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‘You would tell me anything to protect him. I see that here!’ A brown hand slammed down on the photos in emphasis. His glittering gaze was alight with cold hostility, his handsome mouth compressed with distaste.
‘You’re not listening to me...you don’t believe me,’ she whispered dazedly.
‘It’s unimportant, immaterial,’ he dismissed in a tone that cracked like a whiplash. ‘But never in my life have I been more humiliated!’
Her relationship with Paul was ‘unimportant, immaterial’? Her throat closed convulsively as she gaped at him. Paul meant nothing at all to Nik? She saw her cosy, silly fantasies about their marriage shatter into pieces around her stupid feet, exposed by hard reality. Nik was only concerned about his public image, his macho sense of honour, his hypocritical belief that, while it had been all right for him to celebrate his extra-marital interests abroad, she should have been above reproach.
She felt sick. All at once she deeply regretted her attitude of guilt and apology. Her sole desire had been to limit the damage caused to their relationship but now Nik had made it brutally clear just how empty a charade their marriage was on his side.
In a surge of pain, she lashed out. ‘If you call this humiliation, you’ve had a very easy ride through life!’
He stilled. The silence of his disbelief pulsed like a live wire between them.
Leah lifted her head and clashed with glittering jet eyes. Something had snapped inside her. ‘I’ve had five years of humiliation in newsprint...everybody knows just how much you valued your marriage, Nik. You made very sure of that. But when the boot is on the other foot it’s suddenly a hanging offence. Just be grateful you had the connections and the money to save face; I had neither,’ she told him with bitter dignity. ‘And I had to stand the pitying glances and the innuendoes of your guests at your dinner parties as well!’
He had gone white, his strong bone-structure prominent beneath his golden skin. ‘I did not consider myself married.’
Leah cast a speaking glance down at the wretched photographs, refusing to betray her embarrassment or her anguished regret. ‘Well, neither did I—’
‘That is different.’ Nik did not yield a logical inch, he was still in such a rage.
‘Yes, I was more sensitive,’ Leah conceded shakily, sudden tears of turmoil threatening and willed back. ‘And too much of a coward to do anything about it. But I’m not going to bow my head like a sinner and I’m not going to say sorry either—’
‘Theos mou...’ He slung something at her in guttural Greek, both fists clenched.
‘Because I’m not sorry. In fact in the mood I am in now I wish your friend had printed them and you had to live for just a few weeks with what I had to live with for five years!’ She threw back at him in a wild surge of bitterness and distress. ‘Surprised, Nik?’
‘You bitch...’ Breathing rapidly, he stared at her with sudden total impassivity, as if he had switched off every emotion. A faint tremor ran through him, a dark rise of blood accentuating the savage slant of his hard cheekbones.
‘But then it’s just one of those things a man couldn’t possibly understand. A stage I had to g-go through.’ She slung his own cop-out back at him with helpless venom, wanted to shut herself up and discovered that she couldn’t. ‘And, just like you, I went through it later than most! Only I wasn’t as sneaky, slippery and downright devious as you are about justifying yourself and I never set out to deliberately hurt or humiliate anybody! I was too busy being what you call a “lady”...and much good it did me turning the other cheek!’
He swung on his heel without a word and left her standing there alone, shaking and sick inside, wondering dazedly where all that spite had come from. From inside her, she registered in shock. Five years of suppressed bitterness and pain had leapt out when it was least welcome and she knew exactly what had sent her over the edge.
Nik had been solely concerned about the threat of a loss of face. A tremendously important issue to a Greek with both feet still set squarely in the Neanderthal caves. His precious pride, nothing more in the balance. He had wanted her sobbing for forgiveness at his feet. Nothing less would have satisfied. The very last thing he had expected was defiance and a reminder of his own indiscretions. One rule for him, another for her.
Leah covered her hot face with spread hands, a feeling of despairing emptiness enclosing her. Once more she had made an outsize fool of herself. Nik had had to dissuade her from walking out again. So he had swept her off to bed, switched on the charm...and she had fallen for it hook, line and sinker! It had taken a crisis for her to see just how little she really mattered to him. And dear God but it hurt; it hurt so much to be forced to face the reality that the man she loved didn’t give a damn about her.
CHAPTER NINE
THE LIMOUSINE travelled at a snail’s pace through the heavy Athens traffic. Out of the corner of her eye Leah noticed Nik helping himself to a drink. He passed her one without being asked. She drank without examining the contents. It tasted like pure orange. Meanwhile the silence smouldered. The atmosphere was explosive. She felt like a straw doll with a flame-thrower aimed at her. Menace threatened on all sides.
