and wised up.
‘I’m so sorry. I forgot my appointment,’ Leah murmured at the reception desk and as usual she insisted on paying anyway and she tipped as if there were no tomorrow. The proprietor, Charlie, came up to her and offered to fit her in immediately but she sighed and said she was running late and sat down to wait for her chauffeur to draw up outside.
‘Oh, by the way, Mrs Andreakis— ‘ Charlie lowered his head, his beaded locks swinging colourfully ‘— your bodyguard called in with a message for you.’
Leah went rigid, turned white as a ghost.
‘Relax.’ Wry brown eyes met hers. ‘I said you were in the massage-room.’
Leah turned scarlet. ‘Thank you,’ she managed jerkily.
‘I’d better give you the message,’ he whispered. ‘Mr Andreakis is waiting for you at home.’
Nik was what? Nik was waiting for her...Nik who had never waited for her once in five years? Nik was home when he wasn’t due back in London for another fortnight? Involuntarily, Leah shivered, her stomach turning over sickly. For a split-second she was consumed by the sort of panic that made people jump out windows in a fire. Sheer cold terror.
Charlie settled down beside her, his hands planted on his knees. ‘Baby, you’re not cut out for this game you’re playing— ‘
‘I don’t know what you’re— ‘
‘You’ve been coming here every week for five years. And the last couple of months what you’ve been feeling has been just blazing all over your face.’ He sighed. ‘But I don’t want to go down in history as the idiot stupid enough to give Nik Andreakis’s wife an alibi. He’s the kind of guy who probably breaks fingers. I get the shakes just thinking about it.’
Shame washed over her. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m sorry I can’t be more help because it’s been kinda nice seeing you happy for a change.’
‘Mrs Andreakis...?’
Leah flinched as her bodyguard, Boyce, cast a big, dark shadow over her. As she stood, he cast a suspicious, cold look at Charlie, who had been too physically close to his employer’s wife for his liking.
As soon as the door slammed on the limousine, her composure collapsed. Charlie knew she was seeing someone. Dear God, she felt so humiliated. She also felt guilty as hell. Her hairdresser was afraid of being dragged into a marital furore. Not that there was the slightest chance of that happening when Nik couldn’t give two hoots what she did. But cheerful, wisecracking Charlie, who had laughed her out of many a depression over the years, had been genuinely scared.
Everyone was afraid of Nik. And yet she had never heard him shout. Early on in their marriage Leah had walked in mortal terror of him until it had slowly sunk in on her, with the drip effect of his icy indifference, that she barely existed as a human being on his scale of importance. He had married her to gain the shares her father had signed over to her. She had been part of a business deal, nothing more.
And yet there had been times at the beginning when she could have sworn that Nik looked at her with veiled loathing, when his voice could say the lightest things and sound like a whiplash of naked threat, when his very presence in the same room had made her feel menaced...and that was when she had learnt to hug the background, never draw attention to herself, avoid him whenever possible. She had assumed that he resented having had to marry her to get the shares. Yet divorce had always been within his reach. It was a mystery Leah had yet to fathom out.
And now Nik, who had not varied his schedule in five long, endless years, had come home unexpectedly. That fact returned to haunt her, anxious though she had been to evade it. Her fingers clenched white-knuckled around her bag as she climbed the steps of the vast Georgian terraced house. The unfaithful wife, she thought painfully.
But she wasn’t his wife, not his real wife, she reminded herself, just as she had often done in the weeks since she had met Paul. She should have demanded her freedom a long time ago. But her father would have been outraged and bitterly disappointed.
Leah had spent the first seventeen years of her life pleasing her father, Max, in every way she could. She had done as he advised five years ago. She had married Nik and it had been the biggest mistake of her life. Nik had taken her freedom and given nothing in return. But that time was past, she reminded herself. It was almost two months since her father had died, the heart condition which had endangered his health for years having finally taken its toll.
‘Mr Andreakis is waiting for you in the drawing-room,’ Petros the butler informed her.
Leah hovered, nervous tension biting. As a rule, she didn’t see Nik until he sat down at the dinner-table. The belief that something was wrong attacked her again.
He was standing by the marble fireplace, six feet two inches of overwhelmingly masculine male. Once she had looked at him and her heart had sung, her knees had weakened and her voice had caught in her throat. Now Leah saw him always as if through a glass wall. Learning to detach herself had been lesson one.
Nik Andreakis, the legendary Greek tycoon, possessor of fabled wealth and immense power. From his hand-stitched leather shoes to his fabulously tailored mohair-and silk-blend pearl-grey suit, he was effortlessly elegant, supremely sophisticated. A man to die for, she had thought at seventeen, her impressionable little teeny-bopper heart ready to burst with sheer excitement.
And Nik was a devastatingly handsome male animal, quite stunningly gorgeous by any standards. Thick ebony hair, golden skin, riveting black eyes as dark as night. Wherever he went he was the focus of female attention. And he knew it, was amused by it...used it when it suited him. Once, though she rarely allowed herself to recall it, Nik had focused that elemental aura of sexual energy on her.
Something had changed...something was different. Tension thrummed in the air. Deep-set dark eyes scanned her. ‘Your lipstick’s smudged.’
Her fingers flew up to her mouth in a gesture of dismay. ‘Is it?’
Winged ebony brows drew together in slight frown. Nik studied her intently. ‘We haven’t got much time, so I’ll just move to the baseline. We’re flying to Paris.’
Frozen with astonishment, Leah echoed, ‘Paris?’
Nik had already opened the door. ‘Come on,’ he said with unhidden impatience.
‘You want me to go to Paris with you?’ Leah stressed helplessly. ‘Now...like right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
‘A little business tied up with your father’s estate.’ Hooded dark eyes probed the amazement that flashed across her face.
And Leah was amazed— amazed that there could be anything left to sort out concerning her father’s estate. Although Nik had not even bothered to attend Max’s funeral, he had arrogantly assumed responsibility for instructing his lawyers to deal with her father’s property and possessions. While Leah had been grieving, too bound up in her loss to consider the practicalities of death, everything her father owned had been sold— everything!
His beautiful house, his business investments, his very furniture and personal effects had all been liquidated into cash at Nik’s instruction. Leah had not been left with a single memento. Her father, Max Harrington, might never have existed for nothing remained to testify to his sixty-odd years on this earth. Leah had been appalled by Nik’s insensitivity but by the time she found out it had been too late for her to intervene. The deed had been done. As usual, Nik’s orders had been carried out with speedy efficiency by his obedient staff.
A quiver of helpless antagonism ran through her. She lifted her silver head high. ‘Something you actually overlooked?’
‘No. Something I was looking for has finally been located.’ Harsh emphasis accompanied the assurance. An almost savage tension was briefly stamped in his hard, strong features as