The silence stretched between them. Outside on the street she could hear the dim roar of traffic. But all she could hear in the room was the thud of her heartbeat, the pounding of her pulsing blood in her head.
Her mouth was dry suddenly, as parched as a desert. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t.’ He paused again, then spoke. Said the words that were within him. That had been within him for all these years. Never said. Never spoken. Until now.
‘I fell in love with you, Sophie, four years ago. I fell in love with the girl with almond blossom in her hair. The girl whose smile made my heart catch. The girl who enchanted me, captivated me! The girl I desired more than any other woman I’d known—ever could know. I fell in love with you.’
The silence was absolute. Not even the beating of her heart was audible.
Perhaps my heart has stopped. Perhaps I’ve died. I must have died—this cannot be real, it can’t be.
She seemed to sway minutely.
‘That’s why I stayed with you that night. Because I knew you were my heart’s love—that you were going to be mine all my life. And I knew you loved me, Sophie. Knew it with the certainty of one who loves. Every look, every touch confirmed it!’ His voice changed, and something in it made Sophie’s heart constrict. ‘Every kiss confirmed it, Sophie. Every caress. You took me to heaven that night, and though I knew I should have resisted, should have waited until I had made you mine as my bride, I could not! It was impossible to do so! So I made you mine in love, with love, mine for ever and eternity! And then—’
She saw his eyes shadow, and it pierced her—pierced her to the core.
‘And then you told me what I meant to you.’ His voice had changed again. Emptied. Become a hollow place. ‘I wasn’t the man you loved. I was only the man you wanted to marry. Because then everything would be “wonderful”!’ He mocked the girlish gush of her accent, a mockery that lacerated like a knife across her skin. ‘“Wonderful!”’ he echoed. ‘Because then Daddy’s company would be safe, and you would be safe too—the cosseted princess, Daddy’s darling, protected from the world, cocooned in your music, your studies, your artless, easy, effortless life! And you would have Daddy, and Daddy would have his company, and you would have me, too, and everything would be just “wonderful”…’
She was white—as white as a sheet. Her face stricken.
She could only whisper. Anything more was beyond her. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Everything you said. It’s what I was. Pampered and protected. Totally indulged. Looking for shining white knights and silly, selfish happy ever afters!’
She could bear nothing more. The weight of it was crushing her. The weight of knowing that Nikos had been offering her a gift so precious, the gift of his love that she had yearned for, prayed for, and then feared she had only dreamt it hopelessly. The weight was grinding her heart to ashes.
If I had waited—if I had trusted him—
‘I ruined it all,’ she whispered. Anguish at what she had done stabbed her. What she had lost and destroyed. Yet through the anguish another emotion pierced, like a brilliant diamond light. He loved me! He loved me all along! Loved me all along! The wondrous joy of the realisation scintillated in her consciousness like a precious jewel.
But he was speaking again, and each word fell like a blow, shattering her brief joy.
‘When I realised what I meant to you—a financial rescue package—it made me cruel. Vicious. That’s why I laid into you. Said what I did and left you.’
She bit her lip. The pain was fitting. ‘I deserved it,’ she said, her voice low with self-hatred. ‘I deserved what you said to me—what you did!’
‘Did you?’ The same light, neutral tone was in his voice.
Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes! I was stupid and selfish and spoilt, and I thought that if only we were married you would sort everything out for my father and save him from ruin.’
His eyes were still resting on her, never flickering by a fraction. But there was something in their depths, something she could not recognise. Something powerful and veiled. ‘And if you’d never found out that day about your father’s financial problems, would you still have tried to persuade me to stay the night?’
She dropped her eyes. Swallowed. He wanted truth—he could have truth. Deserved truth.
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Why, Sophie? Why would you have wanted me to stay the night?’
She threw back her head. ‘This is pointless! It didn’t happen that way, so what’s the use of asking?’
‘Just answer, Sophie.’
‘What for?’ she countered fiercely.
‘Was it because you hoped that I would marry you?’
‘Yes!’
He was stripping her soul bare and she could not stop him.