by Lynne Graham
In the limo that ferried him back to the town house, Andreas worked his way through two brandies. What Elyssa had seen admitted no possibility of error. Hope's foolish pleas of innocence had only deepened his anger. He concentrated on that anger, letting it rise like a red mist and suppress all other thoughts. He would prove that she was lying, he decided grimly. Lifting the phone, he called his security chief and, with a perfunctory apology for the late hour, he requested a detailed rundown of Hope's daily itinerary in recent months.
Somewhere around dawn, Hope had drifted into an uneasy slumber disturbed by dreams. Wakening, she sat up, and as the awful events of the previous night rolled back to her, her tummy seemed to roll queasily in concert. In the aftermath of that rare bout of nausea, she stumbled into the shower and slumped. With or without Andreas, her life had to go on, she reminded herself dully. There was no point being wimpy about it. From somewhere she had to find the strength to concentrate on the practicalities of life. She had to find somewhere else to live. It was also time to redouble her so-far-unsuccessful efforts to get a loan that would enable her to set up her own business. When she was finally in a position to design and produce her own small select line of handbags, she would be working night and day. Yes, she would be so incredibly busy she wouldn't have the time to agonise over Andreas.
She noticed a small decorative gold box resting on a console table in the hall. When he'd arrived the day before, Andreas had tossed something down before he'd hauled her into his arms. As always it would be chocolate, superlative, incredible, melt-in-the-mouth chocolate purchased abroad at an extortionate price. And as well? Opening the box, she lifted out the tiny gold charm that he had included as a surprise. Only it wasn't really a surprise any more for one by one Andreas had given her an entire collection of unusual charms for her bracelet. This particular one was her name picked out with tiny glittering stones. Some lucky charm this one had proved to be… hope? Without warning her eyes flooded again and she squeezed them tight shut in an agony of loss. Blinking back tears, she realised that misery appeared to have deprived her of her usual love of chocolate. Instead the image of an olive and the prospect of that sharp rather than sweet taste came to mind and her taste buds watered. Bemused, for she had never liked olives, she frowned but a moment later she headed into the kitchen.
On the way to the airport and a flight to New York, Andreas studied the security reports that detailed Hope's recent movements. His initial sensation of complete disbelief swiftly mounted to hot-blooded fury. He knew that if he put his private jet on hold he would never make his transatlantic meeting in time. But for once, emotion took strong precedence over efficiency and discipline and he told his chauffeur to turn round and head for the apartment instead.
Hope disposed of the now-empty jar of olives that Andreas had recently disdained to eat. Perhaps being sick had done something odd to her taste buds, she was reasoning in some confusion just as she heard the slam of the front door. Her heart leapt into her mouth and instant optimism seized her in a heady tide. Andreas had come back… Andreas had realised that she could never have been unfaithful to him!
'I'm down in the bedroom!' she called when she heard him say her name with all the impatience that was so much a part of his abrasive character. Pale blonde hair tumbling round her shoulders in silken disarray, Hope focused turquoise eyes bright with expectation on the doorway and wished she had had time to get dressed and do something about the redness of her eyes. Her restive hands fiddled with the sash of her wrap.
Stunning golden eyes blazing, Andreas strode in. Garbed in a dark designer suit that accentuated his superb masculine physique, he looked heartbreakingly handsome. In a gesture of high voltage intensity that she would never have associated with his cool, controlled nature, he pitched a whole handful of documents down on the carpet at her feet. 'You lying slut!' he raked at her in raw condemnation. 'You've visited Campbell's apartment on countless occasions! You've even stayed the night there. You've been screwing him for months!'
Dumbfounded by the naked aggression of that full frontal verbal attack, Hope was paralysed to the spot. 'What on earth are you talking about?' she framed in bewilderment. 'I've never been in Ben's apartment. I don't even know where he lives.'
'Like hell you don't! Take a good look at the quality of the evidence I have!' Andreas enunciated from between even white teeth.
