THE car drove on through the traffic, heading back into central London. Sophie had seemed to acquiesce, and was sitting on the far side of the seat still, but no longer protesting or vocal. Her eyes were closed, her face was shuttered, shutting him out. Tension and exhaustion were in every line of her body. Nikos let her be. This was not the place for what had to be done. Silently he resumed reading the document he’d been attempting to study while he’d waited for her to come out of the clinic. But the words were meaningless. Only one thing had meaning now, and that must wait until their journey’s end.
It seemed to take for ever until his car finally pulled in under the portico of his Park Lane hotel and his driver was opening the door on Sophie’s side. She got out, and Nikos was there instantly, lest she try and bolt. But she stood listless, immobile, as he cupped her elbow and steered her inside the hotel lobby. She remained silent until he had escorted her up in the elevator to his suite, and then, as he closed the door, she turned.
‘We have nothing to say to each other, Nikos. Nothing!’
Her voice was neither hostile nor encouraging. It was indifferent. As if she had switched off somewhere along the journey.
‘Sit down,’ he instructed her, and with the same dumb acquiescence she lowered herself down onto the sofa.
He followed suit, but sat himself at the far end. He could see her tensing, but ignored it. He had his own tension to cope with. He had to stay in control of this conversation, and he needed all his self-control to do so.
‘I want to know,’ he spelt out, ‘exactly what has happened since I walked out on you, Sophie, four years ago.’
She eyed him blankly. Her face was closed. ‘Why?’ The indifference was there still, but there was hostility beneath the surface now. He could tell.
He ignored the challenge. ‘Just tell me.’ He paused. ‘You’re going nowhere till we’ve had this conversation, so you’d better get on with it. What happened after I walked out on you four years ago?’
Her face was blank. Jaw set. OK, he would start jabbing. ‘When did your father have his first heart attack?’
He’d got to her, he could see. She hadn’t expected that. ‘Who told you he’d had one?’ she countered instantly, voice bristling.
‘The nurse at the clinic. He had two before his stroke. So when was the first one?’
He could see the cords of her neck tauten. Then her head twisted back to him. ‘It’s not your damn business!’
Nikos ignored her outburst. ‘When did he have his first heart attack, Sophie?’
‘You want to know? OK, I’ll tell you!’ Her eyes were full of venom. ‘He had his first heart attack the morning he flew back from Edinburgh, without a rescue package, when his PA told him you’d phoned to say there was no possibility of a Kazandros deal, either, and you’d flown back to Athens already.’
Nikos stilled. ‘That morning?’
‘You want to see his hospital records?’ she jibed sarcastically.
But Nikos’s mind was racing. Thee mou, the very next day after he’d thrown her from him like a soiled rag!
‘How—how bad was he?’
‘He pulled through,’ she said tightly. ‘The doctors warned me he might not, that he might have another attack, but he didn’t. He was in hospital for months, and had to have surgery. That’s why I dropped out of music college—to look after him. By then Granton had folded, and I was worried about university costing too much. The house in Holland Park had to go, too, and we moved to a much cheaper apartment.’
‘I’m—sorry,’ said Nikos. It seemed an inadequate thing to say.
She gave a half-shrug. ‘Why? It wasn’t anything to do with you. Not really. You weren’t responsible—why should you have been?’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said stiffly. Emotion had started to slice inside him again, but he had to keep pushing. ‘And the second attack?’
‘A year later. That one was worse. He was a lot weaker. There was a lot more stress.’
‘Stress?’ Nikos pounced on the word.
She looked away again. ‘Money things. He’d tried to start up Granton again. It stressed him. And then…’ She paused a moment, then continued, in the same tight, terse manner. ‘It was a drain on him financially, losing him even more money, and he had to pull the plug. That’s what triggered the second heart attack.’
He nodded slowly. There was another question he had to ask to make the ugly, bleak jigsaw come together. ‘You told me he’d got caught by a boiler-room scam. When did that happen?’
Had Edward Granton been so weakened by illness that he’d actually been stupid enough to fall for such a well-known fraud?
