Penniless and Purchased
Julia James
Desperate times… DO YOU REQUIRE A PROFESSIONAL DATE? BLONDE FEMALE AVAILABLE FOR DISCREET PRIVATE SERVICE AT A PRICE. CALL SOPHIE XXRequire desperate measures… Nikos Kazandros is outraged to see Sophie Granton – his Sophie – parading herself for purchase! He needs her to stop immediately, but the only way to do that is to pay for her time…and keep her out of his bed!
Yet another party-girl approached him, and yet again he dismissed her—to her displeasure. He flicked his eyes back to the dancers, but as he did so there was a sudden gap in his eyeline to the far side of the room.
Everything stopped. Every faculty he possessed stopped. Except one.
Vision.
And one other. Memory.
Burning, coruscating, vicious memory.
Like a zombie, he started to walk forward. His face was a mask, his pulse insensible.
Into the vortex.
Towards the one human being he had never wanted to see again for the rest of his life. But who was standing there, across the room, staring at him with an expression of absolute shock on her face. For a moment it was like a knife slicing open his guts.
Emotion lashed through him, whipping up from deep inside—from a place he had long, long since buried. Reanimating him.
Shock was still uppermost in him, but he was controlling it now. Channelling it. Focussing it. Targeting it.
Targeting it on the one person he had wanted never again to see in this world. His sole lapse of judgement. His one mistake.
Sophie Granton.
Julia James lives in England with her family. Mills & Boon® were the first ‘grown-up’ books she read as a teenager, alongside Georgette Heyer and Daphne du Maurier, and she’s been reading them ever since. Julia adores the English and Celtic countryside, in all its seasons, and is fascinated by all things historical, from castles to cottages. She also has a special love for the Mediterranean—‘The most perfect landscape after England’!—and considers both ideal settings for romance stories. In between writing she enjoys walking, gardening, needlework, baking extremely gooey cakes and trying to stay fit!
Penniless And Purchased
By
Julia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
SOPHIE stood, holding herself motionless, quite still. She stared, unblinking, at the reflection staring back at her in the long mirror of the hotel’s powder room. The woman in the mirror looked out at her with the same expressionless stare.
She was wearing a clinging, low-cut satin evening dress, her blond hair slicked with hairspray around one shoulder. Her eyes were heavy with glittery make-up, lashes loaded down with coal-black mascara, skin larded with foundation, earlobes dripping crystal, mouth sticky with scarlet lipstick.
It isn’t me!
The cry came from somewhere very deep in Sophie. Very deep. Like a buried place. A grave.
The grave of the person she once had been.
Would never be again.
Heaviness lay like a deadweight in her stomach, wound around by revulsion at what she could see in the mirror.
‘Excuse me—’
The voice was clipped, impatient, wanting Sophie to move aside. Jerkily, she did so, catching the look of unveiled contempt in the older woman’s eyes as she took her place to inspect her appearance. Sophie knew what she had seen. Knew why the woman had looked contemptuous. She felt her stomach churn again. The inside of her mouth was dry, and she poured herself a glass of water from the jug placed on the vanity unit for the use of guests, gulping it down as if it could still her turmoil. For one final time, she stared at herself bleakly in the mirror. Then, with a sudden short intake of breath that cut like glass in her throat, she seized up her evening bag and walked out of the powder room with a stiff, taut gait, on heels so high they swayed her body despite the rigidity in her aching leg muscles as she forced herself to keep going.
Across the hotel lobby, in the bar, her client was waiting for her.
Nikos Kazandros glanced around him. The vast, opulently decorated reception room was dimly lit, crowded, and noisy with thumping music and too-loud voices. It was exactly the kind of party Nikos avoided—full of louche, hedonistic people in search of kicks that inevitably involved entertainment that ran to little white lines and the indiscriminate use of bedrooms. A frown formed on Nikos’s darkly planed face.
His reluctance to go in was not echoed by his companion.
‘Nik—c’mon. This party’s going to be really hot!’
Georgias’s voice was slurred. Since his father was a longtime friend of Nikos’s own father, Nikos had taken on the role of minder to the impressionable twenty-two-year-old for the younger man’s brief stopover in London. For Nikos, a show and dinner would have been enough, but Georgias had wanted to party. Knowing that if he acted too heavy-handed the kid would cut and run and end up God knew where, Nikos had temporised. He would give Georgias an hour here max, no more, and make sure the only stimulant he imbibed was alcohol.
Not that drugs would be the only temptation here. The place was heaving with girls, the kind who—Nikos’s lip curled in contempt—flocked wherever wealthy men partied, eager to make themselves accessible to them. He and Georgias had already been sized up, and a moment later a blonde with more hair than dress was inviting them to dance. Nikos let Georgias take up the invitation with alacrity, turning down with a curt shake of his head the immediate follow-on invite from a brunette who had also scented fresh meat. She flounced off with a pout, leaving Nikos propping the wall up, a cynical twist to his mouth, counting the minutes till he could call time on Georgias and get the hell out of here.
Girls like those here held no attraction for him. Barely one step away from hookers, they made it clear their sole interest in a man was the size of his wallet. They traded sex for a lush lifestyle.
Their one virtue was that they were perfectly open about it.
For a moment Nikos’s face closed fast. Some lacked even that virtue…concealing to the last their real interest…
Some could look as innocent as the morning dew, and all the time—
No. Automatically, as it had done repeatedly for four years now, the guillotine sliced down.
He’d made a mistake. Been a fool. Worse than a fool. But he’d pulled back in time—just in time. For a microsecond, nothing more, bleakness filled his eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by a hardness that etched the features of his face, set his high cheekbones into relief below his dark, long-lashed eyes.
Yet another party-girl approached him, and yet again he dismissed her, to her displeasure. His eyes flicked back to the dancers, to keep Georgias in his view. But as he did so, there was a sudden gap in his eyeline to the far side of the room.
Everything stopped. Every faculty he possessed stopped working. Except one.
Vision.
And one other. Memory.
Burning, coruscating, vicious memory.
Like a zombie, he started to walk forward. His face was a mask, his pulse insensible.
Into the vortex.
Towards the one human being he had never wanted to see again for the rest of his life, but who was standing there, across the room, staring at him with an expression of absolute shock on her face. For a moment it was like a knife slicing open his guts. His eyes flicked to the man beside her.
What the hell—? Nikos recognised him, but not with pleasure. Cosmo Dimistris was a man well at home at parties like this. And well at home with the kind of women who frequented them. Nikos’s eyes lasered back to the woman at Cosmo’s side, her closeness telling him exactly what she was doing there.
Cosmo’s wealth telling him exactly why she was there.
So she was still playing the same game…still hanging out with rich men.
Emotion lashed through him, whipping up from deep inside—from a place he had long, long since buried. Shock was still uppermost in him, but he was controlling it now. Channelling it. Focussing it. Targeting it.
Targeting it on the one person who had been his sole lapse of judgement. His one mistake.
Sophie Granton.
Sophie felt her face beneath the mask of her make-up freeze. No, she thought faintly through the numb miasma in her head, it couldn’t be! It just couldn’t! Not him—not here—not now.
But it was him. Nikos Kazandros. The name tolled in her brain. Tolling her fate. Her doom.
