‘SOPHIE.’
The sound of her name was like a rasp across wounded flesh. For a moment filled with agony Sophie felt the pain of it. Then, steeling herself, she turned expressionless eyes on Nikos.
‘What do you want?’ she responded stonily.
Something moved—flashed—in those dark eyes into whose depths she had once fallen and drowned.
‘Want?’ he echoed. The taunt was still there, the harshness. ‘Why should I want anything—anything that you have to offer now? Cosmo’s welcome to your well-displayed charms!’ The eyes lashed over her, the whip of contempt laying bare her skin.
But she would not feel it, would not feel the lash of his words, his taunting. What was it to her? What was he to her?
Nothing. Nothing at all, ever again!
‘Get lost, Nikos,’ she said, and turned away, plunging into the melee in the room. Even Cosmo Dimistris seemed like a haven from this unbearable encounter.
As he watched her walk away through the room, Nikos felt emotion sear through him. Then, abruptly, it was overridden. He suddenly realised he could no longer see Georgias. Cursing under his breath, he stared around, as if he could conjure him up, and then, a grim look on his face, he headed down a wide corridor that clearly led towards the apartment’s bedrooms.
It took him a while to find his charge, throwing open one door after another and finding the rooms occupied. He carried on his furious search until he found Georgias, his tie loose, shirt undone, the girl he’d been dancing with even more undressed, the pair of them collapsed on a bed together.
Nikos wrested her off, ignoring her squeals of inebriated protest at being balked of her prey, then yanked Georgias upright. He was almost completely out of it, his eyes glazed, hair tousled. Nikos hoped to God it was merely alcohol in his system.
It took a while to get Georgias out of the apartment, their way barred by the milling party throng and imprecations not to leave, and Georgias had a suddenly reanimated desire to dance again, but finally Nikos manhandled him out, and down in the lift.
Getting him across the lobby required some force, but once the night air hit, Georgias collapsed almost completely. Nikos glared angrily out across the roadway. Rain was sluicing down, cold and soaking, but at least a taxi driver had seen him sheltering under the portico of the luxury apartment block, and was diverting towards him. With effort, Nikos manhandled Georgias inside, and thrust him into the far corner of the cab, where he slumped in an ungainly fashion, his eyes closing in insensible stupor. Nikos gritted his teeth.
Brusquely, he gave the name of their hotel, and the cabbie nodded and moved off, tyres sluicing through the rain-filled gutter. Nikos threw himself back into his corner of the cab, his mind in turmoil. Only one image dominated it.
Sophie Granton.
He felt emotion surge inside him again—convulsing, turbid. Filled with anger, with more than anger.
Why the hell did I have to see her?
Why the hell had she had to rise up from the pit like that? Seeing her again, seeing what she’d come to—her dress half hanging off her, keeping company with the likes of jerks like Cosmo!
Memory slanted through his head, unwanted, unbidden—but vivid.
Her graceful body sheathed in a column of ivory, a chiffon stole around her pale shoulders, her face radiant with a beauty that had made his breath stop in his lungs, stepping towards him from the limo to where he waited for her outside the opera house, and her eyes, luminescent, glowing—fixed on him…
With brute force, he twisted his head away, banishing the memory. Now, instead, the last memory he would ever have of her would be draped on Cosmo Dimistris’s arm at a party for coke-heads and tarts….
His mouth thinned, tightened to a whiplash, a lash that flayed across his soul. If that was what she wanted now, that was what she could have.
And yet—
Abruptly, he leant forward, rapping on the glass behind the driver. The cab slowed and the cabbie twisted slightly, sliding open the partition.
‘Turn around,’ said Nikos.
Sophie was walking. It was raining, she was soaked, she was freezing, but she didn’t care. Not about that, but about how stupid she’d been.
No, not just stupid. That was far, far too weak a word. Anger raged inside her. At herself. Sickening, gut-churning. It was like acid inside her. Eating her up.
Will I never, ever learn? Will I go on being so insanely, criminally stupid—so pathetically, abjectly naïve?
