The Konstantos Marriage Demand (14 page)

‘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.’

H
E LET HER
go.

Nikos made no response to her outburst, and he didn’t even attempt to come after her, to try to stop her. He just stayed exactly where he was and watched in total silence as she walked away from him, down the corridor and up the stairs. And for that Sadie could only be intensely grateful.

If he had made one move to stop her or even said a single thing then she knew that she would have fallen apart, gone to pieces in the space between one heartbeat and another. But when he said nothing and simply let her go she managed to get to the top of the stairs before the tears that had been pushing at the back of her eyes spilled out on to her cheeks, and she had to pause for a moment to draw in a shaky breath, fight with herself for control.

He hadn’t even thought her worth fighting for. She had turned down his proposal of marriage—such as it was—and that was that. There was nothing more to do or say. She had said that she was leaving and that was the only alternative left open to her. She didn’t dare to think of what would happen when she got home and told her mother that they had to move out. But she would face that when the time came. For now, she had to pack.

It didn’t take long. She hadn’t brought very much with her, and she certainly wasn’t going to stay around to make sure everything was put neatly in the case. As long as she emptied the room and got out of here, that was all that mattered. She didn’t even expect to see Nikos again.

So it was a shock to her when, after a brief knock, the door swung open and Nikos came into the room. Sadie’s heart jolted against her ribs at the sight of him. Just for a moment she couldn’t stop herself from wondering…

But, no, of course he hadn’t come upstairs to try and persuade her not to leave, or even to talk to her. Instead, his face more shuttered and closed off than ever before, his eyes hooded, he waved a hand towards the case that she had just fastened where it lay on the bed.

‘This ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll take it down for you.’

So he had come to help her on her way. To make sure that she left the villa as speedily as possible. At least she didn’t feel she had to thank him for his consideration.

Instead she grabbed her handbag and jacket and followed Nikos down the stairs to the hall. No taxi, Sadie noted. Obviously it hadn’t yet arrived. She just wished it would hurry up and get here. Every moment that she had to stay seemed to be dragged out beyond endurance, stretching her strength to its limits.

‘You’ll need these.’

Nikos was holding something out to her. Her laptop and her mobile phone. It was as she took the latter, preparing to drop it into her bag, that realisation dawned with a kick of shock.

‘My mother!’

In the heady intoxication of the previous afternoon and night, the shock to the system that this morning had become, she had forgotten to phone and check how her mother was.
And now, checking her phone, she saw that she had forgotten to charge it up too. The battery was completely dead.

‘Use the phone in the office.’

Nikos’s voice make her start, glancing up at him with wide startled eyes.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Do you think that the price of a phone call bothers me?’

The office was just as they had left it, the newspaper still lying opened on the surface of the desk. But somehow it was the other, earlier time they had been in there that now burned in Sadie’s mind. She couldn’t push from her thoughts the memory of how she had been half on and half off that polished surface, her clothes wildly disordered and her senses spinning off into ecstasies as she clung to Nikos’s powerful form, her mouth melded to his.

Feeling the fiery colour rush up into her cheeks at just the thought, she grabbed at the phone in a fury of embarrassment. But just as she did so Nikos’s hand came down on top of hers, making her start as the heat of his skin burned into hers.

‘One thing,’ he said abruptly, his voice harsh. ‘This feud stops now. Here. It’s over.’

‘Do you think that I would say something to my mother that would incite that appalling hatred all over again? I just want to put it all behind me.’

She knew that the way she snatched her hand out from under his looked antagonistic, even hostile, but she felt as if her fingers might actually be scorched by the touch of his, so that she would branded for life if she didn’t pull away.

Luckily Sarah was back on good form again, so the phone call to her mother took only minutes. Feeling both relieved and ill at ease, Sadie carefully replaced the receiver, glancing at the clock as she did so.

‘What time is the taxi coming?’

‘It isn’t,’ Nikos stunned her by saying. ‘At least not yet. We still need to talk.’

