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Dark, hard eyes looked down at her. She pulled back against the stone wall, eyes distending.
Shock. Panic. Fear.
And far more powerful than any of those—loathing. Black, virulent loathing.
Something moved in his eyes. Then he spoke.
‘Still the street rat,’ said Angelos Petrakos. He glanced briefly behind him. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ he said dismissively to the bodyguard, who was still catching his breath from the unexpected blow inflicted upon him.
Angelos turned his attention back to the woman against the wall, her eyes narrowed like a cat’s. He could see the pulse hammering in her neck. Immobile she might be, but she had adrenaline kicking through her system.
Well, so did he.
‘Upstairs,’ he said.
Her eyes narrowed even more. ‘Go to hell.’ Deliberately, never taking her eyes from him, she reached for her mobile. ‘I’m phoning the police,’ she said.
‘Do it,’ he said pleasantly. ‘It should make interesting reading in tomorrow’s papers. Especially in Yorkshire.’
Her hand hovered, then fell. Her heart was pounding, adrenaline surging round her body in huge, sickening waves. She had to beat it down, get control of herself—of the situation. She straightened herself away from the wall, lengthening her spine, bringing her body into a pose. Regaining the illusion, if nothing else, of composure.
‘Why the house call?’ she asked. She kept her voice light, incurious.
‘I told you to phone me.’ His voice was terse. Grating.
She raised delicate eyebrows. ‘Whatever for?’
She could see his eyes darken. ‘We’ll go upstairs and discuss it.’ He saw her hesitate. ‘It’s in your interest to do so,’ he said.
Nothing more. He didn’t need it. And he knew she knew that.
Oh, yes, he knew she knew, all right …
Loathing flashed in her eyes, but for all that she turned and walked towards the staircase. He knew why. Even though her flat was on the penultimate floor she would not risk the confinement of the lift. He let her go up first, let his eyes take in the graceful line of her body. She was casually dressed, in a belted sweater dress over leggings and ankle boots, but the dress was cashmere, and the boots the finest soft leather. She wore the outfit with an elegance that might have been natural but which he knew was not. It had been acquired—just as the rest of her image had been acquired. From the sleek fall of her thick blonde hair, caught back in a jewelled grip, to the cultured tones in which she’d told him to go to hell.
But it was all only an illusion—a lie. And now he would be stripping the illusion from her, exposing the lie.
She let him into her flat, setting down her shoulder bag. ‘So. Talk.’ Her voice came—terse and tense. She was standing hands on hips, chin lifted. Defiance—belligerence—open in her eyes.
For a long moment Angelos simply kept his eyes levelled on her, taking in her new appearance. She hadn’t just transformed her image, she’d matured—like a fine vintage wine. Become a woman in the fullness of her beauty. No longer coltish, but slender, graceful. Her beauty luminescent.
He felt an emotion spear within him, but the emotion, like her beauty, was at this moment irrelevant. It was obvious what she was doing. Attacking so she could avoid having to defend herself. He knew why—because she had no defence. Had that street-sharp mind of hers realised that already? He’d shown his hand downstairs, when he’d mentioned Yorkshire—she’d picked it up straight away. Did she realise that the concession she’d made then—not phoning the police—had only proved to him just how absolutely defenceless she was?
Not that that would stop her fighting—defending the indefensible.
Like she’d done before.
His lips pressed tighter. Memory darkening in his eyes.
He let his gaze rest on her a while. Impassive. Unreadable. Taking his time. Controlling the agenda. Racking up the tension in her. Then, deliberately, he let his glance pass around the well-appointed living room.
‘You’ve done well.’ He would allow her that—nothing more.
He could see the flare of her pupils. But, ‘Yes,’ was all she said.
‘And you plan to do better still.’ He paused. ‘Do you seriously believe,’ he demanded, sneering harshness in his voice, ‘you can get Giles Brooke to marry you? You?’
The flare came again. ‘I’ve already accepted his proposal,’ she answered. It was a sweet moment—so very sweet.
She watched his face darken, fury bite in his eyes. The moment became sweeter still.
