Redeemed By Her Innocence (HQR Presents) Page 8

  Nobody could fill that gaping wound except his House, his world. House was his wife and child, his family.

  Nikos stood on the clifftop terrace and braced his hands on the screen that separated him from the deep, still Aegean Sea. How many times had he stood here, staring out across the blues of daybreak and dusk, broken only by the scattering of islands and boats, slowly skating past?

  He’d loved this place once. He hadn’t realised just how much until he was back here, feeling peace settling slowly around him, enjoying those last few minutes before the world started to waken and decisions had to be made.

  He should be sleeping now, he should have squeezed the last balm of rest before starting the day, because he was going to need to stand firm and not allow himself to be swayed by his incredibly strong attraction to Jacquelyn Jones.

  His one rule, his North Star, for years had been: will this make money? Will this make the board and my shareholders happy? If not, there was no space for it. No dead weights, no millstones, nothing but relentless progress forward. It was his mark as a leader—shedding the brands and products that didn’t fit, even if they were profitable in the short term, for the sake of House.

  Ariana Bridal was a company of the past, not the future. He could give Jacquelyn business advice, but he couldn’t take her on. Not now. Especially not now.

  He’d known this yesterday, he’d known it before he’d even agreed to this stupid idea and he cursed his own weakness in indulging his sexual side at the expense of cold-blooded business.

  But it wasn’t just that, was it? There was something sick inside him. Something that he kept buried with every eighteen-hour working day, and every scholarship he funded, and every woman he took to his bed. He buried the evil that was there—smothered it—but last night it had surfaced.

  He glanced over to the smooth blue pool, its quiet surface untouched and flat. Beyond it, half-obscured by the thick hedge, sat the hot tub. He didn’t shudder now when he thought of it. He could walk past it and he didn’t see his father sitting back in it, his shaved head, his tough muscular shoulders, the incongruous tattoos of a rose on one bicep and a mermaid on the other, on arms that had literally choked the life from people who got in his way...

  The hot tub had been drained but its empty blue shell still sat, right beside the daybed. Its tented roof poked now above the hedge, innocently concealing the scene of their crazy lovemaking.

  He’d almost lost control. He’d been all the way to hell and back with every sip of whisky—the memories of his father and finding him with Maria, right there, in that tub. His taunts, her screaming, begging...

  He hung his head in shame.

  His hatred and his guilt had sprung back last night like a black geyser, forced through the earth. It was as if none of the five years since had made one blind bit of difference. The plaster was ripped back off and nothing could stop the pain but a beautiful blonde with soft curves and a sweet smile.

  And it had stopped it for those brief, sweet hours. The pain had gone, the memories faded away in that woman’s arms and the world had paused while he found solace. It was as if he were making love again for the first time, it was new and fresh and it felt—right? It felt as if he was with someone pure; there was no other way of putting it.

  But she wasn’t here for him. She was here to save her business. Everyone had their reasons and those were hers. He didn’t despise her for it, but he wasn’t going to hang on to the fantasy he’d built up that she was some kind of Goody-Two-Shoes and he was her knight in shining armour. She was as happy as he was to share a warm bed, but the bottom line was that she was here for her business, not for anything else.

  He turned to look through the glass, a glimpse of the bed through the split in the curtains. The bed where she lay, naked, tangled in a sheet, where even the thought of her made him once again react. Any other time than this he’d be happy to slide into that warm bed. But he’d been round the block too many times. Business first. Then pleasure.

  He gripped the railing and shook his head.

  He had to put a stop to this. He had to gather the papers and deliver them to Mark.

  At a sound behind him, he turned to look back over his shoulder. The curtains wafted in the breeze, lifting to show the bed, now empty, the imprint of their bodies clear on the sheets. He stepped into the room, sensing her, following the invisible trail through the air. A door closed further inside. The sound of the shower...

  The party was over. They’d made the deal, had their fun, and now they had to get on with it.

  He made his way to the other end of the house, showered and dressed and sent a maid to Jacquelyn with a message—breakfast would be served on her terrace, in the guest room. He would meet her in the boardroom at eight-thirty.

  Half an hour to hear her pitch and then they’d fly back to London. It wouldn’t be a pleasant flight but she was a big girl. She’d get over it.

  Then on to New York where he’d take the papers to Mark himself. They’d have to sit down together, go through everything, find the trail and deal with it.

  What would happen next would happen. It was out of his control. The last thing he wanted to do was involve the police but if it came to it—well, if it came to it, all hell would have been already unleashed.

  And much as it pained him to leave this little corner of Greece, there was nothing here for him now. His mother would never see it again, and there was no one left who even remembered her. He’d sell this house and everything in it and he would close, hopefully once and for all, this chapter in his life.

  * * *

  Jacquelyn’s head pounded as if she had a bass drum for a brain. Her stomach flipped butterflies up into her chest and her body ached in a thousand different places.