‘Didn’t you say everything? No?’

She was stunned to see him shake his dark head. But then she thought she saw where he was going with this. The conversation she had just had with her mother.

‘I know I didn’t tell her—and I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it like that, over the phone. But I promise you’ll get the house back. We’ll be out of there before you blink. We’ll…’

The words faded into oblivion as some subtle change in his expression told her that that was not what this was about. He wasn’t angry that she hadn’t told Sarah they had to leave Thorn Trees. There was something else.

‘Nikos…’

‘Tell me about your mother.’

It was the last thing she had expected, and she knew that her consternation must show on her face as she stared at him.

‘Tell me about your mother,’ Nikos repeated. ‘It seems to me that your problems with her are at the bottom of this situation. I know the signs.’

‘What signs?’

‘Tell me about your mother.’

He was clearly not going to concede an inch on this. And what could it hurt to tell him now? He had said the feud was over. She prayed that, for her mother’s sake, he had meant it.

‘She’s ill,’ Nikos said now.

‘How did you…? Well, yes. She’s—emotionally fragile. If you must know, she’s agoraphobic—desperately so. She hasn’t been out of the house in years. Not since George was born.’

She glanced nervously at Nikos, watching for his reaction. If he so much as looked shocked…

But Nikos simply nodded, his face calm, his expression at
tentive. With an elegant economy of movement he perched on the edge of the desk, one leg still resting on the floor, and waited.

‘She—she had a breakdown after George was born—terrible postnatal depression combined with…with…’

‘With the fact that her baby was not your father’s,’ Nikos put in, making Sadie blink in astonishment.

‘How did you know?’

‘It’s the only thing that makes sense—all the secrecy about the child, the way your father behaved. Like a man betrayed. A man out to make the world pay for what had happened to him.’

‘That was just how it was.’ Sadie nodded sadly, remembering the dreadful fights, the constant yelling and screaming.

‘Why didn’t your mother leave him? Had her lover abandoned her?’

‘He was dead. He died in an accident just before Mum found that she was pregnant. That was when my father found out too—and, well, everything together was just too much.’

‘Did you ever find out who she had been seeing?’

‘No. She would never say. And my father had made her promise that she never would. That was his condition for letting her stay. For not divorcing her. The only thing she ever told me was that he—her lover—drowned in a boating accident.’

‘Over five years ago?’

What had she said to sharpen his tone, narrow his eyes like that?

‘Is that important?’

But Nikos didn’t answer her. Instead he was on his feet, pulling open a drawer in the desk.

‘Do you have a photo of your brother?’

‘Of George? Of course…’ Rooting in her bag, she pulled out her wallet, opened it to where the passport-size picture was kept. ‘But why?’

She took out the picture in the same moment that Nikos
placed a large album on the desk, flicking through it until he found the photograph he wanted, one long bronzed finger pointing it out to her.

‘Oh, my…’

Sadie let the picture she was holding drop down beside the one Nikos was indicating.

‘It’s George.’

‘It’s my Uncle Georgiou,’ Nikos said flatly. ‘When you were in here yesterday you commented on it specially, and since then it has been nagging at me. It was just before Georgiou died that your father really started to stick the knife into my father’s company—it was one of the reasons why he was able to succeed so well so fast. Because when Dad was in mourning he was badly off balance—not focussing on business.’

‘And my dad was hell-bent on revenge for Georgiou’s affair with his wife!’

So much made sense now, in a way that it never had before.

‘It wasn’t just the feud—or rather it was that plus this new reason for anger, for revenge.’

And they had got caught up in it.

‘That damn feud tainted every person it touched.’

Nikos’s voice was filled with black anger and a touch of something else—something that Sadie would almost have labelled despair as he shook his dark head in disbelief over what had happened.

‘But it really does end here.’

Suddenly he looked up, amber gaze burning straight into hers.