Sophie’s eyes flared with emotion. He could not tell which one, but he knew it was one that caused pain. ‘While he was back in hospital. I—I had power of attorney—he wasn’t expected to pull through a second time—and I…I wanted to give Dad some good news, because he’d been so worried about money. So I… So I…’
Nikos felt icy cold go through him as realisation hollowed out in him.
‘They targeted you, not your father.’
His mind reeled at the very thought of it. Sophie—sheltered by her father from every financial reality in life, insulated from all necessity, focussing only on her music, her studies, her carefree, happy life—lured into the bloodsucking grip of leeches in a boiler room. It would have been like throwing a puppy to wolves.
To be torn to pieces.
Rage speared in him. Rage that anyone should have done that to her!
She was sitting very still, her hands knotted together in her lap. She looked at Nikos. Her skin was stretched across her cheekbones. Her eyes empty now.
‘I invested nearly everything he had left. It wasn’t much by then—only a couple of hundred thousand out of everything he’d once had. I was desperate to recoup his losses, so I could go to him and tell him everything was all right again! Instead—’ She fell silent again, but guilt and self-condemnation lacerated her face. ‘I lost him everything—everything he’d managed to salvage when his company went bust,’ she whispered. ‘Everything. I was so incredibly, incredibly stupid. Gullible. I tried to hide it from Dad, but when he finally came out of hospital he found out and…and…’ She took a razored breath. ‘That’s when he had his stroke.’
She started to lace and unlace her fingers. ‘He was lucky. Not just that he survived, but that he was able to go to that clinic. It’s one of the best in the country. And even luckier that his health insurance was still running.’ She swallowed, and then went on, staring blindly down at the carpet, the skin stretched across her cheekbones. ‘But it’s run out now. He’s used up all his allowance, what with all the hospitalisation and surgery and so on, as well as the stroke clinic. I was putting aside all the money I could, spending as little as possible on anything else, but I couldn’t keep up with the payments. So…so…when they said he would have to leave I knew I had to do whatever it took to earn enough money.’
She lifted her head suddenly, staring right at Nikos. Her expression was hard, and he saw the same look in her eyes as she’d had in the taxi, when he’d hauled her out of the gutter.
‘And if that meant working as an escort, then so what? I had to have the money! I had to! Keeping Dad in the clinic is all that matters! And after all—’ her voice twisted ‘—it’s not as if he’d know how I was earning the money!’ Her eyes were like knives, slicing into Nikos. ‘So that’s why I did it! And that’s why I grabbed your money, too! So now you know! And why the hell you want to I haven’t the faintest idea! It’s nothing to you, Nikos—nothing!’
For a moment, as she fell silent, her chest heaving with emotion, he said nothing. But then he spoke.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said, and his voice was different but he didn’t know how. ‘It’s everything to me.’
His eyes held hers—held them as if he were reaching for them from a very, very long way away. Across a divide that engulfed them like a bottomless chasm.
Emotion was huge inside him, overwhelming him in its enormity. But there were questions still to ask. Questions upon which his whole being depended.
‘Why did you make love with me, Sophie? At Belledon?’ His voice was low.
Her eyes flickered, as if she were seeking refuge.
‘Why, Sophie?’ he asked again, in the same low, intense voice.
Her face worked, but she would not answer. Her eyes slid away, unable to meet his.
‘We found ecstasy together.’ His voice was lower still. ‘You cannot deny it—nor I. Ecstasy, Sophie, that night at Belledon.’ He paused, and a world was in that pause. ‘Then you left. Why, Sophie?’
Slowly, as if every word were dragged from her, as if she was forcing herself to speak, she answered him.
‘I had to. I couldn’t…I couldn’t endure it all over again. Having you despise me.’ Her face contorted. ‘Hate me, just as you did four years ago! I couldn’t face it—not again!’ She shuddered. ‘Not when this time I was innocent!’ She looked at him, eyes stricken. ‘But you wouldn’t have believed me—and why should you have, after what I’d done to you? I swear to you, Nikos, I was innocent! But you already knew I was desperate for money, and if you’d found out about what had happened to my father you would simply have thought that I was as guilty now as I was four years ago!’
