SOPHIE was tearing up weeds. Ruthlessly, urgently. As if pulling weeds out of her own heart. Weeds that had the face of Nikos Kazandros! Emotion scythed through her. Dear God, how close, how perilously, disastrously close she had come to letting him kiss her—
Kiss her! Just like that—there and then!
She had so nearly let it happen! Nearly let herself yield to him! The strength it had taken to pull away, back to safety, to sanity, had been almost beyond her! But she’d done it, and thank God for it!
Gradually, as she worked, her heart-rate slowed and she started to calm, to regain some shred of composure. It was all right. She was safe. He hadn’t come after her. He was leaving her alone. And when she heard, a short time later, the throaty roar of Nikos’s car, she felt safer yet. Safer still if she didn’t let herself dwell on what had nearly happened. Safer if she kept herself doggedly working, until the shadows lengthened across the whole garden, and her back was aching, and she knew she needed to stop.
Stiffly, she got to her feet. There was sun now only in the treetops, high above. The walled garden itself was completely in the shade. She gave a little shiver. It was cool to the point of chill. And as she looked around the shadows seemed to bring a pall of melancholy sifting over her—a sense of slow, abandoned desolation.
She was alone. Completely alone. Nikos was long gone. And, for a reason she did not want to think about, she felt suddenly bereft.
For a moment she just stood there, staring bleakly. Then, as she knew she must—for what else could she do?—she squared her shoulders and went indoors.
She would fill the evening ahead as she had filled all those up till now. She would wash, make herself some supper, and watch something on TV—whatever was on, she didn’t care much—then go to bed. And she would not think herself lonely, the evening ahead empty…
No—she must not allow herself to feel like this! She’d been content enough alone here up till now! Relishing the peace, the silence, the beauty of nature all around. So why, now, should she think she felt alone…restless?
So empty.
So desolate.
She felt tears prick behind her eyelids, but she blinked them away. She would not cry, must not cry, for something that was was impossible. It had been impossible four years ago and it still was—always would be. There was nothing in her life now but the endless grind of doing what she had to do, whatever it took.
With an indrawn breath she would not admit was heavy, she got on with washing the dirt off her hands, wincing slightly at the scratches.
He held my hands, soothed them with his—
No—the shutter sliced down again. Roughly, she dried her hands, flexing her shoulders to loosen them up. But just as she was replacing the hand towel she stilled, every nerve suddenly alert.
It was a car, coming along the drive. And the low, throaty note was all too familiar. Her thoughts churned wildly, but before she could even think coherently the car had drawn to a loud halt by the back door. She heard the engine cut, a door slam. Then Nikos was at the kitchen door, walking right in.
Sophie froze, silenced completely. Inside, she felt her pulse kick into hectic life.
‘I’ve come to take you out to dinner,’ Nikos announced.
For a timeless moment Sophie could only stare up at him.
‘Dinner?’
‘Yes. I’ve made a reservation at the inn I’m staying at. It’s a few miles off, but not too far.’ He spoke as if taking her to dinner were the most natural thing in the world.
She couldn’t speak. Could only stare and swallow helplessly. Then she found words.
‘I can’t go to dinner with you.’ It was baldly said, but inside her head her mind was flailing helplessly, incapable of thought, of rational comprehension. Overwhelming her was emotion.
It was Nikos! Nikos back again—standing right here, right in front of her. Telling her he was taking her to dinner.
A dark eyebrow tilted upwards at her words. ‘You have another engagement?’ he posed.
She felt herself flush. ‘Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I can just—’
‘Why not?’ he interrupted. ‘After all, you’ve been living on short rations for a few days—you must be keen for some more sophisticated fare by now!’
‘I’m perfectly OK here,’ she riposted.
‘Well, now you can have a decent dinner anyway, can’t you?’ He glanced at her attire. ‘You’ll need to change, though.’
‘I haven’t anything suitable for going out,’ she answered. In her mind, painfully, sprang the memory of the extensive wardrobe she had once enjoyed. Every item had long gone.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘There’s no dress code at the restaurant.’
It wasn’t the answer she wanted. ‘Nikos, this is…’ she began.
Mad, she wanted to say. Insane. Pointless. But the words didn’t come. Helplessly, she fell silent.
