CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
N IC SUPPRESSED A SIGH , reluctant to move as he eased back from his wife’s sleeping body. Obviously, the honeymoon idyll had to end, and he had to get back to work. For the first time in twenty-nine years he had been lazy. More than three weeks of sheer unpardonable sloth, the fast-track week in Korea, followed by two weeks on the island of Faros, living in his late father’s monstrous gilded palace.
Sightseeing followed by sun, sea, sand. And sex. He covered Lexy’s slender thigh with a large towel because he didn’t want her to burn when the sun moved. Vaulting upright, he adjusted the overhead canopy to ensure that she remained in the shade. Below the giant lounger the sand was churned up, awash with buckets, spades and Nic’s first attempt since childhood at a sandcastle, all the evidence of the triplets’ presence earlier. Tears and tiredness had sent them back up to the house with their nannies for a nap.
Lexy’s sheaf of golden hair was tangled, her face composed, her slender little body relaxed. Something tugged hard in his chest and he breathed out heavily. He told himself that it was good that he was leaving her for a day. They needed a break, they needed to let the rest of the world in, only it wouldn’t help him to reach a decision about what to do about her and his marriage. Keeping the truce they had agreed, but not confronting her afresh, was killing him because Nic was like a dog with a bone when anything angered him and he couldn’t let it go, no matter how hard he tried.
His lean, strong features were tense, his frown darkening in tenor. The marriage that was never supposed to be a proper marriage and the honeymoon that happened purely by accident. By accident? Theos mou , wasn’t he a little too mature to be choosing an excuse of that kind? Lexy was the wife he had never planned to have, who had somehow become a real wife. She was thicker than thieves with his mother and his sister-in-law, Gigi. As for his grandmother, Electra, who rarely complimented any woman, his yaya had told him he had done exceptionally well in choosing Lexy as a life partner. And his brother, Jace, loved the fact that their wives got on like a house on fire.
But this afternoon he had to fly into Athens and discover the nature of the ‘urgent personal matter’ that had prompted his London office manager, Leigh, to fly to Greece for a confidential meeting. Leigh didn’t fuss over the small stuff. Leigh was level-headed. Someone on his staff must have screwed up very badly and Leigh was blaming herself, he surmised, or perhaps Leigh had developed some ghastly serious illness, which she wanted kept secret. What else could it be?
He was fond of the older woman, who had once worked for his father and who was more efficient than anyone else in either office in London or Athens. She managed his staff with quiet assurance, managed him to some degree too, he conceded with wry amusement, prompting him to take a break when he worked too many hours, sending in food to sustain him, and she guarded him from unwelcome callers like a Rottweiler.
‘You should have woken me up!’ Lexy scolded, catching up with him on the path up from the beach, panting slightly at the gradient. ‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’
‘I hope to make it back for dinner,’ Nic admitted, grabbing her hand to physically pull her up the last few feet. ‘But don’t wait up for me if I’m late.’
He strode into the echoing hall where a litter of tiny sandy sandals almost tripped him up. The triplets were walking but some better than others. Ethan still wobbled like a tiny drunk. Lily was the most sure-footed, but she had taken a vehement dislike to sand. Ezra was full of glee at his own prowess and loved to get his feet wet.
Nic smiled, loving the lack of order that was gradually invading his father’s once very grand property. Lexy had changed things. The staff were more relaxed, the structure of the household less rigid, the meals more casual and everybody was happier, including himself. He, however, was no less rigid in his moral outlook than he had always been, he acknowledged uneasily as he stepped into the shower. He could not abide dishonesty. He could not commit to a woman who had lied to him. How could he ever trust her?
The most likely scenario, he had decided, was that Lexy had met another man after that night in Yorkshire. Perhaps she had doubted the paternity of her children at that point and very probably she had not wished to contact Nic and pull him back into her life just then. What else was he supposed to think when he was continually seeking justification for her long silence and even more dubious claims? After all, he knew that she could never have visited his office without him being informed of the fact, even if it was after the event. Phone calls? Leigh would’ve consulted him. Letters? They would have arrived on his desk.
