by Julia James
‘Five thousand?’ Nikos echoed the amount in a harsh voice. ‘And you think you can clear that kind of money just by working as a no-sex escort? A little light evening work, just smiling and chatting and looking sexy?’ He didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm. ‘Why do you need the money, anyway?’
Her nails dug deeper. Tension netted around her. ‘I owe it.’
‘Paying off credit cards that have stopped funding you, is that it? So why not just go to Daddy and get him to bail you out—or has he finally stopped indulging you?’
The band around her head was tightening more. ‘He doesn’t know I owe the money.’ She spoke tersely. It was all she could manage.
Nikos looked at her. So she was hiding not just her lifestyle from her father but her debts, as well. For a moment he considered tracking down Edward Granton and putting him in the picture. Then he disposed of the thought. The man did not deserve to know the unsavoury truth about his daughter now, much as he hadn’t needed to know what she had tried four years ago. However, Sophie had to be stopped, right now, from the course she was so rashly taking. Time to cut to the chase. It galled him to do it, but it was necessary—that was all.
‘Very well. I will settle your debts for you. I will give you the five thousand pounds.’
She heard the words, heard them but could not take them in. He was offering her the money she so desperately needed? For a moment emotion knifed in her like a sword. Then a word formed on her lips.
‘Why?’
‘Because, Sophie, it’s in my interests.’
Emotion knifed again. She wanted to lash out at him, tell him he could take his money and go to hell! She would never, never take a penny from him! Never!
His eyes were like steel hooks, holding hers. ‘Once the tabloids pick up on you, they will dig into your background—and what will they find, Sophie? Who will they find?’ His voice was edged, like a razorblade. ‘They’ll find me. They’ll find that I once—dated—you.’ He said the word as if it were poison. ‘And then they’ll drag me into the mud that you’re wading into. The Greek tabloids will pick up the story, linking a Kazandros to a hooker—because that’s what they’ll call you, however coyly—and then my parents will hear of it. I won’t have that, Sophie. I really won’t.’ His voice was hard, icy. ‘So I’m prepared to hand over the five thousand pounds you say you owe. But—’ he held up a peremptory hand ‘—not only do you ditch the escort agency and never go near it again, you also clear out of London.’
Her answer was automatic. ‘I can’t. I can’t leave London.’
‘You want my money—you leave London.’
‘I live here.’ She kept her answers short. It was all she could manage.
She saw him give a shrug. ‘You can come back. But not till Cosmo Dimistris is out of the country, you’ve rusticated long enough, and I’m out of the UK, as well.’
Her emotions were churning. Aggression, resentment, and so much more—all in a concrete mixer, heaving around inside her. Mixing with the voice inside her.
Don’t listen to him! You can’t take his money—you can’t!
But hope, desperation, seared like hot steel through her brain.
Oh, God, he could hand me the money. It means nothing to him, just loose change, but to me…to me…
She tried to cut her mind off. Tried not to let the words form in her head, the pleading, the hope, flaring like a thin, impossible flame.
I can’t! I can’t take his money! It’s impossible! Impossible! Anyone but him…any one! Not him—not him!
Not Nikos Kazandros. Not the man who had once been everything to her. A dream come true, a dream of bliss—until the dream had turned into a nightmare. A nightmare that had never left her. A nightmare she had to cope with day in, day out. That and the desperate need for money—so desperate that she’d been prepared to take on the vile work that Nikos was lecturing her about. Standing at the gutter’s edge, the way he’d said. And if she was prepared to do that, then why be squeamish about taking money from Nikos?
It’s money—that’s all that matters. Money you need, money you’ve got to have—because if you don’t have it then you know what’s going to happen. And who cares where it comes from? You were ready enough to earn it by draping yourself over any man who paid you! So who the hell do you think you are to be so damn delicate now, saying you can’t touch Nikos Kazandros’s money because he once ripped every stupid, pathetic illusion from you!
The voice stabbed brutally at her, merciless and harsh, telling her what she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to face. But she had to face it. Had learnt in the bitter years since her world had crashed around her that running away was not an option. That facing the brutal realities of life, of the life that she had been plunged into, forced into, was all she could do.
Her lesson had been hard. Bitterly hard.
But she had learnt it.
Her lips pressed together tightly; her hands clenched. If Nikos Kazandros was offering her five thousand pounds she would take it. Grab it. Seize it. What did her pride matter? Her heart? Her feelings?
They had stopped mattering four years ago, when everything had crashed around her.
Her eyes were like stone, her voice short and sharp as she addressed him. ‘How long will that be?’ she demanded aggressively.
‘How long?’ He echoed her demand. ‘A couple of weeks? Then you can do what the hell you want.’
Sophie’s mind raced. Homing in on the essentials.
‘I need the money before then.’ She spoke tersely, grittily.
‘You can have a cheque when you’re out of London.’
She had seen his eyes flash, flare with brief anger at the way she was speaking to him. She didn’t care.
‘Where do I have to go? I can’t leave the country.’ She spelt that out up-front. She could be out of London for two weeks, just about, but she couldn’t be out of the country. She needed to know she was only a train ride from London, not risk being stranded abroad, unable to afford the fare home.
