A terrible sense of loss stabbed at her and she felt bitter tears burn at the back of her eyes. She only managed to hold them back by sheer force of will.
‘It isn’t as easy as that,’ she managed, her voice rough and uneven. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, the economy…’
She swallowed down the last of the sentence, knowing that finishing it would only give him more ammunition to use against her. Of course he knew all about the economy, and the way things had changed so dramatically in a couple of years or so. It was what he had used against Edwin, manipulating the wild fluctuations in the stock market to his personal advantage and against the man he had hated so bitterly.
‘I thought that you had a business of your own,’ Nikos said now.
‘A small one.’
And one that wasn’t doing very well at all, Sadie acknowledged privately. With things as tight as they were for most people, no one was indulging in the luxury of having a wedding planner organise their ‘big day’. She hadn’t had an enquiry in weeks—and as for bookings, well, the last she’d had had cancelled the next month.
‘Then get yourself another house. There are plenty on the market.’
‘I can’t afford—’
‘Can’t afford a smaller house but yet you want me to rent you Thorn Trees? Have you thought about this? About the sort of rent that can be asked for a place like that?’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about it.’
And had quailed inside at the realisation of the fact that just the rent on her family home would probably be far more than she could possibly manage to rake together every month.
‘Or did you perhaps think that I might be a soft touch and give it to you for—what is that you say—mate’s rates?’
The slang term sounded weird on his tongue, his accent suddenly seeming so much thicker than before, mangling the words until they were almost incomprehensible. But even more disturbing was the knowledge that there was no way at all that they applied to the relationship between herself and Nikos. Whatever else they had been, they had never been ‘mates’. Never truly friends or anything like it. Hot, passionate lovers, fiancés, prospective bride and groom—or at least that was what had been intended.
Or had it? She had been overjoyed to accept Nikos’s proposal. Had looked forward to her wedding day with joyful anticipation and had wept out her devastated heart when she had been forced to cancel it. But what she had thought had been a broken heart had been as nothing when compared to the misery she had endured later, when she had learned the truth about what Nikos had really been planning.
The shattering of her dreams had coincided with such a major crisis in her family life that she had barely known what she was doing from day to day. In the end she had resorted to the policy of least resistance, letting her father dictate everything she did, the way she behaved. He had written the script for those appalling days and she had followed it exactly. At least that way her mother had been safe, and Edwin Carteret had made sure that Nikos had failed in his attempts to get back into her life, to try and see Sadie—and no doubt hurt her even more.
‘I…’
‘Get yourself another house, Sadie,’ Nikos commanded. ‘Nothing else is on offer.’
‘I don’t want another house—I want…’
I want Thorn Trees was all she had to say. And then he would ask her why.
And if she answered with the truth, how would he react? Would he sympathise, as the Nikos she’d thought she had known all those years ago would have sympathised? Or would the Nikos he was now see yet another opportunity to further deepen his revenge against the family who had ruined his father and taken almost everything from him?
Not knowing whether telling him the truth would help or simply put another weapon into his hands, she swallowed hard against the uncomfortable dryness of her throat.
‘Look…’
Her voice croaked embarrassingly.
‘Do you think I could have a coffee or something? Even some water?’
Seeing the look he gave her, she felt her heart clench at the savage contempt that burned in his eyes.
‘Of course not,’ she commented bitterly. ‘That would eat into the paltry five minutes you’ve allotted me. It’s all right.’
Despair blurred her eyes, tiredness making the room seem to swing round her. Why didn’t she just admit defeat, give up and go home? But the memory of her mother’s face as she’d left the house was there, urging her to try again. Sarah needed a home and so did little George. And right now Sadie was their only chance of keeping the house.
‘Here…’
The abrupt word made her start, jump back slightly. Nikos sounded suddenly so very close. Disturbingly so. She blinked hard to clear her vision and found herself staring at a glass filled with water, bubbles rising inside, beads of moisture sliding down the sides. Feeling as she did, it had the effect of discovering a cool oasis in the centre of a blazing desert.
‘Thank you.’ It was genuinely grateful.
Reaching out a hand to take the glass from him, she misjudged the distance, the right approach, and found that although she aimed to grasp it at the base, well below his hand, in fact she closed her fingers over his, feeling their strong warmth in contrast to the cold hardness of the glass.
‘I’m sorry!’
A sensation like the shock from a bolt of lightning shot up all the nerves in her arm, so that she wanted to snatch her hand away, and yet at the same time it seemed that the sudden heat had welded their fingers together, so she couldn’t peel hers away without a terrible effort.
Nikos seemed to have no such problem, though his eyes held hers, darkly mesmeric, as he adjusted his hold on the glass, eased his hand away, waiting just a moment to make sure that she had a good grip before he finally let his arm drop to his side.
Still with their eyes locked together, Sadie lifted the glass of water to her parched lips, swallowed a mouthful, finding it suddenly intensely difficult to force the cool liquid past the disturbing knot that seemed to have closed off her throat.
She wished he would look away, and yet at the same time she knew that she would feel lost and strangely bereft if he did.
‘Thank…’
Her voice failed her, seeming to shrivel in the heat of that intent gaze. Something had happened to his eyes, so that the colour of the iris seemed to have disappeared and there were just the deep dark pools of his widened pupils, edged only at the rim with burning molten bronze.
Almost snatching at the glass, she drank again, gulping down water that did nothing to cool the sudden heat that had flooded her body or ease the sudden heavy pounding of her heart.
‘Thank you.’
At least her voice sounded stronger now, without that appalling crack in the middle that gave away far too much of what she was feeling.
She held out the glass to him, expecting him to take it back, check his watch again to see just how long of her allotted time she had left. But instead, to her total shock, he ignored the gesture and, extending one long, tanned finger, reached out to touch it to her cheek just below the corner of her right eye. Instinctively Sadie flinched and would have backed away, but once more something in that intent expression caught and held her frozen where she was.
‘Tears?’ he said on a softly spoken note of blank disbelief. ‘Tears—for a house!’
Tears?
Sadie’s hand flew up to her face, the backs of her fingers brushing her cheek to discover the shocking