Ella had fallen very still. ‘Abnormal? In what way?’
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t normal for the two of you to be in a celibate engagement,’ Cyrus declared with a caustic derision that sent mortified colour flying into her cheeks. ‘You should know that by the time of his death Paul had no secrets from me.’
Severely discomfited, Ella turned from red to bone white and curved her hands tightly round her cup as if savouring that warmth.
‘But that wasn’t your fault...it was his. I was tempted to tell you what I knew after the funeral but I didn’t see that telling you that late in the day would be doing you any favours.’
Frowning, Ella leant forward in a sudden movement and put her cup back on the tray with a sharp little snap. ‘Telling me what, for goodness’ sake?’
‘Paul was involved in a homosexual relationship before he met you.’
Ella stared at him in complete disbelief. ‘That’s a total lie!’ she gasped.
‘I don’t know if he was gay, bisexual or simply confused, but Paul was definitely not attracted to women in the usual way,’ Cyrus continued in the same hectoring tone of superiority. ‘And once Paul realised he was ill, he clung to you for comfort and support and you gave it unstintingly. That’s why he asked you to marry him. He was terrified of losing you and being alone.’
‘It’s not true,’ Ella insisted in shock. ‘It can’t be true.’
‘I’m afraid it is true,’ Cyrus told her, curtly impatient. ‘And that background made it very difficult for me to know how best to proceed.’
Ella stood up in the hope of hastening his departure. ‘There was nothing to proceed with,’ she muttered in fierce rebuttal. ‘Even if it is, I’m not attracted to you as a man.’
Cyrus rose as well and moved closer. ‘How would you even know, Ella? You’ve never been with a real man.’
Rage finally filtered through Ella’s shock and freed her to speak her mind. ‘Paul was more of a real man than you’ll ever be! A good relationship isn’t necessarily dependent on sex.’
‘Let me show you what you’re rejecting out of misplaced loyalty!’ Cyrus grated, reaching for her. ‘Did you even listen to me? I did you the honour of asking you to marry me!’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Ella stepped sideways, only to be entrapped by the hand that closed roughly into her hair and yanked. Tears sprang to her eyes because it hurt. ‘Let go of me!’
Cyrus had gone all red and his face was a mask of offended fury. ‘I have every right to touch you!’ he hurled down at her, his other hand biting into her slight shoulder. ‘I spent a fortune helping Paul but it was all for your benefit. Are you aware that Drakos is the son of a drug dealer and a whore? Doesn’t that matter to you?’
With every angry word he was pushing her backwards and her calves hit the base of the sofa and his bullying momentum toppled her down on top of it.
‘I’m going to show you what you’ve been missing,’ he intoned viciously.
CHAPTER SIX
UPSTAIRS, NIKOLAI HAD stirred when the doorbell had rung and had then flinched when the front door had slammed loudly on Max’s exit. When his cell phone began ringing beside the bed, he groaned in frustration and gave up the attempt to continue sleeping.
He checked his watch as he lifted his phone. He had had a couple of hours and that would have to do, he reasoned, springing out of bed and raking his fingers through his tousled black hair. Talking on the phone, he strode into the bathroom to splash his face and froze halfway there as his brain kicked in and he recognised the controlled distress in the voice he was listening to. His shoulders slumped as he voiced his sympathy at yet another piece of bad news and then he tossed his phone down in disgust. The bar manager had passed away shortly after Nikolai had left the hospital.
He had pulled on jeans and was wandering barefoot back into the bedroom when a flash of bright colour outside attracted his attention. The drapes hadn’t been pulled properly. A very distinctive car was parked on the other side of the road. It was a bright yellow Ferrari and Nikolai knew exactly who that car belonged to. For a split second he couldn’t credit the coincidence and then it dawned on him that Ella was in the house and he couldn’t relax until he had checked on her. He raced downstairs, saw the drawing-room door ajar, heard Ella’s muffled shriek of pain and kicked the door wide.
