The Greek Tycoon's Wife (12 page)

He didn't dispute her assessment. ‘You were the sensible twin?'

His perception was spooky; Peter had been the creative, impulsive twin and she had been the practical, grounded one.

‘Peter was very special,' she said quietly.

‘My brother was older, and we were not particularly
close. It was hard on my father when he died—Dimitri was his favourite.'

It was impossible to tell from his impassive expression whether he had minded this. Katie, seeing him as a little boy trying to gain parental approval, discovered that she had enough indignation for them both.

‘He was groomed to take over virtually from birth. When we lost him my father literally almost worked himself to death because he didn't think I could fill my brother's shoes.'

And psychologists wondered why children went off the rails! With fathers around like the insensitive clot Nikos was describing it was a wonder any children ever turned out normal!

‘That's so unfair!' she blurted out angrily. She flushed as he shot her a strange look. ‘I just hope,' she added stiffly, ‘I never make any child of mine feel inadequate,' she declared fiercely.

If Nikos had ever had any inadequacies he had obviously worked through them long ago—it was hard to imagine anyone
more
assured and confident than he was.

‘And do you plan on having any children soon?'

Katie sighed. ‘Tom doesn't think it would be a good idea to start a family for a few years yet.'

Nikos suspected she was unaware of how wistful she sounded. ‘And you?' he probed gently.

‘You shouldn't have a baby to fill a gap in your life.'

To Nikos it sounded as though she had told herself this many times before. ‘Some people might say that if you are married to the right man you don't have a gap in your life.'

‘Of course, but when you love someone it's only natural to want to have children with that person…' She looked at him, listening attentively to what she was saying, and stopped dead. ‘I
am
marrying the right man!' He never lost an opportunity to get in a sly dig.
And how,
she wondered,
do I come to be babbling on like an agony aunt about life, love and babies with Nikos Lakis of all people?

‘Did I say otherwise? I was just making a general observation.'

‘It didn't sound very general to me.' It was, she decided, her turn to ask the questions. ‘This
father
of yours—' she couldn't keep the cold note of disapproval out of her voice ‘—does he pick out your bride too?' She knew that her mother's experience was not an isolated one, even now in the twenty-first century.

Nikos shook his head. ‘My father says he's not giving me the excuse to turn around and say he's to blame when I mess up my marriage. His own marriage to my mother was arranged by their families; it was not a happy union,' he explained unemotionally. ‘They virtually lived separate lives; when she died her lover phoned my father to tell him.'

Katie was unable to imagine living like that and what would it be like for the children of such a union?

‘Cheer up.' He pressed a finger to the corners of her down-turned lips. ‘He found true love the second time.'

His light touch had gone but the tingling sensation persisted. ‘Poor true love,' she muttered mutinously.

Nikos looked amused by her venom. ‘Oh, she manages to hold her own. You know, my father is not
all
bad. I have to admit in his defence that I did very little to disabuse him of the notion that I had no natural inclination for hard work. I was no angel.'

‘Seven years married and now he tells me!'

His slow-burning smile appeared in response to her wry grin. It was almost, she mused, as if there was a connection, a real rapport between them; she froze, panic racing through her veins.
Connection! Rapport! You don't get cosy with the man who's doing his best to stop you marrying the man you love!

‘Listen,' she said with a tight smile that didn't reach her
worried eyes, ‘you don't have to talk about your family with me.'

‘Why—am I boring you?'

‘No, you're not boring me.' Was he trying to be obtuse? ‘It's a bit late for deep and meaningful discussions.' She yawned elaborately to emphasise her point.

‘Isn't that what people do late at night?' he suggested softly. ‘When the curtains are closed and the rest of the world does not exist. They reveal things about themselves that they would not dream of doing during the day. The night has a way of lowering barriers and thawing reserves.' His liquid dark gaze slid slowly over her body, then returned to her soft, trembling mouth. ‘Of course,' he rasped throatily, ‘they are usually in bed at the time and they do not spend all their time talking.'

Her sanity was history!

His voice was a sin!

She cleared her throat and tugged fretfully at the neck of her robe. It took all her will-power to wrench her lust-struck gaze from his face. At that moment she was extremely grateful that the towelling was so thick because her breasts were so tense and tender that in normal clothes the brazen changes in them would have been hard to miss.

‘Well, we aren't…in bed!' she choked. ‘That is, I don't want…you…we…' She closed her eyes and squared her shoulders. She could link more than two words together if she just put her mind to it and didn't look directly into his eyes.

