by Julia James
‘I asked you a question—’
‘Get lost.’ Her voice was a low snarl. ‘I’m getting out here.’
‘The hell you are!’ He rapped on the cabbie’s glass. ‘Keep going!’
The cabbie shrugged and set off again, but Nikos could see him glancing in his rearview mirror. He slid the glass partition open.
‘I’m giving her a lift, that’s all. You can drop me off at my hotel, and I’ll pay the fare for wherever she wants to go. That OK with you?’ he finished witheringly.
The cabbie eyed him, then nodded. ‘Whatever you say, guv. If the lady don’t object.’
Nikos’s gaze ripped back to Sophie. She was sitting there, hunched, arms half crossed across her torso now, as if to veil her body from him. She was still shivering, staring expressionlessly at the floor. Her face was blank. Quite blank. Water from her sodden hair still dripped down the line of her jaw. Mascara ran down her cheeks. She looked a mess.
Why wasn’t she with Cosmo? Nikos lurched back into his seat, eyes on her. ‘So, did Cosmo give you the push?’
She didn’t answer, only gave him a brief, knifing glance before closing in on herself again. Her blankness angered Nikos. Everything about her angered him. Everything. He could feel his anger rising—biting. Wanting to find an out.
‘Or did you change your mind about putting out for him? Is that it?’
That got a reaction. Eyes like daggers flashed up at him, fury in them.
‘That wasn’t ever on the table! Nor, for your information, did I choose his company!’
‘So how come you ended up with him?’ Nikos pushed back.
The flash in the eyes came again. ‘He hired me for the evening! As an escort.’
Nikos stilled, not believing what he’d just heard her say.
‘A hooker?’
‘I am not a hooker!’ The snarl came from her throat. ‘I took a job at an escort agency, as an escort! That’s all! I’m well aware that some girls do a hell of a lot more than just have dinner and drinks with their clients, but not me!’ Breath razored in her lungs as her eyes blazed. ‘So whatever else you think, and whatever else that disgusting jerk thought, that was all I signed up for! And he knew it, and the agency knew it, and now you can know it too—and you can take it and choke on it!’
She was fumbling for the door catch again, dimly aware, in the fury and tumult in her head, that the taxi had stopped. She couldn’t find the catch, and then, as she fumbled desperately, she felt a hand close over hers, pulling it away. The cabbie was speaking, opening the partition slightly, his voice wary. ‘You OK there, luv?’
‘She’s fine!’ Nikos cut across roughly, closing the glass again. ‘Keep driving!’
For a moment longer the cabbie looked over his shoulder. But Sophie was sitting frozen again, as if all the fire had been doused with a pail of water. Oh, what the hell? she thought, a bitter weariness crushing down on her as the cold in her bones took over and she started to shiver again.
Why did I rise to it? What do I care what he thinks of me? What could I possibly, possibly care? He’s nothing to me—nothing, nothing, nothing.
Depression, weariness, and despair like a deadweight crushed her down. Her shivering intensified. Her mind seemed like a blur, a mush. Too much had happened, too much overload. She could not take any more…
‘Sophie—’
Nikos’s voice cut across her deadening mind, and she raised blurred eyes to him. Her make-up was running into them, stinging, and drops of rain were still oozing down her forehead, making her blink.
Nikos. I’m in a taxi with Nikos Kazandros, and I don’t know why, or how, or what the hell is going on, and I just can’t cope any more, I can’t…can’t cope…
‘Sophie!’ Nikos spoke again, louder this time. Demanding attention. She stared at him and realised he had taken off his jacket, was holding it out to her. She shrank back, as if it were poisoned.
‘I don’t want it,’ she bit out. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re soaking wet and freezing—even in here.’
‘I’m fine,’ she repeated doggedly.
Nikos’s dark eyes glinted balefully, but he shrugged himself back into his jacket. ‘You really believed Cosmo Dimistris just wanted a sexy female to have dinner with?’ The question was scathing.