Suddenly the weight pinning Ella to the sofa was gone. She blinked in bewilderment and shock as Cyrus went flying back against the wall opposite where Nikolai had flung him after dragging him off her. She sat up just as Nikolai punched the older man hard in the stomach and shouted at him in Greek. Cyrus had attacked her, had torn at her jeans and she was bruised and sore and shaken and frightened. Only the fear that Nikolai might kill Cyrus made her intervene. She stumbled across the room and wrenched at Nikolai’s arm.
‘No...no, don’t hit him again. You’ve hurt him enough!’ she gasped as Cyrus, blood running down his face, which was already swelling from several hits, dragged himself up clumsily from the floor and stumbled frantically towards the door.
‘He hurt you!’ Nikolai vented between gritted white teeth as he strode after the fleeing older man.
Again, Ella grabbed his arm to hold him back and give Cyrus enough time to make it out through the front door. ‘If you kill him you’ll go to prison for it...is that what you want?’
A string of Greek curses erupted from Nikolai as Ella slammed the door protectively in his enemy’s wake. ‘I should’ve warned you about him.’
‘You told me not to be alone with him. I didn’t pay any heed,’ she mumbled guiltily.
‘He’s been accused of getting rough with women before,’ Nikolai divulged.
Blood dripped down onto the polished wooden floor and she grabbed his hand to examine his bruised and bleeding knuckles. ‘You need cleaning up,’ she said, angling him towards the stairs.
‘What happened before he attacked you?’
‘He asked me to marry him and when I told him I wasn’t interested he went off in a rage,’ she told him in a daze. ‘If Gramma hadn’t already hinted to me that she thought he had a more than personal interest in me, I would’ve been gobsmacked. As it was, I tried to be polite. It never once occurred to me that he could be thinking of me like that.’
So, Cyrus had proposed. He had intended marriage. It should’ve been a moment of triumph for Nikolai but it fell resoundingly flat. He had wounded his opponent but Ella had been wounded too. He was appalled that Cyrus had contrived to violently assault Ella and he felt incredibly guilty about that reality. After all, he knew exactly what Cyrus was like and he had virtually set Ella up as a target for the older man’s frustrated rage. She could’ve been raped just as his sister had been and the mere concept of Ella enduring such a violation made Nikolai feel sick with guilt and self-loathing. He was supposed to be in control of events, but somewhere along the line of his plotting he had become selfish and reckless and Ella had very nearly paid the ultimate price. How irresponsible was that?
Even worse, Ella was now valiantly trying to urge him up the stairs as if he were the injured party and in need of the support of her tiny frame. In another mood he would have laughed at the incongruity of her sympathy for him at that moment. But he was not in a laughing mood any more than he was in a triumphant one.
‘What did he do to you?’ Nikolai demanded, thrusting open the bedroom door.
‘He was trying to kiss me and I twisted my face away and he yanked at my hair. I swear he pulled a handful of it out by the roots,’ she whispered, massaging her sore scalp. ‘He flattened me on the sofa and started pulling at my clothes. I never thought of him as a big, strong man but he was much stronger than me. I don’t think I could’ve got him off me without your help... Thank you.’
‘No, don’t thank me,’ Nikolai said with distaste. ‘This is all my fault.’
‘I don’t see how,’ Ella pronounced, dabbing the blood from his hand and applying an antiseptic she had found in the cabinet. She was still trembling in shock from Cyrus’s assault and wondering in disbelief what had come over the older man. Had he simply lost his head in temper? Would he really have raped her? Fear and revulsion curdled low in her stomach. He had tried to rip off her jeans, she recalled with a shudder. There could be no mistake about the motivation of his attack.
‘His conduct is nothing to do with you,’ Ella continued a little unevenly as her breathing began to settle back to normal levels. ‘I was the one who kept up the friendship with Cyrus after Paul died. I used to talk about Paul with his uncle. I needed that outlet after the funeral.’
She fell silent, finally allowing herself to consider what Cyrus had told her about Paul. All the insecurities she had ever felt in her fiancé’s radius briefly returned to haunt her. Paul had been a real extrovert and very popular and when she had first known him she had very quickly fallen for him and longed for more than friendship. But nothing had come of her hopes until Paul had fallen ill. That was when she had become important to Paul and when he had first told her that he loved her. Her eyes prickling and burning, she crushed the memory, which now seemed soiled.
