His Contract Christmas Bride. Sharon Kendrick
had been. The volatile twin. The one who made headlines for all the wrong reasons and had almost been expelled from school an unbelievable three times. But although Niko was reckless he was also full of life. Why, she remembered him as the kind of man who was positively bursting with life.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said and afterwards wondered how she could have asked such a naïve question, in view of her own experience. ‘How can he possibly be dead?’
Drakon’s face contorted with darkness and pain and that was when she knew he was speaking the truth.
‘He died of a drug overdose,’ he bit out. ‘Last month.’
Lucy gasped, her fingertips flying to her lips, her heart crashing wildly against her ribcage as she wondered how she could have been so stupid. Didn’t she of all people know that young lives could be cut down like a blade of grass being sliced by a tractor at harvest time? Had she thought Drakon Konstantinou was immune to pain and loss, just because he was one of the world’s richest men and was always flying around the globe on his private jet, brokering deals to add even more dollars to his already massive fortune?
She wanted to rush over to him. To fling her arms around his tense body and comfort him, as she had comforted innumerable grieving relatives on hospital wards in the past. But that was the trouble with sex. It changed things. You could never touch a former lover and pretend it was impartial, even if it was. ‘Oh, Drakon,’ she said, in a low voice, and could see from his blanched features and haunted eyes that he was in deep shock. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Please. Won’t you sit down? Let me get you something.’ She looked around rather distractedly, trying to remember what was in the ancient drinks cabinet. ‘I think I have some whisky somewhere—’
‘I don’t want whisky,’ he said harshly.
She nodded. ‘Okay. Then I’ll make you some tea. Strong tea with lots of sugar. That’s what you need.’
To her surprise he didn’t object, just sank into one of the fireside armchairs, which looked too flimsy to be able to deal with his powerful frame, and Lucy sped into the kitchen, glad to have something to occupy herself with. Something to distract herself from her racing thoughts. But her hands were shaking so much that the china was chinking madly as she pulled cups and saucers down from one of the cupboards.
Sucking in a deep breath, she waited for the kettle to boil, wondering why she hadn’t realised right from the beginning that something was wrong. Hadn’t she been taught to read the telltale signs of body language which might have suggested that here was a man mourning the loss of his only sibling? While instead she had been selfishly preoccupied with her own battered ego, reflecting on the fact that he’d dumped her after a long weekend of wild and totally unexpected sex. What did something like that matter in the light of what he’d just told her?
She made the tea and frowned as she picked up the tray, because a nagging question still remained.
Why had he told her?
Slowly she went back into the tiny sitting room, her head still full of confusion. He turned to look at her and suddenly Lucy was scared by the expression on his rugged features. By the stony look which made his black eyes look so hard and bleak and cold—eyes which said quite clearly you can’t get close to me. Scared too by another instinctive urge to run over and hug him, wondering if she was using his heartache as an excuse to touch him again. Because hadn’t she yearned to stroke his silken flesh ever since he’d set her body on fire and made her realise what physical pleasure really meant?
She poured tea, dropping four sugar cubes into his cup and giving it a quick stir, before placing it on a small table beside the fire. Then she sat down in a chair opposite him, her knees pressed tightly together. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she questioned softly. ‘About what happened to Niko?’
Talking about it was the last thing Drakon wanted, but if he was to get Lucy to agree to his demands it was unavoidable. And how hard could it be to do that? He was a master of negotiation in the business world—surely he was able to employ the same tools of demand, cooperation and compromise in his personal life if he were to achieve what it was he wanted.
‘How much do you know about my brother?’ he questioned.
She hesitated, shrugging her shoulders a little awkwardly. ‘Not a lot. Once he left school he seemed to disappear off the radar.’
‘Neh. That’s a good way to describe what happened. He disappeared off the radar.’ Drakon’s voice grew distant and sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. But it was, he realised, with a jolt. It was coming from the past—and didn’t they say that the past was like a different country? The Konstantinou twins, two black-eyed little boys, pampered like princes by a battery of servants yet overlooked by the wealthy parents who had employed those servants. They shared almost identical DNA and, for many years, few people could tell them apart, until they heard them speak. So similar in looks and yet so different in character. Sometimes they’d even been able to trick their own parents—but then, they’d lived such separate lives from their mother and father maybe that wasn’t so surprising.
‘Niko was the older of us—by just one and a half minutes—but those vital ninety seconds were all that were needed for him to be in line to inherit the family business. He thought he was going to be a very wealthy man—until the will was read and he discovered there was nothing left. All the money had gone.’
‘How come?’
Drakon stared at her. Her bluebell eyes were a compassionate blur and for a moment he almost confided in her, until he drew himself short, reminding himself that certain segments of the past were irrelevant. He’d come here to talk about the future. ‘The reasons don’t matter,’ he said, the words acrid on his lips. ‘What is relevant is the way Niko coped with finding out the news, and the way he coped with it was with drugs. First it was a puff or two of dope at a party and then he started snorting cocaine, like so many of his buddies. But sooner or later, every addiction needs an additional boost because it isn’t working any more.’ His face twisted. ‘And that’s when he started on heroin.’
She didn’t say anything. Had he expected her to? Had he secretly wanted her to come out with something trite and predictable so he could lash out as he had been wanting to lash out at someone for days now? He felt his jaw tighten as he continued with his story and yet somehow it was an unspeakable relief to unburden himself, because he hadn’t really talked about this with anyone. Not even Amy. He hadn’t dared. Had he been afraid that describing his twin’s fatal weakness might somehow reflect poorly on him? Might hold up a mirror to the cold darkness in his own soul and the guilt which gnawed away at him because he hadn’t been there for his brother when he’d most needed him?
‘I didn’t find this out until afterwards,’ he ground out. ‘Because he left Greece and kept his distance from me—from everyone, really—and resisted every attempt I made to meet up. I only realised afterwards that he wanted to hide the true extent of his drug habit from me. If I’d known I might have been able to do something, but I didn’t know. I guess I was too busy trying to make my fortune. Trying to recover something of the Konstantinou name and reputation.’ He sighed. ‘But eventually, I heard that Niko was living in Goa and was in a steady relationship and I can remember thinking that maybe things might be different. Personally, I’ve never believed in the transformative power of love—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hopeful it might work for Niko.’ His mouth twisted cynically and there was a pause. ‘Apparently they had a beachside wedding and then I heard that she’d had a baby.’
‘B-baby?’ she echoed.
Drakon saw the colour drain from her face but still he didn’t say it. It was as if he needed to mould the facts into some sort of recognisable structure before he hit her with the big one. Was he hoping to build up an element of sympathy, so she would find it impossible to say no to him? ‘He got in touch with me just after the birth, to tell me I was now an uncle. He...he asked me if I wanted to go and meet Xander for myself and I told him I would. So I scheduled in a trip to go and see them the following week and was hopeful