‘Chopin.’ He meant business. The total philistine had come prepared.
She gave him Beethoven, was well aware that he wouldn’t know the difference and then felt rather mean and contemptible. He stayed by the piano throughout, which infuriated her. All she could see of him was his shadow and the lean fingers of one shapely hand and that was more than enough to unsettle her.
‘What do you want?’ she muttered tightly, seeing the manager watching them from the bar, conscious that she had never been more appreciative of the blanket ban on her fraternising with guests or casual customers.
‘The barman told me you have a break at nine.’
‘Not to share with you.’
Nik laid a worn leather jewel-box down on top of the piano. ‘Your mother’s necklace.’
‘I sold it!’
‘I’m giving it back to you.’
‘I don’t want it!’ she spat. ‘And I want you to go away and leave me alone!’
‘Is this gentleman a friend of yours, Miss Harrington?’
Leah spun round. The assistant manager who had been watching them from the bar had decided to join the fray.
‘No,’ she said.
‘If I were you I would ignore that little white lie,’ Nik advised with a sardonic smile. ‘Your pianist is my wife.’
‘Is that true?
She wanted to scream that it was a dirty, devious misrepresentation of the true facts. But she had a hideous premonition that Nik would be more than equal to continuing the dispute. Seething, she gave a jerky nod.
‘And she’s about to take her break,’ Nik added so smoothly that she wanted to hit him.
She crossed the lounge to the table reserved for her use near the bar. Nik settled down opposite and stared at her, just stared, not a single expression crossing his startlingly handsome features. He had lost weight, she noted, enough to accentuate the angle of his cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw. Her mother’s jewel-box, which she had ignored and he had picked up, now sat on the table between them.
‘How did you find me?’ she snapped.
‘With effort.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I wanted you to see this.’ Calmly, from an inside pocket he withdrew a slip of paper, unfolded it and placed it between them. ‘You have that right, don’t you think?’
The certificate. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The certification that proved that a Nikos Andreakis had been born to an Ariadne Andreakis in a Swiss clinic thirty years ago.
‘There is no entry under father. When I challenged Evanthia I was told that he was a married man, whom my mother had refused to name. I was also warned that Stavros had no idea that his wife had ever given birth to an illegitimate child. I was reminded of all the advantages the deception had gained me, the life I might have led had I not been fortunate enough to be kept in the family. I was also told that it was my duty to keep quiet and never to shame Ariadne with the reminder of our true relationship.’ Nik completed with perceptible harshness.
Involuntarily, Leah gave him a look of distress. ‘That was so cruel.’
‘Until the day Max produced this I had no idea that I was not Evanthia’s child. I was devastated by the extent of their deceit. All those years nobody had breathed a word. I turned on Ariadne. I wanted answers. I was entitled to them. But she ran,’ he reminded her. ‘And when she did that she confirmed everything that Evanthia had told me. So I did not approach her again. She was so nervous, I was afraid she would betray us all.’
‘You cared about her.’ She said it for him because she knew how hard he would find saying it.
‘Of course,’ he said gruffly, retrieving the certificate.
‘Have you spoken to her now?’
‘Yes. And Stavros.’ Nik sent her a sudden shimmering glance. ‘Thank you so much for warning me.’
She flushed. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me breaking the news.’
‘I’m delighted with Stavros. All my life I have dreamt of having a father who threatened to knock my teeth down my throat if I upset my mother!’
Leah gazed at him in dismay.
‘So now I know where I get my temper from.’ He gave her a rather rueful smile that yanked painfully at her heartstrings. ‘I like him. I always liked him. He’s a maverick like me. And some day, when Evanthia can no longer feel threatened by the truth,’ he phrased carefully, ‘we will own each other publicly and not give a damn.’
‘Wonderful. I’m glad it’s all sorted out,’ Leah murmured, not sounding as if she was glad at all because she finally understood why he had come to see her. He thought he owed her the happy ending to the story which Max had started with a nightmare.
Silence fell, and not a comfortable one either. Nik glanced at his watch.
‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Leah wondered if he could hear the cracking sound of her heart. She would rather not have seen him at all than see him sitting there, patently at a loss as to what to say next.
‘I’ve bought a house in the country,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve put the London house on the market.’
A fresh start, another nail in her coffin. Valiantly she tried to see Nik in green wellies and failed. Living in the country had been her dream, not his.
‘I thought maybe you’d...well, maybe you’d like to come and see it.’
‘Why?’ This was getting brutal, she thought in agony.
‘It was just an idea.’ He spread a brown hand, very nearly knocked his untouched drink over, and righted it with a stifled curse.
Silence fell again, alive with throbbing undertones of tension.
‘You found yourself a job,’ he began in what looked like near desperation.
‘I won’t always be here,’ Leah told him tightly. ‘It’s a start. I’m getting by just fine, if that’s what’s bothering you.’
‘Why should it?’ He stared down broodingly into his drink.
‘Maybe you’d have liked me to fall flat on my face!’
‘Maybe.’ He didn’t deny it.
‘Have you heard from my solicitor yet?’ Misery made Leah masochistic.
The silence fell again like a thunderclap.
‘You dumped all my socks,’ Nik said grimly.
She went from pale to beetroot and refused to meet his eyes. ‘It was a kind of statement.’
‘I got the message.’
‘It was childish,’ she conceded painfully, running a finger round and round the rim of her glass. ‘How’s Eleni?’ And then she couldn’t believe she had asked him such a dead-give-away question.
‘Happy... Her husband came crawling back the day of the dinner. She’s promised to cut her working day down and he’s promised to learn how to cook or some such bloody thing!’ Nik dismissed, his curled lip emphasising his chauvinistic disbelief.
‘Was that what you were talking about that night?’ Leah prompted shakily, her every suspicion shot down in flames.
‘Mostly she was telling me what a dinosaur I am.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘That I was one of life’s takers, that I broke her heart five years ago and didn’t notice,’ he bit out shortly. ‘And that if I had married her and done to her what I had done to you she would have personally castrated me.’
Eleni had taken revenge in the sweetest, most feminine way possible but she couldn’t have done it had she not got over Nik. The silence was back, louder, tenser and more debilitating than ever. Leah’s mouth ran dry. Something stronger than she was made her look up, and her blue eyes clashed with his black ones.