Nic was in a dark mood, Lexy thought, emerging from her own shower, for once blessing the separate facilities of the huge master bedroom suite they occupied together. But he wouldn’t talk about what was on his mind, even if she was convinced that she already knew.
After all, wasn’t she worrying too? Here they were, married and with three kids, and the ‘faking the marriage’ idea had never even got off the ground in reality. Somehow their relationship had become genuine, the scorching physical chemistry between them too powerful to overcome or ignore. That had been their first mistake, the mistake of total intimacy, she recognised, but the biggest mistake of all was that she had fallen for him again. Absolutely, totally and for ever fallen in love with Nic Diamandis for the second time. And why not? Wasn’t he still her fantasy guy? Her perfect guy with one major drawback: he didn’t trust her, didn’t believe in her and as a result he never talked about anything with her that might be happening more than two days in advance.
She sensed that he was almost always right on the edge of walking out of their messy relationship. And why did he stay? Oh, that was a very easy question to answer. He stayed because he adored Ethan, Ezra and Lily. Once he ended their marriage, he would be deprived of daily access to his sons and his daughter.
Nic emerged from his dressing room, fully clad in a sharply cut black suit teamed with a silver-grey shirt and tie. As always, he looked amazing. He was every inch the tech billionaire who had recently acquired a legendary South Korean computer firm that would ensure his empire maintained an even sharper edge in the development stakes.
‘I’ve been thinking that I may stay on for a few days in Athens,’ Nic told her quietly. ‘It’s time I caught up with work. We’ll be returning to London soon anyway.’
Her tummy shifted queasily, a hollow opening inside her heart. ‘I could come with you,’ she pointed out and hated herself for stating the obvious.
‘I take too many breaks when you’re around,’ he parried drily. ‘But I’ll miss the kids.’
Only he would not miss her, that obvious qualification of his coming to her mind and wounding. He hadn’t said that he would miss her . Maybe all she was to Nic Diamandis was convenient sex on tap and, when required, a mother to his children. Well, tough cookie, she thought in sudden defiance. She was worth more than that!
As her husband strode on downstairs, she watched him head for the helipad where his pilot was awaiting his arrival. Just as quickly and noisily he was gone in the helicopter with its distinctive Diamandis logo, up into the air and en route to Athens. And was she planning to be here waiting obediently for his now unspecified date of return? No, to hell with that idea!
She had to be proactive when it came to her own life. She lived in a fake marriage that already had a specified end date. But Nic wasn’t happy and neither was she. Returning to London, asserting her independence, made sense because he wasn’t going to be part of her life for ever anyway. She needed to move on, make plans for the future, lay down some solid foundations. For the past month, all she had done, she conceded with squirming reluctance, was lay down for him . And romanticise absolutely everything they had shared, which, in the circumstances, was unforgivable. Her fingers worked nervously at the gold necklace she wore, a designer piece he had bought her on Corfu on one of their days out on Jace’s yacht.
She remembered the look in his eyes as he’d clasped it round her throat, that way he had of looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world, the hundred per cent attention always focused on her. It was a kind of charisma Nic Diamantis had, she reasoned, that ability to make a woman feel special even if she wasn’t, but ultimately it hurt . Every hour he spent with her hurt because no gesture, no act of passion, no tender words ultimately meant anything to him. He was only keeping the stupid truce, keeping her content because a contented woman didn’t make waves.
That awareness in mind, she rang Jace’s wife, Gigi, conscious that they were flying back to London that very afternoon, to ask if she could accompany them.
‘Didn’t Nic ask you to go with him to Athens?’ her sister-in-law asked in surprise.
Lexy’s cheeks burned red as the heart of a fire in mortification. ‘No, and he’s not sure when he’s coming back either so I thought I might as well head to London now in advance. I know you’re leaving today and I was hoping you could give us a lift...all of us, the kids and the nannies.’
‘Of course we can, but I’ll check with Jace first,’ Gigi completed more slowly, clearly thinking through to try and guess what was motivating Lexy.
‘Do you think he’ll say no?’ Lexy asked before she could bite back the nervous question.
‘No, Jace keeps his own counsel, but I assume you have your reasons,’ Gigi responded calmly. ‘And in any case, if you want to head to London today you could make your own arrangements, but you might as well travel with company. We can wrangle kids together.’
