Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 27

MAY WAS SUPPOSED to be the best possible time to visit Greece. A time when the sun shone but the weather had yet to heat up to the baking temperatures of summer. Sadie had experienced some of that heat when she had visited Greece before and she had found it hard to cope. But then they had only stayed a couple of nights in the capital before flying to the tiny island of Icaros that had been owned by Nikos’s family for generations going way, way back. Once there, she’d found the breezes from the sea had helped to ease the scorching temperatures and made life more enjoyable.

But Icaros was no longer owned by the Konstantos family. Sadie’s father had seen to that. And the memory of just what Edwin had done was a troublesome worry, like the ache of a sore tooth, nagging at her mind all the time.

‘How are you this morning?’

Nikos’s voice startled her from her thoughts, making her jump nervously as he strolled out of the living room on to the wide main balcony where she had been trying to at least make a pretence of eating some of the breakfast that had been laid out on a table in the sunshine.

‘I trust you spent a comfortable night?’

‘That depends on what you mean by comfortable.’

Dressed more casually in the warmth of his native country, he was devastatingly dark and stunning in a soft white shirt and loose beige trousers. His feet were bare, lean and bronzed on the white stone of the balcony, so that he moved as silently and easily as some loose-limbed cat, every bit as lethally elegant and striking.

‘The room was not to your satisfaction?’

Nikos strolled over to the table and picked up a bunch of grapes, plucking one from the stalk and tossing it into his mouth.

‘My room was fine. As you know it had to be. This is a beautiful house.’

And if she needed anything to bring home to her just how far the Konstantos family had come since their lowest point five years before then this was it.

The villa had been a real surprise. The first of many. The first time Nikos had brought her to Athens they had stayed in his large apartment in the Kolonaki district, overlooking the Parthenon. That apartment had been impressive enough, but it was nothing when compared to the Villa Agnanti, where they had arrived late yesterday afternoon. Built into the side of a hill, the huge white house was on several levels, each one going lower down the cliff from the main road. From the lowest level you could walk out through the back gate, step out on to Schinias beach, where the crystal clear Aegean Sea lapped against the shore just metres away. Every single one of the bedrooms had a balcony that overlooked the ocean, but even the gentle sigh of the waves against the sand had not been soothing enough to ease Sadie into sleep last night. Instead she had lain awake and restless, wondering just what she had got herself into and how she was going to manage to handle things here.

‘It has everything I need,’ Nikos responded, but the flat, unemotional level of his voice somehow communicated far more than what he actually said. It was what he had not said that seemed to reverberate underneath the words and gave them a very different emphasis from the one he had used.

‘But you must know that I wouldn’t be able to rest properly without knowing what was going on at home.’

Sadie adjusted her position against the balustrade, turning so that she was resting her back against the white stonework and looking straight into Nikos’s dark, sculpted face, feeling the warmth of the morning sun beat down on the back of her head.

‘You phoned Thorn Trees just before dinner. All was well then.’

‘But I only had five minutes.’

Five minutes during which the door to the room she had been in was left open and she had been painfully aware of the way that Nikos was waiting for her beyond that door, no doubt listening to every word she said. She had felt like a prisoner under careful observation, unable to manage more than a few stilted sentences in response to her mother’s unrestrained delight at knowing that she was safe in Thorn Trees for the time being at least.

Not that Sarah fully understood that their reprieve was only temporary. The joy that had rung in her mother’s voice had been another twist of the knife in Sadie’s already worried and aching heart. Her mother might think that Nikos had been wildly generous and unbelievably forgiving, she might believe that the stay of execution was permanent and for all time, but Sadie knew it was just that—a stay. And the way Nikos had behaved on the flight here, the fact that her phone and her laptop, her only means of communication with the outside world, were still firmly in his possession left her in no doubt that he wasn’t planning on being forgiving or even kind, but on holding her ruthlessly to their bargain for as long as it took. And then…

And then?

The truth was that she had no idea at all what would happen next. When her time in Greece was up, when she had fulfilled her contract and Nikos and his fiancée were married, then what would happen?

Was the reprieve that he had granted them only for the length of time that she was working for him? And when that was done would he let them stay in Thorn Trees? She couldn’t see it happening.

‘Long enough to assure yourself that your mother is well. You are here to work.’

