Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 25

CAMBRELLI’S RESTAURANT HAD changed very little in the past five years. It was perhaps a little cleaner and brighter—they had obviously put a fresh coat of paint on the walls—but not much else had altered.

There were the same dark wood tables and chairs, some in small booths with red fake leather banquettes on either side, the same red-and-white checked tablecloths, the same candles stuck into empty wine bottles on each table, with wax dripping down the neck and over the label. She was sure that there were even the same rather worn and faded posters on the walls. One of the Colosseum in Rome and one of St Mark’s Square in Venice. It was like stepping back in time and reliving a small part of her life.

If only she really could do that, Sadie thought as she followed the waiter to one of the booths near the back of the room, well away from the window, she noted. If only she could be arriving here as a rather naive twenty year old, still at university, her head in a whirl of excitement and her feet barely seeming to touch the ground as she headed for a date with the most exciting man she had ever met. Anticipating the most wonderful night she had ever known.

And it had been just that. That night and the days, the months that had followed had been the happiest, the most glorious times Sadie had ever known. But if it was at all possible, if she really could go back in time, then she would grab hold of her younger self, try to shake some sense into her.

‘Poor stupid little fool,’ she muttered to herself, the bitterness of memory pushing the words from her mouth in spite of the fact that she wasn’t really speaking to anyone.

‘I beg your pardon, signorina?’

The waiter had heard her, and paused in his progress across the room to glance at her questioningly.

‘Oh—sorry—nothing…’

She had to get a grip on herself, Sadie thought, managing an embarrassed half-smile. The stress of the day and anxiety about the evening ahead was getting to her and making her control of her tongue slip slightly. She needed to have her thoughts and her feelings totally under control.

But oh, how she wished that someone had taken charge of her younger self. That they had warned her not to trust Nikos, not to believe a word he said. Better that she should have faced the inevitable disillusionment then, before their affair had truly begun, rather than go through the whole terrible process of falling hopelessly and mindlessly in love and then being bitterly disappointed. The appalling sense of loss and betrayal had been all the worse because of the wonder and joy that had gone before.

But of course then she wouldn’t have believed anyone who had tried to convince her that Nikos was not what he seemed. She wouldn’t have listened to a single person—probably not even herself if she had managed to appear to give a warning message. At twenty years old she had been naive, gullible, and totally starry-eyed, and she would have thought that it would be well worth a broken heart at the end if she could only have that night.

She had never expected it to last anyway. She had only ever thought that she would have that one night, one date. At the end of the evening she had fully expected that Nikos would take her home, say goodnight, and that would be that. She had been overjoyed, and unable to quite believe it, when he had asked to see her again—and again.

‘Good evening, Sadie.’

Sadie had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed they had reached the booth. It was already occupied, she realised, as in the shadowy darkness Nikos rose to his full height and faced her across the table.

This was not the man she had confronted in his office earlier that day. This Nikos was not the sleek suited businessman who headed the Konstantos Corporation. Instead he was darkly devastating in a soft black shirt, open at the neck with no tie, and worn black denim jeans that hugged the lean hips, the narrow waist that was emphasised by a heavy leather belt.

And just what was the message he intended her to read into that? Or was she reading too much into it because she had spent so long worrying about what she should wear herself—opting for a pair of smart black trousers with a deep red shirt and loose jacket so that she neither looked as if she had dressed up or down for this meeting? She was too acutely sensitive to the hidden clues in what Nikos had chosen to wear.

‘Won’t you sit down?’

The pointed question brought home to her the fact that she had been standing, still and silent, staring at him as if she had never seen him before in her life while he waited with carefully controlled patience for her response.

‘Thank you.’

It was as she sank into the seat directly opposite him that she recalled how she had once been told that when eating out in a restaurant Greek men usually seated themselves with their backs to the wall, their guest facing them. That way the host could see everything that was going on, the coming and going in the main body of the restaurant, but their companion’s attention was forced to be concentrated solely on them.

