Page 26 of The Konstantos Marriage Demand

‘Then we’ll go. I’ve said what I wanted to say and you will need to get home and pack. We leave for Athens in the morning.’

‘Leave…’

Indignation and exasperation burned away any last remaining shreds of the disturbing sensual response she had just felt, leaving her feeling uncomfortable and totally on edge.

‘But I haven’t said I’ll come yet. You can’t just—’

‘There’s nothing for you to say,’ Nikos cut across her attempt to protest, pushing back his chair and standing up as he did so. ‘It’s make your mind up time, Sadie. You either pack to come with me to Greece in the morning—or you pack up everything for yourself, your mother and brother and leave Thorn Trees. So which is it to be?’

It was the reminder of her mother and George that decided the question, as Nikos had obviously intended it should. He had held out the offer to let them stay, but only on his terms. And those terms involved her going with him to Greece and working to arrange Nikos’s wedding to his new bride.

‘Your choice, Sadie,’ Nikos prompted harshly when she still hesitated.

Which, of course, was no choice at all. There was only one thing she could say. Only one way she could keep her mother and George safe and happy. No matter what the personal cost to her.

‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘It seems I have no choice.’

‘None at all,’ Nikos assured her. And the really disturbing thing was the total lack of any sort of triumph or satisfaction in his tone.

He had planned for just this result and things had worked out exactly as he intended. He had expected nothing else. Because he knew exactly where he had her—dancing on the end of the strings that he was holding, in total control of her life. And there was nothing she could do about it.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WE WILL BE preparing to land soon.’

Nikos’s accented voice broke into Sadie’s concentration, making her jump.

‘You’ll need to put that away.’

His gesture indicated the laptop on which she had been working ever since the private jet had levelled out on their flight to Athens, her attention totally focussed on the screen.

‘What are you working on anyway?’

‘Greek wedding customs—what else?’ Sadie swivelled the machine round so that he could see the site she had been studying.

She had been glad to disappear into her need to concentrate on the reason she was on the plane in the first place. It had meant that she could try at least to ignore Nikos’s long, lean form sprawled in one of the soft leather seats on the opposite side of the cabin.

But the truth was that her mind hadn’t really been on her research. Instead, it had insisted on taking her back into the past, replaying scenes of the times she had spent with Nikos when the only wedding she had been planning had been her own. She had desperately needed a real distraction from that.

‘I take it that you are planning a traditional wedding, seeing as you have insisted on dragging me out to Greece with you?’

Nikos shrugged off the question with an indifferent lift of one shoulder.

‘Have you even given your bride a choice? Or will you just dictate how things are to be?’

That brought his eyes to her face, coldly probing, as if he was trying to read what went on behind her eyes. And she could see the flash of something fierce and dark in their golden depths.

‘Are you saying that this is how it was with you? That I dictated everything?’

‘No.’

How could she claim that? He had insisted she should have everything exactly the way she wanted. It was her choice, he had told her, her wedding. She should choose everything. And as a result it had really been the way her father had wanted things, not her choice at all.

But then, of course, that had been because he had never truly meant to marry her. All the time Nikos had been planning on using her to distract her father while he and his family worked to ensure his downfall, the ruin of his company. It was only when she found out the truth that she had realised why he had been so unexpectedly easygoing, so unconcerned about having an Orthodox wedding.

‘Of course you didn’t dictate anything. Because nothing mattered enough to you to bother with that.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’

Nikos’s smile sent a shiver down her spine.

‘Oh, of course, there was one thing.’ She flung the response at him. ‘I know only too well just what mattered to you. You wanted me in your bed and that was all.’

‘And I had you there without too much trouble, as I recall. You practically threw yourself at me.’

She had played right into his hands there, Sadie admitted. At first determined that she would wait until her wedding night to give her virginity to the man she adored, she had completely lost her head just a short time before the big day. So she had hired a cottage, enticed Nikos away with her for a long weekend of blazing passion.

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