‘Then let me get some work done! There’s no way I can do anything without my laptop. And without meeting your bride.’

That came out more pointedly than she had planned. The truth was that just the thought of him marrying someone else twisted up her feelings so badly that she didn’t know what to think or how to feel.

‘My bride will not be here for some time. You will not be able to talk to her.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! How can I work on your—? We—’

To Sadie’s horror her mixed up feelings seemed to have tangled on her tongue, making her stumble over the word.

‘Your wedding—when I don’t know who she is or what she likes? I need to talk to her.’

‘You will talk to me.’

Nikos tossed another grape into his mouth and chewed on it before swallowing it down. Sadie found that the simple movement held her gaze transfixed on the lean line of his throat, the muscles moving under the smooth olive skin. She felt her own mouth dry in response, her own throat move as she swallowed too.

‘I will tell you everything you need to know.’

‘You will?’

Was that embarrassing croak really her voice? Sadie moved to the table set out on the balcony and reached for a glass of orange juice, gulping it down to ease the tight constriction of her throat.

‘A wedding is a woman’s most special day. She would want it to be absolutely perfect.’

‘And it will be,’ Nikos returned with smooth arrogance, clamping sharp white teeth down on another beautifully fresh grape. A tiny trickle of juice slid out on to his lips and he swept it away with a slick of his tongue.

Sadie forced her eyes down to study the surface of her drink as if it held the answer to some vitally important question. Anything to distract herself from the way that her thoughts were heading. Deep inside she was having to struggle with the wild, crazy impulse to move forward, press her mouth to that one small spot on his lips, to savour the sweetness of the grape combined with the intensely personal taste of Nikos’s lips.

She was still fighting the sensual need, her fingers gripping her glass tightly, when Nikos spoke again.

‘I will see to that.’

In the face of his cold confidence the rush of physical response faded as rapidly as it had come, leaving her feeling shivery and unsure, as if in the grip of a sudden fever. For a moment she had let herself forget how icily controlling and ruthless Nikos could be. And forgetting that was not a good idea.

‘And you think that everything you do is so perfect? That you can never make a mistake?’

‘Not perfect, no.’

Nikos pulled out one of the chairs and lowered himself into it, stretching out long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. The change of position should have made him look more relaxed, at ease, but strangely it had exactly the opposite effect. He looked like nothing so much as a hunting tiger, lazily settling down to keep a watch on its prey before it decided whether it was worth the effort to pounce or not. The glass in her hand shook with the tremor of her grip and she hastily banged it down on the table, so as to avoid spilling some of the juice on to the stones of the balcony.

‘And as to making mistakes, well, if I was immune to them then I would never have had anything to do with you.’

‘But you can’t take control of someone else’s life like this. I would never let you get away with it…What?’ she questioned in surprise as Nikos’s low laughter broke into her outburst.

‘I am only too well aware of that, agapiti mou.’ The cynical emphasis on that my dear turned it into the exact opposite of any term of affection and the gleam in the golden eyes as he laughed up at her was totally lacking in any sort of warmth. ‘Why do you think that I would prefer I kept you to myself while we work on plans for the wedding?’

‘If you intend to go ahead and marry this girl this time.’

No sooner had the words escaped her than she wished them back. Too sharp, too bitter, they revealed far more of her personal thoughts than she had ever wanted. The last thing she wanted was for Nikos to feel there was any lingering bitterness about the fact that their marriage had never taken place. She was free of that—wasn’t she?

‘Do you doubt it?’

‘What do you think? I have personal experience of just how much you mean your marriage proposals, remember?’

Nikos’s mouth twisted slightly, his penetrating stare seeming to burn right into her soul.

‘But I always intended to go ahead and marry you.’

‘You did?’

Nikos swallowed some of his coffee, then grimaced in distaste.

‘This stuff is cold. But no matter.’ Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet again. ‘We should be heading out anyway.’

‘Heading out? Why? Where are we going?’

‘You said that you wanted to know more about the wedding. What better way to start than with the place I have in mind for the ceremony? Go and collect whatever you will need. We leave in ten minutes.’

It was going to be a long day, Nikos reflected as he watched Sadie’s retreating back, the sensual sway of her hips, as she made her way into the house. The morning sun beat down on his head and down below, at the bottom of the cliffs, the roar of the surf pounding against the shore was a constant background sound to everything.

