he told her firmly. ‘I think that what I have to say qualifies as good rather than bad.’
‘That’s great.’ Some of her tension evaporated. Her hands trembled in the grip of his and she tugged them free again. Either she was his mistress or she tried to be a friend, even though he had once told her that he didn’t do friendship with women. She could not be a mixture of both and there had to be boundary lines. So this was not the moment when she should be noticing that the dark stubble beginning to shadow his sculpted mouth and hard jaw line made him look outrageously sexy. In fact just thinking that forbidden thought made ready colour warm her complexion.
With a distinct air of concern, Andreas urged her down onto a sofa. ‘You look tired.’
Hope decided being pregnant was deeply unsexy. Only three months ago, he would have urged her down onto a sofa solely to take rampant, masculine advantage of her horizontal state. But now he was more keen for her to rest.
‘Tonight I found out something that shocked me.’ Lean, strong face taut, Andreas launched straight into the confession he knew he had to make. ‘As you’ve probably already worked out, Elyssa has been having affairs with other men. This evening, I also learned that my sister lied when she claimed to have seen you in Ben Campbell’s arms at her party.’
Hope closed her eyes and breathed in slow and deep. Relief made her feel dizzy. That part of the nightmare was over: Andreas was finally accepting that she had told him the truth all along. ‘I’m glad. I really thought that I was going to have to live with that nonsensical story for ever.’
‘I wish I could tell you that Elyssa is very sorry for what she’s done. But I’m afraid my sibling appears rather lacking in the conscience department,’ Andreas derided harshly. ‘Before tonight, I had no idea that Elyssa resented your place in my life.’
‘She called me your whore at the party,’ Hope mused with a little shiver of reluctant recall.
Andreas groaned, his vexation unconcealed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I knew how fond you were of her and telling tales would only have made her dislike me even more. I suppose that even then I wasn’t sure that you would take my word over hers…’ Hope worried at her lower lip and let her pent-up breath escape softly. ‘Of course, by the end of the evening I found that out for a fact.’
Andreas tensed at that reminder. ‘I thought I knew Elyssa inside out but I had idealised her. I wasn’t seeing her as she really was…spoilt, selfish, shallow in her affections,’ Andreas enumerated with a heavy regret that she could feel. ‘OK. I admit it. I didn’t want to see those traits in my closest relative—’
‘You were proud of her…it was natural that you would want to think only good things about her,’ Hope told him gently. ‘I don’t hold that against you. You had no reason to doubt her word if she hadn’t lied to you before.’
Andreas rested his brilliant dark eyes on her heart-shaped face. ‘You’re being very generous about this.’
‘I don’t think so. I just want to be fair.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, pedhi mou. I don’t know where to begin apologising for some of the things I’ve said or for the way I’ve treated you,’ Andreas admitted with roughened honesty. ‘But I was so angry that that whole week is virtually a blank. It was a very unfortunate coincidence that you had indicated your dissatisfaction with our relationship shortly before that party.’
That angle had not occurred to Hope before and she was dismayed that she had not guessed that he would inevitably forge a link between those two apparent events.
Andreas spread lean brown hands, his darkly handsome features clenched taut. ‘I thought you weren’t happy with me any longer. It made the idea that you had sought consolation with someone else seem much more likely.’
‘Yes, I imagine it would have done.’ But Hope also felt that, having known her so well, he should at least have cherished some doubt of her guilt. But then she had long since reached her own conclusions as to why he had been so quick to misjudge her and saw no good reason to share those thoughts. ‘Well,’ she added with a typically warm and soothing smile, ‘I’m grateful that you know nothing happened between Ben and I…’
‘That night anyway.’ Andreas could not silence that qualifier. He was fishing, he knew he was, regardless of his awareness that he had no right to ask her what had happened since then between her and the other man. But he was unable to resist his own powerful need to know.
Tensing below that laser-sharp dark golden appraisal, Hope lowered her uneasy gaze to her linked hands where they rested on her lap. Hot pink was blooming over her cheekbones. It was dreadful but she felt as though every kiss she had exchanged with Ben were written above her head in letters of fire and shame. They had really been very innocent kisses but anything she had shared with Ben ought to remain private. In any case Andreas was not entitled to that sort of information, she reminded herself sternly. After all, could she believe that he had behaved in an equally innocent manner with the beautiful, sophisticated women he had been seen out with in recent times? No, she could not credit that. She had lain awake a lot of nights while she’d struggled not to torment herself with agonising images of Andreas making the most of his newfound sexual freedom.
As Andreas watched her fair skin turn pink a cold, heavy sensation settled like concrete in his stomach. He knew how unreasonable he was being but he had very much hoped to hear her say that, challenging though the circumstances had been, she had stayed loyal to him in spite of everything. Intelligence told him that was unlikely. Intelligence told him that blush was as good as a signed confession in triplicate. She had slept with Campbell. Of course she had.
Andreas endeavoured to put the entire controversial subject out of his mind. He was a pragmatic man. What had been done could not be undone. He offered Hope a soft drink, which she declined. He poured a whisky that he drank down in two minimal gulps. Pragmatic though he believed himself to be, he was assailed by another unfortunate reflection: there was no point hoping that at some future stage she would tell him that Campbell had been absolute rubbish in bed. She was not that kind of woman. He would never, ever know whether she compared them.
‘I feel that I should make an effort to clear the air,’ Hope remarked hesitantly, fixing anxious turquoise eyes on Andreas.
‘As regards what…exactly?’
‘As regards Ben,’ Hope proffered gently.
Andreas froze. His imagination went into a loop. In the name of honesty, she was about to talk like a canary, telling everything right down to the tiniest and most insignificant detail. He wanted to know but feared that knowing would torture him. He breathed in deep. ‘Hope…’
‘No, please let me say what I want to say first,’ Hope interrupted apologetically. ‘Ben’s been so very kind to me. I want you to understand that he’s a much nicer person than people seem to appreciate. I think you’d really like Ben if you got to know him…’
That was the moment when Andreas knew that he should have drunk all the whisky in the decanter in the hope of anaesthetising his sensibilities into a stupor. Hope was engaging in a more refined form of torture than he had even envisaged. She was keen for him to get to know Ben. In the eternally sunny world she inhabited they were probably all destined to become the very closest of mutually supportive friends. There was just one small problem. He could not think of Ben Campbell without wishing to wipe him with maximum violence from the face of the earth.
‘I’m