While Lexy was planning her departure from the island, Nic was entering his Athens head office, lifting his hand to greet familiar faces without pausing while being assured that Leigh awaited him upstairs in his office. He strode into the sunlit room, apprehension tensing his muscles as he scanned the older woman with her dark hair worn in an elegant chignon and her steady blue eyes.
‘Firstly,’ Leigh began in an anxious undertone, ‘I want to tender my resignation, sir—’
‘What on earth...?’ Nic breathed with a frown, wrong-footed by that startling opening to their meeting.
‘I made a bad decision because I chose to trust someone close to you and when I’ve finished explaining myself and my actions, you will be very angry with me,’ she assured him unhappily. Moving forward, she laid a slender folder down on his desk. ‘I kept records of everything though.’
‘Someone close to me?’ Nic was already prompting, ebony brows pleated, because very few people were close to him outside his family. He had long conserved his independence and ensured that his judgement was unaffected by others. It was probably, he conceded, the only preference he had copied from his father’s chosen operational secretive mode in business.
‘Miss Bouras,’ Leigh declared, disconcerting him even more as she stepped forward.
‘Angeliki has nothing to do with any aspect of my business,’ he said defensively.
‘This is personal, confidential,’ Leigh reminded him sadly. ‘And I was the fool who listened to her and followed her advice. Look at this first...’
Nic froze and grasped the phone she was extending to study the photograph showing on the screen and disbelief assailed him. It was a picture of Lexy chopping vegetables in his kitchen in Yorkshire that long ago night. A photo he had believed that he had taken when she was unawares and had later searched for but failed to find on his phone—he had assumed that he had done it too quickly and it hadn’t taken. ‘Where did you get this photo from?’
‘Miss Bouras gave it to me for identification purposes,’ the older woman explained.
A sinking sensation hit Nic’s stomach. ‘Why would she do that? Identification? ’
‘Miss Bouras came to see me. Almost two years ago. She explained that you had a very persistent female stalker causing you an awful lot of grief.’
‘A...a stalker?’ Nic exclaimed in disbelief. ‘I’ve never had a stalker in my life... This woman... Lexy is my wife!’
‘Yes, and I’m afraid I only realised that she was an official part of your life when I saw the pictures of your wedding online,’ Leigh admitted with a grimace. ‘But I believed what Miss Bouras told me and I did as she asked.’
‘What did she ask you to do?’ Nic shot at her in a harsh undertone.
‘To protect you from this woman, this supposedly obnoxious stranger trying to force herself into your life. She said that you were greatly embarrassed by the situation and trying to handle the problem discreetly. I could imagine you reacting that way to a female stalker...’ Leigh muttered ruefully. ‘You wouldn’t want a fuss or any scenes at the office.’
‘Leigh... I’ve never had a stalker!’ Nic repeated forcefully. ‘I can’t credit that Angeliki approached you with this ridiculous story.’
Leigh looked grave. ‘She did, sir, and she was very specific in her advice and instructions. She told me to destroy any letters that arrived, but I kept them as I assumed there would be a court case eventually and that you would need them as evidence. I noted down the phone calls and any visits that the young lady made.’
‘The young lady being my wife ?’ Nic almost whispered, his stomach turning over sickly. Letters, visits , exactly as Lexy had claimed.
‘It wasn’t until I saw the wedding photos that I understood that I had made a very grave error in listening to Miss Bouras and trusting her word, rather than approaching you direct to discuss her instructions with you. You would scarcely marry a stalker.’
‘Thank you for that understanding at least,’ Nic muttered, raking an abstracted hand through his thick black hair while true comprehension began to sink in hard as a hammer blow to the head. Indeed, he felt as though he had been body-slammed against a brick wall and the stuffing had been knocked out of him. He was in shock.
He was already thinking back to the phone number that had disappeared from his phone. He hadn’t thought much about the photo, only that he had taken it in haste while she had been unaware and that perhaps it hadn’t taken, after all. But only one person ever knew the current password he had on his phone, his friend from childhood, Angeliki. Only one person had ever had free access to his phone and she had evidently used it to ensure that he couldn’t contact Lexy.
