For Revenge...Or Pleasure? Page 12

  ‘And I’m sorry for not believing all those things you said about Grace too. You were right.’

  He spun around in an instant and rounded the table towards her, ramming his fist into the air, his face masked with fury.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s too late for that now? My sister could have been scarred for life, or worse—she could have been killed by that lunatic! And yet you did nothing—nothing!—to stop her!’

  She took a step back, blinking at the sudden speed of his approach. He was right. She had done nothing. And it hardly seemed to matter now that it was because she had believed nothing could possibly be wrong.

  He’d been such a champion for his sister, fighting both to save her and to avenge his late fiancée. What would it feel like to have someone fight so hard for you, to defend you so stridently, to care for you that much?

  Did his sister know how lucky she was?

  ‘H…How is Pia now? Do you know?’

  He stopped, and dragged in some air, his fist slowly melting back into a hand as he battled to get his breathing under control. ‘She’s at home. Stella is looking after her—and Kurt, though I don’t know how much good he’ll be. I’m just hoping it will be a long while before she attempts any cosmetic surgery again.’

  She smiled wanly. ‘I’m glad she’s okay. She seems a nice kid.’

  His eyes hardened to stone. ‘Exactly,’ he hissed, moving closer to her. ‘A kid. And yet you were prepared to let that monster cut into her.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘No? It sure looked like it to me.’

  ‘I even tried to talk Pia—Olympia—out of it. But she wouldn’t listen to me. She was determined to go ahead with the surgery.’

  He snorted his disbelief. ‘Don’t give me that!’

  ‘It’s the truth!’

  ‘You can’t make things any better for yourself, you know, so don’t even bother trying.’

  She swallowed back the lump in her throat, fighting the prick of tears that surged up at the injustice. Why had she even bothered to apologise to this brute? He wasn’t prepared to accept anything from her, let alone the truth. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You’ve never believed anything I’ve said. Why should what I say today be any different?’

  ‘You’re not the victim in all this, so don’t make out like you are.’

  ‘I want to leave,’ she said, immediately gritting her teeth together in an effort to keep a hold over the burgeoning bubble of unshed tears that was swelling by the second. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere!’

  ‘You can’t keep me here!’

  ‘Just watch me.’

  ‘There’s no need. You don’t need to protect me any more.’

  ‘You think I’m protecting you?’

  ‘What do you mean? Isn’t that why you brought me here? To protect me from the reporters?’

  His only response was to blink.

  ‘I don’t care about the reporters,’ she said. ‘I can handle them myself.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How much do you think they’ll give you for your story? I think they’d pay a fortune to get the goods from you—probably enough to tide you over while you search for some other laboratory to perform your sick experiments.’

  ‘I don’t believe you! You really think I’d sell my version of events to the highest bidder?’

  His eyes dropped away. ‘I can’t afford to take any chances. So far the Demakis name has escaped being tainted by this scandal. But if someone were to give the press something adverse or embarrassing…’

  ‘And you think I would? That’s why you’re holding me prisoner here—because I might lift some dirt on your precious family? So how long do you think you can keep me here—how long do you plan on keeping me silent? A week? A month? For ever?’

  He slammed his fist against the wall. ‘I don’t want Olympia hurt any more than she has been!’

  ‘And you don’t believe me when I say I’d do nothing to hurt Pia? But why should that come as a surprise? Ever since we’ve met you’ve been only too happy to misjudge me. All the way along you’ve been happy to assume the worst.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying you’ve never chosen to believe me over your own warped preconceived notions. Even when they’re proved wrong, you still won’t accept it. You assumed I was in with Grace from the start. You decided I was just as guilty. Were you disappointed when the police didn’t lock me away? Would it have been easier for you if they’d kept me behind bars and thrown away the key—saved you the trouble?’

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘Why should I? Why should I do anything you say? It’s not as if you’re the bastion of what’s right and true in the world. Look at the way you treated me. You used me—lied to me—tricked me into sleeping with you so that I might spill what I knew about Grace. Well, the joke is on you, Loukas, because it was all for nothing. I didn’t know anything. You went to all the trouble of bedding me for nothing! All that effort—totally wasted!’

  And then he was upon her, his breath harsh on her face, the drumbeat of his heart a mere few inches away.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a complete waste.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SUDDENLY his lips were on hers, hungry, punishing, his tongue seeking entry, his hands seemingly everywhere, ripping at her halter and her pants.

  And the taste of Loukas in her mouth, the feel of his hands upon her, his body pressed next to hers was almost enough to make her forget what they’d been arguing about. Make her want to melt into his passionate embrace. Give herself up to his mind, and body-shattering onslaught.

  Almost.

  Summoning a strength of body and mind from somewhere, from the only place deep within that was untouched by the desire to let herself go, she pushed him away.

  ‘No!’

  Her hands flush on his chest, her breathing rough and edgy, she battled to stay calm. ‘This didn’t solve anything before, and it will solve even less now!’

