She was strongly tempted to put on fresh clothes, stamp back down to the study—but to do so would reveal to Nikos just how much his behaviour had upset her. That and the fact that as long as she didn’t push things to the ultimate extreme then her mother and George were still safe in Thorn Trees. If she made one mistake, took a wrong step, then she had little doubt that Nikos would carry out his threat to have them thrown out of their home and on to the streets.
Or would he do that anyway? The frantic movements of Sadie’s hands stopped and she stared at herself in the mirror, looking anxiously at her face where the flush of colour from the heat of the shower was now fading rapidly from her cheeks. Just what did Nikos plan to do next?
He had got her here under false pretences, claiming that he needed her to plan and organise his wedding. But there had been no wedding to organise at all. It had been nothing but a deceit from start to finish. So had this really been his plan? To get her back into his bed—not that she had actually been in his bed, she acknowledged grimly. She had fallen right into his hands like a ripe plum the first time he had kissed her in his London office and that must have given him the cue he had needed—if in fact he’d needed any such thing—to go ahead with the scheme that she now saw was his ultimate attack on her family and his personal revenge on her.
‘But there must be some arrangement we can come to! Surely there’s something I can do—anything…’ Her own words came back to haunt her, making hot colour flood every inch of her body. She could see just how that had sounded—and how Nikos would naturally have interpreted it.
‘And exactly what sort of services did you have in mind?’ he had come back at her. ‘What exactly are you offering…?’
She’d denied it furiously at the time, but obviously she had put a seed in his mind and he had determined that the real price of letting her stay in Thorn Trees was to be paid in kind.
If she had any sense, she’d be out of here—fast. She had her passport. She might just be able to afford a plane ticket home on the little that was left on her credit card—she hoped.
If she had any sense, or any choice. Because she could be in no doubt as to what would happen if she did run out on Nikos now. Just the thought of her mother being thrown out of her home after the delight of thinking that she had been given a reprieve made the tears burn at the back of Sadie’s eyes. She couldn’t even call the police and tell them how Nikos had kidnapped her. As he had pointed out, he had used no sort of force, and she had come with him only too willingly.
And if they heard about what had just happened in Nikos’s office…
She was trapped, but that didn’t mean she had to sit back and take whatever Nikos tossed her way. A quick glance at the clock revealed how much time had gone by since he had bundled her—as ‘no one important’—so unceremoniously out of his office. Any minute now, she was sure that he would be coming looking for her.
She didn’t want him to come here and think that she had been sitting waiting for him. Sitting on the bed waiting for him. What she wanted him to think was that she didn’t care. That the words he’d said had had no effect on her.
Take a shower he’d said—or have a swim.
She’d do that. Moving hastily to one of the drawers in the wardrobe, she pulled out the swimming costume she had tossed into her case at the very last minute, never really expecting that she would ever have a chance to wear it, and hurried herself into it. When Nikos came to find her, she wouldn’t be here. She would be in the pool—swimming and relaxing in the sun, without a care in the world. And not sparing a single thought for the heated scene in the office.
It almost worked. The warmth of the sun beating down on her head, the cool clarity of the water, the regular physical activity of the strokes up and down the pool soothed her jangled nerves. She actually managed to empty her head of the anxious thoughts that preyed on her mind and focus only on what she was doing. Until the moment that a dark shape blotted out the sun and there was a splash, a brief glimpse of a powerful form slicing into the pool in a perfect dive. A few seconds later, Nikos surfaced, dashing water from his face, tossing back his wet hair as he trod water beside her.
‘So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself.’
‘Hardly hiding,’ Sadie managed with careful insouciance. ‘It’s a hot day and I didn’t want to waste the luxury of having a pool at my disposal.’
She prayed that he would take the ragged edge to her voice as being the result of the exertion of her swimming and not what it truly was—an uncontrollable response to his closeness. To the sight of the powerful chest and shoulders that showed above the surface of the water, black body hair slicked against the tanned skin under which the strong muscles flexed and bunched as he balanced carefully, keeping himself from going under.
‘After all, it’s not every day I see a pool like this. And I do love swimming.’
In spite of her effort to control it, a note of longing slid into her voice. For years now there had been no time for this sort of relaxation, not even in the local public pool. Her mother’s illness and the need to look after George had taken up any free time she had from running the business.
‘You should have stayed with me.’
Nikos pushed both hands through the darkness of his hair that lay sleek and black, plastered to the strong shape of his skull by the weight of the water. Drops of moisture still lay along the broad slash of his cheekbones, sparkling in the sunlight as he turned towards her.
‘You should have stayed with me, glikia mou,’ he returned sardonically. ‘Then you could have swum in a pool like this every single day.’
‘Not if I’d married you when it was originally planned—five years ago.’
The memory of the way that Nikos had trapped her, making her believe that he was going to marry someone else, made her voice sharp. No matter how much she tried to push it out of her mind that telling phrase, ‘The one woman I have ever planned on marrying is you’ just would not be pushed away. She knew he didn’t mean it—how could he mean it?—but still her brain just wouldn’t let it go. And she was forced to face up to the appalling possibility that in a moment of weakness, of longing for it to be so, she had let that lying declaration influence her earlier, when he had kissed her.
Was it possible that she had actually let herself believe that he meant it? And that that was the reason—part of the reason—why she had given in so easily—too easily—to his passionate seduction?
‘You weren’t in such good financial shape then, were you? Or why else would you have come after me in the first place?’
One corner of Nikos’s sensual mouth quirked up into a half smile. Seeing it, Sadie couldn’t help but remember the sexual devastation that mouth had worked on her hungry body when he had kissed every inch of her while she had lain, aroused and yearning, on the polished surface of his office desk. The heat that raced through her veins at the memory had no chance at all of being cooled by the lapping water of the pool.
‘Didn’t what happened earlier give you the answer to that?’ he drawled softly, the wicked gleam in his eyes heightened by the glare of the sun. ‘Surely that would have shown you that you have no need at all of false modesty?’
‘There’s nothing false about it,’ Sadie flashed back. ‘Or modest. I’m simply being realistic and honest—and I wish that you would do me the courtesy