'Evidence?' Hope bent down to lift several of the sheets of paper and frown down at the neat lines of computerised entries. 'What are these?'
'Surprise… surprise. You've had round-the-clock security for most of the past year. Those are the most recent reports of your activities,' Andreas informed her grittily.
'I've had round-the-clock security?' Hope parroted in total astonishment. 'Are you saying you've been having me watched?'
'I would argue that watched over would be a more fair and accurate description.'
'Who's been watching me?' Hope queried tightly, the physical recoil of genuine revulsion assailing her at the very thought of strangers taking note of her every move while she went about her daily business in sublime ignorance of their presence in her life.
'One of my own security teams. Top-notch professionals, who can do the job without attracting attention or interfering with your freedom. They don't make mistakes,' Andreas declared in a ferocious undertone, 'so don't waste your time trying that line on me.'
Hope surveyed him with huge perturbed eyes. 'I'm horrified that you could have distrusted me to that extent. You actually paid people to spy on me. That's absolutely horrible.'
The faintest tinge of dark colour demarcated the angular bronzed planes of the aristocratic cheekbones that enhanced his superb bone structure. 'That isn't how it was. Anonymous threats were made against me. Naturally I was concerned that through your association with me you could be at risk. I considered it my duty to protect you and I did. End of story.'
Hope wasn't listening. She was very much shocked by what he had revealed. 'The very idea that strangers have been spying on me gives me the creeps. I never realised until now just how much I took my right to privacy for granted.'
The confrontation was travelling along unanticipated lines that were utterly infuriating Andreas. How dared she focus on a trivial and obscure angle and ignore the giant sin of her own infidelity? What the hell was her right to privacy worth when set beside the gross betrayal of her affair with another man? Where did she get the nerve to look at him in that reproachful way as if he had done something shameful?
'Until last night I never once requested a copy of the reports on your movements. I did respect your privacy one hundred per cent,' Andreas countered with grim exactitude, his sculpted masculine mouth firming. 'But I wanted to satisfy myself with the proof of your infidelity. The number of visits you have made to Campbell's apartment corroborated the accusation made against you in full.'
Hope was still studying the papers in her hand. A slight sound was impelled from her parted lips when she recognised the familiar address that appeared several times over in the daily reports. She began to understand how the latest misunderstanding had come about. She breathed in deep, glancing up with rueful turquoise eyes to say quietly, 'Ben does own that apartment. But he throws a lot of parties and the residents committee made life difficult for him. He moved out last year and Vanessa lives there now.'
Andreas was unmoved. Hard-as-granite golden eyes clashed with hers. 'I don't believe you. But I've no doubt that your best friend would back up a cover story for your benefit.'
On that score he could not have been more wrong. Having grown up with parents who had frequently cheated on each other, Vanessa heartily despised the deceit that went hand in hand with infidelity. She was the last woman alive likely to lie to conceal a friend's affair.
Taken aback as she was by Andreas's instant dismissal of her explanation about the apartment, Hope swallowed hard. She was very pale. 'Vanessa lives at that address,' she stressed in her determination to make him listen. 'I hardly k
now Ben Campbell and I have not been unfaithful to you. I appreciate how dreadful all this must look to you but surely the two years we've been together at least buys me the right to a fair hearing-'
Andreas studied her with raw contempt. 'It buys you nothing.'
He swung on his heel and strode out of the bedroom.
'Wait!' Hope called down the corridor after him. Slowly and with a reluctance she could feel, Andreas turned his arrogant dark head and looked back at her.
Hope snatched in a jagged breath. Her nerves were so fraught that she had to immediately pull in another deeper breath. The terrifying finality and obduracy she saw stamped in Andreas's lean, hard face frightened her to the edge of panic. She saw that she truly had no choices left. She saw that keeping quiet about Elyssa's behaviour was no longer a sustainable stance. It was wrong that she should be afraid to tell the truth, she reflected unhappily. Unfortunately, the truth would be most unwelcome to Andreas. He might well dismiss what she said out of hand and hate her even more for making damaging allegations against his sister. But Hope felt that she should not let that daunting awareness prevent her from speaking out in her own defence. After all, she might never have another opportunity. As that reality sank in on her, as she was finally forced to confront the possibility that she might never see Andreas again, Hope was impelled into sudden speech.
