Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 24

HE SHOULD NEVER have touched her, Nikos told himself. Never been such a damn fool as to bridge the gap between them, do something as crazy as to put his finger on her face, feel the softness of her skin underneath his.

He should never have let himself get close enough to her to catch the scent of her skin, the clean softness of her hair.

Just a couple of steps forward was all it had taken. And, with the electrical sting of response to the moment their hands had touched around the glass still sizzling up his arm, he had already been halfway towards the madness of arousal that she had always been able to spark in him so instantly in the past.

And still could, damn it, it seemed.

He had spent the last five years trying to put her part in his life behind him, out of his mind. He had managed to get the taste of her out of his mouth and now it was right back there, sensual, intoxicating, driving him insane.

He had to be insane. How the hell else could he have let her get to him so far, so fast?

One touch and he had been right there, back in the maelstrom of searing hunger that tightened his throat, made his heart pound in his chest, made him hot and hard and hungry in the space of a single devastating heartbeat.

Just the feel of the soft flesh of her cheek under his fingertip had brought a memory, fast and dangerous as a bolt of lightning, of the way it had felt to have her naked, all that softness underneath him, warm and willing, yearning for his touch, his caress…opening to him…

Thee mou, no! He was not going down that dangerous path again, sensually enticing though it was.

‘I repeat,’ he said, injecting every ounce of control he possessed into the ruthless command of his voice, ‘is there anything else that you want to say before you leave?’

Was there anything?

Sadie felt as if her head was spinning, reeling as if from the force of a sudden fierce blow.

Her shocked, numbed brain wouldn’t focus, and all she could think of was the feeling of Nikos’s arms around her, the pressure of his body against hers. Her heart was still thudding ferociously and the taste of him was still on her lips. And deep in her body the yearning hunger that had uncoiled in those few fraught, dangerous moments was still burning, still stinging at her senses and making her feel miserably restless with unfulfilled need.

The clamour of every aroused cell made her feel as if she was being assailed by some appalling fever. One that had her burning up in one moment and then shivering in wretched cold the next.

‘Well?’

Nikos’s tone was harshly impatient, and damn him if he didn’t flick another glance at that hateful watch, driving home his message without needing to say another word.

‘I…’

Still unable to collect her thoughts, Sadie resorted to desperate measures, giving her head a rough little shake in an attempt to clear it. The movement caught Nikos’s attention, making him frown ominously.

‘And what does that mean?’ he questioned sharply. ‘Is it supposed to be no, you have nothing more to say? Or no, you have no plans to leave? Because I can tell you that you may not have plans—but I certainly do. I have another appointment in fifteen minutes, and a business lunch and an afternoon conference call after that. I don’t have time to waste standing here, waiting for you to make up your mind and realise that you’ve had your chance—you made your plea and you lost.’

‘Lost?’ Sadie echoed dejectedly, recollection of why she was here coming back to her in full—and leaving her feeling worse than ever at the realisation that Nikos was dismissing her for good, with no chance at all of saving their home for her family.

‘There is no way that I am going to sell you Thorn Trees,’ she heard him say now, confirming her worst suspicions. ‘Or rent it to you. My plans for the house remain just as they were when you—’

‘Oh, please!’ Sadie broke in on him, the thought of going home and telling her mother that she had failed driving her to one last desperate attempt to get him to show some compassion. ‘Please don’t say that! You have to understand—there has to be something I can do for you.’

‘And what makes you think that? What the devil could I want from you? Believe me, there is nothing—’

‘But there must be!’

‘Nothing.’

His tone warned her not to argue further. And the way he raked both hands through his hair, pushing it back into its sleek control, spoke of a ruthless determination to be back on track, ready for the next move, that next appointment. This one was over and he was done with her.

‘But that—what happened just now—surely…?’

Her words died as she looked into his face and his expression told her the terrible truth.

‘What happened just now?’ Nikos echoed cynically, his burning gaze searing over her from the top of her ruffled dark head to the toes of her black patent shoes.

The look of dark contempt that filled it made her shiver, feeling as if a much needed protective layer of skin had been stripped from her body, leaving her raw and exposed, frighteningly vulnerable.

‘And what makes you think that what just happened had anything to do with anything?’