Her eyes could not tear themselves from him. Could not move from the hard, sculpted planes of his face, the sable hair, slashing cheekbones and the night-dark eyes. Could not move from the lean, packed muscle of his six-foot height, the lithe length of his leg, the panthered grace of his stride.
Nikos Kazandros—walking out of the past. Making her oblivious to everything—everything except him. Oblivious to the man she was with, whose company had been anathema to her all evening.
She had made it through drinks at the hotel bar, followed by dinner, over which he had regaled her with boasting about his wealth and possessions, while she had smiled fixedly and asked flattering questions as if she cared less. Then they had arrived at this nightmare party that they seemed to have been at for hours. A sick headache was pressing around her temples, and her stomach was still churning at what she was doing, and why. Sophie had tried desperately to cling to the numbness, just to see her through the remainder of this hideous evening.
And now that numbness had been blasted away as if by nuclear detonation, in one hideous, appalling moment. The moment of ghastly recognition of the man walking towards her.
Nikos Kazandros.
Somewhere, wildly, like a trapped, panicking bird, she could feel thoughts battering around inside her skull. How could it be him? How could it? At a place like this?
It hadn’t taken her more than thirty shocked seconds to stare around at the lavish penthouse apartment, with the pounding music and the alcohol and drugs circulating freely, and the men cut from the same cloth as the one at her side, and the women—the women looking just the way she did…
To see Nikos Kazandros here, at a party like this…
Memory stabbed through her head.
Covent Garden, a gala night, the men in black tie, the women glittering in jewellery and designer gowns, with the world’s greatest tenor and soprano pouring out their voices on stage. Nikos in evening dress, immaculate, devastating, and herself, sitting beside him in their dress circle seats, so quiveringly, shiveringly aware of him…
Nikos glancing towards her, with eyes that held in them an expression that made her heart turn over…
The guillotine sliced down. The one that had been slicing down through her brain for four long, endless, punishing years. Cutting out Nikos Kazandros.
As he made his way towards her, Nikos could take in the full impact of her appearance. Kohled eyes, slicked hair, scarlet mouth, trashy dress. Revulsion curled in him. So this was Sophie Granton now. Four years on. In a place like this. For a brief, knifing moment he felt a different revulsion.
That she should have come to this!
Memory skidded through his head, but he banished it. She had never existed, the girl he’d thought her to be. She’d been someone he’d made up, created for himself out of his own delusions. Delusions that had come crashing down when Sophie Granton had shown what she really wanted.
His mouth twisted. Not me. Just the Kazandros money. To save the family coffers.
He came up to her, stood looking down at her. The look of shock had gone from her face, wiped as if he’d never seen in it. Now her face was blank. Empty. There was no sign that she thought there was anything incongruous about her presence here. Or her appearance. Or who she was with and why. For a second, he just let his hard gaze flick over her. Then it was gone. He glanced at the man at her side, acknowledging his recognition of him.
‘Cosmo—’
‘Nik—’
There was a moment’s pause, then the other man said, his voice at once both oleaginous and mocking, speaking in their native language, ‘Well, well, this is a new departure for you, Nik. Finally decided to lighten up? Are you with anyone, or are you just going to help yourself to what’s on offer? I must say some of the girls here look even more tempting than the one I’ve brought along. If you’re on your own you can take your pick of them.’
His eyes went greedily out over the room, where the assembled female flesh for hire was displaying itself, but his hand had closed possessively over Sophie’s wrist all the same, Nikos saw. Stamping his ownership. Again, Nikos felt the thrust of revulsion ice through him.
As Cosmo’s hot, stubby fingers closed around her, Sophie swallowed. She’d been trying to avoid the slightest physical contact all evening, but now, with horror opening like a pit beneath her feet, as Nikos Kazandros walked out of the nightmare past into the nightmare present, she was almost grateful for it. Grateful, too, that she could not understand what was being said between the two men.
When she’d realised that the man she was to meet that evening had a Greek name, she’d felt as if the gods themselves were mocking her. Bitterness had risen in her throat, as well as revulsion, and revulsion had twisted through her again when she had walked up to him in the hotel bar some three hours earlier. Greek he might be, but Cosmo Dimistris was as physically different from the only Greek man she knew as a warthog from a leopard. Shorter than her in her high heels, overweight, face like putty, with hot, lascivious eyes, and hands with stumpy fingers and damp palms.
Well, she thought viciously, what did she expect? If a man had to pay for a woman’s company in the evening he would hardly be an Adonis, would he? Against her will, her eyes went to the man standing opposite now, and the contrast with the man at her side was cruel and stark. Oh, dear God, he hadn’t changed! Not in four agonisingly long years! He was still the most devastating man she had ever laid eyes on! Even now, with a look of killing contempt in his night-dark eyes, she could feel his power as his gaze razored over her. She knew what he saw, even though she had masked her own expression with a blankness that cost her all her strength to hold in place. For a terrible moment, she felt his contempt like a physical blow, shaming and searing her. Then the lasering glance was gone, and he was looking back at Cosmo Dimistris.
‘I’m minding Georgias Panotis—Anatole Panotis’s son,’ he said tersely. ‘The kid’s wet behind the ears.’ He nodded to where Georgias was still close, dancing with the girl with more hair than dress.
Cosmo gave a coarse laugh. ‘Going to spoil his fun?’
‘Like the fun you have?’ His voice was edged, and once more his eyes went to the woman who was going to provide Cosmo Dimistris’s ‘fun’ tonight.
Nikos felt emotion cresting through him like a dark, killing anger. Out of nowhere, like a black tide, he felt the urge to wrest Cosmo’s hand from her wrist, tell him to go and find his fun somewhere else! He clamped it down, quelling it by force, slamming down the lid on it as if it were glowing nuclear waste. Sophie Granton was not worth a microgram of emotion—not a moment more of his time. Not then, not now.
His eyes flicked over her one last time. She showed nothing in her eyes now. Nothing after the first shock of recognition. Or was it dismay? He felt the question sting. Yes, he thought with turbid anger, why not dismay? Four years ago she had nearly, so very nearly, succeeded in making a fool of him. Well, she would deceive no one now! He could look at her with impunity. With the only kind of look she deserved. His mouth twisted in contempt as his eyes flicked over her again. She was blanking him, he could see, and his eyes narrowed. There was something about her blankness, her closed, expressionless face, that sent a stab of anger through him. She hadn’t been like that when he’d peeled her off him.
Tears, sobbing, clinging to him, clutching at him.
Cosmo was speaking again, and Nikos made himself listen. ‘Speaking of fun…I need some of the powder kind.’ He dropped Sophie’s wrist and changed to English. ‘Stay right there, baby.’
To Sophie’s dismay, he headed off across the room, to be promptly pounced on by a trio of girls, none of whose attention seemed to bother him. She stared after him. Where was he going? Why? Panic broke through. Dear God, she couldn’t be left here like this—with Nikos Kazandros right in front of her. She made to lurch forward, but it was too late. A single word stayed her.
‘Sophie.’
Behind the frozen mask of her face, as if a searing flame had scorched the ice in her mind, dissolving the chains and padlocks, the bars and bolts she had put around the past, like a dam being breached, memory came drowning in. Unbearable, agonising memory.
