Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 31

THE LATE MORNING sun coming through the window and onto her face finally dragged Sadie from the deep, exhausted sleep into which she had fallen well after midnight. Yawning and stretching, she felt the faint aches in her body after the night of passion she had shared with Nikos.

A long, long night of passion that had followed on from the equally ardent afternoon they had spent in bed too. At some point they had emerged to eat a meal, drink some wine, but the food had barely been touched before Nikos had leaned across the table, catching her chin in his hand and drawing her face towards him to plant another long, lingering kiss on her partly open mouth. Sadie had responded with equal enthusiasm, and soon they had abandoned all pretence of wanting to eat and headed back to the bedroom.

She could still feel the places where Nikos had kissed her, caressed her, finding pleasure spots she hadn’t known existed, opening a world of sensual delights to her with every second that had passed. The scent of his body still permeated the sheets, and if she rolled over she could see the indentation on the pillows where his head had rested when they had finally succumbed to sleep.

And she could even still taste him on her mouth. If she licked her lips then her tongue caught the faint flavour of Nikos’s skin, the salty tang of his sweat, the deeply personal memory of his tongue tangling intimately with hers.

Sighing contentedly, she stretched again, savouring the memory that the taste brought back to her.

The taste of her first, her one and only lover.

The taste of the one man she had ever loved.

Her heart kicked hard and sharp at the thought, pushing her upright in the bed, staring sightlessly out of the window to where the clear blue Aegean Sea lapped lazily against the shoreline below.

The one man she had ever loved and the one man she still loved with all her heart.

She drew in a sharp, raw-edged breath at the realisation that this was how it was, and nothing she could do would ever change it. She had fallen head over heels in love with Nikos in the first moment she had met him and nothing had changed since. All that had happened, all that had come between them, had never managed to destroy the way she felt, even when she’d believed it had. Deep in her heart, the feelings had remained just the same. She still loved him; she would always love him.

And Nikos?

Now she realised just what she had been trying to grasp hold of in her mind yesterday by the pool, when Nikos’s kisses and caresses had driven her so distracted with need that she hadn’t been able to think of her own name, let alone grasp the elusive, whispering little voice that had tried to warn her that not all was well. That there was something she really should be thinking of before she jumped in too deep and let the dark waters of sexuality close right over her head.

Now, too late, she knew what it was—and she also knew that it meant that her life would never be the same. She also knew that it had been too late yesterday, too late from the moment she had confronted Nikos in his London office, seeing him again for the first time. Too late to go back to her old way of life, to managing to live without Nikos in it, without knowing that she still loved him. From the moment she had set eyes on him again she had fallen right back in love with him—though in those first days she had never realised the truth.

If, in fact, she had ever really fallen out of love with him. She had been terrified of being in love with a man who didn’t love her at all. And so she had forced herself to believe that she hated him because it was safer for her, easier that way.

‘Safer!’

Sadie actually spoken the word aloud, the way she was feeling turning it into a sound of shaken laughter. Safer just didn’t come into it. Safer wasn’t possible. Because the truth was that she had done exactly that, no matter how careful her personal safeguards had been.

She was in love with Nikos Konstantos and Nikos…Well, Nikos wanted her. He desired her intensely sexually; she could be in no doubt about that. He had spent last night and half of yesterday proving just that to her. He might even want to marry her. But only to get her into his bed and keep her there. He’d said as much yesterday.

‘Hell, yes. I’d have done anything to get you into my bed.’

But he had spoken no word of love. Had never shown any sign of even considering that such an emotion existed. And probably, for Nikos, it never had. He had never loved her in the past, didn’t love her now. And there was no hope that he would ever come to love her at any time in the future—if they had one together.

‘Oh, Nikos!’

Sighing, Sadie forced herself to throw back the covers and get out of bed. What was it they said about the cold light of dawn? Yesterday had been wonderful, the night a sensual fantasy come true. But now, with the morning light shining bright on the new day, and with Nikos no longer in her bed to kiss her distracted, keep her thoughts from the ‘what nexts’ and ‘if onlys’ that plagued her, she was forced to face the probability that last night had not been a beginning, a start to a future, but instead a one-off final fling.

