by Lynne Graham
Cyrus had organised that dreadful fire? Ella was appalled and disbelieving but she did not understand Nikolai’s reaction and she raced after him. ‘Nikolai...what Cyrus did was unspeakable but at least the police have nailed him for it!’
Nikolai spun back to her, his dark eyes tortured. ‘You don’t understand. How could you? This is my fault... Desmond’s death is down to me, no one else.’
CHAPTER TEN
AS NIKOLAI STRODE off to take refuge in the room he used as an office Ella froze in place in the hall, with the dogs wandering restively round her feet. How could the fire or the bar manager’s tragic death be laid at Nikolai’s door? How could he possibly be thinking that way?
Nikolai turned from the window as Ella appeared in the doorway to study him with frowning bemusement. He knew he wasn’t making sense. He knew she didn’t get it and a great sense of weight bowed down his wide shoulders.
‘Cyrus and I have been bitter enemies for a very long time,’ he told her flatly.
Belatedly Ella was recalling Cyrus’s sister’s comment at their wedding. She had intended to ask Nikolai for further clarification but had not got around to it because at the time it hadn’t seemed that important. ‘Why?’ she asked simply.
Nikolai’s spectacular bone structure went rigid. ‘He raped my sister...’
Ella paled and moved forward.
Nikolai leant back against his desk and raked long, taut fingers through his black hair, expelling his breath in a hiss. ‘It was all in the diary. That’s what I found out five years ago.’
Ella was filled with horror, recalling Cyrus’s violent assault on her. ‘What a nightmare that must have been for you.’
‘Cyrus has been accused of rape before but the accusations tend to be kicked out or withdrawn or they miraculously disappear,’ Nikolai advanced in a harsh undertone. ‘His father is an enormously powerful and wealthy man. I looked into the cases of Cyrus’s previous accusers. One of them dropped the case and now has a seat at the directors’ table. She rose up the ranks at meteoric speed and is now an affluent woman who flatly refuses to discuss the matter.’
‘You think she was paid off,’ Ella gathered.
‘Police and members of the legal profession have been bribed. A couple of other victims went from poverty to prosperity. I would assume they were compensated. But Sofia died,’ Nikolai emphasised with pained ferocity. ‘She was poor and powerless and she couldn’t bear to tell me what that bastard had done to her.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Ella urged quietly.
She poured Nikolai a fresh coffee on the veranda. Her hand wasn’t quite steady. She was in shock about what he was telling her about Cyrus. She was remembering the way Cyrus had attacked her and suddenly taking that assault a great deal more seriously. If Nikolai was to be believed it hadn’t been a momentary loss of control, the case of a man losing his temper and barely knowing what he was doing.
Sofia, Ella learned, had not enjoyed Nikolai’s educational advantages and had worked in a variety of dead-end jobs before equipping herself with secretarial skills at night class. She had then taken a position as a typist in Cyrus’s Athens office and one day when she was on reception he had noticed her.
Ella scanned the photo that Nikolai removed from his wallet. His sister had been truly beautiful.
‘Cyrus goes for virgins. My sister was older than his usual victims but she was innocent,’ Nikolai gritted, perspiration beading his upper lip as he went on to tell her how Cyrus had invited his sister out for coffee a couple of times and once to lunch, while telling her to keep their meetings secret from the people she worked with.
‘I suppose that’s when she should’ve got suspicious.’ Ella sighed.
‘She was naive; thrilled and flattered that a handsome, successful man was showing an interest in her, and when he asked her to come to his apartment one evening to do some private work for him she went,’ Nikolai completed.
‘And that’s when...right.’ Ella nodded in shaken acknowledgement. ‘Did Sofia go to the police afterwards?’
‘Only after she had showered but the medical did show that she had been badly bruised. She was told that there wasn’t enough evidence. Cyrus insisted that they had had consensual sex and he was believed and she was more or less told that she was a lonely fantasist. She felt humiliated that the police didn’t believe in or support her. That’s what drove her to take her own life.’
