that they do not find out about this just yet. I want to protect my fiancée.’
A protection he hadn’t offered her, Sadie recalled with a stab of bitterness. Then he had been happy that the world should know about their engagement, their upcoming wedding. With the result that she had begun to feel she was living her life in a goldfish bowl, with a huge, powerful spotlight directed right at it all the time.
Which had made their final break-up into a media circus that had left her shattered and devastated.
‘And you don’t trust me?’ she asked, as much to distract herself from the particularly vivid, particularly painful memories that had risen to the surface of her mind, no matter how much she tried to push them down.
‘You will find out soon enough—when the time is right for you to know.’
It seemed that Nikos too had abandoned all pretence at having an appetite for his meal. His ignored sea bass was rapidly cooling on his plate as he focussed only on her.
‘And of course when you are in Greece…’
‘What?’
She couldn’t have heard that right.
‘No—wait a minute—back up a bit here. What was that? I thought you said…I’m not going to Greece!’
‘Of course you are.’
Nikos’s half smile was perfectly composed, totally in control.
‘How else will you organise the wedding?’
‘Your wedding?’
The croak in her voice was worse than the one inflicted by the bite of the chillies. She could hardly believe that she had heard anything right. Had he really said?
She couldn’t…She wouldn’t! How could he expect her to organise and arrange a wedding at which he—the man she had once been going to marry herself—would become someone else’s husband? He couldn’t ask it of her! It was too cruel. Too monstrous.
But the reality was that Nikos wasn’t asking. He was simply stating a fact. As far as he was concerned this was what was going to happen. She was going to take on the arranging of his wedding—to his fiancée. Because he said so.
‘No…’
It was all she could manage. Even after a long, shaken gulp of cooling water, her throat refused to allow her to say any more.
‘I said that I had a job for you.’
‘This is the job? This is what you brought me here to talk about?’
And what sort of twisted vindictiveness had driven him to bring her here, to the restaurant where they had shared their first meal together, and where, barely two months later, he had proposed to her in one of the other candlelit booths?
‘Well, thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline the commission. I can’t go to Greece.’
And she couldn’t possibly work with him on his plans to marry someone else.
‘I’m afraid that you do not have that option.’ Nikos’s tone took his response to a place light years away from any real regret. In fact, it made it only too plain that the very last thing he was was sorry. ‘This is not a job that you can turn down—or even stop to think about. Not if you really meant what you said when you told me you would do anything if I would just let you live in Thorn Trees.’
‘So…’ Sadie drew in a slow, deep breath and let it out again on a thoughtful sigh. ‘This is your price for what I asked? I work for you—plan your wedding—and you’ll allow me to stay in…’
‘I’ll allow your mother and brother to stay in the family home. For now,’ Nikos put in, making it plain that his concern was only for them.
‘What made you change your mind? Only this morning you were saying that you wouldn’t even consider it.’
‘Your mother played no part in what happened in the past. Neither did your brother. Because of that I am prepared to make some concessions for them.’
Which once again put the emphasis of what he was doing firmly on the personal, between Nikos and herself. And what he wanted from her was for her to organise this wedding for him and so rub her nose in the fact that he had not only moved on but totally replaced her in his life. The cruel sting of that thought made her wish again that she had let him pour her some wine. At least then she could have lifted her glass, sipped from it—even if she was only pretending to drink. She could have fiddled with the glass, hidden her face behind it, anything that would distract him from the hurt, the feeling of being at a loss, she knew must show in her face.
‘But I don’t know anything about Greek weddings— you would do better with someone else, someone who knows all about—’
‘I don’t want anyone else. I want you.’
‘Surely your bride-to-be will have some say in the matter?’
‘My bride-to-be will leave things entirely in my hands.’
‘Oh, she will, will she? What’s this—you’re reverting to type and determined to get yourself a sweet little innocent wife who daren’t say a word against you.’
‘Unlike the wife I would have had if I’d married you?’ Nikos drawled cynically, swilling the rich red wine around in his glass before taking a long drink from it. ‘No one could ever have described you as “sweet”—or “innocent.”’
‘But then you never really wanted to marry me in the first place,’ Sadie flashed back, still fighting with the pain of her memories.
She’d been an innocent when he’d met her—still a virgin at twenty. But naively, crazily, head over heels in love, and thinking she was going to be married to the love of her life, she had thrown that special gift away, giving it to the man who she believed loved her but who had in fact just been using her cynically and cruelly as a way to get at her father.
‘On the contrary…’ Nikos countered. ‘I wanted you very much indeed. So much so that I was out of my head with it.’
‘So that’s all I was to you—a mental aberration?’
She had needed the reminder of how ruthlessly he had behaved. He might have wanted her, all right, but only physically. And she had offered herself to him on a plate, pushing to anticipate their wedding vows.
It was that same night when she had discovered just what Nikos had really been up to when he had claimed he wanted to marry her.
‘You certainly drove me crazy. Are you going to eat that?’
He nodded his dark head towards the plate of rapidly cooling pasta that now was beginning to look nastily congealed and even more unappealing.
‘No chance.’
Sadie gave an exaggerated shudder, and to her astonishment a smile flickered on Nikos’s lips. Brief, barely there, but it did at least have a trace of real warmth, real amusement.
