She was down quicker than he had anticipated. And where he had been sure that, realising something was up, she would dress carefully for maximum impact—something like the fantasy come true of that red dress came to mind—he found he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Sadie had clearly rushed into her clothes, grabbing at the first thing that came to hand. And the first thing was a pair of worn denim jeans and a plain white v-necked tee shirt, her face clear of any make-up, pale against the still-damp darkness of her hair. Not that it helped any. The truth was that she was hellishly sexy in anything. And with the memory of her gloriously naked body in his arms, in his bed—underneath him, warm and willing all through the night and again in the bedroom just now—he had to make a fearsome effort to keep his eyes on her face. Because it was her face that he needed to see. He needed to look into her eyes, read her expression. That way he might have some chance of finding out what was going on in her conniving little mind.
‘What is it?’
So she was going for wide-eyed innocence. With just a touch of defiance. It was the look she’d had on her face the last time he’d seen her five years before. He didn’t want to look too closely at the memories that dredged up.
The newspaper was still lying on the desk, exactly as he had left it to go upstairs. He picked it up and tossed it towards her.
‘Read that.’
He knew exactly the moment she registered what the photograph showed by the way that the colour shifted in her face and she bit down hard on her lower lip, white teeth digging into the soft pink. With an effort Nikos suppressed an urge to go to her and tell her to stop, to run his thumb over the damage she was inflicting on herself.
‘Well?’ he barked, when she had obviously taken in all she needed to, had dropped the paper back on to the desk and was preparing her answer.
‘Well, what?’
What did he expect her to say? Sadie asked herself. And, perhaps more to the point, was there really any point in saying anything? From the thunderous dark frown on his face, he had clearly already tried her, acting as judge and jury, found her guilty and was now prepared to pronounce sentence.
‘I don’t know anything about this.’
A wave of her hand indicated the incriminating photograph. And she had to admit that she understood only too well just why he was so angry.
She had come downstairs, feeling shaken and on edge, apprehensive as to what was ahead of her. From the mood Nikos was in it was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong, though she had no idea what. The only thing that she could think of was that Nikos had had second thoughts about the passion they had shared in the night and was going to tell her it was all over. That had been bad enough. But this she was totally unprepared for.
‘I don’t!’ she repeated when he turned a frankly sceptical look on her, making it plain that he had no intention of believing a word she said.
The picture was of the two of them in Cambrelli’s just a few nights before. And it had been taken in the moment that she had leaned forward, stretched out a hand to touch him. She hadn’t actually made contact at the time, but from the angle the photograph had been taken it looked as if she had. And in the way their heads were inclined towards each other, eyes locked, seeing nothing else, no one else, the picture seemed to tell a story. A totally inaccurate story, but one that was encapsulated in the headline that ran along the top of the page.
‘Together again!’ it read, and the rest of the short article interpreted the scene in the way that she supposed it must have looked to an outsider. The sexy Greek billionaire and his marriage-shy ex-fiancée seemed to be back together, it claimed. They had met for a secret tryst in a down-market restaurant where they’d appeared to be getting closer by the second.
‘Well, I don’t see why you’re so angry that we were seen together. I mean…’
Desperate to lighten the atmosphere, she tried a flippant shrug and knew immediately that she’d hit the wrong note.
‘Look, it’s not as if you really have a fiancée who would be worried or hurt by it.’
‘Do you think that I give a damn about that?’
Sadie had no answer for him. Instead, she was busy trying to work out just what had happened.
‘The storm…’ she said slowly as realisation dawned. ‘There was a storm that night, and what I thought was lightning…’
‘Was in fact the paparazzo you had tipped off that we would be there.’
‘What? No—of course not! How could you think that I would do that? Why would I do that?’
‘Two words,’Nikos stated with deadly venom. ‘Thorn Trees.’
‘Th-Thorn Trees?’
Sadie frowned disbelievingly, rubbed hard at her temples where a headache was beginning to form. The abrupt transition from waking up happy and sensually contented to this fraught and tension-filled atmosphere was a terrible shock to her system. And now that Nikos seemed even more aggressive and antagonistic she was finding it even harder to think straight.
‘I don’t understand—why would this have anything to do with Thorn Trees?’
‘Don’t play games, agapiti mou,’ Nikos scorned savagely. ‘Do you think that I cannot add two and two together?’
‘And come up with five, obviously!’ Sadie flung back. ‘Or more like five hundred. I don’t see how you can make the connection, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Not to me. You’re going to have to explain yourself.’
Nikos flung up his hands in an exaggerated expression of exasperation and his breath hissed in through his teeth in a sigh of dark irritation
‘“I won’t let it happen, Mum,”’ he said suddenly. ‘“I’ve made sure of that. I’ve got everything in hand.”’
For a second Sadie didn’t realise what was happening, couldn’t understand where the words had come from. But then she realised that he was quoting her own conversation with her mother on the phone the day before.
‘I was talking about the wedding planning job I was doing—I thought I was doing—for you.’
Her legs felt distinctly unsteady beneath her so she pulled out the chair from the desk and rested her hands on the back of it, letting it support her as she faced him.
‘I don’t know what else you think I had planned.’
The furious glare Nikos shot her told her that he still believed she knew exactly what he was saying, but she refused to be intimidated by it, staring him out though it took all her courage to do so. Eventually he raked both hands through his hair again and muttered something dark and hostile in thickly accented Greek.
‘The dinner at Cambrelli’s was after you came to my office to ask—to beg—for a way of staying in Thorn Trees.’
‘I know. And after you refused to help at all.’
‘Exactly. In response to which you said that you would do anything—anything at all—if it meant you could stay in the house.’
The realisation of the truth hit her in the face like a slap, and she was so very grateful for the fact that she was supporting herself on the back of the chair as the shock of it made her head spin nauseously.
‘You really believe that in order to get what I want I alerted the press to the fact that we were meeting—gave them a photo opportunity?’
The swift, sharp inclination of his dark head to one side was Nikos’s