finding her way to the offices where she had an appointment first thing that morning. From the moment that she left the tube station and turned right it was as if her feet were taking her automatically along the route she needed, with no need to look where she was going.
But then of course she had been this way so many times before. In other days, some time ago perhaps, but often enough to know her way without thinking. Of course then she had been heading in this direction in such very different circumstances. In those days she would have arrived in a taxi, or perhaps a chauffeur-driven car, with a uniformed driver sliding the limousine to the edge of the kerb and opening the door for her. Then, the offices towards which she was heading had belonged to her father as the head of Carteret Incorporated. Now they were the UK headquarters of the man who had set out to ruin her family in revenge for the way he had been treated.
And who had succeeded far more than he had ever dreamed.
Burning tears mingled with the sting of the rain as Sadie forced her feet towards the huge plate glass doors that marked the entrance to the elegant building, blinding her so that she almost stumbled across the threshold. Bitter acid swirled in her stomach as the doors slid open and she recognised the way that the words Konstantos Corporation were now etched in big gold letters on the glass where once she had been able to see her father’s name—her family name—displayed so clearly.
Would she ever be able to come back here and not think of her father, dead and in his grave for over six months, while the man who had hated him enough to take everything he possessed from him now lorded it over the company that her great-grandfather had built up from nothing into the multimillion corporation it now was?
‘No!’ Drawing on all the determination she possessed, Sadie shook her head, sending her sleek dark hair flying, her green eyes dark with resolve, as she stepped into the wide, marble-floored foyer. Her black patent high-heeled shoes made a clipped, decisive sound as she made her way across to the pale wood reception desk.
‘No!’ she muttered under her breath again.
No way was she going to let cruel memories of the past destroy her now. She couldn’t let them take away the hard-won strength she had drawn on to get herself here. The resolve that was holding her upright and, she prayed, stopping her legs from shaking, her knees from giving way beneath her. She had come here today because it was her last—her only chance. She had to brave the lion in his den and ask him—beg him—to give them this one small reprieve. Without it the thought of the consequences was impossible to bear. For herself, her mother and her small brother. She couldn’t let anything get in the way of that.
‘I have an appointment with Mr Konstantos,’ she told the smartly dressed young woman behind the reception desk. ‘With—Mr Nikos Konstantos.’
She prayed that no tremor in her voice gave away how difficult she had found it to say the name—his name. The name of the man she had once loved almost to the point of madness. The name she had once believed would be hers too for the rest of her life—until she had realised that she was just being used as a pawn in a very nasty power game. A cruel game of revenge and retribution. A settling of scores from wounds that had originally been inflicted long ago and had been many, bitter years festering viciously, until they had poisoned so many lives. Her own amongst them.
‘And your name is?’ the receptionist enquired.
‘Carter,’ Sadie supplied, hoping that the sudden dropping of her green eyes to examine some non-existent spot on one of her hands didn’t betray how difficult she had found it to come out with the lie. ‘S-Sandie Carter.’
She had had to resort to the subterfuge of a false name, she acknowledged inwardly, a nasty taste in her mouth at having been reduced to it. She knew only too well that if she had tried to gain an appointment with him under her real identity then Nikos Konstantos would never even have given her a moment’s consideration. Her request to see him would have been refused with cold-blooded arrogance and unyielding rejection. Her attempt to contact him would have been squashed dead under his arrogant heel before it had even struggled into life and she would be back where she had been at the start of this week: lost, desperate, penniless, and without a hope in the world.
She didn’t have much of a hope now, but at least the receptionist was checking through a list of names and times on her computer, smiling her satisfaction as she found the fictitious one that Sadie had given her, and making a swift click with her mouse as she checked it off.
‘You’re a little early…’
‘Not to worry—I can wait…’ Sadie put in hastily, knowing only too well that ‘a little early’ was a major understatement. She was way too early—by more than half an hour. But nervousness and a real fear that she might have backed out of this if she hadn’t left home just as soon as she was ready had pushed her out of the door well before the time needed for her journey.
‘No need,’ the other woman assured her. ‘Mr Konstantos’s first appointment cancelled, so he can see you straight away.’
‘Thank you,’Sadie managed, because it was all she could say.
She’d committed herself to this interview and she had to go through with it. But now that the time had come she felt sick at just the thought of confronting Nikos here, in what had once been her family’s offices. What had possessed her to do this? To think that she could cope with seeing Nikos for the first time in five years, and come back into the building that did so much to emphasise how far her family’s fortunes had fallen—both at the same time.
‘I think perhaps…’ she began again, her already shaky courage deserting her, meaning to say that she’d changed her mind—she had another appointment, or her mother had just called…anything to give her an excuse to leave, get out of here now. To run and hide before she had to come face to face with…
‘Mr Konstantos…’
The receptionist’s tone, her sudden change of expression, would have alerted Sadie to just what was happening even without the use of that emotive name. The other woman’s eyes had widened, her gaze going straight to a point over Sadie’s shoulder, behind her back. And the expression in it, as in the way she had said the name—that name—told Sadie without another word needing to be spoken just who had come up behind her, silent as a hunting jungle cat, and possibly just as deadly.
‘Has my ten-o’clock appointment arrived?’
‘She’s right here…’
The receptionist smiled as she indicated Sadie standing before her desk, and she clearly thought that Sadie would smile back. Smile and turn. Possibly say hello or some such.
But Sadie knew that she couldn’t move. Her legs seemed to have frozen to the spot. Her mind too had iced up, leaving her incapable of registering a single thought other than the fact that he was behind her.
That Nikos Konstantos was right behind her. And that at any moment he would see her and realise who she was.
It was the voice that had done it. Just those few words in those deep, sensually husky tones had short-circuited her brain waves, making it impossible to think of anything but the shivering sensations that ran up and down her spine. Once she had heard that voice whisper to her in the darkness, murmuring sounds of delight and promising her the very best—the world—the future. And, entranced by that sexy accent, lost in the world of sensuality that just being with him had always created around her, she had foolishly, naively believed in every word.
Every lying word.
‘Mrs
