The Unfaithful Wife Read online

  How on earth could she have forgotten? As long as that hateful certificate was out there, Nik was determined to stay married. Yesterday, for the first time, she had stood up to him, really stood up to him, and seemingly he was now afraid that she might choose to walk out regardless of the possible consequences to him and his family.

  A tight coil of pain snaked up inside her. ‘You don’t have to say that...I over-reacted. I was embarrassed, maybe a little insensitive...’

  ‘A little?’ Highlights of gold flashed through his expressive eyes and for a split-second he both sounded and looked much more like himself until he screened his gaze and tightened his hold on her slender fingers to grate, ‘No, I was the one who was insensitive.’

  Mentally she imagined her ears shooting out on stalks to catch such an un-Nik-like sentiment. ‘But I—’

  ‘It was my fault,’ he interrupted with more than a hint of aggression.

  ‘But I should have—’

  ‘I don’t wish to hear another word,’ he spelt out, with an incredibly forced-looking smile.

  But she could feel the anger he could barely suppress thickening the atmosphere. If only it weren’t such an effort to concentrate, she thought, and she was suffering from a peculiar and unbelievably inappropriate urge to giggle like a drain.

  ‘Nik...I’m not going to walk out again.’ She felt horribly guilty that he should be forced to such lengths to try and placate her when it wasn’t necessary. ‘I know I can’t...unless I find that certificate—’

  ‘Impossible,’ he broke in with a suppressed violence that she quite understood.

  ‘But you’d let me go like a shot if it turned up—’

  ‘That is not quite how I would put it.’ His low-pitched response was uneven.

  ‘Uncork the champagne and dance?’

  ‘Now you are talking nonsense,’ he groaned, fan-shaped lashes almost hitting his cheekbones as they swept down.

  He rescued her glass before she dropped it, set it aside.

  ‘Is that that church again...?’ she enquired without great concern, an unfamiliar feeling of insouciance enclosing her. ‘Do you think Giorgios is lost?’

  Nik swept up the phone and said something to the chauffeur.

  Leah flexed her stiff shoulders and kicked off her shoes and then wondered why she had done something so uncharacteristic. She just felt so incredibly relaxed and yet kind of...excitable at the same time. It was the weirdest sensation.

  Nik watched her and then he reached for her other hand and drew her closer. Her breathing was fractured, her heartbeat a magnified thump against her ribcage; the blood in her veins was racing. She could feel her breasts straining against the light silk barrier of her bra, the sudden painful sensitivity of her nipples.

  The silence throbbed and then in one sudden startling movement Nik dropped his hands to her hips and brought her down on top of him. But he uttered a stifled imprecation and flung his dark head back a split-second before his mouth met hers in what had seemed like a determined collision. He looked like a male in the throes of anguished conflict.

  Leah studied him with out-of-focus eyes, her hands braced on his shoulders.

  ‘Nik?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he muttered raggedly.

  ‘I know what I want to be doing,’ she giggled and, leaning forward, she ran the tip of her tongue teasingly along the compressed line of his mouth.

  His hands clamped over her forearms as though he was about to thrust her back from him and then, with a harsh groan, he crushed her against him instead. He kissed her with so much passion that he bruised her lips. She loved it, excitement leaping through her in a rollercoaster wave.

  Then abruptly he broke the connection and leant his brow against hers.

  ‘I am a sneaky, slippery, devious bastard,’ he mumbled thickly, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘I am everything you ever called me and right now I would give ten years of my life to make love to you. I’m in agony...’

  ‘But?’ She sensed the ‘but’ coming.

  ‘There was vodka in your drink. You’re plastered, Leah.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It was a disgusting thing to do but I was desperate to make you talk...make you relax. Also, the car has been driving round in circles. Please forgive me.’

  As she shifted he shuddered, every taut line of his big body betraying not only his tension but also the intensity of his arousal. And Leah laughed because all of a sudden it seemed terribly funny. As swiftly as she grasped what the matter with her was she knew she ought to be outraged by such duplicity but the idea of Nik being reduced to such desperate straits appealed to her far more. You have a conscience.’