Not that Nikos’s attention seemed to be anywhere else other than on her. Those bronze eyes were fixed on her face in a way that made the tiny hairs at the back of her neck lift in the uncomfortable reaction of a wary cat, faced with a threatening intruder into its space.

‘So you came,’ Nikos commented when the waiter had handed them menus and left them to decide on their meals.

‘Of course I came. As you knew I would have to. I had no other choice. Not unless I wanted to stay at home and pack, as you’d already ordered me to do.’

‘Not ordered. It was the logical next step if things stayed as they were,’ Nikos corrected softly, earning himself a sideways glare that Sadie hoped made it clear that she was not in the least convinced by the apparent conciliatory tone in his voice.

There was no way that he was here to do any peacemaking. Why should he when he held all the cards in his hands—and most of them were aces?

‘And I suppose you are going to claim that you didn’t order me to meet you here?’

‘I merely invited you. So, what would you like to eat?’

Nothing. Sadie felt that she would be unable to swallow a single mouthful. Besides…

‘Did you really invite me out for a meal?’

Nikos glanced up from his study of the menu, one black brow slightly lifted in mocking enquiry.

‘Why else would we be in a restaurant, with menus to choose from?’

Because he wanted to prove that he had so much power over her that he could say jump and she would ask how high. Because he wanted to emphasise, by choosing this particular restaurant, just how very different things were now from the way they had been in the past, when they had been here together before.

‘And why are we in this particular restaurant? Why here and nowhere else?’

‘Because I know you like it here.’

If she didn’t know better, she might almost believe in the innocence in his eyes, his voice. But she had no doubt that it was more than that. Nikos Konstantos never did anything without considering all possible outcomes and planning for the one that was exactly what he wanted.

‘I liked it once,’ she said coldly, pointedly. ‘My tastes have changed since then.’

‘Mine too,’ Nikos drawled cynically.

So how was she supposed to take that? Was he, like her, thinking of the first meal they had eaten here? She hadn’t known who he was then. Only that she had fallen for the most devastatingly handsome and attractive man she had ever met. If she had known would she have been more careful, more on her guard? Maybe even held back and never agreed to go out with him?

If she had then things would have been so much easier. She would never have become tangled up in Nikos’s schemes—and those of her father. She would never have become a pawn in their hateful feud, never been used by each of them against the other. Because that had been all she was to them. A weapon which they could use to inflict as much damage on the other as possible.

‘I understand that the calamari here is very good—unless you prefer—’

‘What I’d prefer…’ Sadie put in sharply, having foolishly let her eyes wander over the menu so that she spotted the delicious shrimp dish she had eaten that first time she had been here. She could almost taste it in her mouth, the memory was so clear and devastating. ‘What I’d prefer is that you tell me exactly why I’m here and what you want from me.’

‘Some wine first?’ Nikos returned imperturbably, lifting one hand to summon the waiter.

The response was immediate, as of course it always was with Nikos. He only had to make the slightest gesture, look as if he might need something, and there was always someone there, right at hand, ready to provide whatever he needed.

But the presence of the waiter and his enquiring glance in her direction, the way he brandished his notepad and pen, meant that she couldn’t pursue the topic she wanted with him standing there listening. Feeling cornered, with her back against the wall, she snatched up the menu again and chose a pasta dish completely at random, only wanting the man to be gone so that she could confront Nikos and find out just what was going on.

‘I don’t for one moment believe,’ she began as soon as they were alone again, ‘that you have invited me here simply to spend an evening together and eat pasta—however good it might be.’

‘You’re right…’

Nikos set his own menu aside and folded his hands together on the tabletop. The movement made a sudden flash of gold catch the light from the candle flame, and Sadie felt her heart thud just once, hard and sharp against her ribs, as she realised that she had no idea whether Nikos was married or if there was a woman in his life.

Someone to replace her.