  She dried her hair and put on make-up and looked at the reflection in the mirror. Nothing to see. No cracks showing. Her hair was sleek, her skin was smooth, her eye sockets were camouflaged and she had smudged highlighter where shadows lurked. She looked...OK.

  She looked OK, but no matter how long she’d stood in the shower she still couldn’t wash away the dirty sense of guilt, the feeling that she had let herself down, and that feeling had clung to every sweep of her mascara wand, every smoothing brush of her hair. No matter how many tricks she played, the face that stared back at her was wretched and desperate and...sad.

  So she had waited, her whole life long she had been the one who was saving herself for her wedding day. She put so much store on love and marriage, and sex was the expression of a lifetime promise to the man she would spend her whole life with.

  She could laugh out loud but it really wasn’t funny. The one time she’d decided to let herself go was the one time she should have been keeping it all together.

  The saving grace was that unlike the last time she’d made such a monumental fool of herself, no one was here to witness her stupidity.

  No one who knew her would ever think she’d throw her whole existence up in the air, especially when it involved jumping into bed with a man she’d only just met. And she clearly hadn’t made that great an impression. Even though she had felt so close to him, so sure that he was feeling what she was feeling, that this passion was surely unique, that their lovemaking couldn’t possibly end after one night—other thoughts entirely must have been running through his mind. So much so that he’d left in the middle of the night, leaving her to awaken cold and alone in an empty bed.

  She’d slid her hands across the sheets to feel for warmth but there was none; he must have been gone for ages. She’d sat up, looked around in the darkness at the unfamiliar shapes of his room. She tried to remember what had happened. Should she try to find him? Should she be worried? In the end she had buried herself in the bed and curled into a ball, her mind whirling with the awful realisation that she’d been abandoned, not held lovingly, not caressed or kissed.

  It’s fine, it’s fine,
she told herself in between forcing slow, deep breaths. It’s just the shock. You’re overreacting. It’s because of what happened with Tim and this isn’t the same at all. This is all OK. It was just sex. He’s just a man.

  Why was she so unlucky?

  Why couldn’t she choose someone who would really care for her? Her mother had found her father. Other people found happy, faithful partners. Why not her? What was she doing wrong?

  Well, there was nothing else for it now. All that she could do was make the best of it. She had to pick herself up all over again and get on with it.

  You’re better than this. You have to do what you came here to do and go down to this meeting, head held high.

  She had better stand there in front of him and sell this business and forget those hours writhing naked in bed with him, screaming his name and feeling him lose himself in her, over and over again. She couldn’t possibly come all this way and go home with nothing—nothing other than the memory of one night of passion.

  But still she sat, staring, numb. Behind her the bed she should have slept in, smooth and intact, a monument to her guilt. She checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. Any minute now she was going to get up from this stool and slip into yesterday’s crushed sundress. She was going to walk through this sprawling villa, not thinking all her excited, girlish thoughts, and become the stony-faced businesswoman she had to be.

  She wasn’t going to use facts and figures and numbers and charts. That wasn’t her best language and right now she didn’t have the head for it at all. She was going to speak from the heart. She would tell him the real story of Ariana Bridal and how her grandmother had built it from nothing, sewing her own dreams with the dreams of the women whose wedding gowns she’d stitched. She was going to tell him of the tiny shop and how it smelled of flowers and how, as a child, she’d longed to touch the white and creamy silks, and had loved to see the faces of the women who’d tried on dresses, expectant, puzzled and then finally the beaming smiles as each of them had looked like the bride they would be.

  She wasn’t going to tell him that she had wished with all her heart that she would be one of those brides one day, dressed in white, making her nonna proud.

  No, what she would tell him was that the tiny shop had become two then three, then more, each of them uniquely, expertly caring for each bride. How could that tiny empire wither and die now when it had so much of what women really wanted? That personal touch...women who understood other women?

  That little shop held her dreams safe inside, like an egg in a nest: her dreams, her mother’s health, her father’s income—everything she held dear was caught up in Ariana Bridal.

  How clearly she could still see her grandmother’s tiny hands, one buried in silk, the other busily hand-stitching pearls.

  A tear formed in her eye. She tipped her head back, desperately holding it in place. She would not cry again. Please not now...

  She stood up tall, she breathed, and just as she heard the footsteps of the maid she smiled a tiny smile and turned, ready.

  On they walked to the boardroom. With every step along the hallway, her heels echoed in the marbled void but her thundering, anxious heartbeat all but smothered her sense of hearing.

  She saw a door ahead, and she knew this was it. The maid paused, Jacquelyn rounded the corner of the room and he looked up at her, their eyes meeting in a flash of recognition and acknowledgement. And—damn it to hell—shame.

  He waited until the maid closed the door behind them.

  ‘Good morning, Jacquelyn. I hope you found everything you needed this morning.’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ she repeated, automatically.

  ‘Great, well, let’s do this. I’m sure you are as desperate to get back to England as I am to get across the Atlantic. I’ve got meetings set up for the rest of the day so, shall we?’

