The Konstantos Marriage Demand (7 page)

‘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.

‘W
E WILL BE
preparing to land soon.’

Nikos’s accented voice broke into Sadie’s concentration, making her jump.

‘You’ll need to put that away.’

His gesture indicated the laptop on which she had been working ever since the private jet had levelled out on their flight to Athens, her attention totally focussed on the screen.

‘What are you working on anyway?’

‘Greek wedding customs—what else?’ Sadie swivelled the machine round so that he could see the site she had been studying.

She had been glad to disappear into her need to concentrate on the reason she was on the plane in the first place. It had meant that she could try at least to ignore Nikos’s long, lean form sprawled in one of the soft leather seats on the opposite side of the cabin.

But the truth was that her mind hadn’t really been on her research. Instead, it had insisted on taking her back into the past, replaying scenes of the times she had spent with Nikos when the only wedding she had been planning had been her own. She had desperately needed a real distraction from that.

‘I take it that you are planning a traditional wedding,
seeing as you have insisted on dragging me out to Greece with you?’

Nikos shrugged off the question with an indifferent lift of one shoulder.

‘Have you even given your bride a choice? Or will you just dictate how things are to be?’

That brought his eyes to her face, coldly probing, as if he was trying to read what went on behind her eyes. And she could see the flash of something fierce and dark in their golden depths.

‘Are you saying that this is how it was with you? That I dictated everything?’

‘No.’

How could she claim that? He had insisted she should have everything exactly the way she wanted. It was her choice, he had told her, her wedding. She should choose everything. And as a result it had really been the way her father had wanted things, not her choice at all.

But then, of course, that had been because he had never truly meant to marry her. All the time Nikos had been planning on using her to distract her father while he and his family worked to ensure his downfall, the ruin of his company. It was only when she found out the truth that she had realised why he had been so unexpectedly easygoing, so unconcerned about having an Orthodox wedding.

‘Of course you didn’t dictate anything. Because nothing mattered enough to you to bother with that.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’

Nikos’s smile sent a shiver down her spine.

‘Oh, of course, there was one thing.’ She flung the response at him. ‘I know only too well just what mattered to you. You wanted me in your bed and that was all.’

‘And I had you there without too much trouble, as I recall. You practically threw yourself at me.’

She had played right into his hands there, Sadie admitted. At first determined that she would wait until her wedding night to give her virginity to the man she adored, she had completely lost her head just a short time before the big day. So she had hired a cottage, enticed Nikos away with her for a long weekend of blazing passion.

Instead it had turned into a dreadful time when her dreams had started to unravel and she had finally begun to learn the truth.

These were the memories that had plagued her as the plane sped towards Greece. Echoes of the time when Nikos, thinking she was asleep, had gone downstairs to answer a call on his mobile phone. But Sadie had only been dozing and, missing him, had crept down after him. Before she’d opened the door she’d caught a drift of his conversation and had stopped to listen. And what she’d heard had shattered her illusions and fantasies, making them tumble in pieces all around her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she’d heard Nikos say, a thread of dark, cruel laughter in his voice. ‘There is more than one way to skin this particular cat. When my ring is on his precious daughter’s finger and she’s part of the Konstantos family too, then Carteret will soon come to heel. We’ll have him exactly where we want him.’

‘It was what I wanted at the time,’ she said now, matching Nikos with an equally dismissive shrug.

Somehow she managed to make her voice hard enough to conceal the way that her memories tore at her heart. She even added a curl of her lips, as if in contempt at her younger self.

‘Don’t forget I was naive and innocent then. I had nothing to compare you to.’

‘Inexperienced, maybe—innocent, never,’ Nikos scorned. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing and you played your virginity as your trump card.’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

‘No? So are you going to tell me what it
was
like? Are you going to claim that you were truly as crazily in love with me as you pretended to be?’

She was heading into dangerous waters here, Sadie told herself. If she admitted the truth, that she had adored him, that he had been her life, then he would want to know why she had turned on him as she had done. And she still had enough pride to want to hide from him just how much she knew of the way he had used her callously in his determination to bring down her family.

And she needed to tread carefully while Nikos was in total charge of the situation. For his own private reasons he was prepared to be unexpectedly generous. He was letting her mother and George stay in the house for now. But she was terrified that if she rocked the boat in any way he might change his mind. Just the memory of the way her mother’s face had lit up when she had been able to give her good news last night was enough to keep a careful check on her tongue.

‘
Crazy
would be a good way to describe it,’ she hedged carefully. ‘You were pretty hot back then, Nikos, and I was tired of being a virgin. But don’t kid yourself that you were anything special.’

‘Oh, I won’t.’ Nikos’s response was darkly dangerous, the savage edge to it slashing like a cruel knife. ‘Believe me, I never did. Now, are you going to switch that thing off or not?’

‘Oh—sorry…’

Hastily, she closed down the site she had been studying, saving her notes before switching off the whole computer. Her movements clumsy, partly from haste and partly because of the burning intensity of his scrutiny, she shut it up and bundled it into the case on the floor beside her seat.

‘I’ll take that.’

Nikos leaned over to pick up the case.

‘Oh, but…’ Sadie tried to protest but he dismissed it with a gesture.

‘The staff will see to our luggage and this will go with it. You will get it back when it’s necessary. And what about your phone? Your mobile will need to be switched off.’

‘Of course.’

The phone was in her bag, and as she pulled it out she saw that the words telling her she had a newly arrived text message were on the screen.

‘It’s from my mother. Can I just see this…?’

Another flick of his hand urged her to do just that and be quick about it, his impatience making her all fingers and thumbs as she checked her message.

It was a long one, and she had to scroll down to read it all. Then scroll back again to reread, not quite believing what she had seen.

