still love—me!’
Sadie’s head snapped back, eyes closing briefly as if he had actually slapped her in the face. But she recovered quickly enough and turned on him instead.
‘No, I’m not claiming that! I don’t love you. If you want the truth…’
‘Oh, by all means, let us have the truth,’ Nikos drawled, when an unexpected catch in her breath had her stumbling over her next words. ‘It is time there was a little honesty in this relationship.’
‘Honesty?’ Sadie echoed, injecting the word with so much cynicism that she almost felt it sharp as a razor on her tongue, ready to cut her to ribbons. ‘If you want honesty, then I’ll give you honesty.’
Once more she had to pause, to draw in a needed calming breath, and Nikos watched her with burning eyes, no trace of emotion on the stone wall of his face. And the need to drive something past that armoured wall drove her to lose control completely.
‘The honest truth is that I don’t love you. Of course I don’t. The only feeling I have for you is loathing. I hate you. I would never have come to you, never have sought you out unless you were my very last chance. The only hope I had.’
The way his eyes narrowed, black brows snapping together in a dark frown made Sadie’s stomach clench in sharp unease. Had she taken several steps too far, saying that? Given him too much ammunition to use against her if he wanted to? But then there was no way he couldn’t know that she’d had to be desperate, on her very last chance, to be prepared to come to him, practically begging for a way to stay in Thorn Trees. He could never have doubted how worried she had to have been to turn to him. Nikos, of all people, would know that if she had had any other possible alternative then she would have used it if she could.
And it had felt so good to actually spit the words out and toss them in his face. To say the things that she had wanted to say five years before and never had the chance. When Nikos had come to the house that one last time, and her father had opened the door to him, she had been upstairs with her mother. Sarah had been pregnant with George and had been in such a state that there’d been no way Sadie could have left her, not even to face the man who had broken her heart and destroyed her life. So she had tossed down the stairs the lines that her father had given her to use and at the time had been thankful that that was all she’d had to do. That she hadn’t had to actually confront Nikos about the things he had done. Because that would have been more than she could bear.
But this time it felt good to actually have the words on her tongue and to give them free range. So good that for a crazy, wild moment she didn’t stop to think of what she was doing or of how dangerous it might be to let rip.
‘And the only reason I’m here is because you asked me to do a job—to plan and organise your damn wedding! We had an agreement on that.’
‘We did.’
Nikos’s tone was surprisingly mild, but the burn of his eyes seemed to flay away a couple of precious layers of her skin, leaving her raw and hurting without even trying.
‘And I will stick to that agreement, no matter how I feel about you personally. I’ll give you every last bit of my expertise. I’ll do the best job I can. Because that’s what I promised.’
She had no other choice. If she didn’t fulfil her side of the bargain, then what was to stop Nikos from reverting to the ‘no way, no chance…go home and pack’ stance that he had taken with her at first. Before his unexpected and almost unbelievable change of heart.
‘But I’ll not do it for you. I’m doing it for your bride, so that she can have a wonderful day even if—even if she is marrying you. And in order to do that…’
What had changed in his face, altered his expression? Some shift in his muscles or a different light in those searing eyes. Something very subtle but definitely there. And it changed everything in the space of a single heartbeat, disturbing the atmosphere so that she felt herself floundering, suddenly gasping for air as if she had gone down under water and her lungs were filling up with liquid.
‘In order to do that?’ he prompted smoothly as she fought to find her voice again.
‘In order to do that I will need to meet her—talk with her.’
‘No way.’
Leaning back in his chair, Nikos laced his hands behind his head, lifting his legs so that they rested on the polished wood surface, feet crossed at the ankles.
‘But that’s ridiculous. Impossible!’
His one-sided shrug dismissed her protest as totally irrelevant.
‘That’s how it’s going to be.’
‘But there’s no way I can do my job if you won’t tell me anything, not even her name.’
But once again they had reached a sticking point. She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his stubborn jaw. She had had all the factual information he was going to allow her.
But there was one more thing he wanted to tell her.
‘All you need to know is that she is the only woman I have ever wanted to marry.’
Nikos was still lounging back in his chair, feet still on the desk. He looked supremely at ease, totally relaxed. But there was nothing comfortable or casual about the way that he added that final comment. Instead, he slipped it into her hard-won composure like the sharpest stiletto blade, sliding in between two of her ribs, aiming straight for her heart.
And it hurt so much that it destroyed every last trace of the already precarious self-control that she had been fighting to maintain ever since this conversation had started.
‘I can’t do this!’ she declared, shaking her head in despair at the situation in which she found herself. ‘I really can’t! You have to see that. Here I am, trying to arrange a wedding for a bride who to all intents and purposes doesn’t seem to exist.’
A stunning thought hit her, and she turned to glare into Nikos’s watchful face, green eyes clashing with gold in deliberate challenge.
‘She does exist, doesn’t she?’ He couldn’t have brought her here on some sort of wild goose chase, could he? And if he had, then why?
Nikos adjusted his position, taking his hands from behind his head and raking both of them through his hair, ruffling its sleek darkness in a way that was dangerously appealing. Sadie’s hands itched with the recollection of how it had felt to have the freedom to smooth through the black silky strands, curling them round her fingers.
‘Oh, she exists,’ he assured her. ‘She’s very definitely real.’
‘Then I want you to get in touch with her.’
Reaching for the phone, she snatched it up and held it out to him.
‘Get her on the phone—talk to her. You don’t even have to let me speak to her. I’ll just ask you the questions I need and you can get me her answers. At least that way I’ll know she’s been consulted—go on!’ she insisted, when Nikos simply stayed where he was, watching her without moving.
But now the relaxed sprawl of his long body had changed, much as his expression had changed only moments