A sound that fitted the restless hammering of his thoughts as he fought a constant battle to keep his more primitive male impulses under control. He was beginning to wonder just how long he could keep up this pretence of wanting to work with her on the wedding. The truth was that work had nothing at all to do with what he wanted to do with Sadie Carteret.

When he had walked out on to the balcony and seen her standing there, it had been all that he could do not to march across and grab her, pulling her hard against him and bringing his mouth down roughly on top of hers, kissing her until they were both reeling with hunger, their thoughts obliterated in the need that he knew would flare between them.

The sun had gleamed on the dark gloss of her hair, gilding the pale shoulders in the sleeveless red sundress. A red sundress that had big black buttons all the way from the dipping neckline right to where the hem swirled around her slender shapely calves. Those buttons had put the devil’s torment into his mind, tempting him almost beyond endurance with images of closing his fingers over each one, sliding it carefully, slowly from its fastening, and then moving down. Exposing first the soft creamy curves of her breasts, the shadowed valley between them. A valley that he knew from experience—all too short an experience—would be warm and slightly moist, the intimate scent of her skin heightened by the heat of her body, reaching out to him and then falling away with each hasty, unevenly snatched breath she took.

And then moving lower, down to her waist, letting the folds of the soft material part over her hips, where the shadow of her sex showed beneath the delicate covering of her underwear. Lower still, until it fell away from her body, leaving her exposed and revealed to the hunger of his eyes, the touch of his hands.

No! With a rough jerk of his head, he pulled his mind away from the sensual thoughts that plagued him and forced them back on to the here and now.

Because here and now he had to concentrate on other things. But it was damn near impossible to concentrate on anything when all he wanted to do was to take Sadie to bed and spend the rest of the day sating himself in the soft warmth of her body.

She would let him too. Or at least she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. He had seen it in her eyes when they had been on the balcony. The sensual awareness that she hadn’t been able to hide. The way her head had gone back, her lips parting slightly, softly. The way that the dark pupils of her eyes had enlarged until her eyes were almost all black, only the faintest trace of mossy green at their edges.

If he had walked across to her then, taken the glass from her hand and replaced it against her lips with his own mouth, then she would not have protested. Or not much.

It would be that moment in his office all over again. The response that neither of them could hide. That he was damn sure he didn’t want to hide. And that he knew Sadie was fighting to conceal from him now because she believed he was going to marry someone else.

A faint smile crossed his mouth as he followed Sadie inside. He was enjoying watching her struggle with the flames that flared between them and the feeling that she could not, must not act on them. He would keep her on that particular rack for a while longer. The end result, when he finally let her off, would be well worth waiting for.

‘We’re here.’

Sadie had to struggle to bite back the exclamation of relief when Nikos made his announcement perhaps fifty minutes later. Helicopter flights were not her favourite form of travel, and from the moment Nikos had led her from the house to his private helipad, where a gleaming machine that looked like nothing so much as a giant black dragonfly had waited for them, her stomach had been twisting tight with tension. And that sensation had been made all the worse by the way the limited space inside had forced her into close confinement with Nikos for the length of the flight.

He’d piloted the helicopter himself, and every movement of his tanned, muscular arms, the strength of his long fingers on the controls, had her mouth drying in sensual response, her own hands tightening on each other where they lay in her lap. So it was with a sense of escape that she watched the land, the first they had seen for the last twenty minutes of a journey which had been mostly over sparkling blue sea, come closer and closer as the helicopter descended.

‘Where are we?’ she asked when at last they were on the ground, with the engine turned off, and she was able to look around.

But Nikos was already out of the craft and, ducking to avoid the slowing blades, coming round to open the door on her side. It was as she set foot on the ground, the blast of heat hitting her after the controlled temperature inside the plane, that recognition hit, and with it a cruel wave of desperate memory. She knew this rugged shoreline, the steep cliffs that rose above the sea. And there in the distance was the low, white-painted, unexpectedly simple house where she had once spent a magical couple of days when Nikos had first brought her to Greece and to his family home.

‘This is Icaros!’

She knew she looked as startled as she sounded, her head coming up sharply in surprise, green eyes locking with cool gold. And it was then that she realised he had been aiming for just this response.

