Penniless and Purchased

by Julia James

  He stopped. As if silencing himself deliberately. Then he changed the subject. ‘It’s been a long day. I’ve meetings first thing tomorrow, so I may not see you before you set off for college.’ He came to kiss her goodnight, on each cheek. ‘Forgive me for being over-protective, my darling. I only ever want what is best for you. Enjoy going out with Mr Kazandros, if you are set on it. But don’t expect too much of it. And, Sophie?’ His tone changed again. ‘Remember that I may be doing business with him.’ There was a tightness in his voice suddenly, and Sophie stepped back, looking at him a moment.

  ‘Is…is it important business?’ she asked hesitantly.

  The tight look was back on his face. Then she saw it relax. ‘Just don’t give away any trade secrets!’ he said, with deliberate lightness.

  She put on another wry smile. ‘I don’t know any!’

  Her father’s expression flickered for a moment—as if, she thought, he weren’t quite sure about something. Then he nodded. ‘Just as well.’ He dropped a last kiss on her forehead.

  But as he did she felt his hands tighten on her shoulders suddenly, as if emotion were going through him. She felt a wave of her filial love seize her, coming on top of the state of exhilaration that had been mounting all evening.

  ‘Oh, Daddy, I’ll be careful! Careful of everything! Careful of letting out trade secrets and of letting him sweep me away! But, oh, oh, he is just so wonderful!’ She stepped away, skipping down the stairs on feet as light as air, her mind totally absorbed once more with the wonderful, glorious, breathtaking gorgeousness of Nikos Kazandros!

  The next day was an agony. She so wanted to phone home, to find out if he’d called with a concert date, but made herself wait until she got back from college.

  To find no message waiting for her.

  Her heart plunged. Had he just said that about the concert but not meant it? She dragged herself up to her room, sank down on her bed, feeling her heart sinking with her. Blankly she stared. Had she really thought he would ask her out?

  Yes—yes, I did! I really did!

  She felt her insides clench, and for a moment it was like a physical pain, knowing that she’d been so ridiculously optimistic. Her hands clutched in her lap as she stared down at the carpet, knowing with a heavy, bleak certainty that she would never hear from Nikos Kazandros again. Never, ever, ever…

  The house phone by her bedside rang, and listlessly she picked it up.

  ‘Miss Sophie?’ Mrs T’s brisk, tart tones came down the line. ‘I’d appreciate it if you came down to the kitchen. There’s been a delivery for you, and it’s not the sort of thing I can be running up and down to the top floor with!’

  My music books, thought Sophie dully. She had some on order, and they weighed a ton, so she knew why Mrs T was reluctant to bring them up herself. Dolefully, she trailed downstairs. But when she saw what was on the dresser, elation soared through her again.

  Flowers—a bouquet so vast she knew exactly why the housekeeper hadn’t tried to carry them, their rich, exotic fragrance pouring through the room. And with them a note. Handwritten.

  I hope a Covent Garden gala will be acceptable to you?

  I’ll send a car for seven tomorrow.

  It was just signed ‘NK’.

  She hugged it to her and danced all the way back up to her rooms, the blooms in her grip wobbling precariously, her heart singing with delirious delight.

  If she’d taken for ever to get ready just for dinner, for the following evening she took all afternoon. She was ready—just—when the sleek limo drew up outside the house, and though she felt a stab of disappointment when she realised she was the only passenger, she could feel her excitement mounting as the car made its slow way towards Covent Garden. By the time she was disgorged she was trembling, and as she climbed out, Nikos was walking forward.

  She froze.

  He was wearing evening dress, and if she’d thought he looked gorgeous in a lounge suit, in a tuxedo he simply melted her on the spot!

  He took her hand, murmuring something in Greek. His eyes were fixed on her, and she felt the thrill come again.

  ‘You look…’ he said, but there was a husk in his voice and he could not finish.

