by Penny Jordan
She moved to the seating area, her lips pursed with disapproval for his lack of punctuality. Behind her there was a spectacular view, framed by a wall of pure glass.
She’d followed his meteoric rise to the top, reading about each success and triumph in the papers alongside the rest of the world. It would have been impossible not to track his astounding emergence onto the world’s financial stage. Nikos had built himself into a billionaire with the kind of ease with which most people put on shoes in the morning. Everything he’d touched had turned to gold.
Marnie had contented herself with congratulating him in her dreams. Or reading about him on the internet—except when her heart found it could no longer handle the never-ending assault of images that showed Nikos and her. The generic ‘Other Woman’ he habitually dated. She was always tall, with big breasts, blonde hair, and the kind of extroverted confidence that the Marnies of this world could only marvel at.
In a thousand years she’d never be like one of them. Those women with their easy sexuality and relaxed happiness.
As if to emphasise her point, her fingers drifted to the elegant chignon she’d styled her shoulder-length hair into that morning. A few clumps had come loose. She tucked them back into place with care, then replaced her manicured hands in her lap.
Almost twenty minutes later the receptionist crossed the room purposefully. ‘Lady Kenington?’
Marnie started, her face lifting expectantly.
‘Mr Kyriazis is ready to see you.’
Oh, was he? Well, it was about time, she thought crossly as she stood and fell into step behind the other woman.
A pair of frosted glass doors showed a dark, blurred figure which could only be him. The details of his features were not yet visible.
‘Lady Kenington, sir,’ the receptionist announced.
On the threshold of not just the door but of a moment she’d fantasised about for years, Marnie sucked in a fortifying breath and then, on legs that were trembling lightly, stepped into his palatial office.
Would he be the same?
Would the spark between them still exist?
Or had six years eroded it completely?
‘Nikos.’
To her own ears her voice was cool and detached, despite the way her heart was stammering painfully against her ribs. Standing by the windows, he turned to face her at the receptionist’s pronouncement, the mid-afternoon sun casting a pale glow over him that focussed her attention on him as a spotlight might have.
The six years since she’d last seen him had been generous to Nikos. The face she’d loved was much the same, perhaps enhanced by wisdom and the hallmarks of success. Dark eyes, wide-set and rimmed by thick black lashes, a nose that had a bump halfway down from a childhood accident, and a wide mouth set above a chin with a thumbprint-sized cleft. His cheekbones were as pronounced as always, as though the features of his face had been carved from stone at the beginning of time. It was a face that conveyed strength and power—a face that had commanded her love.
He wore his dark hair a little shorter now, but it still brushed his collar at the back and had the luxuriant thickness that had always begged her to run her fingers through it. His dark eyes, so captivating, flashed with an emotion that seemed to Marnie almost mocking.
With pure indolent arrogance he flicked his gaze over her face, then lower, letting it travel slowly across her unimpressive cleavage down to her slim waist. She felt a spike of warmth travel through her abdomen as feelings long ago suppressed slammed against her.
Where his eyes travelled, her skin reacted. She was warm as though he’d touched her, as though he’d glided his fingertips over her body, promising pleasure and satisfaction.
‘Marnie.’
Her gut churned. She’d always loved the way he said her name, with the emphasis on the second syllable, like a note from a love song.
The door clicked shut behind her and Marnie had to fight against the instinct to jump like a kitten. Only with the greatest of effort was she able to maintain an impassive expression on her subtly made-up face.
Under normal circumstances Marnie would have done what was expected of her. Even in the most awkward of encounters she could generally muster the basics in small talk. But Nikos was different. This was different.
‘Well, Nikos?’ she said, a tight smile her only concession to social convention. ‘You summoned me here. I presume it’s not just to stare at me?’
He arched a thick dark brow and her stomach flopped. She’d forgotten just how lethal his looks were in person. And it wasn’t just that he was handsome. He was completely vibrant. When he frowned it was as if his whole body echoed the feeling. The same could be said when he smiled or laughed. He was a passionate man who hid nothing. She felt his impatience now, and it burned the little part of her heart that had survived the explosive demise of their relationship.
‘Would you like a drink?’ His accent was flavoured with cinnamon and pepper: sweet and spicy. Her pulse skittered.
‘A drink?’ Her lips twisted in an imitation of disapproval. ‘At this hour? No. Thank you,’ she added as an afterthought.
He shrugged, the bespoke suit straining across his muscled chest. She looked away, heat flashing to the extremities of her limbs. When he began walking towards her, she was powerless to move.
He stopped just a foot or so across the floor, his expression impossible to interpret. His fragrance was an assault on her senses, and the intense masculinity of him was setting her body on fire. Her knees felt as if they might buckle. But although her fingers were fidgeting it was the only betraying gesture of her unease. Her face remained impassive, and her eyes were wide with unspoken challenge.
‘You said you needed to speak to me. That it was important.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured, his gaze once again roaming her face, as though the days, months and years they’d spent separated were a story he could read in it if he looked long enough.
