Nik arrived late, but he was there. He entered the back of the hall and surveyed the tables that had replaced the normal seats in the auditorium, searching for his sister and niece. He had just located them and plotted a course towards them when a ripple of applause made him decide to hang back until there was a break in proceedings so he could slide unobtrusively into his seat and no doubt get an earful for being late.
Maybe he’d slip out to the bar...? He hated this sort of occasion and he’d have been much happier to just make an anonymous donation, but he’d been guilted into coming, not by his sister for once, but his niece, who had gone into Bambi-eyes mode and reminded him that he’d never taken her to the show he had promised for her birthday.
He was in no position to deny it, although he didn’t remember the promise or the birthday, so here he was. He hadn’t smelt a set-up, not until he heard Chloe’s name announced, followed by another ripple of applause.
Nik only heard the name.
Theos, she looked magnificent!
Lust struck through his body as his glance moved from the woman standing on the stage to the larger image on the screen at the side of the stage. Elegant, assured, with the glamour of a siren of the bygone golden Hollywood era, she was wearing a dress that had to have sent every male temperature in the room sky-high... The thought of anonymous males lusting after her drew his brows into a straight line of disapproval above his eyes, but they relaxed when she began to speak.
A sigh of pleasure left his lips...he had missed that sound. The simple admission sent a shock through his body and he didn’t catch what she said as he focused instead on the sound of her voice.
She had a beautiful voice; pleasingly low and clear, it filled the room. She must have said something amusing because there was a soft ripple of laughter...except he didn’t feel like laughing. There was nothing humorous about the way he was feeling, the things he was feeling.
Did an alcoholic feel this way when they found the innocuous orange juice they’d just swallowed was laced with vodka?
What did they say about recovery? Something about the first step was accepting you had a problem...but what if you didn’t want to recover—ever?
Frustration burned through him as he stood there staring at her, a multitude of clashing emotions swirling inside him. He desired her, he resented her...he had missed her.
He had been only trying to help her and she had thrown his actions back in his face, accusing him of being the one with the problem, assigning the worst possible motives to his actions.
Why should he defend himself to this woman?
The woman who had tapped into his deepest fears, the weaknesses he despised in himself, and exposed them all to the light, and she’d made it sound as though he had a choice...?
She was wrong. Knowing it was enough, challenging her mistakes would have made it seem as though he needed to defend his actions, or, as she saw it, his lack of action... Move on, she’d said, but where was he meant to move on to? He couldn’t rewrite the past.
A man takes responsibility for his own actions, Nicolaos.
The memory of his father’s comment surfaced, smoothing out the creases of uncertainty at the edge of his mind.
Strange how some memories stuck. How old had he been? He couldn’t even remember what lie he’d told, or what childish rule he’d broken. Maybe the moment had stood out for him because it was outside the norm. His father had not had a hands-on parenting style; he had seemed as remote a figure as the portrait of his stern-looking great-grandfather that Nik always felt disapproved of him.
He remembered the shame he’d felt and the determination never to disappoint his father again; he’d be a man.
The idea that he hadn’t lived by that adage ever since was ludicrous. As for feeling guilty about how he’d handled matters with Chloe, she was the one who had seduced him that night they’d met!
Ah, poor you, the unwilling victim!
His inner dialogue was interrupted by a sudden roar of applause, and Nik realised that he was the only person in the room still looking at the figure in red on the stage. The spotlight, along with everyone else, was focused instead on a table near the front.
The big screen showed a little girl with a woman kneeling beside her, obviously her mother, encouraging her to go up on stage to receive her award, but the little girl was shaking her head emphatically.
There was an awkward silence as the child began to sob loudly then, and it was a heart-rending sound.
He was relieved and pleasantly surprised by the show of sensitivity as the camera moved off her face. No, not sensitivity, he saw then, they were just following the story. It focused on the tall figure in red who was now walking down the steps of the stage.
A murmur of approval went round the room that faded to a silence as Chloe began to weave her way through the tables towards the child. A silence Nik didn’t understand until he saw the image of her body on the screen. The camera had dropped to show the long legs, the daring slit and...everything inside him froze.
The lighting was harsh and the camera picked out every detail of the discoloured, twisted flesh.
‘Theos...!’His stomach muscles clenched, not in reaction to the sight of the ugly marks, but the pain they represented, the months of pain they represented. The explosion of pride he felt drew a raw-sounding gasp from a place deep inside him he hadn’t known existed. An emotion he had stubbornly refused to acknowledge.
Like everyone else he watched as she dropped down into a graceful crouch beside the little girl, the big screen showing her smile as she spoke.
There was another faint ripple of sound around the room when the little girl lifted her teary face from her mother’s shoulder. Chloe nodded and pointed to her own leg.