The Unfaithful Wife(20)

Leah shivered violently, stunned by the attack she had somehow drawn down upon herself. ‘How can you speak to me like this?’

‘You can be a whore in my bedroom any time and I don’t give a damn about how you conduct yourself in the kitchen or the drawing-room!’ he misquoted with seething emphasis, his lean fingers biting into her narrow bones, dark eyes flailing her shattered face. ‘But get rid of your adolescent fantasies of true love in a cottage with Woods. It’s never going to happen unless I’m six feet under! You’re my wife. Face it and face it fast before I lose all patience with you!’

The door slammed thunderously in his wake. Leah dared to breathe again but her heart was pounding against her ribcage in near panic. Nik had exploded into rage like a bonfire rained on by paraffin. Dimly it occurred to her that she might have been wiser to tell him that Paul no longer featured in what he had called her ‘adolescent fantasies’. But that idea was wholly crushed as she relived the humiliation of the verbal attack she had just been forced to withstand.

‘Hot as hell...wanton...abandoned...a whore’. No doubt it was exactly what she deserved. She had reduced herself to his primitive level, allowed herself to forget every principle and every decent inhibition, number one of which should have been no sex without love. Well, he could just go back to his bimbos, then; it was absolutely no skin off her... Yes, it was, it was! Deeply hurt, positively savaged by the very idea of Nik with another woman, Leah vented a stifled sob and fled.





CHAPTER SEVEN


‘IS NIK WORKING?’ Ponia enquired gently over dinner for two.

‘Probably.’ Leah contrived a stiff little smile meant to suggest that she had only just noticed his absence and was quite unconcerned by it. After all, she reminded herself doggedly, five years of almost continuous absence ought to have accustomed her to the value of her own company and counsel. Only somehow it hadn’t. Their relationship had changed so fast and so radically that Leah was in turmoil and her desperate attempts to regain her former detachment weren’t working one little bit.

‘He was in the taverna this afternoon; one of the fishermen at the harbour mentioned it,’ Ponia supplied, and looked uncomfortably at Leah. ‘He’s in a rage, isn’t he?’

‘We had an argument, yes,’ Leah conceded, wishing that the teenager would drop the subject.

‘He has a very hot temper.’ Ponia pushed her thick curls back from one small ear, a reflective curve to her mouth. ‘But he very rarely loses it—which is just as well, considering that the family just don’t know how to handle it. My grandmother never raises her voice. None of them do. They go white to the gills and back off when Nik blows up. The one and only time I saw it, it fascinated me.’

Nik’s niece was watching her almost expectantly. Leah’s brow furrowed but she said nothing.

Ponia concentrated on her plate but kept on talking. ‘I was about eleven when I overheard my two aunts talking about Nik. They were wondering who his natural parents were and I didn’t even know what that meant then—’

Leah froze. ‘His natural parents?’ she repeated, carefully keeping her voice level.

The teenager’s face was uncharacteristically serious. ‘Of course, I was stupid enough to go and ask my mother and she was really upset. It was years before I understood that adoption’s only something to be ashamed of in my family.’

‘Yes,’ Leah agreed, since some input appeared to be expected from her. She was so afraid of revealing her astonishment that she wouldn’t even let herself think about what she had just learnt.

Ponia visibly relaxed. ‘It’s never, ever mentioned. Everybody outside the family thinks Nik was born to my grandmother; how did she get away with it? She was forty-eight!’

‘It’s not impossible.’ Leah was becoming uncomfortable although she could understand Ponia’s curiosity. Her request for an explanation of what she had overheard at eleven had obviously been greeted with maternal dismay and distress and a brick wall of silence. She was a lively, intelligent girl, still clearly troubled by the response she had received.

Ponia shrugged. ‘The secrecy must have made it much harder for Nik.’

‘People are much more open about adoption now than they were thirty years ago.’ Leah took a deep breath. ‘But we shouldn’t be talking about this, Ponia. It’s too private and, before you ask me, no, I don’t know anything more than you do.’

