didn’t even know she was depressed. I hadn’t seen her in months,’ he explained in a bitten-off, tight undertone. ‘I kept on offering to fly her over to London and she made excuses. I should’ve realised something was wrong and flown to her in Athens, but that was in the days before my private jet and I was working night and day on getting my first hotel opened up. I neglected her. I put profit first.’
‘You didn’t know there was anything wrong. When you’re busy time goes by and you don’t notice.’
‘Don’t try to comfort me,’ Nikolai interposed darkly. ‘I let Sofia down when she needed me, the only time she ever needed me. I had all these ideas about what we would do together once I made some money, but I should’ve been concentrating on the present, not the future.’
Ella’s eyes stung, for she could feel the guilty grief he had never managed to overcome. ‘You didn’t know, Nikolai, and obviously she didn’t want you to know or she’d have told you how she was feeling.’
His lean, strong face froze. ‘I found out by reading her diary. I felt bad about doing that but I needed so badly to know...why...’ he completed jaggedly.
‘Of course you did. That’s human nature,’ she murmured softly, touched that he had finally chosen to confide in her, her heart full to overflowing with love.
She still didn’t know what it was about him that had made her fall so deeply in love at such speed, she only knew that the thought of life without him terrified her.
And in their differing ways that evening as they attended a party at Nikolai’s great-aunts’ house in Chania, both of them mulled over that conversation and reached certain conclusions.
After being widowed in their sixties, the twin sisters had set up home together again and as each of them had had several children, all of whom lived locally, they were rarely without visitors. From their very first visit, Nikolai and Ella had been made wonderfully welcome, long-lost members of the family being brought back into the fold. Ella had watched Nikolai slowly unfreeze and lose the cool distrustful front that he so often wore to the world. That particular evening, Ella saw him tripping up over one of the toddlers and pausing to pick him up and dry his tears.
‘He’ll make a good father, unlike his own,’ Dorkas Drakos pronounced with satisfaction.
‘Our brother was a misery all his life. His money never brought him happiness,’ Dido piped up at her sister’s elbow. ‘Nikolai is very different.’
Guilt was nagging at Ella as she watched Nikolai with the little boy. Maybe she shouldn’t wait until they returned to London to make her announcement...
Straightening, Nikolai met his bride’s luminous green eyes. He had to tell her the truth. She had said she loved him but had she meant it? Nikolai had never seen himself as remotely loveable. When other women had told him they loved him he had known in his bones that the only thing they really loved was his wealth and generosity, but he knew that wasn’t true of Ella, who thought he spent money far too freely on her and got embarrassed whenever he gave her anything.
But to tell her the truth would entail hurting her and he had never dreaded anything more than he dreaded that prospect. If she was too badly hurt would she fall out of love again? Would she walk away? Would she never again see him in the same light? Would he irrevocably damage all that was special between them?
The more those anxieties infiltrated Nikolai, the more determined he became to clear his conscience. He didn’t want to keep secrets from Ella. How could he expect her to trust him when he had yet to trust her with the truth about himself? Nor would he ever forget Ella insisting that with her he could be his real self. Even so that was still a major challenge for a male who had never before shown a woman his real self...
Early the following morning, however, everything changed without warning. They were having breakfast when Nikolai dug his phone out to answer a call. Ella watched his lean, darkly handsome face freeze and then saw the colour steadily draining from below his bronzed skin. His eyes cloaked as he put the phone down.
‘Cyrus Makris has been arrested and charged for paying two men to set my hotel on fire and for Desmond’s death,’ Nikolai relayed flatly.
With the air of a sleepwalker, Nikolai rose upright and walked back indoors.
Cyrus had organised that dreadful fire? Ella was appalled and disbelieving but she did not understand Nikolai’s reaction and she raced after him. ‘Nikolai...what Cyrus did was unspeakable but at least the police have nailed him for it!’
Nikolai spun back to her, his dark eyes tortured. ‘You don’t understand. How could you? This is my fault... Desmond’s death is down to me, no one else.’
AS NIKOLAI STRODE off to take refuge in the room he used as an office Ella froze in place in the hall, with the dogs wandering restively round her feet. How could the fire or the bar manager’s tragic death be laid at Nikolai’s door? How could he possibly be thinking that way?
Nikolai turned from the window as Ella appeared in the doorway to study him with frowning bemusement. He knew he wasn’t making sense. He knew she didn’t get it and a great sense of weight bowed down his wide shoulders.
‘Cyrus and I have been bitter enemies for a very long time,’ he told her flatly.
Belatedly Ella was recalling Cyrus’s sister’s comment at their wedding. She had intended to ask Nikolai for further clarification but had not got around to it because at the time it hadn’t seemed that important. ‘Why?’ she asked simply.
Nikolai’s spectacular bone structure went rigid. ‘He raped my sister...’
Ella paled and moved forward.
Nikolai leant back against his desk and raked long, taut fingers through his black hair, expelling his breath in a hiss. ‘It was all in the diary. That’s what I found out five years ago.’
Ella was filled with horror, recalling Cyrus’s violent assault on her. ‘What a nightmare that must have been for you.’
‘Cyrus has been accused of rape before but the accusations tend to be kicked out or withdrawn or they miraculously disappear,’ Nikolai advanced in a harsh undertone. ‘His father is an enormously powerful and wealthy man. I looked into the cases of Cyrus’s previous accusers. One of them dropped the case and now has a seat at the directors’ table. She rose up the ranks at meteoric speed and is now an affluent woman who flatly refuses to discuss the matter.’
‘You think she was paid off,’ Ella gathered.
‘Police and members of the legal profession have been bribed. A couple of other victims went from poverty to prosperity. I would assume they were compensated. But Sofia died,’ Nikolai emphasised with pained ferocity. ‘She was poor and powerless and she couldn’t bear to tell me what that bastard had done to her.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Ella urged quietly.
She poured Nikolai a fresh coffee on the veranda. Her hand wasn’t quite steady. She was in shock about what he was telling her about Cyrus. She was remembering the way Cyrus had attacked her and suddenly taking that assault a great deal more seriously.