‘You got the island back?’

Nikos’s response was a curt nod.

‘I got the island back,’ he confirmed.

‘Oh, I’m so glad about that.’

That made his eyes narrow in frank disbelief.

‘You are?’

‘Of course! I know how much this island means to your family.’

It was in the tiny chapel here that his father and mother, his grandparents and every great-grandparent they could remember had been married. A tradition that was vital to the man Nikos was. And his sister, who had died as a baby, was buried in the chapel grounds.

‘So did your father.’

Nikos’s tone was so savage that Sadie actually flinched away from it, recoiling in her chair as if from a blow to her face.

‘That was why he sold it to someone else instead of keeping it for himself. An extra fortune for him, and more of a problem for me to get it back if I ever tried it. I would have to negotiate with someone else and he thought he would be able to watch.’

Sadie shivered both at that icy tone and at the thought of how her father had behaved. The island had been one of the weapons Edwin had used against her when she had refused to believe that Nikos didn’t really love her. If it was a lovematch, her father had said, wouldn’t she be marrying in the little island chapel, like every other Konstantos bride before her? And faced with that and so much other evidence, she had had no choice but to believe him.

She hadn’t wanted to think that her father was right. Hadn’t wanted to accept his bitter, cynical way of thinking about everything. He had been so totally obsessed with getting revenge on the Konstantos family that it had taken over his life. But she had no idea why.

‘Do you know what started this crazy feud in the first place?’ she asked impulsively, not caring if the question was wise or if it would push her even further into trouble with Nikos, raking up old bitter memories that were far better left buried.

‘There was always rivalry between the families—in business dealings. But then it became personal, when the woman my grandfather was supposed to marry ran off with your grandfather instead. Pappous never forgot—or forgave. And he made sure that the Carterets paid for it financially. After that, if one family could attack the other in any way, they did.’

Nikos moved away from the helicopter and paced over to the edge of the cliff to stand staring out at the sea. His long body was silhouetted dark against the sunlight, the width of his shoulders seeming even more impressive than ever.

Suddenly, painfully, Sadie was reminded of the days when they had been together. When, if she had seen him like this, she would have been able to go up to him, slide her arms around that narrow waist until they met over the flat stomach. She could have rested her head against the powerful back, felt the heat of his skin through his shirt and inhaled the rich, intimate scent of his body.

That was how she had always dealt with difficult times in the past. Whatever mood he had been in, she had always been able to bring him round that way, to make him relax and smile again. More often than not he would turn in her arms, gathering her close to kiss her fiercely, until her head was spinning with happiness and desire.

That was how they had ended up in bed together the first time on that weekend before her wedding…

No, no, no!

Desperately she dragged her thoughts back from the painful path they were following. She must not let herself remember how it had once been. It was too cruel, too distressing. And all those ‘once had beens’ had never really existed. She had been living in a dream world, swallowing every deliberate lie that Nikos tossed her way and believing she had found the love of her life. The risks of even allowing such memories back into her life was too great to contemplate with any degree of safety. If she let them back into her mind, into her heart, then she would never be able to cope.

‘There was more to it than that.’ She tried to continue the conversation in order to distract herself from the torment of her memories. ‘Something more recent that had made things even worse. My father was…obsessed is the only word. He’d always perpetuated the feud in a business sense, but something new happened to drive him even further into the depths of hatred for the Konstantos family. Into a determination to ruin them once and for all.’

‘And you didn’t know what that was?’

‘No,’ Sadie managed, her eyes now fixed on the horizon. Her heart was thudding erratically, making it difficult to breathe. She was too much on edge, too aware of the difference between being here now like this and the way things had been that first time to manage to control her voice.

‘But I do know, in the end, it never truly brought him any real satisfaction. He drove his family and friends away because nothing else mattered to him. And he broke my mother’s heart. I found out later that my mother had had an affair. It destroyed their marriage, but I’m sure it was because she felt neglected, abandoned because he was so obsessed.’

It was so much easier to talk like this when Nikos had his back to her. When she couldn’t see his dark, stunning face and the cold contempt that burned in his eyes, thinned his beautiful, sensual mouth. Like this she could still pretend that they had some sort of a civilised relationship.