Her face contorted again, anguish and self-loathing in her eyes. ‘Because four years ago I was guilty! Guilty of every word you threw at me! I’d just found out that day about my father’s financial troubles—I saw an article in the business section of a newspaper someone was reading on the bus as I came back from college, headlined “Granton counts on Kazandros lifeline”! I was horrified! Appalled! Terrified for my father! And I felt so totally ashamed! I’d spent all that time tunnel-visioned on you. I’d never even realised what was going on for my father!’
She gave a hollow, biting laugh, quickly cut off in her throat. ‘Until I read in that article that that was why my father had invited you in the first place! Because he wanted you to be his white knight, to save him from going under! I felt so guilty that my father was in such trouble and I hadn’t even noticed! But then I realized…’ She swallowed. ‘I realised that of course you must be intending to invest in Grantons, or merge, or whatever was going to be necessary, because you would never have been going out with me if you hadn’t! I knew you would never have had a relationship with me if you weren’t intending to save Granton. You would have thought it dishonourable, because your going out with me would have led my father to assume he could count on you. So, because you were still going out with me, I knew I didn’t have to worry about my father after all. And then that evening—’
She stopped. Her chest was heaving, and suddenly she got to her feet.
‘And then,’ she went on, each word cutting the air, ‘that evening, at that charity ball, you told me you were going back to Athens the next morning.’
She stopped again and swallowed. There was a stone in her throat, and she had to swallow it. Nikos was sitting immobile, looking at her. His face was a mask, and she knew why. She forced herself on, each word like broken glass in her throat.
‘I knew that could only mean one thing. You were finished with me. And that meant you were finished with my father, too. That you weren’t going to be his white knight. And you weren’t going to be my—’
She took another razoring breath. The stone in her throat was still there, but she had to force herself to speak all the same. Why, she didn’t know. Nikos knew the truth. He had known it four years ago. He knew it now.
‘So it was to be our last evening together—ever. And I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it. So I invited you in, knowing we’d be alone in the house, and I made myself as…as enticing as I could. It…it was like…like a test. Were you really going to finish with me? Were you really going to leave me?’ Her voice dropped. Her hands twisted in her lap, eyes sank.
‘I so, so desperately wanted you to stay.’
Her words came haltingly, each one exacting a price from her in blood.
‘And you did stay.’ She lifted her eyes to him again. Forced herself to look at him. Face him. Confess to him. ‘You stayed. And you made love to me. I knew you would never have done that if you hadn’t been serious about me, about our relationship, because you knew I was a virgin, and I knew you would always respect that. So to me that night was proof that you hadn’t been going to finish with me after all, that you were serious about me and always had been, and that you would sort out everything about the business side of things just as you must have intended all along! We’d get married and live happily ever after, and all Daddy’s worries would be gone because you’d be his son-in-law, and you and your father would be investing in Granton, and Daddy would be happy, and you and I would be happy, and everything in the entire universe was going to be wonderful! Just wonderful! A fairy tale come true, with you as a white knight for my father and for me too!’
Her voice was rank with bitterness, with self-mockery. Self-loathing.
She looked at him. His face was still a motionless mask.
‘And then…’ She swallowed, and the stone was choking her now, suffocating her. ‘Then you told me the truth. About myself. Threw those ugly, brutal home truths at me—showing me just what I’d done.’
Her eyes shut a moment, as if she did not have the strength to keep them open. Then she took another breath and spoke again.
‘And I realised it was true—every word of what you’d said. I realised I’d behaved shamefully, trying to manipulate you, luring you into bed with me. You called me a contemptible little piece of work—and I was. I hated you for it, Nikos, but it was true.’
Her eyes burned in her face. ‘But not this time…’
His face had shuttered, veiled as if by a mask. He sat back, leaning back against the sofa, spreading his arms along the cushions, crossing one leg over another. Elegant, devastating. In the pit of her churning stomach, Sophie felt a clench suddenly.
Get out! Get out while you can! You were mad to let him bring you here! You’ve said your piece—for what the hell it was worth!—now go!
