woman in front of him with incredulous disdain.
Elyssa pouted. ‘I can’t help it if men find me irresistible.’
Her vanity even in the face of the damage she had done was deeply offensive to Andreas. Somehow he had overlooked the reality that his once-vulnerable little sister had grown to adulthood and full independence. It was not a good moment to discover that he did not like the woman she had become.
‘The night that you threw your housewarming party,’ Andreas murmured abruptly as it occurred to him that his sibling was not at all the reliable and truthful witness he had believed her to be, ‘you said that you found Hope with Ben Campbell. Was that true?’
Her surprise patent at that unexpected change of subject, Elyssa coloured. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘That story about Hope was a wind-up, wasn’t it?’ Determined to get the truth out of his sister, Andreas let a deceptively amused smile curve his handsome mouth.
His sister regarded him uncertainly and then she relaxed when she saw the smile. ‘How did you guess?’
At Elyssa’s confirmation that she had concocted the tale about Hope, Andreas fell very still. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘I had to protect myself. She caught me kissing another man. I decided to discredit her before she got the chance to tell anybody what she’d seen.’ Elyssa lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug of dismissal.
Cold condemnation was stamped on her brother’s lean, hard-boned face. ‘I’ll never forgive you for hurting her.’
‘You tricked me into telling you…’ Pale with consternation as that truth sank in, Elyssa started to scramble upright. ‘That’s not fair!’
‘How fair were you to Hope?’
‘Surely you didn’t expect me to like her?’ his sister snapped with furious resentment. ‘From the minute you met Hope Evans, you had no time for me any more. You were always with her playing house. Yet who was she? A vulgar little upstart from nowhere! I couldn’t believe that you would bring a woman like that to my home and show her off!’
‘Your spite turns my stomach,’ Andreas breathed in disgust.
When he emerged from his sister’s home, he did not climb back into the limo. He wanted to walk for a while in the fresh air. Elyssa’s vicious attack on Hope and the jealousy that had powered her abuse appalled him. Nothing could excuse his sister’s cruel lies or her complete lack of guilt. How could he have been so blind to the younger woman’s true nature?
Elyssa had always needed to be the centre of attention. From babyhood she had thrown tantrums to ensure she got what she wanted. Of recent Andreas had become less patient with her constant demands and had encouraged her to rely on her husband for support. Naturally he had wanted to spend more time with Hope. Once or twice he had wondered why his sibling had so little apparent interest in his private life. Now he suspected that Elyssa’s resentment had grown in direct proportion to the longevity of his relationship with Hope. Yet he had failed to notice that anything was wrong. He had also made the fatal mistake of introducing Hope to his sister. It was his fault that Hope had become the innocent victim of her malice. How was he supposed to make that up to Hope?
He phoned her five minutes later. ‘I have to see you.’
‘Why?’ Hope said a little prayer that he would answer that he was missing her.
‘Something’s happened. I don’t feel right about waiting until tomorrow to discuss it with you,’ Andreas admitted. ‘It’s late…you could stay the night.’
‘At the town house?’
‘Yes.’
Hope entered a large tick on the mental scorecard she was running on him. ‘That would be OK,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘But I couldn’t actually stay with you…if you know what I mean.’
‘I’ll send the car to pick you up.’
A manservant ushered her into the elegant hall of the big Georgian terraced house and into an imposing drawing room where Andreas awaited her. He looked very serious and her apprehension shifted up another notch on the scale.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked immediately.
Andreas read the strain in her clear turquoise eyes and reached for both her hands. ‘Stop worrying right now,’ he told her firmly. ‘I think that what I have to say qualifies as good rather than bad.’
‘That’s great.’ Some of her tension evaporated. Her hands trembled in the grip of his and she tugged them free again. Either she was his mistress or she tried to be a friend, even though he had once told her that he didn’t do friendship with women. She could not be a mixture of both and there had to be boundary lines. So this was not the moment when she should be noticing that the dark stubble beginning to shadow his sculpted mouth and hard jaw line made him look outrageously sexy. In fact just thinking that forbidden thought made ready colour warm her complexion.
With a distinct air of concern, Andreas urged her down onto a sofa. ‘You look tired.’
Hope decided being pregnant was deeply unsexy. Only three months ago, he would have urged her down onto a sofa solely to take rampant, masculine advantage of her horizontal state. But now he was more keen for her to rest.
‘Tonight I found out something that shocked me.’ Lean, strong face taut, Andreas launched straight into the confession he knew he had to make. ‘As you’ve probably already worked out, Elyssa has been having affairs with other men. This evening, I also learned that my sister lied when she claimed to have seen you in Ben Campbell’s arms at her party.’
Hope closed her eyes and breathed in slow and deep. Relief made her feel dizzy. That part of the nightmare was over: Andreas was finally accepting that she had told him the truth all along. ‘I’m glad. I really thought that I was going to have to live with that nonsensical story for ever.’
‘I wish I could tell you that Elyssa is very sorry for what she’s done. But I’m afraid my sibling appears rather lacking in the conscience department,’ Andreas derided harshly. ‘Before tonight, I had no idea that Elyssa resented your place in my life.’
‘She called me your whore at the party,’ Hope mused with a little shiver of reluctant recall.
Andreas groaned, his vexation unconcealed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I knew how fond you were of her and telling tales would only have made her dislike me even more. I suppose that even then I wasn’t sure that you would take my word over hers…’ Hope worried at her lower lip and let her pent-up breath escape softly. ‘Of course, by the end of the evening I found that out for a fact.’
Andreas tensed at that reminder. ‘I thought I knew Elyssa inside out but I had idealised her. I wasn’t seeing her as she really was…spoilt, selfish, shallow in her affections,’ Andreas enumerated with a heavy regret that she could feel. ‘OK. I admit it. I didn’t want to see those traits in my closest relative—’
‘You were proud of her…it was natural that you would want to think only good things about her,’ Hope told him gently. ‘I don’t hold that against you. You had no reason to doubt her word if she hadn’t lied to you before.’
Andreas rested his brilliant dark eyes on her heart-shaped face. ‘You’re being very generous about this.’
‘I don’t think so. I just want to be fair.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, pedhi mou. I don’t know where to begin apologising for some of the things I’ve said or for the way I’ve treated you,’ Andreas admitted with roughened honesty. ‘But I was so angry that that whole week is virtually a blank. It was a very unfortunate coincidence that you had indicated your dissatisfaction with our relationship shortly before that party.’
That angle had not occurred to Hope before and she was dismayed