‘I was hoping that you and Bastien would join us for dinner some evening while you’re in Athens,’ Grace shared. ‘Break the ice a bit.’
‘I think it would take an ice pick,’ Lilah confided ruefully.
‘Bastien’s not the family type. He’s a natural loner,’ Marina remarked.
Lilah stiffened angrily and her bright blue eyes sparked. ‘Bastien might be closer to his brother if you hadn’t soured their relationship by lying about what happened between you and Bastien ten years ago,’ Lilah condemned, the stream of recrimination racing off her tongue before she could even stop to think about what she was saying.
In response to Lilah’s outburst the most appalling silence spread. Marina had turned the colour of ash, and Grace was staring at Lilah in wide-eyed consternation.
‘I... I don’t know what to say,’ Marina responded, and as a deep flush highlighted her cheeks her guiltiness was obvious to Lilah.
‘But I do. Delilah...time for you to leave.’
A deeply unwelcome voice sounded from behind the sofa she was sitting on. Lilah’s head swivelled and she focused on Bastien in shock. The fact that he had heard what she had said to Marina was stamped on his lean darkly handsome face and in the threatening golden blaze of his eyes. She had embarrassed him by prying into his past and he was absolutely furious.
Her cheeks warm, she stood up and encountered a sympathetic glance from Grace.
‘I’m sorry. I put my foot in it...trod where I shouldn’t...whatever you want to call it,’ Lilah muttered in a rush as soon as she was in the car with him.
‘We’ll discuss it when we get back to the apartment.’
‘How’s your father?’ she asked.
‘They think he’s had a minor heart attack. He’s going to have to change his lifestyle—eat less, exercise more,’ he breathed curtly. ‘Cleta’s staying with him. I’ll go back to see him later.’
Lilah stole a glance at his grim bronzed profile and cursed the misfortune that had led to Bastien overhearing her attack on his former lover. She knew she was in the wrong. She should have minded her own business. Should never have embarrassed Grace like that in her home. And now Bastien was furious with her.
She gritted her teeth, angry that she had spoken on impulse and without sensible forethought, but not sorry that she had told Marina what she thought of her behaviour.
His apartment was a penthouse, furnished in contemporary style and full of airy space, glass, metal and stone.
Lilah slung her bag down in the main reception room and sat down heavily. ‘Say what you have to say,’ she urged apprehensively, her nerves worn to a thread by the enforced wait.
Bastien settled burning golden eyes on her. ‘What the hell got into you? I told you something private and you used it as a weapon to attack Marina. It was none of your business. You embarrassed me and you embarrassed Grace.’
‘Well, if I embarrassed Marina, I’m not sorry,’ Lilah fired back. ‘She deserved what I said. And I didn’t specify what I was talking about in any way, so I doubt if I embarrassed anyone.’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ Bastien raked back at her rawly. ‘You dug up something very confidential from my past. I can’t believe that I even told you now. I should’ve known a woman couldn’t be trusted.’
‘Oh, don’t throw any of that prejudiced nonsense at me!’ Lilah warned him, equally rawly. ‘It just got to me when Marina walked in all smiles and charm, acting as if she was a friend of the family.’
‘She is a friend!’
‘Not of yours, she’s not!’ Lilah flung back feelingly. ‘She’s caused a whole lot of trouble between you and your brother and you shouldn’t have let her lies stand unchallenged. Your pride makes you your own worst enemy, Bastien!’
‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Nothing that happened between Marina and I or Leo and I is anything to do with you. Where the hell do you get the nerve to interfere?’
‘Maybe...just maybe...I was trying to do something for you.’
‘You had no right to upset Marina like that.’
‘Marina?’ Lilah gasped as if he had punched her, because she was suddenly desperately short of breath, pierced to the heart that he should be more concerned about his former lover’s feelings than about her.
‘Yes—Marina,’ Bastien repeated curtly. ‘Of course she was upset. I saw her face. She knew instantly what you were referring to. You can’t have thought this through, Delilah.’
