by Julia James
He could hear her upstairs, the creaking floorboards revealing her activity. She didn’t keep him long, and he could hear the tread of her footsteps coming downstairs as he was locking the garden door. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said she had nothing suitable with her—the blouse and skirt she had changed into, though neat and clean, were clearly daywear. Her hair had been simply clipped back into a low ponytail, and she had not bothered with make-up. Well, he told himself bluntly, it was all to the good if she weren’t dressed up. The last thing he wanted was her exacerbating her natural beauty in any way whatsoever.
The gypsy skirt she was wearing the first time I set eyes on her, swirling around her long, long legs…The peach dress she wore to dinner that evening, accentuating every pliant line of her body…The ivory evening gown she wore to that gala, the first night I took her out…
Through his head she walked like a procession, each vision a wound. Roughly, he banished them. They were the past, and the past was over. Now, only the immunisation programme was ahead of him. Nothing else.
He led the way out to the car, and opened the passenger seat. For a moment she seemed to balk, then climbed in, settling the seat belt across her, her face inexpressive.
But behind the blank expression she was fighting down emotion. Crushing down the memories that tried to come crowding into her head. Don’t think…don’t remember. It was all she could do, all she could tell herself. And don’t, above all, look at the man sitting beside you, his powerful frame so close you could almost brush your sleeve against his.
As Nikos gunned the engine she felt the G-force thrust her back in her seat. He drove as he had always driven, with ultra-masculine assurance, and the powerful car creamed down the driveway and out on to the public highway, revving strongly as he roared through the quiet countryside. To distract her flailing emotions she looked about her, at rolling fields and woodland, anywhere but at the man driving her. Where they were she still had no idea, and didn’t care anyway.
After about ten minutes he pulled off the main road and drew up in front of a prosperous-looking inn, with mullioned windows, overhanging eaves, and flower boxes along the sills. It looked pretty and old and immaculately kept. Judging by the kind of up-market cars parked, it was clearly the kind of place that attracted a well-heeled clientele.
They went inside, Nikos ducking his head as they stepped into the old-world interior. As always, as Sophie remembered, he received instant attention, and within a few minutes they were installed at a spacious table set inside a glassed-in extension to the rear of the building, overlooking a close-mown lawn that stretched down to a little river. Cool air wafted in from wide-open French windows.
Sophie sat, feeling mixed emotions trying to jostle their way past the glaze she had forcibly imposed on herself since the moment she had climbed into Nikos’s car. Why Nikos was doing this she had no idea. Her only priority was to get through this ordeal intact.
But it was going to be torture to endure his company, to have to go through the hideous mockery of dining with him as if they were actually a couple…
As once they had been…
No—stop that! Stop it now—right now. She said the words to herself fiercely, inside her head.
Just shake the napkin on to your lap, smile at the waiter, look through the menu, make a choice—any choice; it doesn’t matter—then put the menu aside, pick up your glass of water, look out of the window, look at the river, the lawn, the flowers, the countryside. Look at anything, anything at all, but don’t look at Nikos…don’t look at Nikos—
Her eyes went to him. Hopelessly, helplessly. How could she do anything else except look at him? Look at the perfect sculpture of his face; its every contour known to her, every glance, every expression, an image on her very heart—once, so long, long ago.
But no longer. And never again. That was what she had to remember. All she could permit herself to think.
With a silent intake of breath she shifted her eyes away as he studied the menu, reached instead, idly, for the little card that sat within the centrepiece of the table, flanked by pepper and salt and a tastefully arranged spray of flowers. She glanced at the card, with its printed sketch of the front of the inn and the address. They were somewhere in Hampshire, so it seemed, close to a village Sophie had never heard of. It didn’t seem particularly important to her where she was, so she replaced the card. Then, resolutely, she turned her head to look out over the view again.
‘Sophie?’
Her head snapped round. Nikos was looking at her, one eyebrow quirked questioningly. A waiter had materialised beside the table and was clearly ready to take their order. She swallowed, and murmured her requests, then Nikos gave his.
He was choosing lamb for his entrée, and memory stabbed at her. It had always been his favourite, and she could vividly remember him telling her about all the traditional Greek methods of cooking lamb, baking it so slowly that the meat fell from the bones because it was so tender.
‘You must come to Greece—then you will see,’ he had said. And she had felt her heart give a little lift, as though it were already on its way to heaven. Why would he take her to Greece except to meet his parents, introduce her as the girl he loved, wanted to marry? Oh, please, please let it be so! She had loved him so much, so much—
Her mind sheered away. She had never gone to Greece with him.
And she no longer loved him.
He had killed her love for him—stabbed her to the heart. And she had handed him the dagger with which to do it. And her life had shattered to pieces.
A heaviness crushed down on her. An old, familiar bitterness.
He was handing back the leather-bound menus, turning his attention to the wine list, relaying his decision to the hovering maître d’. Then his attention turned to Sophie. She lifted her chin. She would not look away. She would bear this and stick it out. Why he was going through this farce she could not begin to guess, but she would not crumble. His expression seemed veiled, as though he were hiding some emotion behind the dark surface of his eyes. Despite her intention to stay unperturbed, she found herself reaching jerkily for her water glass.