‘It stops,’ he said fiercely. ‘And from now on things will be different. For a start, you will have no need to worry about Thorn Trees. The house will be my gift to your mother—and my cousin. And there will be more. Little George should have inherited all that his father had, and if he really is my uncle’s
son—and looking at this photo, I am sure that he is—then I will make sure he has what is his by right.’

‘Thank you.’

Sadie made herself say it, though her tongue tripped up over the words. She found that her mind was seesawing from one emotion to another. She was full of relief for her mother, delight for George—but there was a terrible sense of uncertainty about what this would mean for herself. She had had to acknowledge that she had lost her chance of ever having Nikos love her. She had faced up to the prospect of a future without him and she had been prepared to leave. To head out into that future and try to cope with it as best she could. Now she saw that everything was going to be so much different. That with Nikos being George’s cousin—George’s family—inevitably he would want to be in the little boy’s life. It was only right, only fair.

But it meant that she would frequently be forced to see this man she loved and who had never loved her. And she didn’t know how she could handle that.

‘It—it will mean a lot to my mother. She admitted to me recently that she adored George’s father. That he was the love of her life. She was devastated when she learned he’d died.’

Suddenly something Nikos had said to start off this line of conversation came back to her, making her frown in confusion.

‘When you asked about my mother—you said you knew the signs.’

The question she needed wouldn’t form properly, but the urgency in her voice obviously hit home to Nikos and he nodded his understanding without her having to say any more.

‘My father. I know what it’s like to have to watch someone break down—to always feel that you need to check if they are all right. To worry that perhaps the depression will come back.’

‘And this all stems from the same vile mess.’

She didn’t have to ask, just as Nikos hadn’t needed to ask her. His clouded eyes gave her the answer without words.

‘When he lost everything—when your father took over everything and bankrupted him—it was soon after he’d lost his brother. Like your mother, he broke down. I came home one evening and found him…’

The way his face had lost colour warned that there had been something very wrong. Suddenly Nikos pushed himself from his seat on the desk and paced restively about the room, his actions like those of a wild hunting cat, caged up for far too long.

‘I was early. I wasn’t supposed to be there. He thought he had time.’

Suddenly Sadie thought she knew exactly what day Nikos had been talking about, and all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck lifted in fearful apprehension as Nikos paused in his restless pacing, standing by the window and staring out at the sea. But she was sure that those beautiful golden eyes saw nothing of the clear blue waves with their foamy white tops, the golden sands of the beach.

Nikos pressed his forehead against the window glass, closing his eyes in despair at his memories, and, seeing that, Sadie could not stay still at the other side of the room. In a rush she crossed to his side, reached out a hand and touched his arm, just above the elbow. It was all she dared do, even though her heart ached with misery at the way things had turned out.

Like their parents, both of them had been wounded, scarred by the dreadful feud between their families. But as a result of the fallout of that feud, a fallout that had tangled up their own lives, creating the mess they now lived with, neither of them could comfort the other properly.

‘That was the day I rang you…’

The day when she had had second thoughts about her father’s warnings that Nikos was simply out to use her, to
make her part of his revenge on the Carteret family because of the feud. She hadn’t known then of his personal motives for making everything worse. She had broken off her engagement, cancelled her wedding at a day’s notice, but she had wanted to at least try to talk to Nikos himself….

‘You told me to go to hell.’

‘I know.’

Nikos’s sigh was weary, dragged up from somewhere deep inside him, and as he turned to her, his movements were slow and heavy, like those of a much older man.

‘But what the hell else could I have done? I was there in a room with my father who thought he had lost everything. He’d got a gun from somewhere and he meant to use it on himself.’

‘Oh, Nikos, no!’

It was worse than she had thought. Worse for Nikos and worse for herself.

Because of that phone call, and the way he had turned on her, she had moved herself firmly onto her father’s side.

‘I didn’t know—and I believed that my dad was right. I begged him to help me, asked him to tell me how to handle things. He said that if I did as he told me, said exactly what he wanted me to say, then all would be well. He would even look after my mother, let her stay in the house. He would raise her baby as his own.’