  She pushed with all her remaining strength, but the effort to shove him away had drained her and his hands felt like manacles on her arms.

  ‘I don’t want this!’

  ‘I know you do,’ he insisted, pressing the weight of his chest against her hands, his mouth seeking her lips once more.

  ‘No. You’re wrong,’ she said, turning her face away. ‘And, just like usual, you can’t accept you could be wrong about anything.’

  ‘The only thing I was wrong about was thinking I could have enough of you. I want you, Jade. I want to make love to you. And I know that that’s what you want too.’

  ‘I want you to make love to me? I’d have to be some kind of mad woman to want someone who has accused me of all the things you charged me with. And you’d have to be some kind of loser to want to make love with someone you have such a low opinion of. What was it you called me—a fake? So fake I can’t see straight—isn’t that how you put it?

  ‘And yet you now insist you want to make love to me. How does that work, when all you see is someone who’s been put together by some crazy Frankenstein? Someone where you can’t tell which bits are real and which are fake? How can you bear to even touch me now that you don’t have to—now that your mission is completed?’

  Dark emotion scudded like storm clouds across his eyes before he pulled himself back and suddenly released her. He surged away, his fingers tangled in knots behind his head.

  ‘I had reason to think what I did. Even if some of my assumptions were misplaced.’

  ‘What was that?’ she asked, pushing herself away from the wall behind him.

  ‘I said maybe I was hasty. Maybe I was too eager to colour you with Della-Bosca’s brush.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m hearing this. You’re not actually admitting you were wrong? You’re not actually admitting that you misjudged me on yet another count?’

  ‘Is it so h
ard to believe? The work you do, the way you look—how likely is it to be natural?’

  She nodded. ‘How likely, indeed?’

  ‘I called you a fake,’ he said. ‘But I can admit when I’m wrong. I just didn’t believe anyone who looked as good as you couldn’t be one of your own clinic’s best customers. I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t be living off a staple diet of surgery and Botox.’

  She gave a short bitter laugh. ‘Botox? Are you serious?’

  And then it dawned on him. No wonder she looked so vital and alive! It was because, unlike just about every other woman in Hollywood, her facial muscles hadn’t been rendered immobile by the injection of a paralysing agent. She was a natural beauty who didn’t need anyone’s help to look that way. And he’d judged her unfairly because of it.

  He shook his head. ‘What can I say? I just couldn’t believe anyone as beautiful as you could have been born that way—especially working in your profession.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, adding a brittle laugh, ‘if it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t born this way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You once asked me to deny that I’d ever had a cosmetic procedure.’

  ‘Jade, I—’

  ‘The thing is, I didn’t deny it.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. I was out of line.’

  ‘No, I didn’t have to. But that’s not the reason I didn’t answer.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  She looked at him for a second. ‘Wait,’ she said, before moving across the room to where her handbag lay on the benchtop. She pulled out her purse and flipped it open, tugging something out from one of the pockets.

  ‘Look,’ she said, holding it out towards him.

  ‘Jade, I…’

  ‘Take it.’

  He took it and looked down. It was an old, battered photograph, worn at the edges. A photograph of a young girl, her face cast down, her eyes hiding from the camera. But there was a red mark on the photo, covering half her face, so the picture wasn’t clear—he couldn’t make out who it was.

  And then he gave a hiss as it hit him.

  The mark wasn’t on the photograph.

  The mark was on her skin.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked. ‘Why did you give this to me?’

  ‘Don’t you recognise her?’ she asked. ‘She’s a girl people wrote off—because of the way she looked. Because of a birthmark that covered half her face people turned their heads away when she came down the street. People couldn’t bear to look her in the eye, and when they did it was always with horror. Or, worse still, pity. Those people judged her because of the way she looked. She was worthless in their eyes.

  ‘And you’re no different to the people who shunned her because she didn’t fit into their neat little view of the world. Because she’s someone you summed up in a second simply because of the way she looked.’

  He frowned down at the photograph. Her words burned in his psyche. It couldn’t be possible—what was she trying to say? Nothing made sense. But there was something in the angle of the chin of the girl in the photograph, the slope of her cheek, something achingly familiar.

  He looked from the photo to Jade and back again. ‘Surely…?’

  She laughed, and he knew she was laughing at him—and at his battle to come to terms with what was staring him in the face.

  ‘It is me, Loukas. That’s the real me as I had to live for sixteen years of my life. And that’s the real me you apparently would rather see. That’s the real me you would have preferred in your bed—someone unsullied by the evil hand of cosmetic surgery.’

  He brushed aside her barbed comment—there was more at stake here than his own preconceived notions. ‘What happened to you to give you this?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing “happened”. I was simply born like that.’

  ‘And there was nothing they could do then?’

  ‘You have to understand it was a small country hospital and my mother was their main concern. She started haemorrhaging shortly after I was born. They tried to save her but just weren’t equipped. By the time they transferred her to Sydney it was too late. They lost her en route. And my father was left without a wife and with a baby he couldn’t bear to look at. He’d lost his childhood sweetheart and was lumbered with the ugliest creature he’d ever seen—something that could never replace the woman he’d lost, or ever stop reminding him of the pain.’

