‘Like you gave me a chance!’ she yelled. Or would have yelled if she hadn’t been coughing so much.
‘Katie…oh, Katie! You’re all right, thank goodness!’ A sobbing Sadie gasped as she reached the top of the staircase. ‘Oh, my, I really should lose a couple of pounds,’ she moaned, clutching her chest. ‘I’m signing into that fat farm next week…’
Nikos was looking with some bewilderment at Sadie, who was babbling wildly on about the detox therapies guaranteed to shed the pounds.
It seemed likely to Katie he was about to make one of his nasty sarky remarks.
Katie elbowed him hard, wanting to protect her friend from his nasty tongue. ‘She’s terrified, it’s her way of coping,’ she hissed at him. God, the man had the empathy of a brick.
Nikos seemed to take her explanation on board. Nodding, he left her side with a terse instruction to stay put!
‘Just take some deep breaths.’ Katie watched in astonishment as, with a smile of incredible charm and gentle manner, Nikos bent over Sadie.
The sound of Nikos’s voice seemed to calm Sadie, who nodded and looked up at him gratefully. Katie saw her do a double take and then an appreciative grin spread over her face.
‘Are you asthmatic?’ Nikos asked.
‘No, just fat and unfit.’ Sadie laughed shakily. ‘I ran all the way from the gate,’ she explained. ‘I think the fire brigade are coming. I heard them in the distance. Shall I go back and wait for them…?’
‘Take Katerina downstairs, and leave the house immediately.’
I suppose, Katie thought numbly, that people like Nikos come into their own in situations like this—situations that require someone to take charge and make decisions. Not even his worst enemy—which might be me—can accuse Nikos of having a problem with decision-making, she conceded wryly.
‘I’m not going anywhere until Alexander—’
‘I will get Alexander and you will leave the building,’ Nikos announced in a lordly fashion. ‘How old is he?’ he asked, advancing towards the door from which smoke was now billowing.
‘You can’t go in there,’ Katie said positively, as convenient as it might be, she couldn’t let the rat die for her cat, who might still have a few of his lives left.
‘Concentrate.’
Katie was, on the amazing silver flecks in his eyes. She was stressed, exhausted, terrified, and frankly there couldn’t be a worse time to admit that you were sexually attracted to a person, and had there been any other conceivable explanation for the way her mind disintegrated and her body came to life around him Katie would have plumped for it.
‘How old is he?’ Nikos asked as though she hadn’t spoken.
The relevance of this escaped Katie, but she recognised she wasn’t totally immune to the indefinable something Nikos possessed that inspired compliance, no matter how silly the question or request.
‘Threeish, I think.’ That was what the vet had estimated when he’d given the ginger tom his injections. ‘I think we’ll sedate him next time,’ he’d said drily as he’d disinfected the scratches on his arm.
Nikos stopped in his tracks. ‘Three!’ he ejaculated, his lips twisting in a grimace of appalled disgust. His chest lifted. ‘You left a three-year-old child alone?’
Katie’s jaw dropped. He thought…he actually thought she…! Words failed her. God, she’d known he had a low opinion of her, but she hadn’t thought it was this low!
Sadie, who was supporting Katie, came to her aid. ‘Child?’ She looked at the tall Greek as though he’d gone mad. ‘Alexander is a cat.’
At her words Nikos, whose body was primed for action, each muscle clenched in anticipation of the task ahead, went quite still. Only his eyes moved; they slid from Katie to Sadie, who nodded, before returning to the original object of his scrutiny.
Katie observed the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed.
‘You risked your life for a cat?’ There was no discernible inflection in his voice.
‘Sorry, I realise it would have suited you much better if I had left a helpless baby alone.’
He gave an impatient frown. ‘What are you talking about, suited my purposes? I have no hidden agenda.’
‘You’re right—it’s not hidden, it’s blatantly obvious. It’s so much easier for you to carry on pretending you’re doing the dirty to save your friend from making a terrible marriage if I reveal myself to be an avaricious monster with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. If, however, I turn out not to be a heartless bitch you’ll look less like the true friend and more like a spiteful, vindictive pig who can’t bear to see anyone else happy because he’s too emotionally retarded and shallow to form a decent relationship himself!’ she concluded breathlessly.
The blank incredulity of his expression gradually metamorphosed into one of smouldering fury. ‘Have you quite finished?’ he enquired with clipped hauteur.
‘Actually, no, I haven’t,’ Katie heard herself grit back belligerently, even though she’d run out of emotional steam.
As the expectant silence lengthened Nikos lifted a satirical eyebrow.
‘I didn’t risk my life. You said I did,’ she reminded him. ‘But I didn’t,’ she ended lamely. Though actually, now that she came to think about it, her actions looked a little different. This no doubt had something to do with the fact she was viewing it without the stimulation provided by gallons of adrenalin pumping through her veins.
‘I might have known you wouldn’t like animals,’ she heard herself grouch pettishly. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut while I’m still ahead? she wondered in exasperation. What was it about this man that made her say stupid things? When he was around she seemed to be possessed by a need to prove she was even more selfish and superficial than he thought her.
‘I like animals—in fact I frequently prefer them to people, especially the crazy, stupid, female type of person.’
Katie, who was normally capable of giving as good as she got, was deeply embarrassed to feel her eyes suddenly fill with tears at this fairly mild—by his standards—insult.
She wasn’t the only one to feel uncomfortable. It seemed that quite by accident she’d discovered another of Nikos’s weak spots…he looked even more dismayed by her tears than she was.
He cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t mean…’ As he spoke he seemed to notice for the first time the hand he had extended towards her. For a split second he stared at it as if it didn’t belong to him, an expression of shock on his dark, lean features. Then his expression became as unrevealing as ever as he lowered it to his side. His chest lifted as he took a deep breath.
‘Take Katerina outside and wait for the fire brigade,’ he instructed tersely as he turned to Sadie, who silently handed him a torch from her pocket. ‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t need taking anywhere…’ Katie’s voice rose to a querulous squeak as her comments fell on deaf ears. ‘And you can’t go back in there.’
‘Look on the bright side—if I don’t come out you’ll be able to marry Tom.’
Katie gave a cry of alarm as he turned and stepped back into her smoke-filled flat. If it hadn’t been for Sadie’s restraining grip on her arm she would have followed him.
‘Don’t worry, he’s not daft,’ Sadie soothed. ‘He was only trying to wind you up.’ Curiously she searched