LEAH RECOVERED consciousness in the limousine, Nik was bending over her just as he had been doing before she'd passed out. In one frantic movement she jack-knifed back from him and plastered herself up against the far door while she fumbled madly for the release mechanism, uncaring that they were in the midst of fast-moving traffic. 'Get away from me!' she screeched in panic.
'Fragile little creature, aren't you? A bundle of rampant nerves all of a sudden.' Lounging back in a disturbing attitude of fluid relaxation, Nik surveyed her with unashamed satisfaction and a sardonic smile, his aggression cloaked, his temper hack under control. So where is that certificate?"
Her fingernails clenched painfully into her palms, etching purple crescents on the tender flesh. She needed that pain to be assured that Nik was still talking in the same nightmare fashion that he had been employing inside that suffocating little room. 'I've already told you that I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Well, if you didn't know you know now and I want an answer.'
'I can't believe my father was a blackmailer—' 'Dirty, isn't it?' Nik treated her to a scrutiny empty of even the tiniest vein of compassion. 'But then he was a professional of the very highest quality. His field was the rich and famous and the skeletons he dug out of closets had to be really juicy ones. He was very good at what he did,' Nik drawled impassively. 'He never milked his victims totally dry. He never drove anyone to the brink of trying to kill him. He made them pay for so long and then he let them off the hook but he kept the evidence of their misdeeds to protect himself. He made a fortune...'
'I won't believe it!' Leah stung back shakily. 'I won’t believe any of this!'
"Do you think he kept pornographic pictures in that box just for fun?'
Leah's stomach curdled. She lowered her pounding head.
'Now if he took the trouble to retain a copy of the juicy skeleton he trailed out of my family closet—' Nik's deep voice held a renewed edge of harshness '—he also kept the original of the certificate, and since I have exhausted every other avenue it is obvious to me that he must have given it to you.'
'He didn't give anything to me!' There was a quiver of hysteria in her tremulous response. She was in shock—deep shock—and in no state to combat his continuing pressure for her to produce something that she had not even known existed and certainly didn't have.
'You can't hold it over me. Just try and I will break you,..'
'You're crazy' she suddenly sobbed.
This far, I have been remarkably kind and patient. I have been on a leash for live years,' Nik grated in an embittered undertone, 'I was only safe as long as I stayed married to you I thought you might run home to Daddy. But you never did and one thing did become clear to me, gruesomely clear over the years. You are. in love with me—'
'What?' Leah interrupted shakily. 'You are obsessed with me. Do you think I don't know this?' Nik sent her a shimmering look of contempt. 'Any normal woman would have left me by now and given up all hope of having her love returned...but not you! You stayed the course, loyal to the bitter end, obscenely faithful and well-behaved, giving me no excuse to complain of the devil's bargain I made!'
'Faithful?’ hysteria was tearing at her convulsing throat; Dear heaven, he actually believed what he was saying! Nik believed that she loved him. He thought she had stayed because she loved him. Paul's name hovered on the very tip of her tongue bin sixth sense warned her not to muddy the waters further. One thing at a time...only which? She wondered wildly. Life as she knew it had been shattered in the space of a few hours.
'I am not in love with you." she murmured with as much dignity as she could contrive, her teeth gritting behind her peach-tinted lips. Absolute humiliation engulfed her as she appreciated that all along Nik had been thinking that his neglected, unwanted wife was just dying of love for him in spite of his complete indifference towards her. The ego he must have...the utter, unashamed conceit.
