and unclenching of his long-fingered hands as if he didn’t trust himself not to reach out and shake her for how she had betrayed him. If only he knew the truth, but how could she explain it now, after all this time?
Ava raised her chin with a bravado she was nowhere near feeling. ‘Let’s not speak in riddles, Marc. Say what you came here to say.’
He stepped closer. It was only one step, but it halted the breath in her throat. She swallowed, but it only made the restriction tighter. She had to crane her neck, for even in her heels he towered over her. His eyes bored into hers, dark and deep pools of simmering anger.
‘I am here to take possession of this villa,’ he said, ‘and to offer you a job for which we both know you are highly qualified.’
She frowned at him, her stomach curdling with unease, her skin tightening all over with apprehension. ‘D-doing what?’
His top lip lifted, his eyes glittering with icy disdain. ‘Servicing a rich man’s needs. You are well known for it, are you not?’
Ava felt a tremor in her spine as his hatred smashed over her in soundless waves. ‘You know nothing of my relationship with Douglas,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady and controlled.
‘Your meal ticket is dead,’ Marc said bluntly. ‘He’s left you with nothing, not even a roof over your beautiful blonde head.’
‘Only because you took it all off him,’ she shot back. ‘You did it deliberately, didn’t you? There were hundreds if not thousands of companies going for the asking, but you hunted him down and took everything off him to get at me.’
He smiled a victor’s smile, but there was a hint of cruelty about it. ‘I will give you a minute or two to think it over,’ he said. ‘I am sure you will come to see it as the most sensible course of action at this point in your life.’
‘I don’t need even a second to think it over,’Ava said through tight lips. ‘I don’t want your rubbish job.’
A lightning flash of fury lit his gaze from behind. ‘Did your lawyer not explain to you how things are?’
‘I would rather live on the streets than work in any capacity for you,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Marc, but it won’t work. I know you think I deliberately betrayed you, but that’s not the way it was. I knew nothing of Douglas’s business interests. He didn’t tell me he was bidding for the same contract as you.’
His mouth was a thin, flat line of tension. ‘You double-crossing liar,’ he ground out venomously. ‘You did everything in your power to ruin me and you damned near got away with it. I lost nearly everything. Everything, do you hear me?’
Ava closed her eyes in distress. The vibration of his anger in the air was like pummelling blows to her flesh. She could not defend herself against her guilt at what she had inadvertently done to him by marrying Douglas Cole. But given her time again she would still have done it, for Serena’s sake.
‘Open your eyes,’ Marc growled at her.
Her eyes sprang open, the nettle-like sting of tears blurring her vision. ‘Don’t do this, Marc,’ she said, close to pleading. ‘The past can’t be changed by manipulating things now.’
His eyes blazed like twin black bowls of flame as he grasped her chin between two of his fingers, his touch like a blistering brand on her skin. His eyes drilled into hers, holding hers in a duel she could never hope to win. She lowered her lashes, but he countered it by pushing her chin even higher. ‘I swore I would one day make you pay for what you did to me, Ava, and that day has come,’ he said. ‘This villa is mine and everything in it, including you.’
She swallowed convulsively as she tried to pull out of his hold. ‘No…no!’
His fingers bit into her flesh. ‘Yes and yes, ma belle,’ he said. ‘Do you not want to hear my terms?’
Ava fought for control of her emotions. She bit the inside of her lip, tasting blood and the bitterness of regret. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, dropping her shoulders slightly.
His fingers relaxed their hold, his thumb moving in a slow caress over the pillow of her bottom lip until every nerve-end was tingling. Ava was mesmerised by his touch. It was so achingly gentle after his flaying words. She felt herself melting, the stiffness going out of her limbs, her body remembering how it felt to press up against his hard, protective warmth.
After a moment he seemed to check himself. His hand dropped from her mouth and his eyes hardened to black coal again. ‘You will be my mistress,’ he said. ‘I will pay you an allowance for as long as we are together. But I would like to make one thing very clear from the outset. Unlike the way you manipulated Cole into marrying you, I will not be offering the same deal. There will be no marriage between us. Ever.’
Ava felt her heart contract in pain at the bitterness in his tone. He had spoken the words like a business plan. But then, what had changed? Hadn’t he said much the same five years ago? No marriage, no kids, no commitment. And she had been foolish enough to accept it…for a time.
Ava drew in a breath that scalded her throat. ‘You seem very convinced I will accept your offer.’
‘That is because I know you, Ava,’ he said with a sardonic light in his gaze. ‘You need money and a lot of it.’
‘I can find work.’ Pride pulled her shoulders back even farther. ‘I’ve been thinking of returning to modelling.’
A determined look hardened his eyes to black ice. ‘One word from me and there’s not an agency the length and breadth of Europe who would take you on.’
Ava wished she had the courage to call his bluff. But after a five-year hiatus in her modelling career at Douglas’s insistence she didn’t like her chances of being picked up by her old agency, let alone anyone else.
‘I can find other work,’ she said with a defiant look.
‘Not the sort of work that will pay you enough to regularly top up your sister’s bank account.’
Ava felt her eyes widen. ‘You know about that?’
He gave her an enigmatic look. ‘You know the saying—keep your friends close but your enemies closer. I am making it my business to find out everything there is to find out about you, Ava.’
Ava felt as if he had pierced her heart with a long metal skewer. She felt the barb of it right to her backbone; it reverberated throughout her body, making her want to hug her arms around herself, to stop the pulse of pain. But somehow she stood firm, her eyes holding the black fire of his.
‘Please keep Serena out of this,’ she said hollowly.
‘There will be no need for her to know anything other than we are together again,’ he said.
Ava wondered how the news would affect her sister. Serena had out of fierce loyalty never mentioned Marc’s name in her presence over the last five years. She had also kept the secret of Ava’s real relationship with Douglas Cole quiet, so quiet her husband, Richard, was to this day unaware of it. Serena had been too terrified Richard’s conservative family would be totally scandalised by her near-brush with a prison term that only Ava’s actions had rescued her from experiencing.
