Penniless and Purchased

What on earth had she done it for? It just didn’t square with anything he’d expected. He’d expected to find her sulking, outraged at being relegated to this mouldering, deserted house, bored out of her pampered skin, itching for the bright lights, wanting someone—anyone—to spend some money on her! Wanting the easy life she’d always had, always wanted to keep…

His eyes hardened unconsciously. But not at his expense, thank you! He’d seen to that four years ago—and he was seeing to it now, as well. He’d settle her debts, but he was damned if she was going to get a luxury holiday, as well!

Yet as he gazed about him, seeing the evidence of hard manual labour all around him, he started to feel his thoughts shifting. They shifted even further when she answered him.

‘I told you. I enjoy it,’ she said tightly. ‘It’s very peaceful.’

Nikos’s gaze snapped back to her. She didn’t look like someone at peace—tension was visible in the set of her shoulders, the straightness of her back. His eyes worked over her, oblivious for the moment of the stiffening in her pose under his scrutiny. He still couldn’t get over how totally different she looked from when he had last set eyes on her.

His eyes rested on her. She looked a million times better like this! Straggling hair, smut of dirt on her cheek, shabby T-shirt—none of it could distract from what was keeping his eyes on her.

Her beauty. Her sheer, extraordinary, breathtaking beauty! Her bones, her eyes, her mouth—all were just so…so…

He stopped analysing and just gazed, feeling an emotion go through him that seemed to be scouring him out from the inside. Memory kept pouring down into his consciousness—so many memories! Each one a vivid, vibrant picture in his head—of Sophie, Sophie, Sophie…So young, so beautiful…so magical…

Oh, she was older now, but her beauty had ripened, filled out, and without that tawdry mask of make-up it was as if he was seeing her all over again for the first ti

me.

Abruptly she snapped her head away, sheering her gaze from him, her complexion paling beneath the honeyed hue that the summer sun had tinted her exposed skin with. The movement severed the moment. With a mental wrench, Nikos pushed aside his empty plate and reached for one of the luscious ruby strawberries glistening in their bowl. The warm ripeness was lush on his tongue, and he focussed on savouring it—blocking out as best he could his urge to scrutinise Sophie again.

Leave her alone! There’s no point at all in looking…she’s not for you, ever again!

But his thoughts seemed to be ringing hollow in his brain. Oh, he knew the score, all right—how could he not? He’d ripped Sophie Granton from him four long years ago, and he had no intention—none whatsoever—of letting her take root again. None. The hell with what he’d felt when he’d seen her again! That disastrous, fatal flash of desire. That had to be killed again, stone dead.

Which was exactly why he’d come to see her. Not because he wanted to see her again—never that!—but simply to drive home to her that, pay her debts he might, but pamper her he would never do! She’d have to put up with being dumped here, with all the privations it entailed, however much she resented it!

Except that she didn’t seem to be resenting it…

Seemed, indeed, to have made herself at home here—humble though it was, self-reliant though she had to be. Seemed, indeed, to have got stuck in, quite unnecessarily, to diligent peasant labour! And found it peaceful!

Nikos found his gaze going out again over the garden. But then it was peaceful…

Warm and sunny and somnolent, with bees buzzing and birds chirruping. Unconsciously he reached for another strawberry, savouring again its sweet ripeness. He felt his muscles relax, and out of nowhere a sense of well-being start to steal over him. He stretched his long legs out and crossed them at the ankle, hooking an arm around the back of the chair as he continued with the strawberries. Across the table he could see Sophie’s fingers reach out tentatively, stiffly, and take a strawberry for herself.

‘They’re very good,’ he remarked. ‘Are they from that bed over there?’ He nodded in the direction.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘They’re ripening every day now. I had to clear away the weeds first.’

‘Well worth it,’ responded Nikos. His eye was drawn as a bird darted down to the pile of weeds and hopped on to the bared earth, pecking suddenly.

‘What’s that?’ he enquired lazily, indicating the bird with his hand.

‘It’s a robin. It’s after the grubs and worms in the soil. It’s been dropping in every day. It’s probably got a nest somewhere.’ She was trying to talk normally, but it was hard. Harder still to go on sitting here, tense and awkward, while just across from her Nikos was stretching out in all his masculine glory, making himself at home, replete and relaxed.

Why can’t he just go away? Why can’t he clear off and leave me alone?

But the anguished rhetoric sounded hollow. Her sense, her sanity, might want him to disappear, but there was a part of her—a weak, dangerous part of her—that only wanted to let her gaze rest on him again, now that he was no longer looking at her, and gaze and gaze and gaze…

Feast on him even as he was feasting on the strawberries she’d picked.

‘Feeding her chicks?’ mused Nikos.

‘His chicks,’ she corrected. ‘That’s the male.’

‘How can you tell?’ His enquiry was as lazily voiced as his pose was relaxed.

‘His red breast. Very handsome. Pulls the females.’ There was a tart note in her voice.