The past, pouring through her head like molten lead…
CHAPTER TWO
THE spring sun was warm on her head, even in the early evening, as Sophie walked through Holland Park, up from Kensington High Street, where she’d hopped off the bus. She loved taking this walk, especially at this time of year. Was there ever a time of year more lovely? she thought. Bars of Schumann’s ‘Spring Symphony’ trilled euphonically through her head as she walked lightly through the park, where trees were unfurling their greenery, the air sweet, even for London.
She quickened her pace. She wanted to tell her father the wonderful news, that she’d been chosen as one of the soloists for the college concert next month. Her mind ran through the repertoire. The two Chopin nocturnes were easy enough, but the Liszt was fiendish! Well, practice would make perfect. It was a shame they weren’t going to get the new baby grand that her father had promised her for her birthday earlier in the year, but the existing one was perfectly good enough, and she mustn’t be greedy.
She frowned very slightly. It was unlike her father to stint on anything to do with her music. He’d been her biggest enthusiast, from the moment her primary school music teacher had said she really should have piano lessons. From then on her father had paid willingly for anything and everything that developing her talent, such as it was, required. Oh, she was no musical genius. She knew that, accepted that. So very few musicians were, and, considering how incredibly hard it was even for the exceptionally gifted to make a living, she didn’t envy them. No, she was perfectly content being talented, dedicated—and amateur. Besides, she made rueful the acknowledgement that she was in the highly privileged position of not having to earn a living. Even when she left college she could continue with her music without any thought of having to make it pay in any way. She would play for pleasure—and other people’s, too, she hoped.
Certainly her father loved to listen to her. Again, a rueful smile tugged at her lips. He might be her biggest fan, but his ear was not musical.
‘Oh, Daddy, that’s Handel, not Bach!’
She heard herself laugh affectionately in her memory.
‘Whatever you say, Sophie, pet, whatever you say,’ Edward Granton would reply indulgently.
Yes, indulgence was definitely the word when it came to her, his daughter, Sophie knew. But although she knew she was the apple of his eye she had never taken advantage of it other than to pursue her music. Besides…a tiny glint of sadness shadowed in her eyes…she knew why her father wanted to indulge her so.
She was all he had.
Her memories of her mother were dim, almost non-existent. She could remember her singing, that was all, a low, clear voice, lulling her to sleep as an infant.
‘That’s where you get your music from,’ her father would tell her, over and over again. ‘Your wonderful, wonderful mother.’ Then he would sigh, and Sophie’s heart would squeeze with terrible sadness.
So she let him spoil her, for he loved to do so, and she could not deprive him of what gave him so much pleasure. She tried very hard not to be spoilt, though she knew that compared with many of the other students, she was. Her father could pay the music college fees without blinking, never burdening her with student loans or the like. She could continue to live at home, in the beautiful house in Holland Park, and have a first-class instrument to practise on, and her clothes were always beautiful because her father liked to see her look pretty.
‘You’re so like your mother, pet,’ he would say. ‘She’d be so proud of you. As proud as I am.’
Well, she wanted her father to be proud of her, wanted to see him smiling at her. Another little frown flickered across her brow. Her father’s smiles hadn’t been as forthcoming for the past few months, ever since her birthday, really, she supposed. Oh, he wasn’t cross or grumpy—it was more that he seemed…preoccupied. As if things were on his mind.
She’d asked him once, when his brow had seemed particularly drawn. But all he’d said to her had been, ‘Oh, just the market…the market. Things will pick up again. They always do. They go in cycles.’
For a while she’d been worried about him. But then she’d had exams coming up, and all her focus had been on them. When she’d surfaced on the other side of the exams it had been the vacation, and she’d had a chance to visit Vienna on a college trip. She’d grabbed it with both hands, and, though her father had blinked a moment when she’d said how much it would cost, he’d handed her a cheque to cover it all the same.
The trip had been every bit as wonderful as she’d known it would be, and so had the extra excursion to Salzberg, which she hadn’t been able to resist signing up for, even if had cost a lot. But it had been worth it. She’d brought her father back a huge box of Mozartkugeln to show her appreciation. He’d thanked her with the air of preoccupation that still seemed to be his dominant mood, and listened absently while she’d regaled him with all the wonderful things she’d done and seen. Then he’d headed for his study.
‘I’ve got to make some phone calls, pet,’ he’d said, and she hadn’t seen him again all evening.
It was unlike him not to want her company, and the following day over breakfast she had taken a deep breath and asked him if things were all right.
‘Now, I’m not having you worrying about things that you don’t have to worry about,’ he’d said firmly. ‘Business has its ups and downs, and that’s that. Everyone’s affected at the moment—it’s the recession. That’s all.’
And that was all she had got out of him. But then he never talked business to her. She hardly even knew what exactly Granton plc did. It was property and finance and City things like that, and even though sometimes she felt she ought to be more interested she knew she wasn’t, and she also knew her father didn’t want her to be. He was a doting parent, but old-fashioned, too. He far preferred her to be off doing something artistic, like music, and the closest she ever got to his business life was when he invited business associates to dinner, and Sophie, as she had done since she was in sixth form, played hostess.
Sophie’s mind ran on, pleasantly occupied, until she reached the exit of the park. The roads around here were quiet, and rich with almond blossom, and she caught her breath in delight as she swung homewards along the pavement. She was still gazing upwards into the laden branches as she paused to cross the road to her father’s house. There was very little traffic here, and she was about to step into the road, her hand half reaching upwards to cup a cascade of peach and white blossom, when the throaty throb of a powerful machine prowled down the road. It drew her eye immediately. Low and lean and jet-black, with a world-famous logo on the elongated bonnet. But it wasn’t just the opentopped car that made her pause. It was the driver.
She felt her lips part. Wow! If you wanted an image of Mr Cool, that was it! Hair as jet-black as his motor, one besuited arm crooked casually over the lowered driver’s window, hands curving around the steering wheel, white cuffs, a glimpse of a dark red silk tie, and a face—oh, gulp—a face that had a chiselled profile and—double gulp—dark glasses to die for…
She just stared as he went by. Transfixed.
Too transfixed to see his head shift, very slightly, to bring her into his line of sight in his rearview mirror, which caught her perfectly, standing, poised, long pale hair streaming, blue gypsy skirt wound about her long legs, her hand cupping almond blossoms, petals drifting down over her, caught in a pool of sunlight.
The car seemed to slow a moment, then picked up speed again, turning the corner. With a little sigh, Sophie set off in the same direction. Five minutes later, she was outside their house, her eyes going to the gleaming back monster parked a couple of bays along. There was no sign of the driver.
A new neighbour?
She felt her insides give a little skip.
But more likely he was just visiting someone.
A woman, probably. Sophie’s imagination fired. She’d be dark and svelte, with figure-hugging clothes and a sultry voice. Instinctively she felt her hackles rise. She hated the entirely fictitious female instantly. Then, with a shake of her head at her own daft imagination, she set her bags down and set to find her keys.
Letting herself in, she dumped her bags on the chest in the hallway and glanced at her reflection in the mirror above. Long hair, somewhat wispy from the breeze and walking, an oval face, grey-blue eyes, wide set, not much make-up, just a touch of mascara and lip gloss, and little gypsy earrings, which she’d chosen to go with her skirt.
