Modern Romance June 2017 Books 1 – 4. Maisey Yates
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUCY CAME OUT of the room where she had left the nanny watching over Bella and smiled at the sight of Kreon waiting for her. ‘Dad? What are you doing up here?’ she asked with a grin. ‘Are you trying to escape all the polite chit-chat? Or have you heard a rumour that the food’s going to be bad?’
Kreon shifted uneasily on his feet, his face grave and troubled. ‘I have done something wrong and it concerns you.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Lucy laughed as he urged her into an alcove with seats.
‘Talking to Heracles made me see stuff...differently.’ Her father selected his words with an air of discomfiture as he sat down. ‘It made me appreciate that we’ve all had our tragedies and our triumphs but it’s how we deal with them that makes us who we are. I’d like to be proud of who I am but right now I’m not.’
Lucy narrowed her eyes in confusion. ‘You don’t sound like yourself.’
‘Jax’s father neglected Jax because he despised Jax’s mother, whom he divorced. He knows he can never make it up to Jax and he has to live with it every day, knowing that all those years he left his boy to deal alone with a very difficult woman,’ Kreon told her.
‘But you and I have a different history,’ Lucy reasoned, tucking that fresh information about Jax into her memory to take out and ponder at a more suitable time. ‘You didn’t even know that my mother was pregnant when you left London and she didn’t tell you later when she could have done—’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ Kreon told her heavily. ‘For many years I hated Heracles Antonakos because he put me down over my friendship with his wife. I’m ashamed to admit that I took my resentment out on his son.’
Lucy’s smooth brow had furrowed. ‘In what way?’
‘When Sofia was dying, she had a letter sent to me in which she confessed her darkest secret. She didn’t have the nerve to tell her husband so she told me instead.’ Kreon drew a crumpled envelope from his pocket and passed it to her. ‘Give it to Jax, let him decide what to do with it now. In it Sofia confesses to having an affair and she admits that Jax’s brother wasn’t fathered by Heracles. I went to see Jax a couple of weeks ago and I threatened to take that letter to the newspapers.’
‘Good grief...why would you threaten to do something so horrible?’ Lucy demanded in total disbelief.
‘I wanted Jax to marry you and take care of you and Bella. I thought he owed you that security and I still believe that he does but coercing him into doing it was wrong and unjust. He was protecting his father from more heartache and I shouldn’t have put him in that position. He is not responsible for his father’s mistakes.’
Lucy had turned very pale and her stomach was curdling as if she had eaten something that disagreed with her. She studied her father in slowly dawning horror and comprehension. ‘Are you telling me that you blackmailed Jax into proposing to me?’
As Kreon gave a guilty nod of silent confirmation, Lucy felt as though the bottom had just dropped out of her world. She stared at the brand-new wedding ring on her finger and felt sick. Jax hadn’t wanted to marry her. No, he had been forced to marry her. It was ghastly. She looked at her father in stricken condemnation. ‘Were you insane? I mean, what on earth could persuade you that that was an acceptable way to behave towards Bella’s father?’
‘I was angry with him. I wanted to punish Jax for seducing and abandoning you. It’s not an excuse but at the time I honestly believed I was doing what was best for you and my granddaughter.’
‘Because Jax is rich and powerful,’ Lucy slotted in sickly. ‘And now you feel bad about it because you’ve realised that rich and powerful people like Heracles Antonakos make mistakes and suffer just like everyone else.’
Kreon sighed. ‘That’s probably it in a nutshell. When I listened to Heracles talking I felt my anger draining away. He was a workaholic who neglected all his wives. But he came to the wedding today even though he didn’t approve of you because he was making an effort to be supportive of Jax as a father should. That was the right kind of effort to make for a child, mine was wrong. What did I do today? I made a sarcastic comment and provoked that punch.’
‘I’m really upset,’ Lucy admitted, breathing in deep and slow to calm herself down. ‘You’d better go back down and join the guests before Iola starts wondering where you are.’
‘I’m sorry, Lucy. I’ve just felt so powerless since you came into my life. You had had such a rough time and I genuinely did want to make your life better,’ Kreon confessed before he walked away.
And she understood exactly where her father was coming from but he had blackmailed Jax. Nausea stirred in Lucy’s tummy. Jax, who would hold a grudge beyond the grave. Jax, who idolised the father who had ignored him for so many years, had been vulnerable. A deep sense of anguish flooded Lucy and an even deeper sense of shame. The father she had so easily come to love had let her down badly and shown her his feet of clay. That hurt as well. Was she always going to be a rotten judge of character?
But what did she do now? Well, the middle of a wedding didn’t seem the ideal venue in which to open a very difficult conversation with Jax. Oh, by the way, my father mentioned that he blackmailed you... Lucy cringed and winced and hurt all over again. She hurt for her father and for Jax and for Bella, for surely the chances of such a marriage working out looked very poor. But most of all, she was discovering that she hurt for herself. Jax’s apparent desire to marry her had filled her with hope and even unleashed a few dreams.
Only now it was obvious that Jax hadn’t actually experienced any desire to put a ring on her finger. Her father had used the nastiest form of persuasion available to get that wedding ring on her hand. Hadn’t it ever occurred to Kreon that it would be his daughter who had to deal with the aftermath of what he had done? Hadn’t he appreciated how angry and aggrieved Jax would feel? Lucy shivered, suddenly feeling very alone and without support. She couldn’t depend on her father and now it was equally obvious that she could not depend on her new husband either.
For the first time she badly wanted to speak to the sisters she had never met. It was crazy but she wanted to reach out and see if she could connect with a sister as she so obviously had failed to connect with Jax or her father. Kreon had lied when he said that she could trust him. And Jax hadn’t meant all those fine things he had said about how they could be a couple creating a secure family in which to raise a child. He had been forced to talk like that to convince Lucy to agree to marry him and she groaned out loud, remembering how unusually understated Jax had been that evening. She had already put her sister’s phone number into her mobile for fear that she might mislay Polly’s letter and she dug her phone out of her small ornamental bag.
She got a bad case of cold feet while the phone was ringing and almost stopped the call before it connected. And then it was answered by this sunny, confidence-inducing female voice and Lucy froze.
‘It’s Lucy...er...your sister...if that’s you, Polly,’ she gabbled in an uneasy rush.
‘Lucy!’ Polly proclaimed warmly. ‘I’m so very happy to hear from you. Do you have any idea how long Ellie and I have been trying to trace you?’
‘Why were you trying?’ Lucy asked in genuine puzzlement.
‘Because you’re our sister and part of our family. Ellie and I always had each other but until recently I know you had no one. Of course, I appreciate that you have your father now—’
‘That hasn’t worked out so well,’ Lucy mumbled in some embarrassment.
‘I’m really sorry to hear that. Are you all right, Lucy?’ Polly prompted anxiously.
Lucy stared stonily at the wall, hot prickly tears stinging the backs of her aching eyes. ‘Well, not so great today...to be brutally honest,’ she framed chokily.
‘You