Outside a heavy rumble of thunder announced the fact that a storm was approaching. Sadie noted it with only half her mind, the rest of her attention focussed on those long, strong, tanned fingers resting on the red and white checked cloth. Fingers where she now saw the gold was just a signet ring, worn on Nikos’s right hand. At the realisation her breath escaped her in a rush. Breath that she hadn’t even been aware of holding in.

‘I haven’t just invited you here to spend the evening with me. I asked you to meet me because I wanted to offer you a job.’

‘A job?’

And now the waiter was back with the wine, interrupting them again. Was Nikos really making a particular thing about checking the label, having the bottle opened, tasting the small amount the waiter poured into his glass? Or was it just that it seemed that way to her, with every long drawn out second seeming to grate more on her already overstretched nerves, making her want to scream or make some protest. Instead she had to settle for waiting, her back tense, teeth digging into the softness of her bottom lip, until he had nodded his satisfaction and indicated that the waiter should pour her a drink.

‘No, thanks,’ Sadie put in hastily, pressing her hand over the top of her glass. She needed to keep a clear head until she found out just what Nikos was up to. If he pressed her…

Nikos took her decision with surprising equanimity, sipping appreciatively at the rich red liquid in his own glass, once again taking his time before he moved the conversation on at all. Sadie couldn’t stand the waiting any longer.

‘What sort of a job?’ she demanded when the silence had stretched out just too long to bear. ‘Why would you want to employ me? And what makes you think that I would ever want to work for you?’

‘You did,’ Nikos told her coolly, taking another swallow of his wine.

‘I never!’

‘Oh, yes, you did.’

And when she frowned in blank incomprehension, he shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief.

‘What a very short memory you have, Miss Carteret. Whatever happened to “There must be some arrangement we can come to! Surely there’s something I can do—anything”? Anything,’ he added, with soft menace and deadly emphasis.

Recalling the interpretation he had put on that ‘anything’ earlier that day, Sadie suddenly wished she had accepted some of the wine. Right now it might ease the painful knot of tension tight in her chest, ease the uncomfortably jerky pounding of her heart. She knew she would do anything in her power to gain some extra time that her mother and George could spend in the home that meant so much to them. But did Nikos really mean…?

‘What exactly did you have in mind?’ she managed to croak, another rumble of distant thunder seeming to underline the apprehension in her tone.

Once more Nikos took his time in replying, stony, hard eyes never leaving her face as he leaned back in his chair and seemed to consider his response. Not that he had any need to, Sadie reflected. She had little doubt that he knew exactly what he was going to say and how it would affect her. She had the most uncomfortable feeling that she was as powerless as a puppet, with its strings dangling from the hands of a ruthless and cruel master.

‘We’ll come to that in a moment,’ he said evenly. ‘But first I want you to tell me exactly why you want the house so much.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Sadie hedged, unwilling to expose her mother’s story to his pitiless gaze.

‘Oh, yes, totally obvious.’

Could his tone get any more cynical?

‘Young woman with no money, a not very successful business as a wedding planner…’

Seeing her start of surprise, he gave a tight smile.

‘I make sure I keep up to date with what is happening to anyone I have had dealings with in the past.’

So how much did he know? The idea of being kept under surveillance like that when she hadn’t known he was watching made her skin crawl.

That smile grew darker, more dangerous, the blaze of the candles reflected in the depths of his penetrating gaze.

‘I always thought that it was something of a very black irony that someone who walked out on her own wedding just the day before it was due to take place should now make her living organising other women’s “big days.”’

Nikos’s sensual mouth twisted on the words.

‘But then the one thing I could never deny is that you always had that very special sense of style. When other people were paying, of course.’

‘I had to do something to earn a living,’ Sadie managed from between tight lips. ‘And that at least was a way of using my design course.’

The one her father had paid for as a reward for doing as he asked of her. She wouldn’t need it, Edwin had told her. After all, she was going to be a great catch—a very wealthy young woman now that he had seen off the opposition, which was the way he had described his takeover of almost everything the Konstantos family had owned.

