Echoes of the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

frustration. ‘I didn’t lie to you.’
    ‘When you introduced me to your famous parents, I knew you hadn’t been honest with me about a lot of things. I also knew our backgrounds were poles apart. It was time to end it.’
    ‘I don’t believe you ran away because our backgrounds were so different. Why would you do that when you married Bennett to better your social position?’
    Her shoulders slumped. ‘I was totally out of my depth in your world,’ she said in a defeated voice. ‘Your father guessed how I felt. He could see I would never fit into your lifestyle.’
    Jake looked away for a second, running his gaze along a stone of the crypt behind her. She wondered if he remembered the awkwardness of her introduction to his parents as clearly as she did. His mother’s smile had been warm and welcoming but his father had looked at her with distaste, rudely ignoring the hand Amanda extended. Jake had seethed beside her as his father subjected Amanda to an uncomfortable interrogation into her background. It was five minutes before he led her away from his parents without causing a scene, and apologised to her for his father’s behaviour.
    ‘Your father did his best to illustrate the fact that I didn’t belong at that party or by your side,’ she recalled bitterly. ‘He saw me as the gauche girl in the second-hand dress—and he was trying to get you to see that girl too. I overheard what he said. It was a conversation that reinforced everything I was beginning to understand.’
    The man she loved was completely out of her reach.
    ‘I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth. I was taunted at school because my faded uniform was a couple of sizes too big, and because I was being raised by my aunt. But being poor never mattered until I met you.’
    Why had she fallen in love with the son of a famous multi-billionaire?
    ‘Is that the reason you married Bennett?’ Jake asked her. ‘Was that your way of freeing yourself from your past and attaining the wealth you desired?’
    ‘Damn it all, Jake. I didn’t want money. That was what your father wanted you to believe!’
    Hot tears stung her eyes as she turned away from Jake and crossed her arms over her chest—a feeble attempt to hold herself together. With gritty determination she tried to sound out the long, foreign-looking name on the crypt rather than dwelling on Mr Formosa’s words, but each hateful word of the conversation was recorded on an audiotape in her mind and it kept playing.
    ‘I’m surprised you brought her here, son,’ Jake’s father had told him. ‘It was a mistake becoming involved with her. She’s out of her depth.’
    ‘Dad —’
    ‘Having sex with her is one thing, and I can understand that because she’s beautiful. I just hope you’re being responsible about birth control. Girls like that will conveniently forget to take their pill. Next thing, they’re knocking on your door nine months later with a little bundle of pink or blue and claiming half your trust fund.’
    ‘I can’t believe you’re being such a snob. You know nothing about Amanda,’ he argued.
    ‘Not true. I saw you with her on the beach the other day, and since then I’ve had her investigated.’
    ‘What?’ The single syllable was full of outrage.
    ‘This girl lives with her aunt in a run-down fibro housing commission home in western Sydney. Her mother was an alcoholic who abandoned her at birth and died of liver failure ten years ago. Her father is unknown. The aunt —’
    ‘I know all this,’ Jake grated.
    ‘Then face it, son. She’s a legal secretary who’ll never earn a fortune. What girl in her position wouldn’t look at the lifestyle you can provide and make a grab for it?’
    ‘Amanda isn’t —’
    ‘In the same class,’ his father finished. ‘What you need to do is patch things up with Sophie. She’s the girl you’ve always been close to. Amanda is just a rebound affair because you’ve had a fight with her.’
    Amanda had heard