Wasn’t it far more likely that Nikos had seen last night as a way, as he had said, ‘to deal with what is between us’? To get her out of his system once and for all. He had made no promise, offered her nothing else. And she would be all kinds of a fool if she looked for anything.

But for now she’d take what was on offer, she resolved as she headed for the bathroom and the shower. The truth was that she was weak enough to admit to settling for anything. Just one more day…just one more time…

That phrase was still repeating inside her head when, fresh from her shower, naked and with dripping hair, she wandered back into the bedroom. Only to stop dead at the sight of the dark figure standing by the window.

‘Nikos!’

With the sun blazing behind him, his imposing frame was just a black silhouette, his face a shadowed blank. But there was something about the way he stood, a tension in the broad shoulders under the soft blue linen shirt, in the way his hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his pale trousers, that warned her about his mood. He was not here for light conversation, and if she was any judge he was definitely not here to resume the lovemaking that had occupied so much of the night.

‘What is it?’ she asked sharply in the same moment that he spoke too.

‘We need to talk.’

It clashed with her own words, but she caught it and it sent her spirits, already only precariously balanced between good and low, plummeting right down on to the floor beneath her bare feet. How many ominous, difficult conversations had begun with just those words? We need to talk implied that something had gone wrong—or was about to go wrong.

But what?

‘OK.’

It was all she could manage, and in a way that was totally ridiculous after the night they had just spent together she found herself wishing that she had wrapped a towel around her before she had left the bathroom. Standing here like this, totally naked, she felt so vulnerable and exposed, needing to hide. She certainly didn’t feel up to any ‘we need to talk’ type of discussion anyway.

‘Not like this. Get some clothes on first.’

Obviously Nikos felt the same about her appearance. Which should have been a relief but, in fact, only added to her tension. Last night, nothing would have distracted him from the fact that she was naked—or from taking full advantage of it. Now it was an awkward obstacle in the way of what he wanted to get done.

Which didn’t promise well for this talk.

‘Of course.’

But her clothes were in her room, not here in Nikos’s bedroom where they had spent the night.

‘I’ll…’

But Nikos was already moving, heading for the door as if he couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.

‘I’ll be in my office,’ he tossed over his shoulder at her.

‘I’ll be there.’

Somehow Sadie managed to keep her tone buoyant, when in fact, it should have been sinking with her spirits. She had admitted to herself that she expected her dismissal from his life to come sooner rather than later, but not this soon. She doubted if Nikos even heard her anyway, as the door swung to behind his hasty exit.

He was a fool, Nikos told himself as he headed for the stairs, the pace of his steps matching the state of his thoughts. A stupid, total fool and he had just proved it to himself.

He should have known. He did know, damn it! He’d left Sadie sleeping in his bed this morning and she had been totally naked then. And then, when he had gone into the room and heard the shower running in the bathroom, any idiot would have assumed that when she emerged she was not likely to be wearing any clothes.

But he had not been thinking straight. With his mind so full of the news he had been given this morning, he hadn’t been thinking about anything else at all. And so when Sadie had finally emerged, beautifully naked, with her soft skin still pink and glowing from the shower, the sight had hit him like a blow to his already unfocussed head. And that was something he didn’t need. In two ways.

He already had the image of Sadie’s naked body in his mind. Gamato, after last night he knew that it was etched there permanently, never to be erased. If he had hoped that the sensory indulgence of the past eighteen hours or so would sate him on her charms and leave him free to live his life again, then he had been very badly mistaken. There was no way he was sated at all. The truth was that he doubted if he ever would be. There was no way he could have enough of Sadie Carteret, and one passionate night of total abandon had done nothing to appease the appetite he had for her.

If anything, it had only whetted it so that he was far hungrier now than he had ever been in the years they had been apart.

And that was why the article he had read in the English gossip columns had sent his mental temperature soaring, making any sort of rational thought impossible.

‘Gamoto!’

