His Penniless Beauty

His words seemed casual, as did his pose, but there was a fine tension in every line of his body that belied his calm.

‘And there are things you need to know, Sophie.’ He paused, as if imposing self-control for a moment. ‘And the first is this. I’ve paid your father’s clinic fees for the next six months.’

For a second she froze, then she rounded on him. ‘Then you can damn well unpay them! I didn’t ask for your help, Nikos! I didn’t ask for your charity! My father’s not your concern! Not your responsibility!’

He got to his feet, and suddenly he seemed very tall, his presence overpowering. She took a step backwards.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said again, and walked towards her. ‘Because there’s something else you need to know, Sophie.’ He stopped a few steps away from her, but it was like being in a magnetic field, and she felt herself physically sway. She dug her heels into the carpet, standing her ground, muscles knotted with tension.

‘There’s nothing else I need to know!’

He shook his head. ‘You’re wrong about that, too, Sophie. Wrong about so, so much. But mostly wrong about this.’ He paused a moment, levelling his gaze on her. ‘Why do you think I was going back to Athens four years ago?’

She stared. What had that to do with anything? He answered her silent incomprehension.

‘I was going to see my parents,’ he told her conversationally. ‘I was going to tell them,’ he continued, his tone still casual, still unexceptional, his eyes still resting on her, ‘that I’d just met the woman I was going to marry.’

The silence stretched between them. Outside on the street she could hear the dim roar of traffic. But all she could hear in the room was the thud of her heartbeat, the pounding of her pulsing blood in her head.

Her mouth was dry suddenly, as parched as a desert. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t.’ He paused again, then spoke. Said the words that were within him. That had been within him for all these years. Never said. Never spoken. Until now.

‘I fell in love with you, Sophie, four years ago. I fell in love with the girl with almond blossom in her hair. The girl whose smile made my heart catch. The girl who enchanted me, captivated me! The girl I desired more than any other woman I’d known—ever could know. I fell in love with you.’

The silence was absolute. Not even the beating of her heart was audible.

Perhaps my heart has stopped. Perhaps I’ve died. I must have died—this cannot be real, it can’t be.

She seemed to sway minutely.

‘That’s why I stayed with you that night. Because I knew you were my heart’s love—that you were going to be mine all my life. And I knew you loved me, Sophie. Knew it with the certainty of one who loves. Every look, every touch confirmed it!’ His voice changed, and something in it made Sophie’s heart constrict. ‘Every kiss confirmed it, Sophie. Every caress. You took me to heaven that night, and though I knew I should have resisted, should have waited until I had made you mine as my bride, I could not! It was impossible to do so! So I made you mine in love, with love, mine for ever and eternity! And then—’

She saw his eyes shadow, and it pierced her—pierced her to the core.

‘And then you told me what I meant to you.’ His voice had changed again. Emptied. Become a hollow place. ‘I wasn’t the man you loved. I was only the man you wanted to marry. Because then everything would be “wonderful”!’ He mocked the girlish gush of her accent, a mockery that lacerated like a knife across her skin. ‘“Wonderful!”’ he echoed. ‘Because then Daddy’s company would be safe, and you would be safe too—the cosseted princess, Daddy’s darling, protected from the world, cocooned in your music, your studies, your artless, easy, effortless life! And you would have Daddy, and Daddy would have his company, and you would have me, too, and everything would be just “wonderful”…’

She was white—as white as a sheet. Her face stricken.

She could only whisper. Anything more was beyond her. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Everything you said. It’s what I was. Pampered and protected. Totally indulged. Looking for shining white knights and silly, selfish happy ever afters!’

She could bear nothing more. The weight of it was crushing her. The weight of knowing that Nikos had been offering her a gift so precious, the gift of his love that she had yearned for, prayed for, and then feared she had only dreamt it hopelessly. The weight was grinding her heart to ashes.