Nikos’s mouth thinned. ‘Don’t worry, Sophie, I’m not whisking you off to some romantic hideaway.’ The sarcasm bit at her, but she ignored that too. She would ignore everything about Nikos Kazandros—everything except the money he was offering her. The lifeline…
Emotion stabbed inside her again, despite her attempt to crush it back. Dear God—money and Nikos Kazandros…
Nikos Kazandros, offering a lifeline…
The lifeline he had refused to offer before.
The irony of it twisted in her consciousness.
But the lifeline I wanted then wasn’t a paltry five thousand pounds…
No. The thought seared like a burning brand in her head. It was a lot more. Far, far more than money…
She sheered her mind away. No point treading that bitter path again. The path paved with broken dreams. She made herself meet his gaze, made herself look at those dark, cold eyes. Eyes that had once melted her in their heat.
But never would again.
For a second, a fraction of a second so brief she hardly registered it, she felt emotion so powerful, so agonising, that she felt faint with it. Then it was gone. Only the expressionless, indifferent gaze on her was left.
‘So where—?’ she began, her voice demanding again.
This time he cut her short. He got to his feet. ‘I’ll send a car,’ he told her. ‘Be ready at eight tomorrow morning.’
‘That’s too early,’ she said immediately. It would give her no time to go into the shop, explain what was happening, hope they would let her disappear for two weeks without sacking her. But even if they did sack her, she would have to accept it and then just try and get another job swiftly when she was allowed back to London again.
‘Tough.’ His reply was unsympathetic.
She glared at him, but said nothing. She had no choice but to take what was handed out to her. Just the way she had for four hideous years. Taking everything thrown at her. Swallowing it. Enduring it.
And she would endure this too. Because the lifeline he was tossing at her was one she could not afford to throw back in his face.
He waited, pointedly, as she moved around the table.
‘I’ll have my driver take you home now,’ he told her, pulling out his mobile to summon his car. ‘Give you time to pack.’
She said nothing. She couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except let him steer her out of the hotel on to the pavement. A sleek saloon was there already, and the driver got out, opening the rear passenger door for her. How many times had she shared Nikos’s chauffeured car, been out with him in the evening? Been escorted home by him, her heart singing with bliss…?
She pulled her gaze away. Away from his tall, commanding figure that could make her heart skip a beat just looking at it.
But not any more.
Never again.
As she plunged inside the car, scooping her long, clinging skirt out of the way as she did so, she twisted her head away, staring out of the far window at the traffic coursing heedlessly by. Refusing to look back at Nikos.
The driver spoke to her on his intercom, and she gave him her address then hunkered further back into the corner of her seat, still not looking out at Nikos, not knowing if he were even still there or not as the car pulled out into the traffic.
On the pavement, heedless of passers-by, Nikos stood stock still, staring after the disappearing car. His face was expressionless. But inside, virulently, he was calling himself every kind of fool for having allowed himself to see her again, to do this face to face instead of setting one of his staff to sort it, keeping himself well away from her. Too late now, though—it was done. Sophie was dealt with, and also the danger she threatened his family with. Silencing his castigations, he reached out his hand to flag down a passing taxi.
Heading the other way.
The way that did not have Sophie Granton in its path.
CHAPTER FIVE
NIKOS gazed abstractedly out across the expanse of his London office, filled with late morning light, and wondered what Sophie Granton was making of her new accommodation. It would be quite a shock for her, that was for certain. He gave a thin, humourless smile. A luxury venue it was not.
What had she been expecting? he wondered to himself. That he would keep her in the comfort she was so used to? His smile narrowed to a tight, whipped line. After all, that had always been his main purpose in her life, as far as she was concerned…
That was what he must make himself remember about Sophie Granton. Nothing else.
Nothing about the way she’d used to smile at him, the way they would talk, endlessly, about anything and everything. The way she’d gaze at him, her eyes sparkling like diamonds, when he complimented her. Or the way they’d laughed together, danced together, walked hand in hand together…
He snapped his mind away. What the hell was the point in thinking back to a past he never wanted to remember again? What, indeed, was the point of thinking about Sophie Granton at all?
None, he told himself resolutely. He had done what was necessary to minimise the risk to his family from her sordid lifestyle and that was enough. Anything else was irrelevant.
Irrelevant to think about her now, to think about where she was now, wondering what she was doing, what she made of where he had stashed her to keep her away from London, from Cosmo—from himself.
Because that was why he’d sent her out of town, he knew. To keep her far, far away from him.
Far away was the safest place for Sophie Granton to be.
So he would be safe from her and all that she had once meant to him—and never could again.
With a short, sharp, decisive intake of breath, he reached for his keyboard and got on with his work.
Hot sunlight was baking down, and Sophie could feel sweat trickling down into the small of her back beneath her already damp T-shirt. She rolled her shoulders a moment, stretching her neck, the movement shifting the crouching position she was in and making her rebalance her muscles as she lifted her gaze. A brief, wry expression formed in her eyes as a glance reaffirmed her surroundings.