‘But—you…I thought…’

Her tongue seemed to tangle up on itself, tying itself in knots so that she couldn’t get the words out.

‘You thought…?’ Nikos prompted harshly when she fought with herself, trying to speak.

‘I thought that that—that when you…’

When you kissed me. She just couldn’t make herself say it. She knew that she would give herself away if she did. She had thought—had hoped—that the way he had kissed her so passionately meant that he still felt some trace of something for her. That, if nothing else, at least he was still attracted to her. And she had little doubt that that hope, that illusion—because his face made it plain it was an illusion—would show in her voice if she said anything more.

‘When I kissed you?’ Nikos drawled mockingly. ‘Is that what you mean? So tell me, my sweet Sadie, just what did you think was happening? What do you think that was?’

‘I—’ Sadie tried to begin, but he ignored her stuttering attempt at speech and talked across her quite deliberately.

‘Did you think it was warmth? Was that it? Or perhaps affection? Or perhaps…’

He actually had the nerve to stop, appear to consider, even look suitably surprised, when deep down inside she knew damn well that the brute wasn’t surprised at all but had been aiming for this right from the start.

‘Thee mou, you didn’t think it was love, did you?’

If she’d found it hard to speak before, then now Sadie found it absolutely impossible. She could feel the hot colour flaring in her cheeks and knew that her furiously embarrassed reaction had given her away completely.

‘Then I’m sorry—’

‘No, you’re not!’ Sadie broke in, finding her voice at last in the strength of the wave of anger that swept over her. ‘You’re not sorry at all. And I know it wasn’t—wasn’t anything like love.’

It couldn’t have been. There was no way anyone could switch on love like that and then immediately turn it off right away.

‘It certainly wasn’t,’ Nikos confirmed coldly.

‘So what was it?’

Cruelty? Deliberate manipulation? Some sort of hateful test?

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Nikos questioned softly. ‘I couldn’t help myself.’

He’d shocked her there. It wasn’t at all the answer she’d expected. But he’d anticipated her response and knew that he had her when her head went back in amazement, green eyes opening wide. A smile that did nothing to light up his face and had no effect at all on the coldness of his eyes flickered across his beautiful mouth as he noted her response.

He paused just long enough for his words to sink in and hit home before moving in for the kill.

‘Lust will do that,’ he declared, making sure that his words were totally clear. ‘You always spoke to my most basic masculine nature—my libido—you still do. I find it hard to keep my hands off you.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment? Because if it is you need to work on your technique.’

But Sadie’s sarcasm, her attempt to hit back, simply bounced off Nikos’s impenetrable hide without, apparently, even leaving a mark.

‘Lust I can handle,’ he went on, as if she had never spoken. ‘It’s something I can decide to indulge or not as I choose.’

‘And you—decided to indulge it just now when you pawed me—’

‘Not pawed, Sadie,’ Nikos corrected, shaking his head almost as if in sorrow at her interpretation of his actions. ‘I do not paw women. And if I had then you would not have responded as you did.’

‘I—’ Sadie tried to protest, but the sudden rush of confidence to speak seemed to have deserted her.

‘If you want the truth,’ Nikos continued, ‘I wanted to know if you tasted the same. And you do.’

‘Taste?’

It was the last thing she had expected.

‘You still taste exactly the same.’

Nikos’s mouth twisted on the words.

‘I may not have recognised it before, but I see what it is now—the taste of lies and deceit—the taste of betrayal.’

Sadie flinched inwardly as he flung the words in her face. She wished she could deny them, throw her refutation right back into his dark, contemptuous face. But how could she when deep down she knew that they were nothing but the truth? She’d been forced to betray him, but he had planned his own betrayal with cold-blooded cruelty and with no one twisting his arm up behind his back—emotionally, at least. It had all been precisely what he had wanted all along.

‘It wasn’t exactly as you think. But I don’t suppose you want to hear about that, do you?’

‘You’re damn right I don’t. In fact, I do not want to hear another single word from you.’

‘But the house…’ Despair forced her to say it, pushing the words from her mouth when she just wanted to keep quiet and get out of there with some shreds of dignity intact. But she had her mother and her little brother to think of, and she couldn’t let them down.

