Penniless and Purchased. Julia James

remember this evening!’

      Her eyes were like stars, dewed with emotion.

      She saw his face still again, as it had done before. Then, slowly, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips.

      ‘As will I,’ he said softly.

      She could only sit, her heart soaring, face alight, lips parted, gazing at him, feeling more than she had ever felt in her life before! More than she had ever thought it possible to feel.

      The soft brush of his lips on her hand had made her breathless, and then he was lowering her hand, but not relinquishing it, instead drawing her to her feet as the audience started to get to theirs. She felt his fingers lace through hers, so strong, so warm, holding hers, and felt faint with the wonderfulness of it.

      Nikos! His name reverberated in her head. Nikos! Nikos! Nikos!

      She floated on air as she walked beside him, his fingers still laced with hers, as they made their slow procession from the opera house. Leaving took ages, because the narrow streets outside were thronged, but eventually Nikos was handing her into the limo, and she was sinking into its depths, he was coming in beside her, and the limo was moving slowly off.

      ‘I asked your father if I might take you for supper after the performance,’ Nikos said. His eyes glinted. ‘I’ve got you till midnight, but you must be home on the stroke of twelve!’

      She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘He’s terribly Victorian.’

      But Nikos did not laugh with her. ‘He is right to be careful of you,’ he said soberly. Then his tone altered. ‘Now, I hope my choice of restaurant will please you.’

      He could have suggested fish and chips and she would have been enchanted, but where he took her was infinitely more salubrious. It was uncrowded and, best of all, their table was very private. What she ate she had no idea, nor did she have much more idea what they talked about. Sophie knew her whole attention was on Nikos—Nikos alone! Gazing at him, smiling at him, listening to him, knowing with every passing moment that he was the most wonderful, wonderful man she had ever met! And by the time, two hours later, he reluctantly escorted her from the limo up to the front door of her father’s house, she knew something else, as well. Something even more precious.

      She was in love.

      She knew it for a certainty—irrefutably, incontestably. She was in love with Nikos Kazandros!

      Dreamily, she waltzed around her room, knowing she was happier than she had ever been in her life, and that the rest of her life was going to be the most wonderful in the world—because she was in love with Nikos Kazandros! In love! In love! In love!

      And nothing could stop it! Nothing!

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘SOPHIE.’

      The sound of her name was like a rasp across wounded flesh. For a moment filled with agony Sophie felt the pain of it. Then, steeling herself, she turned expressionless eyes on Nikos.

      ‘What do you want?’ she responded stonily.

      Something moved—flashed—in those dark eyes into whose depths she had once fallen and drowned.

      ‘Want?’ he echoed. The taunt was still there, the harshness. ‘Why should I want anything—anything that you have to offer now? Cosmo’s welcome to your well-displayed charms!’ The eyes lashed over her, the whip of contempt laying bare her skin.

      But she would not feel it, would not feel the lash of his words, his taunting. What was it to her? What was he to her?

      Nothing. Nothing at all, ever again!

      ‘Get lost, Nikos,’ she said, and turned away, plunging into the melee in the room. Even Cosmo Dimistris seemed like a haven from this unbearable encounter.

      As he watched her walk away through the room, Nikos felt emotion sear through him. Then, abruptly, it was overridden. He suddenly realised he could no longer see Georgias. Cursing under his breath, he stared around, as if he could conjure him up, and then, a grim look on his face, he headed down a wide corridor that clearly led towards the apartment’s bedrooms.

      It took him a while to find his charge, throwing open one door after another and finding the rooms occupied. He carried on his furious search until he found Georgias, his tie loose, shirt undone, the girl he’d been dancing with even more undressed, the pair of them collapsed on a bed together.

      Nikos wrested her off, ignoring her squeals of inebriated protest at being balked of her prey, then yanked Georgias up-right. He was almost completely out of it, his eyes glazed, hair tousled. Nikos hoped to God it was merely alcohol in his system.

      It took a while to get Georgias out of the apartment, their way barred by the milling party throng and imprecations not to leave, and Georgias had a suddenly reanimated desire to dance again, but finally Nikos manhandled him out, and down in the lift.

      Getting him across the lobby required some force, but once the night air hit, Georgias collapsed almost completely. Nikos glared angrily out across the roadway. Rain was sluicing down, cold and soaking, but at least a taxi driver had seen him sheltering under the portico of the luxury apartment block, and was diverting towards him. With effort, Nikos manhandled Georgias inside, and thrust him into the far corner of the cab, where he slumped in an ungainly fashion, his eyes closing in insensible stupor. Nikos gritted his teeth.

      Brusquely, he gave the name of their hotel, and the cabbie nodded and moved off, tyres sluicing through the rain-filled gutter. Nikos threw himself back into his corner of the cab, his mind in turmoil. Only one image dominated it.

      Sophie Granton.

      He felt emotion surge inside him again—convulsing, turbid. Filled with anger, with more than anger.

       Why the hell did I have to see her?

      Why the hell had she had to rise up from the pit like that? Seeing her again, seeing what she’d come to—her dress half hanging off her, keeping company with the likes of jerks like Cosmo!