by Lynne Graham
Feeling weak as a kitten, she slumped back against the pillows. Her reply just leapt off her tongue. ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forgive you either.’
It was a mistake. Halfway to the door, Nik stilled and spun back. ‘So now you tell me the truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘That this is a deliberate attempt to attract my attention,’ he condemned with splintering fury. ‘No wonder you left tracks a blind man could follow...no wonder I am treated to an open door and the sound of you exchanging sweet nothings with your lover!’
‘Attract your attention?’ Leah repeated, her exquisite face alight with unhidden incredulity, physical weakness banished as she sat up in one abrupt movement.
‘Which you have done beautifully,’ Nik conceded with a sudden blazing smile that chilled her to the marrow. ‘You haven’t even slept with him, have you? So far and no further. Perfect.’ He strolled back towards the bed, riveting dark eyes probing her with derisive brilliance. ‘Not enough to send me over the edge but enough to make me sit back and take notice...’
Momentarily she was stunned by the sheer depth of his conceit. Then she flung her head back, sapphire eyes flashing with fury. ‘I have slept with him!’ she lied hotly. ‘And I don’t want you over the edge or taking notice because I don’t give a damn about you!’
‘If he has laid one finger on your unclothed body, he’s dead. You do understand that?’ Nik surveyed her with hooded dark eyes, a lethal stillness to his lean, powerful body. ‘This is not some game. I warn you, pethi mou. If he’s had you, I’ll break him,’ he asserted with murderous cool.
Leah couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t credit that he could back her into a corner like that. And how could he possibly guess that her relationship with Paul had yet to become intimate? She had lied in temper but also out of a need to stress that it was a serious relationship, not some silly flirtation manufactured to attract an indifferent husband’s attention. The very suggestion that she might be guilty of such childishly manipulative, not to say pathetic behaviour made her blood boil in her veins. But she was simultaneously terrified that Nik might harm Paul.
‘You are having to think so hard about this, I feel almost embarrassed,’ Nik revealed smoothly.
And all the anger had gone as if it had never been, she registered in a daze. ‘OK,’ she muttered tightly, studying her tightly linked hands, hating Nik with so much venom that she was literally ill with the force of her feelings. ‘I haven’t slept with him but—’
‘And shall I tell you why? A Greek would divorce an unfaithful wife. So you went as far as you dared and no further. The only reckless thing you ever did in your life was marry me. Cristo.’ Nik expelled his breathe in a hiss. ‘What a fool I was to think for one second that you might risk losing your status as my wife!’
‘But that’s exactly what I want to lose!’ Leah shot back at him in untrammelled rage and frustration. ‘I don’t want you... I want my freedom!’
‘Like hell you do,’ Nik responded crushingly. ‘You’d sink like a stone in the real world. You couldn’t cut it out there. You’d be as helpless as a newborn baby without your credit cards!’
‘How dare you?’ Leah spat, white as snow.
A winged ebony brow elevated. ‘I was just telling it like it is. You are exactly what Max created: a beautiful, fragile ornament, the perfect wife for a very rich man, born to be waited on hand and foot...’
‘You swine,’ she gasped, pain tearing through her in a blinding wave.
‘That’s not to say that you’re not very good in your own rarefied milieu,’ he drawled in wry addition. ‘You’re a marvellous hostess. And you’re a real lady. But if you really want your freedom—’
‘I do!’ Leah practically sobbed at him.
‘Ask yourself why you’re still buying my socks.’ Unleashing a sardonic smile on her, Nik turned and strode out of the room.
What did his bloody socks have to do with anything? That was just a trivial task she had taken on early in their marriage and kept on doing without even thinking about it! Leah dived out of bed, snatching up the towelling robe and digging her arms frantically into it. She had to make him listen. She had to make him understand.
He was in the master bedroom. Leah halted on the threshold, discomfited to find him halfway out of his shirt.
‘What now?’ he grated with driven impatience.
‘I want you to listen to me.’ Twitching the neck of the robe higher with restive fingertips, she made herself meet his unreadable gaze. ‘I love Paul. I want a divorce.’