She said nothing, only clenched her jaw.
‘Answer me!’
Her eyes flashed again. ‘What do you want to know for? What possible concern is it of yours?’
‘Just tell me,’ he gritted.
‘Yes,’ she enunciated, berating herself even as she did so, because she owed this man no explanation, no justification. But she wanted to wipe the sneer from his face—needed to. ‘I did. Because that is what I signed up to. When I went to the agency, I said I would only do dinner dates, nothing else. And the woman said fine, it was up to me, it was my choice, and the agency didn’t get involved with anything more than providing the introduction—’
His laugh, harsh and short, cut across her. ‘Introduction? Did you think you were working for a dating agency? No one can be that naïve!’
She twisted her head away. A rock was in her stomach. Yes, she’d been that naïve, all right. So naïve—right up to the moment when she’d gone to find Cosmo Dimistris and he had offered her some cocaine, having clearly just snorted some himself, and said it would make the sex much, much better, whilst steering her into a bedroom.
The rock in her stomach hardened, and she felt again the lash of self-hatred that she’d flagellated herself with as she’d trudged down the rain-sluiced street. Cosmo had made it savagely clear to her, with a laugh so coarse that it had almost obliterated the hot groping of his hand, that if she wasn’t going to come up with the goods, she could stop wasting his time and get the hell out, because there were plenty of other girls here who would provide what he wanted.
The taxi was turning off the road, heading into the sweeping entrance of a hotel.
‘Your hotel, guv.’
The voice of the cabbie penetrated her self-castigation. Immediately she made for the door. She had to get out, and fast. Out and away. Away from Nikos Kazandros.
‘Stay where you are.’ His voice was harsh, and it was clearly an order.
She glowered at him.
‘The cab will take you wherever you want to go. I’ll settle the fare to cover it.’
He was turning his attention now to the other occupant of the cab. Sophie had no idea who he was, and cared less. She just wanted Nikos gone, gone. And then she could get the hell out of here.
Wordlessly, Nikos set about the task of making Georgias sufficiently conscious to get out of the cab. He could feel the thrum of the humming engine of the car as it hovered under the portico of the Park Lane hotel.
‘Out,’ he said brusquely to Georgias, thrusting him on to the concourse, where he stood swaying and blinking. He turned to climb out himself, then paused, looking one last time at Sophie as she sat there hunched, still shivering. One final question seared through his brain. His eyes bored into her as he leant towards her.
‘Why? Give me one good reason why? Whatever the hell you are—hooker, escort, good-time girl, whatever—why go anywhere near this…this sleaze? Take a good, hard look at yourself when you get home—a good, hard look, Sophie—and think about whether you like what you see. Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.’
His voice was low, audible only to her. Her eyes flashed up, and for a second, just a second, Nikos felt himself reeling as if she had physically struck him.
‘Why do you think?’ she bit out, hissing, like Medusa’s snakes. ‘I need the bloody money!’
Her face was contorted, her eyes like daggers, ringed with black mascara, like black hollows, and in that instant Nikos recoiled, as if seeing a death’s head. Then his face set and he hurled himself from the cab, slamming the door, pausing only to extract his wallet and, with grim, tight face, thrust a fifty-pound note at the cabbie.
‘Take her wh
erever she wants,’ he said. Then he seized Georgias by the arm and marched him into the hotel.
Inside the taxi, Sophie stared after him for one long, last moment, until he had disappeared. Then she started to get out of the cab.
‘Oi, luv, your fare’s covered,’ said the cabbie, sliding open his partition.
‘I need an Underground station,’ she said, in a low, strained voice.
The cabbie looked concerned. ‘Luv, he’s right. You can’t go on a train all wet the way you are. You’ll get attacked. Mugged. Or worse. Look…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not my business, but I’d be happier taking you somewhere. I don’t want to read about you in the paper tomorrow, OK?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, just started the cab moving again. Sophie went on sitting there, shivering. But it wasn’t just the cold that was making her tremble.
