Reunited by the Greek's Vows

by Andie Brock

  But not yet. Right now he needed space to think.

  Nikos checked his watch again. Where was she? He had gone to some considerable trouble to set up this meeting with the CEO of a leading confectionery company here in the UK. He’d been looking forward to telling Kate, seeing the surprise on her face. Okay, it wasn’t the most romantic of gestures, but potentially this could mean a huge deal for Kandy Kate.

  But as it turned out he hadn’t had the chance to tell her anything before she’d taken herself off to bed. So he’d ended up sending her a text message, telling her to meet him at Rosebury’s head office in the Shard at ten o’clock. As Nikos had pressed ‘send’ he’d told himself this would be his final involvement in Kate’s business. After this she was on her own.

  Leaning forward, he picked up one of the newspapers that were neatly lined up on the table—one of the red tops. It wasn’t his usual sort of reading material, but he was just killing time. After flipping through the pages of scaremongering politics and salacious gossip about footballers’ wives, he was just about to toss it back on the table when a headline caught his eye.

  Wrenching the page open, he stared at it in abject horror.

  Randy Kate! the headline screamed at him. And below there was a photograph of Kate, sprawled on top of a man on the ground. What the hell? And, if that wasn’t bad enough, amongst the group of people surrounding them there was Sofia, looking down on them with a panicked expression on her face.

  With shaking hands, Nikos scanned the article below.

  Caught frolicking in a London beer garden yesterday evening, newlywed Kate Nikoladis, recently married to wealthy Greek businessman Nikos Nikoladis, seemed to be enjoying some downtime with an unknown admirer.

  Heiress to the Kandy Kate confectionery business, Kate may be the nation’s sweetheart in the US, but will this lead to a sticky situation with her heart-throb husband?

  ‘Hi.’

  He heard Kate approaching behind him.

  ‘Not late, am I?’

  Nikos turned slowly, not trusting himself to speak for a second as rage coursed through him, hot and fierce.

  ‘What...’ finally finding a modicum of control, he held up the open newspaper, shaking it in front of her ‘...is the meaning of this?’

  Kate took the paper from him, her face draining of colour as she quickly scanned the article.

  ‘Oh, hell.’ She dropped it onto the table.

  ‘Well?’ Nikos’s voice shook with anger.

  ‘Look, there was a bit of an incident in the beer garden after you left last night.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This guy came on to Sofia...’

  ‘He did what?’ The heat of his rage intensified.

  ‘I intervened, and we got into a bit of a scrap, and—’

  ‘A scrap? Is that what you call this?’ Nikos gestured furiously to the photograph.

  ‘It was something and nothing, Nikos. I dealt with it.’

  ‘And this is your way of dealing with it is, is it? Throwing yourself on top of a total stranger and showing yourself up in front of everyone? In front of Sofia?’

  Stunned into silence, Kate could only stare at Nikos, her heart thumping harder with every passing second. Okay, she’d messed up, but Nikos was overreacting. She had expected him to be annoyed—angry, even—but not to turn it into a personal attack. Everything they had shared in the last few days together—the pleasure, the intimacy, the sense of really getting to know one another—had instantly vanished, obliterated by the cold rage in Nikos’s eyes.

  But then, standing there, unable to move, Kate felt her initial surprise harden into something colder, like a fist closing round her heart. It was Nikos’s use of the phrase ‘showing yourself up’—a phrase she had heard all too often in her childhood and her teens, thrown at her by her mother whenever Kate had a smudge on her nose or a hole in her tights or wasn’t looking one hundred percent picture-perfect.

  And Nikos was just the same, wasn’t he? Just as bad. Despite what Kate wanted to believe—what her poor battered heart so wanted to be true—Nikos was using her in the same way as her mother had used her. Like a commodity, a possession, to be paraded around when necessary, to look pretty, smile nicely, and keep her mouth shut. And when she made a mistake his default position was to punish her. Just like her mother.