Where had he slept last night? When she had finally drifted off around dawn she had still been alone. He hadn’t put in an appearance at lunch either, not that she could say that she had been disappointed by his absence. It had taken ice cubes, cold cloths and every cosmetic technique she possessed to conceal the reddened state of her eyes. She didn’t feel in any fit state to meet Nik’s family. Her nerves were jangling like piano wires.
When she simply didn’t think she could bear the silence one minute longer, she settled on what she saw as a safe subject. ‘When we get back to London,’ she murmured tautly, ‘I’m going to check out that writing bureau. It’s a long shot, I know, but Max did tell me to guard it well. It might just have a—’
‘Secret drawer? Or maybe a hidden coded map with X marks the spot?’ he cut in in a growling tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘I doubt if Max was as deeply into Enid Blyton as your imagination appears to be. Take an axe to it if you like! It won’t get you anywhere.’
If it killed her she would find that certificate, she swore to herself, her cheeks burning. It wasn’t fair that she should be held hostage to protect someone in his precious family from having some past transgression exposed. And it was positively paranoid of Nik to fear that even though Max was dead that secret might still be a threat, likely to be dragged out into the light of day if they broke up!
Parting her lips tremulously, Leah expressed that latter belief out loud. Nik slung her a seething glance, negating her assumption that she had chosen a safe subject. ‘That is not a risk I am prepared to take.’
‘I’m starting to think that you’re covering up a murder, something really ghastly!’ Leah shot back shakily.
‘Nothing so dramatic.’ He vented a harsh laugh, his jawline clenching hard. ‘Your conscience may rest in peace.’
‘I wish you’d tell me,’ she said unsteadily.
‘And put temptation in your way? Do you think I don’t know how desperate you are to be free? Do you really think I’m that stupid?’
Leah paled but she defended herself. ‘I wouldn’t hurt your family.’
‘Wait until you meet them,’ he breathed with dark satire. ‘You are not about to step into a living, breathing episode of The Waltons.’
Leah tensed. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ll see.’
He lounged back into the corner in one fluid motion, black eyes shielded to a sliver of light in his impassive face by the thick dark crescents of his lashes. His expressive mouth had a decidedly embittered curve. It finally dawned on her that he was not looking forward to an ecstatic family reunion. Or was it that?
Why did she continue to ignore the fact that those wretched photographs had been as much of a shock to him as they had been to her yesterday? New and fragile bonds had been shattered by too brutal a reminder o
f the recent past.
And in her determination to defend herself she had used those photos as an excuse to vent her own bitterness. Maybe she had chosen the wrong issue on which to make a stand...and very possibly the wrong target as well. It wasn’t Nik’s fault that she was still furiously angry with herself for not trying to take control of her own life sooner, for playing the martyr to the bitter end to retain her father’s approval, and, finally, for being taken in by someone as superficial as Paul Woods.
No, Leah had to face that that frustration, regret and humiliation had all been self-induced. Nik had played little part in her passive acceptance of a marriage which was a charade. He had taken his lead from her. That was a devastating truth for her to accept but she saw that it was the truth, and what made it worse was the fact that she had long been happy to avoid it.
Not once in five years had she objected, demanded or even attempted to discuss the situation and Nik had not been in a position to demand his own freedom. Little wonder that he had decided that she was either obsessed with him or determined not to lose the status and wealth which being his wife had granted her.
So only now did she try to imagine how she would have felt presented with Nik in a series of intimate photos with another woman... She would have felt savaged. But Nik had never done that to her. He had been discreet. He had never featured in a clinch with another woman in newsprint. There had been no kiss-and-tell revelations—plenty of gossip-column inches of suggestion but never any actual proof that he was intimately involved with any of his beautiful companions.
Besides, whether she liked it or not, Nik had had a right to say that he had not considered himself married then. Forced into marriage with a seventeen-year-old, he had simply got on with his life as best he could. He had never been unkind to her. He had never set out to hurt her. In front of other people he had accorded her every respect. He had given her the status which her father had demanded as the price of silence. What more could she have expected? Love hadn’t been part of the deal even then. And one way or another she would have to learn to live with that.
‘Yesterday—’ she began, without even knowing what she intended to say but painfully aware that she had to make an attempt to bridge the gulf which had opened up between them.
