HAD THE WORLD just tilted on its side? Had an earthquake just happened? Her vision was blurred...her heart seemed to have stopped.
‘What?’
The word shot from her like a bullet. A bullet that found its target in the blankness of Anatole’s face.
‘Are you insane?’ she shot again.
He lifted a hand. It was a jerky movement, as if designed to stop more bullets. As if to silence her.
‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘It’s the obvious solution to the situation!’
Christine’s eyes flashed. It felt as if her heart had still not started beating yet. ‘What situation?’ she demanded. ‘There is no situation! I am Vasilis’s widow. He has left me perfectly well provided for and even more so his son—a son who will before long no longer be so sad at the loss of his pappou and who will grow up adored by me and protected by Vasilis’s wealth. What on earth about that needs a solution?’
Anatole’s expression shifted. Something moved in his eyes. But his words, when he spoke, were stony. ‘Nicky needs a father. All children do. With Vasilis gone, irrespective of whether Nicky thought of him as his grandfather, another man must take the role he played in his son’s life.’
His eyes rested on Christine, shifting in their regard.
‘You are not yet thirty, Tia—Christine—and it is impossible to envisage you not remarrying at some point.’ He lifted his hand again. ‘I take back what I said,’ he said stiffly, ‘about your likely dissolute lifestyle as the wealthy widow of a deceased much older husband.’
He felt the fury of Christine’s eyes hurling daggers on him, even for saying that, even with his stiff apology, but he kept on speaking. It was vital he do so. Imperative.
‘But it is inevitable that you will remarry,’ he persisted. Something flashed darkly in his eyes. ‘That neighbour of yours, Barcourt, would be only too eager—or any other man! And I do not mean that as an insult. I mean it as a compliment, Christine.’
He gritted his teeth.
‘I appreciate that you would never marry anyone who would not be a doting stepfather to Nicky. And Barcourt—I give him this freely—is clearly cut out to be an excellent father. But he would not, as I said, make a good husband for you.’
His eyes rested a moment on her, his face taut, his eyes implacable.
‘I would,’ he said.
He took an incised breath.
‘I would make an excellent husband for you. Think about it...’
He leant forward a little, as if to give emphasis to what he was saying—what he had to say to make her hear. Accept what had forced its way into his head and now could not be banished.
Urgently, he forged on. ‘I am the closest relative to Nicky on his father’s side. I discount my own father. He would be as little interested in Nicky as he was in me,’ he said scathingly.
Christine could hear something in his voice that for the first time since he had tilted the world sideways for her with what he had said, stopping the beating of her heart, shifted her to react. There had been dismissal in his voice, but something else too. Something that she recognised. Recognised because she herself had been possessed by it totally and absolutely five years ago.
Pain—pain at rejection...at not being wanted.
But Anatole was speaking still, making her listen to him.
‘Who better to be a father to Nicky than myself—his closest blood kin? And who better to be your husband, Christine...’ his voice changed suddenly, grew huskier ‘...than me?’
His eyes washed over her—she could feel it like a silken brush over her senses.
‘Who better than me?’ he said again, his voice lower, that brush across her senses coming again.
She felt fatal faintness drumming at her again. She desperately wanted to speak, but she was voiceless. Bereft of everything except the sensation of his gaze washing over her, weakening her, dissolving her.
She tried to fight it—oh, dear God, she tried! Tried to remember all the pain he’d caused her.
But his eyes were washing over her now as they had done so many times, so long ago.
‘I know you, Tia,’ he said now, and the name he’d always called her by came naturally to him...as naturally as the wash of his eyes over her. ‘And you know me. And we both know how compatible we are.’
He took another breath.
‘And now we’re much more so. You have matured into this woman you have become—poised, elegant, able to hold your own in company that would have terrified you five years ago! Five years ago you were young and inexperienced. Oh, I don’t just mean sexually...’
He’d said the word casually, but it brought a heat to Christine’s cheeks she would have given a million pounds for them not to have, and she beat it back as desperately as she could,
‘I mean in all the ways of the world.’