  Nikos had been controlling her from the very start of this ill-fated arrangement. Even during the meetings he had set up for Kandy Kate he had been the one doing the talking, the negotiating—as if Kate was little more than a cardboard cut-out. And she had let him. Because Nikos was a super-successful businessman and she couldn’t even keep her family business afloat. Because Nikos was a hugely powerful, charismatic character.

  No doubt he had been controlling her in Venice, and then in Barcelona too, when he had taken her to his bed. And Kate had fallen willingly into his arms, thrown herself headlong into his dark trap of seduction. Blinded by the power and passion of their lovemaking, Kate had allowed herself to imagine it as so much more, entertaining ridiculous fantasies of rekindling their relationship for real. Falling in love all over again. Now she saw that for Nikos it had just been sex.

  Firming her quivering lip, Kate pushed back her shoulders, refusing to show her hurt. Her eyes strayed to the wretched photograph, taunting her. She had to admit she could see how it might be construed. The man’s legs were splayed, and Kate had somehow managed to fall in between them, her dress riding up to her thighs. But she hadn’t done anything wrong—that was the point.

  ‘For your information, I did not throw myself on top of that man.’ She firmed her lips. ‘I was pushing him away from me and we tripped and fell. That’s all.’

  ‘And when exactly were you going to tell me about this?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Kate replied hotly. ‘And, considering the way you’ve just reacted like a chest-beating caveman, who can blame me?’

  ‘And how do you expect me to react?’ On his feet now, Nikos closed the space between them with a single lethal stride. ‘When I open the paper and see this sort of filth staring back at me?’

  Kate took in a breath, willing herself to stay calm, not to let him get to her. ‘I’ve told you what happened. I am not going to explain myself any more.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine.’ Nikos glared at her. ‘Because I don’t want to hear any more. I leave you in charge of Sofia for a couple of hours and this is the result. You do realise you’ve jeopardised everything I have been trying to achieve? Undone everything we have been working towards? Once the Greek press get hold of this—if they haven’t already—it might well affect the court’s decision.’

  ‘Surely not?’ Kate’s fingers fiddled anxiously with the gold stud in her ear.

  ‘My new bride draped between the legs of a stranger while the minor I’m trying to become guardian of looks on in horror? What do you think, Kate?’

  ‘I will explain. Go and speak to the court in person—make them see it was all a misunderstanding.’

  ‘It’s way too late for that, Kate. The damage is done.’

  ‘No... It can’t be...’

  ‘Excuse me.’ A door opened and the clipped English tones of a polished PA interrupted their fight. ‘Mr Lewis will see you now.’

  ‘One minute!’ Nikos rapped over his shoulder.

  ‘Of course...’ With a look of surprise, the PA retreated.

  ‘We’d better go in.’ Kate drew in a ragged breath.

  ‘Still thinking about your precious business, Kate?’

  Nikos threw the words at her with such vicious scorn that Kate flinched.

  ‘You set up this meeting, Nikos, not me. I don’t want to keep Charles Lewis waiting. That would be very bad manners.’

  ‘Then by all means go ahead.’ Nikos stepped out of her way. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘You...you aren’
t coming in with me?’

  ‘No, Kate, I am not. Do you really think I can sit beside you as your husband when you’re plastered all over the papers like that?’ He jabbed a finger in the direction of the newspaper.

  ‘Mr Lewis won’t be interested in my private life. He probably hasn’t even seen the paper.’

  ‘But I have, Kate, and that’s enough.’

  ‘Very well.’ Kate pulled on a cloak of defiance. ‘I will go in alone.’

  ‘Yes, you do that Kate. I’ll see you back at the hotel this evening.’ He glowered at her, his lip thinning with hostility. ‘On second thoughts, don’t wait up. I may be late back.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS GONE midnight when Nikos finally returned to the hotel. Channelling his frustration into work, he had rented an office in the Shard for the day and fired off emails, demanded to see business reports, chased up contracts and negotiated new deals as if his life depended on it. Or his sanity.

  Maybe it did. It wouldn’t be the first time he had used work as his salvation.

