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‘Pretend just for a moment that I’m not a mind-reader.’ She was unable to conceal the fearful quiver in her voice.
‘If I thought for one moment you would make Tom happy I would give you this divorce.’
‘I will make Tom happy. I love him…’ she declared loudly.
A scornful sound vibrated in Nikos’s brown throat. ‘I watched you together; you do not love Tom,’ he announced calmly.
‘And you’d know, I suppose?’
‘I know how a woman in love acts, and you were not that woman. There was no passion in your eyes when they touched his; you act as if he’s your brother,’ he sneered scornfully.
‘We don’t all wear our hearts on our sleeves and there is a lot more to marriage than sex!’
‘Both these things are true and I agree that many successful marriages are based on more pragmatic reasons; I have no problem with that, so long as both parties enter into the arrangement with their eyes open.’
‘Like us.’
‘Unless you are planning on not sharing Tom’s bed there are some very obvious differences, but, yes, on your part there are very obviously similarities. However, unlike Tom, I was not madly in love with you,’ he ground out sarcastically. ‘It is your hypocrisy in pretending you are marrying for some pure and elevated reasons that I despise. The thing you love is the idea of being married to someone who can buy you diamonds and keep you in your expensive clothes.’
‘How dare you act as if you know me? You may have married me, but you don’t know me at all!’
‘But we are married and, while we are, Tom is safe from making the worst mistake of his life…’
‘And you can’t marry your girlfriend.’ Surely that consideration had to carry weight with him.
‘She will wait.’ His faintly startled tone suggested no other possibility had even occurred to him.
For a brief moment Katie allowed herself the indulgence of imagining Nikos Lakis left at the altar, a shattered man. The bride leaving him in this happy vision bore a startling resemblance to herself. As pleasant as this fantasy was, Katie had to think of some way of dealing with Nikos in the real world, and denying him her favours was hardly going to do it…what would?
It was so obvious she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it earlier.
‘So maybe you’ve got a girlfriend who will let you walk over her and wait for you until doomsday, but the press are a different kettle of fish—they don’t have so much tolerance for rich playboys.’
Katie sensed his big body tense behind the wheel. ‘Meaning…?’
Katie refused to be put off by the menace in his silky voice. ‘Meaning that some sections of the press would have a field day if they found out a member of the Lakis family had gone through a fake wedding ceremony so he could get the money to maintain his lavish lifestyle.’
Greek billionaire, young and more beautiful than any man had a right to be… Katie didn’t know much about such things, but she was betting the press would have files several feet thick on Nikos Lakis and more than a passing interest in his wedding plans past, present or future! Of course she would never actually go to the press, but he didn’t have to know that. On this occasion, him thinking she were some avaricious cow definitely worked in her favour. She flickered a cautious glance at his profile…and swallowed; she had definitely made her point.
‘I can just see the headlines now…’ she breathed airily. Even though she was staring fixedly out the window she was aware of the explosive tension in the tall figure beside her. The silence between them lengthened until Katie could no longer bear it; she swivelled in her seat and shot a look at him.
If Nikos’s expression was any indication, he was seeing those headlines she’d spoken of too. Katie salved her troubled conscience by reminding herself she would not have had to resort to these sort of tactics if he hadn’t played dirty first.
‘You are threatening me?’ he finally asked incredulously.
Kate found his silky shark’s smile and soft voice a million times more menacing than a lot of shouting and swearing.
In fact it was so unnerving that had she had any alternative or been any less stubborn she might have retracted there and then.
‘Think very carefully before you do that, yineka mou.’
Now who was threatening…? ‘I am not your yineka mou,’ she gritted automatically, before adding, ‘it’s the third house on the left after the telephone kiosk.’ She took some comfort from the fact that the street lights in this tree-lined avenue of solid Edwardian houses were fairly bright, and even in subdued light the car Nikos drove was likely to be noticed. He struck her as the practical type of man who would wait until there weren’t any witnesses before he strangled her.
The fact that he wanted to strangle her was not in doubt!
‘You speak Greek?’ Nikos sounded startled.
Katie froze; her response to his sarcastic endearment had been unconscious. ‘Just a few words,’ she mumbled, thinking of the lullaby her mother had sung to her when she’d been unable to sleep. That and a few endearments were the limit of her vocabulary, though she wished right now that she had a better grasp of her mother tongue.
‘When I visit a country,’ she told him blandly, ‘I make it a rule to know how to ask directions to the loo, order a drink and understand what a man is saying when he makes love to me.’
That’s me, the sophisticated woman of the world, well travelled and even more well versed in other things. My God, would he laugh if he knew how far from the truth this was; the only time her passport had come out of mothballs was on a day trip to Calais and as for the other! There could be few twenty-five-year-olds less experienced!
All regretful thoughts of bilingualism and the blank page that was her sex life left her head as they rounded the next tight corner.
