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He had seethed with rage when he’d realised that she had been seeing another man. He had scared her half out of her wits. But as long as the affair had been arrested outside the bedroom door he was able to shrug it off with the truly astonishing belief that she had only been trying to make him sit up and take notice of her. And all of a sudden he was being sarcastic rather than furious, assuring her that she couldn’t survive except as his wife and revealing with every following word and action the most staggering revelation of all...
Nik didn’t seem to want a divorce. And Leah found that totally and absolutely unbelievable in the circumstances. Why would he want to hang on to a wife he had been blackmailed into marrying? Why would he want to hang on to an empty charade?
It didn’t make sense; it didn’t make any sense at all. Her every expectation had been torn from her and she felt like somebody trying to walk a tightrope in the dark. Nik was volatile, unpredictable...OK. But this was something else again and she couldn’t sleep for wondering what was motivating him and why all of a sudden he was making sexual advances to a wife he had blithely ignored for five years.
Even worse was trying to figure out why she hadn’t fought him off, why she had just stood there and allowed him to kiss her...and felt so hot and wanton that she could have died with shame afterwards. Nik was very experienced. Maybe any male, possessed of that brand of carnal expertise, could tempt a woman as inexperienced as she was. Maybe it was all a matter of pressing the right physical buttons. Even so, he had still dragged a response from her far more powerful than Paul had ever managed.
Don’t, she screamed inside her head, guilty and thoroughly ashamed of herself. How could there be any comparison? Sex was the least important thing in a relationship, to her way of thinking. She loved Paul; she did love Paul. Nik had shaken that belief not at all.
But she was badly shaken by the unwelcome discovery that she could still be vulnerable after all this time to Nik’s undeniable sexual charisma. She had thought she had grown out of that. She had thought she was safe, cured, indifferent. And he had taught her otherwise...and laughed. Dear God, laughed. She relived the moment, racked by the torment of her shattered pride.
A case was sitting just inside the door when she woke up, feeling like a corpse. Nik had had fresh clothing flown in. Oh, so thoughtful of him. Leah donned the dark blue Versace suit, spent longer than usual striving to repair the ravages of a virtually sleepless night and only emerged from the bedroom when she felt she had achieved the miracle.
Nik was lounging back in his chair behind the Financial Times. He lowered it, cast it aside and lifted his coffee. ‘You should go back to bed. You look like a vampire victim waiting on the third bite.’
‘Very funny,’ Leah gritted, a flush driving away the pallor which had made the blusher on her cheeks stand out.
An ebony brow quirked. ‘I think you’re incredibly lucky still to be all in one unbruised, attached piece after what I found out last night. I think I have been remarkably tolerant and understanding—but don’t push it.’
Leah snatched at a croissant, conscious of night-dark eyes tracking her every movement. He was etched in her mind’s eye. Immaculate in a navy pinstriped suit and red silk tie. No bags under his eyes. No visible sign of last night’s horrors marred his natural vibrancy. Her nerves were shattered and he was as laid-back and in control as he had ever been. In fact he looked bloody smug. Hatred coursed through her. Her hands shook as she tore apart the croissant.
‘I intend to see a solicitor this morning,’ she announced without looking at him. ‘I want a divorce.’
‘In your dreams,’ Nik said softly.
Her silver head shot up. ‘I—’
‘Shut up,’ Nik told her with hard emphasis.
‘You can’t prevent me.’
‘I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘And I’m not going to sit here and be insulted.’
‘Sit down!’ he bit out, his hard voice cracking like a whiplash down the table at her. And Leah got such a shock that she sat again. ‘I want you to listen to me.’
She sugared her coffee, refusing to look up. Let him have his say. He was not going to stop her starting a divorce. She was entitled to her freedom and nothing he could do or say was likely to stop her reaching out and simply grabbing it.
‘Five years ago I was twenty-five and you were seventeen, a very young seventeen. A child inside a woman’s body. And I don’t get all hot and excited at the idea of sleeping with an adolescent, even if she is my wife! I found that a complete turn-off,’ Nik delivered with excruciating candour. ‘Some men like very young girls. I’m not one of them.’