She took a heavy, angry, heaving breath. He looked so damn relaxed, lounging back on the sofa! So damnably devastating! Greedily, hungrily, her eyes devoured him, even though she tried to stop herself. But this would be the very last time she would set eyes on him. In a moment she would be gone out of his life for ever. And never, never again would she see his face in the flesh, see the perfect curve of his cheekbones, the blade of his perfect nose, the sculpted, sensuous mouth that could make her run with hot and cold if she let herself, for a single second, remember the touch of his lips on her flesh, and the eyes, those beautiful, dark, gold-glinting, long-lashed eyes, that she could drown in, down, down, down into their depths, never to surface…
With all the strength she had left, she pulled herself to her feet. A raking breath left her stricken lungs. ‘I’m going now, Nikos. There’s nothing else you need to know.’
She made to turn, to head for the door of the suite, but his words stayed her in her tracks.
‘You’re wrong. There is something I need to know—very badly.’
His words seemed casual, as did his pose, but there was a fine tension in every line of his body that belied his calm.
‘And there are things you need to know, Sophie.’ He paused, as if imposing self-control for a moment. ‘And the first is this. I’ve paid your father’s clinic fees for the next six months.’
For a second she froze, then she rounded on him. ‘Then you can damn well unpay them! I didn’t ask for your help, Nikos! I didn’t ask for your charity! My father’s not your concern! Not your responsibility!’
He got to his feet, and suddenly he seemed very tall, his presence overpowering. She took a step backwards.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said again, and walked towards her. ‘Because there’s something else you need to know, Sophie.’ He stopped a few steps away from her, but it was like being in a magnetic field, and she felt herself physically sway. She dug her heels into the carpet, standing her ground, muscles knotted with tension.
‘There’s nothing else I need to know!’
He shook his head. ‘You’re wrong about that, too, Sophie. Wrong about so, so much. But mostly wrong about this.’ He paused a moment, levelling his gaze on her. ‘Why do you think I was going back to Athens four years ago?’
She stared. What had that to do with anything? He answered her silent incomprehension.
‘I was going to see my parents,’ he told her conversationally. ‘I was going to tell them,’ he continued, his tone still casual, still unexceptional, his eyes still resting on her, ‘that I’d just met the woman I was going to marry.’
The silence stretched between them. Outside on the street she could hear the dim roar of traffic. But all she could hear in the room was the thud of her heartbeat, the pounding of her pulsing blood in her head.
Her mouth was dry suddenly, as parched as a desert. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t.’ He paused again, then spoke. Said the words that were within him. That had been within him for all these years. Never said. Never spoken. Until now.
‘I fell in love with you, Sophie, four years ago. I fell in love with the girl with almond blossom in her hair. The girl whose smile made my heart catch. The girl who enchanted me, captivated me! The girl I desired more than any other woman I’d known—ever could know. I fell in love with you.’
The silence was absolute. Not even the beating of her heart was audible.
Perhaps my heart has stopped. Perhaps I’ve died. I must have died—this cannot be real, it can’t be.
She seemed to sway minutely.
‘That’s why I stayed with you that night. Because I knew you were my heart’s love—that you were going to be mine all my life. And I knew you loved me, Sophie. Knew it with the certainty of one who loves. Every look, every touch confirmed it!’ His voice changed, and something in it made Sophie’s heart constrict. ‘Every kiss confirmed it, Sophie. Every caress. You took me to heaven that night, and though I knew I should have resisted, should have waited until I had made you mine as my bride, I could not! It was impossible to do so! So I made you mine in love, with love, mine for ever and eternity! And then—’
She saw his eyes shadow, and it pierced her—pierced her to the core.
‘And then you told me what I meant to you.’ His voice had changed again. Emptied. Become a hollow place. ‘I wasn’t the man you loved. I was only the man you wanted to marry. Because then everything would be “wonderful”!’ He mocked the girlish gush of her accent, a mockery that lacerated like a knife across her skin. ‘“Wonderful!”’ he echoed. ‘Because then Daddy’s company would be safe, and you would be safe too—the cosseted princess, Daddy’s darling, protected from the world, cocooned in your music, your studies, your artless, easy, effortless life! And you would have Daddy, and Daddy would have his company, and you would have me, too, and everything would be just “wonderful”…’
She was white—as white as a sheet. Her face stricken.