Ponia went a fierce red and bent her head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought it up—’

‘Because I’m family...and yet not family,’ Leah supplied gently. ‘But I think you have to accept that Nik has a right to privacy about something that personal and I may be wrong but I doubt that it would be a good idea to raise the subject with him.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Ponia was aghast at the idea.

Leah smoothly changed the subject and hoped she had firmly dissuaded the younger girl from further indiscreet probing. But long after Ponia had said goodnight Leah was bothered by what she had been told. In some ways she knew nothing about Nik and that hurt; no matter how unreasonable that was, it hurt. She wandered into the drawing-room where she had noticed the magnificent grand piano earlier in the day and sat down on the stool.

So Nik was an adopted Andreakis. And it was foolish to feel hurt that he had never even made a fleeting mention of the fact. After all, it was blatantly obvious that his family had gone to some lengths to conceal the adoption. His parents had had three daughters and must have badly wanted a son. And in a veil of secrecy they had adopted a baby boy. Over the years Leah had read several profiles on Nik in the newspapers and not one of them had referred to that. Ponia was right. Nobody outside the family circle knew.

What age had Nik been before he learnt the truth? Had his parents been more honest in private than they had been in public? If they hadn’t been, it must have been one hell of a shock, she reflected, her fingers moving nimbly over the gleaming keyboard, the rich virtuosity of a Chopin concerto flooding the room with the music she often employed to accompany her deepest thoughts.

She hoped Ponia had the sense to be discreet. Some secrets you just had to live with. Maybe Nik didn’t want anybody to know either. Or maybe he simply didn’t give a damn, considered it scarcely relevant to his adult life. He was very attached to the family she had yet to meet. He was capable of very strong emotions. Why had she never seen that before? A male capable of marrying a woman he didn’t love merely to protect his family was a male capable of putting other people’s needs ahead of his own. Although it was a little hard to appreciate his sacrifice when she had been part of the burnt offering.

Dear God, she thought, with a surge of sudden pain, how could she exist in a marriage where nothing was given or shared but a bed? It was too late for her to accept that. Maybe years ago, when she hadn’t known any better, hadn’t known Nik for the man that he was, she would have happily settled for what he was prepared to give her. But not now, when every sense craved more.

But she had no choice, and even if she did have a choice, did she really have the strength to walk away from him? Was half a loaf better than no bread? She lifted her hands from the keyboard in sudden bitter distress.

‘Don’t stop...’

Her spine rigid, Leah slowly swivelled round on the stool. Nik was standing in the shadows by the window. A shimmering tension emanated from the tautness of his stance; his black eyes glittered in his dark face. His hair was tousled, his shirt half unbuttoned, his jawline blue-shadowed.

‘Play for me,’ he said roughly, and it was not a request.

Leah spun back round to the piano. Her sapphire eyes flared. She lifted her slim hands and played ‘Chopsticks’, every deliberately discordant note expressing her mood of defiance.

A set of hard fingers closed round her narrow wrists and jerked them up. Sudden silence spread through the room, broken only by her own fractured breathing. She could feel the warmth of his powerful body, raw with tension, mere inches from her as he bent over her. A shiver ran through her.

‘Why?’ he grated, releasing her wrists.

‘I’m not your slave,’ she muttered shakily, but that wasn’t why. She remembered playing for him years ago, remembered that first night; she had never played for him since. Music had always been her mode of self-expression. It had become far too personal to share with Nik.

‘Play,’ he said again.

Her hands were trembling. The atmosphere was dangerously charged with every forceful element of Nik’s volatile temperament.

‘I have no music.’

‘You can play for hours without music,’ he reminded her harshly.

Enervated by his louring presence, she began to play, snatches of this, pieces of that, but her usually nimble fingers were reluctant to do her bidding smoothly and several jarring notes disturbed the performance. After the fourth mistake her fingers slid from the keyboard.

‘You’re very stubborn. I should have realised that,’ Nik breathed. ‘You may look as fragile as spun glass but you’re not.’

But right now Leah felt very fragile. Every nerve-ending was singing with the high-wire tension in the room. Slowly she stood up, reluctant to look anywhere near him.