‘Go and change,’ he prompted. ‘Don’t be too long—I only had a sandwich for lunch, remember!’
There was light humour in his voice, and she wondered at it. She was still trying to make sense of what was happening. Why on earth was he here to take her to dinner? It was incomprehensible.
It was unbearable.
Her mouth twisted briefly. But then the last four years had taught her that the unbearable still had to be borne…
This was just one more thing that she had to endure. And that was what she would have to do this evening. Get through it. Endure it. Endure the torment of having dinner with Nikos…
Numbly, she found herself turning round and heading upstairs to the little bedroom over the sitting room.
Below, Nikos felt his breath draw in.
Was he really doing the right thing? He silenced his doubts. He’d been through them all since driving away earlier. This was the right thing to do. Somehow he had to make himself immune to Sophie, so that she was no longer haunting him from the past. So that he could see her again and feel nothing about her. Nothing at all.
He could hear her upstairs, the creaking floorboards revealing her activity. She didn’t keep him long, and he could hear the tread of her footsteps coming downstairs as he was locking the garden door. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said she had nothing suitable with her—the blouse and skirt she had changed into, though neat and clean, were clearly daywear. Her hair had been simply clipped back into a low ponytail, and she had not bothered with make-up. Well, he told himself bluntly, it was all to the good if she weren’t dressed up. The last thing he wanted was her exacerbating her natural beauty in any way whatsoever.
The gypsy skirt she was wearing the first time I set eyes on her, swirling around her long, long legs… The peach dress she wore to dinner that evening, accentuating every pliant line of her body… The ivory evening gown she wore to that gala, the first night I took her out…
Through his head she walked like a procession, each vision a wound. Roughly, he banished them. They were the past, and the past was over. Now, only the immunisation programme was ahead of him. Nothing else.
He led the way out to the car, and opened the passenger seat. For a moment she seemed to balk, then climbed in, settling the seat belt across her, her face inexpressive.
But behind the blank expression she was fighting down emotion. Crushing down the memories that tried to come crowding into her head. Don’t think…don’t remember. It was all she could do, all she could tell herself. And don’t, above all, look at the man sitting beside you, his powerful frame so close you could almost brush your sleeve against his.
As Nikos gunned the engine she felt the G-force thrust her back in her seat. He drove as he had always driven, with ultra-masculine assurance, and the powerful car creamed down the driveway and out on to the public highway, revving strongly as he roared through the quiet countryside. To distract her flailing emotions she looked about her, at rolling fields and woodland, anywhere but at the man driving her. Where they were she still had no idea, and didn’t care anyway.
After about ten minutes he pulled off the main road and drew up in front of a prosperous-looking inn, with mullioned windows, overhanging eaves, and flower boxes along the sills. It looked pretty and old and immaculately kept. Judging by the kind of up-market cars parked, it was clearly the kind of place that attracted a well-heeled clientele.
They went inside, Nikos ducking his head as they stepped into the old-world interior. As always, as Sophie remembered, he received instant attention, and within a few minutes they were installed at a spacious table set inside a glassed-in extension to the rear of the building, overlooking a close-mown lawn that stretched down to a little river. Cool air wafted in from wide-open French windows.
Sophie sat, feeling mixed emotions trying to jostle their way past the glaze she had forcibly imposed on herself since the moment she had climbed into Nikos’s car. Why Nikos was doing this she had no idea. Her only priority was to get through this ordeal intact.
But it was going to be torture to endure his company, to have to go through the hideous mockery of dining with him as if they were actually a couple….
As once they had been….
No—stop that! Stop it now—right now. She said the words to herself fiercely, inside her head.
Just shake the napkin on to your lap, smile at the waiter, look through the menu, make a choice—any choice; it doesn’t matter—then put the menu aside, pick up your glass of water, look out of the window, look at the river, the lawn, the flowers, the countryside. Look at anything, anything at all, but don’t look at Nikos…don’t look at Nikos—
Her eyes went to him. Hopelessly, helplessly. How could she do anything else except look at him? Look at the perfect sculpture of his face; its every contour known to her, every glance, every expression, an image on her very heart—once, so long, long ago.
But no longer. And never again. That was what she had to remember. All she could permit herself to think.
