The note had neither greeting nor signature, but it didn’t need one. There was no mistaking Nikos’s dark, slashing scrawl. Just four brief words, dashed off in haste, and the sight of them made Sadie blink hard in bewilderment and confusion.
Cambrelli’s 8:00 p.m. Be there.
Be there.
It was a blunt decree, a command that she would be wise to obey—or risk the consequences.
Be there.
And Cambrelli’s. Dear heaven, but the man knew how to stick the knife in. Cambrelli’s was the small Italian restaurant he had taken her to on their very first date.
Rebellion rose hotly in Sadie’s heart. Who the hell was this man that he could issue such an order and expect to have it obeyed? Her fingers tightened on the paper, the impulse to crumple it into a ball and toss it away from her almost overwhelming. She was damned if she…
But even as she lifted her hand to do so, common sense reasserted itself and froze the defiant gesture. What was she thinking of? She knew exactly who this man was.
He was Nikos Konstantos, and he was in the position of having every command he issued obeyed at once, without any hint of a question. He also held all the cards very tightly in his hands.
‘And, knowing me as you do, I am sure that you will recall that once I have made up my mind on a matter then I never change it.’
The words that Nikos had flung at her sounded so clearly inside her head that she almost believed that the man himself had come up behind her and spoken them out loud.
He had sworn that he would not help her and made it plain that every one of her entreaties had fallen on totally stony ground.
And yet…
Her gaze went back to the note in her hand as she smoothed it out and read over once again.
Cambrelli’s 8:00 p.m. Be there.
She didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed that Nikos had tossed her some kind of lifeline. It wasn’t much but it was all she had, and she would be a fool not to grab at it while she could.
The receptionist was still hovering close at hand, obviously waiting for an answer. Glancing down at her phone, reading the message from her mother again, Sadie drew in a deep breath and came to a decision.
‘Tell Mr Konstantos that I will meet him as arranged.’
CAMBRELLI’S RESTAURANT HAD changed very little in the past five years. It was perhaps a little cleaner and brighter—they had obviously put a fresh coat of paint on the walls—but not much else had altered.
There were the same dark wood tables and chairs, some in small booths with red fake leather banquettes on either side, the same red-and-white checked tablecloths, the same candles stuck into empty wine bottles on each table, with wax dripping down the neck and over the label. She was sure that there were even the same rather worn and faded posters on the walls. One of the Colosseum in Rome and one of St Mark’s Square in Venice. It was like stepping back in time and reliving a small part of her life.
If only she really could do that, Sadie thought as she followed the waiter to one of the booths near the back of the room, well away from the window, she noted. If only she could be arriving here as a rather naive twenty year old, still at university, her head in a whirl of excitement and her feet barely seeming to touch the ground as she headed for a date with the most exciting man she had ever met. Anticipating the most wonderful night she had ever known.
And it had been just that. That night and the days, the months that had followed had been the happiest, the most glorious times Sadie had ever known. But if it was at all possible, if she really could go back in time, then she would grab hold of her younger self, try to shake some sense into her.
‘Poor stupid little fool,’ she muttered to herself, the bitterness of memory pushing the words from her mouth in spite of the fact that she wasn’t really speaking to anyone.
‘I beg your pardon, signorina?’
The waiter had heard her, and paused in his progress across the room to glance at her questioningly.
‘Oh—sorry—nothing…’
She had to get a grip on herself, Sadie thought, managing an embarrassed half-smile. The stress of the day and anxiety about the evening ahead was getting to her and making her control of her tongue slip slightly. She needed to have her thoughts and her feelings totally under control.
But oh, how she wished that someone had taken charge of her younger self. That they had warned her not to trust Nikos, not to believe a word he said. Better that she should have faced the inevitable disillusionment then, before their affair had truly begun, rather than go through the whole terrible process of falling hopelessly and mindlessly in love and then being bitterly disappointed. The appalling sense of loss and betrayal had been all the worse because of the wonder and joy that had gone before.
But of course then she wouldn’t have believed anyone who had tried to convince her that Nikos was not what he seemed. She wouldn’t have listened to a single person—probably not even herself if she had managed to appear to give a warning message. At twenty years old she had been naive, gullible, and totally starry-eyed, and she would have thought that it would be well worth a broken heart at the end if she could only have that night.
She had never expected it to last anyway. She had only ever thought that she would have that one night, one date. At the end of the evening she had fully expected that Nikos would take her home, say goodnight, and that would be that. She had been overjoyed, and unable to quite believe it, when he had asked to see her again—and again.
‘Good evening, Sadie.’
Sadie had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed they had reached the booth. It was already occupied, she realised, as in the shadowy darkness Nikos rose to his full height and faced her across the table.
This was not the man she had confronted in his office earlier that day. This Nikos was not the sleek suited businessman who headed the Konstantos Corporation. Instead he was darkly devastating in a soft black shirt, open at the neck with no tie, and worn black denim jeans that hugged the lean hips, the narrow waist that was emphasised by a heavy leather belt.
And just what was the message he intended her to read into that? Or was she reading too much into it because she had spent so long worrying about what she should wear herself—opting for a pair of smart black trousers with a deep red shirt and loose jacket so that she neither looked as if she had dressed up or down for this meeting? She was too acutely sensitive to the hidden clues in what Nikos had chosen to wear.
‘Won’t you sit down?’
The pointed question brought home to her the fact that she had been standing, still and silent, staring at him as if she had never seen him before in her life while he waited with carefully controlled patience for her response.
‘Thank you.’
It was as she sank into the seat directly opposite him that she recalled how she had once been told that when eating out in a restaurant Greek men usually seated themselves with their backs to the wall, their guest facing them. That way the host could see everything that was going on, the coming and going in the main body of the restaurant, but their companion’s attention was forced to be concentrated solely on them.
Not that Nikos’s attention seemed to be anywhere else other than on her. Those bronze eyes were fixed on her face in a way that made the tiny hairs at the back of her neck lift in the uncomfortable reaction of a wary cat, faced with a threatening intruder into its space.
‘So