By Request Collection Part 2. Natalie Anderson
If she had any sense, she’d be out of here—fast. She had her passport. She might just be able to afford a plane ticket home on the little that was left on her credit card—she hoped.
If she had any sense, or any choice. Because she could be in no doubt as to what would happen if she did run out on Nikos now. Just the thought of her mother being thrown out of her home after the delight of thinking that she had been given a reprieve made the tears burn at the back of Sadie’s eyes. She couldn’t even call the police and tell them how Nikos had kidnapped her. As he had pointed out, he had used no sort of force, and she had come with him only too willingly.
And if they heard about what had just happened in Nikos’s office…
She was trapped, but that didn’t mean she had to sit back and take whatever Nikos tossed her way. A quick glance at the clock revealed how much time had gone by since he had bundled her—as ‘no one important’—so unceremoniously out of his office. Any minute now, she was sure that he would be coming looking for her.
She didn’t want him to come here and think that she had been sitting waiting for him. Sitting on the bed waiting for him. What she wanted him to think was that she didn’t care. That the words he’d said had had no effect on her.
Take a shower he’d said—or have a swim.
She’d do that. Moving hastily to one of the drawers in the wardrobe, she pulled out the swimming costume she had tossed into her case at the very last minute, never really expecting that she would ever have a chance to wear it, and hurried herself into it. When Nikos came to find her, she wouldn’t be here. She would be in the pool—swimming and relaxing in the sun, without a care in the world. And not sparing a single thought for the heated scene in the office.
It almost worked. The warmth of the sun beating down on her head, the cool clarity of the water, the regular physical activity of the strokes up and down the pool soothed her jangled nerves. She actually managed to empty her head of the anxious thoughts that preyed on her mind and focus only on what she was doing. Until the moment that a dark shape blotted out the sun and there was a splash, a brief glimpse of a powerful form slicing into the pool in a perfect dive. A few seconds later, Nikos surfaced, dashing water from his face, tossing back his wet hair as he trod water beside her.
‘So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself.’
‘Hardly hiding,’ Sadie managed with careful insouciance. ‘It’s a hot day and I didn’t want to waste the luxury of having a pool at my disposal.’
She prayed that he would take the ragged edge to her voice as being the result of the exertion of her swimming and not what it truly was—an uncontrollable response to his closeness. To the sight of the powerful chest and shoulders that showed above the surface of the water, black body hair slicked against the tanned skin under which the strong muscles flexed and bunched as he balanced carefully, keeping himself from going under.
‘After all, it’s not every day I see a pool like this. And I do love swimming.’
In spite of her effort to control it, a note of longing slid into her voice. For years now there had been no time for this sort of relaxation, not even in the local public pool. Her mother’s illness and the need to look after George had taken up any free time she had from running the business.
‘You should have stayed with me.’
Nikos pushed both hands through the darkness of his hair that lay sleek and black, plastered to the strong shape of his skull by the weight of the water. Drops of moisture still lay along the broad slash of his cheekbones, sparkling in the sunlight as he turned towards her.
‘You should have stayed with me, glikia mou,’ he returned sardonically. ‘Then you could have swum in a pool like this every single day.’
‘Not if I’d married you when it was originally planned—five years ago.’
The memory of the way that Nikos had trapped her, making her believe that he was going to marry someone else, made her voice sharp. No matter how much she tried to push it out of her mind that telling phrase, ‘The one woman I have ever planned on marrying is you’ just would not be pushed away. She knew he didn’t mean it—how could he mean it?—but still her brain just wouldn’t let it go. And she was forced to face up to the appalling possibility that in a moment of weakness, of longing for it to be so, she had let that lying declaration influence her earlier, when he had kissed her.
Was it possible that she had actually let herself believe that he meant it? And that that was the reason—part of the reason—why she had given in so easily—too easily—to his passionate seduction?
‘You weren’t in such good financial shape then, were you? Or why else would you have come after me in the first place?’
One corner of Nikos’s sensual mouth quirked up into a half smile. Seeing it, Sadie couldn’t help but remember the sexual devastation that mouth had worked on her hungry body when he had kissed every inch of her while she had lain, aroused and yearning, on the polished surface of his office desk. The heat that raced through her veins at the memory had no chance at all of being cooled by the lapping water of the pool.
‘Didn’t what happened earlier give you the answer to that?’ he drawled softly, the wicked gleam in his eyes heightened by the glare of the sun. ‘Surely that would have shown you that you have no need at all of false modesty?’
‘There’s nothing false about it,’ Sadie flashed back. ‘Or modest. I’m simply being realistic and honest—and I wish that you would do me the courtesy of being the same. The fact is that if I had not been Edwin Carteret’s daughter and the heiress to his fortune then there is no way you would ever have sought me out at the start.’
‘I—’ Nikos began, but she had seen the look in his eyes, the subtle change in his expression, and knew that, in spite of the way that he tried to hide it, he was thinking through his response very carefully, planning exactly what to say.
‘Honesty, Nikos. You owe me at least that.’
For a long moment his golden eyes locked with hers and she could almost hear his clever, ruthless brain working through the possibilities and coming to a decision.
‘Honestly, then…’ he said at last. ‘The answer is no. If you had not been your father’s daughter, then I would never have sought you out in the first place.’
If he had reached out and grabbed her hard by the shoulders, wrenching her towards him and pushing her down hard underneath the cool water, then he couldn’t have caused more of a shock to her heart. But, be honest with yourself too, Sadie reproached her foolish mind. Did you really think there would be any other answer? Hoping for a different response was such a foolish weakness. A wishful fantasy that could never be achieved.
‘And, yes, I lied to you—or at least kept from you the fact that the Konstantos finances were not in the best possible shape. But who can blame me when I already had overwhelming evidence of the way your father was working to bring the corporation down?’
‘You could have confided in me. Trusted me.’
‘Trust!’ Nikos scorned, throwing back his dark head in a laugh that seemed to turn the air around them into ice and then splinter it into a million tiny pieces. ‘You dare talk to me about trust when all the time you were part of the whole conspiracy your father had set up. When I was fighting for my life—for my family’s life—you were there, just waiting to stab me in the back.’
That was more than Sadie could take. In the past she had been forced to play along with her father’s wicked plans, forced to keep silent about everything that was going on in order to keep her mother and her as yet unborn baby brother safe. Now that part of the problem, at least, was all over. Her father was dead; he couldn’t hurt anyone any more.
‘If I hadn’t done what I did, then you would have lost your fight.’
‘What?’
Nikos’s