Then the fury vanished from his eyes. His face became a mask. He strolled over to the sofa, dropping down on it, lengthening his legs, stretching out his arms. Occupying her space. She didn’t like it, he could see.
‘Thea Dauntry,’ he mused. His mockery was open. ‘A name fit for the bride of a real, live aristocrat! The Honourable Mrs Giles St John Brooke,’ he intoned. ‘And then, in the fullness of time, Viscountess Carriston.’ He paused—a brief, deadly silence.
Thea felt her stomach fill with acid. She knew what he was going to say … knew it with a sick dread inside her.
His eyes moved over her. Assessingly. Insultingly. Then he spoke. Silkily, lethally.
‘So, tell me, what does he think about your little secret? What does he think,’ he asked, his voice edged like a blade as cold snaked down her spine and Angelos’s malignant gaze pinned her, ‘about Kat Jones …?’
The name fell into the space between them. Severing the dam that held the present from the past.
And memory, like a foul, fetid tide, swept through her …
CHAPTER TWO
KAT raced up the escalator at the underground station, not caring if she was hustling the people standing. She had to race. She was already twenty minutes late. Half of her told her it was a waste of her time, racing or not. The booker had said as much—the snooty one Kat disliked, who looked at her as if she hadn’t washed that morning.
Well, you try keeping lily-white and fragrant in a dump of a bedsit with only a cracked sink in the corner!
Strip washes were all she could manage—mostly in cold water, to avoid the rip-off meter—apart from when she went to the public swimming baths and used the showers there.
One day I’ll have a bathroom with a walk-in shower and a bath the size of a hot tub …
There was a long list of things she was going to have ‘one day’. And to get even a fraction of the way to getting them she needed this job. If she could get there in time, before they’d seen all the girls. If they picked her out from the crowd of other hopefuls. If that then led to other castings, other jobs, other shoots.
If if, if …
She took a sharp intake of steadying breath as she thrust through the exit barrier. Yeah, there were a lot of ifs—but so what? She’d got this far, hadn’t she? And even this far had been way, way beyond her once.
Everything had been beyond her. She’d had nothing except what the taxpayer had handed out to her at the care home. Who had been responsible for her existence she had hardly any idea. Certainly not who’d fathered her—he probably didn’t even know himself. Certainly didn’t care. Not enough to check whether the women he slept with ever found themselves pregnant. As for who that lucky woman had been—well, all Kat knew from her records was that she’d been deemed unfit to raise her own child. The social workers had descended when she was five, finding her hungry, crying and with bruises on her thin arms. Her last memory of her home was her mother screaming slurred obscenities at the policewoman and the social worker as they carted her away. Anything else was just a blur.
Just as well, probably.
She’d never settled well, though, in the care home, and had left school the moment she could, resisting attempts to educate her, drifting in and out of casual work, sometimes being sacked for tardiness, sometimes walking out herself because she didn’t like to take instructions from people.
But at eighteen Kat had found out something that had changed her life. Changed it completely—for ever. She’d got access to the records of her birth and family. She could still remember the moment when it had happened. She’d been staring down at the paperwork, reading the brief, unexpansive notes written in official language about herself.
Father—unknown. Mother—known to the police as a prostitute, drug addict—no attempt at rehabilitation. Died of drug overdose at twenty-three.
Hatred had seared through her—hatred of the woman whom she could remember only dimly as someone who’d shouted a lot and slapped her, and very often hadn’t been there at all, leaving her to pick food out of the fridge, or even the rubbish, and feel sick afterwards. A mother who’d loved her drugs more than she’d loved her daughter.
Yes, hatred was a good emotion to feel about a mother like that.
Then Kat had read the next entry—this time about her mother’s parents.
Father—unknown. Mother—a street prostitute, alcoholic. Knocked down by car and killed at twenty. Daughter taken into care.
The chill that had gone through her had iced her bones. For a long time she’d just stared down at the document. Seeing the damnation in it. Each mother damning her daughter. Generation to generation. Then, slowly, very slowly, she’d raised her head. Her eyes had been like burning brands. Her expression fierce, almost savage.
Well, not me! I’m not going that way! I’m getting out—out!
