by Lynne Graham
‘You know the whole story—’
‘Had I known it thirty years ago I would never have allowed them to do it!’ Stavros asserted with unhidden anger. ‘We were young. We did wrong. But they should have let us marry when they realised she was carrying our child. For that I can never forgive them!’
‘You’re Nik’s father,’ Leah whispered unevenly, staring at him with huge eyes.
Stavros frowned at her. ‘You did not know that? And if you do not know it, are you telling me that Nik does not know it either?’
‘It’s not something we’ve talked about,’ Leah said weakly, leaning back against the rail for support.
Stavros looked grimmer than ever. ‘Maybe he does not want to know, maybe he blames us for his rotten childhood—and he has cause,’ he conceded grudgingly.
‘Do you think you could start at the beginning?’ Leah suggested quietly.
Stavros was brief and succinct. He had been a student when he’d fallen in love with Ariadne Andreakis. He had neither the money nor the background to impress her parents then and the relationship had been broken up. Ariadne had not had the courage to fight her family. When her pregnancy was discovered, she had gone abroad with her mother. Stavros had not been told, had not even been aware of Nik’s existence until he met up with Ariadne again a decade later.
‘It almost killed me to learn what she had gone through alone. And to know I had a son I could not claim. But this time I would not be parted from Ariadne. I wore her down. I made her marry me in the teeth of their opposition!’ he admitted with a satisfaction that strongly reminded her of Nik. ‘Alexos was outraged and Evanthia hated the sight of me—and still does—but what could they do once the deed was done but put a face on it? Appearances count a lot to this family.’
‘And then?’
‘Then happiness was tempered with misery,’ Stavros revealed bluntly. ‘Ariadne believed we should be grateful that our son was within our sight. If he had been given away for adoption we might never have found him, never have known him...but ultimately I sometimes think that might have been less painful. Evanthia didn’t love him, didn’t treat him like a son, and the rest of the family resented him, this adopted child brought in to inherit over their heads.’
‘And they still resent him,’ Leah murmured feelingly.
‘Yet he has multiplied their wealth a hundredfold. Alexos...he was a good man at heart,’ Stavros conceded. ‘He cared about Nik but he thought Ariadne was a weakling, so he was very tough on her son. But Ariadne is not weak. She coped with the situation until Nik began to avoid her and we realised that he knew.’
‘About five years ago, I believe you said,’ Leah framed unsteadily.
‘It must have been a terrible shock but we had waited for so long, hoping that he might ask or find out or suspect,’ Stavros muttered with a raw candour that brought tears to Leah’s eyes. ‘It wasn’t our place to tell him if he had no suspicion. Ariadne promised her parents that she would never tell him. That was the price she paid. But that Nik should learn the truth of his parentage and then freeze her out... Neither one of us, in our innocence, expected that!’
Leah bowed her head, wondering what Nik did feel, struggling to make sense of behaviour that no longer made sense to her. Who did he think he was protecting? Ariadne or his grandmother or both of them?
‘For her peace of mind, this must be resolved.’ Stavros reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘So I ask you to raise this subject with Nik and discover if he knows the whole truth since it is very obvious that he will never approach us.’
‘Yes.’
‘She loves him very much; she makes excuses for him, blames herself but he is a grown man, a highly intelligent man,’ Stavros said in a rough undertone. ‘Why continue to accept me and not her? He makes no attempt to conceal his attachment to our daughter. Were I not bound by my promise to his mother I would have challenged him without fear.’
Leah lifted drowning eyes. ‘I don’t think Nik knows you’re his father.’
The older man looked unconvinced and then noted the lines of stress on her delicate face. ‘It is very selfish of me to drag you into this mess.’
‘No.’ She almost told him that she had been a part of that same mess longer than he could have possibly guessed. Had Max got his hands on Nik’s original birth certificate? Was there any mention of who his father was? But it was beyond the bounds of belief that Nik had discovered his mother’s identity without demanding further answers from somebody! The trail could only lead back to Evanthia Andreakis.
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll talk to him when we get back to London...not here,’ she stressed.
‘Whatever the outcome, I will be in your debt.’
As Stavros moved away from her, Leah felt the weight of that burden. It wasn’t a case of no news was good news. Nik was as volatile and unpredictable as Pandora’s box and Stavros could have no idea just how far Nik had been prepared to go to conceal the truth of his parentage. It had to be that which Max had discovered—a birth certificate, capable of blowing the Andreakis family sky-high even thirty years on. There couldn’t possibly be two such dangerous secrets in one family...surely?
Nik was watching her across the width of the room. She wondered if he was aware that she had just a very long and private conversation with Stavros. The weight of that guilty knowledge engulfed her, leaving her pale, her facial bones stiff. She was tempted to rush in and tell all, knew that it would be madness in such surroundings. But even as she looked back at him Nik was turning aside, his strong features coldly cast until Eleni, standing several feet away, said something that made him smile.
And though a few minutes later he joined her and she spent what remained of the evening never far from him she registered with a sinking heart that he had distanced himself from her. The warmth had gone, to be replaced by cool, polite constraint. And she felt cold inside and afraid. The barriers he had smashed down in Paris weeks ago had suddenly been replaced for no good reason that she could see.