  There weren’t words to describe her! Oh, he could describe the dress—a slim column of ivory silk—and a matching stole, picked out with the most delicate embroidery, and around her throat pearls like angel’s tears. Her hair was caught in a loose coil at the nape of her neck, and her make-up was so barely there that it seemed invisible, except for the exquisite enhancement of her beauty. A beauty he could find no words for, only desire.

  Oh, not desire as he knew it, but a new, different kind of desire that had nothing in common with the emotion he usually associated with the term. No, this was a new kind of sensation. One that made him want to…want to…

  He didn’t know what. And didn’t bother to try and find words. What for? He didn’t need them. Didn’t need anything right now except to smile at her and lead her forward into the opera house, thronged with arrivals, and murmur something appropriate about being glad that she’d wanted to come this evening.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Glad? I can’t even believe you got tickets! They’re gold-dust for events like this!’

  The corner of his mouth pulled. ‘Ah, so that’s why you accepted my invitation. And there I was, being a conceited idiot and hoping it was for my sake, not a gold-dust ticket to a gala!’

  Her eyes flew to him. ‘How could you think that?’ she breathed.

  He stilled. He seemed to do that all the time. She kept stopping him in his tracks. She’d done it over and over again the evening before, but now, like this, as she gazed at him he felt it again, like a trip hammer, slamming down on him.

  What is she doing to me?

  He became aware they were holding up others, and jolted forwards again, guiding her smoothly. But he didn’t touch her. His hand hovered behind her back, but somehow he felt that the kind of casual body contact he would take for granted with any other woman would be out of place.

  When I touch her, it will be special…

  And this evening would be special, he knew. Not just because even for him it had taken considerable effort—not to say expense!—to get hold of tickets for the evening, but because—well, because, that was all.

  He stopped analysing. Gave himself to the experience. The experience of feeling that something was happening to him that was new—quite, quite new.

  She was walking gracefully forward, and he could see male eyes turning. And he could also see that she was gazing around her as they made their way through the throng, her eyes widening every now and then. In the crush bar, champagne was circulating, and Nikos took a glass for himself and for her. She took a sip, then leant forward, slightly towards him.

  He was raising his glass. ‘To a memorable evening,’ he said.

  She didn’t need to echo his words to know that they were true. Wonderfully, magically true!

  And they stayed true all evening. She sat beside him in the plush seats, her face alight, as some of the greatest artists in the world sang on the famous stage below, wreathed in its crimson velvet curtains. All the time, every moment of the gala, she was overpoweringly conscious of Nikos sitting beside her—the lean strength of his body, the occasional breath-catching brush of his sleeve, even though she kept her hands clasped in her lap. By the time the gala ended her emotions were sky-high, swept up by the soaring music and artistry of the performers. In the final applause she turned to Nikos.

  ‘Thank you! Thank you! All my life I’ll remember this evening!’

  Her eyes were like stars, dewed with emotion.

  She saw his face still again, as it had done before. Then, slowly, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips.

  ‘As will I,’ he said softly.

  She could only sit, her heart soaring, face alight, lips parted, gazing at him, feeling more than she had ever felt in her life before! More than she had ever thought it possib
le to feel.

  The soft brush of his lips on her hand had made her breathless, and then he was lowering her hand, but not relinquishing it, instead drawing her to her feet as the audience started to get to theirs. She felt his fingers lace through hers, so strong, so warm, holding hers, and felt faint with the wonderfulness of it.

  Nikos! His name reverberated in her head. Nikos! Nikos! Nikos!

  She floated on air as she walked beside him, his fingers still laced with hers, as they made their slow procession from the opera house. Leaving took ages, because the narrow streets outside were thronged, but eventually Nikos was handing her into the limo, and she was sinking into its depths, he was coming in beside her, and the limo was moving slowly off.

  ‘I asked your father if I might take you for supper after the performance,’ Nikos said. His eyes glinted. ‘I’ve got you till midnight, but you must be home on the stroke of twelve!’

  She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘He’s terribly Victorian.’