Nik strolled across the depth of the carpet towards her. ‘You’re my wife,’ he delivered in a soft tone of revelation. ‘And why are you my wife? Because you so badly wanted to be my wife.’
A hectic flush ran up her slender throat and her teeth clenched. ‘Did you hear what I said? I love him!’
‘You’re buying his socks too?’ Nik enquired without pause, savage amusement in his narrowed scrutiny.
Without her even thinking about it, her hand flashed up and she slapped him hard, so hard that she couldn’t feel her fingers for several taut seconds afterwards. Then she was shocked by what she had done, the unfamiliar violence which had simply surged up out of nowhere and spilt over. Fearfully, she flinched back from him as he reached out for her, all amusement banished from his hard, dark eyes.
‘No!’
‘Even when I think a bloody good slap might do you good I can restrain myself. You’re too small, too breakable. If I’d been the wife-beating type, don’t you think you would have known it by now?’
Nik tugged her resistant body closer with easy strength, another kind of threat entirely explicit in the slow-burn effect of his dark gaze wandering over her, lingering on the steadily widening V of pale skin revealed by the far too large robe as it slid down off one narrow-boned shoulder.
‘And I have to confess that my idea of entertainment is rather more intimate than violence and infinitely more satisfying.’
‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ Leah screeched so loudly that her voice cracked and her throat hurt.
‘A long, hot night in my bed is exactly what you need.’ A lean hand settled on her bare shoulder.
‘Don’t be disgusting!’ Leah’s facial muscles locked with revulsion.
‘And don’t dismiss out of hand what you have never experienced.’ Nik laughed softly as he lowered his darkly handsome head and dragged her relentlessly up against him, one hand curving to the swell of her hips.
‘Stop it—’
‘I feel so threatened,’ he mocked indolently, brushing a silvery strand of hair back from one delicate cheekbone in an almost tender gesture that struck her as so out of character that she found herself briefly losing track of her struggle for freedom.
‘Nik...’
His mouth came down on hers with mesmerising expertise and prised her soft lips apart. She stopped breathing. He gathered her closer, sealing her to every abrasively male angle of his taut body. Her back arched without her volition, increasing that contact. His tongue drove into the moist, tender interior she had yielded and explored. A river of fire flowed through her and she quivered, leaning against him, winding her arms sinuously round his neck. Darkness beckoned behind her lowered eyelids, the heat in the pit of her stomach twisting like a hot wire through her trembling length.
Nik freed her swollen mouth and studied her with complete impassivity. ‘What was his name?’ he derided.
‘His...oh, God!’ On unsteady legs, Leah went into retreat, her fingers flying up in stark distress and turmoil to her reddened lips.
‘”Frailty, thy name is woman!”’ Nik quoted with savage amusement. ‘But you’ve got your priorities wrong. I’m the husband.’
Leah struggled to think of something—anything to say in self-defence. Nothing occurred to her. As she hovered, prey to a number of conflicting violent emotions, Nik shed his shirt, displaying powerful muscles that rippled like flexing cords beneath his
golden skin. She didn’t want to stare but she stared all the same.
Nik moved past her, opened the door and thrust her unceremoniously out into the corridor, murmuring, ‘We’ll talk over breakfast.’
The door thudded shut in her confused face. Was she going out of her mind? Had the past twenty-four tension-filled hours been a nightmare? She got back into bed, curled up in the foetal position and hugged herself. Nik was a stranger. She didn’t know him like this...and just for a little while she hadn’t known herself either.
He had been so bitter, so enraged at the bank. He had devastated her. But since then his every switch of mood had caught her by surprise. It was as if there were a script running somewhere and she was the only one who hadn’t read it yet.
He had seethed with rage when he’d realised that she had been seeing another man. He had scared her half out of her wits. But as long as the affair had been arrested outside the bedroom door he was able to shrug it off with the truly astonishing belief that she had only been trying to make him sit up and take notice of her. And all of a sudden he was being sarcastic rather than furious, assuring her that she couldn’t survive except as his wife and revealing with every following word and action the most staggering revelation of all...
