CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

L EANDROS WAS STILL in shock himself. Eliana lived here ? In this run-down apartment block in the back end of the city? Had she really been reduced to this ?

Disbelief had hit him when the airport taxi had dropped him off in this street, and he’d stared around, questioning whether he had possibly got the wrong address. But no, he had not. And that was definitely Eliana standing there, her face ashen, in the narrow gap of the safety chained doorway.

He watched her fumble with the safety chain, as though her hands wouldn’t work properly, and as the door opened more widely he stepped forward. She stepped away, as if automatically, and then he was inside, casting a still half-disbelieving look around him at the tiny studio, with its shabby furniture, worn floor, cramped kitchenette and totally depressing air of chronic poverty.

Eliana had not just gone down in the world—she had reached the bottom.

Her face was still ashen, her eyes distended.

‘What—? What—? I don’t understand... Why—?’

The disconnected words fell from her lips, uncomprehending, as filled with shock as her expression. Leandros’s gaze snapped back from surveying her unlovely living quarters to her face. Not just ashen, but with lines of tiredness etched into it. She did not look good...

But that was to his advantage. Just as seeing the daughter of Aristides Georgiades, whose forebears had hobnobbed with the long-gone kings of Greece, now the widow of the son of one of Greece’s richest men, reduced to living in a dump like this was to his advantage.

She will do anything to get out of here.

‘You really live here?’ he heard himself ask.

Something changed in her face. ‘As you can see,’ she answered tightly.

She crossed her arms across her chest, chin going up. She took a breath, kept talking, her voice less faint now.

‘Leandros, what is this? What are you doing here?’

There was blank incomprehension in her tone, but a demand as well.

His own expression altered in response. ‘I thought you might like to come out to dinner with me,’ he said.

She stared. ‘Are you mad?’

He ignored the voice that was telling him that, yes, he was in fact mad to be doing what he was doing. ‘I have something I want to speak to you about,’ he said instead.

Her face closed. ‘So, speak.’

‘Not here,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’ll tell you over dinner. It could be...’ his voice became silky ‘...to your advantage.’ His gaze flicked around the dump she lived in—had been reduced to living in. ‘I could get you out of here,’ he said.

Something moved in her eyes—a longing so intense it overrode everything else in her tired face. For a moment he felt pity for her—then he pushed it aside. It wasn’t the emotion he intended to feel. As for love—she had killed that six years ago. Now all he wanted from her was something else. Something that had nothing to do with love.

He saw her handbag—a cheap one—on the table, and handed it to her, along with the apartment keys beside it.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

She seemed totally dazed, and he took advantage of it, guiding her out of the apartment, ushering her downstairs, and into the waiting taxi, which promptly drove off. She sank into her seat, still looking blitzed. But then, he was blitzed too.

All the way up to Thessaloniki a voice inside him had told him that what he was doing was madness. But he was doing it all the same...

He stole a glance at her, sitting silent and immobile, staring ahead blankly. He felt something move within him that was confirming of his mad impulse to come to Thessaloniki like this. For all the tiredness in her eyes, the cheapness of her clothes, her face with not a scrap of make-up, her hair caught back in a straggling knot, her beauty was undimmed.

He let his gaze rest lingeringly on her. She might be beaten down by her new poverty, but she was unbowed.

An air of unreality hit him—was he really sitting here in a taxi with Eliana? Or would he blink and wake up? Find it was only a dream after all?

His expression hardened. He was done with dreams about Eliana. She’d destroyed them six years again—ripped them from him and trampled them into the mire. Now what he wanted from her was a lot more basic.

The taxi made its way out on to the seafront of the city, where there were any number of restaurants—Thessaloniki was the foodie capital of Greece. But tonight was not for gourmet dining—Eliana was hardly dressed for it—and the mid-range fish restaurant the taxi driver had recommended would do fine.

It was quiet at this early hour of the evening, and he chose a table far from the few other diners. Eliana was focussing on her menu, and Leandros knew she was doing so to avoid looking at him.

‘Made your decision?’ he asked.

She gave a start, naming one of the fish dishes, then looking away again. Leandros beckoned the waiter over, relayed their order, then ordered water, beer for himself, and a carafe of house red. The waiter headed off, returning a few moments later with the drinks order, and a basket of bread with some pats of butter.