‘Sadie…’

Nikos’s hand was held out towards the phone. He didn’t quite click his fingers in impatience, but that mood was very much in the air as he waited for her to respond.

‘But…’

Sadie’s eyes were still on the text message.

‘Mum says that she’s had a letter from you—a courier delivery. And you…’

She had to spin round, had to look straight into Nikos’s face to try to read his expression.

‘Is this true? Have you really sent my mother written notification that she can stay in Thorn Trees for now?’

The answer was there in his face, in the swift, darkened glance that he directed briefly at the phone and then at Sadie once again.

‘I instructed my solicitor to send a letter this morning.’

‘But why?’

‘I told you. Your mother and brother played no part in what happened in the past. It would be inhuman to take revenge on a child.’

Which once again brought a shiver of apprehension at the thought that revenge was in his mind at all.

She was here to organise his wedding, wasn’t she?

‘And this is in return for my helping to plan and arrange your wedding?’

The bronze eyes that met her questioning glance were cool and opaque, all emotion blanked out so that there was nothing to read, nothing to give her any help.

Nothing to ease that cold edge of uncertainty that had shivered down her spine.

‘Our arrangement is that you will do a job for me. As long as you carry out that job to my satisfaction then your mother and brother will be able to stay in the house without harassment or upset. I have sent them a letter informing them of that.’

‘Thank you!’

After the fear and uncertainty of the moment she had left his office only the day before the rush of relief was so great that it pushed aside all sense of restraint, driving her into instinctive action without a thought of the consequences. With her phone still in her hand, she bent forward, lifting her face to press a swift, light-hearted kiss on Nikos’s lean cheek.

‘Thank you!’ she said again. Then froze as reaction hit home.

It had been meant to be light-hearted. Rationally, that was what she had told herself. But what thumped straight into her heart was a response that was very far from rational.

Just the scent of his body in her nostrils, the taste of his skin on her lips, the faint rasp of stubble breaking through the olive-toned flesh, went straight to her head like the most potent alcohol. Her mind swam, her vision blurring so that every other sense came into sharper focus. She couldn’t stop
herself from letting her tongue slip out to experience, very softly, the faintly salt taste of his skin, knowing in that moment such a sudden rush of memories and sensations that she felt as if the plane they were in had hit sudden violent turbulence that swung them up and down and from side to side until she was dizzy with shock and sensation.

She wanted to press herself up against the hard strength of his body, wind her arms up and around his neck, fingers tangling in the jet silk of his hair. She wanted to turn her head just an inch or more, so that it met with the warm temptation of his lips. She longed to deepen the taste of him as their mouths joined, opened…

She knew her mistake even before the thoughts had fully formed in her mind. She felt his sudden tension, the stiffening of that long body, the way his jaw tightened until his whole face was just one rigid mask of rejection, so cold and unyielding that it was almost like kissing the carved, immobile face of some marble statue. She felt as if her mouth must be bruised by slamming up against it.

‘No!’

Nikos’s response was sharp and violent. The swift jerk of his head repulsed her foolish gesture, and he wrenched himself away from her with a force that had her almost losing her balance. Instinctively, her hand went out to grasp at Nikos’s arm for support, then immediately released it again as she felt the even more powerful rejection that stiffened it against her.

‘I’m sorry!’

Somehow she managed to stay upright. But the fight for equilibrium in her mind was harder won as she struggled with the terrible sense of loss that seared through her with the force of a lightning strike. She had forgotten that Nikos had told her he was marrying someone else, that he was commit
ted to another woman. It was no wonder he had reacted so forcefully to her impulsive response.

‘That wasn’t any sort of come-on—truly it wasn’t. It was only a thank-you!’

Could the look he turned on her be any colder, any more distant? Was it possible that she could endure the icy contempt that seemed to strike with the force of an arctic blast and not shrivel under the force of it, crumpling where she sat?

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘You’re damned right it won’t happen again.’ Nikos turned on her in dark fury. ‘If you thought that you could win me round to giving you whatever you want by seducing me then you couldn’t be more wrong. I may have been caught that way before, but never again.’

‘You were caught?’ Sadie scorned. ‘In my opinion it was exactly the opposite way round! I was the one caught in your trap. The one you hunted down. You could never have been caught because I’m not sure you ever intended to marry me. You simply wanted to use me in your damned family feud with my father.’

‘Oh, I would have married you, all right,’ Nikos tossed back, the words hitting her like a slap in the face. ‘By then I was so completely obsessed with you that I would have done anything—however stupid—to have you in my bed. One night with you was not enough. Could never be enough. I would have put my head right back in the noose if only to have another one.’

What else had she expected? Sadie asked herself, struggling with the bitter pain that had put a taste like acid in her mouth. Had she really believed that Nikos would deny the accusation she had thrown at him? That he would claim—pretend—he had actually felt something for her? That he would even declare that he had loved her?

She’d known the real truth all along. Ever since her father had enlightened her. And yet it still hurt so terribly, ripping great raw and bleeding holes in her heart.

‘But not now,’ she managed.

‘Not now,’ Nikos confirmed darkly.

‘Of course you have a new fiancée now. A new lo…’

But her voice failed her then. There was no way she could form the word
love
. It didn’t belong on her tongue and it seemed to have formed a cruel knot in her throat, so that she could barely manage to breathe.

‘I will do my very best to create a wonderful wedding for you both.’

It was the only way she could thank him for the reprieve he had offered her and her family. The chance to try and make sure that her mother survived the upheavals in their life and maybe found a future to look forward to. The thought of her mother twisted on nerves deep inside her. She had made the best provision she could for Sarah, and that text at least made it seem that she was coping for now. But Sadie had never been away from home for more than a day since the truth about George had burst on the family. She could only pray that her mother would cope.