Marnie tried to catalogue the changes that had taken place in her physically in the six years since he’d walked out of Kenington Hall for the last time. Her hair, once long and fair, was shoulder-length and much darker now, with a sort of burnt sugar colour that fell with a fashionable wave to her shoulders. She hadn’t worn make-up back then, but now she didn’t leave the house without at least a little cosmetic help. That was the wariness she had learned to demonstrate when a scrum of paparazzi was potentially sitting in wait, desperate to capture that next unflattering shot.
‘Well?’ she asked, her voice a throaty husk.
‘What is your rush, agape mou?’
She started at the endearment, her fingertips itching as though of their own free will they might slap him. It felt as though a knife had been plunged into her chest.
She flattened the desire to correct him. She needed to stay on point to get through this encounter unscathed. ‘You’ve kept me waiting twenty minutes. I have somewhere else to be after this,’ she lied. ‘I can’t spare much more time. So, whatever you’ve called me here to say, I suggest you get it over with.’
Again, his brow arched imperiously. His disapproval pleased her in that moment. It eclipsed, all too briefly, other far more seductive thoughts.
‘Wherever you’ve got to be after this, I suggest you cancel it.’ He repeated her directive back to her with an insouciant shrug.
‘Just as dictatorial as ever,’ she said
His laugh whipped around the room, hitting her hard. ‘You used to like that about me, I seem to recall.’
Her heart was racing. She lifted her arms, crossing them over her chest, hoping they might hide the way her body was betraying her. ‘I’m definitely not here to walk down memory lane,’ she said stiffly.
‘You have no idea why you’re here.’
She met his gaze, felt flame leaping from one to the other. ‘No. You’re right. I don’t.’
Wishing she’d obeyed her instincts and refused to see him, she began to walk towards the door. Being in the same room as him, fee
ling the force of his enmity, she knew only that nothing could be important enough to go through thiswringer.
Some paths were best unfollowed—their relationship was definitely one of them.
‘I don’t know why I listened.’ She shook her head and her hair loosened a little, dropping a tendril from her temple across her cheek. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’
He laughed again, following her to the door and pressing the flat of his palm against it. ‘Stop.’
She started, and it dawned on him that Marnie was nervous. Her façade was exceptional. Cold, unfeeling, composed. But Marnie was uncertain, too. Her enormous almond-shaped eyes, warm like coffee, flew to his face before she seemed to regain her footing and inject her expression with an air of impatience.
But she wasn’t impatient. How could she be? The past was claiming her. He was him, and she was her, but they were kids again. Teenagers madly in love, sure of nothing and everything, unable to keep their hands off each other in the passionate way of illicit love affairs.
Sensing her prevarication, he spoke firmly. ‘Your father is on the brink of total ruin, and if you don’t listen to me he’ll be bankrupt within a month.’
She froze, all colour draining from her face. She shook her head slowly from side to side, mumbling something about not being able to believe it, but her mind was shredding through that silly denial. After all, she’d seen for herself the change in him recently. The stress. The anger. The drinking too much. The weight loss. Disturbed sleep. Why hadn’t she pushed him harder? Why hadn’t she demanded that he or her mother tell her honestly what was going on?
‘I have no interest in lying to you,’ he said simply. ‘Sit down.’
She nodded, her throat thick, as she crossed the room and took a chair at the meeting table. He followed, his eyes not leaving her face as he poured two glasses of water and slid one across the table, before hunkering his large frame into the chair opposite.
His feet brushed hers accidentally beneath the table. The shock of her father’s situation had robbed her of her usual control and she jumped at the touch, her whole body resonating before she caught herself in the childish reaction.
And he’d noticed it; the smile of sardonic amusement on his face might have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so completely overcome by concern.
‘Dad’s… I don’t…’ She shook her head, resting her hands on the table, trying to make sense of the revelation.
‘Your father, like many investors who didn’t take adequate precautions, is suffering at the hands of a turbulent market. More fool him.’
He spoke with disrespect and obvious dislike, but Marnie didn’t leap to defend Arthur Kenington. At one time she’d been her father’s biggest champion, but that too had changed over time. Shell-shock in the immediate aftermath of Libby’s death had translated to the kind of loyalty that didn’t allow room for doubt. Her need to keep her family close had made it impossible for her to risk upsetting the only people on earth who understood her grief. She would have done anything to save them further pain, even if that had meant walking away from the man she loved because they’d expressed their bitter disapproval.
Her eyes were cloudy as they settled on his frame. Memories were sharp. She pushed at them angrily, relegating them to the locked box of her mind.
Those memories were of the past. The distant past. She and Nikos were different people now.
‘He will lose everything without immediate help. Without money.’
Marnie turned the ring she always wore around her finger—a nervous gesture she’d resorted to without realising. Her face—so beautiful, so ethereally elegant—was crushed, and Nikos felt a hint of pity for her. There was a time when he would have said that causing her pain was anathema to him. A time when he would have leapt in front of a speeding bus to save her life—a time when he had promised to love her for ever, to adore her, to cherish her.
And she’d answered that pledge by telling him he’d never be good enough for her, or words to that effect.
He straightened in the chair, honing in on his resolve.
But Marnie spoke first, her voice quietly insistent. ‘Dad has lots of associates. People with money.’
