‘Do I?’
‘How can you doubt it? The last time I made love on a beach I was a teenager.’ He pulled her up with him and cast her a mocking smile. ‘Now we eat.’
All his tension had gone. He had said what he obviously felt he had to say. He had expressed regret for those five years. Guilt had taken a long while to hit him, but then, it was only now that Nik actually felt married, only now that he could make the effort to understand that he had not been her father’s only victim.
Max had been too shrewd a man not to foresee Nik’s resentment and bitterness at being forced into marriage and he could hardly have failed to be aware that Nik had other women. But Max hadn’t cared, hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t worried that she might be unhappy, Leah acknowledged painfully. He had caught her a very wealthy, influential husband and he had been very proud of that feat.
‘Why so serious?’ Nik probed.
‘I was thinking about Max.’
‘Wherever he is, he’s probably laughing like a hyena right now, you can be sure of that,’ he returned witheringly. ‘Here we are, doing exactly what he always wanted us to do, and sooner or later we’ll even have a child—’
‘A child?’ Leah was arrested by the concept, eyes wide.
His gaze narrowed, suddenly cool as winter. ‘One of those wriggly little pink things which scream a lot and require exhaustive house training,’ he extended very drily. ‘Most people find their helplessness cute and appealing...but maybe you don’t.’
She flushed, looked down into her glass. ‘I do...I just never thought about it,’ she muttered unevenly, forbearing to admit that she hadn’t thought along such lines in many years. But sudden warmth flooded her as she imagined carrying his baby.
He curved an arm round her, hauling her into the shelter of his sun-warmed body. ‘I thought maybe next year,’ he imported huskily, treating her to a dazzling smile in reward for having given the desired response.
‘It would be rather awkward for you if I refused, wouldn’t it?’ she said, abruptly rebelling against that arrogant stamp of approval. ‘Considering that you’re stuck with me anyway!’
‘Is that what you think?’
Leah wished she had kept her mouth shut. She could see the ambience of the last few glorious days going up in smoke in front of her eyes. ‘It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ she whispered tightly.
‘Our marriage is what we make of it.’ Shifting, Nik enclosed her in his strong arms, turned her round and settled her between his spread thighs. Insistent dark eyes levelled on hers, holding her fast. ‘Understand that, accept it,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t look back.’
And then he kissed her and refilled her glass and offered her some food but she wasn’t really hungry any more. She watched him eat with unblemished appetite and for the first time she allowed herself to think with optimism about their future. If he could put the past behind him so could she, and maybe the first thing she ought to do was tell him the truth about Paul...
‘Nik...?’
At the same time as she spoke someone called down from the top of the steep path that wound down from the villa. Nik uttered an imprecation and sprang upright in a movement indicative of his raw impatience. ‘I said no calls, no interruptions!’
She watched him stride closer and shout back. Then he spread his hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Urgent,’ he grated. ‘It had better be very urgent! Stay here...wait for me.’
He went up the path at speed. Leah helped herself to some luscious strawberries which had caught her eye. She studied her ring from all angles and smiled, quite euphorically happy all of a sudden. It was an effort to recall that she had to tell him about Paul when he returned because in all truth, she registered sleepily, she just didn’t want to remember how foolish she had been.
She woke up to noise, startled, disorientated. She saw a helicopter far above, hanging like a giant black bird, a second before it swept out across the bay. Pushing her hair off her hot face, she frowned down at her watch. She had been asleep for a couple of hours and Nik hadn’t come back.
Dimly she remembered the phone call—at least she assumed it had been a phone call. An urgent one. Clearly urgent enough to make Nik forget about her. She discovered her panties and pulled them on with a rueful giggle, tugging down her dress again, feeling deliciously abandoned.
She strolled into the cool of the villa and noticed the silence. She laid down the picnic stuff she had hauled up from the beach. The staff seemed to have vanished. An odd little shiver ran up her backbone—a premonition that something was wrong. Nik was in his office, studying something on his desk.
‘You forgot about me but I forgive you,’ she teased uncertainly from the doorway.
He raised his dark head and straightened. Eyes as treacherously cold and threatening as black ice focused on her and right there and then, in one devastating second, Leah knew that sixth sense had not betrayed her. She could feel the suppressed rage he was struggling to control, see it in the rigidity of his golden features as he stood there staring her down with all the silent intimidation he was capable of transmitting.
Leah paled. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘How did you guess?’ His deep voice shook perceptibly with the force of the emotions he was visibly tamping down.
‘What is it?’ Her heartbeat had shifted up into the region of her throat.
‘Come here,’ he murmured flatly. ‘I have something to show you.’
She had a terrible craven urge to run away but she quelled it and crossed the room.
Then she saw them—would have had to be blind to miss them. A collection of glossy photographs was fanned out across the desktop. Leah blinked, leant closer, steadying herself with one small hand. Her stomach gave a violent lurch and
dropped down to somewhere near her toes. Shock reverberated through her. The photos were of her and Paul.
In disbelief she stared and pushed one aside to examine another...and then another. Paul and her walking hand in hand down a crowded street, kissing in the wine bar, glued together in a doorway, smiling euphorically at each other. She squirmed, feeling as if Jaws had jumped out of a puddle at her and bitten a large chunk out of both her lower limbs. Her knees threatened to fold. Her eyes stung painfully. Why now? she wanted to scream in a sudden surge of anguished resentment. Why now when they had been so happy?’
‘Where did they come from?’ she whispered sickly.
‘Did you know that you had a photographer on your trail?’
‘No...’
‘Do you know what photographs of my wife with another man are worth on the open market?’
Her marriage? Leah looked numbly into space, temporarily shorn of reaction by shock. In spite of all her ridiculous precautions she had been recognised, followed and captured on film. And not once had she even suspected it.
Nik quoted a fantastic sum and then waited as though he expected some kind of response. She made none; could think of absolutely nothing to say.
‘These photos were offered to one of the tabloids,’ Nik grated. ‘If the owner of that rag had not been one of my closest friends and his editor aware of that fact they would have been published!’
‘You bought them,’ she gathered, a slender hand lifting to press against her throbbing temples.
‘You’re my wife! What choice did I have?’ he raked at her with raw aggression, every bitten-out syllable expressing his fury. ‘Cristo!’
‘Stop shouting at me!’ she gasped in growing distress. ‘I’m sorry about this but I couldn’t have stopped it happening...and anyway it’s over with Paul! It was over before I walked out on you in London. I probably should have told you that before now—’
‘Spare me your lies,’ he cut in with ruthless, icy precision.
Leah froze, lifting darkened eyes to his. ‘I’m not lying. It is over.’