The Darkest of Secrets (17 page)

‘May I come in?’

Wordlessly she nodded and stepped aside so he could enter. Khalis came into her little sitting room with its slanted ceilings and rather shabby antique furniture, seeming to dominate the small space.

To her surprise, he took a pile of folded papers from his inside pocket and dropped them on the coffee table with a thud.

‘What is that?’

‘Your file.’

‘My
file
?’

His mouth tightened. ‘After you left, I had Eric research your background.’ He gestured to the thick pile of papers. ‘He gave me that.’

Grace took in his hard expression, the narrowed eyes and tightened mouth, and she swallowed dryly. She knew what kind of articles the online gossip sites and tabloids had run. Sordid speculation about why Loukas Christofides, Greek shipping tycoon, had divorced his wife so abruptly and denied her custody of their daughter. ‘It must have made some interesting reading,’ she managed.

‘No, it didn’t, actually.’

She stared at him in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t read it.’

‘Why … why not?’

‘Because even now I believe we shared something on that island, something important and different. I don’t know why you ran from me, but I want to understand.’ He stopped, his chest heaving, his gaze blazing into hers. ‘Help me understand, Grace.’

How could she refuse when he asked her so rawly? And maybe … maybe he did understand. He
could.
She swallowed, her heart beating so hard it hurt. ‘It’s a long story,’ she whispered.

‘I have all the time in the world.’ He sat down on her sofa, his body seeming relaxed although she still felt his tension. ‘Why did you say I might hate you?’ he asked quietly when the silence had ticked on for several minutes.

Grace knew he’d painted her as a victim, the most innocent of portraits. Now she would have to tell him the truth, in bold, stark colours. He would know, and he might leave here hating her more than ever before.

Or he might understand, forgive and love you more than ever before.

Did she dare hope?

Swallowing, she sat down across from him, her hands tucked between her knees. ‘I’ve told you a bit about my marriage. About Loukas.’

‘A little,’ Khalis agreed neutrally. She hadn’t said anything yet, and still it was so hard. Every explanation felt like an excuse.

‘And that our marriage was troubled.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that, Grace.’

‘I know.’ She closed her eyes. He knew a little of how unhappy she’d been, trapped on that wretched island. Yet to go into detail now, to try to explain how desperate and lonely and scared she’d felt—wouldn’t it all just sound as if she were justifying her actions? Khalis would certainly think so. He had given himself no excuses for accepting his father’s help even after he’d realised the extent of his corruption. She wouldn’t give herself any, either.

‘Grace,’ he prompted, and impatience edged his voice. Grace sighed and opened her eyes. There was, she knew, only one way to tell him the truth. Without any explanations, reasons or excuses. Just the stark, sordid facts. And see what he did with them.

‘You’ve probably wondered how Loukas managed to gain complete custody of Katerina.’

‘I assumed he worked the system, bribed a judge.’ He paused, his voice carefully even. ‘You implied as much.’

‘Yes, but there was more to it than that. The truth is, he painted me as an unfit mother.’ She gestured to the packet of papers he’d thrown onto her table. ‘If you’d read those articles, you’d see. He made me seem completely irresponsible, negligent—’ She swallowed and forced herself to go on. ‘By the time he’d finished, anyone would think I hadn’t cared about my daughter at all.’

Khalis’s gaze remained steady on hers. ‘But they would be wrong, wouldn’t they?’

‘They’d be wrong in thinking I didn’t care,’ Grace said in a low voice, brushing impatiently at the corners of her eyes. ‘But they wouldn’t be wrong in thinking I’d been negligent.’ She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I was.’

Khalis said nothing for a moment. Grace forced herself to hold his gaze, but she couldn’t tell a thing from his shuttered eyes, his expressionless face. The tears that had threatened were gone now, replaced with a deep and bone-weary resignation.

‘Negligent,’ he finally repeated. ‘How?’

Again Grace hesitated. She wanted to rush to her own defence, to explain she’d never meant to be negligent, she’d never actually put Katerina in danger—but what was the point? The fact remained that she had betrayed her husband. Her family. Herself. She took a breath, let it out slowly. ‘I had an affair.’

