‘So that’s all I was to you—a mental aberration?’
She had needed the reminder of how ruthlessly he had behaved. He might have wanted her, all right, but only physically. And she had offered herself to him on a plate, pushing to anticipate their wedding vows.
It was that same night when she had discovered just what Nikos had really been up to when he had claimed he wanted to marry her.
‘You certainly drove me crazy. Are you going to eat that?’
He nodded his dark head towards the plate of rapidly cooling pasta that now was beginning to look nastily congealed and even more unappealing.
‘No chance.’
Sadie gave an exaggerated shudder, and to her astonishment a smile flickered on Nikos’s lips. Brief, barely there, but it did at least have a trace of real warmth, real amusement.
‘I knew that would happen when you ordered it. Remembering how much you hate chillies…’
‘Then why didn’t you say something?’ she demanded, causing Nikos to hold up his hands in front of himself in a gesture of appeasement.
‘I also remember what you were like when anyone tried to tell you what to do,’ he said dryly.
And for a moment, as their eyes met across the table, it was as if the years had fallen away and they were back on that very first date, with every part of their relationship brand-new and fresh. When they had both been just learning about each other and everything had seemed bright and clear, with so much potential lying ahead.
As the flickering candle-light played over Nikos’s stunning face it emphasised shadows, showed up lines that she hadn’t seen before. Lines that five years of experience had put on his face, under his eyes, around his mouth. But somehow the marks of time seemed only to enhance rather than reduce the powerful masculine appeal of his hard features. At this time of day his strong jaw was already shaded with the darkness of a day’s growth of beard and, seeing it, Sadie suddenly had a rush of vivid, painful memory of just how she had loved the feel of that faint roughness against her skin when he kissed her, the lightly stinging response it had always left behind.
Nikos’s eyes were dark, deep pools above the broad slash of his cheekbones, and his sensual mouth was stained faintly by the rich red wine he had just drunk, his lips still moist from it. As their gazes clashed, froze, locked together with an intensity that made it seem as if the whole of the restaurant and everyone in it had faded into a hazy blur, the murmur of conversation blended together until it made a sound like the distant buzzing of a thousand bees—there, but making no real sense at all.
All the breath seemed to stop in her throat, making her lips part in an attempt to snatch in air that she had almost forgotten how to breathe. She felt as if she was drowning in those eyes, losing herself and going down for the third time as hot waters of sensuality swirled around her head, making her senses swim dangerously. Outside, in the darkened rainswept street, the lightning flashed again, but Sadie barely saw it. It was only when a growl of thunder made her jump that she came back to herself in a rush.
‘Nikos…’
She barely knew she had spoken, only that the sound of his name had escaped on a breath that had somehow formed into the word. And when she looked around, with things coming back into focus again, she saw how she had actually put her hand out to him, trying to make contact. Her arm lay across the gingham tablecloth, her fingers stretched towards his, almost making contact.
In the space of a jolting heartbeat she knew what a mistake she had made. She saw the way the man before her blinked hard, just once, and when he opened his eyes again it was as if all trace of any emotion, any warmth, had been washed from them leaving them, opaque and cold as a pebble at the bottom of a mountain stream. With that blink the silent connection that seemed to have formed between was broken, shattered, and Nikos suddenly straightened up, reaching for his napkin and dabbing it to his mouth.
‘Then we’ll go. I’ve said what I wanted to say and you will need to get home and pack. We leave for Athens in the morning.’
‘Leave…’
Indignation and exasperation burned away any last remaining shreds of the disturbing sensual response she had just felt, leaving her feeling uncomfortable and totally on edge.
‘But I haven’t said I’ll come yet. You can’t just—’
‘There’s nothing for you to say,’ Nikos cut across her attempt to protest, pushing back his chair and standing up as he did so. ‘It’s make your mind up time, Sadie. You either pack to come with me to Greece in the morning—or you pack up everything for yourself, your mother and brother and leave Thorn Trees. So which is it to be?’
It was the reminder of her mother and George that decided the question, as Nikos had obviously intended it should. He had held out the offer to let them stay, but only on his terms. And those terms involved her going with him to Greece and working to arrange Nikos’s wedding to his new bride.
‘Your choice, Sadie,’ Nikos prompted harshly when she still hesitated.
Which, of course, was no choice at all. There was only one thing she could say. Only one way she could keep her mother and George safe and happy. No matter what the personal cost to her.
‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘It seems I have no choice.’
‘None at all,’ Nikos assured her. And the really disturbing thing was the total lack of any sort of triumph or satisfaction in his tone.
He had planned for just this result and things had worked out exactly as he intended. He had expected nothing else. Because he knew exactly where he had her—dancing on the end of the strings that he was holding, in total control of her life. And there was nothing she could do about it.
‘WE WILL BE preparing to land soon.’
Nikos’s accented voice broke into Sadie’s concentration, making her jump.
‘You’ll need to put that away.’
His gesture indicated the laptop on which she had been working ever since the private jet had levelled out on their flight to Athens, her attention totally focussed on the screen.
‘What are you working on anyway?’
‘Greek wedding customs—what else?’ Sadie swivelled the machine round so that he could see the site she had been studying.
She had been glad to disappear into her need to concentrate on the reason she was on the plane in the first place. It had meant that she could try at least to ignore Nikos’s long, lean form sprawled in one of the soft leather seats on the opposite side of the cabin.
But the truth was that her mind hadn’t really been on her research. Instead, it had insisted on taking her back into the past, replaying scenes of the times she had spent with Nikos when the only wedding she had been planning had been her own. She had desperately needed a real distraction from that.
‘I take it that you are planning a traditional wedding, seeing as you have insisted on dragging me out to Greece with you?’
Nikos shrugged off the question with an indifferent lift of one shoulder.
‘Have you even given your bride a choice? Or will you just dictate how things are to be?’
That brought his eyes to her face, coldly probing, as if he was trying to read what went on behind her eyes. And she could see the flash of something fierce and dark in their golden depths.
‘Are you saying that this is how it was with you? That I dictated everything?’
‘No.’
How