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‘On his last assignment his cameraman, his best friend, was shot.’
Chloe blanched in shock. ‘Did he...?’
Tatiana nodded. ‘He died in Nik’s arms, but the worst part—at least for the families—was that for three days we knew that there had been a fatality. There were about ten journalists, all from different media outlets pinned down, but we didn’t know their identities or who had died.’
Chloe gave an empathetic murmur of sympathy and touched her friend’s hand as the older woman closed her eyes and shuddered. ‘We all loved Charlie, he had just got engaged...but at the same time we were all so incredibly relieved that it wasn’t Nik. It made everyone feel so guilty.’
‘Survivor’s guilt,’ Chloe said, thinking of her sister who, after the accident from which she had escaped unscathed while Chloe had not, had been helped by a therapist. Well, Nik Latsis could afford the best help money could buy.
‘You’ve probably seen him, although professionally he used Mum’s maiden name, because he didn’t want to be accused of using the family name. Does Kyriakis ring a bell...? Nik Kyriakis?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘I’ve never watched much TV. There was a rule when we were growing up, half an hour’s television a day, and then when I could decide for myself I suppose it had become a habit I never really broke. Even now I listen to the radio rather than switch on the box. It must have been hard for your brother going back to work after what had happened...?’
She had gone back to the spot where the accident had happened—had it been therapeutic? Only in the sense that she had proved to herself that she could do it?
That had been how she had privately charted her recovery: the things she was able to do, the things she could move past—looking at her scars, showing them to her family, getting into a car, driving a car...going back to the winding mountain road where the accident had happened.
‘He didn’t go back. A day after he returned, our dad had his stroke and couldn’t run the company any more; the plan had always been for Nik to step up when the time came.’ She stopped, an expression of consternation crossing her face. ‘Nik doesn’t ever talk about what happened to Charlie, so don’t mention it tonight, will you?’ she finished anxiously.
If he wanted to bottle things up in a stupid manly way, that was fine by her; she definitely wouldn’t be getting him to unburden himself to her. In fact, the idea of seeing him, let alone passing the time of day with him, made the panic gathered like a tight icy ball in her stomach expand uncomfortably.
Ironically there had been a time when she would have paid good money to confront her runaway lover, but that time was long gone; she had no intention of having any sort of conversation with Nik Latsis.
He was history, a mistake, but not one she was going to beat herself up over any more, and one she really didn’t want to come face to face with, but, if she absolutely had to, she was going to do it with pride and dignity.
Well, that was the plan anyway.
‘I won’t,’ she promised as the voice in her head reminded her once again that her plans often had a habit of going wrong...