Leah kept on stirring her coffee. She was very pale, painfully embarrassed and oddly guilty that it had never once crossed her mind that Nik might feel that way about the teenaged bride he had had forced on him. ‘You hated me anyway,’ she said tightly.
‘I resented you. I don’t think I ever got as far as hating you. I just closed you out,’ Nik mused. ‘We were stuck with each other and I dealt with it my way.’
‘Excuse me if I throw up,’ Leah inserted jerkily, unable to still the juvenile response but suddenly blatantly conscious of just how juvenile she had sounded. Nor did she want the past raked up, she registered uneasily. There was so much pain and turmoil there. She might have learnt to put it behind her but he was dragging up very raw memories...
‘I started work when I was fourteen on one of my father’s ships. He was an old-fashioned man. He wanted me to start at the bottom and work up because he had done it that way. I knew I needed an education. The next eight years were filled with eighteen-hour days. When I wasn’t slogging my guts out I was studying to try and keep up and playing the stock market on the side. I didn’t have a misspent youth. I didn’t have time for one,’ Nik completed drily.
He had never talked to her like this before. It disturbed her. She lifted her coffee-cup and hugged it to her, finding some kind of security in its warmth. She had had a rough idea of what his early years had been like but she hadn’t realised they had been quite as grim and joyless as he made them sound. ‘I don’t know why you’re telling me this.’
‘I want you to understand what it was like for me being forced into marriage when I wasn’t ready for it.’
‘I understand perfectly,’ Leah said frigidly.
‘I had finally reached the top. I was at last free to do everything I never got to do when I was younger,’ he asserted in a driven undertone.
‘You were free to sleep around,’ Leah rephrased with icy distaste. ‘And then Max came along and saddled you with me, right?’
‘Theos,’ Nik exclaimed. ‘Ne...yes, if you must put it like that, but I did not sleep around. You’re a woman. You couldn’t possibly understand what it is like for a man. It is a stage every man has to go through but I went through it later than most.’
Sexist toad, she thought bitterly, drinking down her coffee in one gulp. There was a whole world of gasping, gushing women out there and she sincerely doubted that he had left one willing woman unexplored. Apart from his wife. Leah had been left in frozen animation, denied everything he took by right for himself. Stowed away on a shelf to shrivel up in an empty, echoing London house where even the serv
ants were foreign. A consuming bitterness assailed her.
‘I get the picture. As insidious an excuse for adultery as any woman has ever received. In fact, it’s so damned brilliant, you really ought to go public with it!’
‘I am not apologising for myself. I married you under duress. I would not have married you otherwise. I was not ready to make that commitment to any woman at twenty-five.’ Smouldering black eyes smashed into hers with unashamed force. ‘It was better that I left you alone than shared your bed and strayed as I probably would have done.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Leah was trembling with a combustible mix of emotions: rage, resentment, hatred and remembered pain and humiliation. She physically hurt with the control it took to hold them in.
Nik watched her from below lush ebony lashes. ‘And then there was the obscene idea of performing like a stud for Max’s benefit.’
Leah reddened as though he had slapped her across the face.
‘On many occasions I have looked at you over the last couple of years and been very tempted to take you to my bed but it would have been like surrendering to the enemy and I doubt if you would have enjoyed the effect that had on me.’
‘I really don’t want to hear any more,’ she admitted tightly.
Nik ignored her. ‘But now Max is gone. And I may not have that certificate as yet but I don’t believe you know where it is...or even what it is.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how relieved I feel. Tell me, is there some point to this deeply unpleasant walk down memory lane?’ Leah prompted stiffly.
Nik treated her to a wolfish smile. ‘I’m ready to settle down into being married.’
Her breath escaped in an audible hiss. Her lashes flickered. Incredulous sapphire-blue eyes clung to his darkly handsome features, her heartbeat sitting somewhere in the neighbourhood of her convulsed throat.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘YOU LOOK as if you need a good, stiff drink.’ Rising gracefully upright, Nik strode across to the polished antique sideboard, extracted a brandy goblet and calmly poured a measure from the cut-glass decanter. With incredible cool, he settled it down on the table in front of her and strolled across to the marble fireplace.