But Sadie had known that she couldn’t just sit around at home. For one thing, the atmosphere there between her parents had been so poisonous that it had been an endurance test simply to breathe the same air. And, for another, the last thing she had wanted to do was to consider the prospect of another suitor who would only want to marry her because of the huge inheritance that was going to come to her when her father died.

She’d been through that once. And once was more than enough.

‘And it was something I could do from home.’

Nikos nodded slowly, turning the stem of his glass round and round in his tanned fingers.

‘And of course Thorn Trees is a prestigious address from which to run a business that would attract society brides and their wealthy families.’

‘But that isn’t why I want to keep the house!’

A deliberately lifted eyebrow questioned her overemphatic outburst.

‘Then why would you want to live in a huge London mansion with—what?—seven bedrooms and an indoor pool? Preferably for free, or at the most for a tiny rent. So, tell me exactly why you need a house like Thorn Trees? Do you plan to sleep in each of the bedrooms on a different day of the week?’

‘Oh, now you’re just being ridiculous! Of course not! And I wouldn’t be living there on my own.’

That had his attention. She could tell by the way his back stiffened, cold eyes burning into her as the swept over her face. Sadie felt she could also tell just what was going through his mind—clearly his ‘keeping up to date’ hadn’t resulted in him finding out the story about her mother. At least that was one thing her father had done properly before he died.

But the waiter was back again, this time bringing their meals, and Nikos was forced to sit and wait—obviously burning up with impatience—to be served before he could find out more. The man barely had time to put the plates on the table before Nikos was waving him away, ignoring his questions as to whether there was anything else they wanted.

‘Who?’ he demanded, and Sadie allowed herself a moment or two to prolong the tension, knowing it would provoke him even more.

‘Did you have to send him away like that?’ she complained. ‘I might have wanted some parmesan…’

A flick of Nikos’s hand dismissed her protest as irrelevant and unimportant.

‘Who?’ he repeated.

‘Well, not what you’re thinking—so you can get your mind out of the gutter. Do you really think that I would ask you to finance my love life by providing a home for me and my lover?’

He wouldn’t put it past her, Nikos acknowledged to himself. Sadie Carteret had had a liking for the good things of life, always provided someone else was paying. The way she had discarded him so quickly when his family had been ruined and he had lost his personal fortune had been proof of that. And of course she had deliberately distracted him so that her father could work behind the scenes, planning hostile takeovers, finding ways to bring the Konstantos empire down. She had even been prepared to sacrifice her own virginity to ensure that the destructive plan succeeded.

Beyond the windows, yet another distant rumble of thunder after what he assumed was the flash of lightning just seemed to underline the point of her corruption.

‘Nothing would surprise me.’

‘Well, for your information, I share the house with my mother and little brother.’

That was so unexpected that it seemed to hit like a blow between his eyes, making his head go back in shock, eyes narrowing assessingly. This was information he had not been given.

‘You don’t have a brother.’

The look Sadie turned on his was wide-eyed, innocent, sharply contrasting with the way that her chin came up and she faced him defiantly over the table.

‘Well, that just goes to show that your amazing spy network isn’t as good as you thought. For your information, I do have a brother—a little brother called George. He was born—He’s not quite five.’

Five. Why did it seem that everything that had turned his life upside down had happened at the point not quite five years before? So her mother had been pregnant around the time when they had been together and planning to get married, or just after. And little George had been born into the maelstrom of action and reaction once her father’s plan to bring down the house of Konstantos had been put into motion.

And of course in those months he had been focusing only on holding things together. On keeping the corporation from going under and taking his beleaguered father with it. At the time he had felt that if he thought about anything else, focussed on anything else, then the dark waves of total disaster would break over his head and he would definitely go down for the third time—and never come up again.

But the fact that she had a brother put a different complexion on the fact that Sadie wanted to keep the house. This George was so young that there was no way he could have ever been involved in anything the adult Carterets had planned and implemented against his family.