The cabbie went on talking, half turning his head to do so. ‘Listen, luv, I’ve got a daughter your age. I wouldn’t like to see her—well, in the state you are. And I’d tell her straight what I’m going to tell you.’ He took a breath. ‘Blokes like that—’ he nodded his head back in the direction of the hotel ‘—they’re bad news for girls. All flash and cash and that’s your lot. Stay clear of them. That’s what I say—and it’s what any dad would say. And if you ain’t got a dad…well, I’ll say it for him—OK? A dad wants to be proud of his daughter—and to know she’s safe.’
Sophie heard the words, heard them from very far away. From a life that had gone for ever. That could never come back. Never.
And the bitter, bitter irony of what the cabbie had said made her want to burst into savage, hysterical laughter.
Or into tears that would drown her in their bottomless depths.
Nikos stood by the plate-glass window of his hotel lounge, looking out over the darkness of Hyde Park beyond. His tie was undone, his jacket discarded. One hand was splayed against the chill pane, the other cradling a glass of whisky from the drinks cabinet. His face was dark. Blank. Eyes unseeing.
But he was seeing, all right. Except not what was real. Not what existed any more.
But it never did exist—it never did! The past never was what I thought it was, and it took the narrowest damn escape of my life to realise that!
And thank God he had escaped!
He felt an old familiar emotion convulse him. One he had not felt now for a long, long time. He had forcibly banned it from existing, though it had taken all his strength to do so. He knew why it had struck again—knew it was inevitable.
Why had he had to see her again? What malign twist of fate had made it happen?
He took a brooding mouthful of the whisky, feeling its fire burn down his throat. He wanted to numb everything inside him. Wanted the alcohol to shut down all sensation, all thought. All memory.
But it wouldn’t work. The memory was still alive, writhing like a pit of snakes in his belly.
And it wasn’t just memory inside him. There was something more dangerous, more powerful…
No! I will not allow it! I will not let myself go there! Never, ever again! I cauterised it four years ago—and I will not let it back in! I will not!
His mind slammed into action, exerting every gram of self-discipline.
I will control this! It will not control me!
The mantra gritted through his head, repeating as his fingers pressed tighter still around the curve of the glass. It was vital, essential, to keep control. Because if he failed—
The snakes writhed inside him again, and he slugged back another mouthful of whisky. He wanted to sleep, craved oblivion, but he knew with a thick anger that if he slept it would be worse, far worse, than staying awake. If he slept—he would dream.
Memories he could control. But dreams…
He pushed himself away abruptly from the window, and ranged restlessly around the room. How the hell had Sophie Granton come to end up working as an escort? His glass stilled even as he started to lift it again to his mouth. The image of her face as she’d flung her stinging answer at him seared in his mind.
‘I need the bloody money!’
He’d recoiled—the venom in her voice had been virulent.
Again, his brows snapped together. Why was she so strapped for cash?
What had happened to Sophie Granton since he had discovered what she was really after? Granton plc had gone under. He’d known that—known it was inevitable the moment he’d pulled Kazandros Corp out of the negotiations and gone back to Athens to report that the risks were too great.
And so they had been—but not to Kazandros Corp. Only to himself.
But I cut my losses—I got out in time! I saved my own skin!
But Edward Granton had not been able to save his. The end had come swiftly, his company imploding under the weight of debts, of unrepayable loans, of foreclosures and inevitable financial collapse.
Nikos had been back in Athens then, and what had happened to Edward Granton after his company had gone under had not been Nikos’s concern.
Let alone what had happened to his daughter.
So what did happen to her?
Impatiently, he brushed the question aside. Sure, Edward Granton would have had to cut back, would doubtless have taken some face-saving action like opting for early retirement, probably somewhere like Spain. But he was no financial fool, despite having over-extended his company during the recession. He’d have had assets protected from the corporate balance sheet, assets that he could adequately live on, even though it would have meant retrenching.
