CHAPTER FOUR

L EANDROS LAY SLEEPLESS on his bed at the hotel. On the other side of the city was Eliana...

He was still shocked by the brutal reality of just how low she had sunk. The cramped, run-down studio flat, the whole shabby apartment block in the back end of town—was that really what she had come down to?

Well, he could get her out of there. Lift her back up to something more like the life she had once lived.

He frowned. Why had she not bitten his hand off when he’d made her his offer? Did she have anything better in mind? His expression hardened. Well, if she did, she wouldn’t be getting it from him. He’d been totally upfront with her—she wasn’t going to get the chance to have any illusions about what he was offering.

And there was nothing sordid about what he was offering. He wanted an affair with her, a temporary liaison that would give them something each of them wanted. She got a ticket out of that dump of an apartment, and he—well, he got what had been getting under his skin ever since that damn night in Athens all those weeks ago.

He stared, hands behind his head, up at the ceiling of his hotel room, but what he was seeing was not that. It was the image of Eliana, sitting opposite him at the taverna, without a scrap of make-up, in those chain store clothes, her hair pulled starkly off her face—and yet with the same unforgettable beauty that she had always possessed.

His mind slipped further back...back to that holiday he’d reminded her of, their week in Crete. Happiness had consumed him. He’d stepped into another world, with Eliana at his side. The week had been magical—and intensely frustrating too. For her kisses had been an incitement for so much more—and yet she had always drawn back. His only consolation—and it brought a twist to his mouth even now—was the fact that she had found it as hard to draw back from him as he had from her. She’d wanted him—and he’d done his damnedest to show her just how much he wanted her! Done his damnedest to show her just how much she wanted him in return even as, breathless and bemused, she’d pulled away from his embrace in the shadows of that quiet cobbled street in the old part of Chania, where their hotel—a converted merchant’s mansion—had lain a few metres beyond.

‘Let me come to your room tonight...’ His voice had been husky as he’d moved to reach for her again.

She’d held him at bay. ‘We agreed. Oh, Leandros, don’t make it harder for me than it already is. I want so much to wait for our wedding day...our wedding night...’

There’d been a catch in her voice, her eyes glowing partly with pleading, partly with the desire that he knew had quickened in her as he’d kissed her as seductively as he’d known how.

And he’d honoured her plea—knowing how important it was for her.

His expression changed again, became etched in bitterness. Now, with the acid lens of hindsight, he knew just why it had been so important for her.

So she could go a virgin to Damian’s bed.

Had she kept her virginity deliberately from the off? In case something happened to prevent her from marrying him? Would she have given herself only when his ring was on her finger, her access to the Kastellanos wealth secured?

Well, now there would be no ring—and all that she would get from him materially, as he had informed her over dinner, would be the couture wardrobe he would provide, and whatever piece of jewellery he chose to bestow upon her when he had sent her on her way, which she would be able to sell to fund her in Athens.

When I’ve had enough of her.

And then he could get his life back and be free of her—finally. Finally free.

She will never haunt me again, neither in dreams, nor in waking. I’ll be done with her and her power will be gone.

A nerve ticked in his cheek, and he felt his hands clench behind his head as he went on staring sightlessly at the blank and empty ceiling overhead.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, watch where you’re going!’

The angry outburst from a shopper was lost on Eliana as she made a muttering apology. Her mind was not on restocking shelves. It was like a tangled skein of wool—knotted and impossible, riven with emotions, a tormented mess. It had been like that all week. Ever since the bombshell Leandros had lobbed at her—as if turning up at her apartment hadn’t been bombshell enough.

Through the tangled mess in her head one phrase kept going round and round and round. She kept hearing his voice saying it.

‘I want you to come back to me.’

It was incising itself into her ceaselessly, remorseless, by day and by night. Not letting her go. Tormenting her. She’d tried to overlay it, to smother it, to deafen it with the words she’d said to him, dragged out of her numbly as she’d sat opposite him in the restaurant.

‘Thank you, but no.’

She wanted to hang on to them—needed to hang on to them...was desperate to hang on to them. But with each passing day they were getting fainter and fainter.

Oh, dear God, why had Leandros come back into her life? Why couldn’t he have stayed out of it? Just gone on ignoring her existence as he had for six long, bleak years.