  ‘And right now it is killing me,’ he confided thickly, knotting two unsteady hands slowly into her hair to prevent her from moving. ‘Theos, it is always like this with you! I want you so much, you could make me beg.’

  That frank confession told Leah of a power she had not dreamt she possessed. She was knocked sideways by the concept. It had not occurred to her that he might find her that desirable. But Nik was telling her that this wild hunger that could surge up between them without warning was mutual. But then he was a very physical male. It might not be the true love which her adolescent fantasies had centred on but she sensed that she had vastly underrated the extent of her own attraction.

  Even so, she argued, ‘I don’t have big boobs.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Or legs that go up to my armpits.’

  ‘Cristo, I think you’re perfect.’ He brushed his lips sensually back and forth across hers, a husky growl of hunger escaping him. ‘So very perfect, I can’t believe you’re mine.’

  ‘Tell me more...’ she invited, tilting her head back out of reach with a teasing smile.

  Taking abrupt note of the fact that the limousine had drawn to a halt in a courtyard, he swore instead. ‘We have arrived.’

  It took a second or two for Leah to dredge herself back to the real world again. Nik slid her back on to the seat and then suddenly cupped her cheekbone in a possessive palm and extracted another long, lingering kiss that did nothing to aid her efforts to pull herself together.

  The fresh air made her feel dizzy. Nik curved an arm around her narrow back and steadied her while she smoothed down the short skirt of her raspberry-coloured suit. ‘If I trip over the furniture it’ll be your fault,’ she complained.

  He laughed softly and bent his head. ‘You’re still weak from the effects of the flu,’ he told her smoothly. ‘You’ll definitely have to lie down to rest before dinner...and being a caring, concerned husband—’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I will naturally accompany you,’ he completed even more smoothly.

  As he guided her up the flight of shallow steps and through the double doors—already opened wide on to an impressive marble foyer—she dimly marvelled at the speed and dexterity with which he had returned their relationship to its former footing. She was relieved, she was suddenly happy again, but she was just a little intimidated by the ease with which he had performed that miracle.

  Ponia appeared, looking frantic and far more formally clad than Leah had ever seen her, with her hair swept up, her tiny frame sheathed in an elegant dress. ‘You’re so late!’

  ‘We got lost,’ Nik said carelessly.

  ‘Lost?’ Ponia parroted.

  ‘But we found each other again,’ he murmured in an aside only audible to Leah.

  ‘Yes.’ A tremulous smile flashed across her lips, her sapphire eyes suddenly brilliant in her heart-shaped face.

  ‘Eleni’s here,’ Ponia said baldly from behind them.

  Leah felt Nik stiffen and then he laughed. ‘What a delightful surprise!’

  ‘And the whole Kiriakos tribe are coming to dinner,’ Ponia proffered in a rush.

  ‘How very civilised,’ Nik responded, but he no longer sounded quite so amused.

  Leah wanted to ask questions but it was too late. A manservan
t was opening a door and suddenly they were on the threshold of a vast reception-room which, dismayingly, was filled with people, every one of whom fell silent and turned to view their entrance.

  Nik’s mother, Evanthia Andreakis, was a regal, still attractive woman who could easily have passed as being a decade younger than she was. She greeted Nik, shook Leah’s hand, barely looking at her, and then quite calmly turned her attention back to Eleni Kiriakos, who was seated by her side, and continued to converse in her own language.

  It was Eleni who stood up, a faint flush on her perfect cheekbones, to enquire politely after Leah’s health.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

  ‘You look wonderful, Nik.’ Eleni smiled with real warmth and the abrupt transformation from cool reserve to vivacity quite startled Leah.

  Mrs Andreakis signalled to Leah with an imperious gesture of one hand. Ponia was standing beside the older woman, her pretty face set and flushed. ‘My grandmother would like me to introduce you to everyone,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Doesn’t she speak English?’ Leah whispered.