Virulent self-hatred snaked through her.
I thought I’d finally learnt my lessons! All of them! I thought I could finally say that I’d wised up!
Like hell she had! The needles of freezing rain pounded down on her and she welcomed them as the punishment she deserved. She walked on blindly, writhing in self-loathing and bleak rage.
In the roadway, a car turned. A cab, she realised too late, as it arced through the wash of water in the gutter, sending a plume of cold, dirty water over her legs.
‘Get in.’
The voice was terse. It sounded angry. She stared. The passenger door of the taxi had opened just in front of her, and holding it open was Nikos Kazandros.
‘I said get in!’
She froze. And in that moment Nikos reached out and grabbed at her. For an instant she resisted, but he was far too strong for her, and he pulled her into the cab, thrusting her down on to the jump seat opposite him, yanking the cab door shut.
‘OK, drive,’ he said to the cabbie. The cabbie glanced briefly at his latest passenger, but she was just sitting there, making no move to get out, so he let out the throttle and moved off in to the traffic again.
On her seat, Sophie felt her brain start to work again. And her muscles. She started to shiver, violently. Water was running down from the hair plastered wetly to her head.
‘Are you mad?’ Nikos heard himself grind out to Sophie. ‘Walking along looking like that?’
She stared at him through rain-wet eyelashes. Her mascara was starting to run. It looked like black tears.
‘I didn’t have a coat with me,’ she said. Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she had to clench her jaw to stop them.
‘And you didn’t think to take a taxi?’ Nikos retorted witheringly. In the shifting light of the interior of the cab he could see the soaked satin of her dress outline every contour of her body. Her evening gown was clinging to her like a second skin, and twice as revealing. She looked half naked…
Involuntarily, he felt, to his own anger and self-disgust, an awareness of her body beneath the semi-transparent material. Of the twin swell of her breasts, their nipples standing out from the cold. He dragged his eyes back to her face.
She made no answer to his jibe, only closed her mouth tightly, jaw clamped. She was shivering, Nikos could see, and clutching a tiny bag on her lap. He pulled his gaze away, deliberately glancing at Georgias. But Georgias was slumped into stertorous sleep in the corner of the cab.
‘There’s a tube station! Let me out!’
Nikos’s attention was whipped back again. Sophie was rapping on the glass behind the cabbie’s seat, and he started to slow down as they approached the station. Nikos’s anger mounted.
‘Are you insane? You can’t go on the tube like that! You’re half naked!’ His eyes flashed darkly. ‘What the hell are you doing, anyway? You were with Cosmo.’
She didn’t answer him, just started to fumble with the door catch as the taxi pulled over beside the entrance to the tube station. Nikos’s hand laced out and imprisoned her wrist.
‘I asked you a question—’
‘Get lost.’ Her voice was a low snarl. ‘I’m getting out here.’
‘The hell you are!’ He rapped on the cabbie’s glass. ‘Keep going!’
The cabbie shrugged and set off again, but Nikos could see him glancing in his rearview mirror. He slid the glass partition open.
‘I’m giving her a lift, that’s all. You can drop me off at my hotel, and I’ll pay the fare for wherever she wants to go. That OK with you?’ he finished witheringly.
The cabbie eyed him, then nodded. ‘Whatever you say, guv. If the lady don’t object.’
Nikos’s gaze ripped back to Sophie. She was sitting there, hunched, arms half crossed across her torso now, as if to veil her body from him. She was still shivering, staring expressionlessly at the floor. Her face was blank. Quite blank. Water from her sodden hair still dripped down the line of her jaw. Mascara ran down her cheeks. She looked a mess.
Why wasn’t she with Cosmo? Nikos lurched back into his seat, eyes on her. ‘So, did Cosmo give you the push?’
She didn’t answer, only gave him a brief, knifing glance before closing in on herself again. Her blankness angered Nikos. Everything about her angered him. Everything. He could feel his anger rising—biting. Wanting to find an out.
