His Penniless Beauty

Her mind sheered away. She had never gone to Greece with him.

And she no longer loved him.

He had killed her love for him—stabbed her to the heart. And she had handed him the dagger with which to do it. And her life had shattered to pieces.

A heaviness crushed down on her. An old, familiar bitterness.

He was handing back the leather-bound menus, turning his attention to the wine list, relaying his decision to the hovering maître d’. Then his attention turned to Sophie. She lifted her chin. She would not look away. She would bear this and stick it out. Why he was going through this farce she could not begin to guess, but she would not crumble. His expression seemed veiled, as though he were hiding some emotion behind the dark surface of his eyes. Despite her intention to stay unperturbed, she found herself reaching jerkily for her water glass.

‘Sophie—’

She stayed her hand. Swallowed. ‘Yes?’

He seemed uncertain for a moment, then he spoke. ‘Sophie, the reason I’m having dinner with you is this. I want to draw a line under the past. I don’t want it intruding again. You clearly don’t, either. So I want to have an evening with you that proves to us both that, in the unlikely event of our paths ever crossing again, they can do so without the drama that has happened this time.’

He took a breath, then went on, his voice crisp and decisive. ‘I trust, with your debt settled, your financial problems are now averted. You got yourself into a dangerous mess, but you’re out of it now, and I’m sure you’ll have the good sense not to consider that dire option a sensible course ever to consider again. Now, I’ve lectured you quite enough—’ he permitted himself a lightening of his brisk tone ‘—so let us change the subject and not refer to it again.’

She was looking at him strangely as he spoke, a closed look on her face. He wondered at it fleetingly, and then the wine waiter was there, proffering the bottle he’d selected. Once the tasting and the pouring were complete, he lifted his filled glass and took a contemplative mouthful. Replacing the glass, he remarked, his tone conversational, ‘So, you decided music wasn’t for you after all?’

‘No.’ There was no emotion in her voice and she did not elaborate.

She wasn’t going to be forthcoming, clearly, and Nikos let it be. Her defection from a subject she had once been devoted to surprised him, but perhaps her vaunted devotion to her music had been as shallow as other aspects of her character.

He pulled his thoughts away from that dark path. He was not going there. Tonight was about the future, not the past. And the future was about making Sophie Granton nothing more than a passing acquaintance to whom he had total immunity.

He started again, making his tone conversational once more. ‘What did you take up instead to occupy you?’

Carefully, Sophie picked up her wineglass. The tips of her fingers were white.

‘Nothing much,’ she said.

It was like getting blood out of a stone, thought Nikos.

Once they had talked with eager fluency, never at a loss, talking of anything and everything.

The first course was served, and Nikos was glad, but as they started to eat, he resumed his attempts.

‘What sort of “nothing much”?’ He smiled.

Sophie forked up a morsel of her seafood concoction, savouring its delicate flavour. It took her mind off Nikos’s relentless probing.

‘I work,’ she answered.

His eyebrows rose. If she were in paid employment she had clearly failed to live within her salary, running up debts that she’d resorted to trying to pay with that vile escort work.

‘What sort of work?’ He kept his voice pleasantly enquiring.

‘In a shoe shop.’ It was the truth—or had been until she’d not turned up the day she’d been driven here. She doubted the shop would take her back, and that would mean another dispiriting trip to the unemployment office, trying to find something, anything, that kept money coming in, however low paid. Nikos’s five thousand pound loan had only bought her a limited amount of time. Nothing more than that.

For a moment she felt fear, so familiar, so terrifying, bite in her throat. Dear God, how could she keep going? Doing what she had to do—had no choice but do?

Surviving—I’m surviving. Day after day. Week after week. It’s all I can do and I have to go on doing it. Scraping together the money that I need. That I go on needing. And there’s nothing I can do except to go on doing what I’m doing.

‘Ah…’ Nikos understood now. It was a popular option, working in a fashionable boutique, especially when the shop was owned by a friend and run as a little hobby—something to occupy women like her, to while away the time. ‘That must be useful if you want to snap up the latest designs first,’ he remarked lightly.