  To some extent, it had served its purpose. With his brain engaged in the complex legalities of negotiating a new deal or monitoring the figures on a volatile stock market, he had successfully managed to blot Kate out. But the second he’d stopped—the second he’d picked up his coffee cup and stared out of the window at the city of London—he’d found himself right back in Kate’s thrall, his mind whirring with a surge of thoughts and conflicting emotions. None of which he wanted to examine.

  As he let himself into their suite of rooms Nikos was determined that tonight was going to be a Kate-free zone—both mentally and physically. He would pour himself a drink, go to bed—alone—and get some sleep.

  The place was in darkness, but as Nikos flicked on the light switch in the living room he saw with a stab of frustration that he wasn’t alone. Kate was uncurling herself from the sofa, blinking against the light.

  ‘Hi...’

  ‘You still up?’ He strode over to the sideboard, deliberately not meeting her eye.

  ‘Yes. I wanted to talk to you before you go to bed.’

  Before you go to bed. Not we. Taking the stopper out of the cut-glass decanter, Nikos noisily sloshed himself a generous measure of whisky. Clearly Kate was planning on sleeping alone too.

  ‘What about?’

  He turned, facing her now. She was wearing grey leisure pants and a white tee shirt. Her pale face was free from make-up and her hair was mussed on one side from where she had been resting against a cushion. She still looked gorgeous.

  ‘Well, firstly I wanted to thank you properly for setting up that meeting with Rosebury’s. It was very helpful.’

  ‘And secondly?’

  Nikos went to stand before her, towering over her. He didn’t want her thanks for some stupid business deal. He wanted her to stand up and kiss him, long and hard and deep, and take away the torment in his head. He wanted her in his bed. Or out of his life.

  He didn’t know what the hell he wanted.

  But his harsh tones had hit home. Nikos watched as Kate drew up her legs, defensively wrapping her arms around her knees.

  ‘Secondly, I think we need to talk about us.’

  ‘Us?’ Nikos repeated the word with cruel contempt, the kick of whisky sharpening his tongue. ‘There is no “us”.’

  A flicker of hurt crossed Kate’s face but she recovered quickly, meeting his gaze full-on.

  ‘Yes, there is, Nikos.’ Her voice was soft, weary. ‘Whether you like it or not, we do have a past, and we are tied together for the foreseeable future. And just recently...’ she faltered, searching for the right words ‘...we have been intimate.’

  ‘And which of those things would you like to talk about, Kate?’ Nikos closed his fingers around the glass in his hand.

  Kate stared at him, willing herself to stay strong. She didn’t want to do any of this. Returning to the hotel hours ago, she had paced around in turmoil, not knowing what to do with herself. Instinct had told her to flee, to get away before Nikos could hurt her any more, break her heart still further. She had even packed her suitcase, looked up flights online.

  But then she had stopped. Running away wasn’t going to solve anything. If she was ever to be free of the hold Nikos had over her, ever to find any sort of closure, she had to face up to her demons. She had to face up to Nikos. No matter how hard it was to do. No matter how much it hurt.

  ‘The past.’ Kate took in a shuddering breath. ‘The night we broke up. We have never discussed that.’

  ‘What’s to discuss?’ Animosity emanated from Nikos in pulsing waves. ‘You made it quite clear that you didn’t want me there. That our so-called engagement had been hidden like a dirty secret. That I wasn’t deserving of your love.’

  ‘No.’ Quietly Kate got to her feet, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘That’s not true. Please don’t ever think that.’

  ‘Then how do you explain your behaviour? Why you were so delighted to find out you weren’t pregnant?’

  ‘Because the timing was all wrong.’ She came to stand before him. ‘Daddy had just died and Mom needed my support. I knew I was going to have to take on the running of Kandy Kate. Everything was in chaos. Surely you can see that?’ Exasperated, she ran a hand through her hair. ‘To be honest, I thought you would be relieved too.’

  ‘Then you thought wrong.’