With a silent intake of breath she shifted her eyes away as he studied the menu, reached instead, idly, for the little card that sat within the centrepiece of the table, flanked by pepper and salt and a tastefully arranged spray of flowers. She glanced at the card, with its printed sketch of the front of the inn and the address. They were somewhere in Hampshire, so it seemed, close to a village Sophie had never heard of. It didn’t seem particularly important to her where she was, so she replaced the card. Then, resolutely, she turned her head to look out over the view again.
‘Sophie?’
Her head snapped round. Nikos was looking at her, one eyebrow quirked questioningly. A waiter had materialised beside the table and was clearly ready to take their order. She swallowed, and murmured her requests, then Nikos gave his.
He was choosing lamb for his entrée, and memory stabbed at her. It had always been his favourite, and she could vividly remember him telling her about all the traditional Greek methods of cooking lamb, baking it so slowly that the meat fell from the bones because it was so tender.
‘You must come to Greece—then you will see,’ he had said. And she had felt her heart give a little lift, as though it were already on its way to heaven. Why would he take her to Greece except to meet his parents, introduce her as the girl he loved, wanted to marry? Oh, please, please let it be so! She had loved him so much, so much—
Her mind sheered away. She had never gone to Greece with him.
And she no longer loved him.
He had killed her love for him—stabbed her to the heart. And she had handed him the dagger with which to do it. And her life had shattered to pieces.
A heaviness crushed down on her. An old, familiar bitterness.
He was handing back the leather-bound menus, turning his attention to the wine list, relaying his decision to the hovering maître d’. Then his attention turned to Sophie. She lifted her chin. She would not look away. She would bear this and stick it out. Why he was going through this farce she could not begin to guess, but she would not crumble. His expression seemed veiled, as though he were hiding some emotion behind the dark surface of his eyes. Despite her intention to stay unperturbed, she found herself reaching jerkily for her water glass.
‘Sophie—’
She stayed her hand. Swallowed. ‘Yes?’
He seemed uncertain for a moment, then he spoke. ‘Sophie, the reason I’m having dinner with you is this. I want to draw a line under the past. I don’t want it intruding again. You clearly don’t, either. So I want to have an evening with you that proves to us both that, in the unlikely event of our paths ever crossing again, they can do so without the drama that has happened this time.’
He took a breath, then went on, his voice crisp and decisive. ‘I trust, with your debt settled, your financial problems are now averted. You got yourself into a dangerous mess, but you’re out of it now, and I’m sure you’ll have the good sense not to consider that dire option a sensible course ever to consider again. Now, I’ve lectured you quite enough—’ he permitted himself a lightening of his brisk tone ‘—so let us change the subject and not refer to it again.’
She was looking at him strangely as he spoke, a closed look on her face. He wondered at it fleetingly, and then the wine waiter was there, proffering the bottle he’d selected. Once the tasting and the pouring were complete, he lifted his filled glass and took a contemplative mouthful. Replacing the glass, he remarked, his tone conversational, ‘So, you decided music wasn’t for you after all?’
‘No.’ There was no emotion in her voice and she did not elaborate.
She wasn’t going to be forthcoming, clearly, and Nikos let it be. Her defection from a subject she had once been devoted to surprised him, but perhaps her vaunted devotion to her music had been as shallow as other aspects of her character.
He pulled his thoughts away from that dark path. He was not going there. Tonight was about the future, not the past. And the future was about making Sophie Granton nothing more than a passing acquaintance to whom he had total immunity.
He started again, making his tone conversational once more. ‘What did you take up instead to occupy you?’
Carefully, Sophie picked up her wineglass. The tips of her fingers were white.
‘Nothing much,’ she said.
It was like getting blood out of a stone, thought Nikos.
Once they had talked with eager fluency, never at a loss, talking of anything and everything.
The first course was served, and Nikos was glad, but as they started to eat, he resumed his attempts.
‘What sort of “nothing much”?’ He smiled.
Sophie forked up a morsel of her seafood concoction, savouring its delicate flavour. It took her mind off Nikos’s relentless probing.
‘I work,’ she answered.
His eyebrows rose. If she were in paid employment she had clearly failed to live within her salary, running up debts that she’d resorted to trying to pay with that vile escort work.
‘What sort of work?’ He kept his voice pleasantly enquiring.