All Khalis did was blink, but Grace still felt his recoil. He was surprised, of course. Shocked. He’d been expecting something sympathetic, something perhaps about postpartum depression or her abusive husband or who knew what. All along he’d been thinking that she’d been hurt, not that she’d done the hurting. Not an affair. Not a sordid, sexual, adulterous affair.

‘An affair,’ he said without any expression at all.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, tonelessly now. ‘With the man who managed the island property. Gardening, house repairs—’

‘I don’t care what he
did.

‘I know. I just …’ She shook her head. ‘I told you I didn’t want to tell you,’ she said in a low voice.

Khalis didn’t speak, and neither did Grace. The silence that yawned between them now was worse than any words could have been. Finally he asked, ‘And while you had this affair … you were negligent of your daughter?’

‘I never put her in danger or anything like that,’ she whispered. ‘I loved her. I still love her.’ Her voice wavered and she strove for control. Khalis needed to hear the facts without tears or sentiment. ‘That whole time is a blur. I was so unhappy—I didn’t knowingly neglect her, of course not. I just … I just wasn’t the mother I wanted to be.’

‘Or the wife, apparently.’

His cool observation was like a dagger thrust straight to the heart. Grace blinked hard. ‘I know what it sounds like. Maybe it’s a blur because I don’t want to remember.’ Yet she’d never been able to truly forget. How could you not remember and not forget at the same time? More contradictions. ‘I’m not trying to make excuses,’ she said. ‘How can I? I’m just trying to explain—’

‘Why you had this affair.’

‘How I don’t really remember.’

Khalis let out a rush of breath that sounded almost like a laugh, yet without any humour in it at all. ‘How convenient,’ he said, ‘for you not to remember.’

‘I’m not lying, Khalis.’

‘You virtually lied to me from the moment I met you—’

‘That is
not
fair.’ Her voice rose, surprising her. ‘Why should I have told you such a thing when I barely knew you?’ She stuck out her hand in a mockery of an introduction. ‘Hello, my name is Grace Turner, I’m an art appraiser and an adulteress?’

Khalis rose from the sofa, prowling around the room with a restless, angry energy. ‘There were plenty of times after that,’ he said, his words almost a growl. ‘When you knew how I felt about you—’

‘I know—’ she cut him off with a whisper ‘—I know. And I was afraid, I admit that. I didn’t want you to look at me … the way you’re looking at me now.’ With his face so terribly expressionless, as if he could not decide if she were a stranger or someone he knew, never mind loved.

And she loved him. She’d fallen in love with him on the island, with his tenderness and gentleness and understanding. She’d fallen in love with him despite that hardness inside him that she was seeing and feeling now. And she didn’t know if her love was enough. She said nothing, simply waited for his verdict. Would he walk away from her just as he had from his family, no second chances, no regrets?

‘How long?’ he finally asked.

‘How long.?’

‘How long did you have this affair?’

She hesitated, the words drawn reluctantly from her. ‘About six weeks.’

‘And how long were you married?’

‘Nearly two years.’

Khalis said nothing. Grace knew how awful it all sounded. How could she, with a little baby and a new husband, have gone and sought out another man? How could she have deceived her husband and lost her daughter? What kind of woman did that?

She did. Had. And if she hadn’t been able to forget or forgive her actions, how could a man like Khalis?

Khalis stopped by the window, his back to her as he stared out at the darkness. ‘And I suppose,’ he said in a detached voice, ‘your husband found out about the affair. And was furious.’

‘Yes. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been. That I’d.’ She stopped miserably. ‘So in the courts he painted me as a negligent mother instead.’

‘But you weren’t.’

His observation, even when delivered in such a cold voice, gave her the thinnest thread of hope. ‘I don’t
think …
I don’t know what I was.’

Khalis didn’t answer. His back was still to her. ‘How?’ he finally asked.

Grace blinked. ‘How …?’

‘How did he find out?’

‘Do you really need to know all these details?’ she asked rawly. ‘How does it help anything—?’

‘He walked in on you, didn’t he?’ Khalis said. He turned around and Grace quelled at his icy expression. This was the man who had faced down his father, who had walked away from his family. ‘On you and your lover.’

