by Lynne Graham
Close family or not, Nik was very much a loner, and she had never seen that in him until now. The extrovert front concealed that inner wariness of his. He found it so much easier to be sarcastic than candid where emotions were concerned. Deep down inside he had an innate reserve which astonished her. It was so foreign to the arrogant, brash image of him which she had cherished for years.
Why didn’t she just admit it? she asked herself. She smiled and let her fingers trail through the silky sand. She was more in love with Nik than she had ever been. He had told her that they could have a very good marriage and this far he had proved his point. Did it really matter that he didn’t love her? He wanted her...all the time. Her cheeks burned. But would that last? Would it be enough for him? Would he get bored? A year from now, where would they be? That was an answer nobody got to know in advance, she scolded herself.
Crunching footfalls interrupted her troubled thoughts and she turned her head. Dimitri, one of the youngest of the household staff, was crossing the beach towards her, laden with what looked like the provisions for a picnic lunch. He greeted her in careful English and then with great ceremony proceeded to spread an immaculate cloth over the sand. Two bottles of wine in cooling-sleeves and crystal glasses were produced.
‘Kyrios Andreakis will be here directly,’ Dimitri imparted, and hovered with the corkscrew.
‘Thank you. I’ll see to the rest. It looks gorgeous.’ Leah peered into the yet to be unpacked box and her mouth watered. ‘Cook has surpassed herself.’
‘I not wait, kyrie?’
‘There’s no need.’ With difficulty, Leah hid her amusement as he laid down the corkscrew with a deep air of uncertainty. Just for once Nik could open the wine and they could serve themselves.
It was their last day on the island, she reflected sadly. Tomorrow they were flying to Athens and she would meet the rest of his family. Ponia had returned home a few days earlier. Leah had protested until the girl had grinned and said, ‘Two’s company, three’s a pair of lovers and one gooseberry!’
Nik strolled across the sand towards her, blatantly aware of her intent absorption in his approach, and he smiled, unashamedly basking in her appreciation. In a pair of faded, tight cut-off jeans and nothing else, he looked nothing short of spectacular but there was something about that smile, something about that light in his lustrous dark eyes which clutched at her heart and squeezed it hard.
For an instant, an almost boyish vulnerability was etched in the electric charge of his answering appraisal and then it was gone, wiped out by a thick cloaking veil of ebony lashes that any woman would have killed to possess, and she told herself she had imagined it.
‘You’re wearing white,’ he murmured, dropping down beside her in a sprawl of long, golden limbs. ‘It suits you.’
‘I was wearing white the first time you saw me.’ She didn’t know why she said it; it was just one of those instant thought connections which flew off the tongue.
Nik tensed and lifted the corkscrew. ‘Yes.’
It was not something he wished to discuss. He didn’t have to tell her that. Nik could put out warning flares without opening his mouth. Impulsively, she ignored the atmospheric vibrations. ‘You went to a lot of trouble to meet me—’
‘Did I? Give me your glass.’
Leah nibbled at her lower lip and lifted both glasses, her attention resting on the set line of his sensual mouth as he poured the wine. Frustration coursed through her. He shut her out, held her at a distance. The closer they got, paradoxically the more he withheld, as though he didn’t trust her. And why should he trust her? She was an idiot. How did she expect Nik to trust her when he no doubt believed that in some corner of her heart she was still pining for Paul?
Why hadn’t she told him the truth yet? Pride? Ego? Or the fear that Paul’s very existence had partly spurred Nik into claiming her as his real wife? Nik was highly competitive, possessive, territorial. Keeping her pinned like a specimen butterfly to a board for five years hadn’t bothered Nik but when the butterfly flapped its wings and without warning tried to fly away he had been challenged, not to mention staggered by the idea. Take the challenge away, tell him he had vanquished the opposition...would he lose interest? That was what had kept her quiet and suddenly she wasn’t very proud of that reality. Game-playing wasn’t very wise with someone as volatile as Nik.