‘I see,’ he said, the words loaded with dark meaning. ‘That explains why I never got to hear of it. So tell me…’

‘No.’

Ridiculously buoyed up by the small triumph she’d had in putting him mentally onto the wrong foot for once, Sadie waved the hand that had picked up her fork to dig into her pasta to silence him.

‘My turn.’

He might hold all the aces, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let him get away with monopolising the conversation and treating the meal as if it was a trial for fraud with him as the counsel for the prosecution.

‘I get to ask some questions too.’

Was that a grudging respect in his eyes, the inclination of his head? Just the possibility gave her a little surge of confidence as she forked up a mouthful of her pasta.

‘What questions?’

‘Well, the obvious, for a starter. Like—you said you wanted to talk to me about a job. What sort of a job could I do for you? I mean—what need would you have of a wedding planner?’

‘That really is asking the obvious,’ Nikos commented. ‘To plan a wedding, of course.’

The impact of his response hit home just in the moment that Sadie popped the forkful of pasta into her mouth and chewed. Too late she realised that she’d been in such a state of apprehension when she’d arrived at the restaurant that she’d blindly ordered her meal with an arrabiata sauce, instead of the one next to it on the menu. She loathed chillies, and this was heavily laced with them.

‘A wedding?’ she croaked through the burn in her mouth, tears of reaction stinging her eyes.

‘Here…’

Leaning forward, Nikos poured a glass of water, held it out to her, watching as she gulped it down gratefully.

‘You hate spicy food,’ he said, when she finally started to breathe more easily. ‘Particularly chillies.’

Did he remember everything about her? It was a scary thought.

‘So why order something that you were going to hate?’

‘It’s almost five years. I might have changed—people do.’

‘Obviously not that much,’ Nikos drawled, his dry tone making her wonder if there was so much more than her reaction to the chilli sauce behind his comment. ‘Would you like something else?’

‘No—thank you.’

Any appetite she had had fled in the moment he had made that stunning announcement. But at least the impact of the chillies had disguised the fact that a lot—oh, be honest!—most of her reaction had been in response to his declaration. Her heart was still thudding from the shock of it, her thoughts spinning, whirling from one emotion to another and back again.

And none of the reactions was one that she really wanted to take out and examine in detail. Not here, not now. Not with Nikos lounging back in his chair, watching every move she made.

‘Whose wedding?’ she managed to croak. ‘Are you telling me that you are getting married?’

Once more Nikos inclined his dark head in agreement.

‘Who to?’

‘I prefer not to say. One never knows when the paparazzi might be hanging around, looking for a story. I prefer that they do not find out about this just yet. I want to protect my fiancée.’

A protection he hadn’t offered her, Sadie recalled with a stab of bitterness. Then he had been happy that the world should know about their engagement, their upcoming wedding. With the result that she had begun to feel she was living her life in a goldfish bowl, with a huge, powerful spotlight directed right at it all the time.

Which had made their final break-up into a media circus that had left her shattered and devastated.

‘And you don’t trust me?’ she asked, as much to distract herself from the particularly vivid, particularly painful memories that had risen to the surface of her mind, no matter how much she tried to push them down.

‘You will find out soon enough—when the time is right for you to know.’

It seemed that Nikos too had abandoned all pretence at having an appetite for his meal. His ignored sea bass was rapidly cooling on his plate as he focussed only on her.

‘And of course when you are in Greece…’

‘What?’

She couldn’t have heard that right.

‘No—wait a minute—back up a bit here. What was that? I thought you said…I’m not going to Greece!’

‘Of course you are.’

Nikos’s half smile was perfectly composed, totally in control.

‘How else will you organise the wedding?’

‘Your wedding?’

The croak in her voice was worse than the one inflicted by the bite of the chillies. She could hardly believe that she had heard anything right. Had he really said?

She couldn’t…She wouldn’t! How could he expect her to organise and arrange a wedding at which he—the man she had once been going to marry herself—would become someone else’s husband? He couldn’t ask it of her! It was too cruel. Too monstrous.