Her resolution was absolute, fusing into every cell in her body. Fuelling, from then on, every moment of her life. She was getting out and heading up. Making something of herself. Getting off the bleak, relentless conveyor belt that was trying to take her down into the pit that had swallowed her mother—her mother’s mother.
And two things, it was obvious, could push her down there. Drink and drugs. That was why her mother, and her mother’s mother, had become prostitutes, she knew—to fund their addiction. And sex, too, had to be out. Sex got you a fatherless baby, raised on benefits, got you trapped into single motherhood. The way her mother had been, and her mother before her …
Sex, drink and drugs—all toxic.
All totally out of her life.
Out too, all the drifting and aimlessness of her existence. From now on, everything had a focus, an end point, a reason. Everything was a step on her journey out of the life she had into the life she wanted. The life she was going to get for herself.
But how was she going to get that life? She was going to work—work her backside off—but doing what? She’d left school with the minimum qualifications, had hated school-work anyway, so what could she do?
It was Katya who showed her. Katya, whom she’d met at the hostel for the homeless she’d got a room in, who was Polish, blonde and busty. She palled up with Kat, claiming they had the same name, the same hair colour, the same age—and the same determination to make good. Katya’s father was a miner, crippled in an explosion. Her mother had TB. She had eight younger brothers and sisters.
‘I look after them,’ said Katya simply. She knew exactly how she was going to do so. ‘Glamour modelling,’ she told Kat openly. ‘It makes good money, and at home no one will see those magazines, so I don’t care.’
Kat tried to talk her out of it. Her every instinct revolted against going anywhere along that path.
‘No. I do it,’ said Katya resolutely. She eyed Kat. ‘You, with your looks, can model without the glamour,’ she said. ‘Real modelling.’
Kat had laughed dismissively. ‘Thousands of girls want to become models.’
Katya only shrugged. ‘So? Some of them make it. Why not you?
Her words echoed in Kat’s mind. Resonating like wind chimes, playing seductively in her consciousness.
Why not her?
She took to staring at herself in the mirror. She was thin, like a model was. Especially since she didn’t spend much on food—not having much to spend. And she was tall. Long bones. She studied her face. Her eyes were wide. Greyish. Oval face. Cheekbones high. Straight nose. Bare mouth. Teeth OK. No lipstick, no eyeshadow. She never wore make-up. What for, when she avoided sex—and therefore men—like the plague?
She gave a shrug. Either her face would suit, or it wouldn’t. But she might as well try.
‘You need a portfolio,’ Katya told her. ‘You know—photos to show how good you can look. But they cost a lot.’
Kat took a job—two jobs. In the day, six days a week, she worked in a shoe shop, and in the evening, seven days a week, she worked as a waitress. She was on time every day. She took all the instructions she was given without argument, resistance or attitude. She was polite to customers, even when they were rude to her. She gritted her teeth, steeled her spine, and did the work—earned the wages. Saved every penny she could.
It was slow, and it was hard, and it took her six months to put aside enough. But pound by pound, doggedly hoarded, she put the money together to pay for a professional portfolio.
Then she just had to find a photographer. Katya recommended one. Kat was sceptical, given the Polish girl’s line of work, but Katya went on at her, and eventually Kat said OK. She didn’t like Mike, straight off, but Katya was with her, so she didn’t walk out. She liked him even less when he wanted her to strip off—just to see her underlying figure, he claimed—nor did she like the fact he didn’t like it when she said no. The session took for ever, with Katya redoing her hair and make-up, changing her clothes all the time. She didn’t like Mike physically changing her pose, moving her around like a doll. But she knew that was all a model was—a clothes horse. Not a person. She had better get used to it. Train herself to be docile. Even though it went against the grain.
Finally he finished, and when the photos were ready Kat was so stunned she could only stare. The face which all her life hadn’t seemed to be anything much, was suddenly, out of nowhere, amazing! Her eyes were huge, her cheekbones like knives, and her mouth—
‘I look fantastic,’ she said faintly. It was like looking at a stranger—a face that wasn’t hers, but was. She gave Katya a hug. ‘Thanks!’ she choked.