‘In a shoe shop.’ It was the truth—or had been until she’d not turned up the day she’d been driven here. She doubted the shop would take her back, and that would mean another dispiriting trip to the unemployment office, trying to find something, anything, that kept money coming in, however low paid. Nikos’s five thousand pound loan had only bought her a limited amount of time. Nothing more than that.
For a moment she felt fear, so familiar, so terrifying, bite in her throat. Dear God, how could she keep going? Doing what she had to do—had no choice but do?
Surviving—I’m surviving. Day after day. Week after week. It’s all I can do and I have to go on doing it. Scraping together the money that I need. That I go on needing. And there’s nothing I can do except to go on doing what I’m doing.
‘Ah…’ Nikos understood now. It was a popular option, working in a fashionable boutique, especially when the shop was owned by a friend and run as a little hobby—something to occupy women like her, to while away the time. ‘That must be useful if you want to snap up the latest designs first,’ he remarked lightly.
He named a couple of top shoe designers, the likes of which had never been seen in the downmarket, off-the-rack shoe shop Sophie had worked at every day of the week, morning through late opening. Except for the two precious afternoons a week she’d insisted on taking off, that made her whole bleak existence, her endless, punishing struggle for survival, worthwhile.
Nikos saw her face shutter again. Did she just not want to talk about herself to him at any level? Even the mundanely conversational? Well, OK then, he would back off even from that. He could understand if she were touchy about anything personal.
Determinedly, he tried another gambit.
‘It was good of you to tackle the walled garden as you did. The gardens, I think, are going to be as great a challenge as the house to restore! Fortunately I understand that the original landscape designs drawn up for Belledon in the eighteenth century are still existing, so they will guide the work.’
Sophie reached for her wine. She felt the alcohol slide into her system and was grateful.
‘Belledon?’
‘Your accommodation,’ he clarified. ‘Although you may not see it as a hotel, it is highly suitable, all the same, for such use. It’s within five miles of the motorway from Heathrow and, fully restored, will be a showpiece for the area. I envisage it will be one of the leading country house hotels in the UK, despite the cost of its restoration.’
He warmed to his theme, and Sophie was glad of it—grateful he had abandoned his unbearable inquisition of her. She let him talk, busying herself eating the delicious food. It would be foolish and wasteful not to make the most of it. The first course had been removed, and a succulent fillet of lamb placed in front of each of them.
‘This is good,’ approved Nikos. ‘Locally sourced, so the menu says. The Belledon chef will have to be on his mettle, I can see! Fortunately the home farm is part of the estate, and it will supply the bulk of the food for the hotel. The kitchen garden you have been so energetically restoring will also contribute significantly. Ideally, I would like all the food to be organic, although it will take time to achieve certification. But it is something to work towards.’
Again, he went on talking as they ate, and without realising it Sophie found herself being drawn into the conversation. The level of wine in her glass seemed constant, though she was not aware of it being refilled. But she could feel the alcohol entering her bloodstream, warming it. Dissolving, slowly but steadily, thread by thread, the net of tension webbing her at being here with Nikos. But so, too, was the conversation, she realised. As Nikos talked on about the intricacies and challenges of restoring an historic country house, ranging from one aspect to another, she found herself taking a real interest in the undertaking. Unconsciously she started to ask questions, make observations, volunteer opinions.
With part of her mind she wondered at it. Wondered at herself being here, like this, with Nikos, listening to him, talking to him, sharing a meal with him. As if, she realised, with a mix of emotions piercing her, there were no tormented history between them. As if, impossible though it must surely be, she were simply being wined and dined by him. As if there was nothing dark nor desperate poisoning the air. As if—and this surely must be an illusion—could only be an illusion—as if the heavy, crushing pall of the past that had weighed down on her was lifting away….
It was not real. She knew that. Knew it was only an illusion—an illusion brought on by the sense of unreality enmeshing her at being here, having dinner with Nikos, having him sitting opposite her, so close she could have reached out to him, touched his hand, his face. So close she could see the indentation around his mouth when he gave his quick smile, the gold flecks in his eyes as his expression became animated at the subject he was talking about, the silky sable fall of his hair across his well-shaped forehead. Yet, illusion though it was, illusion though it must be, she knew she could not deny what it offered her.
A respite—however brief, however illusory—from the endless torment in her head that Nikos evoked.
