His Penniless Beauty

Her face contorted. Dear God, how could last night have happened? What vicious twist of fate had heaped that upon her? Four years—four years—since her life had been destroyed, and now Nikos Kazandros had reappeared, like some hideous, malign demon, to mock and taunt her in her very hour of desperate self-abasement!

God almighty, did he think she’d wanted to take that hideous job? Dressing up like a tart and meeting a complete stranger for the evening? She’d had to force herself to do it! Force herself to let everyone see her in that vulgar, exposing dress, to smile, and make fatuous, feeble conversation to a man who made her flesh crawl, made her feel even dirtier than she felt already.

Hasn’t life done enough to me?

The cry came from the depths—the depths where she lived now, to which she had sunk remorselessly, pitilessly.

She stared around her. The tiny, shabby bedsit was hardly big enough for a bed, let alone an alcove with a sink, and a cracked dresser with a hot ring and kettle on it. But it was all she could afford—all she dared afford. She bowed her head, crushed beneath a weight she could not bear.

But she must.

On top of the narrow chest of drawers was the latest letter. Beneath the polite phrase was the harsh, brutal truth.

We regret to inform you that unless the fees are paid in full, in advance, by the end of the month, we shall have no option but to insist that you make immediate alternative arrangements—

She sheered her mind away, as she always did. Had to. Because to do anything else was unbearable.

I have to get the money! I have to!

It didn’t matter how—it couldn’t matter. She had to pay that bill—just had to!

Fear gnawed at her as she stared at the letter, at the stark, pitiless words in it.

As stark and pitiless as the world. She knew that now. The world was a vile place, without mercy or kindness or goodness in it. Hadn’t she learnt that? Hadn’t the last four punishing, terrifying years taught her that?

Into her eyes a hardness came, glazing them over. What use were feelings, sensibilities, moral revulsion? Where did they get you? Nowhere. The end of the road.

But for her the road stretched on. Endlessly. And, whatever anyone thought of her, whatever she thought of herself, the money had to be found. Had to be!

In her head she heard the scornful, condemning words of Nikos Kazandros pouring over her, cruel and vicious, like acid into an unstanched wound.

‘Take a good hard look at yourself when you get home—a good hard look, Sophie—and think about whether you like what you see. Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.’

Anger filled her. What did he know?

Well, she knew! She knew, all right! She could hate it all she liked, but nothing would let her off the hook—nothing could spare her.

Ahead of her another day loomed, another struggle.

And no end in sight.

And Nikos Kazandros, and all her memories of him, could take their sneers and contempt and drain away, back into the poisoned, bitter past where they belonged. And go to hell!

Nikos sat motionless in the leather chair at the head of an oval table around which half a dozen men were seated. They were discussing a forthcoming property deal, but Nikos wasn’t paying attention. He had two people of his own in the discussion, whose judgement he trusted, and his presence was only as a figurehead for Kazandros Corp. Since his father had retired, two years previously, Nikos now had the entire running of the company to himself. After leaving London four years ago, he’d immersed himself without pause in learning every string there was to the business, cutting more and more deals on his own account until he’d earned his father’s complete trust. He’d come a long way in four years….

And he’d never looked back. Not once. He had not permitted himself to do so. He had pushed Sophie Granton out of his head, never to return.

But return she had.

Damn her!

In the darkness of the night he’d been determined to push her back out of his head again. But this morning, with the bright sunshine streaming into the meeting room of his UK lawyers, she had come invading again.

He kept seeing her everywhere, all the time.

But not the way she’d been, draped on Cosmo Dimistris’s arm. And not the way he’d known her four bitter years ago. Neither of those images burned in his skull.

It was the last image of her, when she’d sat hunched in the taxi, shivering, bedraggled, sodden.

Something moved in him—something he did not want to feel. He resented it. Why should he feel it? Sophie Granton was nothing to him! He knew what she was—what she was prepared to do to get what she wanted. If she’d got herself into a mess, it was none of his making! If she’d thought the world owed her an easy living and was now finding it did not, that was not his problem! It hadn’t been four years ago, and it damn well wasn’t now!