  But Nikos did not laugh with her. ‘He is right to be careful of you,’ he said soberly. Then his tone altered. ‘Now, I hope my choice of restaurant will please you.’

  He could have suggested fish and chips and she would have been enchanted, but where he took her was infinitely more salubrious. It was uncrowded and, best of all, their table was very private. What she ate she had no idea, nor did she have much more idea what they talked about. Sophie knew her whole attention was on Nikos—Nikos alone! Gazing at him, smiling at him, listening to him, knowing with every passing moment that he was the most wonderful, wonderful man she had ever met! And by the time, two hours later, he reluctantly escorted her from the limo up to the front door of her father’s house, she knew something else, as well. Something even more precious.

  She was in love.

  She knew it for a certainty—irrefutably, incontestably. She was in love with Nikos Kazandros!

  Dreamily, she waltzed around her room, knowing she was happier than she had ever been in her life, and that the rest of her life was going to be the most wonderful in the world—because she was in love with Nikos Kazandros! In love! In love! In love!

  And nothing could stop it! Nothing!

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘SOPHIE.’

  The sound of her name was like a rasp across wounded flesh. For a moment filled with agony Sophie felt the pain of it. Then, steeling herself, she turned expressionless eyes on Nikos.

  ‘What do you want?’ she responded stonily.

  Something moved—flashed—in those dark eyes into whose depths she had once fallen and drowned.

  ‘Want?’ he echoed. The taunt was still there, the harshness. ‘Why should I want anything—anything that you have to offer now? Cosmo’s welcome to your well-displayed charms!’ The eyes lashed over her, the whip of contempt laying bare her skin.

  But she would not feel it, would not feel the lash of his words, his taunting. What was it to her? What was he to her?

  Nothing. Nothing at all, ever again!

  ‘Get lost, Nikos,’ she said, and turned away, plunging into the melee in the room. Even Cosmo Dimistris seemed like a haven from this unbearable encounter.

  As he watched her walk away through the room, Nikos felt emotion sear through him. Then, abruptly, it was overridden. He suddenly realised he could no longer see Georgias. Cursing under his breath, he stared around, as if he could conjure him up, and then, a grim look on his face, he headed down a wide corridor that clearly led towards the apartment’s bedrooms.

  It took him a while to find his charge, throwing open one door after another and finding the rooms occupied. He carried on his furious search until he found Georgias, his tie loose, shirt undone, the girl he’d been dancing with even more undressed, the pair of them collapsed on a bed together.

  Nikos wrested her off, ignoring her squeals of inebriated protest at being balked of her prey, then yanked Georgias up-right. He was almost completely out of it, his eyes glazed, hair tousled. Nikos hoped to God it was merely alcohol in his system.

  It took a while to get Georgias out of the apartment, their way barred by the milling party throng and imprecations not to leave, and Georgias had a suddenly reanimated desire to dance again, but finally Nikos manhandled him out, and down in the lift.

  Getting him across the lobby required some force, but once the night air hit, Georgias collapsed almost completely. Nikos glared angrily out across the roadway. Rain was sluicing down, cold and soaking, but at least a taxi driver had seen him sheltering under the portico of the luxury apartment block, and was diverting towards him. With effort, Nikos manhandled Georgias inside, and thrust him into the far corner of the cab, where he slumped in an ungainly fashion, his eyes closing in insensible stupor. Nikos gritted his teeth.

  Brusquely, he gave the name of their hotel, and the cabbie nodded and moved off, tyres sluicing through the rain-filled gutter. Nikos threw himself back into his corner of the cab, his mind in turmoil. Only one image dominated it.

  Sophie Granton.

  He felt emotion surge inside him again—convulsing, turbid. Filled with anger, with more than anger.

  Why the hell did I have to see her?

  Why the hell had she had to rise up from the pit like that? Seeing her again, seeing what she’d come to—her dress half hanging off her, keeping company with the likes of jerks like Cosmo!

