‘Want?’ he echoed. The taunt was still there, the harshness. ‘Why should I want anything—anything that you have to offer now? Cosmo’s welcome to your well-displayed charms!’ The eyes lashed over her, the whip of contempt laying bare her skin.
But she would not feel it, would not feel the lash of his words, his taunting. What was it to her? What was he to her?
Nothing. Nothing at all, ever again!
‘Get lost, Nikos,’ she said, and turned away, plunging into the melee in the room. Even Cosmo Dimistris seemed like a haven from this unbearable encounter.
As he watched her walk away through the room, Nikos felt emotion sear through him. Then, abruptly, it was overridden. He suddenly realised he could no longer see Georgias. Cursing under his breath, he stared around, as if he could conjure him up, and then, a grim look on his face, he headed down a wide corridor that clearly led towards the apartment’s bedrooms.
It took him a while to find his charge, throwing open one door after another and finding the rooms occupied. He carried on his furious search until he found Georgias, his tie loose, shirt undone, the girl he’d been dancing with even more undressed, the pair of them collapsed on a bed together.
Nikos wrested her off, ignoring her squeals of inebriated protest at being balked of her prey, then yanked Georgias up-right. He was almost completely out of it, his eyes glazed, hair tousled. Nikos hoped to God it was merely alcohol in his system.
It took a while to get Georgias out of the apartment, their way barred by the milling party throng and imprecations not to leave, and Georgias had a suddenly reanimated desire to dance again, but finally Nikos manhandled him out, and down in the lift.
Getting him across the lobby required some force, but once the night air hit, Georgias collapsed almost completely. Nikos glared angrily out across the roadway. Rain was sluicing down, cold and soaking, but at least a taxi driver had seen him sheltering under the portico of the luxury apartment block, and was diverting towards him. With effort, Nikos manhandled Georgias inside, and thrust him into the far corner of the cab, where he slumped in an ungainly fashion, his eyes closing in insensible stupor. Nikos gritted his teeth.
Brusquely, he gave the name of their hotel, and the cabbie nodded and moved off, tyres sluicing through the rain-filled gutter. Nikos threw himself back into his corner of the cab, his mind in turmoil. Only one image dominated it.
Sophie Granton.
He felt emotion surge inside him again—convulsing, turbid. Filled with anger, with more than anger.
Why the hell did I have to see her?
Why the hell had she had to rise up from the pit like that? Seeing her again, seeing what she’d come to—her dress half hanging off her, keeping company with the likes of jerks like Cosmo!
Memory slanted through his head, unwanted, unbidden—but vivid.
Her graceful body sheathed in a column of ivory, a chiffon stole around her pale shoulders, her face radiant with a beauty that had made his breath stop in his lungs, stepping towards him from the limo to where he waited for her outside the opera house, and her eyes, luminescent, glowing—fixed on him…
With brute force, he twisted his head away, banishing the memory. Now, instead, the last memory he would ever have of her would be draped on Cosmo Dimistris’s arm at a party for coke-heads and tarts…
His mouth thinned, tightened to a whiplash, a lash that flayed across his soul. If that was what she wanted now, that was what she could have.
And yet—
Abruptly, he leant forward, rapping on the glass behind the driver. The cab slowed and the cabbie twisted slightly, sliding open the partition.
‘Turn around,’ said Nikos.
Sophie was walking. It was raining, she was soaked, she was freezing, but she didn’t care. Not about that, but about how stupid she’d been.
No, not just stupid. That was far, far too weak a word. Anger raged inside her. At herself. Sickening, gut-churning. It was like acid inside her. Eating her up.
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.