The Cozakis Bride

'It's Nik.'

He didn't sound like himself. He sounded flat, taut, ex­pressionless.

'Are you all right?' she pressed instantly. Silence sizzled on the line.

Olympia was holding the phone so tight she was hurting her fingers. She had just heard his voice and all pride and self-discipline had vanished. She was thinking of crawling, and hating herself for it. 'Maybe you think that in the light of what I said and did that is a funny thing for me to ask,' she began, hoping to draw out the dialogue as long as pos­sible—which meant she had to do all the talking because it didn't sound as if he was going to be much help in that field, 'I'm not all right,' Nik informed her. 'Look, the helicopter will bring you to Athens for eight. I'll see you then.' 'Nik?' 'What?'

She breathed in jaggedly, eyes ready to overflow again. 'I'm just so miserable!'

'You got what you wanted. You got my favourite house. You got my baby. You haven't got me,' Nik enumerated curtly.

'But I want you!' Olympia sobbed, before she could swal­low that despairing cry back again.

The silence stretched and stretched like a giant elastic band attached to her sensitive nerve-endings. At any moment she expected it to snap and rip her down the middle. She heard Nik clear his throat, but he still said nothing. 'I just don't know what to say,' he finally advanced gruffly when she had practically given up all hope of a response.

'Fine...don't worry about it___________ I know I shan't!' In a flood

of tears, she stuffed the phone under two cushions, listening to it ring and ring and ignoring it. The roof had fallen in on her just as Nik had always forecast. Reckless to the point of self-destruction. He'd been right. She had trashed the rela­tionship they had built up. If there had ever been any hope of them staying together she had destroyed that hope all on her own. And it was going to be precious little comfort to her in the future that she had held on to her principles. Already loving Nik, needing Nik, was starting to feel like a life sentence of craving what she couldn't have.

The housekeeper entered the lounge with a gentle knock on the door and another phone. Olympia accepted it with writhing reluctance.

'Olympia?' Nik grated rawly.

'I'll see you at eight. I only said I wanted you because of the baby!' Olympia lied, and after a couple of seconds the phone went dead.

So they would discuss their divorce, or their separation. No, the lawyers would see to the technicalities. Why had she lied like that about the baby? Nik hadn't deserved to be in­sulted again just so that she could save face.

Olympia dressed in unrelieved black to fly to Athens. A stretch limo ferried her through the busy streets at a snail's pace. There was plenty of time for her to ponder her mistakes and her misery and she didn't bother looking out of the win­dow. So when the limo finally drew to a halt, and she climbed out to gaze up at the huge stone mansion in front of her, it was a horrible shock to realise that she had been brought to the Cozakis family home, rather than Nik's apartment or even his office.

A very correct manservant ushered her into the classical hall with its chilly but impressive decor and sculptured heads set on plinths. Olympia could feel herself dwindling in stature right back down into the nervous and intimidated teenager whom Nik had brought home to meet his parents. She had tried to edge back out through the door again, muttering that maybe it was a bit too soon for such a meeting, and Nik had yanked her back.

Momentarily, her eyes shimmered with tears over the memory. For a crazy instant she wanted to be transported back into her seventeen-year-old self, strengthened with all the knowledge she had acquired since their marriage. Most of all, she wanted to experience just once what she had been far too insecure to recognise then...that Nik had truly loved her.

'Olympia...'

She jerked round. Nik was in a doorway staring at her. She stopped breathing. Her heart just jumped and raced. She connected with his spectacular gaze, those jaguar-gold eyes surrounded by inky black lashes. She went weak at the knees. Her attention expanded to rove all over him. The bold, dark features, the intrinsic aura of intense maleness which made breathing such a challenge, the palest grey suit exquisitely tailored to his magnificent athletic physique.

'All four limbs still present and correct, head better screwed on...' Nik muttered tautly.

She didn't know what he was talking about. She didn't care. She just walked across the hall as if he had yanked on a string.