I don’t need this, and I don’t want it—I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!

She had enough to cope with—oh, so much more than enough.

She stretched up, replenishing the packets of pasta and rice. The tangled mess of her thoughts and emotions was writhing now, like a nest of snakes, and Leandros’s voice was in her head, over and over and over again.

‘I want you to come back to me.’

She closed her eyes in anguish. She must not listen to those words—must not heed their power...their tainted temptation to claim again in any way, on any terms, what she once had had.

Leandros desiring her...

As she still desired him...had always done...would always do...

The knowledge was impossible to deny.

In her mind’s vivid eye she saw him again as he had been at that fateful party to celebrate Chloe’s engagement—and then as he had been only a handful of days ago, striding back into her life. Saw that he still possessed exactly what he had always possessed—the ability to kindle in her that flame of desire.

But I forfeited my right to desire him.

Her eyes shadowed. She had no right to him...to anything of him. Not any more...

Yet memory played again in her head of how they’d walked along the seafront, how she had denied him, all the while trembling in his arms at his kisses.

Guilt smote her again—always, always guilt. Guilt at having betrayed his love for her and denied him his desire for her. The desire he had told her he now wanted to slake...

The tangled, tormenting knot of thoughts and feelings in her head writhed again. How could she be free of her endless guilt? Free of Leandros—finally free? Free of what she had once felt for him? Free of the desire that now could only be tainted by what she’d done to him?

Slowly, fatefully, the words shaped themselves in her head.

If I went to him now, as he asks of me—if I did I could finally move on...put behind me what I did, what I destroyed.

Her guilt would go—the guilt she had felt ever since she had returned his ring, accepted Damian’s in its place.

I could be free of it—free of that guilt. Because I would be offering him now what I never offered him then, what is all that he wants of me. And that would free him, too, wouldn’t it? He can be purged of me. He can hate me still, but I can make amends—and in doing so free myself.

If she simply went to Paris with Leandros...

All through her shift the thought stayed with her.

All the while she walked back to her studio that evening.

Stayed with her as she sat down on her narrow bed with its lumpy mattress, reached inside her handbag. Took out the business card in the zip pocket. Stared down at it.

She got out her cheap phone and numbly, without thinking about it, without letting herself think about it, she started to tap in the number from the stiff white card.

Sent a text to Leandros.

Scarcely believing that she was doing so.

And yet she was.

Leandros sat in one of the several business lounges at Thessaloniki airport, where he’d just arrived off the shuttle from Athens, drumming his fingers on his briefcase. His flight to Paris was about to be called—and there was no sign of Eliana.

Yet she had agreed to be here. He hadn’t spoken to her—she wouldn’t take his calls—but she had texted, and it had been by text that he’d told her when to arrive.

So, where was she?

Was she going to show up or not?

He could feel tension whipping across his shoulders. His expression was set, his gaze fixed on the entrance to the lounge. He was oblivious to the fact that he was being eyed up both by the hostess in charge of refreshments and by a female passenger across the lounge, trying to catch his eye. Oblivious to everything except his impatience to see Eliana walk through that damn door...

The flight announcement started, and his tension cranked up even more. OK, so they would want to board the business class passengers first, but there was no immediate urgency. All the same...

She was burning in his head.

And there was only one way to extinguish that flame, that fire.

His gaze darkened. He hated it that it should be so... Despising himself for his weakness... Resenting her for her power to make him so weak.

I should not want her. I should not want to have her with me, to take her to Paris, to claim what she denied me—denied me before she betrayed me, my faithless fiancée...

But it did not matter that he could hear his own thoughts jeering at him—it made no difference. Nothing had made any difference—not since seeing her again in Athens, and then, last week, succumbing to the temptation, to the fire in his head that she had kindled, to confront her here in Thessaloniki. To put to her his contemptuous offer, knowing she would accept it—because how else was she going to get herself out of the gutter she’d fallen into by failing to give Jonas Makris the grandson he’d craved?

So... His darkening thoughts circled back to the present. Where the hell was she?

One of the airline staff was approaching him, a smile on her face and a clipboard in her hand, inviting him to board.

