Leah stepped back from him, the chill, the sense of threat running along her every nerve-ending. ‘For my sake? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I hope not.’ He swung on his heel.
Leah made for the stairs. A hard hand stayed her. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘To get changed.’ Sudden fear licked at her. She stared in shock at the lean, powerful hand clamped to her slender forearm. Nik never touched her...never, not even in the most passing, casual gesture.
‘There’s no time for that. The jet’s ready for take-off.’
‘Will we be coming back tonight?’ Her voice rose an octave as he literally thrust her out of the house. ‘I have nothing packed!’
‘You’ll manage.’
‘What’s going on?’ Leah demanded frantically as the limousine drew away from the kerb.
Ignoring her with supreme disdain, Nik picked up the phone and proceeded to talk at length in Greek.
She didn’t understand a word. A fleeting recollection stirred. On their wedding-day she had told him she intended to learn his language. ‘Don’t waste your time,’ he had derided, and that had been the very first crack that appeared in her fantasy world. Before the day was at an end, the crack had widened into a yawning gulf but it had taken a lot longer for reality to banish that fantasy world she had wanted so badly.
Her temples throbbed with the tension in the air. But her inner turmoil did not show. She sat still, apparently composed, her manicured hands loosely resting on her lap. In Nik’s presence she had learnt to conceal her emotions. Only that did not still the stormy flood of her hidden consternation and incomprehension.
‘What is this all about?’ Leah asked a second time.
Silence.
Doggedly she persisted. ‘I understood that Dad’s estate was all settled.’
‘Did you really? I wonder,’ Nik responded murderously quietly.
Something in his intonation disturbed her. Her delicate profile turned. She encountered eyes as treacherous as black ice. Her stomach muscles clenched, her skin chilling. She had a sense of impending disaster so powerful that she felt briefly sick.
‘If you would just explain what— ?’ she began.
‘Why should I explain myself to you?’ It was so clearly a growl of lancing derision that she was silenced.
‘Young as you are, you are every man’s secret fantasy...’ Who would ever believe that those seductive words had been uttered by the husband who had ignored her very existence for five solid years? Yet Nik had said those words the first day they met. Why had he lied? Why had he pretended? Had he wanted those shares in that shipping line that badly? He must have done. It was patently obvious that she had never been Nik Andreakis’s secret fantasy. Bitterness tremored through her. Nik had used her without conscience...as had her father, who had gloried in Nik’s wealth and status.
Pained by the acknowledgement, Leah looked blankly out of the window. She longed for Paul— Paul, who hadn’t even known who she was when he’d first approached her, Paul, the very first man in her life to respond to her as an individual with feelings and needs and opinions of her own. He wanted only her. He wanted her for herself. He wasn’t trying to use her.
In Paris, she would tell Nik that she wanted a divorce. There would be no more procrastination. She would not risk losing Paul. And she was hungry to live a life of her own, hungry for the freedom which beckoned so tantalisingly on the horizon. Nik had stolen her youth, the teenage years when she should have been dating and having fun and loving. Why shouldn’t she be greedy for what she had never had?
On the private jet she flicked through magazines but her mouth curled several times as she watched the stewardess hover round Nik like some harem concubine, desperate to attract the sultan’s favour. The beautiful brunette had a bad dose of infatuation. Who better than Leah to recognise the symptoms? After all, she had once been a victim herself. But now she was utterly detached from Nik and prided herself on the fact.
Nik Andreakis, with his smouldering Greek temperament and movie-star looks, didn’t touch her on any physical or emotional level. He was volatile, ruthless and unpredictable. The cloak of civilisation was thin. He was also manipulative, arrogant and vicious towards those who opposed or antagonised him. If she had been his real wife, she wouldn’t have dared to sneak around with another man behind his back...
A limousine collected them at Charles de Gaulle Airport, carrying them through the heavy late afternoon traffic. The car drew up on a busy, crowded street. Leah climbed out, too proud to ask yet again where they were going but looking around. Nik strode ahead of her into the nearest building. He was carrying an executive case. And the building was a bank, she registered.
Three men were waiting in the foyer. One of them, whom she recognised as her father’s solicitor, attempted to speak to her. But Nik cut him off very rudely. From below her lashes she stole a glance at her husband. Dear God, but he was ignorant. In the wrong mood— too frequently the only mood in which Leah saw him— his manners were atrocious towards those unfortunates he considered to be lesser beings. As one of them, Leah felt a creature sympathy for the middle-aged man with his flushed, strained face.
A lift took them down to the vaults. The magical mystery tour, she reflected grimly. Were there more shares in that precious shipping line on offer? How could any man with Nik’s fabulous wealth and assets be so disgustingly greedy? He had married her out of greed, hadn’t he? Something for nothing. The shares had come free as her dowry.
The solicitor stuffed a key in her hand abruptly and then turned away.
“Give it to me,’ Nik grated in a driven undertone, his simmering tension leaping out at her in an electrifying wave.
The key for a safety-deposit box, presumably belonging to her father, for why else would it have been put in her hand? She ignored him. For the very first time in their marriage she ignored her husband, moving forward to watch the bank executive produce the box and leave it on the table before quietly leaving the small, bare room.
‘Leah...’ Nik growled.
She refused to look at him. ‘If it’s my father’s, it’s mine...’
‘Be very careful of what you claim.’
His savage warning pierced cold to the very centre of her body. She looked at him and was paralysed. Naked violence and aggression were etched in his ferociously taut features. She blenched, and cast the key on the table by the box in sudden surrender.
‘If it’s in here you can relax,’ Nik murmured between clenched white teeth. ‘If it isn’t, you’ll be lucky to see the dawn break tomorrow.’
If what was in there? Perspiration broke on her short upper lip. Her legs suddenly felt weak and wobbly. Her sapphire-blue eyes clung to him in sick disbelief. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was inserting the key in the box with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.
She licked her dry lips. There was something more than shares at stake, something terrible enough to make even Nik Andreakis threaten to come apart at the seams... She had never seen him close to the edge, never dreamt that he could lose control, but she was seeing it now.
The box was full of papers. With a burst of guttural Greek, Nik began to rifle through them, discarding letters and photos which spilled in careless disarray across the table. He was pale and taut, his evident search becoming visibly more agitated.
Leah focused on an envelope addressed to someone she had never heard of. She didn’t even recognise the writing. And then she glimpsed a large, glossy photograph. In stark colour, it depicted a number of men and women engaged in... In shock and disgust, Leah averted her eyes again. She started to tremble. Why had her father kept such an obscene thing in his possession?
‘What is this stuff?’ she whispered,