But other than that—’
‘It isn’t enough!’
‘It will have to be enough. Because that is how it is going to be.’
‘But my mother—is unwell.’
She was severely tempted to move forward, try to snatch the phone from the pocket of his immaculately tailored jacket, but the urgent sense of need warred uncomfortably with a strong sense of self preservation. She was here, on her own, in his plane, thousands of feet up in the air. If she caused a scene, started a struggle, then she was at a disadvantage from the off. Nikos would only have to raise his voice and call his staff…
No, don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t even need to call anyone, she acknowledged to herself. Nikos could see off her feeble attempt at resistance so easily that she would be a fool even to try it. But even so she still couldn’t give in to such domineering behaviour.
‘You have no right—!’
‘I have every right. I am the one who makes the rules, not you. You are here because I allow you to be here—no other reason. And you are here to do a job.’
‘A job I can’t do without a phone…’
Her eyes went to the laptop case still in his possession, carefully tucked under his arm, and a shiver of cold panic ran along every nerve. Did he really mean to isolate her totally, have her under his complete control?
‘Or my computer.’
‘Any information or help you need will be provided once we are in my villa. All you have to do is ask.’
‘I can’t work that way.’
‘You work any way that I ask of you.’
It was a deliberate verbal slap down, reminding her harshly just who was in charge here. And she would be every sort of a fool to forget that, Sadie reminded herself miserably. She had been in grave danger of forgetting just how important this job was to her.
She was grateful for the lifeline he had tossed her, the chance to let her mother stay in the only place where she felt safe. And now here she was, risking everything by setting herself against the only man who could ensure that would still happen. She should be thanking him, agreeing to go along with anything he suggested. But still—stealing her phone…!
‘I do not want the paparazzi finding out anything about this,’ Nikos went on, snatching the conversational rug from under her feet and stunning her into silence in the space of a single heartbeat.
That she understood. She had no argument against it, and she couldn’t even try to find one. The paparazzi and the popular press had been the bane of their lives when she and Nikos had been together. They had plagued them incessantly, day in and day out. They had never had a moment’s peace or time to themselves. She had hated it, been made miserable by the constant hounding, the pushing and shoving, the shouted demands and the incessant flashing of a hundred or more cameras.
And at the end…Sadie shivered at just the memory. At the end the relentless attentions of those snoopers had made everything a thousand times worse.
She understood why Nikos couldn’t let his new fiancée go through that. But she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t feel a pang of jealousy at the protective way he was determined to shield her.
‘You can trust me!’
The look he turned on her told her that he felt the opposite was true.
‘Trust…’ he said, drawing out the word until it was a sound of pure doubt, cynical and rough. ‘Ah, yes, we had such a trusting relationship, didn’t we?’
Sadie winced away from the contemptuous mockery of his tone. She had trusted him with her heart, her future, her life. And he had torn it all to pieces and tossed it back in her face.
‘This isn’t about you and me. And I wouldn’t—’
‘I trust no one.’ It was a flat, cold statement. No room for negotiation. ‘I find it’s better that way. Now, if you will fasten your safety belt…’
‘What a terribly sad way to live your life,’ Sadie flung at him, but she knew that she had no option but to do as he said. The seat belt light was still flashing and the jet was already beginning to alter its path to turn in the circle needed for descent. Personal safety, if nothing else, demanded that she acted sensibly.
‘That is my phone,’ she managed, determined to keep the defiance up as she sank back into the soft leather of her seat and reached for the belt. ‘And, paparazzi or not, you have no right…’
Except the right of possession, she acknowledged to herself as Nikos blatantly ignored her, strapping himself in. And in this case possession was all, because she had no hope that he would return the phone to her, no matter how she pleaded.
Miserably she yanked the seatbelt tight, tighter than it needed to be. And she forced herself to stare out of the window, blinking fiercely until the tears that burned at the back of her eyes ebbed away, leaving them dry and unfocussed. She wished she could do the same with her thoughts, driving away the bitter sting of the slap of reality right in her face.
Because nothing could bring home to her more definitely or more cruelly the way that, in Nikos’s mind, she was now no longer part of his life than the nasty little exchange she had just endured. Nothing could make it plainer that she was firmly on the outside, kept from the centre of his world by high, strong fences, the ‘Keep Out’ signs clearly and forcefully displayed. He didn’t even trust her, putting her so far outside any circle that could be termed his friends that she could only assume her place was amongst those he considered his enemies. And the thought of being considered an enemy by him made a sensation like the crawl of something cold and slimy slither down her spine.
Out beyond the window she could see the land below becoming clearer and clearer as the plane continued its descent. Down there was Greece, Venizelos Airport and the city of Athens itself. The last time she had been here it had been as the newly engaged fiancée of Nikos Konstantos. She had stared out of the window with keen interest, bubbling with excitement at the thought that she was going to set foot in the homeland of the man she loved for the very first time. How different was this arrival, with no sense of excitement or joy, only a terrible feeling of oppression and apprehension, uncertainty about what was to come.
Then she had felt as if she was coming home. As if she was launching a new beginning, one that would put the tensions and stresses that had ruined her family life behind her and put her on the path to a much happier future.
This time she had no idea what to expect. The prospect of what was ahead of her made her insides twist into tight knots of panic at the realisation that this time she was truly alone, without a single ally on her side. No one she could turn to for help or support.
She might understand, rationally at least, just why Nikos had felt that he needed to take her phone and her laptop. But that didn’t stop the nasty, creeping sense of fear that there might be more to it than he was letting on.
Just what did he have planned for her? And why did she have the terrible feeling that in coming to Greece like this she had made the terrible mistake of jumping right out of the frying pan and into the fiercely blazing heart of a savagely burning fire?