He’d said he wanted to draw a line under the past. It had seemed, when he’d uttered it, an impossible thing to do! And yet now, as the meal progressed and the conversation flowed so effortlessly, across subjects that were blessedly free of anything sensitive, anything personal, she was finding herself wondering whether it could be done. She felt the landscape of her emotions shift again, altering everything subtly, silently. It was not that the past had disappeared, but it was a different part of the past that was in her mental vision now, it seemed. Not the bitter, tormented past that had scarred and scoured her, but the past that this evening now recalled and echoed.
Familiarity rushed through her. How many times had she and he sat together, talking about everything, anything, the flow of conversation easy, stimulating, engaging, enthralling? This was Nikos as she remembered him in those golden days she had spent with him, with time flashing by, his keen mind a foil to hers, his ready laugh, his easy smile—
Because it had never, never just been his incredible looks that had captivated her—it had been so much more. The sheer pleasure of his company, the ease, the companionship…
Emotion tugged at her—a poignancy she could not avert. She felt it running through her veins like a darting arrow. How much she had lost in losing him! How much!
Yet counterpointed to the sense of loss was for now, for this fleeting, brief time, a sense of something so precious that she felt it was like a jewel nestled in her palm. However fleeting this evening was, however illusory, that sense of bitterness was washed away, and the time now was real. However fleeting, she would be grateful for it, glad for it—drinking the sweet, heady wine that it offered her to the very last.
Outside, the evening had darkened into night, and the candle on the table threw its light on to the glass of the conservatory window, creating, as it did, a flickering parallel world. Sophie’s eyes drifted towards it, and she felt her emotions quicken again—they were there, she and Nikos, in that parallel world of light and shadow, illuminated together.
Together…
The word pierced in her heart and she felt its power. There in that shadow world there had been no separation. In that shadow world there was no bitter past. There, in the illusory reality of the candle-light, it was as if they had always been like this—as if the years of parting had never been. She felt her mind run on, seizing a present that could never be out of a past that never was.
If we had never parted that could be us, there, in that other existence! That could be the reality, and these four long bitter years could have been the sweetest of all!
For precious moments she let herself revel in the sweetness of the thought, the beguiling, wondrous fantasy that she and Nikos were simply here together, man and wife, come down to visit his beautiful abandoned house, to plan its restoration, to fill it once more with life and love, envisage it as a place for them to live in. She and him…a family…a happiness to last a lifetime….
She knew it was not real, could not be real, and yet in her mind it was. In her mind as she sat there, sipping at her wine, eating the delicious morsels of food, and gazing, oh, just gazing—and gazing and gazing—at the man so close to her, it was all the reality she craved. All the reality she yearned for. The other reality, the one she had been condemned to, which weighed and crushed and pulled her down, had slipped away. Now there was only this sweet, wondrous reality. And it was enough…
Waiters came to clear the table, presenting her with a dessert menu. She chose randomly, and something duly appeared, together with a glass of sweet, delicate Beaune de Venise, which she sipped as she spooned up the delicious concoction before her. Her mind was getting hazy, but she didn’t care. The outer world, her consciousness of it, seemed to be receding. A strange sense of dissociation drifted down on her. She found she could sit, sipping her sweet wine, and let Nikos’s voice wind about her as her eyes rested on him. It was strange, so strange, she found herself thinking bemusedly. How she could just sit here…gazing at him. Taking him in…all his male perfection…her eyes drifting over him…
Nikos—only Nikos…only ever Nikos in all the world for me…
Her heart was full with emotion, the jewel in her palm rich and rare and so, so precious…
‘Sophie?’
Her name sounded in the air, sibilant and questioning. Nikos was looking at her enquiringly, his chair half pushed back. The dining room was almost deserted, the candle burnt low. The couple in the glass had vanished.
Or had they?
She got to her feet, as Nikos did the same, and then he was there, ushering her out as they were bowed away by the waiter—the last diners to leave, she saw. And Nikos was at her side, falling in beside her, as they stepped through the open French windows into the garden beyond the conservatory restaurant. She felt his presence, his closeness. Felt the rightness of his place at her side.
This is where he should be—where I should be…
Like the couple in the glass. Together.
‘Are you cold?’ Nikos’s enquiry was solicitous as he walked beside her on the dimly lit path.