But the reality was that Nikos wasn’t asking. He was simply stating a fact. As far as he was concerned this was what was going to happen. She was going to take on the arranging of his wedding—to his fiancée. Because he said so.

‘No…’

It was all she could manage. Even after a long, shaken gulp of cooling water, her throat refused to allow her to say any more.

‘I said that I had a job for you.’

‘This is the job? This is what you brought me here to talk about?’

And what sort of twisted vindictiveness had driven him to bring her here, to the restaurant where they had shared their first meal together, and where, barely two months later, he had proposed to her in one of the other candlelit booths?

‘Well, thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline the commission. I can’t go to Greece.’

And she couldn’t possibly work with him on his plans to marry someone else.

‘I’m afraid that you do not have that option.’ Nikos’s tone took his response to a place light years away from any real regret. In fact, it made it only too plain that the very last thing he was was sorry. ‘This is not a job that you can turn down—or even stop to think about. Not if you really meant what you said when you told me you would do anything if I would just let you live in Thorn Trees.’

‘So…’ Sadie drew in a slow, deep breath and let it out again on a thoughtful sigh. ‘This is your price for what I asked? I work for you—plan your wedding—and you’ll allow me to stay in…’

‘I’ll allow your mother and brother to stay in the family home. For now,’ Nikos put in, making it plain that his concern was only for them.

‘What made you change your mind? Only this morning you were saying that you wouldn’t even consider it.’

‘Your mother played no part in what happened in the past. Neither did your brother. Because of that I am prepared to make some concessions for them.’

Which once again put the emphasis of what he was doing firmly on the personal, between Nikos and herself. And what he wanted from her was for her to organise this wedding for him and so rub her nose in the fact that he had not only moved on but totally replaced her in his life. The cruel sting of that thought made her wish again that she had let him pour her some wine. At least then she could have lifted her glass, sipped from it—even if she was only pretending to drink. She could have fiddled with the glass, hidden her face behind it, anything that would distract him from the hurt, the feeling of being at a loss, she knew must show in her face.

‘But I don’t know anything about Greek weddings— you would do better with someone else, someone who knows all about—’

‘I don’t want anyone else. I want you.’

‘Surely your bride-to-be will have some say in the matter?’

‘My bride-to-be will leave things entirely in my hands.’

‘Oh, she will, will she? What’s this—you’re reverting to type and determined to get yourself a sweet little innocent wife who daren’t say a word against you.’

‘Unlike the wife I would have had if I’d married you?’ Nikos drawled cynically, swilling the rich red wine around in his glass before taking a long drink from it. ‘No one could ever have described you as “sweet”—or “innocent.”’

‘But then you never really wanted to marry me in the first place,’ Sadie flashed back, still fighting with the pain of her memories.

She’d been an innocent when he’d met her—still a virgin at twenty. But naively, crazily, head over heels in love, and thinking she was going to be married to the love of her life, she had thrown that special gift away, giving it to the man who she believed loved her but who had in fact just been using her cynically and cruelly as a way to get at her father.

‘On the contrary…’ Nikos countered. ‘I wanted you very much indeed. So much so that I was out of my head with it.’

‘So that’s all I was to you—a mental aberration?’

She had needed the reminder of how ruthlessly he had behaved. He might have wanted her, all right, but only physically. And she had offered herself to him on a plate, pushing to anticipate their wedding vows.

It was that same night when she had discovered just what Nikos had really been up to when he had claimed he wanted to marry her.

‘You certainly drove me crazy. Are you going to eat that?’

He nodded his dark head towards the plate of rapidly cooling pasta that now was beginning to look nastily congealed and even more unappealing.

‘No chance.’

Sadie gave an exaggerated shudder, and to her astonishment a smile flickered on Nikos’s lips. Brief, barely there, but it did at least have a trace of real warmth, real amusement.

‘I knew that would happen when you ordered it. Remembering how much you hate chillies…’

‘Then why didn’t you say something?’ she demanded, causing Nikos to hold up his hands in front of himself in a gesture of appeasement.