‘Gamoto!’ Nikos flung up his hands in a gesture of total exasperation. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I will not sell you Thorn Trees? Nor will I rent it to you—not at any price. Not if you were the last person on earth.’

‘But there must be some arrangement we can come to! Surely there’s something I can do—anything…’

The words shrivelled and died when she saw the fiendish light in his eyes and knew that she had made a terrible mistake.

‘And exactly what sort of services did you have in mind? What exactly are you offering…?’

‘Not that! Never!’ Sadie flung at him, seeing the way his dark and cruel mind was going. ‘If you really think that I’d sell myself…I’d rather die!’

‘That was not the impression you were giving a few minutes ago,’ Nikos returned, his voice sounding soft and silky but with an effect as brutal as a sharp stiletto sliding in between her ribs to stab at her heart. ‘Then it was Oh, Nikos—yes, Nikos…’

‘And you fell for it, didn’t you?’

The words had flashed from her mouth before she had time to consider if they were wise or even safe. She only knew that she couldn’t take any more of this black mockery. Of the appalling insults he was tossing in her direction with almost every word that came out of his mouth.

‘You really thought that all you had to do was to touch me—kiss me—and I would be putty in your hands.’

‘You were. That is exactly how you behaved.’

‘I made it seem as if I was but you’re pretty easy to fool. All I had to do was to let you cop a feel…’

The way that his black brows snapped together in a furious frown made her heart lurch in panic, cutting her words off short. Deciding hastily that it was probably safer not to think about the real reason why he looked so furious, instead she opted for a less contentious option and flashed him a mocking smile.

‘Ask someone to translate,’ she suggested wickedly.

‘No translation necessary, believe me,’ Nikos flung back, cold as ice. ‘None at all. But if you think that that was what was happening then you are the one in need of an interpretation. And a reality check.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Oh, yes. If you think that all it takes is a flash of those stunning green eyes or a wiggle of your sexy little behind, then you really don’t know me at all.’

‘It felt—’ Sadie began, but Nikos cut in on her, bringing one long-fingered hand down in a slashing gesture to emphasise his interruption.

‘I was fool enough to go that way once before and I have no intention of ever putting my head into the noose all over again.’

‘And you’ve made us pay for it ever since!’

Sadie was beginning to feel as if she was on some dangerous emotional rollercoaster. And it was all her own fault. After all she’d started this, with the pretence that she’d only been playing him along.

Playing him along—hah! That would be the day. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but the truth was that she had been putty in his hands. One kiss, one caress, and she had lost all grip on her sanity and been spun into a world of hot sensation and even hotter need. At least she had had the sense to realise that those casually tossed compliments—stunning green eyes and sexy little behind, indeed!—were not meant at all. They were just the practised flattery of a consummate womaniser. He probably rolled them out to whichever woman he happened to be with, changing the colour of their eyes where appropriate of course.

‘You’ve had five years of taking your revenge. Haven’t you done enough, had enough?’

‘If you want the truth, then the answer is no,’

It was a flat, hard statement, his tone as harshly unyielding as his face, and when she looked into the deep pools of his eyes she saw no spark of warmth, no hint of humanity. Instead they were as cold and unresponsive as ice, his opaque, blanked-off stare shocking and frightening.

‘What more can you have? There’s nothing left. My father’s dead—his fortune, his company are yours. Isn’t that enough for you?’

‘No, it is not.’

Nikos’s golden eyes flicked over her face, catching and locking with her furious gaze just for one moment. Then he looked away again, heavy lids coming down to cut him off from her.

‘I thought it was, but now I find it just won’t do. It isn’t enough. It doesn’t give me the satisfaction that I wanted. I need to find some other way of making sure of that.’

And then she knew. With a terrible, sinking sense of despair she realised just what was going on here. Nikos Konstantos had always been determined to have his revenge for the way that Edwin had ruined his family. He had worked for that and for nothing else all the five years since she had last seen him. He’d taken the Carteret name, the Carteret business and stamped them into the mud, drained them of every last penny they possessed. He was even prepared to take the family home from them and throw her and her mother and little George out into the street.

And she had done the worst thing possible, made the most terrible mistake imaginable, by coming here to plead with him for a chance.

Because that had given Nikos one more chance to exact revenge on the member of the family he had the most personal reasons to hate. The one that he hadn’t yet crushed beneath his heel and laughed in triumph as he did so.

