From Dirt to Diamonds

‘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.