‘Sophie—’
She stayed her hand. Swallowed. ‘Yes?’
He seemed uncertain for a moment, then he spoke. ‘Sophie, the reason I’m having dinner with you is this. I want to draw a line under the past. I don’t want it intruding again. You clearly don’t, either. So I want to have an evening with you that proves to us both that, in the unlikely event of our paths ever crossing again, they can do so without the drama that has happened this time.’
He took a breath, then went on, his voice crisp and decisive. ‘I trust, with your debt settled, your financial problems are now averted. You got yourself into a dangerous mess, but you’re out of it now, and I’m sure you’ll have the good sense not to consider that dire option a sensible course ever to consider again. Now, I’ve lectured you quite enough—’ he permitted himself a lightening of his brisk tone ‘—so let us change the subject and not refer to it again.’
She was looking at him strangely as he spoke, a closed look on her face. He wondered at it fleetingly, and then the wine waiter was there, proffering the bottle he’d selected. Once the tasting and the pouring were complete, he lifted his filled glass and took a contemplative mouthful. Replacing the glass, he remarked, his tone conversational, ‘So, you decided music wasn’t for you after all?’
‘No.’ There was no emotion in her voice and she did not elaborate.
She wasn’t going to be forthcoming, clearly, and Nikos let it be. Her defection from a subject she had once been devoted to surprised him, but perhaps her vaunted devotion to her music had been as shallow as other aspects of her character.
He pulled his thoughts away from that dark path. He was not going there. Tonight was about the future, not the past. And the future was about making Sophie Granton nothing more than a passing acquaintance to whom he had total immunity.
He
started again, making his tone conversational once more. ‘What did you take up instead to occupy you?’
Carefully, Sophie picked up her wineglass. The tips of her fingers were white.
‘Nothing much,’ she said.
It was like getting blood out of a stone, thought Nikos.
Once they had talked with eager fluency, never at a loss, talking of anything and everything.
The first course was served, and Nikos was glad, but as they started to eat, he resumed his attempts.
‘What sort of “nothing much”?’ He smiled.
Sophie forked up a morsel of her seafood concoction, savouring its delicate flavour. It took her mind off Nikos’s relentless probing.
‘I work,’ she answered.
His eyebrows rose. If she were in paid employment she had clearly failed to live within her salary, running up debts that she’d resorted to trying to pay with that vile escort work.
‘What sort of work?’ He kept his voice pleasantly enquiring.
‘In a shoe shop.’ It was the truth—or had been until she’d not turned up the day she’d been driven here. She doubted the shop would take her back, and that would mean another dispiriting trip to the unemployment office, trying to find something, anything, that kept money coming in, however low paid. Nikos’s five thousand pound loan had only bought her a limited amount of time. Nothing more than that.
For a moment she felt fear, so familiar, so terrifying, bite in her throat. Dear God, how could she keep going? Doing what she had to do—had no choice but do?
Surviving—I’m surviving. Day after day. Week after week. It’s all I can do and I have to go on doing it. Scraping together the money that I need. That I go on needing. And there’s nothing I can do except to go on doing what I’m doing.
‘Ah…’ Nikos understood now. It was a popular option, working in a fashionable boutique, especially when the shop was owned by a friend and run as a little hobby—something to occupy women like her, to while away the time. ‘That must be useful if you want to snap up the latest designs first,’ he remarked lightly.
He named a couple of top shoe designers, the likes of which had never been seen in the downmarket, off-the-rack shoe shop Sophie had worked at every day of the week, morning through late opening. Except for the two precious afternoons a week she’d insisted on taking off, that made her whole bleak existence, her endless, punishing struggle for survival, worthwhile.
Nikos saw her face shutter again. Did she just not want to talk about herself to him at any level? Even the mundanely conversational? Well, OK then, he would back off even from that. He could understand if she were touchy about anything personal.
Determinedly, he tried another gambit.
‘It was good of you to tackle the walled garden as you did. The gardens, I think, are going to be as great a challenge as the house to restore! Fortunately I understand that the original landscape designs drawn up for Belledon in the eighteenth century are still existing, so they will guide the work.’
Sophie reached for her wine. She felt the alcohol slide into her system and was grateful.
‘Belledon?’
‘Your accommodation,’ he clarified. ‘Although you may not see it as a hotel, it is highly suitable, all the same, for such use. It’s within five miles of the motorway from Heathrow and, fully restored, will be a showpiece for the area. I envisage it will be one of the leading country house hotels in the UK, despite the cost of its restoration.’
He warmed to his theme, and Sophie was glad of it—grateful he had abandoned his unbearable inquisition of her. She let him talk, busying herself eating the delicious food. It would be foolish and wasteful not to make the most of it. The first course had been removed, and a succulent fillet of lamb placed in front of each of them.
‘This is good,’ approved Nikos. ‘Locally sourced, so the menu says. The Belledon chef will have to be on his mettle, I can see! Fortunately the home farm is part of the estate, and it will supply the bulk of the food for the hotel. The kitchen garden you have been so energetically restoring will also contribute significantly. Ideally, I would like all the food to be organic, although it will take time to achieve certification. But it is something to work towards.’