‘I’m waiting for someone,’ he said curtly, and she nodded smilingly and moved on to another passenger—but not without a lingering glance back at him, to which he was as oblivious as he was any other female’s attention.

There was only one female he wanted to pay him attention—to turn up.

And she was there—there in the entrance to the lounge.

He felt emotions stab through him—a mix of them. Anger that she’d run so late, relief that she’d arrived at all, and something even more potent...more stabbing. Something that made his gaze focus on her like a laser beam, taking in the entirety of her in an instant, imprinting it on his retinas.

She was looking fraught—that was the only word for it. Strain in her face, in her eyes, as she hesitantly showed her boarding pass to the attendant at the door, gripping her bag—a shoulder bag that seemed, he thought, to be doubling as a carry-on, bulky and bulging.

He’d told her not to pack, that he’d be supplying her wardrobe, but presumably there were first-night necessities she would need before he took her shopping in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré tomorrow.

He pushed the thought of ‘first-night’ from him...got to his feet, strode across to her.

‘You’ve cut it fine,’ he said. His voice was still curt, and it came out like an admonishment.

She flushed. ‘The bus took longer than I thought it would,’ she said.

He frowned. ‘I told you to take a taxi—that I’d reimburse you the fare.’

She didn’t answer, only paid attention to the airline staffer who was hovering, keen for them to board.

Leandros nodded, taking Eliana’s elbow. He felt her freeze, and for some reason it annoyed him. But she went with him all the same, disengaging as they left the lounge to make their way towards their gate.

Leandros glanced at her as they walked. She was looking neat, but that was about the only compliment he could pay her. He frowned inwardly. It was...strange... That was the only word he could come up with. To see her dressed so cheaply. Almost as strange—and that was definitely not the only word—as seeing her reduced to living in that squalid rental apartment.

He quickened his pace slightly, unconsciously. Well, that poverty-stricken, squalid existence she’d been forced into was about to change. From now on her luck was looking up—courtesy of himself. Courtesy of the fire burning in his head that only she could extinguish.

When he had got what he wanted from her—then, and only then—he could be free of that burning fire, so disastrously rekindled. He wished to God it wasn’t so—wished to God he’d never set eyes on her again. Wished to God that she’d never been widowed, simply so that their paths would never have crossed again and she would have remained out of his reach for ever by her marriage, instead of only six long years.

But now...

Now she was boarding a plane with him, and they were heading to Paris. To have the ‘honeymoon’ she had denied him. And after that, and only after that, he would, if there was any justice in this world, finally be free of her.

Finally.

‘Champagne, madam?’

The steward was proffering a tray with two glasses of gently foaming flutes on it, together with little bowls of salted almonds.

Eliana shook her head, but Leandros simply reached out and took the two flutes with a swift ‘thank you’, placing them on the table set between their spacious seats. The steward placed the nuts down as well, and then disappeared.

Leandros picked up a flute and held the other one out to Eliana. Passively, she took it, trying to calm her jangled nerves. Trying not to be so burningly aware of sitting there beside him in the capacious first-class seat. But he was dominating her senses—as he always had.

He always did—always! From the first moment I saw him there was never another man for me. Never...

Not Damian—poor, hapless Damian. Trying to please his overbearing father with a bride Jonas Makris considered suitable for his son—irrespective of what his son might want...

Poor Damian—and yet we both got what each of us wanted from our marriage.

A marriage that had ended with his car smashed to pieces on that treacherous road a year and a half ago, leaving the consequences that it had...

‘To Paris—and to our time together there.’

Leandros’s low voice interrupted thoughts she didn’t want to have...memories she wanted even less. He clinked his glass against hers, a smile pulling at his sculpted mouth. Yet it was a smile that was disquieting. Like the silky note in his voice.

‘To our days,’ he said. ‘And to our nights...’

For a moment his eyes held hers, and then she broke contact, knowing colour had stained across her cheekbones. Knowing why. Because when he looked at her like that...

More memories she must not have came to her. Of how he had once looked at her like that all the time, making no secret of his desire for her—a desire that she, in those heady, intoxicating days of her love for him, had made no secret of returning.