Feeling her hands sticky from London buses, she nipped into the downstairs loo to freshen up. Then she went upstairs. She had the attic floor all to herself. Her father had had it converted to a teenager’s dream pad for her thirteenth birthday, and, although it had been redecorated several times since then, she still loved it. Sophie had been going to head straight up to her own rooms, as she knew her father wouldn’t be home yet, but as she passed along the first-floor landing she heard her father’s voice from the drawing room.
Smilingly, she changed tack, opened the double doors, and sailed in.
‘Daddy! How lovely! I didn’t know you were home—’ she began.
Then she stopped dead. Her father wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the large room with him. Sophie heard her breath catch in her throat as her eyes went to the other occupant.
It was the driver of the car that had passed her.
Standing here, he looked even more fantastic than he had in the brief glimpse she’d got of him. He was tall—taller than her and her father. And slim, like a blade, wearing a suit so fantastically cut she knew it screamed Italian designer, just like the pristine white shirt and the dark slash of a tie did, too. But it wasn’t his clothes that made the breath catch in her throat, her pulse quicken suddenly. It was the body inside the suit, and the face—oh, the face—that was every bit as chiselled as it had been in profile, with jawline and cheekbones and nose and above all eyes that were dark and long-lashed, and which were looking at her and making her feel…feel…
‘Sophie, pet, let me introduce you to our guest.’
Her father’s voice made her blink, but her gaze was still on the man standing in the middle of the drawing room. Looking—
Drop-dead gorgeous. That was the phrase, and it suited him totally, utterly. Just—drop-dead gorgeous. She wanted to go on staring—couldn’t do anything but go on staring!
He took her breath away. Literally.
‘This is Nikos Kazandros. This is my daughter, Sophie.’
Nikos Kazandros. She echoed the name in her head, and it seemed to resonate like a fine vibration. So he was Greek, she registered. Nikos Kazandros. Dreamily, she rolled the name around her head as, dimly, she heard her father perform the introductions. Even more dimly she heard herself murmuring something polite. But then Nikos Kazandros was holding out his hand, saying something to her in a low voice which did not register, only the deep timbre and the slight drawl over the words, the foreign accent hardly there beneath the impeccable English. Numbly, she slipped her hand into his.
His palm and fingers were cool and strong, and as she made contact, she felt another of those strange vibrations go through her. Then she was slipping her hand from his, but continuing to stand there, still gazing at him. Eyes locked to his face.
Long lashes swept down suddenly over his dark eyes, and she felt her breath catch again. Then her father was talking once more.
‘My daughter is a student, Mr Kazandros, but I’m fortunate enough that she chooses to live here, not in some student dive.’ He gave a brief social laugh.
The dark eyes were on her once more, and she felt their impact with another whoosh in her lungs.
‘What do you study?’ he asked, addressing her direct.
Again, the deep, slightly accented voice did things to her.
And the eyes, those eyes resting on her, so dark, so very dark…
‘Music,’ she answered, her voice slightly breathless.
‘Indeed? Which instrument do you specialise in?’ It was a polite query, nothing more than the circumstances warranted, mere small talk between a guest and the daughter of his host. But there seemed to her to be something deeply profound about the question. Something that made her pulse flutter.
‘Piano,’ she answered. One-word answers seemed all that she was capable of.
‘I’m sure Sophie will play for us after dinner,’ said Edward Granton. His daughter’s eyes flew to his.
‘Is Mr Kazandros staying for dinner?’
‘Your father has been so kind as to invite me,’ murmured their guest. There was smoothness in his voice now, and the dark lashes were veiling his eyes. ‘I hope that does not inconvenience you?’
‘Oh, no! No—not at all,’ she said, her voice still breathy. Then a smile broke across her face. ‘It would be lovely!’
His eyes stilled, rested on her. She saw, deep in those dark, long-lashed orbs, something that once more seemed to hit that strange, evocative frequency that she’d felt when she’d heard his voice. For one long, incredible moment she could not tear her eyes away. She seemed to be falling into their depths, and she could feel her eyes widening, widening…
Her father’s voice brought her back. ‘Sophie, I’ve let Mrs T know, but it would be good if you popped in to ask if she needs a hand. Now, very tediously for you, I must speak business to Mr Kazandros, so—’
She took her cue. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll…um…I’ll see you later.’ She nodded briefly, courteously, at the man who was taking her breath away, then turned to go to the door, knowing that what she really wanted to do was go on standing there, gazing at him, drinking him in…
He was before her at the door, opening it for her. Then, as she paused, he smiled down at her suddenly.
‘Almond blossom,’ he murmured, and his fingers brushed with absolute lightness at a couple of stray petals still caught in her hair. Her eyes flared again, and she felt quivery. Breathless.
‘Thank you,’ she husked, and suddenly she was too shy to look at him any more.
She all but scurried out of the room. As she gained the landing, she realised her heart was thudding. Forgetting her father’s suggestion to go and see the housekeeper, instead Sophie ran upstairs, panting at little by the time she was up in her attic quarters. She threw herself bouncingly down on the bed, feeling her heart give a little thrill.
Nikos Kazandros. His name flared in her brain, and she said it out loud, just to hear the syllables roll around in all their exotic foreignness. What on earth was he doing here? When her father invited business colleagues and associates they were all middle-aged men and dead boring. But this man—oh, wow! He could be a film star, not a businessman.
She gave an exuberant little laugh. She didn’t care what he was—he was here, in the house, and in just a little while she’d be seeing him again.
She leapt to her feet, horror-struck. What time was it? She and her father usually dined at eight, so how much time did that leave her? She seized her bedside clock and gave an anguished cry. Could she be ready in time?
Not ready for dinner. Ready for Nikos Kazandros.
Nikos Kazandros, Nikos Kazandros…
The syllables went round and round in her head while she dived into the bathroom and the shower, dragging off her clothes. She had some serious, serious ablutions to make!
Nikos was listening to Edward Granton, but his attention was not on what the older man was saying. He knew what it would be about, anyway, and he knew exactly what to expect, and exactly what to do.
But what he had not expected was what had happened ten minutes ago in the drawing room.
Thee mou, the girl was a peach! The clearest, most delicately scented honey possible. Even now, with time to compose himself, he could still feel the resonance of the moment the doors had flung open and she’d sailed in. He’d had a moment’s vision of flying golden locks, a swirl of colour around her hips and legs, and then every last gram of his focus had gone to her face. He’d recognised it instantly—the girl he’d seen in his rearview mirror, framed like a picture.
An exquisite picture. Stopping him in his tracks.
But she was young. Too young. She didn’t look more than eighteen, and Edward Granton had said she was a student. Pity. Pity she was so young. Pity she was his host’s daughter. Pity that he was here on business, not pleasure.
Nikos turned his attention back fully on Edward Granton and the figures the older man was presenting, the argument he was making, the proposal he was constructing. Speaking convincingly, persuasively, fluently—and completely failing, all the same, to conceal the fact that he was hovering on the brink of financial ruin. The complete collapse of Granton plc.