There was no point in revisiting the past and allowing Cyrus’s allegations to upset her. Paul was gone and her questions couldn’t be answered now. But was it possible that she had been blind to the reality of a man’s sexual lack of interest? Had she wasted four years of her life on a non-relationship? That was a very distressing thought.
‘We should’ve called the police on Cyrus,’ Nikolai breathed in a savage undertone. ‘Had him arrested for what he did to you—’
‘But thanks to you he didn’t really do anything. He certainly scared me out of my wits for a few minutes but I wouldn’t want to involve the police. He was incredibly generous to Paul while he was ill and, even though today he insisted that he only did all that for my benefit, I have to stay grateful for what he did do to help then,’ she framed shakily.
‘You’re crying...’ Nikolai registered belatedly as a solitary tear dropped on his hand.
Ella crammed a hand defensively against her wobbling mouth. ‘Sorry—’
‘No, let it out...you’ve had a very frightening experience,’ Nikolai pointed out, furious that he had let her stand there ministering to his minor injuries when she herself had been through so much more. Without hesitation he bent and swept her up into his arms. ‘You need to lie down for a while.’
‘Do you really think he would have r-ripped off my clothes and...?’
‘Yes, I do think that,’ Nikolai admitted as he rested her down gently on the disordered bed and sat down beside her. ‘Obviously he had wanted you for a very long time and your rejection would have hurt his ego. Make no mistake; Cyrus thinks he’s a hell of a good catch.’
‘To accept that all this time he’s been thinking of me like that and I hadn’t a clue...it’s horrible!’ Ella broke off with a sudden sob and Nikolai lifted her up into his arms, muttering what sounded like soothing things in Greek.
Ella let the tears fall against his shoulder, belatedly appreciating that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, that indeed all he was wearing was his jeans. He felt so hot against her cheek, like a muscular furnace, but she felt so incredibly safe and protected in his arms. ‘I’m sorry...so sorry about this.’
‘What are you sorry for? Cyrus assaulted you.’
‘He said that Paul had had a gay affair,’ she confided jaggedly, her heart beating like a hammer inside her. ‘And the awful thing is that it might be true and I’ll never really know why Paul—’
Comprehension entered Nikolai and he breathed in slow and deep. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
But it mattered to Ella, who had on several occasions felt humiliated by Paul’s physical restraint with her. Even Gramma had been surprised when Paul hadn’t asked Ella to move in with him. Had Paul ever wanted that kind of intimacy with her? His resistance had made her feel like less of a woman. The suspicion that that might have all been a front to hide his secret cut even deeper because she had believed that they were as close as two people could be without sex.
‘Cyrus would have said anything to sully your memories of his nephew,’ Nikolai opined. ‘He must’ve been very jealous of him.’
‘No, the worst thing is that I’m scared that Cyrus was telling the truth about Paul...a truth I was too stupid to see on my own!’ Ella gasped against a smooth, tanned shoulder, marvelling that she could be that close with Nikolai without him making any kind of move on her even though she knew how much he wanted her. That, she conceded dizzily, was yet one more striking difference between Cyrus and Nikolai. Nikolai wasn’t taking advantage, wouldn’t take advantage of her while she was upset. A vague sense of frustration and regret trickled through her in response to that recognition.
Nikolai usually ran a mile from crying women and he was at a loss with Ella. He didn’t hug but that was all right because she was the one doing the hugging. He didn’t know what to say, though, particularly when she referred to a gay affair. He was definitely out of his element there. Changing the subject struck him as the only possible option and he breathed in deep. ‘Desmond, the bar manager in the burns unit, died an hour after I left the hospital,’ he told her. ‘His son phoned to tell me.’
Ella froze and then jerked up her head to look at him. Her face was flushed and her little nose was red but her green eyes were wet and impossibly appealing, Nikolai registered helplessly. ‘I’m so sorry, Nikolai.’
