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His nostrils flared. ‘We both know how flighty you can be. You say one thing and mean another. Do I need to remind you that I have first-hand knowledge of that? That you went straight from my arms into another man’s with barely a pause in between? After you assured me that Paolo Romani meant nothing to you?’
The accusation stung, even though she knew the full truth behind it. The very real threats from her father...the vicious examples he’d made her witness. Her fear that he’d make true on them.
‘Am I to bear punishment for one mistake for the rest of my life?’
The smile that curved his sensual lips was all cynicism, no mirth.
‘But it wasn’t just the one mistake, was it, agape mou? You knew I was there, listening, when you denigrated me to your father,’ he accused, citing the awful night when they hadn’t covered their tracks as well as they should have.
In her eagerness to meet with Ares in their secret spot, a few nights before her eighteenth birthday, she’d failed to ensure her father was otherwise occupied. Elio had found her in the orange grove. Her quick actions had thankfully ensured she seemed to be alone, but she’d been aware that Ares remained nearby, a protective presence but privy to every caustic put-down her father had unleashed upon her.
She’d remained silently defiant...until her father had whispered a vicious threat against Ares and Sergios. One so low and deadly she’d been certain Ares hadn’t heard it.
Terror and panic had pushed her into responding regrettably, in the only way her young mind had offered.
She’d hotly denied her attraction to his chauffeur’s son, and then gone one better and sworn he wasn’t her type, that she’d never be attracted to him.
Even from his hidden spot, she’d felt the force of Ares’s affront, the blow to his pride. And his cold rejection of her next day—the day she’d planned to go several steps further than the light kisses they’d so far shared—had hurt. Nevertheless, she’d understood.
She had hoped to explain that she’d said what she had to prevent the serious bodily harm her father had threatened Ares and his father with. She’d seen first-hand how Elio treated his enemies. The last thing she’d wanted was for him to act on his threats.
Until she’d discovered Ares’s own plans.
Ares Zanelis had always planned to leave her behind. To shatter the foolish, girlish dreams she’d woven around him.
Having secured a string of near-dilapidated buildings with the nest egg his father had given him, he’d made plans to leave Alghero—information she’d discovered through the servants’ gossip the day before he’d left.
Thankfully, he’d never witnessed the extent of her devastation. How she’d cried herself to sleep for months afterwards, with her father’s cruel jabs at her clear unhappiness driving the knives in even deeper.
Tell him now. Set the record straight.
‘I knew you were still in the orange grove that night, Ares. I said all those things to take my father’s interest off you. I was protecting you. He threatened to have you beaten. Or worse.’
His mouth twisted, scoffing at the idea that a man like him would need someone to save him, even back then.
‘Considerate of you. But I’ve never needed anyone to fight my battles for me. Bravo for trying—and you were shockingly convincing. Enough to make me wonder if it was your subconscious speaking the truth on your behalf.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ she protested hotly. ‘I never thought you were beneath me.’
‘You moved on very quickly after that. Or were you also protecting me when you kissed your father’s lieutenant’s son the very next night, in the same spot where you’d let me touch you?’ he seethed.
Regret and shock ripped a gasp from her throat. ‘You saw?’
Censure etched into his face. ‘Oh, yes. But then I always saw you, didn’t I? You made sure of that.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It means we lived at opposite ends of your father’s estate and had no business crossing paths—and yet there you always were.’
‘You pursued me too!’ she protested hotly, her face flaming.
He shrugged. ‘You were as beautiful then as you are now. Perhaps as irresistible to me as you pretended I was to you. But you also proved to be fickle, didn’t you? Maybe for once I shouldn’t have ignored your father when he said you were meant for another. That I was a dress rehearsal for the real thing.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘He said that to you?’
His sardonic smile widened. ‘That and much more—including those threats you believed you were protecting me from. He never missed an opportunity to warn me away from the precious daughter he intended to marry off to Paolo Romani. The same bastard I saw you kissing, agapita,’ he accused icily.
Odessa shook her head, choosing to remain silent. How could she tell him that it had been a misguided effort to forget him without sounding pathetic? That he’d been imprinted so deeply on her that she’d feared she would remain lonely for ever in the face of her father’s determination to keep them apart? The formidable man beside her now would deem any excuse a weak protest, his judge-and-jury conviction of her character one she suspected he’d cemented a long time ago.