It was also impossible to sit down and wait for Sadie to appear. The thought that he might have actually started to trust her when the truth was that he was being led around by his nose—or another part of his anatomy—twisted cruelly in his guts.

She was down quicker than he had anticipated. And where he had been sure that, realising something was up, she would dress carefully for maximum impact—something like the fantasy come true of that red dress came to mind—he found he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Sadie had clearly rushed into her clothes, grabbing at the first thing that came to hand. And the first thing was a pair of worn denim jeans and a plain white v-necked tee shirt, her face clear of any make-up, pale against the still-damp darkness of her hair. Not that it helped any. The truth was that she was hellishly sexy in anything. And with the memory of her gloriously naked body in his arms, in his bed—underneath him, warm and willing all through the night and again in the bedroom just now—he had to make a fearsome effort to keep his eyes on her face. Because it was her face that he needed to see. He needed to look into her eyes, read her expression. That way he might have some chance of finding out what was going on in her conniving little mind.

‘What is it?’

So she was going for wide-eyed innocence. With just a touch of defiance. It was the look she’d had on her face the last time he’d seen her five years before. He didn’t want to look too closely at the memories that dredged up.

The newspaper was still lying on the desk, exactly as he had left it to go upstairs. He picked it up and tossed it towards her.

‘Read that.’

He knew exactly the moment she registered what the photograph showed by the way that the colour shifted in her face and she bit down hard on her lower lip, white teeth digging into the soft pink. With an effort Nikos suppressed an urge to go to her and tell her to stop, to run his thumb over the damage she was inflicting on herself.

‘Well?’ he barked, when she had obviously taken in all she needed to, had dropped the paper back on to the desk and was preparing her answer.

‘Well, what?’

What did he expect her to say? Sadie asked herself. And, perhaps more to the point, was there really any point in saying anything? From the thunderous dark frown on his face, he had clearly already tried her, acting as judge and jury, found her guilty and was now prepared to pronounce sentence.

‘I don’t know anything about this.’

A wave of her hand indicated the incriminating photograph. And she had to admit that she understood only too well just why he was so angry.

She had come downstairs, feeling shaken and on edge, apprehensive as to what was ahead of her. From the mood Nikos was in it was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong, though she had no idea what. The only thing that she could think of was that Nikos had had second thoughts about the passion they had shared in the night and was going to tell her it was all over. That had been bad enough. But this she was totally unprepared for.

‘I don’t!’ she repeated when he turned a frankly sceptical look on her, making it plain that he had no intention of believing a word she said.

The picture was of the two of them in Cambrelli’s just a few nights before. And it had been taken in the moment that she had leaned forward, stretched out a hand to touch him. She hadn’t actually made contact at the time, but from the angle the photograph had been taken it looked as if she had. And in the way their heads were inclined towards each other, eyes locked, seeing nothing else, no one else, the picture seemed to tell a story. A totally inaccurate story, but one that was encapsulated in the headline that ran along the top of the page.

‘Together again!’ it read, and the rest of the short article interpreted the scene in the way that she supposed it must have looked to an outsider. The sexy Greek billionaire and his marriage-shy ex-fiancée seemed to be back together, it claimed. They had met for a secret tryst in a down-market restaurant where they’d appeared to be getting closer by the second.

‘Well, I don’t see why you’re so angry that we were seen together. I mean…’

Desperate to lighten the atmosphere, she tried a flippant shrug and knew immediately that she’d hit the wrong note.

‘Look, it’s not as if you really have a fiancée who would be worried or hurt by it.’

‘Do you think that I give a damn about that?’

Sadie had no answer for him. Instead, she was busy trying to work out just what had happened.

‘The storm…’ she said slowly as realisation dawned. ‘There was a storm that night, and what I thought was lightning…’

‘Was in fact the paparazzo you had tipped off that we would be there.’

‘What? No—of course not! How could you think that I would do that? Why would I do that?’

‘Two words,’Nikos stated with deadly venom. ‘Thorn Trees.’

‘Th-Thorn Trees?’