Lilah was wounded by the angle the conversation had taken and fighting to hide the fact from him. Bastien was standing there, all lean, powerful and poised and devastatingly beautiful, and he was defending another woman to her face. He was her husband but he wasn’t on her side.
Her tummy flipped, leaving her struggling against a sickening light-headed sensation.
‘The termination caused Marina considerable distress,’ Bastien delivered in a grim undertone. ‘She made her choice, but I don’t doubt that the decision cost her. That’s the main reason why I didn’t persist in arguing my case with Leo. Marina doesn’t deserve to have that distressing experience raked up again. So she lied and played victim to look more sympathetic in Leo’s eyes? OK...that was wrong. But Leo is the one who chose to believe her story and disbelieve mine.’
Belated guilt pierced Lilah and she felt more nauseated than ever. On one score Bastien was correct. She had not thought through the implications of what she was throwing at Marina. But she was not a naturally unkind or unfeeling person. She knew she should never have referred to so private a matter. She had been cruel, and the shame of that reality engulfed Lilah like a suffocating blanket.
She blundered upright, desperate simply to escape Bastien’s censorious gaze and lick her wounds and her squashed ego in private.
She swayed as the room telescoped around her in the most disturbing way. Her head was swimming and her skin was clammy and cold. Not a sound escaped Lilah’s lips as blackness folded in behind her eyelids and she flopped down on the rug in a faint.
For a split second Bastien stared at Delilah, who had dropped in a heap on the rug, and then he plunged forward to crouch and gather her up, his brain obscured by the most peculiar fog of something that felt like panic but which he refused to acknowledge as panic. He wasn’t the panicking type—never had been, never would be.
He dug out his phone to ring his brother’s home and ask for Grace. Leo, mercifully, asked no questions, but Grace more than made up for that omission.
Grace told him quietly and succinctly what to do and Bastien followed her instructions, furious that he had once disdained to take a first aid course, assuming he would never feel the need for such training.
By the time he’d come off the phone and was carrying Delilah down to the main bedroom she was showing signs of recovery. Her lashes fluttered, her head moved, and a faint hint of colour began to lift the drawn pallor of her complexion.
Only then did Bastien dare to breathe again. He smoothed a shaking hand over Delilah’s brow to brush back her tumbled dark hair. He had never felt so scared in his life. That knowledge shook him up even more. He had shouted at her, condemned her. And why had he done that?
Maybe I was trying to do something for you, Delilah had said, and the sheer shock value of those words was still reverberating inside Bastien. When had anyone ever tried to do anything to improve his life? When had anyone ever tried to protect him from the consequences of his own behaviour?
Delilah had been trying to protect him.
He swallowed hard. He didn’t need anyone’s protection. Nobody had protected him as a child or as an adolescent—neither his mother nor his father—and Bastien had learned never to look to other people for support. But Delilah had blundered headfirst into a difficult and delicate situation in a clumsy and futile attempt to straighten out his non-relationship with his only sibling.
Admittedly he had noticed how his wife had pokered up by his side when she’d seenhow the Zikos family treated him. Delilah, he registered in a daze, cared about him—in spite of the methods he had used to ensnare her, in spite of all the mistakes he had made.
He snatched in a ragged breath and studied her in wondering appreciation.
‘My goodness—what happened?’ Lilah mumbled, blue eyes opening to fix on Bastien’s lean darkly handsome face. ‘Did I faint? I’ve never done that in my life! I’m so sorry.’
‘You were upset—and when did you last eat?’ Bastien pressed, pushing her back against the pillows when she tried to get up. ‘Lie there for a while. Are you feeling sick?’
Lilah grimaced. ‘Only a little... It’s fading.’
‘I’m really sorry I shouted at you,’ Bastien said abruptly, a lean brown hand closing over hers, and he was astonished at how easily the apology emerged.
‘You weren’t shouting.’
‘I’m not in a good mood. I was stressed about Anatole and feeling guilty about him,’ Bastien admitted, disconcerting her with that confidence. ‘I love my father, but I’ve never been able to respect him, and...and that makes me feel like a lousy son.’