‘Play along?’ Leah questioned.
‘If I had said that I did not wish to marry Eleni her father would have pressured her to marry someone else and she might never have got to study medicine,’ Nik explained, his mouth twisting. ‘You must understand that Eleni is a dedicated doctor who gives virtually one hundred per cent to her vocation. She has time for little else. She is not the wife I would have chosen for myself, nor was I the husband she would have chosen...’
Leah swallowed hard, striving to absorb his calm assurance and tie it in with what she had believed she had seen in that hospital. Close friends embracing? Eleni had been so affectionate towards Nik but then people who had known each other all their lives tended to be and possibly it had been some time since they had last met, Leah reasoned uncertainly under the onslaught of Nik’s level scrutiny. His cool candour was impressive, she had to admit.
‘You weren’t in love with her?’
‘I believed I was once.’ Nik smiled with wry recall. ‘But I was only eighteen. Eleni was beautiful. That was all that mattered. But it was not very long before her absorption in her studies made me see that we were incompatible.’
‘You wanted her one hundred per cent vocation to be targeted on you.’
‘You know me so well.’
‘Frankly, it was just an observation,’ Leah said stiffly. ‘Why did you call the timing of our marriage inconvenient?’
‘Eleni’s father blamed my defection on her dedication to her career and she was forced into open conflict with her family before she had won her independence.’
‘And how did your family react?’ Leah heard herself prompt tautly.
‘With shock, horror and shame at my behaviour,’ Nik enumerated flatly. ‘A betrothal is a serious commitment in Greek society, most particularly to a family as steeped in traditional beliefs as mine. I was accused of dishonouring the Andreakis name. It is true that inevitably the betrothal would have been broken but the fact that I immediately married someone else magnified the offence in their eyes.’
Leah studied the carpet and she saw her father like a cold force at the centre of a storm, wielding the elements within his grasp without caring about the damage he inflicted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed.
‘It’s immaterial now. Last year Eleni married another doctor.’ Nik’s strong features tautened. ‘Both families were placated by that development. If they do not concede that we had a right to choose our own partners, I do believe they both acknowledge that Eleni and I would not have been suited.’
Leah began picking at her salad, a little embarrassed at her dramatic assumption that Eleni Kiriakos was Nik’s mistress. A newly married woman, a lifelong friend. Why should she not have openly demonstrated her fondness for Nik? Perhaps she had misinterpreted what she saw because she had never been in a position to offer anyone that kind of affection. Her father hadn’t wanted it. Nik hadn’t wanted it. By the time Paul came along, she had been inhibited by the habit of concealing her emotions.
The silence lingered. Deep in thought, Leah ate her meal.
‘You close me out as if I’m invisible,’ Nik murmured silkily. ‘When you do that I want to smash things and shout.’
Her silvery head flew up, stark confusion etched in her sapphire eyes. ‘That’s childish.’
Nik shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent unconcern. ‘There is a child inside every one of us.’
Leah cleared her throat awkwardly, strangely disconcerted by that unexpected admission and the ease with which he’d made it. Living with Nik, she decided, was like camping out on the side of a live volcano. There was always a rumble, a warning quake of suggested disaster in the air.
‘Why won’t you let me go?’ she demanded starkly.
‘You’re my wife.’
‘Not good enough.’
Nik spread beautifully shaped fingers. ‘That certificate is still out there,’ he reminded her drily.
Leah paled. ‘But my father is dead...he probably destroyed it!’
‘He destroyed nothing else,’ Nik pointed out. ‘And Max was very clever. I may have despised him but even I have to acknowledge that. Who knows what he might have arranged? If we split up, if we part, somebody somewhere may be primed to use that certificate to hurt my family—’
‘That’s being paranoid!’ Leah muttered unevenly, her head beginning to ache.
‘It’s not a risk I am prepared to take. As far as Max was concerned you were content to be my wife right up until the day he died,’ Nik said smoothly. ‘He knew no different. And I believe that he would have taken a special pleasure from ensuring that if I ever attempted to divorce you I would pay.’