She didn’t see the strange expression fleetingly in the other girl’s eyes.
She took the next morning off work and, nerves shredded like paper, heart thumping, headed for the modelling agency she’d selected as her first try with her new portfolio.
They had, to her exultation, taken her on.
But even after being signed it was a long, slow haul. Assignments were thin on the ground, and competition for them fierce.
Especially the best ones.
Like the one she was racing for now. For a start, the casting was at a seriously flash Park Lane hotel, and the shoot itself was going to be in Monte Carlo—posing on yachts in a marina. She felt a thrill of excitement as she raced out of the tube station. She’d never been abroad in her life, let alone anywhere that fantastically swanky.
As she dashed up to the hotel, heart-rate zapping in her chest, she was intent only on getting to the entrance as fast as possible. She completely ignored the sleek limo pulled up at the kerb, and the frock-coated doorman stepping back from opening the rear door. Nor did she pay the slightest attention to whoever it was getting out. Except that as she raced up to the hotel’s revolving door he was in her way.
“Scuse me!’ she exclaimed, and made to push past him, to get into the revolving door first.
But the man simply turned his head sharply and stopped, blocking her. Kat glared at him. She took in height, a dark suit, a tanned complexion, strong features which made her pulse give a strange kick, and dark, forbidding eyes clashing with hers.
Her pulse gave that strange kick again. But it was because she was running late, was in a hurry, didn’t have time to waste—and this block of a man was in her way. That was why. No other reason.
‘Look, are you going to shift or not?’ she bit out impatiently, glaring at him belligerently.
Something flashed in the dark eyes. Something that made that kick come again. But it was just because he was still in her way—and because he was looking at her as if she was some inferior being. Her back went up as automatically as the kick that came in her pulse.
‘Would you be so very kind,’ she gritted, in mock-ingratiating accents, ‘as to allow me to get into the damn hotel?’
The dark eyes flashed again. But this time it was different. She didn’t know how different, or why. But it was. This time it didn’t make her pulse kick. It made something arrow in her stomach instead.
Then he stepped back. He said nothing, just indicated with his hand for her to go into the revolving door. It was an offhand gesture—dismissive. She didn’t like it. It made her back go up even more. She stepped into the open angle of the doorway, then turned her head.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, in sweetly acid, exaggerated tones. ‘How terribly kind of you!’
Something glinted in his eye, which she didn’t like either, and she turned her head sharply and swept inside, pushing the door round, to gain the marbled entrance lobby.
‘Posh idiot!’ she muttered. Then she pulled her mind away from the incident. She had to find where the casting was.
Fifteen minutes later she was sitting on a spindly gilt chair in a huge hotel function room, looking depressed at the usual horde of fantastic-looking hopefuls. There seemed to be a bit of a lull in the proceedings. The suits at the far end, bunched around a table, must be making their minds up. Kat stared round, feeling strangely edgy—more so than she usually felt at a casting. Maybe it was because she didn’t like this room—it made her feel out of place. This was the poshest place she’d ever been in, and all the people who came here were posh. Like the bloke who’d looked down on her for daring to push past him.
Kat’s eyebrows drew together. She felt antagonism flick inside her, then pushed the memory out of her mind. No point thinking about it—it had been brief, annoying, and now it was over. Just one of those things. She wondered how long it would take for the suits to decide whether she was one of the lucky chosen.
She wasn’t a strong candidate, she knew. Not for a swanky shoot like this. Her looks and style were fine for streetwise stuff, smart and sassy or aggro-cool, but if this was all about yachts then they’d want models that looked the part. Those sleek, classy girls who spoke with plums in their mouths, who were called Christabel and Octavia and knew each other from boarding school. Who were only modelling for a hobby or a lark until they married, or got bored with the hard work it really was.
She went on staring, keeping herself to herself, the way she always did at castings, not caring if other girls thought her standoffish. Then, abruptly, the huddle at the table straightened and a chicly dressed middle-aged woman started reading names out.
Kat’s wasn’t one of them.