‘Or did you change your mind about putting out for him? Is that it?’
That got a reaction. Eyes like daggers flashed up at him, fury in them.
‘That wasn’t ever on the table! Nor, for your information, did I choose his company!’
‘So how come you ended up with him?’ Nikos pushed back.
The flash in the eyes came again. ‘He hired me for the evening! As an escort.’
Nikos stilled, not believing what he’d just heard her say.
‘A hooker?’
‘I am not a hooker!’ The snarl came from her throat. ‘I took a job at an escort agency, as an escort! That’s all! I’m well aware that some girls do a hell of a lot more than just have dinner and drinks with their clients, but not me!’ Breath razored in her lungs as her eyes blazed. ‘So whatever else you think, and whatever else that disgusting jerk thought, that was all I signed up for! And he knew it, and the agency knew it, and now you can know it too—and you can take it and choke on it!’
She was fumbling for the door catch again, dimly aware, in the fury and tumult in her head, that the taxi had stopped. She couldn’t find the catch, and then, as she fumbled desperately, she felt a hand close over hers, pulling it away. The cabbie was speaking, opening the partition slightly, his voice wary. ‘You OK there, luv?’
‘She’s fine!’ Nikos cut across roughly, closing the glass again. ‘Keep driving!’
For a moment longer the cabbie looked over his shoulder. But Sophie was sitting frozen again, as if all the fire had been doused with a pail of water. Oh, what the hell? she thought, a bitter weariness crushing down on her as the cold in her bones took over and she started to shiver again.
Why did I rise to it? What do I care what he thinks of me? What could I possibly, possibly care? He’s nothing to me—nothing, nothing, nothing.
Depression, weariness, and despair like a deadweight crushed her down. Her shivering intensified. Her mind seemed like a blur, a mush. Too much had happened, too much overload. She could not take any more…
‘Sophie—’
Nikos’s voice cut across her deadening mind, and she raised blurred eyes to him. Her make-up was running into them, stinging, and drops of rain were still oozing down her forehead, making her blink.
Nikos. I’m in a taxi with Nikos Kazandros, and I don’t know why, or how, or what the hell is going on, and I just can’t cope any more, I can’t…can’t cope…
‘Sophie!’ Nikos spoke again, louder this time. Demanding attention. She stared at him and realised he had taken off his jacket, was holding it out to her. She shrank back, as if it were poisoned.
‘I don’t want it,’ she bit out. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re soaking wet and freezing—even in here.’
‘I’m fine,’ she repeated doggedly.
Nikos’s dark eyes glinted balefully, but he shrugged himself back into his jacket. ‘You really believed Cosmo Dimistris just wanted a sexy female to have dinner with?’ The question was scathing.
She said nothing, only clenched her jaw.
‘Answer me!’
Her eyes flashed again. ‘What do you want to know for? What possible concern is it of yours?’
‘Just tell me,’ he gritted.
‘Yes,’ she enunciated, berating herself even as she did so, because she owed this man no explanation, no justification. But she wanted to wipe the sneer from his face—needed to. ‘I did. Because that is what I signed up to. When I went to the agency, I said I would only do dinner dates, nothing else. And the woman said fine, it was up to me, it was my choice, and the agency didn’t get involved with anything more than providing the introduction—’
His laugh, harsh and short, cut across her. ‘Introduction? Did you think you were working for a dating agency? No one can be that naïve!’
She twisted her head away. A rock was in her stomach. Yes, she’d been that naïve, all right. So naïve—right up to the moment when she’d gone to find Cosmo Dimistris and he had offered her some cocaine, having clearly just snorted some himself, and said it would make the sex much, much better, whilst steering her into a bedroom.
The rock in her stomach hardened, and she felt again the lash of self-hatred that she’d flagellated herself with as she’d trudged down the rain-sluiced street. Cosmo had made it savagely clear to her, with a laugh so coarse that it had almost obliterated the hot groping of his hand, that if she wasn’t going to come up with the goods, she could stop wasting his time and get the hell out, because there were plenty of other girls here who would provide what he wanted.