Leandros reached for his beer, taking a long draught—he suddenly felt he needed it. Then he poured water and wine for them both.

‘Eliana—’

He said her name, and as if on auto-response her eyes went to him. And immediately veiled. Her hand jerked forward to take a piece of bread, which she then crumbled into pieces as if she were doing something to distract herself. She still looked strained...tense as a board. Yet for all that there was a haunting beauty about her. Haunting—and so, so familiar.

Emotions churned in him, but he fought them back. He didn’t want those emotions. They were from the past, and he wasn’t interested in the past any longer. He was immune to it and inured to it. It was just the present he was interested in—and the immediate future.

‘I expect you’re wondering why I’m here,’ he opened, helping himself to some bread and buttering it. ‘As I said, I have something to put to you.’

He glanced at her semi-covertly. Her expression did not change.

So he spoke again. Not prevaricating, or circling around, or delaying in any way. Cutting right to the chase—to the reason he was here.

‘I want you to come back to me,’ he said.

Eliana heard his words, but they did not register. It was impossible that they should do so. Her expression, veiled as it already was, froze. So did her fingers, pointlessly crumbling her piece of bread.

‘I am quite serious,’ he said.

His eyes were on her like weights. A weight she could not bear.

‘You can’t possibly be,’ she heard herself say, her voice faint, hardly audible.

A new expression crossed his face. He was cynical. She could see it in the slight twist to his mouth, the acid look in his eyes. Eyes so dark...so drowning...

‘And yet I am,’ he returned.

He reached for his wine glass, took a hefty slug, then resumed his regard of her.

‘Don’t get any ideas, however,’ he said. His voice held the same acidity as his eyes. ‘I want something a lot more limited this time.’ He paused ‘You’ll do well out of it, all the same.’ His eyes narrowed, sweeping over her. ‘You really have hit rock bottom, haven’t you? I’d heard old man Jonas hadn’t gone easy on you—but surely Damian left you something?’

If her face could have gone even more blank, it did. Then, with a tightness that was in her voice as well as her throat, she spoke.

‘Evidently not.’

He frowned. ‘Why not? Unless...’ That acid look was in his eye again...that cynical twist to his mouth. ‘Unless he had reason not to?’

She didn’t answer. It was none of his business, her marriage to Damian, and the years she had spent as his wife. Nor was what had happened after his untimely death. Nothing about her was any of his business any more...or his concern. Not that he felt any for her—that was obvious.

But why should he, after what I did to him?

And why, most of all, had he turned up here like this—said to her what he had...?

Waves of unreality were hitting her...slug after slug. How could she be here, sitting opposite Leandros, out of nowhere—absolutely nowhere? For all the desperate blankness in her eyes, they were still fastened on him. Her senses reeling.

Leandros—here—physically so close—

His face...the once so familiar features. His sable hair, his dark and gold-flecked eyes, the line of his jaw, his sculpted mouth, the breadth of his shoulders, the lean strength of his body... All here... All real...

She felt faint with it—with the scent of his aftershave, still the same as she remembered...

Jerkily, she reached for her wine. She needed it.

His face had tightened.

‘Looks like you got your just desserts,’ he said now, as she stayed silent. ‘You married him for money, and now you haven’t got it.’

She still said nothing. There was nothing she could or would tell him.

Their food was arriving and she was grateful. Hungrily, she got stuck into her fish, and Leandros did too.

‘So, my offer to you...’ he opened, as he started eating. ‘I want you to come to Paris with me.’

His voice was brisk, without expression. But Eliana stopped eating, eyes fastening on him. Emotion knifed through her before she could stop it.

Paris—the destination that had been going to be their honeymoon...

Leandros was still speaking in that brisk, expressionless tone of voice.

‘I have to go there on business next week. I want you to come with me.’

His eyes lifted from his food, looked straight at her. There was a glint in them that was like acid on her skin.

‘We’d planned to honeymoon there, remember?’

Her hold on her fork tightened. His eyes were resting on her. Unreadable. But the feel of acid on her skin ate through her.