  Memory slanted through his head, unwanted, unbidden—but vivid.

  Her graceful body sheathed in a column of ivory, a chiffon stole around her pale shoulders, her face radiant with a beauty that had made his breath stop in his lungs, stepping towards him from the limo to where he waited for her outside the opera house, and her eyes, luminescent, glowing—fixed on him…

  With brute force, he twisted his head away, banishing the memory. Now, instead, the last memory he would ever have of her would be draped on Cosmo Dimistris’s arm at a party for coke-heads and tarts…

  His mouth thinned, tightened to a whiplash, a lash that flayed across his soul. If that was what she wanted now, that was what she could have.

  And yet—

  Abruptly, he leant forward, rapping on the glass behind the driver. The cab slowed and the cabbie twisted slightly, sliding open the partition.

  ‘Turn around,’ said Nikos.

  Sophie was walking. It was raining, she was soaked, she was freezing, but she didn’t care. Not about that, but about how stupid she’d been.

  No, not just stupid. That was far, far too weak a word. Anger raged inside her. At herself. Sickening, gut-churning. It was like acid inside her. Eating her up.

  Will I never, ever learn? Will I go on being so insanely, criminally stupid—so pathetically, abjectly naïve?

  Virulent self-hatred snaked through her.

  I thought I’d finally learnt my lessons! All of them! I thought I could finally say that I’d wised up!

  Like hell she had! The needles of freezing rain pounded down on her and she welcomed them as the punishment she deserved. She walked on blindly, writhing in self-loathing and bleak rage.

  In the roadway, a car turned. A cab, she realised too late, as it arced through the wash of water in the gutter, sending a plume of cold, dirty water over her legs.

  ‘Get in.’

  The voice was terse. It sounded angry. She stared. The passenger door of the taxi had opened just in front of her, and holding it open was Nikos Kazandros.

  ‘I said get in!’

  She froze. And in that moment Nikos reached out and grabbed at her. For an instant she resisted, but he was far too strong for her, and he pulled her into the cab, thrusting her down on to the jump seat opposite him, yanking the cab door shut.

  ‘OK, drive,’ he said to the cabbie. The cabbie glanced briefly at his latest passenger, but she was just sitting there, making no move to get out, so he let out the throttle and moved off in to the traffic again.

  On her seat, Sophie felt her brain start to work again. And her muscles. She started to shiver, violently. Water
was running down from the hair plastered wetly to her head.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Nikos heard himself grind out to Sophie. ‘Walking along looking like that?’

  She stared at him through rain-wet eyelashes. Her mascara was starting to run. It looked like black tears.

  ‘I didn’t have a coat with me,’ she said. Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she had to clench her jaw to stop them.

  ‘And you didn’t think to take a taxi?’ Nikos retorted witheringly. In the shifting light of the interior of the cab he could see the soaked satin of her dress outline every contour of her body. Her evening gown was clinging to her like a second skin, and twice as revealing. She looked half naked…

  Involuntarily, he felt, to his own anger and self-disgust, an awareness of her body beneath the semi-transparent material. Of the twin swell of her breasts, their nipples standing out from the cold. He dragged his eyes back to her face.

  She made no answer to his jibe, only closed her mouth tightly, jaw clamped. She was shivering, Nikos could see, and clutching a tiny bag on her lap. He pulled his gaze away, deliberately glancing at Georgias. But Georgias was slumped into stertorous sleep in the corner of the cab.

  ‘There’s a tube station! Let me out!’

  Nikos’s attention was whipped back again. Sophie was rapping on the glass behind the cabbie’s seat, and he started to slow down as they approached the station. Nikos’s anger mounted.

  ‘Are you insane? You can’t go on the tube like that! You’re half naked!’ His eyes flashed darkly. ‘What the hell are you doing, anyway? You were with Cosmo.’

  She didn’t answer him, just started to fumble with the door catch as the taxi pulled over beside the entrance to the tube station. Nikos’s hand laced out and imprisoned her wrist.