HER HEART hammering wildly behind her breastbone Leah watched Nik swing on his heel and depart and then all her muscles gave and she was ready to flop with almost sick relief. He couldn't have heard any thing. He would have said something if he had... wouldn't he"? Or reacted in some way which he hadn't. He had actually smiled.
As she left the bedroom, fighting to regain her smashed composure, she heard the manservant tell Nik that the car was waiting. As she neared the hall, she heard Nik cancel it. Had he been planning to dine out and then changed his mind? Well, she certainly hoped he wasn't staying in for her benefit, A little voice toll her how exceedingly unlikely it was that Nik would do anything for her benefit.
'I have some calls of my own to make,' Nik delivered in a flat aside as she drew almost level. 'Don't wait for me.'
Leah ale without even being aware of what she was eating. She felt guilty, enervated, and dismayingly confused, her temples throbbed with strain. All her life she had been open and honest. Well that was until three short months ago when Paul had accidentally sent her flying in Harrods. Deception was abhorrent to, her but it hadn't declined to her at the outset that she would become involved with him. He had insisted on taking her into the restaurant. They had laughed and chatted over coffee. Nothing could have been more innocent. The second fowling had been entirely accidental as well...
Pushing her plate away, Leah gulped down a glass of wins but it didn't take the nasty taste from her mouth. Why on earth did she feel like this? All she had to do was ask Nik for a divorce soon and it would all be over. Maybe she should slop seeing Paul until then. Was that what she should be doing? Or maybe she should just walk out and leave Nik a note to find the next time he was in London. Cowardly, but probably all he deserved.
She was quite suns that Nik hadn't agonized over any of hit, women. He certainly hadn't cared about Leah's feelings. Leah had had to live with humiliation in newsprint as well as in private. Nik was extremely photogenic and a gossip columnist's dream, the married man who led the adulterer's dream existence without any apparent interference from his wife. FOR Nik to say that he had been on a leash for five years was errant nonsense. But then two wrongs did not make a right. Why should she stoop to Nik's level?
Deciding against coffee, the exhaustion of extreme stress creeping over her like a suffocating blanket. Leah decided to go to bed. Her strained mouth compressed when she remembered that she had no nightwear. The toweling robe hung in the bathroom for the use of guests was too bulky for comfort. In the end she slid naked between the smooth percale-sheets and in the comforting darkness she reached a decision. Tomorrow morning she would tell Nik that she wanted a divorce. Then there would be no further need for her over-active conscience to torment her with this ridiculous sense of being in the wrong.
She awakened from a deep sleep with a start. The overhead lights were on full and she blinked in complete disorientation as she sat up, momentarily not even recalling where she was, And then her sleep eyes focused on Nik where he was poised several feet from the bed and flew wide. He looked like hell; that was her first thought as she clutched the sheet protectively round herself, belatedly recalling her nudity.
His luxuriant black hair was tousled, his tie was missing and the white silk dress-shirt he wore beneath his dinner-jacket was half-open, displaying a disturbing wedge of bronzed chest, liberally sprinkled with curling dark whorls of hair. His strong, dark features were fiercely clenched and for someone of his usually vibrant skin tone he was staggeringly pale. Almost as though he was in shock, she thought uncertainly., severe shock.
'Wh-—what's wrong...what time is it?' she mumbled, pushing a hand through the silken disarray of the silvery hair falling round her shoulders, swallowing back a yawn as she glanced at her watch to discover that it was the early hours of the morning.