Would Kazandros Corp throw Granton the lifeline he was desperate for? Maybe. There was value in the company, no doubt about that, but it was haemorrhaging cash. Granton had made some rash calls, and then had done what so many men under pressure went on to do—made even rasher ones, trying to claw back safety. But safety was gone. Granton was running out of options, running out of room to manoeuvre. Running out, worst of all, of time. In just under a month he’d have to make a hefty payment due on a loan, and right now his cashflow couldn’t meet it. After that, things were just going to get worse. Edward Granton could start to cash in assets, to try and get back on an even keel, but he would be risking not just failing to make a profit on his original investment but taking a loss, as well.
No, all that could keep Granton plc—and Granton himself—afloat was a white knight.
Was Kazandros Corp going to be that white knight? He would know soon enough, thought Nikos. But it would be on his terms, not Edward Granton’s.
This was his baby. His father had handed it to him, had trusted him to make the right call, the one that would pay off in the long term. If the figures performed on the bottom line it might just be a shrewd investment, giving Kazandros Corp a good foothold in the London commercial property market—but even if the figures stacked, there was still substantial risk.
Definitely time to crunch the numbers. Eyes focussed entirely on the printouts Edward Granton was putting in front of him, Nikos blanked out the rest of the world.
Including the peach of a girl who was Edward Granton’s too-young daughter.
Sophie studied her reflection critically. More critically than she’d done since—oh, she couldn’t remember when! It was probably when she’d started going out with Joel, but that had been over a year ago, and he was long gone. It was funny, she thought now, examining whether her eye make-up was exactly even on both sides, that she’d ever been keen on Joel. Oh, he had obvious charms—blond, good-looking, popular…
But he was just a boy. She stilled a moment, eyes widening unconsciously as she stared at herself.
Nikos Kazandros wasn’t a boy. Yet again his image formed in her head. It seemed to have imprinted itself on her instantly, indelibly, and every time she called it up she felt her pulse give a little flurry. It was a gorgeous feeling. It made her feel a funny mix of excited and shivery, as well. She’d never felt like that about Joel, that was for sure! More a sort of satisfaction that he’d chosen her to go out with instead of another girl, Hayley. Her eyes darkened briefly. Not that he hadn’t gone straight out with Hayley after she and he had split…
She tightened her mouth. Yes, well, Hayley had made it clear she was more than eager to give Joel what he wanted from his girlfriends! What he’d wanted from her, too, but hadn’t got. Hence the split.
Her mouth pressed tighter. No way would she ever have dreamt of wasting the occasion on Joel who, with hindsight, had obviously only gone out with her to try and get her into bed. Nothing special—just one more conquest for him.
Well, it’s not going to be like that! It’s going to be something really, really special—someone really, really special!
Without volition, the imprint of her father’s business guest formed in her head again. Immediately she blinked, telling herself it was to test her mascara was not running. But she knew it was to counter the sudden quiver that ran through her as she put the two thoughts together.
Someone special.
And Nikos Kazandros.
She pulled back from the mirror. No—that was absurd! She’d only just set eyes on the man, spent a bare few minutes in his company. And now here she was thinking—
She felt herself colour, and stood up from her dressing stool. She was being ridiculous. She took a step backwards, moving to inspect her whole appearance, focussing only on that.
She had, she knew, pulled out all the stops.
But for Nikos Kazandros a woman would have to!
With looks like his—not to mention the flash car and his obviously wealthy background!—Nikos Kazandros wouldn’t even have to crook his little finger to get girls flocking around him! They’d all be as breathless as she’d been.
Again she felt her heart-rate quicken, felt her lungs take in a swift, shallow breath. Felt that gorgeous little shivery feeling flutter through her. Excitement caught at her. She took one last look at her reflection. If she couldn’t make Nikos Kazandros look twice at her now, she never would!
What if he does? The voice sounded in her head. Yes, Nikos Kazandros was gorgeous—two hundred percent, twenty-two carat gorgeous—but he was their dinner guest, that was all.
Then you’d better make the most of him, hadn’t you? The voice sounded again, but it was a different one this time. One that made her glance at the slim gold watch around her wrist, and then, flicking her hair back off her shoulders, trot to the door and set off downstairs.
She could hear her father’s voice from the drawing room. The doors were open this time, and yet for a moment, breath catching, she paused in the threshold. She didn’t do it deliberately. It was because she was suddenly breathless.
Nervous.
Maybe he’s not as gorgeous as I thought. Maybe when I see him again I’ll be disappointed. Think his nose too big, his eyes too close-set. See flaws in him. Change my mind over him.
But that wasn’t the only reason she was nervous, she knew. There was another reason—one to do with a sudden deep sense that she was standing on the threshold of something significant.
Deliberately, quite deliberately as she walked into the room, she did not do what every instinct was trying to compel her to do and let her eyes go to the tall, dark figure standing across the room. She could see him at the periphery of her vision, but she wouldn’t let her eyes fly to him.
Her father was greeting her warmly. Almost as if he were relieved at her arrival. The disquieting thought distracted her. She went up and kissed him on the cheek, then turned to their guest.
‘Mr Kazandros.’ She smiled.
For a moment he didn’t answer her smile. For a moment his face was expressionless. Sophie found herself wondering at it. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, he was greeting her in return.
‘Miss Granton.’ He gave a small bow of his head, very foreign. It reminded her of Vienna, where everyone had seemed so formal all the time. She gave a light laugh.
‘Oh, please, do call me Sophie. Miss Granton makes me sound like someone in Jane Austen! Probably a maiden aunt.’
Something moved in his eyes. ‘Unlikely,’ he said, his voice very dry.
But she wasn’t paying a great deal of attention. As she’d let her gaze go to him, to greet him, exhilaration had swept through her. She hadn’t been imagining it! He really was as drop-dead, gulpingly gorgeous as she’d first thought! How could she even have thought there might be any flaws? There were none—absolutely none! He really, really was just shiveringly fantastic!
And he definitely was no boy. This was a man—a man who moved through the world, doing business, driving incredible cars, sophisticated, assured, skilled, experienced.
Experienced.
The word repeated itself in her head. With connotations that made her breath tighter. She found her eyes moving to his mouth.
Sculpted, mobile.
Experienced.
She felt heat beat up in her throat. He’d know how to kiss fantastically…
Her father was saying something, and she forced herself to listen.
‘Your usual orange juice, pet?’
He was crossing over to the drinks cabinet against the other wall. She took a little breath.
‘Oh, I think I’ll have a Bellini tonight, please, Daddy.’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t said ‘Daddy’ like that.
It makes me sound like a little girl.
She didn’t look at Nikos Kazandros in case she saw the thought in his eyes. She didn’t want him to think of her as a little girl.
Her father paused by the cabinet. ‘Sophie, pet, there’s no champagne open. I don’t want to waste a bottle on a single drink. Have something else.’
She was momentarily stymied. Then she recovered. She looked back at Nikos Kazandros. He had that veiled look on his face again.
‘What are you drinking, Mr Kazandros?’ she asked, eyeing his shallow glass, which he was holding with long, squaretipped fingers. Her voice had a breathless touch to it.
She could see the switch being thrown again. The veiled look was gone.