The taxi was turning off the road, heading into the sweeping entrance of a hotel.
‘Your hotel, guv.’
The voice of the cabbie penetrated her self-castigation. Immediately she made for the door. She had to get out, and fast. Out and away. Away from Nikos Kazandros.
‘Stay where you are.’ His voice was harsh, and it was clearly an order.
She glowered at him.
‘The cab will take you wherever you want to go. I’ll settle the fare to cover it.’
He was turning his attention now to the other occupant of the cab. Sophie had no idea who he was, and cared less. She just wanted Nikos gone, gone. And then she could get the hell out of here.
Wordlessly, Nikos set about the task of making Georgias sufficiently conscious to get out of the cab. He could feel the thrum of the humming engine of the car as it hovered under the portico of the Park Lane hotel.
‘Out,’ he said brusquely to Georgias, thrusting him on to the concourse, where he stood swaying and blinking. He turned to climb out himself, then paused, looking one last time at Sophie as she sat there hunched, still shivering. One final question seared through his brain. His eyes bored into her as he leant towards her.
‘Why? Give me one good reason why? Whatever the hell you are—hooker, escort, good-time girl, whatever—why go anywhere near this…this sleaze? Take a good, hard look at yourself when you get home—a good, hard look, Sophie—and think about whether you like what you see. Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.’
His voice was low, audible only to her. Her eyes flashed up, and for a second, just a second, Nikos felt himself reeling as if she had physically struck him.
‘Why do you think?’ she bit out, hissing, like Medusa’s snakes. ‘I need the bloody money!’
Her face was contorted, her eyes like daggers, ringed with black mascara, like black hollows, and in that instant Nikos recoiled, as if seeing a death’s head. Then his face set and he hurled himself from the cab, slamming the door, pausing only to extract his wallet and, with grim, tight face, thrust a fifty-pound note at the cabbie.
‘Take her wherever she wants,’ he said. Then he seized Georgias by the arm and marched him into the hotel.
Inside the taxi, Sophie stared after him for one long, last moment, until he had disappeared. Then she started to get out of the cab.
‘Oi, luv, your fare’s covered,’ said the cabbie, sliding open his partition.
‘I need an Underground station,’ she said, in a low, strained voice.
The cabbie looked concerned. ‘Luv, he’s right. You can’t go on a train all wet the way you are. You’ll get attacked. Mugged. Or worse. Look…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not my business, but I’d be happier taking you somewhere. I don’t want to read about you in the paper tomorrow, OK?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, just started the cab moving again. Sophie went on sitting there, shivering. But it wasn’t just the cold that was making her tremble.
The cabbie went on talking, half turning his head to do so. ‘Listen, luv, I’ve got a daughter your age. I wouldn’t like to see her—well, in the state you are. And I’d tell her straight what I’m going to tell you.’ He took a breath. ‘Blokes like that—’ he nodded his head back in the direction of the hotel ‘—they’re bad news for girls. All flash and cash and that’s your lot. Stay clear of them. That’s what I say—and it’s what any dad would say. And if you ain’t got a dad…well, I’ll say it for him—OK? A dad wants to be proud of his daughter—and to know she’s safe.’
Sophie heard the words, heard them from very far away. From a life that had gone for ever. That could never come back. Never.
And the bitter, bitter irony of what the cabbie had said made her want to burst into savage, hysterical laughter.
Or into tears that would drown her in their bottomless depths.
Nikos stood by the plate-glass window of his hotel lounge, looking out over the darkness of Hyde Park beyond. His tie was undone, his jacket discarded. One hand was splayed against the chill pane, the other cradling a glass of whisky from the drinks cabinet. His face was dark. Blank. Eyes unseeing.
But he was seeing, all right. Except not what was real. Not what existed any more.
But it never did exist—it never did! The past never was what I thought it was, and it took the narrowest damn escape of my life to realise that!
And thank God he had escaped!
