It was only when she looked at that key now that she realised it bore a very close resemblance to the same key she had held in her hand inside that Paris bank. She broke the chain, hurting her hand in the process. The key had been lightly gilded to match the chain but the numbers engraved on it could still be read. It didn’t even fit the lock on the flap. It was the key to another safety-deposit box. For five long years Nik had had his passport to freedom right under his own roof. Max would have enjoyed that irony.
She went to Nik’s wing of the house. Her feet carried her up there, made that left turn on the landing of their own accord. He was pulling on a fresh shirt in the bedroom, so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice her entrance.
‘Nik...’ Her voice emerged hoarsely.
He spun fluidly round to face her, a winged ebony brow quirking as he saw her standing there, sapphire eyes glittering like jewels, the only flash of life in the still beauty of her face.
For a split-second she wanted to curl her fingers around the key and hide it. It had never occurred to her that it might take courage to hand it over, an even greater courage to face the likely consequences. But that awareness hit her now and, shamed by that momentary hesitation, she lifted her hand and dropped the key down on to the bed.
‘Not a life sentence after all,’ she heard herself say flatly.
There was not a flicker of comprehension in Nik’s questioning scrutiny. He had never been so slow on the uptake. He stared at her and then back at the key blankly.
‘It’s the key to another safety-deposit box. Presumably it contains what you’re after.’ And she explained about the bureau.
‘Cristo!’ Nik whispered, coming back to life and sweeping up the key. ‘All this time. I cannot believe it!’
Leah wandered over to the window. The key to the promised land of freedom. Either the end or the beginning of their marriage. Only time would tell her which for if Nik didn’t want to let her go he wouldn’t. On that level he was basic.
‘There’s something else we have to discuss.’
‘Can it not wait?’ he demanded with impatience. ‘I won’t be able to rest until I fly back to Paris and try out this key.’
‘No, I’m afraid this can’t. You see, I happen to know what is in that box. Your birth certificate.’ Leah turned her head.
His starkly handsome features were fiercely clenched. ‘And where did you come by that information?’
Leah loosed a jagged laugh. ‘Well, certainly not from you. Stavros chose to confide in me—’
‘Stavros?’ Nik ejaculated incredulously.
‘He asked me to act as an intermediary. He assumed that I was in your confidence,’ Leah revealed. ‘So I now know that Ariadne is your natural mother.’
‘Stavros is aware of this?’ Nik was ashen, his dark gaze nailed to her.
‘Look, it’s none of my business,’ Leah breathed because Nik, with his silence, had made it so crushingly clear that it wasn’t.
‘For how long has he known?’ he launched at her rawly.
Her brow furrowed. He really didn’t know. He really didn’t know that Stavros was his father and she did not want to be the one to tell him.
‘Theos mou...if he knew, there was no need for me to worry that it might destroy their marriage!’ he vented in sudden savage frustration.
And with those few words Nik told her so much. He did not know who his father was. He had assumed he was a dark secret in Ariadne’s past, the kind of secret a conservative Greek husband would not be able to swallow. So Nik had been protecting Ariadne. And he was none too pleased to discover that his sacrifice had been in vain.
‘Stavros knows everything about your parentage. He wants to talk to you. He’s worried about the effect this continuing secrecy is having on Ariadne.’
Nik muttered something in Greek, both hands clenching. ‘Then why did he not approach me personally?’
‘He promised her that he would never do that, just as she promised your grandparents that she would never tell you.’
‘She is ashamed of me.’
‘I don’t think so, and if you weren’t so stubborn and so damnably proud you might have found that out for yourself by now!’ Leah shot at him shakily.
Nik dealt her a look of such fury that she was pinned to the spot. ‘The first time I saw her after I found out I did attempt to speak to her. She burst into tears and ran away!’ he derided. ‘She was hysterical and terrified.’
