ELENI AND NIK. Nik and Eleni. Leah was shattered. Five years ago they had been engaged to be married. Evidently Nik might not have been averse to a little Parisian flirtation but he had already had his future wife lined up. At least he had, Leah adjusted, until her. father had intervened to demand a change of bride. Leah felt really sick as the full meaning of what she had learnt sank in.
Nik and Eleni Kiriakos were lovers. So why had Nik insisted that Leah remain his wife? Why had he refused to snatch at his freedom? Didn't he want to marry Eleni? Or was he quite content to retain the good doctor as his mistress, his patently devoted mistress, who couldn't even keep her paws off him in the presence of his wife?
Leah shuddered; she presumed that there was nothing in the Hippocratic oath that forbade such behavior. No wonder Nik had been so bitter about their marriage! But Nik had not chosen to tell her the whole truth of what their marriage had cost him.
On the other hand, Nik was certainly beginning to settle the score for what he had suffered. Could that possibly be mere coincidence? Dear God, Nik had to hate her! It was a nonsense surely for him to say that he did not?
More wretched, more isolated than she had ever felt in her life before, Leah buried her aching head in the pillows. Just as Max Harrington had manipulated Nik and forcibly rearranged his life five years ago, Nik was now bringing to bear a similar pressure on Max's daughter.
Nik had first revealed what might have been called a 'sudden' attraction towards his hitherto invisible wife the day Leah had told him she was in love with another man. Previous to that, he had believed that she still loved him and no doubt over the years he had reaped a vicarious satisfaction from punishing her for her father's sins by demonstrating his complete indifference towards her.
He didn't yet know that Paul was out of her life. But he had been ruthlessly determined to achieve that end. Why? An eye for an eye. a tooth for a tooth? Nik had been deprived of Eleni five years ago. Was he intern on putting Leah through the same torment of losing a loved one? Was he capable of being that sadistic? Her father was out of reach, had been out of reach of any form of retribution even while alive by virtue of his blackmail, but Leah was very much within reach and always had been.
Yes, Nik could be sadistic. She remembered his cruel assurance that even Max couldn't force him to perform like a stud in her bed. Her pounding head was whirling. She thought back shrinkingly to Nik's passionate possession of her, only now recalled his unashamed admission that that had been a deliberate ploy. At the time she had believed that he meant he had slept with her both to reinforce his contention that they could have a real marriage and to tear a gaping hole in her confident assertion that she loved Paul... even to punish her for daring to defy him.
Only now did she see another, even more humiliating explanation for that night. A turn of the screw, a heightening of the victim's torment. Nik, with all his considerable sexual savoir-faire, selling out with cool calculation to seduce his wife and thus throw her into absolute turmoil. Suddenly she felt painfully degraded by her own weakness in his arms, the unsuspected vulnerability which had made her a pushover for all that smouldering. sizz1ing Greek machismo, And Nik had just loved that discovery. The awareness was like a knife twisting in an open wound.
Exhaustion sent her into an uneasy sleep from which she awoke to find that it was after midnight. She had slept solid for more than twelve hours. But evidently it had done her good. Physically she was feeling much stronger...even if she did feel as though she was on the brink of starvation.
Pulling on a light robe, she went off in search of food. Her mind was awash with all the frightening thoughts she had endured earlier and, preoccupied as she was, she got the shock of her life when Nik appeared silently in a doorway just as she was passing.