His eyes slipped away, stared out as if into the past, a frown folding his brow.
He spoke again—with difficulty now. ‘I didn’t want to marry you then, Tia. I didn’t want to marry anyone. Not just you—anyone at all. There was no reason for me to marry, and many not to. But now...’ His eyes came back to her, sweeping in like a beacon, skewering her helplessly. ‘Now there is every reason. To make a stable family for Nicky, a loving family—’ He broke off, as if that had been hard for him to say.
For a moment Christine could not answer. Too much was pouring through her head—far, far too much. Then, with a scissoring breath, she said, ‘I will not have a husband who despises me.’
It was tersely expressed, vehemently meant.
She saw him shake his head.
‘I don’t,’ he answered. ‘I don’t despise you—’
Her eyes flashed blue fire. ‘Don’t lie to me, Anatole! You called me a cheap little adventuress! You thought me a scheming, ruthless gold-digger, who manipulated your hapless uncle into putting a wedding ring on my finger! And you thought I tried exactly the same thing on you—was perfectly prepared to get myself pregnant—’ her mouth bit out the word as if it was rotten ‘—to make you marry me!’
His face turned stony. ‘Whatever your motives for marrying Vasilis, I accept that you have not profited from his death and that you are devoted to your son.’
His eyes shifted again, and a troubled look drifted across them as a new thought formed—one that he had not had before. Had she wanted a baby so much that she’d been happy to marry a man so much older than her? Could it possibly be that it had not been his wealth that had made her marry his uncle? Had his riches not been the driving force behind her desire to marry Vasilis? Otherwise, why would she have insisted on not being the main beneficiary of his will?
He looked at her now—directly, eye to eye.
‘Why did you marry my uncle?’
The strained look was instantly back in her face. ‘I don’t wish to discuss it. Think what you want, Anatole. I don’t care.’
There was weariness in her voice, resignation.
With a jerking movement she got to her feet. ‘It’s time you left,’ she said, her voice terse.
He stood also. Seeming to tower over her as Vasilis had never done.
Memory drummed in her, fusing the past with the present, making it impossible to separate them. Ramming home to her just how vulnerable she was to the man who stood there, a man who had always been able to melt her bones with a single glance from his deep, dark eyes. Who quickened her senses, heated the blood in her veins.
He wants to marry me—
The words were in her head—unbelievable, impossible. Yet they were there.
‘You haven’t given me your answer yet,’ Anatole said.
His dark gaze was fixed on her. But this was the present, not the past. The past was over, would never return. Could never return.
With a summoning of her strength, she pulled herself together. ‘I gave it to you instantly,’ she countered. ‘What you are proposing is insane, and I will treat it as such. And in the morning, Anatole, if you have any brain cells left in your head, you will agree with me.’
She walked out into the hall, moving to the front door, opening it pointedly.
He followed her out of the dining room. ‘Are you really throwing me out of my uncle’s house?’ he said.
There was an edge in his voice that cut at her.
She pressed her lips together. ‘Anatole, my husband was thirty years older than me. Do you think I haven’t learnt to be incredibly careful about my reputation?’ Her voice twisted. ‘I know that my reputation can mean nothing to you, but for Nicky’s sake have the decency to leave.’
He walked towards her. There was something in the way he approached her that made all the nerve fibres in her body quiver. Suddenly the space between them was charged with static electricity, flickering with lightning.
He looked at her speculatively. ‘Do I tempt you, Tia?’
There was a caress in his voice, intimacy in the way his eyes washed over her. A caress and an intimacy that had once been as familiar to her as breathing. That she had not experienced for five long years. That was now alive between them again.
She could not breathe, could not move.
His hand reached for her and he drew one finger gently, oh-so-gently, down her cheek, brushing it across her parted lips. It felt like silk and velvet, and faintness drummed in her ears.
So long...it’s been so long...
She felt her heart cry out his name, but it was from far away. Oh, so long ago. Echoing down the years to now—to this unbearable moment.