Sophie shook her head. She wasn’t cold. The wine in her veins and the soft summer night warmed her. So did the heat in her blood. Was her pulse heavier than it normally was? Or was she just more conscious of the beating of her heart?
More conscious of the tall figure at her side?
What am I doing here? she thought. Surely she could not be here, with Nikos, having dined with him, talked to him, listened to him. Reality was prickling at her mind, penetrating the hazy miasma that had been cocooning her. Yet its entrance was unsure, uncertain.
She glanced about her. What was real? The night air? The scent of honeysuckle teasing her senses? The fall of their footsteps on the path? The massed dimness at the edge of the garden?
Nikos at her side?
Could he be real?
Oh, yes—oh, yes… He was real!
Nikos—Nikos, Nikos…
She tried to silence the voice in her head, for it had no right to cry out like that—nor reason, either. But reasons seemed a thousand miles away, and all that was left was a burning consciousness of his presence—a consciousness that became even more vivid as he paused at the top of a short flight of steps, looking upwards into the sky.
‘Look at the stars,’ he said.
She followed his uplifted gaze. Overhead the heavens shone, pricked with gold, the faintest wisps of cloud scudding over them.
‘There’s Jupiter,’ he said.
She gazed blindly. He raised his hand, to point, and as he did so his other hand closed on her shoulder, to alter her position slightly. Suddenly his breath was warm on her neck, and the stars blurred in her eyes. The warmth of his palm on her shoulder seemed like a brand. Imprinting her with his presence.
For a moment, timeless and motionless, she stilled completely, every cell in her body piercingly aware of Nikos’s closeness, his touch, his breath, his scent, his very being. Emotion lifted her.
Then, abruptly, the hand at her shoulder fell away.
‘The car park is just through here,’ he said. His voice was terse suddenly, and his pace as they walked towards the gate that led from the garden quickened. She felt the emotion that had lifted her hang, quiveringly, inside her.
As he gained the car, opening the passenger door for her, Nikos set his jaw tensely. What was happening to him?
What had been happening all evening?
As he gunned the engine and manoeuvred the car out of the car park, he tried to get his head around it. The evening had had a clear, unambiguous purpose: to put the past behind him. To make him see, finally, that the past was over and done with. That Sophie had no power to arouse emotions in him. That he could gain immunity from her, from what she could do to him…
Liar…
The word shaped itself in his head and he brushed it aside, but it reformed again. From the corner of his eye he could see her sitting there beside him, feel her presence, her reality.
Sophie…
Everything about her seemed so vivid, so vital! Everything about her was imprinted on him. In every cell of his body. Emotion washed through him. Emotion that she aroused! Only she aroused. Only Sophie…
Only Sophie….
The car ate up the few miles as he closed the distance to Belledon. They did not talk—yet the silence spoke. His head was full—but not with words, not with thoughts.
As he wound down the long drive to the house, took the curve around to the back and drew up outside the entrance to her quarters, he could feel the emotion in him strengthening. What it was he did not know, could not name. Knew only that it was strong and growing stronger. More imperative. More powerful.
I should leave. Leave her and go. Get back to the inn and then, first thing, head back to London. The architect can wait. He’s not important. All that is important is for me to get back to London. Away.
Away from Sophie…
But even as the thought forced its way into his head he knew it for the lie it was.
He cut the engine and the silence pooled. With a jerky movement Nikos opened his door, strode out around the car to open the passenger seat door. She got out quickly, shutting the door herself. Nikos walked up to the back door, unlocking it with his own set of keys for the property. It took a moment to find the right key, but then it yielded, and he pushed the door back, holding it open for her.
He did not speak.
Dared not speak.
Dared not look at her.
She approached slowly. There was a sudden wariness in her step. A sudden slow thump of her heart. All around was nothing but silence. Then the mournful cry of an owl pierced it momentarily.
‘Sophie—’
The sound of his voice penetrated. Her eyes went to him as he stood in the dimness by the open door, waiting for her to go inside. Waiting to leave. To drive away. She paused. The air was chill now, after the warmth of the car, but it was not the night that chilled her.
Knowledge came to her.
I will never see Nikos again now.
He would drive away and she would never see him again.
She knew it with an absolute certainty. There would be no more accidental encounters, no more crossing of paths. No more.
A terrible yearning swept through her. A yearning for what had never been, for what never would be. What never could be.
