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‘I wanted to kill you,’ Nik murmured flatly.
Her head jerked. His sculpted profile was as emotionally uninformative as his intonation.
‘But then I didn’t realise how bitter you were. I don’t think I ever looked at those years from your point of view before. You always appeared content...ludicrously content,’ he acknowledged, with a wry twist of his eloquent mouth. ‘But you never betrayed any sign of unhappiness.’
Leah laced her unsteady hands together. ‘You weren’t there to see it and I learnt how to hide my feelings.’
‘Why did you stay with me? I have to know that,’ he breathed, turning hooded dark eyes on to her without warning. ‘I’m well aware that it couldn’t have been my wealth, not when you were prepared to give it all up to be with Woods. So why did you stay for so long?’
Faint pink burnished her cheeks and then drained away again under the onslaught of that probing scrutiny. She veiled her eyes and opted for honesty. ‘The first time I saw you...’ She uttered a jerky laugh. ‘It sounds so stupid now but for me, well, it was love at first sight.’
‘That doesn’t sound stupid,’ he said.
God, this was so embarrassing and he was trying to help her out by acting as if what she had just said was not embarrassing. But talking about feelings did embarrass Leah. It had been so easy to say ‘I love you’ to Paul when he had said it first. Nothing further had been required from her.
‘Has it ever happened to you? I mean, like, at first sight?’ she muttered almost inaudibly.
‘Yes.’ Nik then provided a slight hiatus by choosing to lift the phone and communicate with his chauffeur in Greek before continuing. ‘It was instantaneous and as terrifying as jumping out of a plane without a parachute. I felt out of control, taken over. I didn’t like it.’
Disconcerted by his candour, Leah bent her head, knowing that he was talking about Eleni Kiriakos. He had only been eighteen, she remembered that. But still it hurt to know that another woman had been capable of rousing that kind of emotional intensity in Nik. And no doubt had Eleni been less preoccupied with her medical studies Nik would have stayed in love.
‘You were telling me how you felt,’ he reminded her.
Leah bit her lip and tasted blood. ‘I was so naïve... At the beginning I thought you felt the same way. You were only flirting but I didn’t have the experience to recognise that,’ she said brittlely. ‘So you can blame me entirely for what Max did. If I hadn’t fallen for you and made it so obvious, he would never have thought of dragging any skeletons out of closets.’
‘That wasn’t your fault. I know that I blamed you that day at the bank but I was lashing out at the easiest target,’ he admitted with unusual quietness. ‘You were not to blame but you were Max’s daughter and the pressure I had been under since his death combined with the discovery that that box did not contain what I sought made me lose my head. It may be coming a little late but I am sorry for the manner in which you learnt of your father’s...trade.’
‘I had to find out some time.’ Confused by his soothing manner and simultaneously surprised that they still had not arrived at his mother’s home, which she had vaguely understood to be no great distance across the city, Leah stole a glance at him, and was further bewildered by the intensity of his appraisal.
And then comprehension hit her. Naturally Nik did not wish to introduce her to his family when they were obviously at daggers drawn, so he had evidently buried his own anger in an effort to paper over the cracks for the sake of appearances.
‘I think it’s very important that we should be honest with each other,’ he asserted, lowering his dense black lashes. ‘You say that you loved me when you married me...when did you stop?’
‘Stop what?’ Inexcusably her attention had strayed as she’d looked at him. He could stop her heart dead in its tracks just with one smile. And he was right—it was terrifying to love like that, to lurch from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell, to have one’s entire hope of happiness centred solely on one person...and in this case a volatile and ruthless individualist as difficult to read as a blank canvas.
‘Loving me?’ Nik pressed with impressive casualness, almost as if they were discussing something as impersonal as the weather.
Leah tensed. Somehow—and she didn’t quite understand how—she had stumbled into a nightmare conversation. ‘I just shut you out...I don’t remember when—’
‘So why did you stay?’
His persistence was remorseless. Yet she could understand his need to know. Her lashes screened her eyes. ‘Marrying you was the one thing I ever did that made my father proud of me...that was one reason. I was very hooked on trying to win his love and approval,’ she muttered with audible self-loathing. ‘Just as at the start I was trying to win yours...’
He released his breath in a sharp hiss.
Leah was in a what-the-hell mood now. Why pretend, why struggle to conceal the obvious? She loosed a jagged laugh. ‘Look, it really doesn’t matter now. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad but, you see, it was your bad luck that I was the way I was then. Max always ignored me and then you ignored me. It was no big deal. It was what I was used to—my whole life set out for me, a nice safe little cocoon—’
‘But I hurt you...I must have hurt you continually.’
Nik sounded so strange, his normally deep, rich voice hoarse, as if she was upsetting him... A ridiculous idea, she reflected, sipping at her drink and wondering why her head felt so light. He might have regrets for the way he had treated her in the past but there was absolutely no reason, in the peculiar circumstances of their marriage, for him to be upset.
‘If you don’t have high expectations or enough self-respect,’ she muttered tightly, ‘you
accept being kicked in the teeth because somehow you think you’ve asked for it. And I certainly did.’
‘You did not ask for one tenth of what I put you through!’ Nik swore fiercely.
Leah stopped staring into space and stared at him instead. He was driving a set of lean brown fingers through his thick black hair, his strong jawline set like granite, his normally glowing complexion pale. ‘Why should you feel guilty?’ she demanded in open confusion. ‘We weren’t really married.’
‘But we are married now...’ Breathing rapidly, Nik subjected her to a disturbingly intense scrutiny. ‘Your glass is empty. Let me get you another drink.’
Her head was swimming slightly, she noticed. She felt oddly detached. If it hadn’t been ridiculous, she would have suspected that she had had a rather large shot of alcohol but she was only drinking pure orange. Nik knew that she had no head for drink.
‘Have we driven down this road before?’ she enquired, abstractedly noticing a church that looked vaguely familiar.
‘Maybe Giorgios is trying to find a short cut,’ Nik suggested.
‘I feel like we’ve been in this car forever.’
‘Deeply meaningful conversations can have that effect.’
‘I thought they were beneath you.
‘Not when my marriage is at stake.’
Her lashes fluttered. Playing for time, she took another slug of her orange juice before looking up. She just couldn’t believe he had said that. It wasn’t the sort of thing Nik would say. Lustrous dark eyes were nailed to her, a faint flush accentuating the taut angle of his high cheekbones.
‘You know...you’re gorgeous,’ she murmured like someone talking to herself, the words dragging slightly. And it was true—he was, she reflected, scanning his lean, lithe length and striking dark features, a familiar heat surging up inside her.
Nik slid along the leather seat and reached for one of her hands. ‘I want you to forgive me for my unreasonable behaviour yesterday.’
On that strange level where she could sometimes read Nik like an open book she sensed sneaky, slippery, devious insincerity. For some reason he was telling her what he believed she must want to hear but he did not think that his behaviour had been unreasonable. And then the proverbial penny dropped like a brick and she grasped what lay behind his extraordinary conduct. ‘My marriage is at stake’.