‘We could—we could end it,’ she suggested, buoyed up on a sudden rush of hope. ‘We could say it stops right here and now and—’

‘And what?’ Nikos enquired, turning suddenly to face her again. ‘And what, Sadie, agapiti mou? Hmm? We end it now and—what? Become close friends?’

He didn’t have to explain how he felt about that. It was there in the disgust stamped clearly onto the beautifully carved features, in the twist to his lips, the bite of the words he flung into her face.

‘No—not friends. We could never be that…’

‘Not friends,’ Nikos repeated with a brutal emphasis, his tongue curling in distaste on the word. ‘Because friends would never turn friends out of their home. Because friends would waive the cost of the rent—or even the purchase price of a very expensive house.’

‘No!’ Sadie shook her head violently so that her dark hair spun out wildly in the sunshine. ‘No—nothing like that!’

Did he really think that that was why she had proposed ending the feud? So that as her ‘friend’ he would feel obliged to let her off her debts and hand Thorn Trees over to her at a peppercorn rent? In the back of her mind she could hear once more that mocking ‘mate’s rates’ that he had tossed at her in his office a couple of days before.

‘You’re right! We could never be friends. And I wouldn’t want to be. All I meant was that we could call a halt to these stupid hostilities and—and live totally separate lives. There’s no way we ever have to even see each other again.’

The thought seemed to stop her breath in her throat. She’d managed to get on with her life these past years by refusing to let herself even think about Nikos and pushing away every memory when it tried to surface. It had nearly broken her but she had managed it. Now it would all be to do again. And, knowing how hard it had been the first time, she flinched away from the prospect of going through it once more.

‘And the sooner that happens, the better as far as I’m concerned.’

He was supposed to respond to that. She even paused, waiting for him to say something but Nikos remained strangely silent. Silent and still. Only the burn of his eyes, fixed on her, unblinking, seemed alive in his set and rigid face.

She should take that as a yes, Sadie decided. It certainly wasn’t any sort of a no. Nothing like a rush to say that, no, they must not separate, must not be apart again. Of course not. But she wished he would say something. Anything.

And suddenly she had to speak again, if only to break the disturbing, nerve-stretching silence that had been going on for far too long.

‘We’d better get this job done so that I can get out of here and be on my way.’

She would be professional if it killed her, she told herself. It was the only way she was going to get through this. She would do the best damn job she could, never put a foot wrong, and then Nikos would have no reason at all to find fault. No reason to go back on his word to let her mother stay in Thorn Trees.

But it was one thing to make that sort of a resolve, quite another to stick to it when every place they walked held a memory of the time when they had been together. Every path, every cove, even every rock, spoke of a happier time, a time when she had known the joy of love, even though it had all been a bitter deception and not the delight she had thought it to be.

It was almost as if Nikos knew what was in her thoughts, what had been in her heart when she had visited Icaros with him all those years before, and was now using it to torment her with the fact that this was where he would be marrying his new fiancée, the woman he loved. And it was when they crossed the little wooden bridge that led from the main island to the high headland, where the tiny chapel stood, that she knew she couldn’t hold back any more. Coming to an abrupt halt, she turned to Nikos, brushing back the dark silk of the her hair that the winds had whipped into wild disorder around her face.

‘Just why am I here?’ she demanded, not caring if the words were wise.

Had she gone completely mad? the look he turned on her said. Did he have to explain everything to her? In words of one syllable?

‘You are a wedding planner. I need to plan a wedding.’

The exaggerated clarity with which he spoke, a deliberate slowing down of his words, grated on her already overwrought nerves. He sounded as if he was having to explain to someone simple. Someone who would have difficulty in understanding what he said.

‘But you could have anyone you wanted. There must be much more established—more successful—fashionable—wedding planners you could hire.’

‘But I want you.’

What was it in his voice that made a shiver run over her skin, lifting the tiny hairs in a rush of apprehension? Sadie couldn’t define it, and she wasn’t sure that she really wanted to dig too deep and find out more than she wanted to know.

‘Why me? Why none of the others?’

Nikos pushed open the door of the little chapel, the wood making a harsh scraping sound over the stone-flagged floor.

‘You owe me,’ he declared harshly. ‘They don’t.’And then, with an abrupt turn onto another conversational path that threw her completely off balance, he continued, ‘Now, come inside and see the chapel.’

