Penniless and Purchased (17 page)

She took a heavy, angry, heaving breath. He looked so damn relaxed, lounging back on the sofa! So damnably devastating! Greedily, hungrily, her eyes devoured him, even though she tried to stop herself. But this would be the very last time she would set eyes on him. In a moment she would be gone out of his life for ever. And never, never again would she see his face in the flesh, see the perfect curve of his cheekbones, the blade of his perfect nose, the sculpted, sensuous mouth that could make her run with hot and cold if she let herself, for a single second, remember the touch of his lips on her flesh, and the eyes, those beautiful, dark, gold-glinting,
long-lashed eyes, that she could drown in, down, down, down into their depths, never to surface…

With all the strength she had left, she pulled herself to her feet. A raking breath left her stricken lungs. ‘I’m going now, Nikos. There’s nothing else you need to know.’

She made to turn, to head for the door of the suite, but his words stayed her in her tracks.

‘You’re wrong. There is something I need to know—very badly.’

His words seemed casual, as did his pose, but there was a fine tension in every line of his body that belied his calm.

‘And there are things
you
need to know, Sophie.’ He paused, as if imposing self-control for a moment. ‘And the first is this. I’ve paid your father’s clinic fees for the next six months.’

For a second she froze, then she rounded on him. ‘Then you can damn well
un
pay them! I didn’t ask for your help, Nikos! I didn’t ask for your charity! My father’s not your concern! Not your responsibility!’

He got to his feet, and suddenly he seemed very tall, his presence overpowering. She took a step backwards.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said again, and walked towards her. ‘Because there’s something else you need to know, Sophie.’ He stopped a few steps away from her, but it was like being in a magnetic field, and she felt herself physically sway. She dug her heels into the carpet, standing her ground, muscles knotted with tension.

‘There’s
nothing
else I need to know!’

He shook his head. ‘You’re wrong about that, too, Sophie. Wrong about so, so much. But mostly wrong about this.’ He paused a moment, levelling his gaze on her. ‘Why do you think I was going back to Athens four years ago?’

She stared. What had
that
to do with anything? He answered her silent incomprehension.

‘I was going to see my parents,’ he told her conversationally. ‘I was going to tell them,’ he continued, his tone still casual, still unexceptional, his eyes still resting on her, ‘that I’d just met the woman I was going to marry.’

The silence stretched between them. Outside on the street she could hear the dim roar of traffic. But all she could hear in the room was the thud of her heartbeat, the pounding of her pulsing blood in her head.

Her mouth was dry suddenly, as parched as a desert. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t.’ He paused again, then spoke. Said the words that were within him. That had been within him for all these years. Never said. Never spoken. Until now.

‘I fell in love with you, Sophie, four years ago. I fell in love with the girl with almond blossom in her hair. The girl whose smile made my heart catch. The girl who enchanted me, captivated me! The girl I desired more than any other woman I’d known—ever could know. I fell in love with you.’

The silence was absolute. Not even the beating of her heart was audible.

Perhaps my heart has stopped. Perhaps I’ve died. I must have died—this cannot be real, it can’t be.

She seemed to sway minutely.

‘That’s why I stayed with you that night. Because I knew you were my heart’s love—that you were going to be mine all my life. And I knew you loved me, Sophie. Knew it with the certainty of one who loves. Every look, every touch confirmed it!’ His voice changed, and something in it made Sophie’s heart constrict. ‘Every kiss confirmed it, Sophie. Every caress. You took me to heaven that night, and though
I knew I should have resisted, should have waited until I had made you mine as my bride, I could not! It was impossible to do so! So I made you mine in love,
with
love, mine for ever and eternity! And then—’

She saw his eyes shadow, and it pierced her—pierced her to the core.

‘And then you told me what I meant to you.’ His voice had changed again. Emptied. Become a hollow place. ‘I wasn’t the man you loved. I was only the man you wanted to marry. Because then everything would be “wonderful”!’ He mocked the girlish gush of her accent, a mockery that lacerated like a knife across her skin. ‘“Wonderful!”’ he echoed. ‘Because then Daddy’s company would be safe, and you would be safe too—the cosseted princess, Daddy’s darling, protected from the world, cocooned in your music, your studies, your artless, easy, effortless life! And you would have Daddy, and Daddy would have his company, and you would have me, too, and everything would be just “wonderful”…’

She was white—as white as a sheet. Her face stricken.