He hadn’t truly had his revenge on Sadie herself. Until now. And now it was strictly personal and totally ruthless. This wasn’t about the house or the past except as it pitted the two of them against each other. This was the last part that would make his campaign of revenge complete.

He had her in his sights and he wasn’t letting go.

‘And the way you’ve found is by making sure that my family don’t have a home to live in. How can you live with that on your conscience?’

‘No problem.’

Nikos’s shrug dismissed the question as being of no importance to him whatsoever. He didn’t care and he had no intention of caring.

‘I live with it as easily as you and your father could walk away from the devastation you made of my life—and my family’s.’

‘And you think that gives you the moral high ground? You were pretty damn good at playing games at that time, if I remember rightly.’

‘Not games, Sadie.’

Nikos shook his head, his expression almost sorrowful, but Sadie knew that sorrow was the furthest thing from what he was feeling. He might hide it well but she knew that deep inside he was probably taking a cruel delight in tormenting her like this, having her with her back to the wall, nowhere to run.

‘Believe me, I was serious. Deadly serious.’

‘Oh, yeah, deadly serious about perpetuating that damn family feud. And look what that did to you. It almost ruined your family.’

‘Almost,’ Nikos echoed with deadly emphasis. ‘Almost— but it did not actually ruin us, did it? Not totally. And now the shoe is very definitely on the other foot.’

‘As I’m only too well aware,’ Sadie muttered belligerently.

She wondered what would happen if she told Nikos that the only reason that ‘almost’ was even there was because of her. Because of the choice she’d made.

He’d probably never believe her. The mood he was in, he wasn’t going to listen to anything she said.

‘So this is checkmate, is it?’ she went on. ‘You must know that I can’t leave it like this—without persuading you to let us stay in Thorn Trees…’

‘That isn’t going to happen,’Nikos stated with cold obduracy.

‘So what do I do?’

Once more those powerful shoulders under the superbly tailored jacket lifted in an unfeeling and dismissive shrug.

‘You said you were prepared to do anything to get what you wanted,’ he drawled heartlessly. ‘Turn those wiles that you were using earlier on someone else and you might have more success with someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do.’

‘Wiles…’ Sadie spluttered in furious indignation. He really thought that she had set out to seduce him as a way to manipulate him into giving her what she wanted. ‘How dare you…?’

But Nikos ignored her angry interjection.

‘Find yourself another rich man and beg him to give you a chance to earn the price of the house. He might not find the offer so distasteful—his standards may not be as high as mine.’

Sadie gritted her teeth against the need to refute the implications of that cynical ‘earn,’ though her fingers twitched sharply at her side with the urge to lash out and swipe that cold sneer from his arrogant face. Whatever momentary satisfaction it would bring—and it would be very satisfying—it would also make things so much worse and only succeed in angering Nikos even further.

‘And if I did then you would only put the price up higher and higher each time.’

Nikos’s smile was pure cold evil. The smile of the devil.

‘How well you understand me, glikia mou. And, knowing me as you do, I am sure that you will recall that once I have made up my mind on a matter then I never change it. No matter what the temptation.’

And he had made up his mind on this, so it would be like battering her head against a brick wall if she continued to try to persuade him.

‘And now, as you have had more than twice the amount of time allotted to you, I really would prefer it if you left immediately.’

Striding across to the door, Nikos pulled it open and stood pointedly, waiting for her to leave.

‘I am sure that both of us would prefer to avoid the publicity that my calling Security might create.’

Knowing Nikos, Sadie recognised when she had come to the end of the road and there was nowhere else she could go. Defeat was staring her in the face and the only thing left to her was to accept it with as much dignity as she possibly could. Though the thought of going home and telling her mother…

Putting her head up high, stiffening her back and straightening her shoulders, she forced her feet to take her towards the door he had indicated. She had fully determined that she wouldn’t say another word. That she wouldn’t show him any weakness. She wouldn’t even look at him. But somehow as she had to pass him her footsteps faltered, and in spite of her determination her reluctant gaze was drawn to his dark, stunning face, meeting the icy glare of those golden eyes.

‘Is there nothing I can do…?’ she began and knew her mistake as she saw his face harden even more, hooded eyes closing off from her.