‘We won’t be recapturing the past, Eliana,’ he went on. ‘We’ll be...updating it to our current circumstances.’

He ate some more of his fish, washing it down with some wine. He looked across at her again.

‘And in these present circumstances I think my offer to you is entirely...appropriate. I am willing to take you on. It will suit us both. I’ll provide you with a new wardrobe, and when we part I’ll be generous. You will have enough to get you out of the dump you live in, get you back to Athens all fixed up to go husband-hunting again. Just what you want. As for me... Well, I’ll get what I want too, Eliana.’

She set down her fork. Looked straight at him.

‘Which is what, Leandros?’

Her voice was flat.

A dark, saturnine glint showed in the depths of his night-dark eyes.

‘What I was denied, Eliana,’ he said softly. ‘What you denied me.’

He set his cutlery down too. Reached a hand forward. Folded it over hers still resting over her fork. It felt warm, but like a weight that would crush her to pieces.

Faintness drummed through her.

‘You in my bed.’

He had said it. Spelt it out. Laid it out. Bluntly, coarsely, brutally. No hearts and flowers—they had rotted years ago—nothing but the blunt, visceral truth.

He lifted his hand away. The hand that had not touched her for six long years.

‘You denied me during our courtship—prating on about wedding nights and so forth. Were you already hedging your bets, even then? Just in case a better offer came along and you wanted to go as a virgin to his bed? I assume you did with Damian? Did he appreciate it, I wonder? Appreciate all your fantastic beauty? Well, whatever... I most definitely will . I set no prize on virginity—that would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it? Even when I wanted to marry you it was your choice, not mine, to wait until our wedding night—whatever your reason for it. Now, we’ll be...let us say “equal” in that respect. Both experienced. We’ll make, I am confident, good lovers.’

He went back to eating. The fish was good, tasty and filling. And his mood was improving, his confidence in his own decision increasing. He confirmed it to himself. For six years he’d done his best to ignore the continuing existence of the woman who had once meant all the world to him—now he was going to reverse that policy.

But on his own terms this time. Not hers.

‘I’m due in Paris tomorrow. I propose I fly up here again then, and we’ll fly to Paris from here. Don’t bother packing—we’ll hit the fashion houses first thing. Give me your current phone number and I’ll text you the time you’ll need to be at the airport.’

He was being brisk and businesslike, and he was glad of it. He looked across at her, waiting for her reply. She’d picked up her cutlery again, and was absorbed, it seemed, in eating her own fish.

‘Eliana?’ he prompted.

She didn’t look up, and he waited a moment longer.

‘Do you require something on account? Is that it?’ he said. ‘If so, I expect I can run to that.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. ‘If you have expenses here to settle, will this cover it?’

He extracted a few hundred-euro notes and put them by her place.

She stopped eating. Pushed them away from her. Looked across at him.

‘Thank you, but no,’ she said politely. ‘And thank you,’ she went on, in the same polite voice, ‘but no, in fact, to your kind invitation to go to Paris with you and keep you company in bed.’

He paused again. Then: ‘Why not?’ He kept his tone casual.

‘The past is gone, Leandros. I don’t want to try and exhume it. What would be the point?’

‘The point, Eliana,’ he spelt out deliberately, ‘is what I have already said. I will bankroll you, get you back on your feet. You’ll be able to start again—look for another rich man to marry you. You can’t do that,’ he said, and his voice was drier than ever, ‘from some dump in a backstreet in Thessaloniki.’

He drained his glass of wine and went on eating, as did she. For all its non-gourmet status, the food was good, and he ate with a will now. He didn’t say anything more—he’d let Eliana think over what he’d offered her.

When they’d both finished eating, he settled the bill, then got to his feet.

Leandros was guiding her outside, into the warm air. The seafront stretched along the wide bay. City-dwellers were making their evening volta , strolling along—a familiar scene at this hour of the day along every seafront in Greece.

‘Let’s walk a bit,’ he said to her.

Passively, she fell into step beside him. She was still in a daze, unable to believe what was happening. That Leandros had reappeared like this—and what he’d said to her.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable that he should have said it—or thought she might agree.

Suddenly, he spoke.