‘He was a good guy,’ Nikolai volunteered. ‘I met him when I started working at the hotel. I was only eighteen. He trained me...’
‘What were you like at eighteen?’ she whispered, relieved to be sprung from her introspection.
It was yet another one of those occasions when Nikolai found a woman hard to comprehend. What did what he was like at eighteen have to do with anything? How was that relevant?
‘Cocky...horny,’ he murmured blankly, his mind elsewhere as he breathed in the scent of her hair. She smelt like strawberries. Was that her shampoo? He stroked long fingers down the back of her head, watching the bronze strands shimmer like silk in the light. He was hard as a rock below the jeans and that seriously bothered him because it was inappropriate after what Cyrus had done.
Ella tilted her head back and looked up into Nikolai’s lean dark face. She saw the raw hunger tightening his spectacular bone structure and the burn in his melted caramel eyes below the black velvet fringe of his lashes. ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ she told him truthfully, every fibre of her body suddenly prickling with physical awareness.
She had travelled from gay affairs to what he was like as a teenager to his eyes and that only reminded Nikolai why he rarely had conversations with women. He had sex with them and kept the talking to the absolute minimum. His strong jawline clenched. ‘I was telling you that Desmond had died...’
Ella felt the heat of shame suffuse her mortified face. ‘Yes.’
‘His family were with him at the end. He would’ve wanted that. He was very much a family man,’ he breathed gruffly.
And that catch in his dark deep drawl and the anguish he was struggling to contain in his stunning eyes simply fuelled Ella’s fascination with the male holding her. Nikolai Drakos was incredibly emotional. That great well of intense emotion was what he hid behind the cold front and he usually hid it well but just at that moment pretence was beyond him and she loved that too. He was being so open with her, so frank and natural. His attitude washed away the bad feelings Cyrus and his revelations had infused her with and she felt her own strength again.
‘Not that I know much about how normal families operate,’ Nikolai acknowledged thickly.
Her fingers slid over a bare tanned shoulder. His skin felt like satin and the physical heat he put out attracted he
r as potently as the sun on a cold day. She quivered, awesomely aware of the swelling fullness of her breasts and the prickling tightening of her nipples. She was in control, in full control of herself, yet when she looked at Nikolai it was hard to breathe or swallow because she was remembering what his mouth felt like on hers. And unlike Paul, Nikolai wanted her, she reminded herself with satisfaction. Beneath her thigh she could feel him primed and ready, something she had never felt with Paul. Paul hadn’t wanted her the way she’d wanted him but Nikolai did and couldn’t hide it. That knowledge clenched something deep down inside her and made her feel oddly giddy.
Her hand came up of its own volition and skated along the tempting fullness of his sensual lower lip. His eyes lit up like firecrackers when she met them boldly, wanting, craving, needing and for the very first time unashamed of her natural instincts.
‘Was that an invitation?’ Nikolai husked, a faint shudder racking his big, powerful frame because every atom of pent-up energy imprisoned inside him longed for release.
‘You need it gilt-edged and engraved?’ Ella teased, alight with her own daring, her own decision. He wanted her, she wanted him and it was normal and natural, she told herself firmly, even though somewhere deep down inside herself she was secretly shocked that she was the one taking the initiative.
‘Oh, no... I’m a much quicker study,’ Nikolai told her, sliding her down against the pillows and leaning down to trace her lush smiling mouth with his. In truth he wanted to flatten her to the bed and claim her body and soul like a Neanderthal. It took immense control to remember that she was innocent and deserving of the very best he could deliver.
The aggressive stroke of his tongue between her lips extracted a whimper of sound from the back of Ella’s throat. Her whole body pulsed with expectation. She wondered dimly when it had happened, when she had travelled from simply wanting him to the edge of an unbearable craving that she could no longer fight. And she didn’t care because there was no later or tomorrow or any kind of future in her thoughts, there was only this one special moment when she was finally making her choice and stepping out beyond the grief that had weighed her down for so long. His mouth crashed down on hers and she welcomed it, tipping her head back, parting her lips, all woman, all welcome. His passion enthralled her as much as the emotion he concealed as though it was something to be ashamed of.