‘Oh, my goodness…! Stop the car!’ she suddenly shrieked urgently.
‘There is no need for theatrics, or threats. Be reasonable. I would be a bad enemy to make and a resourceful woman like you will no doubt find another gullible man with a fat bank balance. But I cannot permit you to marry Tom.’
Katie wasn’t listening to these powerful words as she literally bounced in her seat in frustration. ‘I said stop the car!’ she bellowed, grabbing the steering wheel.
There was a short-lived tussle during which the car slewed violently to the left, barely missing a large beech tree before Nikos, white-faced and cursing, brought the vehicle safely to standstill.
‘Are you mad?’ he thundered, raking her face with silver-shot blazing eyes. ‘You could have killed us.’
Katie, who had been thrown against the door, shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears. ‘Well, if you’d done what I said instead of ignoring me…’ she retorted, reaching for the door handle.
Long brown fingers came to cover her own.
‘You are not going anywhere…’
Katie turned her head impatiently towards him. ‘Shut up and phone for the fire brigade—that’s my flat over there with smoke pouring out of the damned window.’
‘Theos!’
CHAPTER FIVE
KATIE didn’t wait around to see if Nikos was doing as she requested. She tore open the door, which he no longer barred, and, gathering her long skirts, ran full pelt down the path to the entrance she shared with Sadie.
In between pounding on the door she fumbled in her purse for her key. Before she found it Sadie, dressed in a baggy pair of silk trousers and a low-cut top that made her look like an inmate of a harem, appeared blinking sleepily.
‘Where’s the fire…?’
Katie had no time to waste on explanations. ‘Upstairs.’
Sadie’s eyes widened as she appreciated for the first time the urgency in Katie’s manner. ‘You’re serious!’ She sniffed the air. ‘I can smell smoke.’
Katie barged unceremoniously past her friend. ‘That’s because my flat’s on fire, and Alexander is still in there!’ she yelled over her shoulder as she raced up the stairs two at a time.
She ignored Sadie’s alarmed cry of ‘Katie, you can’t go up there…he’s just a cat!’
The smell of smoke got stronger as she climbed the stairs, but when she arrived at the top all she could see that was out of the ordinary were a few puffs of pale smoke oozing from the gap under the door of her attic apartment—it wasn’t good, but Katie had expected worse. With any luck the fire brigade would arrive before it got out of hand.
For a moment she stood there indecisively, at a loss to know what to do next. What did people do under such circumstances…?
‘If in doubt cross your fingers,’ she declared unscientifically. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
She exhaled noisily with relief as no lethal fireball knocked her over, and she pressed a hand flat against her chest where her thudding heart was trying hard to escape.
Perhaps this is my lucky day after all… she mused. ‘Lucky…!’ She rolled her eyes. Oh my word, I’m turninginto one of those irritating people who see a bright side to a calamity, no matter how dire. ‘There’s optimism, Katie, and then there’s insanity. Your flat is on fire because you forgot to turn off your iron—that’s not lucky, it’s disastrous.’
The sound of her own voice calmed her nerves and strengthened her resolve. Her flat consisted of an open-plan living-area-cum-kitchen and a small bedroom with en suite facilities. Though the main room was filled with an acrid smoke that stung the back of her throat and made her eyes water, Katie could see no more obvious signs of the fire, which seemed to advance her theory that it had started in the bedroom. That was where she had ironed the creases from her dress on the floor rather than be bothered getting out her ironing-board.
‘Alex…good puss, nice kitty,’ she called, advancing cautiously into the smoke-filled room.
She had barely gone a couple of yards into the room when the visibility became nil. The only thing she could now see was a dull orange coming from underneath her bedroom door; it was the only thing that gave her any sense of orientation in the gloom. It also gave her a deep sense of foreboding…how long would the door contain the flames?
At times like this a well-developed imagination was not helpful.
No good thinking about that, she told herself, just get onwith it. The sooner you find that damned cat, the sooner you can get out. Despite this stoicism her knees were shaking as she cautiously proceeded.
She stopped every few feet to listen but there was no response to her calls.
Katie didn’t know why she had expected him to respond, because Alexander was not a nice kitty, or a good puss, he was a belligerent animal who brought live mice into her bedroom and spat when you tried to show him affection. If he’d been human, doctors would have said he had a personality disorder.
And if I had any sense, she reflected grimly, I’d leave him to fry!
‘Alex, puss, puss…’ Mid coaxing call she walked straight into a solid object—the coffee-table she’d discovered in the garage sale. The impact of solid teak on her vulnerable shin was enough to send her to her knees. She eased her weight from her bruised knee and felt the tangled fabric of her dress rip.
‘Damn!’
It was while she was on her knees that she realised the smoke was thinner nearer the floor. She decided to continue her search from this position.
She was crawling cautiously along when she heard a deep voice calling her name.