‘I'm sure I don't want to pry,' she announced, applying herself to the food even though her appetite had suddenly left her.

Considering his hunger, Nikos did not eat much, but he did watch her; in fact her appetite seemed to fascinate him. She tried not to let his interest put her off—it actually became a matter of principle not to let him see how much he spooked her, though she was beginning to suspect he al
ready knew. He had to have seen the symptoms a hundred times before—he was the sort of man that women reacted to. In fact he probably took their homage as his due.

It occurred to her that he might be comparing her robust enjoyment of the food unfavourably with the more delicate, refined manners of his sophisticated lady friends.

‘That was very nice, thank you.' Having started, Katie decided it seemed logical to get all the thank-yous out of the way at once. ‘And thank you for saving my cat and giving me a bed tonight…it's kind of you,' she admitted primly.

Nikos looked at her with unsettling intensity for a moment. ‘Perhaps you should try and get some sleep?' he suggested abruptly.

Katie nodded, unable to rid herself of the conviction he'd been about to say something quite different. Unable to endure his hard, steady appraisal any longer, she stood up. Aware of a strong and totally illogical feeling of anticlimax, she smoothed down the non-existent creases in her robe.

‘I will.' Nikos's dark enigmatic eyes held hers but he still didn't speak. ‘Goodnight?' Katie was deeply mortified to hear the word emerge as a wistful question. Her bare toes curled into the thick carpet. Could she be more obvious? She chastised herself,
Why don't you just go ahead and beg the man not to let you leave, Katie? That might be more subtle.

‘Goodnight, Katerina.'

Though his expression was about as revealing as a stone wall and his deep-accented drawl no more enlightening, Katie was totally convinced she read contempt in both. She limped towards the door before she could make any more of a fool of herself.

D
ESPITE
the fact her body ached with exhaustion, Katie didn't find sleep quickly. Neither, it seemed, did Nikos—as she tossed she was aware of the crack of light under the door and maybe it was her overactive imagination but she seemed to hear his soft tread as he paced the room.

Eventually however she must have slept and when she awoke later in a cold sweat the light had gone and the room was in total darkness. She couldn't recall what she had been dreaming about, but when she had awoken whatever it was had left her with a nebulous sense of dread. In the unfamiliar surroundings it took her several clumsy attempts before she found the switch for the bedside light.

Despite the cluttered condition of her bedside table at home—the surface was crammed with framed snapshots of her family—she could locate the light switch with her eyes closed. In fact she frequently did.

A poignant smile curved her lips as her sleepy thoughts drifted to those well-loved family photos, none of which was going to win any prizes for composition or technique, but each one represented a precious memory for her… The one of Peter soaked to the skin but grinning after he'd taken a tumble into the pond they had picnicked beside. One of her favourites was her mother, who had believed herself unphotogenic, looking beautiful as she held aloft their birthday cake aflame with candles…
aflame
— The sound of the mental block in Katie's head crumbling was deafening.

‘Oh, what am I going to do? They've all gone! Everything!' she cried out loud as the full horror of her loss came crashing down upon her.

The photos were gone…everything was gone. There was
nothing…not a single keepsake left of her mother, father or brother. She must have known this all along, but a protective mechanism had kicked in that had stopped her acknowledging it—until now.

Shoulders heaving, she turned over and buried her face in the pillow. Curled up in a tight foetal ball of misery beneath the duvet, Katie began to sob without restraint for what she had lost in the fire.

She was so immersed in this orgy of misery that she didn't hear the knock on the interconnecting door and she remained oblivious to the sound of a deep, concerned voice hesitantly calling her name. She wasn't even aware of the tall figure lowering himself down onto the edge of her bed. The hand on her shoulder was the first she knew of Nikos's presence.

‘What's wrong?' He raked a hand through his tousled hair as he received a fresh wail in response.
‘Speak to me!'
he demanded, shaking her slightly.

If Katie hadn't had other things on her mind she would have immediately noticed that his accent was perceptibly stronger and his air of calm command considerably frayed around the edges—but she did have other things on her mind.

Clutching the pillow her face was buried in even tighter with one hand, she used the other to hit out backwards. She didn't make contact.

‘Nothing's wrong. Go away!' Her words emerged indistinctly through the pillow and the aching constriction in her throat.

‘Clearly there is nothing wrong,' Nikos ironically observed. Eyes narrowed, he examined his options…then, giving vent to a harsh, guttural Greek curse, he flipped the hunched figure in the bed over onto her back. Katie didn't alter her position, she kept her knees folded up on her chest and her chin tucked into them.