With aching pain, she moved past him.
‘Sophie—’
She paused minutely. She could not say goodnight, could not speak anodyne words. It was all beyond her.
‘Sophie, I—’
She tilted her head—the barest acknowledgement. ‘Goodbye, Nikos.’
Her voice was low, faint. She had meant to say goodnight, but a truer word had come. She started forwards again, into the interior.
‘Sophie—’
Her name came from him again, but it was different now, and his hand was on her shoulder. Halting her. She turned.
He was so close to her. Standing there in the doorway, his hand on her shoulder, pressing through the material of her blouse. He said something in Greek. She did not know what. Knew only that in the darkness of the night his face was stark.
His eyes were burning suddenly, with a fire that came from deep within.
Weakness went through her, making her breath catch, her heart seize. The warmth of his hand on her shoulder made her weaker yet. Her eyes clung to his. Clung in desperation, beseeching. Yearning.
Oh, dear God—Nikos!
Emotion filled her that she should be so close to him, and then anguish that this was, could only be, her final moment with him. That nothing remained—only this final parting.
And then…
Slowly, infinitely slowly, as if a weight were dragging at him, his hands slid from her shoulders to fasten around her arms. She felt his muscles tense, felt him draw her towards him. Her heartbeat had slowed. Her breath stopped. Time stopped. The unbearable past that had taken him from her once, the unbearable future that would take him from her for ever, all vanished, and there was only this moment—now. This moment with him. The soft dark of the night, the dim points of the stars, the faint soughing of the wind in the distant trees, the haunting cry of the hunting owl—that was all there was.
And Nikos. So close to her. So close.
Holding her.
Words came from him again, in his own language, low and rasped. She did not understand. But she did not need words to know what was in his eyes, his face.
His lips.
In a slow, slow descent, his mouth covered hers.
Like silken velvet his mouth moved on hers, drawing from her a nectar sweeter than honey. The nectar he had tasted before, as sweet as this. The nectar that had been in her very first kiss—and in her last.
And now in this.
She opened to him. She could not do otherwise. Giving herself, all of herself, to this moment of bliss. Nikos kissing her. Nikos’s mouth moving on hers softly, slowly.
As he had kissed her the very first time.
Past and present fused in her head, her heart. The past she had submerged beneath layer after layer of desperately imposed barriers was now as real and singing in her consciousness as the bliss of the present.
Holland Park, after the open-air opera, walking along, hand in hand, his fingers laced with hers. Nikos pausing in the shadowed pathway to turn her slowly towards him, to murmur her name, and then, as her eyes fluttered shut, to do what she had been longing, aching for him to do—kiss her…
It was as if that moment had come again—as if this was the first time all over again. As if her heart were singing, soaring as it had then, her body and soul filling with the sweetest bliss.
Then, in that distant, long-ago past, he had drawn back regretfully, reluctantly, and she had gone on standing there, dazed and dizzy with delight, gazing up at him, lips parted, her heart soaring heavenward on wings of wonder.
‘I must take you home,’ he’d murmured then, and had walked with her, slowly, his arm around her shoulders, their bodies touching. They had meandered homewards, slowly, back towards her father’s house. His car had been parked there, and though she had invited him in for coffee—daringly, hopefully—he had ruefully shaken his head.
‘I can’t,’ he’d said. ‘Or I will want to stay…’
All he’d done was tilt up her chin and drop the lightest, slightest kiss upon her lips. Then he’d let her go and turned away, walked back to the car, pausing only to lift his hand in a final goodnight and call softly, ‘Go in, Sophie.’
And she had, though it had been like tearing herself away, and when she had shut the front door she had leant back against it until she’d heard his car drive away, and then she had drifted upstairs, floating on air to her bedroom, aching with all her being for him.
As she ached now. Now that she was in his arms again—now that the bliss of his kiss was soaring in her veins—now that the low, hectic beat of her heart, the pulse of her blood, were binding her to him—now that the warm, sensuous pressure of his mouth was drowning her senses.
She gave herself to it absolutely, completely. Not even trying to fight, trying to resist. The past flowed into the present, becoming one.