‘You are more beautiful now than you ever were,’ he said softly.
His eyes were holding hers, dissolving hers.
‘How could I forget how beautiful you are? How could I not want you again, so incredibly beautiful, so very lovely...?’
She felt her body sway, had no strength to hold herself upright. It was as if all that was keeping her standing was his eyes, holding hers.
‘So beautiful...’ he murmured, his voice as soft as feathers.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, his mouth descended and his lips touched hers, grazed hers, moved slowly across her sweet, tender mouth. She made no move, not one—could not...would not. Dared not...
He drew back, his eyes searching hers. ‘Once, Tia, you would have melted into my arms.’
He smiled—a warm, embracing smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, that made her remember all that had once been between them.
With that single, long, casual finger he tilted up her chin. ‘So tiny, so petite...’ He smiled again. His expression changed. ‘You’ll melt for me again, sweet Tia.’
He let his finger drop, took a breath, gave another final smile. Of confidence...of certainty.
What he wanted was right—was obvious. It was absolutely what should happen between them. It was an impulse, yes, but it had been impulse that had made him pile her into his car that afternoon all those years ago, drive off with her, take her to his apartment...his bed.
And had he not done so she would not be here now—his uncle’s widow, the mother of a fatherless child, a young boy who needed a loving father as every child needed one, as every child needed a loving mother too, who made their child the centre of their universe. That was what he could do for Nicky—his uncle’s child. Forge for him a loving family, keep him safe in that love all through his childhood... All his life.
I did not have that. Nicky will.
He smiled again, seeing how everything would resolve itself. Nicky would have himself, Anatole, to raise him, and he would have Tia—recreated now as Christine. Once, marriage had seemed impossible to him—fatherhood out of the question. But now, as emotion swept up in him, he knew that everything had changed for ever.
The future was crystal-clear to him and it was centred on this woman—this woman who was back in his life. It made clear, obvious sense all round. His desire for her was stronger than it had ever been. Her mature beauty drew him now even more than her ingénue loveliness had moved him—on that count there could be no doubt.
He spoke again to her, his final words for this evening, his tone a low, sensual husk, his eyes a caress.
‘You’ll melt, Christine,’ he said, with promise in his voice, ‘on our wedding night.’
* * *
Christine lay in bed, sleepless, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. Thoughts, emotions, confusion—all whirled chaotically around in her head. She could make sense of nothing. Nothing at all. Every now and then she would try and snatch at the whirling maelstrom, to try and capture it, but it always eluded her. Fragments skimmed past her again, just out of range.
He wants to marry me.
He despises me.
He kissed me.
None of it made sense—none of it—yet round and round the fragments whirled.
She tossed and turned, and found no rest at all.
But in the morning, when finally she awoke from the heavy, mentally exhausted slumber into which she’d fallen in the small hours, only one fragment was vivid in her head.
Temptation.
Oh, she could tell herself as much as she liked that it was insane that a man who had thrown the accusations at her that he had, a man who had told her to her face that he never wanted to marry her, should now be offering to do just that. Of his own free will.
It was insane that she should pay even the slightest attention to what he’d said. What he’d done. And yet tendrils of something writhed through her brain, finding soft, vulnerable places to cling to, to penetrate. She could feel it spreading in her mind...something so dangerous it terrified her.
Temptation.
Deadly, fatal temptation.
She had felt it once before—just as strong, just as dangerous. Once before she had been about to do something that with every instinct in her body she had known to be wrong. And the conflict had almost destroyed her. Would have destroyed her had it not been for Vasilis.
She had poured it all out to him that desperate day in Athens, when Anatole had made it so ruthlessly clear how little she meant to him—had set out the only terms under which he was prepared to continue with her, and what the consequences would be if she rejected those terms, broke them.
And Vasilis had listened. Had let her weep and sob and pour out all her misery and desperation. And then kindly, calmly and oh-so-generously, he had put forward another possibility for her.