Was it really only four days since she had been deposited here? It seemed a lot longer. A lot longer since she had climbed, tensely, into the sleek chauffeured car that had been parked so incongruously at the kerb of the bleak, blighted street where she had to live now. Her stomach had been tied into knots, and the mental hardness she’d relied on the previous night to get through the ordeal of seeing Nikos again had dissolved into a morass of viscous, glutinous, conflicting emotions that she’d scarcely been able to give a name to.
One thing she’d known for certain. Reaction had set in with a vengeance. As she’d lain sleepless, stomach churning, in her narrow, lumpy bed, trying not to hear the thump of music coming through the thin walls from the next bedsit, she had realised that the only thing that had got her through the shock of seeing Nikos again had been nothing more than bravado.
How did I even manage to face him? How did I stop myself bolting the moment I laid eyes on him in that hotel bar?
It was what she should have done, she knew. And yet it had happened so fast, so out of the blue, when her nerves had already been at stretching point, and she had been unable to act rationally.
And then, even more out of the blue, for him actually to dangle that lifeline over her…
Five thousand pounds—just to stay out of London for two weeks!
She had known she shouldn’t take the money. Shouldn’t touch it. But it had been impossible not to. Impossible not to grab at it with both hands, to snatch it, even from a man who should have been the very last man to be indebted to.
But when the car’s driver had handed her an envelope with her name on it, and she had seen the cheque within, her last resolve had evaporated. The numbers had danced in front of her eyes and she had felt a relief so profound go through her that it had made her realise just how frightened she had been about the punishing need to get hold of the money somehow, anyhow…
It hadn’t been until the driver had stopped, at her request, at a branch of her bank, and she’d raced in to deposit the cheque, simultaneously writing out one of her own with an accompanying note and then posting it in the nearest postbox, that she had felt herself truly believe in the reprieve that she had had. But back in the car she had felt her anxiety levels start to mount again.
Nothing came free in life—she knew that know, knew it bitterly and harshly. So what was Nikos going to expect of her in repayment for the loan? Just where, exactly, was she to be taken?
Now, as the sun’s heat burned down on her, Sophie’s wry expression deepened. Of all the possible destinations she’d guessed Nikos had had in mind for her as a way of keeping her out of London for a fortnight, this had never been one of them. This was a world away from anything she had envisaged.
Four days ago the car had deposited her here. Just where ‘here’ was, she still did not exactly know! But she didn’t care. It was enough just to be there. Somewhere heading west out of London, in the depths of the English countryside, in what she could only assume was one of Kazandros Corp’s latest UK property acquisitions.
A beautiful but semi-derelict, utterly deserted country house.
Not that she was in the main house itself. The small wing she was inhabiting had clearly once been something like the quarters for a housekeeper, or thereabouts, judging by the modest and old-fashioned décor and furnishings, the small rooms and out-of-the-way position. Just how long ago a housekeeper had inhabited these quarters Sophie could not tell, except that it was not recently.
Her first task had been to give the place a thorough clean, removing layers of dust and neglect. She had welcomed the work, though, finding pleasure in the effort required not least because it gave her something to do. It was the same in the small walled garden that she was now so diligently weeding. The place was a sun-trap, and Sophie needed nothing more to wear than a T-shirt and cotton trousers as the summer’s heat baked down on her in the e
nclosed space.
It had taken her a while to realise that she had the entire place to herself. Not only had there been no one in evidence when she had arrived, no one had put in an appearance since. For a while she’d wondered at it, then simply accepted it. She had not been completely abandoned, however, for she had discovered upon her arrival that the fridge in the old-fashioned kitchen was working, and had been filled with food—basic, but adequate for about a week. The larder had an equally adequate complement of groceries. She had initially wondered if someone was going to turn up the next day, but no one did, nor had since. Nor was there any sign of life in the main house.
She had explored that the afternoon of her arrival, and as she’d wandered through the huge, deserted, dusty rooms, with their shutters closed, and bereft of furniture and hangings, she had been struck both by the melancholy of the place and its striking beauty. Restored, the house would be breathtakingly beautiful! Even as she’d gazed around, though, she’d known it would take a fortune to restore it. Floorboards were sagging, moulding was coming off the ceilings, and there was a smell of mildew everywhere. Cobwebs festooned the cornices, and she could hear the tell-tale scuttlings of mice in the wainscoting. She had not dared venture upstairs, for the graceful curving banisters were precarious, and who knew how rotten the floorboards might be? It was not a place to explore on her own.
What was Nikos intending to do with the place? she’d wondered. Turn it into another prestige country hotel? A conference centre or other business use? Or restore it and sell it as residence for a millionaire? Her eyes had worked around the elegant proportions of the rooms, mentally envisaging it restored as a private house once more.
How beautiful to live here!
Out of nowhere, like a poisoned dart, the thought had struck her.
We could have lived here—Nikos and I…
Instantly she’d scourged the words from her mind, but it had been too late. Imagination, vivid and painful, had flared through her.