He guided her to the staircase and up the narrow stairs, into the dim, encompassing darkness that awaited there. To take her into his arms again. The darkness enveloped them, but he did not need light to tell him what he knew—that her soft, slender body folded to his, that her tender, rounded breasts pressed against him, that her sweet, generous mouth was like honey beneath his. Nectar.
Did he speak? He did not know. Nor if he spoke Greek or English. Knew only that his hand had slipped around the nape of her neck, cradling her head to his as his other hand slid down the long wand-curve of her spine. He was kissing her still, deeper, and yet each kiss only engendered a greater hunger, a wilder desire for her. His fingers were at her blouse—that cheap, unlovely blouse that should never have sullied her honeyed-body—peeling the material away from her, careless of buttons just as he was careless of zips or fasteners, only to ease her skirt from her, let it slide and cascade to the floor, where he could lift her out of it and lower her gently, carefully, down upon the waiting bed.
He followed her in a daze, his own garments and her remaining ones shed somehow, anyhow. Irrelevant how they fell, or where. All that was essential was to lower his bared body onto hers, gleaming like pearl in the velvet dark, to graze his lips along that opalescent skin, the delicate bones below her throat, the hollow at its base. Then, with the lightest, most feathered touch, he skimmed the swell of her tender breasts, heard her murmurous cries, felt her breasts swelling to his touch of lips and fingertips, felt their peaks cresting beneath his sensuous suckling, heard those cries again, husky from her throat.
Her fingers wound in his hair, splaying out over the contours of his back, and his body hardened against hers, filling him with a desire so steep, so absolute, that he moved on her, seeking, questing, parting her thighs with his and lifting himself to her arching hips. Her throat was extended, her head thrown back, the pale tresses of her loosened hair flowing like a banner as he kissed her again, deeper and yet deeper still, as she opened to him with tiny, breathy cries, pleading for him as he slowly, carefully, sheathed himself within her yielding body.
She could not move. Dared not. Because if she did something impossible would happen. She would feel a bliss more than it was possible to feel. So she could only lie there, his body filling hers, hers enwrapping his, their muscles quivering. Her hands were caught at the wrists, lifted either side of her head. Her whole being was poised, balanced so finely that it was as if the very edge of a tsunami had welled out of the ocean deeps. For a timeless, exquisite moment she was held so still it was as if she were a statue of marble or ivory, hung in a moment of time that seemed eternal. She gazed upwards, her eyes wide, her lips parted—up into the face above her, whose dark, dark eyes held a question that was impossible to deny.
Then, with a susurration of her name, he moved.
And her body answered him.
She cried out. She could not help it—could not stop herself. Cried out as the drowning sweetness flushed through her until every cell was honeyed, every pore dissolved, and her whole body was drenched. The sweetness went on and on and on. He was there too, his body surging into her, and she heard him cry out with her. And then it was ebbing—ebbing away. The sweetness drained from her until all that was left was the utter exhaustion of her limbs, only lassitude. His body was heavy on hers, and he rolled them sideways so that she was in his arms, and he in hers, their bodies still melded, still complete. Her eyelids were so very, very heavy, her body sweet and warm. She folded against him, clasped to him, her hair swathing him, her head against his shoulder. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her eyelids fluttered shut and soon she was still, sleeping in his embrace.
Dim light pressed with skimming fingertips against her eyelids, fluttering them open. For a moment she was alone, as she had been for so long, and then, as if in a mirage, she realised she was in Nikos’s arms.
And they had made love.
Happiness welled through her. How it had happened she did not care—nor why. It had happened, that was all, and she was here, and he was with her. Her hands could press against the warm, hard wall of his chest, feel the rise and fall of it, feel the soft rhythm of his breath. She could open her eyes and see, in the dim dawn light, the beautiful contours of his face, his sable hair feathering on his brow, his long, long lashes swept down over his eyes.
And know, with a wonder that was like a piercing pain, that she was experiencing something that she had never, ever experienced in her life.
I never lay in his arms, I never woke in his arms.
But this time—this time that had been granted to her!
This is how it should have been—
Her mind tried to sheer away, to block out the terrible memories that suddenly, instantly, were there inside her head, vivid and anguished. Humiliating and poisonous.
Shaming.
Cold iced through her. The warmth of Nikos’s arms was gone. Blindly she stared out into the room.
And slowly, very, very slowly, as if a terrible, unbearable weight was crushing down on her, she knew what she must do.