‘Yes,’ he said coldly, unbelievably. ‘The one thing you can do is go home and start packing—I want you out by the end of the week.’

It was the final blow, but at least his vicious tone was enough to stiffen her resolve.

‘I’ll do that,’ she flung at him, refusing to let him see the terrible sense of defeat that was tearing at her soul.

‘I’d appreciate it.’

Another couple of strides and she was beyond him, out of the room at last and marching straight down the long, soulless corridor, staring straight ahead.

She’d taken it better than he’d thought, Nikos admitted as he watched her go. Just for a moment there he had suspected that she was going to show him that she meant her declaration that she would do anything and turn back to him, coming close with smiles and deliberate kisses in an attempt to seduce him into giving her what she wanted.

And if she had done just that? The way his heart kicked and his body tightened gave him his answer.

Gamoto! Was he really going to let her walk out of his life once again, just as she had done five years before? With the taste of her still on his lips, with his body still in the grip of the burning arousal that just that one kiss had sent flaring through him, he knew that the answer was no. For almost five years he had tried to put this woman out of his mind and now, after less than an hour in her company, he knew why he had never fully managed to do it.

He still wanted her.

He wanted her like hell, in the way that he had never wanted any other woman in his life. And even the knowledge of the vile way she had behaved, the way she’d used an e-mail message to tell him she was backing out of their marriage—less than twenty-four hours before the ceremony—the cold-voiced rejection that she’d tossed down the stairs, couldn’t erase the yearning hunger that plagued his senses. Watching the sway of her hips, the swing of the glossy dark hair as she walked away from him, he found he was actually considering calling her back, offering to renegotiate.

‘You’ve had five years of taking your revenge. Haven’t you done enough, had enough?’

The echo of her angry voice, just moments before, sounded inside his head. And his own answer came back at him fast, forcing him to face the truth.

‘I thought it was, but now I find it just won’t do. It isn’t enough. It doesn’t give me the satisfaction that I wanted. I need to find some other way of making sure of that.’

When Edwin Carteret had died, he’d thought he was done with the whole, hateful family. He’d clawed back every last penny of the fortune that had been taken from them and doubled it. He’d taken every asset the Carterets had owned—Thorn Trees being the last on the list—and seen his hated enemy reduced to total bankruptcy and ruin. To the black despair that his father had known and had barely even recovered from now. And he had thought that it was enough.

But one meeting with his nemesis in the seductive form of Sadie Carteret had brought that belief crashing down around him. Now at last he could put his finger on the feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction that had plagued him in recent months. Before then he had been working too hard, barely even raising his eyes from his desk, from the files of stock market dealings, the takeover details and investments that had brought him to where he was now. It could never be enough because he hadn’t dealt with the one remaining insult the Carterets had dealt him. Only this time it wasn’t ‘the Carterets’ he had in his sights, but one member of that family in particular.

This time it was personal. Personal between him and seductive, manipulating Sadie Carteret.

And by coming here today Sadie had handed him just the weapon he needed. She was desperate to get her hands on her ancestral family home. Almost as desperate as he was to get his hands on her silken skin, her feminine curves. To have her under him in his bed once more. And the way she’d responded to his kiss had left him in no doubt that she still felt the passion that had brought them together in that one explosive weekend that had just been enough to awaken his appetite, never enough to sate it.

She would do anything she could to get Thorn Trees, she had said. Well, now he’d see how far she was prepared to go to do just that. If things went the way he planned, then she would get the damn house, and he could find the satisfaction he needed and get Sadie Carteret out of his system once and for all. In the most enjoyable way.

For a moment he thought about calling her back, and then paused, shaking his head as he rethought. If he sent a message down in the executive lift then she would get it before she left the building.

Kicking the door shut, he went back to his desk and reached for pen and paper.

The long, long corridor ahead of her blurred and danced as Sadie fought with the tears that burned at her eyes, but this time she was not looking back, she told herself. Not a single glance. Even when it seemed to be an extraordinarily long time before she finally heard the door to Nikos’s office bang shut behind her.

Somehow she made it to the lift, and only once inside did she let herself collapse back against the wall, her whole body sagging limply and her head dropping forward as her eyes closed. It was some moments before she could even think of pressing the button for the ground floor.