‘I also remember what you were like when anyone tried to tell you what to do,’ he said dryly.

And for a moment, as their eyes met across the table, it was as if the years had fallen away and they were back on that very first date, with every part of their relationship brand-new and fresh. When they had both been just learning about each other and everything had seemed bright and clear, with so much potential lying ahead.

As the flickering candle-light played over Nikos’s stunning face it emphasised shadows, showed up lines that she hadn’t seen before. Lines that five years of experience had put on his face, under his eyes, around his mouth. But somehow the marks of time seemed only to enhance rather than reduce the powerful masculine appeal of his hard features. At this time of day his strong jaw was already shaded with the darkness of a day’s growth of beard and, seeing it, Sadie suddenly had a rush of vivid, painful memory of just how she had loved the feel of that faint roughness against her skin when he kissed her, the lightly stinging response it had always left behind.

Nikos’s eyes were dark, deep pools above the broad slash of his cheekbones, and his sensual mouth was stained faintly by the rich red wine he had just drunk, his lips still moist from it. As their gazes clashed, froze, locked together with an intensity that made it seem as if the whole of the restaurant and everyone in it had faded into a hazy blur, the murmur of conversation blended together until it made a sound like the distant buzzing of a thousand bees—there, but making no real sense at all.

All the breath seemed to stop in her throat, making her lips part in an attempt to snatch in air that she had almost forgotten how to breathe. She felt as if she was drowning in those eyes, losing herself and going down for the third time as hot waters of sensuality swirled around her head, making her senses swim dangerously. Outside, in the darkened rainswept street, the lightning flashed again, but Sadie barely saw it. It was only when a growl of thunder made her jump that she came back to herself in a rush.

‘Nikos…’

She barely knew she had spoken, only that the sound of his name had escaped on a breath that had somehow formed into the word. And when she looked around, with things coming back into focus again, she saw how she had actually put her hand out to him, trying to make contact. Her arm lay across the gingham tablecloth, her fingers stretched towards his, almost making contact.

In the space of a jolting heartbeat she knew what a mistake she had made. She saw the way the man before her blinked hard, just once, and when he opened his eyes again it was as if all trace of any emotion, any warmth, had been washed from them leaving them, opaque and cold as a pebble at the bottom of a mountain stream. With that blink the silent connection that seemed to have formed between was broken, shattered, and Nikos suddenly straightened up, reaching for his napkin and dabbing it to his mouth.

‘Then we’ll go. I’ve said what I wanted to say and you will need to get home and pack. We leave for Athens in the morning.’

‘Leave…’

Indignation and exasperation burned away any last remaining shreds of the disturbing sensual response she had just felt, leaving her feeling uncomfortable and totally on edge.

‘But I haven’t said I’ll come yet. You can’t just—’

‘There’s nothing for you to say,’ Nikos cut across her attempt to protest, pushing back his chair and standing up as he did so. ‘It’s make your mind up time, Sadie. You either pack to come with me to Greece in the morning—or you pack up everything for yourself, your mother and brother and leave Thorn Trees. So which is it to be?’

It was the reminder of her mother and George that decided the question, as Nikos had obviously intended it should. He had held out the offer to let them stay, but only on his terms. And those terms involved her going with him to Greece and working to arrange Nikos’s wedding to his new bride.

‘Your choice, Sadie,’ Nikos prompted harshly when she still hesitated.

Which, of course, was no choice at all. There was only one thing she could say. Only one way she could keep her mother and George safe and happy. No matter what the personal cost to her.

‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘It seems I have no choice.’

‘None at all,’ Nikos assured her. And the really disturbing thing was the total lack of any sort of triumph or satisfaction in his tone.

He had planned for just this result and things had worked out exactly as he intended. He had expected nothing else. Because he knew exactly where he had her—dancing on the end of the strings that he was holding, in total control of her life. And there was nothing she could do about it.