Nik didn’t seem to want a divorce. And Leah found that totally and absolutely unbelievable in the circumstances. Why would he want to hang on to a wife he had been blackmailed into marrying? Why would he want to hang on to an empty charade?
It didn’t make sense; it didn’t make any sense at all. Her every expectation had been torn from her and she felt like somebody trying to walk a tightrope in the dark. Nik was volatile, unpredictable...OK. But this was something else again and she couldn’t sleep for wondering what was motivating him and why all of a sudden he was making sexual advances to a wife he had blithely ignored for five years.
Even worse was trying to figure out why she hadn’t fought him off, why she had just stood there and allowed him to kiss her...and felt so hot and wanton that she could have died with shame afterwards. Nik was very experienced. Maybe any male, possessed of that brand of carnal expertise, could tempt a woman as inexperienced as she was. Maybe it was all a matter of pressing the right physical buttons. Even so, he had still dragged a response from her far more powerful than Paul had ever managed.
Don’t, she screamed inside her head, guilty and thoroughly ashamed of herself. How could there be any comparison? Sex was the least important thing in a relationship, to her way of thinking. She loved Paul; she did love Paul. Nik had shaken that belief not at all.
But she was badly shaken by the unwelcome discovery that she could still be vulnerable after all this time to Nik’s undeniable sexual charisma. She had thought she had grown out of that. She had thought she was safe, cured, indifferent. And he had taught her otherwise...and laughed. Dear God, laughed. She relived the moment, racked by the torment of her shattered pride.
A case was sitting just inside the door when she woke up, feeling like a corpse. Nik had had fresh clothing flown in. Oh, so thoughtful of him. Leah donned the dark blue Versace suit, spent longer than usual striving to repair the ravages of a virtually sleepless night and only emerged from the bedroom when she felt she had achieved the miracle.
Nik was lounging back in his chair behind the Financial Times. He lowered it, cast it aside and lifted his coffee. ‘You should go back to bed. You look like a vampire victim waiting on the third bite.’
‘Very funny,’ Leah gritted, a flush driving away the pallor which had made the blusher on her cheeks stand out.
An ebony brow quirked. ‘I think you’re incredibly lucky still to be all in one unbruised, attached piece after what I found out last night. I think I have been remarkably tolerant and understanding—but don’t push it.’
Leah snatched at a croissant, conscious of night-dark eyes tracking her every movement. He was etched in her mind’s eye. Immaculate in a navy pinstriped suit and red silk tie. No bags under his eyes. No visible sign of last night’s horrors marred his natural vibrancy. Her nerves were shattered and he was as laid-back and in control as he had ever been. In fact he looked bloody smug. Hatred coursed through her. Her hands shook as she tore apart the croissant.
‘I intend to see a solicitor this morning,’ she announced without looking at him. ‘I want a divorce.’
‘In your dreams,’ Nik said softly.
Her silver head shot up. ‘I—’
‘Shut up,’ Nik told her with hard emphasis.
‘You can’t prevent me.’
‘I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘And I’m not going to sit here and be insulted.’
‘Sit down!’ he bit out, his hard voice cracking like a whiplash down the table at her. And Leah got such a shock that she sat again. ‘I want you to listen to me.’
She sugared her coffee, refusing to look up. Let him have his say. He was not going to stop her starting a divorce. She was entitled to her freedom and nothing he could do or say was likely to stop her reaching out and simply grabbing it.
‘Five years ago I was twenty-five and you were seventeen, a very young seventeen. A child inside a woman’s body. And I don’t get all hot and excited at the idea of sleeping with an adolescent, even if she is my wife! I found that a complete turn-off,’ Nik delivered with excruciating candour. ‘Some men like very young girls. I’m not one of them.’
Leah kept on stirring her coffee. She was very pale, painfully embarrassed and oddly guilty that it had never once crossed her mind that Nik might feel that way about the teenaged bride he had had forced on him. ‘You hated me anyway,’ she said tightly.