Her scorching blush, she knew, was all the answer he needed. Khalis said nothing and Grace gazed blindly down at her lap. She couldn’t bear the look of condemnation she knew she’d see on his face.

He let out a shuddering breath. ‘I thought you’d been abused,’ he said quietly. ‘Emotionally or physically—something. Something terrible. I hated your ex-husband for hurting you.’

Grace blinked hard, her gaze still on her lap. ‘I know,’ she said softly.

‘And all along.’ He stopped and then, through her blurred vision, from the corner of her eye, she saw him pick up his coat.

Her throat was so tight she could barely choke out the words. ‘I’m sorry.’

The only answer was the click of the door as Khalis shut it behind him.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Y
OU
look,’ Michel told Grace a week later, ‘like a plate of warmed-up rice pudding.’

‘That doesn’t sound very attractive.’ She closed the door to her employer’s office, eyebrows raised. ‘You wanted to see me?’

Michel stared at her hard. ‘I mean it, Grace. You look terrible.’

‘Clearly you’re full of compliments today.’

He sighed and moved around to his desk. Grace waited, trying to keep her expression enquiring and friendly even as her body tensed and another headache began its relentless pounding. This last week had been horrible. She had not seen or heard from Khalis since he’d walked out of her apartment without a word, leaving her too empty and aching even to cry. She’d drifted through the days, feeling numb and yet possessing a terrible awareness of what lay beneath that nothingness—an awful, yawning expanse of grief and despair. Just knowing it was there, like the deep and frigid waters beneath a thin layer of black ice, kept her awake at night, staring into the darkness, memories dancing through her mind like ghosts.

Memories of her marriage, the deep unhappiness she’d felt, the terrible mistakes she’d made. Memories of holding Katerina for the first time, the joy so deep it almost felt like pain as she’d kissed her wrinkled, downy head. Memories of the court hearing that had left her as close to longing for death as she’d ever been.

Memories of Khalis.

She’d taken her one night knowing she would only have the memories to sustain her, but they did not. They tormented her with their tenderness and sweetness, and she lay in bed with her eyes closed, imagining she could feel his arms around her, his body pressed against her, his thumb brushing the tear from her cheek.

Sometimes sleep came, and always dawn, and she stumbled through another day alone.

‘Is there something you wanted?’ Grace asked, keeping her smile in place with effort. Michel sighed and steepled his fingers under his chin.

‘Not precisely. Khalis Tannous has donated the last two works in his father’s collection.’

‘The Leonardos?’

‘Yes.’

Grace affected a look of merely professional interest. She had no idea if she succeeded or not. ‘And where is he donating them?’

‘The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.’

The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge was practically a second home.

Grace angled her face away from Michel’s narrowed gaze. ‘A rather odd choice,’ she said.

‘Is it? I thought it quite spectacularly appropriate.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come now, Grace. It’s quite obvious to anyone with eyes in his head that something happened between you and Tannous on that island.’

‘I see,’ Grace said after a second’s pause.

‘And that it made you more miserable than ever,’ Michel continued. ‘I had hopes that Tannous might bring you back to life—’

‘I wasn’t
dead
,’ Grace interjected and Michel gave her a mirthless smile.

‘As good as. I’m your employer, Grace, but I’ve also known you since you were a child, and I care about you. I never liked seeing you so unhappy, and I like it even less now. I thought Tannous might help you—’

‘Is that why you insisted I go to that island?’

Michel gave a dismissive and completely Gallic shrug. ‘I sent you there because you are my best appraiser of Renaissance art. But I must confess I don’t like the result.’ He stared at her rather beadily from behind his desk. ‘You’re enough to make the Mona Lisa lose her smile.’

Grace thought of Leda’s sorrowful half-smile and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll try to—’

‘Don’t be
sorry
,’ Michel cut her off impatiently. ‘I didn’t bring you in here to ask for an apology.’

‘Then why?’

Michel was silent for a long moment. ‘What did he do to you?’ he finally asked.

‘Nothing, Michel. He didn’t do anything to me.’
Except make me fall in love with him.

‘Then why are you looking—?’

‘Like a bowl of warmed-up rice pudding?’ She gave him a small sad smile. ‘Because he found out,’ she said simply. ‘He found out about me.’