has a very limited timescale and that I needed to look towards the future. And, of course, some women consider such men to be little more than savages—don’t they, Jess?’
She flinched. He could see the whitening of her knuckles in her lap and her reaction gave him a rush of pleasure. Because he wanted to see her react. He wanted to see her coolness melt and to watch her squirm.
‘You know I never said that.’ Her voice was trembling.
‘No,’ he agreed grimly. ‘But your father said it and you just stood there and agreed with every damned word, didn’t you, Jess? You were complicit in your silence. The little princess, agreeing with Daddy. Shall I remind you of some of the other things he said?’
‘No!’ Her hand had flown to her neck, as if her fingers could disguise the little pulse which was working frantically there.
‘He called me a thug. He said I would drag you down to the gutter where I came from, if you stayed with me. Do you remember that, Jess?’
She shook her head. ‘Wh—why are we sitting here talking about the past?’ she questioned and suddenly her voice didn’t sound so cool. ‘I dated you when I was a teenager and, yes, my father reacted badly when he found out we were...’
‘Lovers,’ he put in silkily.
She swallowed. ‘Lovers,’ she repeated, as if it hurt her to say it. ‘But it all happened such a long time ago and none of it matters any more. I’ve...well, I’ve moved on and I expect you have, too.’
Loukas might have laughed if he hadn’t felt the cold twist of rage. She had humiliated him as no woman had ever dared try. She had trampled on his foolish dreams—and she thought that none of it mattered? Well, he was about to show her that it did. That if you betrayed someone then sooner or later it would come back to haunt you.
He picked up a gold pen which was lying on his desk and began to twirl it between his thumb and forefinger, his eyes never leaving her face.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the past we should be concentrating on, but the present. And, of course, the future. Or rather more importantly—your future.’
He saw her shoulders stiffen. Did she guess what was coming? Surely she realised that anyone in his position would set about terminating her contract with as little fallout as possible.
‘What about it?’
He heard the defensiveness in her voice as he twirled the pen in the opposite direction. ‘You’ve been working for the company for—how long is it now, Jess?’
‘I’m sure you know exactly how long it is.’
‘You’re right. I do. I have your contract here in front of me.’ He glanced down at it before looking up again. ‘You joined Lulu right after you gave up your tennis career, yes?’
Jessica didn’t answer straight away because she was afraid of giving herself away. She didn’t want to show anything which might make her vulnerable to this very intimidating Loukas. Given up her tennis career? He made it sound as if she’d given up taking sugar in her coffee! As if the thing she’d devoted her entire life to—the sport she’d lived and breathed since she was barely out of nappies—hadn’t suddenly been snatched away from her. It had left a great, gaping hole in her life and, coming straight after her break-up with him, it had been a double whammy she’d found difficult to claw her way back from. But she’d done it because it had been either sink or swim, and very soon after that she’d had Hannah to care for. So sinking had never really been an option. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘So why don’t you tell me how you got the job, which I understand surprised a lot of people in the industry, since you had zero modelling experience?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you sleep with the boss?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped, before she could stop herself. ‘He was a man in his sixties.’
‘Otherwise you might have been tempted?’ He leaned back in his chair and smiled, as if he was pleased to have got some kind of reaction from her at last. ‘I know from my own experience that sportswomen have particularly voracious sexual appetites. You in particular were pretty spectacular in bed, Jess. And out of it. You could never get enough of me, could you?’
Jessica willed herself not to respond to the taunt, even though it was true. She felt as if he was toying with her, the way a cat sometimes toyed with a dragonfly just before its sheathed paw finally stilled the chattering wings. But for the time being she would play along. What choice did she have when the balance of power was so unevenly divided? Flouncing out of here wasn’t an option, because this wasn’t just about survival—it was about pride. She might have got the job by chance, but she’d grown into the unexpected career which fate had provided by way of compensation for her shattered dreams. She was proud of what she’d achieved and she wasn’t going to toss it all away in a heated moment of retaliation, just because the man asking the questions was the man she’d never been able to forget.
‘Do you want an answer to your question?’ she asked quietly. ‘Or are you just going to sit there insulting me?’
A hint of a smile tugged at the edges of his lips, but just as quickly it was gone. ‘Carry on,’ he said.
She drew in a deep breath, like one which used to fire her up just before she began a service game. ‘You know I tore a ligament, which effectively ended my career?’ She stared into his face, but any sympathy she might have been hoping for was absent. His cursory nod was an acknowledgment, not a condolence. There was no understanding in the cold gleam of his eyes. She wondered if he knew that her father had died.
‘I heard you pulled out on the eve of a big tournament,’ he said.
‘I did.’ She nodded. ‘Obviously, there was a lot of publicity. I was...’
‘You were poised on the brink of international success,’ he interjected softly. ‘Expected to win at least one Grand Slam, despite your precocious age.’
‘That’s right,’ she said, and this time no amount of training could keep the faint crack of emotion from her voice. Didn’t matter how many times she told herself that worse things had happened to people than having to pull out of a career before it had really begun—it still hurt. She thought of all the pain and practice. Of the friends and relationships she’d lost along the way. Of the disapproving silences at home and the way her father had pushed her and pushed her until she’d felt she couldn’t be pushed any more. The endless sacrifices and the sense that she was never quite good enough. All ended with the sickening snap of her ligament as she ran across the court for a ball she was never going to reach.
She swallowed. ‘The papers ran a photo of me leaving the press conference after I’d been discharged from hospital.’ It had become an iconic image, which had been splashed all over the tabloids. Her face had been pale and edged with strain. Her trademark blonde plait falling over the narrow shoulders on which a nation’s hopes had been resting.
‘And?
His bullet-like interjection snapped Jessica back to the present and she looked into the rugged beauty of his olive-skinned face. And wasn’t it a mark of her own weakness that she found herself aching to touch it again? To whisper her fingertips all over its hard angles and hollows and feel the shadowed roughness of his jaw. Couldn’t he blot out the uncomfortable way she was feeling with the power
