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'You're very young, Jacy—your whole life is a long time,' he said, with an odd inflection in his throaty voice.
Guilelessly she traced her small hands up over his hard biceps to his shoulders. 'Not long enough for the way I feel about you, Leo.' At last, after two weeks of waiting, they were finally making a commitment, she thought ecstatically. Leo loved her, he wanted her to stay; her dream had come true. She slid her hands from his shoulders to cup his beloved face in her small palms. 'Kiss me,' she demanded, wanting to seal their future. But before his lips met hers a loud knock on the door interrupted their idyll.
'Are you expecting someone?' Leo demanded, drawing away from her.
Hastily she scrambled off his lap and adjusted her dress. 'No, no one—unless the girls have come back early.' The banging on the door continued. So much for her romantic evening, she thought sadly and with some frustration.
'You'd better answer it,' Leo commanded, leaning forward to pick up his glass of wine from the table. 'And get rid of them, if you can.' He glanced up at her flushed, woeful expression and grinned. 'If you can't, we could go night-fishing!'
Relieved that their evening wasn't to end so precipitately, she grinned back before heading for the door and opening it.
'What took you so long?' a hard male voice demanded.
'Daddy! What are you doing here?' she got out, before being swept off her feet in a bear-hug and carried back into the living-room.
'I came to see you, Ja...' She was dropped to her feet so abruptly that she nearly fell as her father caught sight of Leo. 'My God! Kozakis!' he exclaimed, completely ignoring his daughter.
Jacy stirred restlessly in the bed. Ten years on and the memory was still painful. She could see the whole scene in her mind's eye as if it were yesterday, the players moving seemingly in slow motion.
The small room, and her father, a tall slim man with fair hair, about the same height as Leo but a good deal older. He stood motionless, a questioning light in his pale eyes.
But Leo jumped to his feet, overturning in the process the small occasional-table that held the wine and glasses.
'What the hell are you doing here, Carter? Hoping to get a follow-up for your filthy rag?' he snarled, and in two short strides he was standing within inches of the other man and grasping him by the throat. 'Get out before I break your damn neck.'
'No, no!' Jacy didn't know what was happening, but there was no mistaking the burning hatred in Leo's eyes. 'Please, Leo, this is my father,' she cried.
Leo's hands fell to his sides and he turned slowly to face Jacy. For a moment he watched her in a bitter, hostile silence. 'This man is your father? You knew. You knew all the time who I was.'
She flinched at the icy contempt in his tone, and couldn't speak: fear had closed her throat. The dark man towering over her, who only minutes earlier had been making love to her, had vanished, and in his place stood a stranger. A steely-eyed, furious stranger.
I suppose you're following in your father's footsteps as a budding reporter?' he queried with deadly softness.
'I thought about it,' she responded meekly, hoping to defuse the violent tension in the room. But...
'I should have guessed all that dewy-eyed innocence was too good to be true. What was it to be? A scoop to launch your career? How Kozakis seduced an innocent girl?' His lips curled in sneering contempt, his dark eyes narrowed to mere slits. 'Just you try it, Jacy—you or your father—and I will make you out to be the biggest slut in Christendom.'
Jacy, her legs trembling and her eyes filling with moisture, fought back her tears. She didn't know what had gone wrong. She could not understand what was happening—why Leo, her lover, was behaving this way. And she was too terrified to ask.
'Or perhaps you were going for the biggy, a wedding-ring, then the fat settlement and an expose. My God! I nearly fell for it.'
She heard Leo's ranting, and her rosy dream of love and marriage to her fisherman disintegrated before her eyes. Her glance swung to her father, and she was hurt anew by the look of stunned disbelief on her father's face.
'Now, wait a damn minute, Kozakis. You can't speak to my daughter like that.' Her father finally found his voice; but as Jacy watched Leo pushed past the older man and strode towards the door. With his hand on the door-handle, he turned and spoke.
'Carter, I always knew you were a slimy rat.' His dark, furious gaze slanted between father and daughter. 'And the old adage is certainly true: like father, like daughter.' His black eyes caught and held Jacy's. 'At least a whore has the basic honesty to state a price, but women like you turn my stomach. Your type bleed a man dry before the poor sod even knows he's paying for it.' And with one disgusted shake of his dark head he stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door after him.
Jacy gave one despairing little cry. 'Leo...' But in her heart she knew it was too late. She staggered to the sofa and collapsed on to it in a heap. Burying her head in her hands, she cried and cried as her heart splintered into a million pieces. She was barely aware of the comforting arm of her father around her shaking shoulders. She didn't fully understand what had happened, but Leo's parting words had cut into her very soul. The icy contempt in his dark eyes was indelibly burnt into her brain.
'Hush, Jacy, please. The man's not worth it.' Her father's quietly voiced words finally penetrated the black depths of her sorrow.
'But I love him,' she rasped, her throat dry with crying. 'I don't understand she wailed and, lifting her head, with her eyes swollen and red with weeping, she beseeched her father, 'What happened? We love each other,' she ended on a sob.
'I don't know what has been going on here, Jacy; your mother gave me some garbled story about your wanting to marry a fisherman.'
'Yes, Daddy—Leo. But-
'Sorry, my pet.' He held her close, an arm around her shoulder. 'But Leo Kozakis is no fisherman. He's a very wealthy businessman, with offices in all the major capitals of the world. Whatever he told you was a lie: his family home is a luxurious villa not far from here, and it's guarded like Fort Knox.'