She’d tried her best, given it her best shot. And she’d failed. Nothing, it seemed, could prevail against the black, brutal hatred that Nikos had let fester for all these years. Nothing could change him, restore him to the man he had once been. The man who had stolen her heart. The man she had been going to marry.

No.

Shaking herself roughly, she snapped her head up sharply, forcing herself to face facts once and for all.

She had to stop deceiving herself. That Nikos was a fantasy, a deception—a lie. The Nikos she had loved had never truly existed; he had simply been playing with her, manipulating her until he got exactly what he wanted. If her father hadn’t moved in to protect her then the end result could have been far worse than it had. And it had been terrible enough.

The lift came to a halt, the doors sliding open, and Sadie pushed herself into motion, now desperate to get away, to be free of the tainted atmosphere of hatred.

It was as she crossed the wide, marble-floored foyer that she heard the beeping sound from her mobile phone. A text message. She knew who it would be from even before she had taken it from her bag, though the sight of ‘New message from Mum’ on the screen almost made her switch it off and not look.

But that would be the coward’s way out. She had to face her family and let them know that she had failed some time. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the ‘view’ key.

How did you get on? her mother asked, as Sadie had known she would. Have you got good news? Can we stay?

Standing in the middle of the foyer, Sadie could only stare at the tiny screen until the backlighting blinked off and the whole thing went black. How was she going to do this? What could she say to soften the blow?

‘Miss Carteret?’

It took a moment or two to register that the voice was speaking to her. That the receptionist she had talked to earlier had come up behind her and was now trying to get her attention.

‘Excuse me, Miss Carteret, I have a message.’

‘A message?’

Sadie stared blankly at the folded sheet of paper the other woman held out to her.

‘From who?’

But even as she asked the question she knew there could only be one person who could have sent it. Only one man who could have dashed off the note and had it brought down to her in the executive lift, so it had caught up with her before she left the building.

Nikos. Just the thought of his name made her hand shake as she reached for the note.

‘Thank you.’

She barely noticed the receptionist move away, her attention closely focussed on the piece of paper she held. After the way she had left Nikos upstairs, the brutal harshness of that final ‘nothing’, this was the last thing she had expected. He had been adamant that he was not going to help her, so why…?

Her fingers fumbled with the note as she unfolded it, tension blurring her vision as she tried to focus.

The note had neither greeting nor signature, but it didn’t need one. There was no mistaking Nikos’s dark, slashing scrawl. Just four brief words, dashed off in haste, and the sight of them made Sadie blink hard in bewilderment and confusion.

Cambrelli’s 8:00 p.m. Be there.

Be there.

It was a blunt decree, a command that she would be wise to obey—or risk the consequences.

Be there.

And Cambrelli’s. Dear heaven, but the man knew how to stick the knife in. Cambrelli’s was the small Italian restaurant he had taken her to on their very first date.

Rebellion rose hotly in Sadie’s heart. Who the hell was this man that he could issue such an order and expect to have it obeyed? Her fingers tightened on the paper, the impulse to crumple it into a ball and toss it away from her almost overwhelming. She was damned if she…

But even as she lifted her hand to do so, common sense reasserted itself and froze the defiant gesture. What was she thinking of? She knew exactly who this man was.

He was Nikos Konstantos, and he was in the position of having every command he issued obeyed at once, without any hint of a question. He also held all the cards very tightly in his hands.

‘And, knowing me as you do, I am sure that you will recall that once I have made up my mind on a matter then I never change it.’

The words that Nikos had flung at her sounded so clearly inside her head that she almost believed that the man himself had come up behind her and spoken them out loud.

He had sworn that he would not help her and made it plain that every one of her entreaties had fallen on totally stony ground.

And yet…

Her gaze went back to the note in her hand as she smoothed it out and read over once again.

Cambrelli’s 8:00 p.m. Be there.

She didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed that Nikos had tossed her some kind of lifeline. It wasn’t much but it was all she had, and she would be a fool not to grab at it while she could.

The receptionist was still hovering close at hand, obviously waiting for an answer. Glancing down at her phone, reading the message from her mother again, Sadie drew in a deep breath and came to a decision.

‘Tell Mr Konstantos that I will meet him as arranged.’