‘He needs rather a large sum.’
‘He’ll find it,’ she said with false bravado, unknowingly tilting her gaze down her small ski slope nose.
His smile was almost feral in its confidence. ‘A hundred million pounds by the end of the month?’
‘A…hundred…’ Her feathery lashes closed, muting any visible shock. She was hiding herself from him, wanting to keep her turmoil private and secret.
He didn’t challenge her; there was no need.
‘And that is just to start,’ he confirmed with a small nod. ‘But if you want to leave…’ He waved a hand towards the door, as though he didn’t give a damn what she chose to do.
Marnie toyed with the ring again, her eyes studying its gentle golden crenulations before shifting their focus back to his face. ‘So? What’s your interest in my father’s business?’
‘His business?’ Nikos’s laugh was short and sharp. ‘I have no interest in that.’
Marnie’s eyes knitted together, confusion obvious on her features. Even her hair looked uptight, knotted into that style. Her hands, her nails, her perfectly made-up face: she was the picture of stylish grace, just as her parents had always intended her to be.
‘I presume you called me here because you have a plan.’ She pinned him with her golden-brown eyes until the sensation overpowered her. ‘I wish you’d stop prevaricating and just tell me.’
His smile was not one of happiness. ‘You are hardly in a position to issue commands to me.’
Marnie’s face lifted to his in surprise. ‘That’s not what I was doing.’ She shook her head timidly from side to side. ‘I didn’t mean to, anyway. It’s just…please. Tell me everything.’
He shrugged. ‘Bad decisions. Bad investments. Bad business.’ He pressed back further in his chair, the intensity of his fierce gaze sending sharp arrows of awareness and emotion through her blood. ‘The why of it doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
He spoke on as though she hadn’t. His eyes bored into hers. ‘I believe there are not ten people in the world who would find themselves in a financial position to help your father. Even fewer who would have any motivation to do so.’
Marnie bit down on her lower lip, trying desperately to think of anyone who might have enough liquidity to inject some cash into her father’s crumbling empire.
Only one man came to mind, and he was staring at her in a way that was turning her mind to mush.
Unable to sit still for a moment longer, Marnie scraped her chair back and stalked to the window. London vibrated beneath them: a collection of cars and souls all going about their own lives, threading together into one enormous carpet of activity. She felt as if she’d been plucked out of the fibres and placed here instead, in a madhouse.
‘Dad’s never been your favourite person,’ she said softly. ‘How do I know you’re not making this up for some cruel reason of your own?’
‘Your father’s demise is not a well-kept secret, matakia mou. Anderson told me.’
‘Anderson?’ The name was like a knife in her gut. She thought of Libby’s fiancé with the shock of grief that always accompanied anything to do with her sister. With Before.
‘We’re still in touch,’ he said with a shrug, as if that wasn’t important.
‘He knows about this?’ She thought of Anderson Holt’s family, the fortune they possessed. Maybe they could help? She dismissed the thought instantly. A hundred million pounds—cash—was beyond most people’s capabilities. Besides, Arthur Kenington would never let himself be bailed out.
‘It is no secret,’ Nikos said, misunderstanding her question. ‘I imagine the whole city knows the truth of your father’s position.’
Her spine stiffened and sorrow for the man who had raised her pushed all thoughts of her
late sister’s fiancé from her mind. She blinked quickly, denying the sting of tears that was threatening. She was not willing to show such weakness in front of anyone, let alone Nikos.
‘He has seemed stressed lately,’ she conceded awkwardly, keeping her vision focussed on the buzz of activity at street level.
‘I can well imagine. The idea of losing his life’s work and the legacy of his forebears will be weighing heavily on his conscience. Not to mention his monumental ego.’
She let the barb go by. Her mind was completely absorbed with trying to make sense of this information. ‘I don’t understand why he wouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Don’t you?’ His eyes flashed with anger and resentment as his last conversation with Lord Arthur Kenington came to mind. ‘The man prides himself on shielding you from the world. He would do anything to spare you the pain of actually inhabiting reality with the rest of us.’
‘You call this reality?’ she quipped, flicking a disapproving glance around the cavernous glass office decorated with modern art masterpieces and furniture that would have looked at home in a gallery.
A muscle jerked in his cheek and Marnie wished she could pull those words back. Who was she to sit in judgement of his success? She didn’t know the details, but she knew enough of his childhood to realise that if anyone on earth understood poverty it was Nikos.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly, lifting a finger to her temple and rubbing at it. ‘None of this is your fault.’
A pang of something a lot like sympathy squeezed in Nikos’s gut. Recognising that she could still evoke those emotions in him, he consciously pushed aside any softening towards her.
‘No.’ He rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. ‘He stands to lose it all, Marnie. His investments. His reputation. Kenington Hall. He will be a cautionary tale at best, a laughing stock more likely.’
‘Don’t…’ She shivered, thinking of what her parents had already suffered and lost in life. The thought of them enduring yet another tragedy weighed so heavily on her chest she could hardly breathe.
‘I would be lying if I said I’m not a little tempted to leave him to his fate. A fate that, as it turns out, is not at all dissimilar to what he predicted for me.’