‘Nikos,’ he said softly, as if he were speaking only to her. ‘If I am to call you Sophie.’ A smile, tantalisingly brief, as was the quiver that it engendered in her, hovered at the corner of one mouth. ‘And I am having a martini—very dry. It is an…acquired taste.’
‘Sophie, you’d hate it, believe me,’ said her father from the drinks cabinet.
‘A sweet martini can be very palatable,’ suggested Nikos.
She smiled. ‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘There you go, Daddy. A sweet martini for me, please!’
Oh, damn, she’d said ‘Daddy’ again, and again her gaze flicked to Nikos Kazandros—no, Nikos, she amended, and felt a little thrill, as if of triumph—to see whether he thought her childish. But the veiled look was back on his face. She wondered at it, but at the same time realised she was glad of it, too, because it seemed to give her the opportunity to look at him, as she wanted to, without actually falling headfirst into his gaze, because his eyes were not quite meeting hers.
But they were on her face, though. And more than her face.
They’d flicked downwards, she could see—only for an instant, but it was enough. Enough to tell her, again with a little thrill of triumph, that she had not pulled out all the stops in vain.
The peach-coloured cocktail dress she wore was one of her very favourites. There was something about the colour that just absolutely suited her skin tone and her hair. The material was so light it skimmed her body, but outlined it, as well. It wasn’t at all overtly revealing—but somehow it seemed to indicate an awful lot. The hem was a little way above her knees, yet it lengthened the line of her legs incredibly. The bodice was not tight, but she knew it gave her a very flattering bust, and made her waist look even more slender than it was.
It had been incredibly expensive, even for her budget, but because she loved it so she got good value from it, wearing it over and over again.
But never so gratefully as now.
Now, as Nikos Kazandros’s experienced eyes flicked over her—how many women had he looked over to judge whether they were good enough to interest him?—she knew, with every ingrained feminine instinct, that what he saw he liked.
Liked a lot.
Her lips parted, and her smile was one of mingled gladness—and relief.
I want him to like me.
He was a world away from her. Not just because she was still a student, and he was a man old enough to be doing business with her father, but because, for all her more-than-comfortable existence, it was obvious just from looking at him that Nikos Kazandros’s stalking ground was the kind of glamorous watering holes that littered the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the Alps and the Indian Ocean islands. Fashionable clubs in fashionable cities, with the kind of exclusive membership that filtered out anyone not sufficiently rich, sufficiently sophisticated. The world of serious money and serious spending. That was the world Nikos Kazandros belonged to.
For a moment she felt dismay fill her, knowing the distance between them was too great.
Then his eyes flicked back up to meet hers again.
The veil was gone. And in its place—
Sophie’s breath stilled in her body. Completely. As if oxygen were no longer necessary to her survival.
Because it wasn’t. The only thing necessary to her survival at this moment was the look that Nikos Kazandros was pouring into her eyes.
She had heard the expression ‘the world stopped turning’—now she and knew what it meant. For one incredible, timeless moment she just gazed back at him. Feeling everything stop.
Then, from a long way away, she heard her father’s voice.
‘Sophie?’
She blinked. The world started again. Her father was there, holding out her sweet martini to her. She took it and dipped her head, wanting only to take a large gulp of the drink.
There was heat in her throat, and not from the alcohol. From a different source of intoxication. Far, far more powerful.
Powerful enough to sweep her away, for ever, into a different world, from which she knew, with a strange, vague sense of fatality, she might never, never return.
And from which she knew she would never want to.
Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips, as if toasting that fate. Her eyes went back to his. They were veiled again, but she knew why now. Didn’t mind. She smiled, lips parting over pearled teeth.
Nikos took a mouthful of his own dry martini. He could do with it. Self-control was slamming down hard over him and he needed to regain it, urgently.
Hell, if he’d thought Sophie Granton a peach when he’d first seen her, with her hair flying and almond blossom drifting on her gypsy clothes, now he couldn’t even begin to find the right description for her.
Except—knockout.
But not in the way the women in his world usually earned that soubriquet. Not from wearing the kind of gown that stunned male libidos a kilometre wide. Sophie Granton’s impact as she’d stood in the doorway a few minutes ago had been quite different. Hitting him in a quite different place. One where he’d never been hit before.
And in one he had, as well.
That dress she was wearing and the sleek, groomed fall of hair had hit a spot that was very, very familiar to him. The spot that had, right over the top of it, a great big D for Desire.
He knew he shouldn’t even begin to indulge it, but that was easier said than done. Hell, it was impossible to do! The way she stood there, with her perfect figure, perfect face, perfect hair. Now, with make-up on, she looked older, he realised, and realised too that he was glad of it.
Because maybe this peach of a girl wasn’t out of bounds, after all?
A reality check crashed through his brain. He wasn’t here to run around with Edward Granton’s knockout daughter, he was here to find out whether Granton plc would be worth the trouble and risk rescuing it entailed. That was all.
And yet—
Well, he was here for dinner and he would make the most of it. Make the most of appreciating this beautiful golden girl.
The discussion with Edward Granton had not been easy. The numbers did not look as if they were going to crunch well—the only question was, did it put the company out of play or not? It would be a tricky call to make.
Granton himself was looking strained. That in itself was a bad sign, a revealing one. He knew that his financial survival depended on a rescue. Of course Granton might have other white knights in the offing, but any intimation that he had could also be a bluff and a gamble. Nikos’s father had taught him about the business world well, and that any mistake could cost him dearly. His father had raised him never to be a rich man’s son, thinking money came easily. No matter how large and financially sound Kazandros Corp was now, it could always be lost…No, whatever happened, he would make the right call about Granton plc—his father was trusting him to do that.
And he certainly trusted him enough not to get diverted by anything other than the task he’d been sent to London to do.
Including this girl he couldn’t take his eyes from. For a moment he toyed with coming up with some excuse to get out of dinner. Maybe he should. It would be safer.
Safer?
The word repeated itself in his head. Why had it come to him? He frowned mentally. It made it sound as if there was some sort of danger ahead. He brushed it aside impatiently. He was overreacting. All he was going to do was have dinner with Edward Granton and his daughter.
Did she know how precarious her father’s position was? How shaky the financial edifice that kept her in designer clothes and living in this house in one of London’s most expensive districts? Not to mention paid her student fees and bought her the grand piano he could see in the room behind this one?
No, she couldn’t possibly. Not only did Edward Granton strike him as very much the old-fashioned type of father—indulgent and protective—but she herself had an absolutely carefree air about her. The only thing on her mind—and Nikos noted it with a satisfaction that surprised him with its intensity—was himself.
It was completely obvious to him. Oh, she wasn’t making a play for him or giving him any kind of come-on—it wasn’t that at all. So what was it?
She was entirely natural in her reaction to him.
He could see it in her eyes, the way she gazed at him, meeting his gaze and revelling in it, lips slightly parted, the light, slightly breathless voice.
He couldn’t but respond to her.
‘The name Holland Park comes from Holland House, which used to stand in the park itself,’ she was saying. ‘Sadly, the house was bombed in the war, and there’s only fragments left, like the Orangery. But the park is beautiful, and I always walk through it on my way back from college if the weather is fine, like today.’
‘And arrive covered in almond blossom.’ He smiled.
‘It’s glorious this time of year, isn’t it?’ She smiled back.