The change had come not from her but from him. Maybe Eleni’s presence reminded him of the terms of his marriage...the life sentence he had once flung in Leah’s teeth. There was no free choice in a life sentence. And suddenly Leah knew that for her there would be no happiness until she could give Nik that choice...
CHAPTER TEN
NIK PARTED from her the instant they entered the London house. He had a lot of work to catch up on, he said. He would be leaving again as soon as he had changed.
‘Don’t hurry back on my account,’ Leah urged with an acidity that was in direct proportion to the pain she was ramming down inside her.
He swung back, shooting her a grim glance. ‘We’ll talk when I get back.’
Why was she receiving the impression that she was the one at fault? She had done nothing. But since last night she had felt like Nik’s gaoler. How would he react when she told him about her conversation with Stavros? Would she be telling him anything he didn’t already know? How would he react when he realised that she now knew that secret? He had not trusted her enough to tell her himself. That fact bit deepest of all.
She walked into the drawing-room and her mouth twisted as she looked at her mother’s writing bureau. ‘Take an axe to it if you like!’ Nik had derided. When she pulled down the flap that functioned as a writing surface she saw nothing new. The drawers and pigeon-holes were empty. She didn’t use the bureau because it didn’t lock. The key decoratively attached by a too short golden chain to the flap would not reach the keyhole. Such a foolish oversight on the part of the craftsman who had restored the piece.
It was only when she looked at that key now that she realised it bore a very close resemblance to the same key she had held in her hand inside that Paris bank. She broke the chain, hurting her hand in the process. The key had been lightly gilded to match the chain but the numbers engraved on it could still be read. It didn’t even fit the lock on the flap. It was the key to another safety-deposit box. For five long
years Nik had had his passport to freedom right under his own roof. Max would have enjoyed that irony.
She went to Nik’s wing of the house. Her feet carried her up there, made that left turn on the landing of their own accord. He was pulling on a fresh shirt in the bedroom, so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice her entrance.
‘Nik...’ Her voice emerged hoarsely.
He spun fluidly round to face her, a winged ebony brow quirking as he saw her standing there, sapphire eyes glittering like jewels, the only flash of life in the still beauty of her face.
For a split-second she wanted to curl her fingers around the key and hide it. It had never occurred to her that it might take courage to hand it over, an even greater courage to face the likely consequences. But that awareness hit her now and, shamed by that momentary hesitation, she lifted her hand and dropped the key down on to the bed.
‘Not a life sentence after all,’ she heard herself say flatly.
There was not a flicker of comprehension in Nik’s questioning scrutiny. He had never been so slow on the uptake. He stared at her and then back at the key blankly.
‘It’s the key to another safety-deposit box. Presumably it contains what you’re after.’ And she explained about the bureau.
‘Cristo!’ Nik whispered, coming back to life and sweeping up the key. ‘All this time. I cannot believe it!’
Leah wandered over to the window. The key to the promised land of freedom. Either the end or the beginning of their marriage. Only time would tell her which for if Nik didn’t want to let her go he wouldn’t. On that level he was basic.
‘There’s something else we have to discuss.’
‘Can it not wait?’ he demanded with impatience. ‘I won’t be able to rest until I fly back to Paris and try out this key.’
‘No, I’m afraid this can’t. You see, I happen to know what is in that box. Your birth certificate.’ Leah turned her head.
His starkly handsome features were fiercely clenched. ‘And where did you come by that information?’
Leah loosed a jagged laugh. ‘Well, certainly not from you. Stavros chose to confide in me—’
‘Stavros?’ Nik ejaculated incredulously.
‘He asked me to act as an intermediary. He assumed that I was in your confidence,’ Leah revealed. ‘So I now know that Ariadne is your natural mother.’
‘Stavros is aware of this?’ Nik was ashen, his dark gaze nailed to her.
‘Look, it’s none of my business,’ Leah breathed because Nik, with his silence, had made it so crushingly clear that it wasn’t.
‘For how long has he known?’ he launched at her rawly.
Her brow furrowed. He really didn’t know. He really didn’t know that Stavros was his father and she did not want to be the one to tell him.
‘Theos mou...if he knew, there was no need for me to worry that it might destroy their marriage!’ he vented in sudden savage frustration.
And with those few words Nik told her so much. He did not know who his father was. He had assumed he was a dark secret in Ariadne’s past, the kind of secret a conservative Greek husband would not be able to swallow. So Nik had been protecting Ariadne. And he was none too pleased to discover that his sacrifice had been in vain.
‘Stavros knows everything about your parentage. He wants to talk to you. He’s worried about the effect this continuing secrecy is having on Ariadne.’
Nik muttered something in Greek, both hands clenching. ‘Then why did he not approach me personally?’
‘He promised her that he would never do that, just as she promised your grandparents that she would never tell you.’
‘She is ashamed of me.’
‘I don’t think so, and if you weren’t so stubborn and so damnably proud you might have found that out for yourself by now!’ Leah shot at him shakily.