  Kate’s eyelids closed as a bruised silence settled around them. She could feel her heart battling against the misery of what they had lost. What might have been.

  ‘Then I apologise.’ She made herself look up and meet his eyes again. ‘I promise you it was never my intention to undermine you or offend you in any way.’

  Nikos gave a low, dismissive growl. ‘Well, either way it doesn’t matter. Ultimately you did me a favour. Thanks to you I finally grew up. I learnt the importance of money. How wealth gives you power and respect.’

  ‘But money was never my driving force, Nikos.’

  ‘No? Well, what are you doing here, then?’ A sneer curled his lip. ‘You’ll be telling me next that you married me for love.’

  Kate flushed. She felt as if Nikos was nailing down her coffin with one brutally timed blow after another.

  ‘No.’ The wretched flush deepened. ‘I’m here to save Kandy Kate, as you well know. But not because of the money. I’m doing it for my father. Because Kandy Kate is all I have left of him.’

  ‘Yeah...’ Nikos folded his arms across his chest. ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘Because it’s true.’ Kate’s voice quavered, but a sudden need to make Nikos see she wasn’t some mercenary, cold-hearted shrew drove her on. ‘Far from condemning your lack of wealth, I was envious of the life you had when we first met. The freedom you had...the chance to build your own future from scratch.’

  Nikos scoffed. ‘But that envy soon wore off, didn’t it, Kate? By the time I got to New York my so-called “freedom” looked dangerously close to poverty. And as for building my own life from scratch—why would you choose to do that when you were already at the top? I’m sure the gutter looked a long, long way down from the top of KK Towers.’

  ‘You were never in the gutter, Nikos!’

  ‘You and your mother treated me as if I was.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Kate frantically summoned all her fight to try and counter his onslaught. ‘I admit I could have handled the situation better...forewarned my mother about who you were...’

  ‘Forewarned?’ Nikos threw the word back at her in disgust, his breath hot on her face, his eyes glittering with temper. ‘That says it all, doesn’t it? The fact that you had to forewarn your mother about me. Have you any idea how insulting that is?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Kate looked down at the ground. She was making everything worse.

  With a silent apology
to her mother, she drew in a quick breath. ‘There are things about my mother I have never told you, Nikos. She’s vulnerable. Very vulnerable. That’s why I had to try so hard to keep the peace.’

  ‘Save it, Kate. This isn’t about your mother.’

  Kate felt her uncomfortable confession tossed to one side as if nothing.

  ‘This is about you and me. When I arrived in New York I thought we were equals, lovers—destined to share our lives together. I soon found out how wrong I was.’

  ‘No, you weren’t wrong. I thought the same.’

  Kate reached out to him, her eyes beseeching, but Nikos caught hold of her hand and brought it down to his side.

  ‘Well, you had a funny way of showing it.’ Anger and heat pulsed in his voice before he collected himself. ‘But what’s done is done. And maybe you were right. Maybe I didn’t have anything to offer you back then. I admit that I come from a humble background and, yes, my childhood was chaotic. When your mother walks out on you and your father can’t cope life gets tough. There was no money, no stability, and sometimes no food—let alone a table to eat it off. But despite that I survived. Not only survived, but triumphed. I have succeeded where others have failed. Become richer and more successful than most people could even dream about. Now I can hold my head high, mix with A-list celebrities, royalty—the highest in the land. Now, thanks to you, Kate, no one will ever look down on me again.’

  His throat moved as he swallowed hard, but when Kate looked away he put his hands on her shoulders, turning her so there was no escape from the burn of his eyes.

  ‘Perhaps you should take a bow.’

  ‘And perhaps you should take a long, hard look at who you have become.’

  ‘Ha!’ Nikos took away his hands but stayed intimately close, glaring down at her from his towering height. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. Have you forgotten where I found you, agape mou? Dressed like a hooker and sprawled across the lap of a sweaty banker.’

  ‘Have you forgotten how sometimes you have to do something you’d rather not do just to pay the bills?’ Kate desperately tried to beat back his merciless assault.