She could only whisper. Anything more was beyond her. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Everything you said. It’s what I was. Pampered and protected. Totally indulged. Looking for shining white knights and silly, selfish happy ever afters!’
She could bear nothing more. The weight of it was crushing her. The weight of knowing that Nikos had been offering her a gift so precious, the gift of his love that she had yearned for, prayed for, and then feared she had only dreamt it hopelessly. The weight was grinding her heart to ashes.
If I had waited—if I had trusted him—
‘I ruined it all,’ she whispered. Anguish at what she had done stabbed her. What she had lost and destroyed. Yet through the anguish another emotion pierced, like a brilliant diamond light. He loved me! He loved me all along! Loved me all along! The wondrous joy of the realisation scintillated in her consciousness like a precious jewel.
But he was speaking again, and each word fell like a blow, shattering her brief joy.
‘When I realised what I meant to you—a financial rescue package—it made me cruel. Vicious. That’s why I laid into you. Said what I did and left you.’
She bit her lip. The pain was fitting. ‘I deserved it,’ she said, her voice low with self-hatred. ‘I deserved what you said to me—what you did!’
‘Did you?’ The same light, neutral tone was in his voice.
Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes! I was stupid and selfish and spoilt, and I thought that if only we were married you would sort everything out for my father and save him from ruin.’
His eyes were still resting on her, never flickering by a fraction. But there was something in their depths, something she could not recognise. Something powerful and veiled. ‘And if you’d never found out that day about your father’s financial problems, would you still have tried to persuade me to stay the night?’
She dropped her eyes. Swallowed. He wanted truth—he could have truth. Deserved truth.
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Why, Sophie? Why would you have wanted me to stay the night?’
She threw back her head. ‘This is pointless! It didn’t happen that way, so what’s the use of asking?’
‘Just answer, Sophie.’
‘What for?’ she countered fiercely.
‘Was it because you hoped that I would marry you?’
‘Yes!’
He was stripping her soul bare and she could not stop him.
‘And you wanted me to marry you because I was rich?’
Her lips pressed together.
Against her persistent silence he continued, inexorable. ‘But why would my wealth attract you? Your father was already wealthy. So why did you want me to marry you?’ His interrogation was remorseless, pitiless.
She would not answer. What use was the truth now, when her lack of faith in him, her lack of trust, had ruined her life?
‘You didn’t want to marry me for money—there was another reason, wasn’t there? Wasn’t there, Sophie? A reason I could see shining from your beautiful eyes every time I looked at you! A reason I could taste in the sweetness of your lips every time I kissed you! A reason that was in every touch, every caress, every trembling cry that came from you as I made you mine that night! A reason that my hurt and anger has blinded me to! But it was there all along! And it was there that night at Belledon, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Sophie?’ He paused, his vehemence stilled.
But still she would not speak. Could not speak.
‘You were in love with me,’ he said.
The words hung on the air.
Then, slowly, very slowly, she whispered, her voice as faint as air, ‘Yes.’
Hot, salty tears oozed in her eyes. She turned away blindly, seeking the handle of the door. Her vision blurred as she fumbled for the catch.
Nikos’s arms closed around her.
‘Sophie! Dear God, Sophie—don’t go! Why are you trying to go? Trying to leave?’
His arms were folding her back against him, clasping her to him, close against him, so close…
He turned her around in his arms, the emotion in his eyes pouring over her.
‘If I had known—if I had only known four years ago that you loved me!’ His voice was choked. ‘But I thought you only wanted me for my wealth, because your father’s wealth was threatened! That you only wanted me to save him—!’
He broke off. She was gazing at him, her eyes anguished. ‘But I did want you to save him! I did! What you threw at me was true! I can’t excuse what I did!’
His eyes were still pouring into hers, full and lambent.