'Let me give you my version of events last night. It was me who walked into a room and saw your sister in a clinch!' she admitted with all the abruptness of severe stress.
Outrage firing his brilliant gaze, his lean features clenching taut with disgust, Andreas fell very still. 'Theos… don't say another word; stop right there.' Hope thrust up her chin. 'I can't. Elyssa came after me and swore that I would suffer if I told you what I'd seen.'
'How dare you speak of my sister in such a way?' Andreas was white with anger below his olive skin. 'I had no intention of telling anybody what I'd seen… to be honest, I just didn't want to be involved,' Hope continued doggedly.
'You've said enough to make me your enemy for life. The Nicolaidis family have honour, each and every one of us and I am proud of that,' Andreas proclaimed in fierce dismissal. 'It is deeply offensive that you should soil Elyssa's reputation in a pointless attempt to rescue your own. Were you a man I would not have stood here and let you talk about my sister like that. Don't take advantage of the fact that you're a woman.'
'You're the one who's been taking advantage!' Hope protested, a floodtide of anger and agony breaking loose inside her because he had immediately dismissed her account of what had happened at the party. 'You've called me a liar and a slut, you're refusing even to listen to my side of the story.'
'What's to listen to? What's to understand?' Andreas demanded, striding back down the corridor and cornering her against the wall outside the bedroom. 'You spread your legs for a pretty blond toy boy!'
'Of course I didn't!' Colour had run like a banner into her cheeks. 'Don't be crude.'
'That's nothing to what I would like to know.' Andreas slammed his hands to the hall on either side of her head, effectively holding her entrapped. Smouldering golden eyes as dangerous as dynamite challenged her. 'Did you do it in our bed?'
'It didn't happen!' she cried. 'I wouldn't even look at someone else, never mind-'
'You forget…I saw you looking at Campbell last night,' Andreas reminded her darkly.
Hope was trembling with the strength of her emotions. Her spine pushing into the wall, she was forced to tip her face up. 'But I wasn't looking in the way you mean.'
'What does he have that I don't?' Andreas demanded with savage force. 'Is he better in bed?'
'Andreas… ' Hope gasped, fierce embarrassment and dismay at the tenor of that blunt question making her full lower lip part from the cupid's bow curve of her upper.
'Is he more inventive? More exciting?Kinky? What did he do that I didn't do? Didn't I satisfy you? Tell me. I have the right to know!' he launched at her, stunning eyes smouldering ferocious gold with dark sexual jealousy and dropping to the luscious pink swell of her mouth.
'There's nothing for you to know!' she cried in despair.
The tension in the atmosphere was electric. At first Hope did not understand its source. There was a warm, heavy feeling low in her tummy, a buzzing vibration of awareness holding her on a dizzy edge. Holding her indeed on the edge of an anticipation that left her mind frighteningly blank.
'And right now it' s me you want,' Andreas purred with silken satisfaction, lifting lean brown hands to skim a blunt masculine thumb over the distended buds of her nipples, which were clearly delineated by the thin wrap.
Hope gasped in helpless response and arched her back. Her entire body felt hot and super sensitive. Recognising her own sexual excitement shook her inside out. 'Yes, but-'
'In fact you're begging for it,' Andreas husked, dropping his hands to her hips and mating his passionate mouth to hers with a bold hunger that in its very intensity was overwhelmingly erotic.
Fire snaked sinuous seductive forays through her heated flesh. She melted like honey in sunshine, yielding to the plundering thrust of his tongue and the heady intoxication of her own response. In one powerful movement he lifted her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom. As he brought her down on the bed his mouth was still melded to hers with devouring passion. Just as swiftly he relinquished his hold on her. Still lost in the fever of her own desire, Hope clung to his shoulders to draw him back to her.
