He shook his head.
“How is that possible?”
“We didn’t talk about the past,” he said shortly.
“Never?”
“No.”
“Then…what did we talk about?”
“We didn’t talk. We just made love.”
A cold trickle went down her back.
They’d never spoken about their pasts?
Their relationship had only been about sex?
The car stopped. Silently, Talos got out of the car and opened her door. Looking up, she saw a very elegant French restaurant in a glossy new building with coldly modern architecture. “This is your idea of a quick breakfast place?”
Talos gave her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “It was your favorite restaurant in Athens.”
Once inside, they were escorted to the best table, which overlooked the crowded street below. The fancy restaurant was elegant and chilly with sterile airconditioning. There were many waiters but no other diners.
“It’s not very popular in here on a Sunday morning,” she ventured.
“I reserved the whole place,” he said, sounding bored as he opened the menu.
“Why?”
“I wanted you to be comfortable.” He closed the menu. “What would you like?”
With a sigh, she opened her menu. It was written in English and French. This place was entirely too coldly elegant, she thought. Looking out the window with longing, Eve saw locals and tourists thronging a colorful street market.
Outside in the hot Greek sun, she saw people smiling at each other, eating at outdoor cafés, bartering goodnaturedly in the flea market.
The waiter came and took their order, speaking flawless English with a slightly British accent. After he departed, a different waiter brought them drinks. She took a sip of orange juice, then leaned forward with her elbows on the table.
“All right, Talos,” she said quietly. “Tell me why we’re really here.”
His eyes were dark as they fixed on her. “This past summer, I almost lost my business,” he said in a low voice. “A document was stolen from my penthouse which suggested I might be cheating my stockholders of a great deal of money. Of course, I wasn’t. But it cast the company’s finances in a sordid light.”
She stared up at him, shocked. “That’s terrible! Did you find out who did it?”
He looked at her, his eyes glittering. “Yes.”
“I hope you put them in jail!”
He took a sip of black coffee. “That’s not my style.”
“But what does that have to do with me—and this restaurant?”
“This is the last place I ever saw you, Eve. Before your accident.”
She frowned, shaking her head. “Right before I left for my stepfather’s funeral?”
“You left me long before that. Almost three months ago.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you recognize this table?”#p#分页标题#e#
She looked down at it. “No. Should I?”
“The last time I saw you, you were sitting here with Jake Skinner. Having breakfast with him, just hours after I’d made love to you.”
“What?” she gasped.
His hands clenched on the white linen tablecloth. “Kefalas was following you—”
“Following me?” she gasped.
“Protecting you,” he corrected. “During the one day I had an unbreakable appointment. He phoned me and I dropped everything. I rushed here like a fool to demand an explanation. You tried to laugh it off as nothing.”
She thought of the American tycoon whom she’d met at the party. “So that’s why you wanted me to dance with him,” she said quietly. “To trick me?”
“I wanted to make you remember betraying me.”
She shook his head. “I don’t!”
“You disappeared from the city. The next morning, I woke to discover my company’s name splashed across the newspapers, and my phone ringing incessantly with calls from press and angry stockholders. Skinner gave the document to the press. But the one who first stole it from my house—” he leaned forward, his eyes black and hard “—was you.”
She drew back in shock. “Me!”
“And so I’ve been waiting for you to remember. Every place I’ve taken you, every memory I’ve hoped to reignite, was so you could tell me why.”
Suddenly, she understood everything.
“Not just that,” she whispered. “You wanted to punish me. It’s what you’ve wanted since the day you found me in London. You wanted revenge—”
“Justice,” he corrected coldly.
“But when you found out I was pregnant, that changed everything, didn’t it?” She gave a choked laugh, then covered her mouth with an intake of breath. “You felt you had to marry me because I was pregnant with your baby. You never loved me. All you wanted—was to hurt me.”