‘This is for you.’ A fancy little box was laid beside her bare toes.
Leah gave him an astonished glance and lifted it almost shyly. She flipped open the lid and the sunlight glanced blindingly off the sapphire and diamond ring within. Slowly she breathed in and drew it out. ‘It’s exquisite,’ she whispered a little hoarsely, turning to look at him again.
Faint colour emphasised his hard cheekbones. ‘It’s an eternity ring.’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed the thickness of tears in her throat. ‘I know.’
‘Why are you shocked? It’s just a present. Drink your wine before it gets warm,’ Nik urged with a rough edge to his voice.
He knew damned well why she was shocked. Apart from the wedding-ring proffered at the altar, Nik had never given her anything but money. Christmas and birthdays, great fat inputs into her bank account, nothing to unwrap, nothing to get excited about, an acknowledgement of her existence and his wealth, nothing more. She had bought her own jewellery and when a piece was admired at a dinner party she would say, ‘Nik bought it for me,’ reasoning that that was not a lie when it was his money which she had used. But now the memory of that proud and empty pretence just made her want to cry.
‘You don’t want it,’ he condemned with an abruptness that startled her and made her flinch.
‘Of course I do!’ Without any hesitation, she threaded the ring on to her wedding finger for she had the terrible suspicion that if she didn’t move fast he would snatch it off her again and throw it out to sea.
He released his breath in a hiss, the harsh angle of his jawline easing, and she realised that he was, if anything, even more on edge than she was and guiltily aware of those five years of impersonal cash influxes.
‘Dad used to give me money too,’ Leah shared flatly. ‘It’s OK. I never expected anything else. The only time he ever gave me a present—’
‘Me?’ Nik vented a grim laugh, his expressive mouth twisting. ‘And I wasn’t much of a gift, was I?’
‘I was going to say, the only thing he ever gave me was my mother’s writing bureau.’ Her smooth forehead furrowed. ‘And you know it’s not at all valuable. It’s pretty but he wasn’t remotely attached to it. In fact it was kept in one of the attic rooms and he had to have it restored but he said... Nik, do you know what he said?’ she muttered with growing excitement.
‘I’m not remotely interested!’ he asserted with sudden impatience, clear frustration mingling with other intense emotions in his lean, hard features as he reached for her, determined to gain her full attention. ‘I’m trying to tell you that...’ Uncharacteristically, he hesitated. ‘Theos, I wish I hadn’t spent five years being a self-centred, arrogant bastard, making you pay for what Max did...although I didn’t see it like that at the time!’
His lean fingers were biting into her narrow wrist, eloquently betraying just how hard he found it to admit such sentiments. And the writing bureau which Max had told her to ‘guard well’ simply evaporated from her mind.
‘But I can understand why you behaved that way...now,’ Leah murmured wryly.
Nik grimaced. ‘You were only seventeen and you were infatuated with me.’
She dropped her eyes, her skin heating, and drank her wine.
‘And I think even then I accepted that you were innocent of all knowledge of your father’s blackmail. I could have been kinder. You were little more than a child. You were far more naïve than Ponia is at the same age. When I saw you together here...I saw things I didn’t want to see five years ago,’ he completed in a constrained undertone.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she muttered, troubled by his introspe
ctive mood.
‘I must have hurt you a great deal.’
‘Yes.’ There was little point in denying it. ‘But I got over it.’ Forcing a smile to her not quite steady mouth, Leah sat up on her knees and reached into the box of food to begin unloading it. ‘What would you like—?’
‘You...now!’ Nik breathed rawly without warning.
Reaching up, he pulled her down again with two impatient hands. He laced long brown fingers painfully tightly into her silky hair as he gazed down at her startled face with incandescent black eyes. ‘Forget the food,’ he added with a sudden ragged intonation she recognised, only this time it combined apology with desire.