'There's only a few things I need to say to you...'

She froze, stricken eyes veiling. 'Better keep the limo wait­ing, then.'

How had she missed out on noticing straight off how much strain Nik was betraying? It was etched in the clean, tight lines of his bone structure and the set of his mouth. He had lost weight since she had last seen him and he was pale.

He showed her into a book-lined room. 'Firstly, I've torn up all the copies of that offensive pre-marital contract I made you sign.'

Olympia was not noticeably cheered by that announce­ment. He was feeling guilty, she thought. He was now willing to offer generous financial compensation in place of himself. She was obviously going to be a rich ex-wife.

Nik reached for her hand. 'You accused me of marrying you for what I would gain. I asked for that by not telling you the truth about the deal I made with Spyros. I may control your grandfather's business empire but he still owns it and can still dispose of it as he wishes.'

Olympia was astonished by that admission. 'But—'

'Spyros didn't want it that way but I insisted. At the time, I assumed that our marriage would end in divorce,' Nik completed heavily.

That made a great deal of sense to Olympia. Nik had wanted revenge more than he'd wanted profit. It had also suited him to let her believe that she was wholly dependent on him for security. Furthermore, when their marriage broke up, her grandfather could not feel cheated for he would have lost nothing by such an agreement.

Olympia was now paper-pale. Nik was dealing with all the remaining sources of resentment and misunderstanding that still lay between them.

'One last point...without doubt the most important point...' Nik hesitated.

The baby. Access arrangements? The necessity of main­taining a civil relationship in spite of their no longer living together? Her throat convulsed.

'It took me a long time to learn what should have been a very simple lesson,' Nik confided with driven urgency. 'Lukas? That was nothing—indeed, when set against more im­portant matters, a complete triviality.'

'A c-complete triviality?' Olympia stammered with sheer incredulity.

'You saw me in the arms of an ex-girlfriend...you hit back. At least that's how I saw it then, and it made complete sense at the time to me,' Nik spelt out in a charged, almost bitter undertone. 'I had you on this pure, perfect pedestal, and when you seemed to jump off it I was gutted. I carried that feeling for ten years, nourished it, hated you beyond all

reason—'

'I understand,' she broke in, lowering her head wearily even as something in his wording nagged at the back of her mind. 'I felt the same way about you.'

'And when it came to Lukas and you,' Nik continued tautly. 'When it came to trying to deal with that here, in the present, I was still frozen in time at the age of nineteen. So I reacted like a boy, not like a man. I need you to understand that.'

Olympia's head was spinning. Nik was being so open, so honest. He seemed to be trying to prove that he had finally forgiven her for what she hadn't actually done. He was even attempting to foist some of the blame for the episode on himself. He was offering an unconditional acceptance of both her and the past which she had never expected to receive. And then what had nagged at her in Nik's wording a minute earlier was clarified. 'You seemed to jump off... it made com­plete sense at the time...' Nik was talking as though he now doubted her guilt.

'You said you wanted me...' Nik breathed roughly, throw­ing her thoughts into confusion again. 'Back?'

Olympia's sea-jade eyes connected with dark golden eyes. His tension was strong as her own. 'Back,' she confirmed instantaneously.

Nik released his breath audibly and closed both arms tightly round her. She could feel his heart going thump-thump-thump against her as if he had just run a marathon. Slowly he lifted his proud dark head. The look of intense strain was back in his taut gaze. He lifted his hands to her face, curving his fingers round her cheekbones.

'Katerina is here,' he told her then, startling her.

'Katerina?'

'Spyros is here as well.'

'My grandfather?' Olympia was in shock at those twin announcements.

'With the obvious exception of Lukas, I have assembled everybody who was originally involved in our broken engagement ten years ago,' Nik advanced as he walked her back into the hall and towards the drawing room. 'They have all simply had dinner together and your arrival will be unexpected. That is how I planned it.'