She didn’t want to see the chapel, felt that it would destroy her totally to do so. It would take what was left of her shattered heart and grind it in the dust beneath Nikos’s soft handmade boots. If the rest of the island had bitter memories for her, then the inside of the chapel belonged purely to Nikos and the woman he now planned to marry. He had never brought her in here when they had visited Icaros in the past. In fact, the tiny building had stayed securely locked and shuttered, and she had never even set foot on the worn wooden bridge that led to it. Further evidence, her father had said, of the way Nikos had never planned to make her his wife.

But when it came down to it, what choice did she have? She was here to do a job, as Nikos had just reminded her so brutally. And on that job depended her mother’s peace of mind—possibly even her sanity, with the resulting repercussions for her small brother’s happiness. She couldn’t let them down. And so she drew in a deep, hopefully strengthening breath, squared her shoulders and made herself step over the threshold into the cool, shadowed interior of the little church.

After the brightness of the sunlight outside, it was all so dark and dim that she was almost blinded, barely able to see a metre or two ahead of her down the single narrow aisle between the rows of rough wooden pews. Nikos himself, standing before the simple altar, was once more just a silhouette, a solid more substantial shape in the hazy light that came through the narrow windows.

Perhaps it was because of the blackness, because she couldn’t see his face or read his expression clearly. Perhaps it was that she had no choice but to accept that in planning to marry someone else Nikos had demonstrated so clearly that he had moved on from the bitter past they had once shared. But suddenly Sadie was hearing again her own voice inside her head.

We could end it, she had said, referring to the terrible feud between their families. The feud that had taken away too much and given nothing. We could say it stops right here and now…

If only they could. If only she and Nikos could find a way to start again, so that each of them could go on and live their lives without the terrible black shadow hanging over them. But how could she begin? If she could just get Nikos to trust her, even in the tiniest degree, then that would be a start.

A sudden rush of new-found determination pushed her up the aisle towards the still, silent figure standing by the altar steps. Face unreadable, arms folded across the width of his chest, Nikos watched her come.

‘If you really want to employ me as your wedding planner then you have to let me do my job properly,’ Sadie managed once she had drawn level with him, the words spluttering from her in a rush to get them out. ‘You really don’t need to keep my phone and my laptop under lock and key—I’m not going to sell your story.’

The cold-eyed look he turned on her told her that there was no way he believed her declaration.

‘You did damn nearly everything else in the past,’ Nikos flung at her. ‘So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m in no rush to believe you can be trusted now. We do this my way or not at all. And if you can’t agree then you’ll be on the first plane out of here…’

And if she was on the first plane out of Athens, then what would happen to her mother and George? Nikos had said that he would not take revenge on a child, but if she did not fulfil her part of the contract then what was to stop him going back on the deal and throwing her mother and brother out of the only home where they felt safe? Her insides knotted in raw panic at the thought.

She had promised her mother that she would keep her safe in her home for as long as she possibly could, and she would keep that promise if it killed her, she told herself. The one thing she had going for her in this situation was the fact that Nikos was getting married and, for reasons known best to himself, he wanted her to plan the event for him.

She was just going to have to ignore the fact that even thinking about it brought with it a sensation like a cruel knife being scraped over raw, sensitive skin. That the concern that Nikos showed for preserving his fiancée’s anonymity, his involvement in this early stage of things, rubbed her face right in the difference between this wedding and the one he had been planning with her.

Had appeared to be planning with her, she corrected painfully.

She needed to put all those difficult feelings out of her mind. She had to refuse to let herself remember that she was trapped here, isolated with the man who had ruined her life and her family’s. A man who now seemed hell-bent on using the hold he had over her to his own advantage, and taking a cruel and sadistic pleasure in doing just that.

Somehow she was going to have to pretend to herself that Nikos was just a client. Sighing inwardly, Sadie faced the impossibility of that task. Nikos could never be ‘just’ anything. But that was her only way through this situation. The only way she could handle this. Because she did have to handle this.

The truth was that Nikos held all the cards and he could play them as he chose. The only single option left to her was to do the best job she could—and hope that Nikos had some sort of kind cell in his body that would push him to help her when she was done.

Otherwise she would be right back where she had started—or worse. And all of this would have been for nothing.