  ‘Of course she does...she’s just being blasted rude!’ the teenager hissed shamefacedly. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the guest of honour and then Eleni arrived, and she was obviously invited!’

  Leah was ruefully amused by Ponia’s partisan sympathies. ‘Nik and Eleni are old friends.’

  ‘The family don’t see it in quite that light. Eleni and her husband have just split up!’

  A maid was serving them coffee in tiny, fragile porcelain cups. Leah was aware of being the covert cynosure of many eyes, but equally aware that absolutely nobody was approaching her.

  ‘Leah...did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, they’re hoping like hell that Nik dumps you and takes up with her again. It’s disgusting,’ Ponia hissed. ‘That’s why you’re being treated like the invisible woman.’

  Leah wanted to giggle. Whether it was true or simply the produce of a feverish teenage imagination she didn’t care. Nothing could touch her in the mood she was in. She was still dizzily remembering Nik’s trembling intensity in the limousine. Nik was hers, maybe not in the way she had once naïvely dreamt of but there was certainly enough there to build on...and next year maybe a family. An abstracted smile tilted her mouth as she pictured a little boy with black hair and liquid dark eyes.

  ‘You’re really not all here, are you?’ Ponia was frowning at her.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. But please introduce me to everybody.’

  Within an hour Leah had met most of the members of the Andreakis family, and almost without exception she had been received with a stilted formality and brevity which would have struck horror into the bones of a daughter-in-law expecting more of a welcome. It slowly dawned on her that Ponia had not been joking. She felt like the centre of contagion in a room full of health fanatics.

  And then Nik drifted back to her side, rested a hand supportively on her taut spinal cord and their whole reception of her changed with a speed that was almost comic. Everyone talked to Nik, everyone listened to Nik, but from two of his sisters and their respective adult children she sensed the lack of any real warmth behind their effusiveness towards him. He kept the lot of them, Ponia had told her bluntly on the island. Only her parents were independent of either Nik’s financial support or his employment.

  ‘Come and meet my mother,’ Ponia urged impatiently.

  Ariadne was seated alone at the back of the room, a slender, quiet woman who seemed very nervous. Her hands were tightly clasped together, her whole bearing so tense when she glanced up and saw them approaching that Leah found herself smiling in what she hoped was a friendly fashion. She was already disposed to like Ponia’s mother.

  ‘This is Leah,’ the girl announced.

  ‘Please sit with me. Have some more coffee brought,’ Ariadne instructed her daughter tautly. ‘Nik is looking very happy, I think,’ she said then abruptly. ‘You are happy too?’

  ‘Very,’ Leah murmured after a disconcerted pause.

  ‘For so long I wish to meet you...now I not know what to say.’ Ariadne gave an uneasy laugh. ‘You are very beautiful...and clever, Nik tells me. You are a musician and you speak French and German too. I learn English from my daughter,’ she imparted in a rush, treating Leah to an anxious smile. ‘Perhaps next time you come to Greece you come visit me. I like that very much.’

  ‘I think I would like it too.’ Leah watched Nik’s sister send a skittering glance around the room and decided that Ariadne was afraid of being seen to depart from the family line of accepting Nik’s wife only on sufferance. ‘I became very fond of Ponia while she was staying with us.’

  ‘You were very kind to have her. Nik spoils her...’ Her voice trailed away as a tall man with greying hair entered the room and then rose again as she said with perceptible relief, ‘Here is my husband, Stavros.’

  Leah’s gaze narrowed. There was something about the older man’s wide smile and the deep set of his eyes which seemed vaguely familiar, and it had almost gone before she grasped it. Momentarily he had reminded her of Nik and she might have commented on the fact had Stavros not broken into instant voluble speech with all the confidence that his wife lacked.

  What did she think of Greece? What did she think of the family? He pulled a face, untroubled by Ariadne’s gasp. ‘You want real Greek hospitality, you come and stay with us!’ he told her cheerfully, his deep, carrying voice reaching all corners of the room. ‘We love to entertain young people. Sadly we married late and were fortunate indeed to be blessed with a child but our life is sometimes a little dull for our daughter. She thinks we have one foot in the grave!’