She gave a mental shrug. What had she expected? Disappointment and frustration went with the territory, and you rolled with the punches because there was no alternative. She, like the rest of the girls in the room apart from the chosen nine, who’d hurried forward to the table, started to pick up their stuff and prepared to leave.
Except that, abruptly, another door at the far end of the room opened, close to the table with the suits, and someone walked in.
Kat recognised him instantly, and it set the seal on the casting. It was the man she’d hustled at the entrance to the hotel. By the way the suits had jumped to their feet—even the two women—the guy was clearly a head honcho type. Kat wasn’t surprised—it was obvious from the handmade suit to the way he’d looked at her with coldly arrogant eyes, as if she was an inferior being.
Well, if he was the head honcho, then it was just as well she hadn’t been picked. She hadn’t exactly impressed the guy, had she, back-talking him like that? She hefted her bag, and stood up.
As she did so, she felt something on her. It was the man—he was sweeping a rapid glance over the girls in the room. Maybe he was just checking that the models on the short list, clustered eagerly by the table, were the best there. Well, it wouldn’t be her, anyway, not once he’d recognised her. She turned away, moving towards the door.
The voice of the middle-aged woman rang out.
‘You—short blonde hair, green shift. Wait.’
Slowly, Kat paused and turned. The woman beckoned to her impatiently.
‘Kat Jones, is it?’
Kat nodded, but her eyes went past the woman to the tall figure at her side. The man she’d hustled. Mr Big. His eyes were resting on her. She couldn’t read them, not from this distance, but there was something in them that made her feel suddenly very, very weird.
She started to walk towards him.
Angelos Petrakos watched her approach. She appeared wary. He was unsurprised. She’d be ruing her rudeness to him at the hotel entrance. His gaze rested on her critically as she came forward. Too thin for his personal taste, and although her features were stunning, her short, jagged hairstyle was not what he liked in a woman. He liked women chic, elegant, soignée. Not raw off the street like this. With a lip to her that would get her nowhere fast in life.
And yet his eyes narrowed speculatively. There was something about her …
His eyes flicked over her one more time, assessing her. He saw something flash in hers, surprising him. She hadn’t liked the way he’d looked her over.
Curious. She was a model—it was her livelihood to be looked over. But she hadn’t liked him doing it. And that was an anomaly in itself. Women liked him to look them over. They queued up for the privilege. But this fauve girl just about had her hackles raised, claws out. Kat was clearly a good name for her …
But her name was irrelevant. So was anything else. The only thing on the agenda was whether she would suit the campaign he wanted—lend an edge to it that more conventional models wouldn’t. Well, he’d think about it. He snapped off his surveillance and nodded at the creative director of the advertising agency that had been selected for the campaign.
‘Put her on the list,’ he instructed. He didn’t expand on his choice—that was not the concern of those he paid. He turned to go. ‘Have the short-listed girls back here for seven o’clock this evening.’
Then he walked out of the function room.
* * *
At five to seven precisely, Kat walked out of the hotel’s powder room, where she’d changed into her evening gown, having done her face and hair at home earlier. She was looking good, she knew, and she hung on to the knowledge, knowing her nerves were stretched and she needed all that her reflection could offer her. The thin-strapped eau de nil silk gown bought in a sale fell sheer down her slender body, its pale colouring suiting her own paleness. Strappy, high-heeled sandals lifted her hips and gave an assertive boost to her stride.
But beneath the surface her emotions were conflicted. Predominant was nervousness—but running alongside that was another emotion. One that she didn’t want to feel.
She knew who he was now—she’d had it spelt out to her by the suits after he’d walked out of the room that afternoon. Angelos Petrakos. He wasn’t the guy who owned the yacht company—he was the guy who owned the company that owned the yacht company.
Yeah, well, she thought bitingly to herself as she strode into the hotel lobby, she wasn’t going to tiptoe around him, however much she wanted the job. If he wanted to hire her—fine. But no way was she kow-towing to him! No way!
She still didn’t know why he’d put her on the short list. She was a completely different type from the sleek, posh others. Well, she didn’t care about that, either. Either she’d be picked or she wouldn’t. That was it, really. Nothing to do with her—just what Mr Big wanted.