Sadie frowned disbelievingly, rubbed hard at her temples where a headache was beginning to form. The abrupt transition from waking up happy and sensually contented to this fraught and tension-filled atmosphere was a terrible shock to her system. And now that Nikos seemed even more aggressive and antagonistic she was finding it even harder to think straight.

‘I don’t understand—why would this have anything to do with Thorn Trees?’

‘Don’t play games, agapiti mou,’ Nikos scorned savagely. ‘Do you think that I cannot add two and two together?’

‘And come up with five, obviously!’ Sadie flung back. ‘Or more like five hundred. I don’t see how you can make the connection, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me. You’re going to have to explain yourself.’

Nikos flung up his hands in an exaggerated expression of exasperation and his breath hissed in through his teeth in a sigh of dark irritation

‘“I won’t let it happen, Mum,”’ he said suddenly. ‘“I’ve made sure of that. I’ve got everything in hand.”’

For a second Sadie didn’t realise what was happening, couldn’t understand where the words had come from. But then she realised that he was quoting her own conversation with her mother on the phone the day before.

‘I was talking about the wedding planning job I was doing—I thought I was doing—for you.’

Her legs felt distinctly unsteady beneath her so she pulled out the chair from the desk and rested her hands on the back of it, letting it support her as she faced him.

‘I don’t know what else you think I had planned.’

The furious glare Nikos shot her told her that he still believed she knew exactly what he was saying, but she refused to be intimidated by it, staring him out though it took all her courage to do so. Eventually he raked both hands through his hair again and muttered something dark and hostile in thickly accented Greek.

‘The dinner at Cambrelli’s was after you came to my office to ask—to beg—for a way of staying in Thorn Trees.’

‘I know. And after you refused to help at all.’

‘Exactly. In response to which you said that you would do anything—anything at all—if it meant you could stay in the house.’

The realisation of the truth hit her in the face like a slap, and she was so very grateful for the fact that she was supporting herself on the back of the chair as the shock of it made her head spin nauseously.

‘You really believe that in order to get what I want I alerted the press to the fact that we were meeting—gave them a photo opportunity?’

The swift, sharp inclination of his dark head to one side was Nikos’s silent acknowledgement that she was on the right track. But it still didn’t make any sense that she could see.

‘But I don’t understand—why would that help me twist your arm over Thorn Trees?’

‘Because we had been seen together. Because it was assumed—implied—that our relationship was back on.’

‘But it isn’t—wasn’t…’

Which did she mean? Which was right? She really didn’t know.

‘We knew that. No one else. And not knowing that, how would it have looked if it became known that I had taken possession of Thorn Trees after all. That I had thrown my fiancée’s mother and little brother out of their home? Perhaps out of spite for the fact that you had refused to get back with me again…’

‘You think that I would have used this picture as some sort of moral blackmail—a bargaining tool to get what I wanted?’

‘Why not? It is a technique worthy of your father at his best—or do I mean his worst? He would be proud of you, Sadie mou. You have clearly learned a great deal from him.’

‘I’ve learned nothing!’

Raising her voice like this was probably a big mistake, but to be honest she didn’t really care. She wanted to make her point as emphatically as she could.

‘I’ve learned nothing from my father—and I wouldn’t want to! The cold-blooded way he went about everything appalled me. I hated it. My father thought he could run people’s lives—rather like you, in fact. It made my life a misery—my mother’s too—and everyone else’s around us!’

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

‘Do you know what?’

Sadie flung up her arms now, in a gesture that was very similar to the one that Nikos had used a few moments earlier—and expressing the same sort of exasperation.

‘I don’t really care! You’re so obviously dead set against me—and so convinced that you’re damn well right—it seems to me there’s very little point in even trying to explain. I’m never going to persuade you of anything else. So I might as well just stop trying.’

And she’d have to admit that she lost Thorn Trees too, she acknowledged privately to herself. There was no way Nikos was going to let her stay in the house now, under any circumstances. She didn’t dare to let herself consider that thought any further for fear that it would take all the strength from her. And she already felt as if she was fighting for her life.