And that had been it for Nik. He must have felt absolutely betrayed by the deception which had been practised on him for over twenty years. He would have appeared angry and bitter and accusing, not hurt. He wouldn’t have shown the hurt. Unprepared to deal with his sudden knowledge, Ariadne had panicked and burnt her boats simultaneously.
With an abruptness that startled her, Nik turned away. ‘So what else do we have to discuss? Our marriage?’ he murmured without any emotion at all. ‘That is very simple. You stay or you go. Try to make your mind up before I return from Paris.’
Leah stood there in stunned silence. Shattered, she watched him shrug his broad shoulders gracefully into his jacket. There was a whirring sound in her eardrums. The silence closed in around her. Never in her life had she imagined such humiliation. She walked out of the room, her stomach clenched tight with nausea, her breath rasping in her aching throat.
If he had uncorked the champagne and danced it would have been civilised in comparison with that casual, unemotional statement of total indifference. His cruelty astounded her. But then Nik didn’t have any reason to pretend any more. He was free and he could not have told her more candidly that he wanted his freedom. He might just as well have said, There’s the door...use it! It was over...just like that. She was surplus to requirements.
And yet yesterday...Yesterday, she appreciated numbly, was a million miles removed from today when she had given him that key. That day in the bank vault Nik had said that Max had known he would dump her like a hot potato if he ever got his hands on that certificate. In anger, he had been honest, but only that once. As long as the pressure was on, he had been determined to keep their marriage intact by whatever means were within his power. And, being Nik, conscience hadn’t got a look-in!
And yet yesterday... Dear God! As the erotic imagery of what she had naïvely assumed to be their mutual passion bombarded her she covered her face, torn apart by the pain which was threatening to swallow her alive. How could you be that intimate with another human being and not care in the slightest about that person’s feelings? But then she knew how and why, didn’t she?
Nik was the man who had told her that love had terrified him, Nik, who impressed one as being utterly without fear. He had grown up without love and had learnt to do without it. When even the security of what he had believed to be his background had been torn from him by her father when he was twenty-five he had been further hardened, and if he was bitter about his family he had every right to be. He had bottled it all up and brooded about it. That was Nik: keep it all to himself, share nothing, betray no response lest he make himself vulnerable and risk an ounce of the ferocious pride which powered him.
It was a pity he hadn’t thought of her pride...but then what would have been the point? The charade Max had begun had been played out to its final act. And Nik wanted his life back—now. Not another hour, not another day.
She shuddered, chilled to the marrow by his cruelty. Now the freedom she had fought for mere weeks ago had been handed to her on a plate. Nik would not wait to be free of Max’s daughter. Well, damn him to hell, she thought as she wiped at her overflowing eyes. He was a complete bastard and he was really doing her a favour. No woman worthy of her sex would droop around weeping wetly over a creep like Nik Andreakis!
* * *
‘That was really something, honey. It took me way back.’ As Leah’s fingers lifted from the keyboard the handsome American leaning up against the piano treated her to a look of unvarnished admiration. ‘Would you happen to know...?’ He whistled a couple of out-of-tune bars and she laughed and obliged. As he returned with noticeable reluctance to his seat she smiled.
At this hour the dimly lit lounge was usually busier and she got few personal requests. Then she played what she wanted, perfectly aware that she was just supplying a little background mood music to add to the relaxed atmosphere that the hotel management liked to extend to their wealthy clientele. She wasn’t very well paid but she was coping and she had a couple of interviews for other jobs set up for the following week.
In short, she was surviving. It had been a month since she had walked out of Nik’s life. She had learnt the virtue of keeping constantly busy. And she was so darned tired that she slept like a log at night when she finally fell into bed.
She planned the daylight hours like a military combatant. She had signed up for a computer course. She scanned the employment columns, wrote off for any jobs that might be within her reach and plenty that probably weren’t. And every morning she rose with the prayer that this would be the day she didn’t think of Nik once! Unhappily, however, playing the piano wasn’t a good defence against him. He would drift into her mind and hover with amazing persistence until she booted him out again.