He felt an old familiar emotion convulse him. One he had not felt now for a long, long time. He had forcibly banned it from existing, though it had taken all his strength to do so. He knew why it had struck again—knew it was inevitable.
Why had he had to see her again? What malign twist of fate had made it happen?
He took a brooding mouthful of the whisky, feeling its fire burn down his throat. He wanted to numb everything inside him. Wanted the alcohol to shut down all sensation, all thought. All memory.
But it wouldn’t work. The memory was still alive, writhing like a pit of snakes in his belly.
And it wasn’t just memory inside him. There was something more dangerous, more powerful…
No! I will not allow it! I will not let myself go there! Never, ever again! I cauterised it four years ago—and I will not let it back in! I will not!
His mind slammed into action, exerting every gram of self-discipline.
I will control this! It will not control me!
The mantra gritted through his head, repeating as his fingers pressed tighter still around the curve of the glass. It was vital, essential, to keep control. Because if he failed—
The snakes writhed inside him again, and he slugged back another mouthful of whisky. He wanted to sleep, craved oblivion, but he knew with a thick anger that if he slept it would be worse, far worse, than staying awake. If he slept—he would dream.
Memories he could control. But dreams…
He pushed himself away abruptly from the window, and ranged restlessly around the room. How the hell had Sophie Granton come to end up working as an escort? His glass stilled even as he started to lift it again to his mouth. The image of her face as she’d flung her stinging answer at him seared in his mind.
‘I need the bloody money!’
He’d recoiled—the venom in her voice had been virulent.
Again, his brows snapped together. Why was she so strapped for cash?
What had happened to Sophie Granton since he had discovered what she was really after? Granton plc had gone under. He’d known that—known it was inevitable the moment he’d pulled Kazandros Corp out of the negotiations and gone back to Athens to report that the risks were too great.
And so they had been—but not to Kazandros Corp. Only to himself.
But I cut my losses—I got out in time! I saved my own skin!
But Edward Granton had not been able to save his. The end had come swiftly, his company imploding under the weight of debts, of unrepayable loans, of foreclosures and inevitable financial collapse.
Nikos had been back in Athens then, and what had happened to Edward Granton after his company had gone under had not been Nikos’s concern.
Let alone what had happened to his daughter.
So what did happen to her?
Impatiently, he brushed the question aside. Sure, Edward Granton would have had to cut back, would doubtless have taken some face-saving action like opting for early retirement, probably somewhere like Spain. But he was no financial fool, despite having over-extended his company during the recession. He’d have had assets protected from the corporate balance sheet, assets that he could adequately live on, even though it would have meant retrenching.
But maybe Sophie—cosseted as she was by her doting father—hadn’t wanted to retrench. Maybe she’d gone on spending money they just didn’t have. And maybe now the credit card bills had arrived she thought she’d come up with an easy way to make money to pay them off.
Perhaps she’d really thought that all she had to do was keep a rich man company for the evening and he’d pay for the privilege, not expect anything else in return! A derisive snort broke from Nikos. Well, she’d found out tonight that there was no such thing as easy money! Not that it should have taken more than five minutes with Cosmo to suss that he was in the market for sex, and anything else was just an appetiser. His eyes alone, never mind his wandering hands, should have told her that Cosmo had fully intended her to end up horizontal….
But it was a mistake to let that thought even have house room. Immediately, disastrously, Nikos saw an image from the past flare in his mind…
Sophie, her beauty revealed to him in all its incandescent perfection! Her pearled skin, hair like silk, spread on the pillow like a banner as he took her in his aching arms…
No! With savage rage, he forced the memory out of his head. Tearing it from him as he had once torn Sophie’s pleading hands.
His face hardened. Sophie had wanted only one thing from him then, disguise it as she might. The same as she wanted now.
Money. Nothing but money.
Roughly knocking back the last of his whisky, he snapped the glass down on the cabinet.
Enough! He had done with Sophie Granton—she was nothing to him, not any more. And that was all he had to remember!
Face set, he headed for the en suite bathroom, and bed.