And she did forget, the same instant that he brought his mouth swooping down into explosive connection with hers. The smooth control she was accustomed to was absent. Nik unleashed a passion that devastated her. It was no slow, gentle seduction of the senses but an erotic assault in which clothes were thrust aside rather than removed. Excitement took over, blanking out everything but her body’s insanely instinctive need for him.
She gasped and threw her head back as he drove into her, rejoiced in his answering groan of satisfaction and from that point on there was nothing but wild sensation, rising to ecstatic heights she had never touched before and finally throwing her over the edge into a shattering release.
Nik mumbled something in Greek, his arms closing convulsively round her as she stirred. ‘Did I hurt you?’ he breathed unsteadily.
He had shocked her, she acknowledged, unable to resist sending a possessive hand travelling over his damp brown back, feeling his muscles flex in response. But then Nik frequently shocked her, both in and out of bed. She was getting used to it. A rather dazed smile curved her lips as she uttered a reassuring negative.
‘Theos mou...I could lie like this all day.’ Sliding on to his side, he carried her with him and viewed her with slumbrous dark eyes and an undeniable air of indolent satisfaction. ‘Every time I look at you you get more beautiful, agape mou. At seventeen you looked like an angel, pure, untouchable. Now you look like a woman, your mouth swollen from my kisses, your hair in a mess,’ he murmured, his sensual lips curving with rueful amusement, ‘and you still take my breath away.’
‘Do I?’
‘How can you doubt it? The last time I made love on a beach I was a teenager.’ He pulled her up with him and cast her a mocking smile. ‘Now we eat.’
All his tension had gone. He had said what he obviously felt he had to say. He had expressed regret for those five years. Guilt had taken a long while to hit him, but then, it was only now that Nik actually felt married, only now that he could make the effort to understand that he had not been her father’s only victim.
Max had been too shrewd a man not to foresee Nik’s resentment and bitterness at being forced into marriage and he could hardly have failed to be aware that Nik had other women. But Max hadn’t cared, hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t worried that she might be unhappy, Leah acknowledged painfully. He had caught her a very wealthy, influential husband and he had been very proud of that feat.
‘Why so serious?’ Nik probed.
‘I was thinking about Max.’
‘Wherever he is, he’s probably laughing like a hyena right now, you can be sure of that,’ he returned witheringly. ‘Here we are, doing exactly what he always wanted us to do, and sooner or later we’ll even have a child—’
‘A child?’ Leah was arrested by the concept, eyes wide.
His gaze narrowed, suddenly cool as winter. ‘One of those wriggly little pink things which scream a lot and require exhaustive house training,’ he extended very drily. ‘Most people find their helplessness cute and appealing...but maybe you don’t.’
She flushed, looked down into her glass. ‘I do...I just never thought about it,’ she muttered unevenly, forbearing to admit that she hadn’t thought along such lines in many years. But sudden warmth flooded her as she imagined carrying his baby.
He curved an arm round her, hauling her into the shelter of his sun-warmed body. ‘I thought maybe next year,’ he imported huskily, treating her to a dazzling smile in reward for having given the desired response.
‘It would be rather awkward for you if I refused, wouldn’t it?’ she said, abruptly rebelling against that arrogant stamp of approval. ‘Considering that you’re stuck with me anyway!’
‘Is that what you think?’
Leah wished she had kept her mouth shut. She could see the ambience of the last few glorious days going up in smoke in front of her eyes. ‘It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ she whispered tightly.
‘Our marriage is what we make of it.’ Shifting, Nik enclosed her in his strong arms, turned her round and settled her between his spread thighs. Insistent dark eyes levelled on hers, holding her fast. ‘Understand that, accept it,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t look back.’
And then he kissed her and refilled her glass and offered her some food but she wasn’t really hungry any more. She watched him eat with unblemished appetite and for the first time she allowed herself to think with optimism about their future. If he could put the past behind him so could she, and maybe the first thing she ought to do was tell him the truth about Paul...
‘Nik...?’
At the same time as she spoke someone called down from the top of the steep path that wound down from the villa. Nik uttered an imprecation and sprang upright in a movement indicative of his raw impatience. ‘I said no calls, no interruptions!’