He found himself stilling again, the way he’d done when he’d seen her posed, paused, in the doorway. Her smile was as breathtaking as she was—more than breathtaking. Enchanting.
Enchanting…
The word floated in his mind. Where had it come from? He didn’t know, but now that it was there he knew with a certainty he didn’t even think of questioning that it was the right word for her.
What is she doing to me?
The question flickered, unanswered. Unanswerable.
And anyway he didn’t care right now what she was doing to him—only that she was doing it.
And she went right on doing it all through the evening. Smiling her radiant smile at him, gazing wide-eyed at him, making no secret at all of what she was doing. And it didn’t repel him, or annoy him, or make him cynical, or any such thing. Instead he simply…reciprocated.
I’ve never met a girl like her.
The words took shape in his head and he knew they were true. He went on thinking them all through the meal, during which the conversation was predominantly between him and Sophie. When they went to the drawing room for coffee Nikos remembered what Edward Granton had said in the afternoon, and asked Sophie if she would play something for them on the piano. To the music he was largely indifferent—but to the pianist he was anything but. What he wanted was to watch her, poised at the instrument, her beautiful profile outlined for him against the glorious fall of her pale silken hair, her hands moving delicately, expertly over the ivory keys. He sat, coffee cup resting in his hand, eyes very slightly narrowed, focussed with absolute intensity on Sophie Granton’s exquisite face.
Knowing with complete certainty that whatever happened he had to see her again.
He showed his hand when the evening finally ended. As he took his leave, still feeling her starry gaze upon him, he smiled down at her.
‘Will you allow me to take you to a concert while I am in London?’ he murmured and then, throwing an appropriate glance at Edward Granton, ‘With your father’s permission, of course?’
For a moment it seemed to him the man hesitated. Then, as he looked at his daughter briefly, he nodded. Nikos could see that Sophie’s eyes were shining like stars.
‘That would be lovely!’ she exclaimed.
A thrill ran through her. He wanted to see her again! He’d asked her out! This gorgeous, incredible man who simply took her breath away was interested in her! He had to be—he wouldn’t have asked her to go to a concert with him otherwise. He’d just have said goodnight and gone, and that would have been that.
But he wants to see me again!
As her father showed her guest out, Sophie flung her arms around herself and gave herself a huge, disbelieving hug. A few moments later her father came back into the drawing room.
‘Oh, Daddy, isn’t he wonderful!’
There was a slightly strange expression on her father’s face. ‘He’s a very good-looking young man,’ he said.
She read his expression, and answered it with a wry one of her own. ‘That’s not a compliment—it’s a warning, isn’t it?’ she said.
He gave a reluctant nod, then took a breath. ‘Nikos Kazandros is very clearly the kind of privileged young man, with his looks and the lifestyle he leads, who will have good reason to expect that females will fall at his feet! And,’ he added, ‘to expect that they will do what he wants them to do!’ He looked straight at her. ‘Be careful, Sophie. I would hate you to get hurt. And especially now, when—’
He stopped. As if silencing himself deliberately. Then he changed the subject. ‘It’s been a long day. I’ve meetings first thing tomorrow, so I may not see you before you set off for college.’ He came to kiss her goodnight, on each cheek. ‘Forgive me for being over-protective, my darling. I only ever want what is best for you. Enjoy going out with Mr Kazandros, if you are set on it. But don’t expect too much of it. And, Sophie?’ His tone changed again. ‘Remember that I may be doing business with him.’ There was a tightness in his voice suddenly, and Sophie stepped back, looking at him a moment.
‘Is…is it important business?’ she asked hesitantly.
The tight look was back on his face. Then she saw it relax. ‘Just don’t give away any trade secrets!’ he said, with deliberate lightness.
She put on another wry smile. ‘I don’t know any!’
Her father’s expression flickered for a moment—as if, she thought, he weren’t quite sure about something. Then he nodded. ‘Just as well.’ He dropped a last kiss on her forehead.
But as he did she felt his hands tighten on her shoulders suddenly, as if emotion were going through him. She felt a wave of her filial love seize her, coming on top of the state of exhilaration that had been mounting all evening.
‘Oh, Daddy, I’ll be careful! Careful of everything! Careful of letting out trade secrets and of letting him sweep me away! But, oh, oh, he is just so wonderful!’ She stepped away, skipping down the stairs on feet as light as air, her mind totally absorbed once more with the wonderful, glorious, breathtaking gorgeousness of Nikos Kazandros!
The next day was an agony. She so wanted to phone home, to find out if he’d called with a concert date, but made herself wait until she got back from college.
To find no message waiting for her.
Her heart plunged. Had he just said that about the concert but not meant it? She dragged herself up to her room, sank down on her bed, feeling her heart sinking with her. Blankly she stared. Had she really thought he would ask her out?
Yes—yes, I did! I really did!
She felt her insides clench, and for a moment it was like a physical pain, knowing that she’d been so ridiculously optimistic. Her hands clutched in her lap as she stared down at the carpet, knowing with a heavy, bleak certainty that she would never hear from Nikos Kazandros again. Never, ever, ever…
The house phone by her bedside rang, and listlessly she picked it up.
‘Miss Sophie?’ Mrs T’s brisk, tart tones came down the line. ‘I’d appreciate it if you came down to the kitchen. There’s been a delivery for you, and it’s not the sort of thing I can be running up and down to the top floor with!’
My music books, thought Sophie dully. She had some on order, and they weighed a ton, so she knew why Mrs T was reluctant to bring them up herself. Dolefully, she trailed downstairs. But when she saw what was on the dresser, elation soared through her again.
Flowers—a bouquet so vast she knew exactly why the housekeeper hadn’t tried to carry them, their rich, exotic fragrance pouring through the room. And with them a note. Handwritten.
I hope a Covent Garden gala will be acceptable to you?
I’ll send a car for seven tomorrow.
It was just signed ‘NK’.
She hugged it to her and danced all the way back up to her rooms, the blooms in her grip wobbling precariously, her heart singing with delirious delight.
If she’d taken for ever to get ready just for dinner, for the following evening she took all afternoon. She was ready—just—when the sleek limo drew up outside the house, and though she felt a stab of disappointment when she realised she was the only passenger, she could feel her excitement mounting as the car made its slow way towards Covent Garden. By the time she was disgorged she was trembling, and as she climbed out, Nikos was walking forward.
She froze.
He was wearing evening dress, and if she’d thought he looked gorgeous in a lounge suit, in a tuxedo he simply melted her on the spot!
He took her hand, murmuring something in Greek. His eyes were fixed on her, and she felt the thrill come again.
‘You look…’ he said, but there was a husk in his voice and he could not finish.
There weren’t words to describe her! Oh, he could describe the dress—a slim column of ivory silk—and a matching stole, picked out with the most delicate embroidery, and around her throat pearls like angel’s tears. Her hair was caught in a loose coil at the nape of her neck, and her make-up was so barely there that it seemed invisible, except for the exquisite enhancement of her beauty. A beauty he could find no words for, only desire.
