Nikos moved away from the helicopter and paced over to the edge of the cliff to stand staring out at the sea. His long body was silhouetted dark against the sunlight, the width of his shoulders seeming even more impressive than ever.
Suddenly, painfully, Sadie was reminded of the days when they had been together. When, if she had seen him like this, she would have been able to go up to him, slide her arms around that narrow waist until they met over the flat stomach. She could have rested her head against the powerful back, felt the heat of his skin through his shirt and inhaled the rich, intimate scent of his body.
That was how she had always dealt with difficult times in the past. Whatever mood he had been in, she had always been able to bring him round that way, to make him relax and smile again. More often than not he would turn in her arms, gathering her close to kiss her fiercely, until her head was spinning with happiness and desire.
That was how they had ended up in bed together the first time on that weekend before her wedding…
No, no, no!
Desperately she dragged her thoughts back from the painful path they were following. She must not let herself remember how it had once been. It was too cruel, too distressing. And all those ‘once had beens’ had never really existed. She had been living in a dream world, swallowing every deliberate lie that Nikos tossed her way and believing she had found the love of her life. The risks of even allowing such memories back into her life was too great to contemplate with any degree of safety. If she let them back into her mind, into her heart, then she would never be able to cope.
‘There was more to it than that.’ She tried to continue the conversation in order to distract herself from the torment of her memories. ‘Something more recent that had made things even worse. My father was…obsessed is the only word. He’d always perpetuated the feud in a business sense, but something new happened to drive him even further into the depths of hatred for the Konstantos family. Into a determination to ruin them once and for all.’
‘And you didn’t know what that was?’
‘No,’ Sadie managed, her eyes now fixed on the horizon. Her heart was thudding erratically, making it difficult to breathe. She was too much on edge, too aware of the difference between being here now like this and the way things had been that first time to manage to control her voice.
‘But I do know, in the end, it never truly brought him any real satisfaction. He drove his family and friends away because nothing else mattered to him. And he broke my mother’s heart. I found out later that my mother had had an affair. It destroyed their marriage, but I’m sure it was because she felt neglected, abandoned because he was so obsessed.’
It was so much easier to talk like this when Nikos had his back to her. When she couldn’t see his dark, stunning face and the cold contempt that burned in his eyes, thinned his beautiful, sensual mouth. Like this she could still pretend that they had some sort of a civilised relationship.
‘We could—we could end it,’ she suggested, buoyed up on a sudden rush of hope. ‘We could say it stops right here and now and—’
‘And what?’ Nikos enquired, turning suddenly to face her again. ‘And what, Sadie, agapiti mou? Hmm? We end it now and—what? Become close friends?’
He didn’t have to explain how he felt about that. It was there in the disgust stamped clearly onto the beautifully carved features, in the twist to his lips, the bite of the words he flung into her face.
‘No—not friends. We could never be that…’
‘Not friends,’ Nikos repeated with a brutal emphasis, his tongue curling in distaste on the word. ‘Because friends would never turn friends out of their home. Because friends would waive the cost of the rent—or even the purchase price of a very expensive house.’
‘No!’ Sadie shook her head violently so that her dark hair spun out wildly in the sunshine. ‘No—nothing like that!’
Did he really think that that was why she had proposed ending the feud? So that as her ‘friend’ he would feel obliged to let her off her debts and hand Thorn Trees over to her at a peppercorn rent? In the back of her mind she could hear once more that mocking ‘mate’s rates’ that he had tossed at her in his office a couple of days before.
‘You’re right! We could never be friends. And I wouldn’t want to be. All I meant was that we could call a halt to these stupid hostilities and—and live totally separate lives. There’s no way we ever have to even see each other again.’
The thought seemed to stop her breath in her throat. She’d managed to get on with her life these past years by refusing to let herself even think about Nikos and pushing away every memory when it tried to surface. It had nearly broken her but she had managed it. Now it would all be to do again. And, knowing how hard it had been the first time, she flinched away from the prospect of going through it once more.
‘And the sooner that happens, the better as far as I’m concerned.’
He was supposed to respond to that. She even paused, waiting for him to say something but Nikos remained strangely silent. Silent and still. Only the burn of his eyes, fixed on her, unblinking, seemed alive in his set and rigid face.
She should take that as a yes, Sadie decided. It certainly wasn’t any sort of a no. Nothing like a rush to say that, no, they must not separate, must not be apart again. Of course not. But she wished he would say something. Anything.
And suddenly she had to speak again, if only to break the disturbing, nerve-stretching silence that had been going on for far too long.
‘We’d better get this job done so that I can get out of here and be on my way.’
She would be professional if it killed her, she told herself. It was the only way she was going to get through this. She would do the best damn job she could, never put a foot wrong, and then Nikos would have no reason at all to find fault. No reason to go back on his word to let her mother stay in Thorn Trees.
But it was one thing to make that sort of a resolve, quite another to stick to it when every place they walked held a memory of the time when they had been together. Every path, every cove, even every rock, spoke of a happier time, a time when she had known the joy of love, even though it had all been a bitter deception and not the delight she had thought it to be.
It was almost as if Nikos knew what was in her thoughts, what had been in her heart when she had visited Icaros with him all those years before, and was now using it to torment her with the fact that this was where he would be marrying his new fiancée, the woman he loved. And it was when they crossed the little wooden bridge that led from the main island to the high headland, where the tiny chapel stood, that she knew she couldn’t hold back any more. Coming to an abrupt halt, she turned to Nikos, brushing back the dark silk of the her hair that the winds had whipped into wild disorder around her face.
‘Just why am I here?’ she demanded, not caring if the words were wise.
Had she gone completely mad? the look he turned on her said. Did he have to explain everything to her? In words of one syllable?
‘You are a wedding planner. I need to plan a wedding.’
The exaggerated clarity with which he spoke, a deliberate slowing down of his words, grated on her already overwrought nerves. He sounded as if he was having to explain to someone simple. Someone who would have difficulty in understanding what he said.
‘But you could have anyone you wanted. There must be much more established—more successful—fashionable—wedding planners you could hire.’
‘But I want you.’
What was it in his voice that made a shiver run over her skin, lifting the tiny hairs in a rush of apprehension? Sadie couldn’t define it,