby was as stunned as he must’ve been by that development. ‘And that one...er...episode at the hotel was really the extent of your relationship with her?’
‘It was, but not according to Kasma. She had a very fertile imagination and over the months that followed she began acting like a stalker, flying round the world, turning up wherever I was,’ he explained, lines of strain bracketing his mouth as he recalled that period. ‘She tried to force her way into my life while telling my father a pack of lies about me. She told him I’d cheated on her, she told him I’d got her pregnant and then she told him she’d had a miscarriage. He fell for every one of her tales and nothing I could say would persuade him that my relationship with his stepdaughter was a fantasy she had made up. And having made that first mistake by getting involved with her that night at the hotel, I felt I had brought the whole nightmare down on my own head.’
‘I don’t think so—’
‘It was casual sex but there was nothing casual about it,’ Acheron opined grimly. ‘I went to bed with a woman who was a stranger and maybe I deserved what I got.’
‘Not when she set out to deliberately deceive you and then tried to trap you into a relationship,’ Tabby declared stoutly. ‘I don’t agree with the way you behaved with her but she was obviously a disturbed personality.’
‘She assaulted a woman I spent time with last year, which was why I was so concerned about your safety and Amber’s.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She forced her way into my apartment and punched the woman while ranting about how I belonged to her.’ He grimaced at the recollection. ‘My father begged me to use my influence and prevent it from going to court but I was at the end of my rope. Kasma was dangerous and she needed treatment but as long as her family turned a blind eye and I swallowed what she was dishing out, she was free to do as she liked. The court accepted that she was lying and had never had a relationship with me and therefore had no excuse whatsoever for attacking the woman in my apartment and calling it a domestic dispute.’
‘Didn’t that convince your father that you were telling him the truth?’
‘No, Kasma managed to convince him that I must’ve bribed someone and she had been stitched up by me to protect my own reputation,’ he proffered with unconcealed regret. ‘The sole saving grace was that after that court case I was able to take out a restraining order against her and at least that kept her out of my hair while I was on Greek soil.’
Tabby slowly shook her head, which was reeling with his revelations. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her? Why wouldn’t you explain?’
His bold bronzed profile clenched hard. ‘I was ashamed of the whole business and I didn’t want to frighten you either. My wealth didn’t protect me from the fact that Kasma could still get to me almost everywhere I went. You have no idea how powerless I felt when she even managed to gatecrash the wedding because I didn’t want to make a scene with my father’s family present,’ he confessed grittily. ‘I didn’t want to publicise my problems with her while my father was still alive either. She caused him enough grief with her wild stories about how badly I’d treated her.’
‘So why on earth did he want you to marry her?’ Tabby queried, struggling to understand that angle.
‘He believed she loved me and he genuinely thought
