His Penniless Beauty

But, try as she did to tell herself that, it seemed her body knew better. Her body was crying out to her that that extraordinary, miraculous night, that gift that had been given to her out of nowhere, had been real.

She could remember with every cell just how exquisite his every caress had been, every touch of his lips, every beautiful, incredible sensation he had aroused in her as he had made love to her slowly, sensuously, tenderly, passionately…

She stumbled on, forcing herself to do so. Finding words in her head that she did not want there—could not allow there. But they came all the same, just as the echoes of his caresses trembled in her limbs, set an aching in her breasts, her heart. Her stricken, broken heart.

How can a heart break twice?

Hadn’t it been agony enough to go through it the first time around, without having to endure it again now? Yet she knew that there was no escape—could be no escape. Nikos had come back into her life, and her heart had broken all over again.

It was that simple, that brutal.

If only he’d never seen me again!

And yet…

How could she wish never to have seen Nikos again? Never to have experienced that miraculous, magical night she had spent with him? It had been a blessing she could never regret! Emotion poured through her. Whatever the reason Nikos had taken her she must be glad—glad with all her heart—that he had! Because this time her abiding memory would not be burning humiliation and coruscating shame, tearing her to pieces, but instead something she could treasure all her life—a precious gift to hoard and protect, not reject with loathing and repulsion and anger.

That’s what I must hold on to! To give me the strength to go on.

For go on she must—there was no alternative. There never had been.

Head bowed, she went on walking the hard pavement.

‘Sir, we’ve got a sighting.’

Instantly Nikos tensed, fingers gripping his mobile. ‘Where?’ he barked.

His security operative gave him the location. Nikos scrawled it on a pad, then cleared the line, before punching through to his chauffeur to order his car to the forecourt and relaying the location for him to key into the car’s satnav. Then, striding from the office, pausing only to instruct his PA to cancel all appointments, he swung out into the corridor of the executive suite of Kazandros Corp’s London headquarters and headed for the lift. His expression was grim.

His mood grimmer.

Finally his quarry had been run to earth. Emotion scythed through him, but he cut it short. For twenty-four hours emotion had rampaged through him, all but stopping him from functioning. Consuming him to the exclusion of everything else. From the moment he had finally realised that Sophie had gone—disappeared—not just from his bed, but from Belledon itself.

It had taken him over an hour of increasingly frantic searching through the near-derelict main house to establish that she was not lying with a broken neck at the foot of collapsing stairs, or fallen through the rotten floorboards. Even longer to realise that, despite having left all her belongings behind, unpacked, she had nevertheless gone—left him.

Why? The question still burned at the base of his mind, though he had stopped trying to find an answer. There was none that he could think of. It was inexplicable—unforgivable.

What the hell was she playing at?

Anger bit in his throat and he thrust it away. As he climbed into the car, throwing himself back in his seat and ordering his chauffeur, ‘Just drive!’, his face took on a closed, brooding expression. He’d been a fool. A total fool.

Just like last time.

Sophie Granton had torn him to shreds all over again. The burning in the pit of his stomach intensified, and so did the grim expression on his drawn features. He would find Sophie—find her, shake her like a rag, and get answers!

Damn her—damn her for doing this to me all over again! Taking me to heaven—then tossing me into hell. Damn her!

The drive to the location he’d been given took longer than he’d expected. From the plush Kazandros offices in the City the car wended its way north-west—but not to any of the prosperous areas of London that he would once have associated with Sophie Granton. But then these days Sophie Granton was no longer a Holland Park princess. As the car headed into more downmarket streets, Nikos glanced out through the smoked-glass windows, frowning. This area was not just downmarket, it was derelict!

His mobile sounded again, and he snapped it open.

‘Yes?’ His voice was curt.

‘The subject is now walking along the street designated as her home address,’ came the voice at the other end of the connection.

‘Just keep her under surveillance,’ said Nikos, before relaying the information to his driver.