And lo and behold, that was the same person, the only person, he had innocently told about Lexy. He had returned from Yorkshire the same day that Angeliki had finally decided to take his calls and he had been so high on that time with Lexy that he had mentioned to his half-sister that he had met ‘someone’, an important someone , whom he had named and described and waxed lyrical about.
Theos mou , what an idiot he had been! Thinking back to that period, he knew that only a complete fool would have talked about another woman to a woman he had recently rejected. Only by then he had already been thinking of his best friend as his half-sister, a safe confidante to his mind, if not hers.
‘My worst recollection is of instructing the security men to show your pregnant wife-to-be down to the street,’ Leigh almost whispered, her blue eyes shining with tears of regret. ‘I felt dreadful about that even at the time but I thought... I thought it was my duty, my job to protect you from annoyance and unnecessary drama. I believed Miss Bouras. I knew you trusted her and I trusted her as well until I saw those pictures of your wedding. Then I realised that I had to come forward and speak up. Look, I’ve already taken up enough of your time and I can see that you’re rather taken aback by all this—’
‘Try...shocked speechless,’ Nic corrected in a roughened undertone. ‘But it’s not your fault. I trusted Miss Bouras too. You cannot resign over this matter. I will explain all this... somehow to my wife. I will deal with the consequences. It is my responsibility.’
‘Every call your wife made to our London office was logged and every letter is contained in the file, sir. The letters are unopened, of course,’ the older woman proffered uncomfortably, indicating the file lying on his desk. ‘I’m sorry about all this stuff. I know you don’t like it.’
But Angeliki did, Nic reflected darkly. Angeliki thrived on drama, would have enjoyed coming into his office, telling her lies, ensuring that not a single person on his staff would give credence to Lexy, indeed would instead treat her like a stalker, a woman trying to force herself into his life where she was unwanted and unwelcome. And he felt seriously nauseous again when he recalled how very badly he had wanted to hear from Lexy twenty-odd months ago. It was as though his life had suddenly been rolled back in time and he was reliving what he would have felt then. Furious anger filled him. He knew that he had to see Angeliki first, had to confront her and finally tell her that they were siblings.
Once more refusing to accept Leigh’s resignation, telling her that she had been as deceived in her trust of Angeliki as he had long been, Nic left the office to visit Angeliki’s penthouse apartment.
Angeliki’s housekeeper answered the door and ushered him into the airy reception room where her mistress was lying along a couch with a magazine, wearing a silk teddy below a sheer robe that she didn’t bother to close as she sprang up, a huge smile lifting her beautiful face. ‘Nic...always a welcome visitor.’
‘Put something on,’ he urged brusquely. ‘You’re not going to like me much after I’ve finished talking to you.’
In an exaggerated movement, Angeliki tied the sash on the robe, too proud of her long, shapely body to be pleased about hiding it.
‘This is about Lexy, my wife.’ Nic felt the need to attach that possessive label, noting how the blonde’s face tightened. ‘The moment I told you about her, you conducted a campaign to prevent her from coming back into my life.’
Angeliki raised a pencilled brow. ‘Of course I did. I had to prevent you from doing something stupid because you were acting like a teenager about her. I’ve never seen you like that over a woman.’
‘And clearly it was very stupid of me to confide in you. You broke into my phone, didn’t you? Stole the photo, blocked her number, did every rotten thing you could to ensure I couldn’t see her again!’
‘Because you were about to make a huge mistake! I’m your best friend. I protected you from yourself.’
‘I didn’t need protecting. I’m an adult and far from innocent.’
‘You were infatuated for the first time in your life!’ Angeliki sliced in with a cutting edge of venom. ‘You didn’t know what you were doing. Theos mou , you had only parted from her a couple of hours and you were already agonising over whether or not you would look desperate if you phoned her!’
‘You cut off someone who was important to me and, even worse, you left her no means to contact me when she needed my support because she was pregnant. So, no, Angeliki, I have nothing to thank you for. You deprived me of seeing my children coming into this world, you deprived me of times with the four of them that I will never get back!’ Nic raged at her, out of all patience with her drivel. ‘My office manager has told me that you gave her Lexy’s photo and said that she was a stalker.’