The most obvious explanation had evaded her, she conceded dazedly, her hands clenching tightly together. She had let her imagination run riot. She had believed that Nik might well be punishing her for her father’s sins. She had believed that Paul’s very existence so outraged Nik’s pride that he was set on hanging on to her out of sheer dog-in-the-manger bloody-mindedness. She had even begun to believe that on the basis of practical, unemotional reasoning he might indeed consider her to be a suitable wife.
And the terrible reality was that every one of those motivations had been considerably kinder to her ego than the awful truth she had finally been forced to acknowledge: Nik thought he was stuck with her for eternity. Like an albatross. And if he hadn’t been so accustomed to being in that position he might well have been wondering whether a suitably choreographed accident might not best meet his requirements.
‘You’ve turned a little...pale,’ he mused.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Leah mumbled.
She was remembering the fury which had brought him to her hotel, a fury which she now saw had been entirely divorced from any personal feelings on his side. After all, Nik couldn’t allow her to leave him. Even if he really wanted to throw the door wide and encourage her to leave, he couldn’t risk doing it. Marrying her had indeed been the life sentence he had called it.
For the first time she understood how furiously helpless he must have felt in the grip of that awareness early on in their marriage...and how desperately he must have hoped that she would meet and fall for someone else while her father was still alive, thereby releasing him from the union . After all, had that been her choice, Max could scarcely have blamed Nik. No wonder he had left her alone for five years...and no wonder he had accused her in Paris of being obscenely faithful and loyal. Why had she chosen not to examine that condemnation more closely? Why had she buried it?
The tray was removed. Nik bent down and began to lift her. ‘I can manage!’ she gasped strickenly, but he ignored her.
Settled back on the bed, Leah snatched at the sheet and turned over on her stomach, unable even to look at him. She felt stripped of every ounce of pride, every inch of dignity. She was drowning in humiliation. In the space of minutes Nik had changed everything. What right did she have to demand her freedom now? Whether she liked it or not, it had been her infatuation with Nik which had trapped him into this situation. Even Max wouldn’t have tried to push her into marriage with a man she neither wanted nor loved.
‘You’d feel more comfortable without that robe.’
Leah tensed, having been unaware that he was still in the room.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You need a good night’s sleep.’
She felt the sheet move, hands at her waist, gently tugging loose the sash and then sliding the robe down off her shoulders to remove it. The sheet was smoothed back into place.
Nik sighed softly. ‘You know this is my bedroom. Would you mind very much if I moved back in?’
Leah went rigid and then quivered. ‘I’ll move now,’ she managed, beginning to lift her head.
‘I want you to stay,’ he breathed in a curiously stifled tone.
‘Oh...’ Leah froze, violently disturbed by the announcement.
‘We are married,’ he murmured.
The silence stretched, gnawing at her every nerve-ending.
‘Yes.’ It was a whisper so faint that the sound of a pin dropping would have been louder. But it was an acknowledgement which Leah had avoided, protested and denied for years. Now it had been forced on her.
She lay there in shock. There was no other word to describe her condition. The sturdy foundations of her resentment and bitterness and her determination to leave him had been blown to smithereens and right now she was still lying in the bomb crater, fumbling feebly to find some reasonable excuse for denying him the right to sleep in his own bed and the expectation that she share that same bed. And the truth was that there wasn’t any reasonable excuse available to her.
Nik had come to terms with their future that day in Paris. She saw that now. He had got to the bottom of that safety-deposit box and emerged without the ticket to freedom he had vainly sought. For a little while he had hoped that she had it—that wretched certificate that she had never even heard of before that day! And when he had realised that unpleasant reality he had known simultaneously that their marriage was indeed a life sentence. Hence his sudden change of attitude towards her. If escape was out of the question, he had to make the best of imprisonment. If he could not free himself to marry another woman, he had to make the best of the one he had got...