But maybe Sophie—cosseted as she was by her doting father—hadn’t wanted to retrench. Maybe she’d gone on spending money they just didn’t have. And maybe now the credit card bills had arrived she thought she’d come up with an easy way to make money to pay them off.
Perhaps she’d really thought that all she had to do was keep a rich man company for the evening and he’d pay for the privilege, not expect anything else in return! A derisive snort broke from Nikos. Well, she’d found out tonight that there was no such thing as easy money! Not that it should have taken more than five minutes with Cosmo to suss that he was in the market for sex, and anything else was just an appetiser. His eyes alone, never mind his wandering hands, should have told her that Cosmo had fully intended her to end up horizontal…
But it was a mistake to let that thought even have house room. Immediately, disastrously, Nikos saw an image from the past flare in his mind…
Sophie, her beauty revealed to him in all its incandescent perfection! Her pearled skin, hair like silk, spread on the pillow like a banner as he took her in his aching arms…
No! With savage rage, he forced the memory out of his head. Tearing it from him as he had once torn Sophie’s pleading hands.
His face hardened. Sophie had wanted only one thing from him then, disguise it as she might. The same as she wanted now.
Money. Nothing but money.
Roughly knocking back the last of his whisky, he snapped the glass down on the cabinet.
Enough! He had done with Sophie Granton—she was nothing to him, not any more. And that was all he had to remember!
Face set, he headed for the en suite bathroom, and bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
SOPHIE fumbled with the capsule contained in its silver foil, and managed to extract it. Then with shaking hands, she got it into her mouth and rinsed it down with water from a cracked mug. She wanted the painkiller to work instantly, but knew she would have to wait before the tight, hot pounding in her head would ease and bring relief. If only it could bring a cessation of memory! If only it could erase everything from the night before—everything!
Her face contorted. Dear God, how could last night have happened? What vicious twist of fate had heaped that upon her? Four years—four years—since her life had been destroyed, and now Nikos Kazandros had reappeared, like some hideous, malign demon, to mock and taunt her in her very hour of desperate self-abasement!
God almighty, did he think she�
��d wanted to take that hideous job? Dressing up like a tart and meeting a complete stranger for the evening? She’d had to force herself to do it! Force herself to let everyone see her in that vulgar, exposing dress, to smile, and make fatuous, feeble conversation to a man who made her flesh crawl, made her feel even dirtier than she felt already.
Hasn’t life done enough to me?
The cry came from the depths—the depths where she lived now, to which she had sunk remorselessly, pitilessly.
She stared around her. The tiny, shabby bedsit was hardly big enough for a bed, let alone an alcove with a sink, and a cracked dresser with a hot ring and kettle on it. But it was all she could afford—all she dared afford. She bowed her head, crushed beneath a weight she could not bear.
But she must.
On top of the narrow chest of drawers was the latest letter. Beneath the polite phrase was the harsh, brutal truth.
We regret to inform you that unless the fees are paid in full, in advance, by the end of the month, we shall have no option but to insist that you make immediate alternative arrangements—
She sheered her mind away, as she always did. Had to. Because to do anything else was unbearable.
I have to get the money! I have to!
It didn’t matter how—it couldn’t matter. She had to pay that bill—just had to!
Fear gnawed at her as she stared at the letter, at the stark, pitiless words in it.
As stark and pitiless as the world. She knew that now. The world was a vile place, without mercy or kindness or goodness in it. Hadn’t she learnt that? Hadn’t the last four punishing, terrifying years taught her that?
Into her eyes a hardness came, glazing them over. What use were feelings, sensibilities, moral revulsion? Where did they get you? Nowhere. The end of the road.
But for her the road stretched on. Endlessly. And, whatever anyone thought of her, whatever she thought of herself, the money had to be found. Had to be!
In her head she heard the scornful, condemning words of Nikos Kazandros pouring over her, cruel and vicious, like acid into an unstanched wound.