She took a hasty sip of her champagne, letting the soft mousse fill her mouth, divert her senses from the burning consciousness of Leandros so close beside her.

His power over her senses was as undeniable as ever—and yet now, in the toxic aftermath of what she had done to him all those years ago, he had never been more distant...

Sadness filled her. Yes, she had decided...chosen...resolved to come to him now, like this, for the reasons she had justified to herself and for the sake of the freedom that they must somehow find from each other. It had been her choice—and yet now the reality of it weighed her down. Mocked her.

Had this been our honeymoon six long years ago...flying to Paris, newly wedded, setting off on our life’s adventure together...oh, how blissful it would have been.

Instead...

She suppressed a sigh. There was no point in looking back. She had destroyed a past that never was—now she had to cope with the present.

She took another mouthful of champagne. It would likely make her light-headed, but it would provide an insulating layer over her ragged emotions.

Leandros had got some kind of business journal out of his briefcase and was immersed in it. She was glad of it—it gave her time for her breathing to steady, her colour to subside. She helped herself to the salted almonds, feeling a pang of hunger. She’d been far too stressed to eat today, trying to summon the nerve to actually get to the airport at all. She hoped that some kind of meal would be served on the flight. Presumably there would be dinner that evening. And then afterwards, later on—

Her thoughts cut out—absolutely cut out. She could not think ahead to the coming night—dared not. The resolve she’d felt as she’d sent that fateful text to Leandros last week seemed impossible to believe in now.

She felt the aircraft push back, the engine note change. They were taxiing towards the runway. Airborne, she leant back in her seat, closed her eyes. Perhaps Leandros would think her asleep. It would be easier if he did. Though ‘easier’ was a relative term...

‘Are you all right?’

Leandros’s voice made her open her eyes, turn her head towards him. He was frowning.

‘Thank you, I’m fine,’ she said. Her voice was clipped.

‘I’ve never flown with you before,’ he said slowly. ‘When we went to Crete we went by sea.’

Memory was instant and painful. Standing on the deck of the ferry, leaning on the rail, the wind in her hair, Leandros’s arm around her, her head nestled against his shoulder, not a care in the world. And so incredibly happy.

She dropped her eyes, reached for her champagne again. No point remembering that happiness. It was gone. She had destroyed it and it could never return. Never.

‘So, are you a nervous flyer?’

She couldn’t say there was concern in his voice, but the fact that he was asking at all showed something—though what it was she had no idea.

She shook her head. ‘No, though I haven’t flown much. When my mother was alive we went to England sometimes, to visit the relatives who hadn’t objected to her marrying my father, and for her to catch up with friends from her youth. But after she died that all stopped, really. I just stayed with my father, because—’

She stopped. Her mother’s death when she was eighteen had devastated her father, and she had centred her life around him, forgoing college, keeping him company in their beautiful but isolated house out in the countryside. It had been a quiet existence.

And then one of her school friends had invited her to her twenty-first birthday party at her family villa in Glyfada, on the Athens Riviera, and she hadn’t been able to resist going, even though her father had fretted. And it had been there, out on the terrace, bathed in lights and music, guests dancing and partying, overlooking the waters of the Saronic Gulf, that she had first seen Leandros.

She had fallen for him on the spot, ineluctably drawn towards the tall, self-assured, oh-so-good-looking man in his mid-twenties, unable to tear her eyes away. He’d been talking—flirting—with a sophisticated female wearing a lot of make-up and a revealing dress, who had clearly been all over him. Then he’d glanced across the crowded terrace—and their eyes had met.

For a timeless moment the world had stopped, the music had been silenced, the noise and chatter too—and then, as if in slow motion, she’d seen him turn back to the other girl, smile pleasantly but dismissively, and make his way across the terrace. Straight to her.

He’d smiled down at her.

And she’d been lost.

That was all it had taken—for both of them.

‘Because...?’ Leandros’s prompt brought her back to the present—the present in which that enchanted past could never exist again.

She gave a tiny shrug, not wanting to think about any aspect of the past.

‘It was convenient,’ she answered.

She saw the flight attendant moving down the gangway, proffering more champagne, handing out menu cards, and held her flute out for a top-up. It was probably rash, but she felt she needed it. Then she studied the menu, choosing the chicken option. Leandros glanced briefly at his, selecting beef. Then went back to his business journal and Eliana could relax a fraction—but only a fraction. A fraction of a fraction...

