By Request Collection Part 2. Natalie Anderson
as a result it had really been the way her father had wanted things, not her choice at all.
But then, of course, that had been because he had never truly meant to marry her. All the time Nikos had been planning on using her to distract her father while he and his family worked to ensure his downfall, the ruin of his company. It was only when she found out the truth that she had realised why he had been so unexpectedly easygoing, so unconcerned about having an Orthodox wedding.
‘Of course you didn’t dictate anything. Because nothing mattered enough to you to bother with that.’
‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’
Nikos’s smile sent a shiver down her spine.
‘Oh, of course, there was one thing.’ She flung the response at him. ‘I know only too well just what mattered to you. You wanted me in your bed and that was all.’
‘And I had you there without too much trouble, as I recall. You practically threw yourself at me.’
She had played right into his hands there, Sadie admitted. At first determined that she would wait until her wedding night to give her virginity to the man she adored, she had completely lost her head just a short time before the big day. So she had hired a cottage, enticed Nikos away with her for a long weekend of blazing passion.
Instead it had turned into a dreadful time when her dreams had started to unravel and she had finally begun to learn the truth.
These were the memories that had plagued her as the plane sped towards Greece. Echoes of the time when Nikos, thinking she was asleep, had gone downstairs to answer a call on his mobile phone. But Sadie had only been dozing and, missing him, had crept down after him. Before she’d opened the door she’d caught a drift of his conversation and had stopped to listen. And what she’d heard had shattered her illusions and fantasies, making them tumble in pieces all around her.
‘Don’t worry,’ she’d heard Nikos say, a thread of dark, cruel laughter in his voice. ‘There is more than one way to skin this particular cat. When my ring is on his precious daughter’s finger and she’s part of the Konstantos family too, then Carteret will soon come to heel. We’ll have him exactly where we want him.’
‘It was what I wanted at the time,’ she said now, matching Nikos with an equally dismissive shrug.
Somehow she managed to make her voice hard enough to conceal the way that her memories tore at her heart. She even added a curl of her lips, as if in contempt at her younger self.
‘Don’t forget I was naive and innocent then. I had nothing to compare you to.’
‘Inexperienced, maybe—innocent, never,’ Nikos scorned. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing and you played your virginity as your trump card.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’
‘No? So are you going to tell me what it was like? Are you going to claim that you were truly as crazily in love with me as you pretended to be?’
She was heading into dangerous waters here, Sadie told herself. If she admitted the truth, that she had adored him, that he had been her life, then he would want to know why she had turned on him as she had done. And she still had enough pride to want to hide from him just how much she knew of the way he had used her callously in his determination to bring down her family.
And she needed to tread carefully while Nikos was in total charge of the situation. For his own private reasons he was prepared to be unexpectedly generous. He was letting her mother and George stay in the house for now. But she was terrified that if she rocked the boat in any way he might change his mind. Just the memory of the way her mother’s face had lit up when she had been able to give her good news last night was enough to keep a careful check on her tongue.
‘Crazy would be a good way to describe it,’ she hedged carefully. ‘You were pretty hot back then, Nikos, and I was tired of being a virgin. But don’t kid yourself that you were anything special.’
‘Oh, I won’t.’ Nikos’s response was darkly dangerous, the savage edge to it slashing like a cruel knife. ‘Believe me, I never did. Now, are you going to switch that thing off or not?’
‘Oh—sorry…’
Hastily, she closed down the site she had been studying, saving her notes before switching off the whole computer. Her movements clumsy, partly from haste and partly because of the burning intensity of his scrutiny, she shut it up and bundled it into the case on the floor beside her seat.
‘I’ll take that.’
Nikos leaned over to pick up the case.
‘Oh, but…’ Sadie tried to protest but he dismissed it with a gesture.
‘The staff will see to our luggage and this will go with it. You will get it back when it’s necessary. And what about your phone? Your mobile will need to be switched off.’
‘Of course.’
The phone was in her bag, and as she pulled it out she saw that the words telling her she had a newly arrived text message were on the screen.
‘It’s from my mother. Can I just see this…?’
Another flick of his hand urged her to do just that and be quick about it, his impatience making her all fingers and thumbs as she checked her message.
It was a long one, and she had to scroll down to read it all. Then scroll back again to reread, not quite believing what she had seen.
‘Sadie…’
Nikos’s hand was held out towards the phone. He didn’t quite click his fingers in impatience, but that mood was very much in the air as he waited for her to respond.
‘But…’
Sadie’s eyes were still on the text message.
‘Mum says that she’s had a letter from you—a courier delivery. And you…’
She had to spin round, had to look straight into Nikos’s face to try to read his expression.
‘Is this true? Have you really sent my mother written notification that she can stay in Thorn Trees for now?’
The answer was there in his face, in the swift, darkened glance that he directed briefly at the phone and then at Sadie once again.
‘I instructed my solicitor to send a letter this morning.’
‘But why?’
‘I told you. Your mother and brother played no part in what happened in the past. It would be inhuman to take revenge on a child.’
Which once again brought a shiver of apprehension at the thought that revenge was in his mind at all.
She was here to organise his wedding, wasn’t she?
‘And this is in return for my helping to plan and arrange your wedding?’
The bronze eyes that met her questioning glance were cool and opaque, all emotion blanked out so that there was nothing to read, nothing to give her any help.
Nothing to ease that cold edge of uncertainty that had shivered down her spine.
‘Our arrangement is that you will do a job for me. As long as you carry out that job to my satisfaction then your mother and brother will be able to stay in the house without harassment or upset. I have sent them a letter informing them of that.’
‘Thank you!’
After the fear and uncertainty of the moment she had left his office only the day before the rush of relief was so great that it pushed aside all sense of restraint, driving her into instinctive action without a thought of the consequences. With her phone still in her hand, she bent forward, lifting her face to press a swift, light-hearted kiss on Nikos’s lean cheek.
‘Thank you!’ she said again. Then froze as reaction hit home.
It