With cool disdain, Andreas detached her arms from him and straightened to his full commanding height. Proud, dark head high, he stared down at her with icy derision. 'It's over. The instant you let Campbell touch you, it was over. I expect my mistress to preserve her affections exclusively for me.'
Her face drained of colour, Hope thrust herself up into sitting position. 'I'm not and I never was your mistress!'
From the doorway, Andreas vented a sardonic laugh that scored her tender skin like a whiplash. 'Of course you were. What else could you have been to me?'
Hurt far beyond his imagining, Hope blanked him out and stared into space. She could no longer bear to see him. She listened to his steps recede down the corridor, the distant slam of the front door echoing through the apartment. It was over and he was gone and without apparent regret. He could never have cared a button for her, she thought in an agony of mortified pain.
CHAPTER FOUR
FRANTIC to conceal the fact that she had been crying, Hope utilised some eye shadow to draw attention away from her reddened lids. 'Smile' she instructed her flushed and unhappy reflection and she practised curving her mouth up instead of down at the corners.
It was seven weeks since she had moved into Vanessa's spare room. Her friend had been marvellous in every way but Hope knew that misery made other people uncomfortable. Vanessa had told her that the end of a relationship was the perfect excuse for a week of tears and laments, but that after that point it was time to move on. Ever since that week had ended Hope had been pretending that she was well over Andreas and miles down the road to recovery. Unhappily, however, she was finding that maintaining that pretence was the most enormous strain. She assumed that stress had caused the further bouts of nausea she had suffered. Mercifully that sickness had petered out the previous month and, apart from a rather embarrassing craving for olives at certain times, she was fine. If she had a problem, it was with her state of mind. For so long Andreas had been the centre of her universe. Now every day stretched in front of her like a wasteland. Determined to keep up her spirits, she had concentrated on developing a new and much improved business plan. She had visited various financial institutions and was doing her utmost to win a business loan. So far, admittedly, she had not been lucky, but she kept on telling herself that success lay just round the next corner. In the meantime, to meet her bills, she was working in a shop and selling bags at occasional craft fairs.
'Are you sure you don't want any lunch?' Vanessa called from the kitchen.
Hope emerged
from her room. 'No, I grabbed something earlier,' she fibbed because her friend had begun to nag her about how little she was eating. Vanessa, who ate like a horse and never put on an ounce, strolled into the ultra-modern lounge. In one hand she held a sandwich the size of a doorstep. 'So, how did you get on with that bank this morning?'
Hope almost winced. 'The guy said he'd be in touch but I don't think I'll be holding my breath.' 'Let Ben back your business,' Vanessa urged impatiently. 'Your funky handbags are a much better risk than the racehorses he keeps on buying!'
Hope smiled to show that she was appropriately grateful for Ben's offer of financial assistance. However, her smile was a little tense round the edges, for if being dumped by Andreas had taught her anything it was that caution and common sense should be heeded. 'I don't think that would be a good idea.'
'Why not? Five different banks have turned down your loan application,' the redhead reminded her baldly. 'Ben's got money to burn and he's eager to help. In your position I wouldn't think twice about it.'
'Ben's your cousin. You see him from a slightly different perspective,' Hope murmured gently. Hope felt that she had learnt the hard way that there was no such thing as a free lunch. She had lived rent-free in Andreas's enormous apartment and that had come back to haunt her. Instead of maintaining total independence, she had allowed herself to be seduced by the concept of pleasing Andreas and had become, in his eyes at least, a 'kept' woman. As a result, Andreas had found it impossible to see her as an equal. Instead he had regarded her as his mistress; an object and a possession rather than a lover whom he respected. Hope now felt that she understood how rich men looked on less financially successful women. At the same time, she was beginning to value Ben's friendship and did not want to muddy the waters by borrowing money from him.