‘It must have been terrifying for her,’ Ella acknowledged heavily. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what she must have gone through.’
Nikolai was very still. ‘I’ve spent the past five years plotting my revenge against Cyrus.’
Her smooth brow furrowing, Ella gave him a bemused look. ‘Revenge?’
‘After what my sister suffered, I couldn’t live with the idea of Cyrus walking around unpunished. I had him investigated and, the more I learned about him, the more disgusted I became that a sexual deviant like him has never been brought to justice,’ Nikolai revealed. ‘To be honest, I became obsessed with my desire to take revenge on Cyrus...’
Ella strove to look understanding because she really couldn’t blame him for his feelings after hearing the tragic story of his sister’s death. Even so, the concept of revenge was so foreign to her own nature that she really couldn’t grasp it at all.
‘And somewhere during that five years I forgot who I was supposed to be and the man my sister had tried to raise me to be,’ Nikolai admitted gravely. ‘I stole business deals off Cyrus—not very satisfying. However, that was really the only damage I was able to do until his sister, Marika, phoned me a couple of months ago and informed me that Cyrus was planning to marry you.’
‘The sister he doesn’t even speak to was aware that Cyrus wanted to marry me when even I didn’t suspect it?’ Ella gasped, more than a little disturbed by the bombshell of her own name and connection to Cyrus Makris entering Nikolai’s explanations. ‘How is that possible? And why would Marika go out of her way to contact you and tell you that about me?’
‘Cyrus told his father that he was planning to marry his nephew Paul’s former fiancée. His father had been pressuring him to marry for some time and, after Cyrus named you, his father confided in Marika and asked her if she had ever met you. Marika contacted me because she knew that I was her brother’s biggest enemy and she hates him for reasons she has never shared with me.’
Ella shook her head dully. She was getting lost in the story while sixth sense was warning her that there was something very important for her to learn from what Nikolai was telling her. Unfortunately her brain was refusing to join up the dots and pick up the clues she needed.
‘When I saw your photo I couldn’t believe you were the same girl I met in that car park last year,’ Nikolai told her tautly.
‘When did you see my photo?’ Ella pressed, frowning as she moved restively against the wooden support post she had braced a hand on, her simple turquoise sundress swirling round her slim legs.
‘As soon as I had your name I had you checked out.’
Again Ella shook her head. ‘But why would you do that? What could Cyrus’s crazy belief that he could get me to marry him possibly have to do with you?’
‘I wanted to hurt him, Ella!’ Nikolai bit out in frustration. ‘I wanted to ensure that his plans for you came to nothing and that meant I had to get to you first and make you mine instead! I knew that my taking you from him would hit him hardest.’
Ella could feel the blood below her skin draining away as she finally grasped the connection he was making. Wheels within wheels and secret plotting going on behind the scenes. She could never, ever have dreamt that she owed Nikolai’s keen pursuit to such a cold, merciless motivation. Indeed his pursuit had been nothing to do with her at all, nothing personal, she thought sickly, nothing personal when she so badly needed it all to have be
en personal for him.
Nikolai could hear his own heart thumping out his tension in his ears as he watched her like a hawk. She looked sick, shocked. ‘I had to tell you. You have the right to know the worst about me. You need to know what and who I am and what I’m capable of.’
‘Not sure I want to know,’ Ella forced out between teeth that suddenly wanted to chatter. Her brain was in a fog. She couldn’t think. She was scared to think that the male she loved could have seen her merely as a means of revenge and a weapon with which to taunt Cyrus. Was that what Nikolai was saying? Or was she picking him up wrong? Oh, dear heaven, why couldn’t she think and put it all together properly?
‘You married me...’ she whispered shakily. ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘I wanted to make you happy. After what I’d done...the blackmail, the way I treated you...the very fact that rage pushed Cyrus into attacking you. I’m the one to blame for that... I owed you.’