His half-sister backed off a few steps and grimaced. ‘Oh, she’s told you about that. I was hoping that my intervention wouldn’t come out for a while.’
‘You don’t screw up other people’s lives like this,’ Nic breathed rawly. ‘It’s unpardonable. Why did you do it? Were you jealous that I wanted her and not you?’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. I don’t do jealousy.’ Angeliki actually snorted with scornful laughter at that accusation. ‘I’ve never cared about any of the women you’ve been with! But she got in my way and I don’t let anyone do that to me.’
Nic lifted a lean brown hand. ‘News update, Angeliki. Now I’m in your way too and if you ever get in hers again, I will ruin you! I don’t know why you think Lexy was in your way when you and I weren’t even seeing each other.’
‘Because you married her!’ Angeliki launched back at him in angry interruption, her dark eyes hard and cold. ‘That was my place you gave her, not hers! Together we could be the new power couple in Greece. You were always meant to be mine, Nic, but I had to wait for you to grow up and see that we belong together—’
‘We don’t, and never could be together,’ Nic incised with the icy bite of finality. ‘Not only do I not want you in that way, but you are my half-sister. We share the same father.’
Angeliki backed off several feet, shock etched in her fine features. ‘That’s not possible. My mother always hated your father for the way he bullied mine.’
‘It happened between them and you are the result, accept it.’ Nic shrugged, not in a sympathetic mood. ‘The legacy that made you an unexpected heiress came from my father’s private coffers, not from some distant relative. Argus paid his dues in that line.’
Angeliki stared back at him in horror, as if her whole world were falling down on top of her. ‘That’s not possible...because that means that when I got into your bed—’
‘Nothing happened,’ Nic reminded her shortly.
‘And how long have you known about this?’
‘Since a letter was given to me after my father’s will was read. I was going to tell you then, but the bedroom episode had recently occurred and I didn’t want to make the announcement until the dust had settled on that.’
‘You’re my brother,’ Angeliki said queasily. ‘That toad, Jace, who won’t give me the time of day, is my brother too.’
‘And you and I are not friends any more and never will be again,’ Nic framed coldly. ‘Not after what you did to Lexy. Are you even aware that your lies about her being a stalker led to her being thrown out of my office building when she was heavily pregnant? I suspect you don’t care.’
‘You’re right there!’ Angeliki lashed back at him bitterly, dark eyes hard and hollow, reminding him unpleasantly of his late father. ‘I don’t give a damn. The blasted Diamandis family looks after itself and nobody else. I wish you’d had sex with me that night because it would have made you feel dirty and you’re such a clean, decent guy. You were never for me!’
‘That’s good.’ Turning on his heel, Nic strode out of her apartment with a sense of relief. He still had to see his mother, bring her up to date with the Angeliki situation, but he had had enough emotional drama for one day.
He had, he accepted, wrecked his relationship with Lexy from day one of their reunion. His principles had got the better of him. He had been blind, judgemental and intolerant. He had wanted Lexy to be that one perfect ideal woman without flaws. And fancy this, she truly was . He was the one with all the flaws, the guy who had learned he couldn’t trust anyone at a very young age.
Not his father, who had once rammed him head first into a wall for irritating him as a toddler and put him into hospital. Not his mother, who had always put his father first and made excuses or lied for Argus, regardless of what he did. Not the string of women chasing him for his wealth, his status or even the right to stand beside him in a photo and reap that fleeting fame. And not even the one close friend he had ever had, Angeliki, who had clearly been determined to marry him from early on right up until she discovered that she was a blood relation. He also saw in her that, of all three Diamandis siblings, she resembled Argus the most with her cold, calculating, unscrupulous nature. What she wanted, she got, and she didn’t care how she had to go about getting it. He had been learning to trust his older brother, but they had only got to know each other after their father’s death, and he had retained his wariness about letting anyone come close.
By the time Jace phoned him to tell him that he was taking Lexy and the triplets to London with him, Nic was hitting a bottle of whiskey hard and hating himself. He had hurt his wife again and she was leaving him. It was exactly what he deserved...to lose her and his children.