Her head snapped up. ‘You know about that?’
‘Part of my job is sieving information for the truth.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t pay much attention to them in the beginning but then after a while, when I knew you better, I wondered and took another look. You were the object of a concerted smear campaign.’
Rosa blinked, staring.
‘You didn’t know?’
Her mouth twisted. ‘Oh, I knew. But no one believed me.’
‘Who did you tell?’ But the answer was obvious. ‘Your father?’
‘The first photos were real.’ She shook her head. ‘Why I thought it was a good idea to go to that nightclub in a minidress, when I had to climb out of a low-slung sports car…’ She paused. ‘The kiss was real, and yes, I’d had more alcohol than I should. But the photos made things appear far worse than what actually happened. The stories printed with them made them look like something completely different.’
Fotis remembered. The implication had been that she’d partied with her boyfriend and later had sex with him in the back of a car. It had been implied that she’d then had sexual encounters with some of his friends while drunk or high.
‘The worst of the pictures were Photoshopped,’ he added. ‘I assume they hit the press after you broke up with your boyfriend?’
She nodded. ‘He wasn’t as clever as he thought. If he hadn’t bragged about his influence in royal circles, I mightn’t have discovered the truth until much later. A palace bureaucrat came to me, concerned about rumours that she and some others were going to lose their jobs to outsiders. She’d traced the stories to my boyfriend. When I confronted him, he blustered, but not well enough. He tried to explain with half-truths but his lies weren’t good enough.
‘He’d said he loved me but it was obvious he only saw me as a means to further his career and his friends’.’ She drew a slow breath. ‘I had him barred from the palace and never spoke to him again.’
‘So he took revenge by blackening your reputation,’ Fotis growled. He made a mental note to look into the guy’s current situation and make life as difficult as possible for him. ‘Why didn’t your father help? He had the power to take some of the heat out of the stories.’
‘He thought it was beneath the royal family to sue. Some of the worst photos, where they’d used my face and someone else’s body, were taken down. Not that he believed they were fakes. He refused to listen. Insisted I learn the consequences of my actions and lumbered me with close personal protection for years. After that, even if I’d wanted to have a drink with friends in private, I’d never have managed it. I became a social pariah.’
Fotis’ chest clamped painfully around his fast-beating heart. No wonder she’d vibrated with dislike at having another bodyguard.
Her story only made her courage in standing up for Dimi more remarkable. She’d put herself in the firing line of public censure for a stranger.
He groped for her hand and held it tight.
‘You’re a remarkable woman, Rosa.’ Misty eyes turned to his and he wished things could have been different for her. ‘I hope your father realised that eventually.’
She snorted. ‘Hardly. According to him I was too like my mother. Emotional, reckless, more likely to act on the spur of the moment than follow royal protocol or common sense.’
‘Your father sounds like a prig and a fool.’
She laughed, the sound snapping some of the tension that had grown as he heard her story. ‘But a powerful prig.’
‘And your mother… She was an incredibly popular queen.’
‘Exactly. Far more popular than him. He liked everything done his way. He didn’t like change or spontaneity.’
And Rosa, beneath her public veneer of calm elegance, was both spontaneous and passionate, bewitchingly so.
Fotis began to realise how tough her home life must have been, especially after her mother died.
‘It seems like we were both cursed with one good parent and one we’d rather forget.’
She turned her hand to thread her fingers through his, chuckling. ‘It’s incredible we turned out so well adjusted, isn’t it?’
Fotis’ lips stretched in a rare grin. He was a recluse who specialised in keeping people at a distance. And for all Rosa’s warmth, he suspected she had few true friends.
He found it hard to trust, women in particular, and he’d long ago decided not to have a family because caring deeply risked far too much pain. Nico’s death still haunted him.
He suspected Rosa found it difficult to trust, men especially, and though she claimed to live her life exactly as she wanted, she felt the need to prove that to the press and the world at large. Which meant they still affected her decisions and she wasn’t as free as she believed.
‘You’re right. Weareincredible.’