Of all the sentiments a woman madly in love didn’t want to hear, Ella thought numbly, those three little words had to be at the top of the least popular list. I owed you! What was she? A debt he had to pay off? A helpless child he had to comfort and compensate? Or was the light in which he saw her even worse?
Had he guessed even before she married him how she felt about him? Had he worked out that his weapon of choice was so stupid that she had fallen in love with the blackmailing, ruthless, seven-letter-word of a man who had used her to strike a blow against his enemy?
Ella cleared her dry throat with difficulty. ‘So, you had second thoughts about what you had done.’
‘I felt bloody guilty!’ Nikolai fired back at her in a forceful rush. ‘Of course, I did. It may have taken me a while but I did eventually come to my senses and appreciate that what I had done to you was absolutely wrong on every level.’
Ella was unimpressed by those strong words.
‘And is that why you made the biggest sacrifice you could think of and married me?’ she prompted, her distress threatening to break through the false composure of shock. ‘Because you were way too smart for your own good! Presumably you never planned for this marriage to last either. Well, you shot yourself in the foot bedding a virgin, Nikolai!’
‘What are you talking about?’ It was Nikolai’s turn to look bewildered.
‘A virgin has to be more likely to make a mistake concerning the efficiency of her birth control,’ Ella contended, her chin tilted at an aggressive angle because she definitely didn’t want to him to get the impression that she was ashamed or embarrassed or even slightly apologetic. ‘I made a mistake and I’m pregnant...so sorry that doesn’t fit in with your cruel, nasty, callous plans!’
His luxuriant black lashes dipped and then slowly rose again, revealing the sudden glitter in his dark eyes. ‘Pregnant?’ Nikolai breathed in a driven undertone, a sudden inner tide of relief making him feel almost dizzy.
If she was pregnant, he had a whole new line of reasons to argue why she should stay with him. Pregnant, he thought again, only dimly recognising the level of his own astonishment. A baby. His baby. After all the hints his great-aunts had dropped and he had studiously ignored, Dido and Dorkas would be ecstatic at that information.
‘And the good news is,’ Ella suddenly spat at him without warning, while his brain was still wandering all over the place in a most unfamiliar way, ‘you don’t owe me anything! The way I see it, you married me under false pretences, so we’re not married!’
Ella wrenched at the rings on her wedding finger and flung them at his feet with bitter satisfaction. Turning on her heel, she sped off. She could feel herself coming apart like wet shredded paper inside herself and she had no intention of coming apart in front of him. She wasn’t a victim; she refused to be a victim; she was strong. There was nothing Nikolai Drakos could throw at her that she couldn’t handle, she told herself staunchly as she walked fast down the hill towards the beach.
Nikolai crouched down and lifted up her wedding and engagement rings. He was taken aback to register that his hand was shaking. He dug the rings into the pocket of his tight faded jeans. His baby. His baby needed her the same way he needed her. But would she be better off without him? That was a deeply wounding thought for him and he shook it off. He could be what she wanted him to be; he could deliver what she wanted him to deliver for both her and the baby. He would fight to keep her but he just didn’t know what to say to her. He genuinely didn’t know how to persuade her to stay. Ironically Nikolai had much more experience at ditching women. After all, he had never wanted to keep one for ever before.
And unhappily for him, Ella had scruples and standards and he had stomped roughly over all of them. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He knew that, but admitting that he didn’t deserve a second chance to her would only reinforce the wrong, negative image, he reasoned painfully. The apology front didn’t look very promising either because sorry could never begin to cover the damage he had done.
Ella kicked off her shoes when she reached the shore and sank her toes into the hot sand. But her soles burned and she took off in haste for the cooler sand at the water’s edge. There the sea looked so temptingly cool that she walked out into it until the lapping water was right up to her knees. She was breathing as fast as a marathon runner and her heart was pounding like mad. Calm down, she urged herself, you’re pregnant.