  Nik crossed the room. Greetings were exchanged. Considering that Stavros was treating him to the warmest reception he had yet had from any of his relatives, Leah was a little surprised by her husband’s constraint—but then she stopped thinking altogether when she encountered the ebony flare of his expressive gaze whipping over her then lingering with a devastating effect that she could feel right down to her toes.

  ‘You’re looking very tired,’ he murmured.

  She went scarlet but Nik was already drawing her upright, extracting her from his aunt and uncle’s company with social dexterity. She found herself carried off and she glanced back apologetically over her shoulder and glimpsed a very hurt look stamped on Ariadne’s face and then she remembered that Nik hadn’t actually spoken to his sister at all and she said so.

  ‘Of course I did,’ he asserted dismissively.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she muttered.

  At the foot of a gracious winding staircase he silenced her by hauling her into his arms and kissing her breathless. She emerged from the embrace with starry eyes and an inability to think straight. Quite uninhibited by any fear of being seen by his murderously correct relatives, Nik bent and swept her off her startled feet.

  ‘So what do you think of my family?’ he enquired smoothly as he took a first step up the stairs.

  ‘You want candour?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,’ he said drily.

  ‘They’re ghastly.’ And then she groaned and shut her eyes, afraid to look up at him. ‘Of course they’re probably a lot warmer than they seem!’

  ‘Probably colder.’

  Her eyes flew wide. ‘Oh, Nik...’ she whispered in sudden pain on his behalf.

  ‘Don’t be wet,’ he told her with a sardonic smile. ‘I’m a big boy now.’

  ‘Stavros and Ariadne are really, really nice and they seem to be very fond of you,’ she burbled helplessly in consolation. ‘And Stavros even looks like you...yes, that was what made me think I’d met him before!’

  Nik froze on the sweeping marble landing. ‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded with sudden ferocity. ‘I’m not even related to him!’

  Leah blinked. Of course he wasn’t, she registered belatedly. Stavros was only a relative by marriage, a brother-in-law, and furthermore...an
d furthermore... ‘But you’re not related to any of them!’ she heard herself exclaim, and the minute she said it she knew what she had done and she wanted to bite her tongue out after one glimpse at Nik’s shattered face.

  Ten seconds later she was being forced to stay upright on her own power after Nik strode into a bedroom, kicked the door shut with violence and practically dropped her from a height.

  ‘Say that again,’ he invited rawly.

  Leah gave up the fight and backed off to sink wretchedly down on the foot of the bed. Her eyes swam with sudden tears. ‘I’m sorry...I forgot I wasn’t supposed to know.’

  ‘Obviously...and for how long have you known?’ Nik raked down the length of the room at her.

  ‘If I tell you, you have to promise me that you won’t be angry with the person who told me you were adopted.’ She practically whispered the word since Nik’s reaction to her even knowing was so explosive. ‘She thought I knew, you see—’

  ‘She?’

  Alcohol didn’t aid diplomacy or secrecy, Leah registered dismally.

  ‘Nobody in my family would have told you!’ Nik continued harshly.

  ‘Ponia did—’

  ‘Ponia?’ Nik surveyed her in blatant disbelief.

  Reluctantly, Leah recounted the conversation that the teenager had initiated. Nik shook his dark head in visible shock. ‘All this time she has known? Theos mou, I never dreamt she knew!’

  ‘I told her that it was a private matter and I honestly don’t think she’ll mention it again. She was terribly cut up about it,’ Leah hastened to tell him, swallowing back her opinion that it was surely unnecessary for such desperate secrecy to be observed.

  After having met the Andreakis clan, she could well imagine them behaving as though adoption were a dreadful, never-to-be-revealed revelation, and if Nik had been raised with that same kind of attitude—which he clearly had been—then it would be an extremely sensitive subject which he was not accustomed to talking about.