  She paused for a couple of moments before continuing.

  ‘And so for a while he refused to take me—and it looked like I would have to be adopted. But somehow someone managed to convince him to keep me, maybe because they couldn’t find anyone else—God, it must have just about killed him.’

  She stopped again then, as if thinking back. ‘I think he really must have loved me to do that,’ she said.

  ‘What about when you were older?’ he asked. ‘They must have tried something in all that time.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, they sure did.’ Now her voice was more strident, almost bitter. ‘Laser surgery was only new—experimental, really—and my doctors asked my father if I’d be game to give the new technology a try. I was only twelve years old, but I begged my father to let me do it. Because even if the people of the town had grown used to seeing me the way I was, had become accustomed to averting their eyes or masking their pity, still none of their sons asked me to school dances. Nobody wanted to be seen with me. And so I begged him to give me the chance to be as beautiful as my mother had been.’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘And it worked?’

  She laughed, her face raised towards the high ceiling. ‘No, it didn’t work. Far from it.’ She wandered out onto the deck, needing the fresh air and aware without looking that he was following her a few steps behind. ‘I’m sure you know, but the way laser surgery works is to damage the underlying cell tissue in the skin just enough to encourage new cell growth. Ideally what will happen is that the cell tissue will be spurred into action so that basically the skin heals itself—’

  He interrupted. ‘But that didn’t happen with you?’

  ‘No. The technology was too new, too raw, and the technician misjudged the dosage. Instead of taking away the mark he used too high a dose. It burned my skin too deeply…’ She trailed off, her blue eyes rippled with what he could tell was crushing pain. And still he could only imagine the disappointment of a young girl with a dream to be as beautiful as her mother. To be as beautiful as she could be.

  As she should have been from the start.

  As she was now.

  ‘But there’s no trace of anything. What happened?’

  From his angle at the side of her he could see the grimace that screwed up her face, could almost feel the death-grip her hands had on the railing. He watched her take in a couple of breaths, almost as if she was forming her words. And then she spoke.

  ‘I got lucky. There was a doctor visiting from the US who was said to be performing miracles with laser surgery, but the medical authorities at home were sceptical—nobody trusted the new technology after a series of bungled attempts. I wasn’t the only experiment gone wrong, apparently.

  ‘Anyway, somehow the doctor heard about my case, and decided I would be the perfect one to prove that laser surgery had improved and could perform miracles.’

  ‘Weren’t you scared to go through that again, after the first attempt?’

  ‘I was petrified. I didn’t want to do it. But that doctor explained everything so well—they were past the experimentation stage, they were really getting results—and convinced me that the surgery really could make a difference. I was sixteen years old with no family to protect me, and I wanted to go to university. I was a good student—my scar saw to that; there was no chance of boyfriends or distractions—and I knew I was good enough to get into medical school if I kept going. But I couldn’t stand the thought of going like I was.’

  She turned her face towards his. ‘You see, I’d had enough of looking like a freak. I was growing up,
and I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to have boyfriends and relationships. Is that so hard to understand?’

  She wandered to the corner of the deck, placing her arms on the railing and looking out over the sand and surf, looking beyond the ocean, remembering her past and her pain.

  He leaned against the frame of the open door, sensing that she wanted him to keep his distance right now. ‘And this time?’

  She straightened and turned suddenly, her eyes bright. ‘It worked. It worked so well that no one could even tell I’d ever had a birthmark on my face. And I decided then and there that I was going to become a laser surgeon to perform miracles and change lives like that doctor had done for me.’

  It was like a kick to the guts. So that was why she’d become a laser surgeon? Not for the money. He stood transfixed as another of his preconceived notions about Jade disintegrated into dust.

  ‘So is that how the foundation came about? Was it your idea all along?’

  She nodded, her face wistful. ‘I knew how lucky I’d been. If it hadn’t been for that visiting specialist I never would have had the chance to be treated by someone so talented, with the power to completely obliterate my birthmark. When I set about establishing the foundation, I wanted to make that possibility a reality for other kids who couldn’t afford treatment and would otherwise be forced to spend their lives like I spent my early years—hiding my face—hiding from the staring eyes and the spiteful names. I knew how that felt. I knew exactly how much it meant to look normal.’

  He nodded, the pain of her youth a tangible thing, weighing down her words. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I’m finally starting to understand why you ended up working where you did.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ she replied, the wistful tone in her voice replaced with a sudden burst of bitterness, knocking him off balance yet again.

  ‘You don’t see at all. You won’t understand anything until you realise that the doctor who performed that surgery, the doctor who made my life worth living and inspired me to do medicine in the first place, was none other than the woman you set out to destroy. My miracle doctor, the person I believed to be so wonderful she had to be an angel, was none other than Grace.’