‘No doubt this cheery contentment is causing you to
weep as though your heart is broken,' he said drily as he proceeded to separate her from the pillow. ‘You look like a baby hedgehog minus the spikes—on second thoughts, cancel the minus.'

Bereft of her protection, Katie covered her face with her arms, oblivious to how much of her naked state she revealed in the process. ‘At least I have a heart!' she exclaimed. ‘Will you just go away and leave me alone…
please
!' she added on an anguished note of entreaty as the sobs began to rise in her chest again.

Nikos drew a frustrated hand across a lean cheek, which was liberally sprinkled with an even layer of dark stubble. ‘Do not be ridiculous, I cannot possibly leave you like this,' he told her grimly. ‘Are you ill?'

‘Go away!'

‘Do you need a doctor? Is that it? I need to tell him what is wrong. Are you in pain? Does it hurt?'

‘Only when I breathe.'

‘Your chest hurts?'

‘No.'

He released a tense sigh. ‘I am going to call a doctor. I won't be long.'

Alarmed at the idea of medical intervention, she lifted an arm from her eyes and glared through jewel-bright, tear-filled eyes at him. ‘Don't you
dare
call a doctor!' she snapped, emphasising her prohibition with a finger waved angrily in the general direction of his aristocratic nose.

‘That,' Nikos approved, ‘is better.' Almost casually he pinned her wrist against the pillow and then, after a very minor tussle, did the same with the other.

Katie's head thrashed angrily from side to side before she focused her wrath on the dark, demonically handsome face of the man looming over her. Her breath slowed and her expression grew unfocused. It was the first time she registered what he was wearing or, rather,
not
!

She had slept in the nude because she had no option;
Nikos obviously did so out of choice, because he clearly didn't have a stitch on beneath that robe. Which wouldn't have mattered so much if it had been a towelling hotel robe he was wearing, but this was a black silky thing that was knotted worryingly loosely about his waist as though he'd thrown it on in a hurry.

‘What school of counselling did you attend?' she asked hoarsely.

‘Talk to me,' Nikos replied with the air of someone who was not going to be easily distracted from his purpose.

Katie envied his focus; her own couldn't even withstand the warm, uniquely male fragrance rising from his body. To her dismay when he leaned forward to cause the revealing robe to gape even more, exposing in the process most of his chest and a great deal of his flat belly, and if she hadn't stopped herself looking—it hadn't been easy—probably even more.

‘Why should I?' she demanded, reasserting control over her wandering eyes. It might be different if he actually cared, she thought dully, and why should he?
First I'm an inconvenient wife he preferred to pretend didn't exist, now I'm an embarrassingly emotionally incontinent guest.
By now he must be wishing he hadn't taken pity on her homeless condition.

‘Because you want me to go away, and I won't do so until you have,' he explained simply.

‘What,' she asked facetiously, ‘do you want me to talk about? The weather?'

Nikos was pleased to recall an annoying phrase that Caitlin was inordinately fond of using. It seemed appropriate for the occasion.

‘It is not good to keep things bottled up.'

Katie was so astonished to hear this advice emerging from his mouth that she stopped struggling. ‘
You're
giving
me
advice on expressing emotions?' She blinked. ‘You're priceless, you really are.'

Nikos decided to try another tack.

‘What' he asked with a dizzying change of subject, ‘are you wearing?'

Katie froze and tried to slide a little farther under the duvet. ‘What's that got to do with anything?'

He lifted one brow and smiled blandly. ‘Not a thing, but I was just thinking how easy it would be to find out, if I were a man totally without scruples.'

Katie ran the tip of her tongue over the outline of her dry lips and swallowed. ‘Are you trying to blackmail me?' she squeaked as she considered her options. He was almost certainly bluffing, but could she risk it? ‘Let me go.
Please…
'

Nikos's dark glance dwelt thoughtfully on her face for several seconds and then with a slight inclination of his head he released her wrists.

With a white-knuckled grip on the duvet, Katie slithered a little farther upright, raising the cover to her chin as she did so.

‘I was crying because I have lost everything in the fire.'

‘Were you not insured?'

Katie threw him a scornful look. ‘I'm not talking about things with monetary value; I don't care about them!' she declared with a disdainful sniff.

Nikos's gaze narrowed as he listened to the woman who had married a stranger for money contemptuously dismiss her possessions. Nikos did not like anomalies.

