His Penniless Beauty

Will I never, ever learn? Will I go on being so insanely, criminally stupid—so pathetically, abjectly naïve?

Virulent self-hatred snaked through her.

I thought I’d finally learnt my lessons! All of them! I thought I could finally say that I’d wised up!

Like hell she had! The needles of freezing rain pounded down on her and she welcomed them as the punishment she deserved. She walked on blindly, writhing in self-loathing and bleak rage.

In the roadway, a car turned. A cab, she realised too late, as it arced through the wash of water in the gutter, sending a plume of cold, dirty water over her legs.

‘Get in.’

The voice was terse. It sounded angry. She stared. The passenger door of the taxi had opened just in front of her, and holding it open was Nikos Kazandros.

‘I said get in!’

She froze. And in that moment Nikos reached out and grabbed at her. For an instant she resisted, but he was far too strong for her, and he pulled her into the cab, thrusting her down on to the jump seat opposite him, yanking the cab door shut.

‘OK, drive,’ he said to the cabbie. The cabbie glanced briefly at his latest passenger, but she was just sitting there, making no move to get out, so he let out the throttle and moved off in to the traffic again.

On her seat, Sophie felt her brain start to work again. And her muscles. She started to shiver, violently. Water was running down from the hair plastered wetly to her head.

‘Are you mad?’ Nikos heard himself grind out to Sophie. ‘Walking along looking like that?’

She stared at him through rain-wet eyelashes. Her mascara was starting to run. It looked like black tears.

‘I didn’t have a coat with me,’ she said. Her teeth were starting to chatter, and she had to clench her jaw to stop them.

‘And you didn’t think to take a taxi?’ Nikos retorted witheringly. In the shifting light of the interior of the cab he could see the soaked satin of her dress outline every contour of her body. Her evening gown was clinging to her like a second skin, and twice as revealing. She looked half naked…

Involuntarily, he felt, to his own anger and self-disgust, an awareness of her body beneath the semi-transparent material. Of the twin swell of her breasts, their nipples standing out from the cold. He dragged his eyes back to her face.

She made no answer to his jibe, only closed her mouth tightly, jaw clamped. She was shivering, Nikos could see, and clutching a tiny bag on her lap. He pulled his gaze away, deliberately glancing at Georgias. But Georgias was slumped into stertorous sleep in the corner of the cab.

‘There’s a tube station! Let me out!’

Nikos’s attention was whipped back again. Sophie was rapping on the glass behind the cabbie’s seat, and he started to slow down as they approached the station. Nikos’s anger mounted.

‘Are you insane? You can’t go on the tube like that! You’re half naked!’ His eyes flashed darkly. ‘What the hell are you doing, anyway? You were with Cosmo.’

She didn’t answer him, just started to fumble with the door catch as the taxi pulled over beside the entrance to the tube station. Nikos’s hand laced out and imprisoned her wrist.

‘I asked you a question—’

‘Get lost.’ Her voice was a low snarl. ‘I’m getting out here.’

‘The hell you are!’ He rapped on the cabbie’s glass. ‘Keep going!’

The cabbie shrugged and set off again, but Nikos could see him glancing in his rearview mirror. He slid the glass partition open.

‘I’m giving her a lift, that’s all. You can drop me off at my hotel, and I’ll pay the fare for wherever she wants to go. That OK with you?’ he finished witheringly.

The cabbie eyed him, then nodded. ‘Whatever you say, guv. If the lady don’t object.’

Nikos’s gaze ripped back to Sophie. She was sitting there, hunched, arms half crossed across her torso now, as if to veil her body from him. She was still shivering, staring expressionlessly at the floor. Her face was blank. Quite blank. Water from her sodden hair still dripped down the line of her jaw. Mascara ran down her cheeks. She looked a mess.

Why wasn’t she with Cosmo? Nikos lurched back into his seat, eyes on her. ‘So, did Cosmo give you the push?’

She didn’t answer, only gave him a brief, knifing glance before closing in on herself again. Her blankness angered Nikos. Everything about her angered him. Everything. He could feel his anger rising—biting. Wanting to find an out.

‘Or did you change your mind about putting out for him? Is that it?’

That got a reaction. Eyes like daggers flashed up at him, fury in them.