He saved me. He saved me from the danger I was in of yielding to that overpowering temptation, that nightmare torment, that desperate desolation of realising that Anatole was a million miles away from what I yearned for.
Restlessly now, all these years later, she crossed to the window of her bedroom to look down over the gardens. She loved this house—this quiet, tranquil house that was so redolent of her marriage to Vasilis. He had brought her peace when her life had been in pieces.
Her eyes moved to the door set in the wall that led into a little dressing room, and from there into Vasilis’s bedroom. A room that was now empty of him.
I miss him. I miss his kindness, his company, his wisdom.
Yet already, in the long months since she’d stood at his bleak graveside, he was beginning to fade in her head. Or perhaps it was not that he was fading, but that another was forcing himself into her consciousness. Into the space that had once been her husband’s.
Just as her husband had once taken the space that had belonged to the man now replacing him.
I worked so hard to free myself of Anatole. Yet now he is back in my head, dominating everything.
And he was offering her now, with supreme, bitter irony, what he had never wanted to offer her before.
‘Do I tempt you?’
Anatole had taunted her with those words and she had felt the force of them...the temptation to let herself be tempted. And then she had felt the touch of his mouth on hers...
With a smothered cry of anguish she whirled about, forcing herself to get on with the day—to put aside the insanity that Anatole was proposing, force it out of her head.
But when, mid-morning, she went up to Nicky’s nursery to spend some time with him and let Nanny Ruth have a break, the first thing Nicky did was ask where Anatole was. She gave some answer—she knew not what—and was dismayed to see his little face fall. Even more dismayed to discover that he remembered what he’d said so sleepily the night before. What Anatole had said.
His little face quivered. ‘He said my pappou sent him to look after me. But where is he?’
She did her best to divert him, practising his reading and writing with him, until suddenly his eyes brightened and Christine, too, heard a car arriving—crunching along the front drive.
A bare few minutes later, rapid, masculine footsteps sounded outside, the nursery door opened, and there was Anatole.
With a whoop of glee Nicky rushed to him, to be swung up into Anatole’s arms. Christine could only gaze at them, emotion scything inside her powerfully at the sight of her son’s blazing delight at Anatole’s arrival—and Anatole, his face softening, showed in every line of his body his gladness to see Nicky.
He turned to Christine, with Nicky held effortlessly in the crook of his arm, one little hand snaked around his neck, and the pair of them smiled broadly at her.
So like each other...
There was a humming in her ears, blood rushing, and she could only blink helplessly. Then Anatole was speaking...
‘Who wants to go on an adventure today?’ he asked.
Nicky’s eyes lit up. ‘Me! Me!’ came the excited reply.
Anatole laughed and swung him down on his feet again, his eyes going to Christine.
‘It’s a glorious day out there—how about an outing? All three of us?’
She opened her mouth to give any number of objections, but in the face of Nicky’s joyous response could not voice them. ‘Why not?’ she said weakly. ‘I’ll let Nanny know.’
She made her escape, finding Nanny Ruth in her sitting room, watching a programme about antiques on the TV and finishing off a cup of tea.
‘What a good idea!’ she said, beaming when Christine told her of Anatole’s plans. She looked at her employer. ‘It will distract Nicky. And, if I might say...’ Christine got the impression that she was picking her works carefully ‘... I am very glad that young Mr Kyrgiakis is finally in touch.’ She nodded meaningfully. ‘He’s clearly very fond of Nicky already. It will be important for Nicky to have him in his life.’
Her eyes never left Christine’s and then she took a breath, as if having said enough, and got to her feet.
‘Now, where does young Mr K plan on going today? I’ll make sure Nicky has the right clothes.’
She headed into the playroom, leaving Christine feeling outmanoeuvred on all fronts. With deep misgiving she went downstairs, fetching a jacket for herself.
A whole day in Anatole’s company—with only Nicky to shelter behind.
Tension netted her, and she felt her heart-rate increasing. She knew what was causing it to do so. Knew it and feared it.