She could only whisper. Anything more was beyond her. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Everything you said. It’s what I was. Pampered and protected. Totally indulged. Looking for shining white knights and silly, selfish happy ever afters!’

She could bear nothing more. The weight of it was crushing her. The weight of knowing that Nikos had been offering her a gift so precious, the gift of his love that she had yearned for, prayed for, and then feared she had only dreamt it hopelessly. The weight was grinding her heart to ashes.

If I had waited—if I had trusted him—

‘I ruined it all,’ she whispered. Anguish at what she had done stabbed her. What she had lost and destroyed. Yet through the anguish another emotion pierced, like a brilliant
diamond light.
He loved me! He loved me all along!
Loved me all along! The wondrous joy of the realisation scintillated in her consciousness like a precious jewel.

But he was speaking again, and each word fell like a blow, shattering her brief joy.

‘When I realised what I meant to you—a financial rescue package—it made me cruel. Vicious. That’s why I laid into you. Said what I did and left you.’

She bit her lip. The pain was fitting. ‘I deserved it,’ she said, her voice low with self-hatred. ‘I deserved what you said to me—what you did!’

‘Did you?’ The same light, neutral tone was in his voice.

Her eyes flashed. ‘
Yes
! I was stupid and selfish and spoilt, and I thought that if only we were married you would sort everything out for my father and save him from ruin.’

His eyes were still resting on her, never flickering by a fraction. But there was something in their depths, something she could not recognise. Something powerful and veiled. ‘And if you’d never found out that day about your father’s financial problems, would you still have tried to persuade me to stay the night?’

She dropped her eyes. Swallowed. He wanted truth—he could have truth. Deserved truth.

‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Why, Sophie?
Why
would you have wanted me to stay the night?’

She threw back her head. ‘This is pointless! It didn’t happen that way, so what’s the use of asking?’

‘Just answer, Sophie.’

‘What
for
?’ she countered fiercely.

‘Was it because you hoped that I would marry you?’

‘Yes!’

He was stripping her soul bare and she could not stop him.

‘And you wanted me to marry you because I was rich?’

Her lips pressed together.

Against her persistent silence he continued, inexorable. ‘But why would my wealth attract you? Your father was already wealthy. So why did you want me to marry you?’ His interrogation was remorseless, pitiless.

She would not answer. What use was the truth now, when her lack of faith in him, her lack of trust, had ruined her life?

‘You didn’t want to marry me for money—there was another reason, wasn’t there?
Wasn’t there
, Sophie? A reason I could see shining from your beautiful eyes every time I looked at you! A reason I could taste in the sweetness of your lips every time I kissed you! A reason that was in every touch, every caress, every trembling cry that came from you as I made you mine that night! A reason that my hurt and anger has blinded me to! But it was there all along! And it was there that night at Belledon, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it
, Sophie?’ He paused, his vehemence stilled.

But still she would not speak. Could not speak.

‘You were in love with me,’ he said.

The words hung on the air.

Then, slowly, very slowly, she whispered, her voice as faint as air, ‘Yes.’

Hot, salty tears oozed in her eyes. She turned away blindly, seeking the handle of the door. Her vision blurred as she fumbled for the catch.

Nikos’s arms closed around her.

‘Sophie! Dear God, Sophie—don’t go! Why are you trying to go? Trying to leave?’

His arms were folding her back against him, clasping her to him, close against him, so close…

He turned her around in his arms, the emotion in his eyes pouring over her.

‘If I had known—if I had only known four years ago that you loved me!’ His voice was choked. ‘But I thought you only wanted me for my wealth, because your father’s wealth was threatened! That you only wanted me to save him—!’

He broke off. She was gazing at him, her eyes anguished. ‘But I
did
want you to save him! I
did
! What you threw at me was true! I can’t excuse what I did!’