But there was a giant ball of pain ready to explode inside Ella. Nikolai had taken her dreams and torn them apart. Once again she had placed her faith and her hopes in the wrong man. What was it about her? Was she more naive than other women? Fatally attracted to the wrong types? And yet there was not an iota of similarity between Paul and Nikolai, so how could she have known?
Well, of course she should have known, another, more negative voice told her. She had gone for the fairy-tale version, hadn’t she? This idea that she was so irresistible to Nikolai Drakos that he would track her down after that single meeting in the car park and settle her father’s debts simply to get her into his bed? As if! And what sort of woman fell for the kind of guy that would blackmail a woman into his bed? And how on earth had she fallen for him?
By the time, Ella reached that point in her attack of self-loathing she was sobbing and the tears of heartbreak were coursing down her cheeks. Where had the love come from? He had been so distraught, so devastated by that fire, and everything warm and caring in her had loved that in him. She had suddenly seen that the cool, detached male he pretended to be existed no place except inside his own head and the façade he wore to the world.
Only, sadly, it had not occurred to her that behind his grief for the bar manager’s death at his hotel lurked a male willing to break every rule of decency and wreck a perfectly innocent woman’s life in an effort to destroy an admittedly very nasty man. And he had wrecked it, Ella reasoned bitterly. He had allowed her to think that she was special to him, that he cared about her even if he hadn’t given her the actual words. Didn’t everyone know that most men were wary of saying the fatal words that could lead to permanent commitment?
Even so, leave it to Nikolai to find a novel slant... I want to keep you.
I owed you. Dear heaven, the pain of hearing that sentiment would haunt her to her dying day. So, his guilty conscience had made him offer her a wedding, a ring and the luxury of his wealth. And now here she was standing out in the sea like an idiot, she thought with another sob. It was her moment of truth, she dimly recognised. Once again she wasn’t going to get the fairy-tale happy ending. Had Nikolai faked absolutely everything?
Well, he hadn’t faked the sex or the insatiability factor on that front but what was that worth? He had got cuddlier too. He was actually hugging now without prompting, reaching for her hand, touching her, always touching her just like a besotted new husband could be expected to do. Was that all a lie as well? Some sort of a convincing act? She wiped her face with trembling hands, suddenly co
ld in the sunlight. He didn’t love her. He hadn’t moved heaven and earth to find her again or to make her his and only his. He had pursued and entrapped her only to punish Cyrus. That was always going to be her bottom line.
Nikolai saw her standing in the sea and sheer panic controlled him. Later he didn’t remember running down the hill, racing through the orange groves and taking a flying leap down onto the beach instead of following the path. He waded out into the water and snatched her up into his arms just as the sound of his splashing approach began to turn her head.
Bronze-coloured hair fell down over his arm. Slightly pink-edged green eyes gazed up at him in astonishment. ‘What are you doing?’
Nikolai couldn’t find his voice. He strode up the beach and sank down on the steep edge of the path with Ella still tightly cradled in his arms.
‘Let me go!’ she exclaimed.
‘Not until I know for sure you’re all right.’
Against her cheek she could feel his heart thumping very fast and he was breathing heavily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were standing out in the sea. It scared me,’ he acknowledged gruffly.
‘You think I’d do something silly to myself and my baby over what you’ve done?’ Ella pelted back at him, going from tearful acquiescence to rage in the space of seconds as she finally understood his concern. ‘Are you out of your mind? I spent years watching Paul struggle and fight to live. Life is a very precious thing!’
Nikolai breathed again but he still didn’t want to let go of her. ‘The baby...how long have you known?’
Ella stopped struggling to escape. ‘The day before the wedding I discovered that my implant was old and inactive by the time we...had sex,’ she framed with cold precision.
‘It wasn’t only sex. It was something rather more meaningful.’
‘Says the man who wouldn’t know meaningful from a slap in the face!’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ Nikolai persisted, hitting her on her weakest flank. ‘Why, in fact, did you come very close to lying in an effort to deflect my questions about why you weren’t drinking alcohol?’