She watched him stride closer and shout back. Then he spread his hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Urgent,’ he grated. ‘It had better be very urgent! Stay here...wait for me.’
He went up the path at speed. Leah helped herself to some luscious strawberries which had caught her eye. She studied her ring from all angles and smiled, quite euphorically happy all of a sudden. It was an effort to recall that she had to tell him about Paul when he returned because in all truth, she registered sleepily, she just didn’t want to remember how foolish she had been.
She woke up to noise, startled, disorientated. She saw a helicopter far above, hanging like a giant black bird, a second before it swept out across the bay. Pushing her hair off her hot face, she frowned down at her watch. She had been asleep for a couple of hours and Nik hadn’t come back.
Dimly she remembered the phone call—at least she assumed it had been a phone call. An urgent one. Clearly urgent enough to make Nik forget about her. She discovered her panties and pulled them on with a rueful giggle, tugging down her dress again, feeling deliciously abandoned.
She strolled into the cool of the villa and noticed the silence. She laid down the picnic stuff she had hauled up from the beach. The staff seemed to have vanished. An odd little shiver ran up her backbone—a premonition that something was wrong. Nik was in his office, studying something on his desk.
‘You forgot about me but I forgive you,’ she teased uncertainly from the doorway.
He raised his dark head and straightened. Eyes as treacherously cold and threatening as black ice focused on her and right there and then, in one devastating second, Leah knew that sixth sense had not betrayed her. She could feel the suppressed rage he was struggling to control, see it in the rigidity of his golden features as he stood there staring her down with all the silent intimidation he was capable of transmitting.
Leah paled. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘How did you guess?’ His deep voice shook perceptibly with the force of the emotions he was visibly tamping down.
‘What is it?’ Her heartbeat had shifted up into the region of her throat.
‘Come here,’ he murmured flatly. ‘I have something to show you.’
She had a terrible craven urge to run away but she quelled it and crossed the room.
Then she saw them—would have had to be blind to miss them. A collection of glossy photographs was fanned out across the desktop. Leah blinked, leant closer, steadying herself with one small hand. Her stomach gave a violent lurch and
dropped down to somewhere near her toes. Shock reverberated through her. The photos were of her and Paul.
In disbelief she stared and pushed one aside to examine another...and then another. Paul and her walking hand in hand down a crowded street, kissing in the wine bar, glued together in a doorway, smiling euphorically at each other. She squirmed, feeling as if Jaws had jumped out of a puddle at her and bitten a large chunk out of both her lower limbs. Her knees threatened to fold. Her eyes stung painfully. Why now? she wanted to scream in a sudden surge of anguished resentment. Why now when they had been so happy?’
‘Where did they come from?’ she whispered sickly.
‘Did you know that you had a photographer on your trail?’
‘No...’
‘Do you know what photographs of my wife with another man are worth on the open market?’
Her marriage? Leah looked numbly into space, temporarily shorn of reaction by shock. In spite of all her ridiculous precautions she had been recognised, followed and captured on film. And not once had she even suspected it.
Nik quoted a fantastic sum and then waited as though he expected some kind of response. She made none; could think of absolutely nothing to say.
‘These photos were offered to one of the tabloids,’ Nik grated. ‘If the owner of that rag had not been one of my closest friends and his editor aware of that fact they would have been published!’
‘You bought them,’ she gathered, a slender hand lifting to press against her throbbing temples.
‘You’re my wife! What choice did I have?’ he raked at her with raw aggression, every bitten-out syllable expressing his fury. ‘Cristo!’
‘Stop shouting at me!’ she gasped in growing distress. ‘I’m sorry about this but I couldn’t have stopped it happening...and anyway it’s over with Paul! It was over before I walked out on you in London. I probably should have told you that before now—’
‘Spare me your lies,’ he cut in with ruthless, icy precision.
Leah froze, lifting darkened eyes to his. ‘I’m not lying. It is over.’