His eyes were still pouring into hers, full and lambent.

‘But
I
can excuse it, Sophie.’ He drew breath, and she felt his warm palms pressing on her shoulders, steadying her, supporting her, though she felt she must collapse. ‘I can excuse it. You had only just found out that the father you adored was on the brink of ruin! And you thought that I was leaving you. That I didn’t love you as you loved me.’ His face twisted. ‘I should have told you—told you what I felt about you! If I had only told you!’

He took a shuddering breath. But he had
never
told her, had let her fear that she meant nothing to him, and she had been desperate to discover if her fears were false.

‘It was fear that made you do what you did,’ he said sombrely. ‘I could have assuaged those fears with a single word—and by doing so learned then what it has now taken me four long, bitter years to learn. I would have given the world to know it then! That you’d loved me all along.’ There was pain in his voice, and accusation too—against himself. ‘But instead I lashed out at you—and threw you to the waiting wolves. Oh God.’ His voice wrung her heart. ‘When I think of what you have endured these four years! You were so young when I knew you first! Your father kept you so protected from the world! Oh, it was part of your charm, part of your innocence, but it made you so vulnerable to the harsh realities of life!’

His voice changed, becoming stark. ‘And now I have learnt just what you had to cope with, what you had to endure, the strength and fortitude and courage you had to find, the nightmare you have lived year after year, blow after blow, with everything taken from you—the support of your stricken father, your absolute devotion to him to be where you are now! Oh, Sophie, it twists like a knife in me!’ His face was sombre, gaunt. ‘You were protected and cosseted once, kept so by a doting father. But you’re not that girl any longer—you’ve proved yourself beyond all endurance by your courage, your love, your devotion to your father!’

His voice changed again. ‘And I hope I am not the man I was until so short a time ago. You’ve humbled me, Sophie, by what you have endured. I made assumptions about you that were as false as any lie.’ He took a heavy, razoring breath. ‘I wish with all my heart you had told me straight away, that night I dragged you into the taxi when you’d escaped from that louse Cosmo! But why should you have turned to me for help when I thought so ill of you?’

His hands tightened around her.

‘But I thank God for that taxi-ride! Thank God that I tracked you down. Followed you to Belledon. Because now I know the truth about you! That you felt for me then, four long years ago, what I felt for you.’ His voice caught at her. ‘What I feel
now
, Sophie, my dearest one.’ His expression softened. ‘As you do too.’

He paused, and now his palms lifted from her shoulders and his fingers cupped her face again, sliding with gentle tenderness into the tendrils of her hair. He was so close to her, so close, and she felt faintness drumming in her, beating up into her tightening lungs.

‘Love,’ he told her.

His eyes were rich, full with emotion, and she felt the faintness beating more and yet more, so that she could scarcely breathe with it.

‘Love always.’ He gazed down into her eyes, his own ablaze with a fire that would never now be quenched. ‘My love, my life—my Sophie. Always my Sophie, from this time on. As I am yours—for all time.’

His kiss was as tender as his gaze, the touch of his lips on hers adoring.

There was light—light everywhere. Lightness and brightness and the radiance of the sun pouring into her after long, bleak darkness.

How can this be?
she thought, amazed and dazed and dazzled and delirious.
How can this be?

How could it be that Nikos was kissing her, embracing her, holding her so tenderly, so lovingly? It couldn’t be true—surely it couldn’t be true? Yet it was! It
was
true—it was real and true and not a dream—not a yearning—but real, real, real…

The tears were pouring down her face and he was kissing them away, kissing her and murmuring to her, with a wealth of tenderness, and then cradling her, soothing her, as she wept against him, wept away the long, bitter years that had divided them.

‘Oh, Nikos—my own, own Nikos!’ She pressed her face against his chest, weeping for all that she had lost and all that had been given to her again. Radiance filled her.

He swept her up, swept her away, carrying her as if she were no more than a feather, thistledown. He laid her down on the satin-covered bed and lay down beside her, cradling her all the time. Soothing her and hushing her, gentling her and quieting her.