‘We used to do this every evening—do you remember? In Chania, walking along the curve of the harbour that time when we went to Crete?’

Eliana felt her heart catch. How could she not remember her hand being held fast in his, as if he would never let her go?

But it was me who let him go—went to another man.

Pain—so familiar, so impossible to relinquish—stabbed at her for what she’d done.

‘That was a good holiday...’

Leandros was speaking again. There was reminiscence in his voice, but then it changed to hold wry humour.

‘You insisted on separate bedrooms.’

Suddenly, he stopped, stepping in front of Eliana. His hands closed over her shoulders. Stilling her. Freezing her. He looked down at her, his face stark in the street light.

‘Had...had we not had separate bedrooms all the time back then...’

He drew a breath. She heard it—heard the intensity in his voice when he spoke again.

‘You would not would have left me.’

There was something in his voice—something that was like a stab of pain. Then it was gone, replaced by hardness.

He dropped his hands away.

‘No—stupid to think that. With or without sex, you’d still have walked out on me, wouldn’t you, Eliana? Because I wasn’t going to be able to give you what you wanted. Not me...not even sex with me.’

The twist in his voice now was ugly, and she flinched.

‘Just money. That was all you wanted from a man. Any man. Did that hapless fool Damian know that? Know that if his father had done what mine did, and threatened to disinherit him, you’d have dumped him as ruthlessly as you dumped me?’

He quickened his pace and she was forced to do likewise. Emotions were smashing around inside her, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Oh, dear God, why had Leandros turned up like this? Wasn’t her life now grim enough as it was, without him twisting the knife that had been in her heart since what she had done to him?

‘You don’t answer?’ Leandros said now, cynicism in his voice. ‘Well, what does it matter? Damian knew the risk of marrying a woman who’d just dumped the man she’d been keen to marry until his money vanished.’

And something else entered his voice now—something that made it seem to Eliana that he was trying to convince himself.

‘I know the risk I’m taking.’ Now his voice had hardened, conviction made. ‘Which is why I’m keeping my offer strictly limited. I’ll lift you back out of the gutter you’ve fallen into, but on my terms, Eliana—my terms only. Be very clear on that. This is the finish of something old—not the start of something new.’

She didn’t answer—there was no point. Instead, she stopped walking.

‘I’m tired,’ she announced. ‘I don’t want to walk any further.’

She hadn’t wanted to walk at all, but she’d been too dazed, too passive, to do anything else.

‘All right. I’ll see you back to your apartment.’

He summoned a taxi and she sank into it, closing her eyes. She could not bear to see Leandros. Yet his presence dominated her. She knew he was only a few centimetres away from her...that she would only have to reach out her hand to take his...to feel his fingers mesh with hers as they once had.

Anguish filled her suddenly, flooding her with the sheer misery of it all.

I loved him, and I left him.

And what they’d had so briefly in their lives—what she’d willingly, wantonly destroyed—could never, never come back...

He didn’t speak to her again, and she was glad, keeping her eyes shut, terrified that tears might come. Tears he would think deliberate, artificial...manipulative.

At the shabby apartment block the taxi drew up at the kerb, and she stumbled out.

‘Eliana—’

Now he spoke. Demanding she halt. She did, unwillingly turning back as he leant towards her from his seat.

‘You haven’t given me your mobile number.’

She stared at him blankly. Of course she hadn’t. A look of irritation flashed across his strong features, and then he was reaching inside his jacket pocket, taking out a card case, removing a card and holding it purposefully out to her.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘And text me your number. Then I’ll give you the flight details.’

He was still holding the business card out to her.

Nervelessly, knowing she shouldn’t, but doing it all the same, she took it. Then she turned silently away.

She could barely stay upright. The shock of the whole evening was catching up with her, and she had to get inside—get away, get out of his presence.

She heard him pull the car door closed, speak to the driver, give the name of the city’s best hotel. Heard the taxi move off. Then numbly, dumbly, his card burning her fingers as if it were a hot coal, she went inside the apartment block, trudged up the stairs as if a weight were on her back. She was barely able to function.

She got herself inside her studio, collapsed down on the bed.

And just lay there. For a long, long while.

Anguish consuming her.