‘You’re right,’ Nikos conceded unexpectedly, shrugging his broad shoulders in a way that made her mouth drop open slightly in astonishment and disbelief. ‘It really doesn’t matter any more now. If anything, it makes things easier.’

And that was the last thing she had expected. So much so that she took a step back in shock, eyeing him warily, as if she believed that he might have changed shape and persona right in front of her, turning into some totally different, totally alien being right before her eyes.

‘Easier in what way?’

He looked straight at her, those gleaming golden eyes locking with her confused green ones. And he actually smiled. But it wasn’t a smile that warmed her in any way, or even lifted the atmosphere in the room. Instead it sent a cold, creeping sensation sliding down her spine in dread of what was coming next.

‘When we marry, it won’t be such a shock to the world—the gossip columns will already have had a field-day.’

Sadie shook her head in confusion. She couldn’t have heard right.

‘We aren’t getting married.’

‘Oh, but we are.’

Nikos put one hand down on the top of the desk, pressing hard on it as he leaned towards her.

‘It’s the obvious solution, isn’t it?’

‘Not to me. You haven’t even asked me!’

‘Do I need to ask?’ he stunned her by saying. ‘I told you—you are the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry.’

And he truly thought that that made it all fine. The belief was stamped onto his dark features, drawing the muscles tight around his mouth.

‘Yes, in order to have me in your bed!’

If she’d expected him to look mortified, even disconcerted, then she was very badly mistaken.

‘And what better reason is there for being together?’ he countered dismissively.

There’s love, and caring for each other… But she didn’t dare say it, couldn’t even find the strength to open her mouth to speak the words. Obviously they had never crossed Nikos’s mind, and were never likely to do so at any point in the future.

‘We’re great together sexually,’ Nikos went on, confirming her fears. ‘The best. You have to agree there. Last night proved that. I want more of that.’

‘And me?’ Sadie had to force the words from her tight and painful throat so they sounded raw and rusty, breaking apart at the edges. ‘What do I get out of this?’

Again he looked stunned that she had to ask.

‘Do I really have to tell you? You get to be my wife—to have all the wealth and luxury you could ever want. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’ll never look at another woman as long as we are together. And I’ll give you Thorn Trees too—as a wedding gift. I’ll sign it over to you on our wedding day.’

It was the fact that he thought it was enough that finished her. Nikos obviously felt he was offering her everything she wanted, so why was she even hesitating?

Because what he was offering was everything he thought she had ever dreamed of but nothing that she truly wanted.

She couldn’t do it. It was her worst nightmare come true, possibly even worse than the last time he had wanted to marry her. Because at least then she had believed—had deceived herself—that he loved her. Now she no longer had even that comforting delusion.

‘No.’

The stark rejection was all that she could manage. Besides, what else was there to say? There was no point in even trying to explain. The two of them were on opposite sides of a huge, gaping cavern, and there was no way at all of bridging the gap that yawned between them.

‘Why not? After all, you were prepared to marry me for money once before. What’s different now?’

If he had tossed a bucket of icy water right in her face then he couldn’t have brought her to her senses any quicker. What was she doing even standing here like this, listening to him? She had lost. That was the plain and simple fact. And the only thing she could hope for now was to get out of here with a shred of her dignity intact.

‘What’s different? Everything. Every damn thing. But I couldn’t expect you to understand that.’

‘Try me.’

Sadie had turned on her way towards the door, but those two words had her swinging back, looking him straight in the eye. If she had seen any sign there then, damn it, she might actually have tried. But Nikos’s gaze was pure golden ice, no trace of emotion, no flicker of doubt to give her hope that they were even speaking the same language.

‘You can’t even see that it’s the fact you have to ask that is the problem. If you think any woman would accept a proposal like that then you have to be out of your mind.’

Then, knowing that she had well and truly burned her boats, that she had to get out of here before she collapsed completely, she forced herself to continue her walk to the door, not daring to spare him even the briefest of glances.

‘I’m going to my room to pack—and then I’m leaving—getting out of here. But don’t worry. I don’t expect you to get out the executive jet just for me. If you can order me a taxi to the airport, then I’ll take it from there.’