‘I resented you. I don’t think I ever got as far as hating you. I just closed you out,’ Nik mused. ‘We were stuck with each other and I dealt with it my way.’
‘Excuse me if I throw up,’ Leah inserted jerkily, unable to still the juvenile response but suddenly blatantly conscious of just how juvenile she had sounded. Nor did she want the past raked up, she registered uneasily. There was so much pain and turmoil there. She might have learnt to put it behind her but he was dragging up very raw memories...
‘I started work when I was fourteen on one of my father’s ships. He was an old-fashioned man. He wanted me to start at the bottom and work up because he had done it that way. I knew I needed an education. The next eight years were filled with eighteen-hour days. When I wasn’t slogging my guts out I was studying to try and keep up and playing the stock market on the side. I didn’t have a misspent youth. I didn’t have time for one,’ Nik completed drily.
He had never talked to her like this before. It disturbed her. She lifted her coffee-cup and hugged it to her, finding some kind of security in its warmth. She had had a rough idea of what his early years had been like but she hadn’t realised they had been quite as grim and joyless as he made them sound. ‘I don’t know why you’re telling me this.’
‘I want you to understand what it was like for me being forced into marriage when I wasn’t ready for it.’
‘I understand perfectly,’ Leah said frigidly.
‘I had finally reached the top. I was at last free to do everything I never got to do when I was younger,’ he asserted in a driven undertone.
‘You were free to sleep around,’ Leah rephrased with icy distaste. ‘And then Max came along and saddled you with me, right?’
‘Theos,’ Nik exclaimed. ‘Ne...yes, if you must put it like that, but I did not sleep around. You’re a woman. You couldn’t possibly understand what it is like for a man. It is a stage every man has to go through but I went through it later than most.’
Sexist toad, she thought bitterly, drinking down her coffee in one gulp. There was a whole world of gasping, gushing women out there and she sincerely doubted that he had left one willing woman unexplored. Apart from his wife. Leah had been left in frozen animation, denied everything he took by right for himself. Stowed away on a shelf to shrivel up in an empty, echoing London house where even the serv
ants were foreign. A consuming bitterness assailed her.
‘I get the picture. As insidious an excuse for adultery as any woman has ever received. In fact, it’s so damned brilliant, you really ought to go public with it!’
‘I am not apologising for myself. I married you under duress. I would not have married you otherwise. I was not ready to make that commitment to any woman at twenty-five.’ Smouldering black eyes smashed into hers with unashamed force. ‘It was better that I left you alone than shared your bed and strayed as I probably would have done.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Leah was trembling with a combustible mix of emotions: rage, resentment, hatred and remembered pain and humiliation. She physically hurt with the control it took to hold them in.
Nik watched her from below lush ebony lashes. ‘And then there was the obscene idea of performing like a stud for Max’s benefit.’
Leah reddened as though he had slapped her across the face.
‘On many occasions I have looked at you over the last couple of years and been very tempted to take you to my bed but it would have been like surrendering to the enemy and I doubt if you would have enjoyed the effect that had on me.’
‘I really don’t want to hear any more,’ she admitted tightly.
Nik ignored her. ‘But now Max is gone. And I may not have that certificate as yet but I don’t believe you know where it is...or even what it is.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how relieved I feel. Tell me, is there some point to this deeply unpleasant walk down memory lane?’ Leah prompted stiffly.
Nik treated her to a wolfish smile. ‘I’m ready to settle down into being married.’
Her breath escaped in an audible hiss. Her lashes flickered. Incredulous sapphire-blue eyes clung to his darkly handsome features, her heartbeat sitting somewhere in the neighbourhood of her convulsed throat.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘YOU LOOK as if you need a good, stiff drink.’ Rising gracefully upright, Nik strode across to the polished antique sideboard, extracted a brandy goblet and calmly poured a measure from the cut-glass decanter. With incredible cool, he settled it down on the table in front of her and strolled across to the marble fireplace.