The Konstantos Marriage Demand. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ name.’

      ‘Of course I did!’

      Sadie prayed that the control she was forcing into her voice kept it steady. She hoped that she had at least held it down so that it didn’t go soaring up too high under the influence of the panic that was tying her insides into tight, painful knots.

      ‘I had to. What else could I do? If I’d given my real name then there’s no way you would have ever agreed to see me, would you?’

      ‘You’re damn right I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have got across the threshold. But the fact remains that you are here—and that you lied in order to get here. Which means that you have something you want to say. Something that is important enough for you to use that lie in order to get to say it. So what is that, I wonder?’

      The look he turned on her seemed to sear right through her, the blaze of his eyes so intense that Sadie almost expected to see her clothes scorch and burn along the path that it traced over her body.

      Nikos was behind his desk, and he leaned forward to stab one long finger down on a button by his phone. Sadie heard a woman’s voice, faintly blurred by the nervous buzzing in her head, respond almost immediately.

      ‘No calls.’ It was a command, and clearly one he meant to have obeyed. ‘And no interruptions. I am not to be disturbed until I say.’

      And if the secretary or PA goes against those instruction, then she’s a braver woman than I am, Sadie told herself. But the next moment any other thoughts fled from her mind as Nikos nodded his satisfaction and turned his attention back to her.

      ‘So why are you here?’

      ‘I…’

      Faced with that arctic glare, the ferocious bite of his demand, Sadie found that in that moment she couldn’t actually recall precisely why she was there, let alone form her response into any sort of coherent argument. One that might actually impress him, persuade him on to her side when she knew that he was guaranteed to take the opposite stance, simply because he was who he was and she was the one doing the asking.

      She was suddenly very glad of the expanse of polished wood of his desk that came between them, acting as a barrier between the powerful dynamic force that was Nikos Konstantos.

      It was totally irrational, but when he glowered at her like that she suddenly felt as if the room had shrunk, as if the walls had moved inwards, the ceiling coming down, contracting the space around her until she felt it hard to breathe. She felt trapped, confined in a room that had suddenly become too small to hold them both.

      She had been shut in with him in the lift, in a far smaller space, but somehow, contradictorily, this seemed so much worse. Now Nikos seemed so much bigger, so much more powerful, dominating the space in which he stood and holding her captive simply by the pure force of his presence.

      Or was it about the room? Because it was the office that had once been her father’s? But there was no sign at all of the previous occupant. Every last trace of anything that was personal to Edwin had been removed and replaced with something much more modern, more stylish—and much more expensive. Even in the good days of Carteret Incorporated the office had never looked like this.

      The heavy, dark desk and chairs had all been removed and replaced by modern furniture in a pale wood. Thick golden rugs covered the floor, and in the window area there was a comfortable-looking settee and armchairs for relaxing.

      It spoke of Nikos Konstantos of Konstantos Corporation. The man who had taken everything her father had thrown at him and refused to go down under it. He had seen everything his own father had worked for snatched away, had stared bankruptcy and total ruin in the face and still come out fighting. And in five short years he had built up his business empire to what it had once been—and then outstripped that. The Konstantos Corporation was bigger, stronger, richer than it had ever been. And it had swallowed up Carteret Incorporated and absorbed it whole on its way to the top.

      And Nikos was the Konstantos Corporation.

      As she hesitated, Nikos shot back the cuff on his immaculate white shirt and glanced swiftly and pointedly at his watch.

      ‘You have five minutes to explain yourself—and that is more than you would have had if I’d known it was you,’ he stated curtly. ‘Five minutes. No more.’

      Which was guaranteed to dry Sadie’s tongue, make it feel as if it was sticking to the roof of her mouth, and no matter how hard she swallowed, she couldn’t quite force herself to speak.

      ‘Could—could we sit down?’ she tried, looking longingly at the cream cushions on the padded chairs. Perhaps with her attention taken off the need to concentrate on keeping her legs from shaking so that she could stay upright she might manage to put her thoughts—and the necessary arguments to convince him—into some sort of coherent order.

      Sitting down was the last thing Nikos had in mind. He had no intention of letting her get settled, allowing her to stay a moment longer than he had to. Just seeing her here like this was making him feel as if the room was suddenly at the centre of a wild and dangerous hurricane, with the day he had been living being picked up and whirled around, turned inside out.

      And the sound of her voice was raking up memories he had pushed to the back of his mind for so long. He wanted them to stay there. He had never wanted to speak to Sadie Carteret ever again.

      ‘Tell him to go away, Daddy.’

      The words she had tossed down the staircase at him, the last words he had ever heard her speak on the day that had been the worst day of his life, came back to haunt him, making savage anger flare like rocket fire inside his head.

      ‘Tell him the only interest he had for me was his money, and now that he has none I never want to see him again.’

      And he had never wanted to see her, Nikos acknowledged, his whole body taut with rejection of her presence in his life once more. The disturbing tug of sensuality he had felt in the lift had evaporated, he was thankful to find. The memory of her callous rejection, the cold tight voice in which she’d flung it at him, not even bothering to come downstairs and tell him face to face, had driven that away, leaving behind just a cold savagery of hatred.

      The sooner she said what she had to say and got out of here, the better.

      ‘Five minutes,’ he repeated with deadly emphasis. ‘And then I get Security to escort you out. You’ve wasted one of them already.’

      ‘I wanted to talk to you about buying Thorn Trees!’

      That got his attention. His dark head went back, eyes narrowing sharply.

      ‘Buying? What is this? Have you suddenly come into a fortune?’

      Belatedly Sadie realised her mistake. Nerves had got the better of her and she’d blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.

      ‘No—of course not.’

      ‘I didn’t mean buy—I could never afford that. I just…’

      The sudden drop of those bronze eyes down to the gold watch on his wrist, watching the second hand tick by, incensed her, pushing her into rash, unguarded speech.

      ‘Damn you, you took everything we had. Every last thing my father had owned—except СКАЧАТЬ