Nik dealt her a look of such fury that she was pinned to the spot. ‘The first time I saw her after I found out I did attempt to speak to her. She burst into tears and ran away!’ he derided. ‘She was hysterical and terrified.’
And that had been it for Nik. He must have felt absolutely betrayed by the deception which had been practised on him for over twenty years. He would have appeared angry and bitter and accusing, not hurt. He wouldn’t have shown the hurt. Unprepared to deal with his sudden knowledge, Ariadne had panicked and burnt her boats simultaneously.
With an abruptness that startled her, Nik turned away. ‘So what else do we have to discuss? Our marriage?’ he murmured without any emotion at all. ‘That is very simple. You stay or you go. Try to make your mind up before I return from Paris.’
Leah stood there in stunned silence. Shattered, she watched him shrug his broad shoulders gracefully into his jacket. There was a whirring sound in her eardrums. The silence closed in around her. Never in her life had she imagined such humiliation. She walked out of the room, her stomach clenched tight with nausea, her breath rasping in her aching throat.
If he had uncorked the champagne and danced it would have been civilised in comparison with that casual, unemotional statement of total indifference. His cruelty astounded her. But then Nik didn’t have any reason to pretend any more. He was free and he could not have told her more candidly that he wanted his freedom. He might just as well have said, There’s the door...use it! It was over...just like that. She was surplus to requirements.
And yet yesterday...Yesterday, she appreciated numbly, was a million miles removed from today when she had given him that key. That day in the bank vault Nik had said that Max had known he would dump her like a hot potato if he ever got his hands on that certificate. In anger, he had been honest, but only that once. As long as the pressure was on, he had been determined to keep their marriage intact by whatever means were within his power. And, being Nik, conscience hadn’t got a look-in!
And yet yesterday... Dear God! As the erotic imagery of what she had naïvely assumed to be their mutual passion bombarded her she covered her face, torn apart by the pain which was threatening to swallow her alive. How could you be that intimate with another human being and not care in the slightest about that person’s feelings? But then she knew how and why, didn’t she?
Nik was the man who had told her that love had terrified him, Nik, who impressed one as being utterly without fear. He had grown up without love and had learnt to do without it. When even the security of what he had believed to be his background had been torn from him by her father when he was twenty-five he had been further hardened, and if he was bitter about his family he had every right to be. He had bottled it all up and brooded about it. That was Nik: keep it all to himself, share nothing, betray no response lest he make himself vulnerable and risk an ounce of the ferocious pride which powered him.
It was a pity he hadn’t thought of her pride...but then what would have been the point? The charade Max had begun had been played out to its final act. And Nik wanted his life back—now. Not another hour, not another day.
She shuddered, chilled to the marrow by his cruelty. Now the freedom she had fought for mere weeks ago had been handed to her on a plate. Nik would not wait to be free of Max’s daughter. Well, damn him to hell, she thought as she wiped at her overflowing eyes. He was a complete bastard and he was really doing her a favour. No woman worthy of her sex would droop around weeping wetly over a creep like Nik Andreakis!
* * *
‘That was really something, honey. It took me way back.’ As Leah’s fingers lifted from the keyboard the handsome American leaning up against the piano treated her to a look of unvarnished admiration. ‘Would you happen to know...?’ He whistled a couple of out-of-tune bars and she laughed and obliged. As he returned with noticeable reluctance to his seat she smiled.
At this hour the dimly lit lounge was usually busier and she got few personal requests. Then she played what she wanted, perfectly aware that she was just supplying a little background mood music to add to the relaxed atmosphere that the hotel management liked to extend to
their wealthy clientele. She wasn’t very well paid but she was coping and she had a couple of interviews for other jobs set up for the following week.
In short, she was surviving. It had been a month since she had walked out of Nik’s life. She had learnt the virtue of keeping constantly busy. And she was so darned tired that she slept like a log at night when she finally fell into bed.
She planned the daylight hours like a military combatant. She had signed up for a computer course. She scanned the employment columns, wrote off for any jobs that might be within her reach and plenty that probably weren’t. And every morning she rose with the prayer that this would be the day she didn’t think of Nik once! Unhappily, however, playing the piano wasn’t a good defence against him. He would drift into her mind and hover with amazing persistence until she booted him out again.
So when Leah glanced up from the keyboard and saw Nik standing mere feet away she didn’t initially register that he was real. It was as though her memory had served him up. Her hands kept on playing but her sapphire eyes were nailed to the quite dazzling manifestation of her darkest desires. For that was what he was. He belonged in a locked drawer labelled ‘Unhealthy Obsession’.
‘Play for me,’ he drawled softly.
Her fingers had stilled without her even realising it. Her heart jumped into her throat. He cast a long shadow. She dropped her eyes, rigid with angry vulnerability. Why and how had he tracked her down?
‘Please...’ he murmured, and if the word sounded a little strange on his lips it was probably because it was unfamiliar to him.
‘What would you like me to play?’ she enquired as if he were a customer but without the polite smile.
‘Anything.’
‘You can’t name a single composer, can you?’ she derided.