‘Some things can't be replaced with a cheque.' She caught her lower lip between her teeth to stop it trembling. ‘All the photos of my parents and brother…all the keep-sakes… Mum kept the oddest things—a curl from our first haircut, Peter's certificate when he won first prize in the fancy dress competition, the theatre programme from her first proper date with Dad.'

With a cry she rolled onto her side and pressed her hand
over her mouth. Nikos went to touch her but her slim body tensed in rejection and with a twisted smile he drew back.

‘They all went up in the fire,' she explained dully, when she had composed herself. She rolled onto her back. ‘There's nothing left!' she told him in a tight, controlled voice that couldn't disguise the bleakness in her eyes. Despite her attempt to stay in control, her voice rose as her anguish-filled eyes locked angrily with his.

At one level she knew that it was unfair to make him a target of her anger, but her anger didn't listen to reason, it just needed an outlet.

‘Does that constitute just cause in your eyes? I suppose you think I'm being hopelessly sentimental crying about things most people would throw away?' she goaded.

Feeling herself losing control—or was it the emotion she saw in his eyes she couldn't take?—she lowered her eyes to her fingers, which were restlessly picking at the edge of the cotton cover.

‘It is just cause, and, as for sentimentality, that is not a crime in my homeland. We Greeks are a sentimental race.'

Katie lifted her head jerkily and looked with astonishment at the grave expression on his face. Would this man ever stop surprising her? she wondered. Every time she thought she had a handle on him he did something that made her retrench.

‘But I think you are wrong—you have not lost everything.'

Katie's anger stirred. He'd been in there, he must know that nothing had survived. It was cruel of him to try and raise false hopes just to save himself the discomfort of her tears!

‘The fire may have burned paper and twisted metal beyond recognition but some things were beyond its reach…' He reached over and touched the side of her head with his forefinger. ‘Inside here you have the memories of a lifetime and nothing can ever rob you of those,' he told her softly.

Her eyes shot to his and what she saw there convinced her of his total sincerity. He was not just mouthing empty platitudes, he believed totally in what he had just said.

‘Oh!'
she breathed, moved to tears by what he had said, but this time they were tears of appreciation not despair. He was right—some things nobody could take away from her. She could keep her memories, treasure and polish them. She lifted her hand to dab the moisture leaking from her eyes and felt the duvet slip; she immediately grabbed it again.

Nikos folded his arms across his chest and watched her contortions. ‘Let me?'

Before she could voice a protest he lifted his hand and blotted the salty moisture from her cheek with his thumb. Her body's response to the soft touch was immediate and devastating. The devastation was not confined to the area of her downy cheek he stroked; her entire body was filled with a heavy, throbbing lassitude. Katie's eyelashes brushed her cheek as they flickered weakly downwards.

‘There's really no need,' she murmured vaguely.

Nikos looked down into the upturned face of the young woman beside him, his dark eyes touching the blue-veined tracery on her flickering eyelids, the faint, tell-tale flush of blood beneath her pale skin, the vulnerable exposed line of her lovely throat and the pulse spot that throbbed at the base of that throat.

He was barely touching her and she was aroused. The natural progression of his male thoughts led him to visualise how she might respond if he did more than stroke her cheek…such a soft cheek, such smooth skin. Was it equally smooth all over? His heated glance dropped from her lush lips to her smooth, bare shoulders…

‘No,' he agreed throatily. ‘No need at all.' The statement was noticeably lacking in his usual absolute conviction.

Katie sighed low in her throat, an almost feline sound of
pleasure, and turned her head so that the circular movement of his thumb now moved over an area as yet untouched.

The action caused a section of her long silky hair to fall across her cheek. Nikos brushed it aside, but instead of removing his hand he slid his fingers deep into the thick glossy mass until they could trace the shape of her skull.

Katie gave a voluptuous sigh of pleasure.

‘I should go,' he said throatily.

Katie's eyes shot open in protest.
‘You can't!'
She encountered the sensual heat of his smouldering eyes and her heart started to slam against her ribs. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and swallowed. ‘You could stay?'

Nikos inhaled sharply, the action sucking in his flat belly and swelling his magnificent bronzed chest. His eyes slid from hers, his lush lashes effectively concealing his expression; this didn't stop Katie imagining the embarrassed distaste no doubt mirrored there. Her misery was complete when he turned his head away and expelled his suspended breath with a low, sibilant hiss.

No wonder he can't look at me. Self-respect, pride…remember what those are, Katie?

‘No, of course not, that's a silly idea. Take no notice of me, I'm in shock…yes, that's it, I'm in shock!' she heard herself cry in manic relief. ‘Let's just forget I said it. I didn't mean it.'