Oh, not desire as he knew it, but a new, different kind of desire that had nothing in common with the emotion he usually associated with the term. No, this was a new kind of sensation. One that made him want to…want to…
He didn’t know what. And didn’t bother to try and find words. What for? He didn’t need them. Didn’t need anything right now except to smile at her and lead her forward into the opera house, thronged with arrivals, and murmur something appropriate about being glad that she’d wanted to come this evening.
Her eyes widened. ‘Glad? I can’t even believe you got tickets! They’re gold-dust for events like this!’
The corner of his mouth pulled. ‘Ah, so that’s why you accepted my invitation. And there I was, being a conceited idiot and hoping it was for my sake, not a gold-dust ticket to a gala!’
Her eyes flew to him. ‘How could you think that?’ she breathed.
He stilled. He seemed to do that all the time. She kept stopping him in his tracks. She’d done it over and over again the evening before, but now, like this, as she gazed at him he felt it again, like a trip hammer, slamming down on him.
What is she doing to me?
He became aware they were holding up others, and jolted forwards again, guiding her smoothly. But he didn’t touch her. His hand hovered behind her back, but somehow he felt that the kind of casual body contact he would take for granted with any other woman would be out of place.
When I touch her, it will be special…
And this evening would be special, he knew. Not just because even for him it had taken considerable effort—not to say expense!—to get hold of tickets for the evening, but because—well, because, that was all.
He stopped analysing. Gave himself to the experience. The experience of feeling that something was happening to him that was new—quite, quite new.
She was walking gracefully forward, and he could see male eyes turning. And he could also see that she was gazing around her as they made their way through the throng, her eyes widening every now and then. In the crush bar, champagne was circulating, and Nikos took a glass for himself and for her. She took a sip, then leant forward, slightly towards him.
He was raising his glass. ‘To a memorable evening,’ he said.
She didn’t need to echo his words to know that they were true. Wonderfully, magically true!
And they stayed true all evening. She sat beside him in the plush seats, her face alight, as some of the greatest artists in the world sang on the famous stage below, wreathed in its crimson velvet curtains. All the time, every moment of the gala, she was overpoweringly conscious of Nikos sitting beside her—the lean strength of his body, the occasional breath-catching brush of his sleeve, even though she kept her hands clasped in her lap. By the time the gala ended her emotions were sky-high, swept up by the soaring music and artistry of the performers. In the final applause she turned to Nikos.
‘Thank you! Thank you! All my life I’ll remember this evening!’
Her eyes were like stars, dewed with emotion.
She saw his face still again, as it had done before. Then, slowly, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips.
‘As will I,’ he said softly.
She could only sit, her heart soaring, face alight, lips parted, gazing at him, feeling more than she had ever felt in her life before! More than she had ever thought it possible to feel.
The soft brush of his lips on her hand had made her breathless, and then he was lowering her hand, but not relinquishing it, instead drawing her to her feet as the audience started to get to theirs. She felt his fingers lace through hers, so strong, so warm, holding hers, and felt faint with the wonderfulness of it.
Nikos! His name reverberated in her head. Nikos! Nikos! Nikos!
She floated on air as she walked beside him, his fingers still laced with hers, as they made their slow procession from the opera house. Leaving took ages, because the narrow streets outside were thronged, but eventually Nikos was handing her into the limo, and she was sinking into its depths, he was coming in beside her, and the limo was moving slowly off.
‘I asked your father if I might take you for supper after the performance,’ Nikos said. His eyes glinted. ‘I’ve got you till midnight, but you must be home on the stroke of twelve!’
She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘He’s terribly Victorian.’
But Nikos did not laugh with her. ‘He is right to be careful of you,’ he said soberly. Then his tone altered. ‘Now, I hope my choice of restaurant will please you.’
He could have suggested fish and chips and she would have been enchanted, but where he took her was infinitely more salubrious. It was uncrowded and, best of all, their table was very private. What she ate she had no idea, nor did she have much more idea what they talked about. Sophie knew her whole attention was on Nikos—Nikos alone! Gazing at him, smiling at him, listening to him, knowing with every passing moment that he was the most wonderful, wonderful man she had ever met! And by the time, two hours later, he reluctantly escorted her from the limo up to the front door of her father’s house, she knew something else, as well. Something even more precious.
She was in love.
She knew it for a certainty—irrefutably, incontestably. She was in love with Nikos Kazandros!
Dreamily, she waltzed around her room, knowing she was happier than she had ever been in her life, and that the rest of her life was going to be the most wonderful in the world—because she was in love with Nikos Kazandros! In love! In love! In love!
And nothing could stop it! Nothing!
CHAPTER THREE
‘SOPHIE.’
The sound of her name was like a rasp across wounded flesh. For a moment filled with agony Sophie felt the pain of it. Then, steeling herself, she turned expressionless eyes on Nikos.
‘What do you want?’ she responded stonily.
Something moved—flashed—in those dark eyes into whose depths she had once fallen and drowned.
‘Want?’ he echoed. The taunt was still there, the harshness. ‘Why should I want anything—anything that you have to offer now? Cosmo’s welcome to your well-displayed charms!’ The eyes lashed over her, the whip of contempt laying bare her skin.
But she would not feel it, would not feel the lash of his words, his taunting. What was it to her? What was he to her?
Nothing. Nothing at all, ever again!
‘Get lost, Nikos,’ she said, and turned away, plunging into the melee in the room. Even Cosmo Dimistris seemed like a haven from this unbearable encounter.
As he watched her walk away through the room, Nikos felt emotion sear through him. Then, abruptly, it was overridden. He suddenly realised he could no longer see Georgias. Cursing under his breath, he stared around, as if he could conjure him up, and then, a grim look on his face, he headed down a wide corridor that clearly led towards the apartment’s bedrooms.
It took him a while to find his charge, throwing open one door after another and finding the rooms occupied. He carried on his furious search until he found Georgias, his tie loose, shirt undone, the girl he’d been dancing with even more undressed, the pair of them collapsed on a bed together.
Nikos wrested her off, ignoring her squeals of inebriated protest at being balked of her prey, then yanked Georgias up-right. He was almost completely out of it, his eyes glazed, hair tousled. Nikos hoped to God it was merely alcohol in his system.
It took a while to get Georgias out of the apartment, their way barred by the milling party throng and imprecations not to leave, and Georgias had a suddenly reanimated desire to dance again, but finally Nikos manhandled him out, and down in the lift.
Getting him across the lobby required some force, but once the night air hit, Georgias collapsed almost completely. Nikos glared angrily out across the roadway. Rain was sluicing down, cold and soaking, but at least a taxi driver had seen him sheltering under the portico of the luxury apartment block, and was diverting towards him. With effort, Nikos manhandled Georgias inside, and thrust him into the far corner of the cab, where he slumped in an ungainly fashion, his eyes closing in insensible stupor. Nikos gritted his teeth.
Brusquely, he gave the name of their hotel, and the cabbie nodded and moved off, tyres sluicing through the rain-filled gutter. Nikos threw himself back into his corner of the cab, his mind in turmoil. Only one image dominated it.
Sophie Granton.
He felt emotion surge inside him again—convulsing, turbid. Filled with anger, with more than anger.
Why the hell did I have to see her?
Why the hell had she had to rise up from the pit like that? Seeing her again, seeing what she’d come to—her dress half hanging off her, keeping company with the likes of jerks like Cosmo!
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