The meal when it came was welcome, and she tucked in. For her, decent food, let alone gourmet food, belonged to a different life. Now Leandros was offering that life back to her—

But only if—

Her thoughts cut out. Impossible to think them.

As he began his own meal, Leandros addressed her again.

‘So, tell me—which fashion houses in Paris are your favourites now?’

‘I don’t have any,’ she answered. ‘Whatever you want.’

‘Eliana, it’s what you want.’

She looked at him, puzzled. ‘This is only for you, Leandros,’ she replied. ‘I’m here because you want me to be here.’

Even as she spoke, she felt her thoughts betray her. Was she truly here, like this, only for his sake? To make what amends she could to him? To do what was still in her power to do—to give him all that he still wanted from her? But not her love—never that...not any longer.

And I will get closure too, won’t I? That is all—there is nothing more than that...

Yet once again her betraying thoughts plucked at her...

To be with Leandros again, so tormentingly conscious of his physical presence at her side, with all of Paris awaiting them...it was not just closure she was after...

Emotion twisted inside her—knotting and tangling.

But Leandros’s next words cut through the tangling. Made things simple again—brutally so. His voice was edged, like a knife, to cut through that tangled knot of impossible emotions.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I thought you were here because you wanted to get out of that hellhole you’ve been reduced to living in. To climb back out of the gutter—get your old life back again.’

Her eyes pulled away. The hardness in his was the same as it had been when he had seen her at Chloe’s engagement party, that disastrous encounter in Athens. And the same as she had seen six years ago when she’d walked away from him, his denunciation of her ringing in her ears even as got herself out through the door with the last of her shaken strength, her stomach churning at what she was doing. Handing him back his ring...telling him she was going to marry Damian Makris.

She didn’t answer him now. There was no point. Instead, she asked some innocuous question about what time they would arrive in Paris.

He told her, adding, ‘I’ll be dining out tonight—a business dinner. You can have room service. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment, but then we’ll head to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and get your wardrobe sorted. After that... Well, whatever suits us.’ He paused, then continued. ‘What might you like to do?’

His tone was courteous enough, and she matched hers to it. It seemed the easiest thing to do. Requiring the least effort, the least involvement.

‘Whatever you like,’ she said.

He made a noise in his throat. ‘Don’t go complaisant on me, Eliana. You never used to be—and I always liked you for speaking your mind. Other girlfriends...’ there was a cynical twist to his mouth now ‘...they always agreed with everything I wanted—tediously so. You never did, and that was part of your appeal to me—your honesty. Be honest now. So, do you want to do the cultural stuff, or the historical stuff, or just stick to spending my money?’

Only with that did an edge creep into his voice. She heard it, but did not respond. ‘I’d like to see anything of Paris,’ she said civilly. ‘Even the touristy things. It will all be new to me.’

‘We can see beyond Paris too, if you like, and if the weather holds.’

His voice was civil now, too, and she was grateful. Maybe if they could just continue to talk in this way, without him cutting at her all the time— as though I don’t know what I did to him, how badly I treated him!— being with him would be more bearable. Less unbearable...

‘What about Versailles?’ he went on. ‘We had that high on our list, as I recall—’

He broke off abruptly, reaching for his wine and taking a hefty draught.

Eliana paid attention to her food. Somehow she’d drunk her champagne, and now she was starting to sip her chilled white wine. Another layer of insulation over her nerve-endings.

‘Then there’s the Trianons, too, near Versailles—we could do them...the Grand and the Petit Trianons,’ Leandros was saying, back in the same conversational tone.

‘Yes,’ said Eliana politely, ‘we could do that.’

We could do a lot of things, but all you’re really taking me to Paris for is sex.

She felt her throat close, anguish clenching it tight, and felt her eyes blinking suddenly.

This might have been our honeymoon together! Starting our lives together. Living our dream together.

But she had made that dream impossible. All that was left to her—and to Leandros, claiming from her the one thing he still wanted of her—was this poisoned present.

Nothing else.

She reached for her wine again. To conceal the tears that threatened...