Penniless and Purchased

He became aware they were holding up others, and jolted forwards again, guiding her smoothly. But he didn’t touch her. His hand hovered behind her back, but somehow he felt that the kind of casual body contact he would take for granted with any other woman would be out of place.

When I touch her, it will be special…

And this evening would be special, he knew. Not just because even for him it had taken considerable effort—not to say expense!—to get hold of tickets for the evening, but because—well, because, that was all.

He stopped analysing. Gave himself to the experience. The experience of feeling that something was happening to him that was new—quite, quite new.

She was walking gracefully forward, and he could see male eyes turning. And he could also see that she was gazing around her as they made their way through the throng, her eyes widening every now and then. In the crush bar, champagne was circulating, and Nikos took a glass for himself and for her. She took a sip, then leant forward, slightly towards him.

He was raising his glass. ‘To a memorable evening,’ he said.

She didn’t need to echo his words to know that they were true. Wonderfully, magically true!

And they stayed true all evening. She sat beside him in the plush seats, her face alight, as some of the greatest artists in the world sang on the famous stage below, wreathed in its crimson velvet curtains. All the time, every moment of the gala, she was overpoweringly conscious of Nikos sitting beside her—the lean strength of his body, the occasional breath-catching brush of his sleeve, even though she kept her hands clasped in her lap. By the time the gala ended her emotions were sky-high, swept up by the soaring music and artistry of the performers. In the final applause she turned to Nikos.

‘Thank you! Thank you! All my life I’ll remember this evening!’

Her eyes were like stars, dewed with emotion.

She saw his face still again, as it had done before. Then, slowly, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips.

‘As will I,’ he said softly.

She could only sit, her heart soaring, face alight, lips parted, gazing at him, feeling more than she had ever felt in her life before! More than she had ever thought it possib

le to feel.

The soft brush of his lips on her hand had made her breathless, and then he was lowering her hand, but not relinquishing it, instead drawing her to her feet as the audience started to get to theirs. She felt his fingers lace through hers, so strong, so warm, holding hers, and felt faint with the wonderfulness of it.

Nikos! His name reverberated in her head. Nikos! Nikos! Nikos!

She floated on air as she walked beside him, his fingers still laced with hers, as they made their slow procession from the opera house. Leaving took ages, because the narrow streets outside were thronged, but eventually Nikos was handing her into the limo, and she was sinking into its depths, he was coming in beside her, and the limo was moving slowly off.

‘I asked your father if I might take you for supper after the performance,’ Nikos said. His eyes glinted. ‘I’ve got you till midnight, but you must be home on the stroke of twelve!’

She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘He’s terribly Victorian.’

But Nikos did not laugh with her. ‘He is right to be careful of you,’ he said soberly. Then his tone altered. ‘Now, I hope my choice of restaurant will please you.’

He could have suggested fish and chips and she would have been enchanted, but where he took her was infinitely more salubrious. It was uncrowded and, best of all, their table was very private. What she ate she had no idea, nor did she have much more idea what they talked about. Sophie knew her whole attention was on Nikos—Nikos alone! Gazing at him, smiling at him, listening to him, knowing with every passing moment that he was the most wonderful, wonderful man she had ever met! And by the time, two hours later, he reluctantly escorted her from the limo up to the front door of her father’s house, she knew something else, as well. Something even more precious.

She was in love.

She knew it for a certainty—irrefutably, incontestably. She was in love with Nikos Kazandros!

Dreamily, she waltzed around her room, knowing she was happier than she had ever been in her life, and that the rest of her life was going to be the most wonderful in the world—because she was in love with Nikos Kazandros! In love! In love! In love!

And nothing could stop it! Nothing!

CHAPTER THREE

‘SOPHIE.’

The sound of her name was like a rasp across wounded flesh. For a moment filled with agony Sophie felt the pain of it. Then, steeling herself, she turned expressionless eyes on Nikos.

‘What do you want?’ she responded stonily.

Something moved—flashed—in those dark eyes into whose depths she had once fallen and drowned.