Again, he went on talking as they ate, and without realising it Sophie found herself being drawn into the conversation. The level of wine in her glass seemed constant, though she was not aware of it being refilled. But she could feel the alcohol entering her bloodstream, warming it. Dissolving, slowly but steadily, thread by thread, the net of tension webbing her at being here with Nikos. But so, too, was the conversation, she realised. As Nikos talked on about the intricacies and challenges of restoring an historic country house, ranging from one aspect to another, she found herself taking a real interest in the undertaking. Unconsciously she started to ask questions, make observations, volunteer opinions.
With part of her mind she wondered at it. Wondered at herself being here, like this, with Nikos, listening to him, talking to him, sharing a meal with him. As if, she realised, with a mix of emotions piercing her, there were no tormented history between them. As if, impossible though it must surely be, she were simply being wined and dined by him. As if there was nothing dark nor desperate poisoning the air. As if—and this surely must be an illusion—could only be an illusion—as if the heavy, crushing pall of the past that had weighed down on her was lifting away…
It was not real. She knew that. Knew it was only an illusion—an illusion brought on by the sense of unreality enmeshing her at being here, having dinner with Nikos, having him sitting opposite her, so close she could have reached out to him, touched his hand, his face. So close she could see the indentation around his mouth when he gave his quick smile, the gold flecks in his eyes as his expression became animated at the subject he was talking about, the silky sable fall of his hair across his well-shaped forehead. Yet, illusion though it was, illusion though it must be, she knew she could not deny what it offered her.
A respite—however brief, however illusory—from the endless torment in her head that Nikos evoked.
He’d said he wanted to draw a line under the past. It had seemed, when he’d uttered it, an impossible thing to do! And yet now, as the meal progressed and the conversation flowed so effortlessly, across subjects that were blessedly free of anything sensitive, anything personal, she was finding herself wondering whether it could be done. She felt the landscape of her emotions shift again, altering everything subtly, silently. It was not that the past had disappeared, but it was a different part of the past that was in her mental vision now, it seemed. Not the bitter, tormented past that had scarred and scoured her, but the past that this evening now recalled and echoed.
Familiarity rushed through her. How many times had she and he sat together, talking about everything, anything, the flow of conversation easy, stimulating, engaging, enthralling? This was Nikos as she remembered him in those golden days she had spent with him, with time flashing by, his keen mind a foil to hers, his ready laugh, his easy smile—
Because it had never, never just been his incredible looks that had captivated her—it had been so much more. The sheer pleasure of his company, the ease, the companionship…
Emotion tugged at her—a poignancy she could not avert. She felt it running through her veins like a darting arrow. How much she had lost in losing him! How much!
Yet counterpointed to the sense of loss was for now, for this fleeting, brief time, a sense of something so precious that she felt it was like a jewel nestled in her palm. However fleeting this evening was, however illusory, that sense of bitterness was washed away, and the time now was real. However fleeting, she would be grateful for it, glad for it—drinking the sweet, heady wine that it offered her to the very last.
Outside, the evening had darkened into night, and the candle on the table threw its light on to the glass of the conservatory window, creating, as it did, a flickering parallel world. Sophie’s eyes drifted towards it, and she felt he
r emotions quicken again—they were there, she and Nikos, in that parallel world of light and shadow, illuminated together.
Together…
The word pierced in her heart and she felt its power. There in that shadow world there had been no separation. In that shadow world there was no bitter past. There, in the illusory reality of the candle-light, it was as if they had always been like this—as if the years of parting had never been. She felt her mind run on, seizing a present that could never be out of a past that never was.
If we had never parted that could be us, there, in that other existence! That could be the reality, and these four long bitter years could have been the sweetest of all!
For precious moments she let herself revel in the sweetness of the thought, the beguiling, wondrous fantasy that she and Nikos were simply here together, man and wife, come down to visit his beautiful abandoned house, to plan its restoration, to fill it once more with life and love, envisage it as a place for them to live in. She and him…a family…a happiness to last a lifetime…
She knew it was not real, could not be real, and yet in her mind it was. In her mind as she sat there, sipping at her wine, eating the delicious morsels of food, and gazing, oh, just gazing—and gazing and gazing—at the man so close to her, it was all the reality she craved. All the reality she yearned for. The other reality, the one she had been condemned to, which weighed and crushed and pulled her down, had slipped away. Now there was only this sweet, wondrous reality. And it was enough…
Waiters came to clear the table, presenting her with a dessert menu. She chose randomly, and something duly appeared, together with a glass of sweet, delicate Beaune de Venise, which she sipped as she spooned up the delicious concoction before her. Her mind was getting hazy, but she didn’t care. The outer world, her consciousness of it, seemed to be receding. A strange sense of dissociation drifted down on her. She found she could sit, sipping her sweet wine, and let Nikos’s voice wind about her as her eyes rested on him. It was strange, so strange, she found herself thinking bemusedly. How she could just sit here…gazing at him. Taking him in…all his male perfection…her eyes drifting over him…