  Complete denial that they had spent the night making love? She had expected a businesslike approach but this was callous even beyond that.

  ‘I’ve had your laptop hooked up over there.’

  He bowed his head to his own machine, cast a hand to the end of the long shiny table where a screen blinked down from the wall.

  She looked back to see his dark head bent, his brow furrowed, his hands flying over the keyboard, sending emails as she stood there. He didn’t even have the grace to pay her any attention.

  ‘I’m not going to use technology,’ she said.

  He looked up, his brow furrowed even more. Standing there, she felt like a schoolgirl with unfinished homework.

  ‘You’re not? I thought you were working on something yesterday.’

  ‘That was yesterday,’ she said. She heard the wobble in her voice but it wasn’t grief. It was anger. Pure, cold anger.

  ‘Look, before you begin... Jacquelyn,’ he said, pushing back from the desk and sitting up straight in his chair. ‘What happened last night was just sex. It has nothing to do with this. I hope I made it clear that the two things are totally unconnected.’

  She hadn’t expected him to be so cold, so brutal. It was as if he were putting oceans of distance between them before she had even begun. He wasn’t even giving her a chance. Dragging her here and then all that they had done, and now he was rejecting not only her body but her business too...?

  ‘You said it didn’t count,’ she heard her voice say. ‘You didn’t say it would disadvantage me.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly say that.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he conceded, after a long pause. A pause in which she felt as if her whole world were contaminated. But damn him, damn his dark mood and his thin-lipped smile, damn his broad shoulders and washboard-flat abs. Damn his hands that had held her and caressed her and his whole wretched body that had pounded into hers, pounding as her heart was now pounding in her own ears.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said again, but it was without enthusiasm. It was a concession to her boldness, a momentary victory.

  ‘So, can you at least tell me if I’m wasting my time?’ she asked. ‘I’d rather know now. I don’t really want to be here any more than you do. I am very well aware that you’ve filed what happened last night under “No Further Action”.’

  He smiled now, to himself, clearly amused at her imagining that anything else was ever likely to have happened.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Deny it.’

  Her voice was shrill with anger. She couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but it seemed to be out of her hands now. Words were pouring out of her mouth.

  ‘Who are you angry with, Jacquelyn? Me, for making the first move, or yourself for thinking I’d fall into line.’

  ‘I’m not angry with myself. I’m not the one with double standards.’

  ‘Maybe not. But you wouldn’t be the first woman to think that sleeping with me would get you preferential treatment. It’s the oldest trick in the book.’

  ‘How dare you?’ she said, white rage now slipping over her. ‘You have no idea who I am or what I stand for. But it’s quite obvious what goes on inside your head.’

  She turned around, as if she could grab her coat and make for the nearest exit and hail a black cab on the street, but all she saw was a blinking blank screen and his reflection outlined in it. She kept her face turned there, feeling the tears welling up and her chin wobbling and that dreadful thickening warning of grief in her throat.

  Months she had been like this. Months recovering from that rat Tim, and now here she was back again. A gibbering, soft-hearted idiot who couldn’t even stand up for herself.

  Every single fibre in her body thrummed with fury at herself. She would not turn round and show him. Not one single sign of weakness. Not one.

  But the energy in the room shifted and she watched as, like a typhoon cloud crossing the plain, the image in the screen moved and in seco
nds he was standing there behind her.

  She looked down at her fingers curled white around the back of the chair. She concentrated all her strength into that single spot, tried to repel him with the sheer force of her will, just as she had opened herself up to him last night—welcomed his kisses, his touch, his body. Welcomed them and lost herself in them.

  How on earth could she have been so completely naive?

  ‘Look,’ he said, his voice low and calm. ‘I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. I’ve had a look through your website and it’s not going to work for House. That’s it. I don’t mind giving you a hand, you know. A mentoring partner or something like that. I can advise on various things that you might find useful. But...’

  ‘My family poured everything into this business. My grandmother’s fingers were curled with arthritis by the age of fifty but she stitched and made beautiful clothes for the women of our town, and she would be ashamed to see me standing here like this.’

  ‘The last thing I want is for you to feel ashamed. I’m just trying to keep it businesslike from now on.’

  Jacquelyn turned around. She swallowed the bitter pill of self-pity and guilt and lifted her head to face him. Tears were welling in her eyes and her throat was burning but she was damned if she was going to take his crumbs. No matter what happened to Ariana now, she would never stand there begging from a man like him.

  ‘I don’t need to say any more to you. I just need you to arrange my transport home.’

  Beyond his head the day was shimmering into another dreamy Grecian morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not a ripple on the sea, nothing other than heat and light and promise. And somehow that made her feel even worse.

  She had no business being here—she should be back home in Lower Linton, opening up the shop, checking the flowers in the hallway, making sure the staff were pristine and smiling welcomes to the clients, checking the work in progress, the fittings and deliveries, the goodness knew what. There was so much to be done. She had to get away, get back to work, immediately.