Nikos…well, if he wants to murder me this would be the ideal opportunity, she thought. If ever there was a situation where black humour was appropriate, this was it, she decided, continuing her search, studiously ignoring his increasingly urgent cries.
Her grim smile turned into a cough when she heard a loud sound of impact closely followed by a strong Greek curse. It must, she realised in retrospect, have been the cough that alerted him to her position because moments later she was aware of strong hands sliding underneath her arms and hoisting her off the ground.
‘Let me go, you fool!’
‘Be still and keep calm. I have you.’ He did, in an iron grip that made escape impossible. ‘You are quite safe now,’ a deep, soothing voice in her ear informed her.
Katie, who had no desire to be saved, knew instinctively that safety was something Nikos Lakis’s arms would never offer her. It was the thought of what they might offer that made her start to struggle in earnest. As several of her blows connected the reassuring note in his deep voice began to sound a lot more strained.
She let out a shriek as he stopped trying to gently soothe her when, reverting to character, without so much as a ‘by your leave’ he threw her resistant body over his shoulder fireman-fashion.
This is a classic case, she told herself, lapsing into exhausted passivity, of resistance being quite definitely futile.
Katie was forced to maintain this undignified position until they had reached the hallway when she found herself plonked on the wooden floor, which Sadie had only had stripped and polished before Christmas… Oh, God, poor Sadie…! And this is all my stupid fault! I’m the tenant from hell!
She felt cool fingers press against the pulse point at the base of her throat, then a hand, the same one presumably, slid under her chin and began to firmly tilt her head back.
Her watering eyes shot open; embarrassingly it seemed that Nikos had wrongly attributed her sudden inertia to a loss of consciousness. She was ashamed that for a spilt second she had actually considered letting him try to revive her—her curiosity was purely of the scientific variety, of course.
‘Will you stop that?’ In her head her voice had been strong and defiant, but annoyingly what actually emerged from her dry lips was a weak croak.
‘Well, that’s a relief, you don’t require mouth to mouth,’ said the big figure who was straddled over her body as he settled back on his heels.
Though his face and clothes were blackened and soot-stained, he still managed to looked as incredibly handsome as ever, Katie noted despairingly.
‘Imagine your relief and quadruple it,’ she croaked.
‘I did not expect gratitude for saving your life, but civility would have been nice…’
‘Saving my life!’ she squeaked, struggling to sit up. ‘My life didn’t need saving, I had everything under control until you got all Neanderthal.’ Panting and unable to rise, she grabbed onto the first available solid support to provide leverage, which happened to be his thighs, which were clamped either side of her waist.
The iron-hard firmness she encountered made her pause and caused her sensitive stomach muscles to tighten; escape somehow seemed less urgent as her splayed fingers explored a wider area and discovered no give in the bulging contours.
Then she came to herself and was deeply ashamed. It was unforgivable under the circumstances that she’d wasted precious seconds.
‘Thanks to you,’ she snarled, ‘Alexander is probably frying in there,’ she informed him, sliding out from between his legs and struggling to her feet. She got to them when, unaccountably, her knees gave way.
Nikos, a startled expression on his face, had also got to his feet, but with considerably more agility and athletic grace than she had. He caught her as she slid to the floor, which cushioned the impact of her contact with the bare wood.
With her head thrust between her knees, Katie batted blindly with her hands connecting only with empty air. It was only after she stopped fighting that he let her up.
‘You stupid, stupid man!’ she quavered, wiping with the back of her hand angry tears that coursed down her filthy face leaving paler tracks in the grime. Nikos, who was kneeling beside her, did not look particularly chastened by her attack. ‘Alexander is still in there.’ She gestured towards the door.
Nikos looked grim. ‘I heard you. Stay calm—hysteria will achieve nothing.’
‘I am calm!’ she bellowed.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me what you were doing earlier? Surely this was not the time to preserve your image?’
Katie’s brow creased in impatient bewilderment—image, what image? As for staying calm, the part of his recrimination she did understand was not only unjust, but would, if she’d been the type given to throwing wobblers, have set her off again. Katie was rendered speechless—but only temporarily.
‘Like you gave me a chance!’ she yelled. Or would have yelled if she hadn’t been coughing so much.
‘Katie…oh, Katie! You’re all right, thank goodness!’ A sobbing Sadie gasped as she reached the top of the staircase. ‘Oh, my, I really should lose a couple of pounds,’ she moaned, clutching her chest. ‘I’m signing into that fat farm next week…’
Nikos was looking with some bewilderment at Sadie, who was babbling wildly on about the detox therapies guaranteed to shed the pounds.
It seemed likely to Katie he was about to make one of his nasty sarky remarks.
Katie elbowed him hard, wanting to protect her friend from his nasty tongue. ‘She’s terrified, it’s her way of coping,’ she hissed at him. God, the man had the empathy of a brick.
Nikos seemed to take her explanation on board. Nodding, he left her side with a terse instruction to stay put!