‘But I can excuse it, Sophie.’ He drew breath, and she felt his warm palms pressing on her shoulders, steadying her, supporting her, though she felt she must collapse. ‘I can excuse it. You had only just found out that the father you adored was on the brink of ruin! And you thought that I was leaving you. That I didn’t love you as you loved me.’ His face twisted. ‘I should have told you—told you what I felt about you! If I had only told you!’
He took a shuddering breath. But he had never told her, had let her fear that she meant nothing to him, and she had been desperate to discover if her fears were false.
‘It was fear that made you do what you did,’ he said sombrely. ‘I could have assuaged those fears with a single word—and by doing so learned then what it has now taken me four long, bitter years to learn. I would have given the world to know it then! That you’d loved me all along.’ There was pain in his voice, and accusation too—against himself. ‘But instead I lashed out at you—and threw you to the waiting wolves. Oh God.’ His voice wrung her heart. ‘When I think of what you have endured these four years! You were so young when I knew you first! Your father kept you so protected from the world! Oh, it was part of your charm, part of your innocence, but it made you so vulnerable to the harsh realities of life!’
His voice changed, becoming stark. ‘And now I have learnt just what you had to cope with, what you had to endure, the strength and fortitude and courage you had to find, the nightmare you have lived year after year, blow after blow, with everything taken from you—the support of your stricken father, your absolute devotion to him to be where you are now! Oh, Sophie, it twists like a knife in me!’ His face was sombre, gaunt. ‘You were protected and cosseted once, kept so by a doting father. But you’re not that girl any longer—you’ve proved yourself beyond all endurance by your courage, your love, your devotion to your father!’
His voice changed again. ‘And I hope I am not the man I was until so short a time ago. You’ve humbled me, Sophie, by what you have endured. I made assumptions about you that were as false as any lie.’ He took a heavy, razoring breath. ‘I wish with all my heart you had told me straight away, that night I dragged you into the taxi when you’d escaped from that louse Cosmo! But why should you have turned to me for help when I thought so ill of you?’
His hands tightened around her.
‘But I thank God for that taxi-ride! Thank God that I tracked you down. Followed you to Belledon. Because now I know the truth about you! That you felt for me then, four long years ago, what I felt for you.’ His voice caught at her. ‘What I feel now, Sophie, my dearest one.’ His expression softened. ‘As you do too.’
He paused, and now his palms lifted from her shoulders and his fingers cupped her face again, sliding with gentle tenderness into the tendrils of her hair. He was so close to her, so close, and she felt faintness drumming in her, beating up into her tightening lungs.
‘Love,’ he told her.
His eyes were rich, full with emotion, and she felt the faintness beating more and yet more, so that she could scarcely breathe with it.
‘Love always.’ He gazed down into her eyes, his own ablaze with a fire that would never now be quenched. ‘My love, my life—my Sophie. Always my Sophie, from this time on. As I am yours—for all time.’
His kiss was as tender as his gaze, the touch of his lips on hers adoring.
There was light—light everywhere. Lightness and brightness and the radiance of the sun pouring into her after long, bleak darkness.
How can this be? she thought, amazed and dazed and dazzled and delirious. How can this be?
How could it be that Nikos was kissing her, embracing her, holding her so tenderly, so lovingly? It couldn’t be true—surely it couldn’t be true? Yet it was! It was true—it was real and true and not a dream—not a yearning—but real, real, real…
The tears were pouring down her face and he was kissing them away, kissing her and murmuring to her, with a wealth of tenderness, and then cradling her, soothing her, as she wept against him, wept away the long, bitter years that had divided them.
‘Oh, Nikos—my own, own Nikos!’ She pressed her face against his chest, weeping for all that she had lost and all that had been given to her again. Radiance filled her.
He swept her up, swept her away, carrying her as if she were no more than a feather, thistledown. He laid her down on the satin-covered bed and lay down beside her, cradling her all the time. Soothing her and hushing her, gentling her and quieting her.
And then softly, sweetly, tenderly and gently, passionately and lovingly, he made love to her—the woman he loved, the girl he had always loved, his own, sweet Sophie, always his.
As he was hers. Now and for all the years to come.