Penniless and Purchased. Julia James

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СКАЧАТЬ she knew as a warthog from a leopard. Shorter than her in her high heels, overweight, face like putty, with hot, lascivious eyes, and hands with stumpy fingers and damp palms.

      Well, she thought viciously, what did she expect? If a man had to pay for a woman’s company in the evening he would hardly be an Adonis, would he? Against her will, her eyes went to the man standing opposite now, and the contrast with the man at her side was cruel and stark. Oh, dear God, he hadn’t changed! Not in four agonisingly long years! He was still the most devastating man she had ever laid eyes on! Even now, with a look of killing contempt in his night-dark eyes, she could feel his power as his gaze razored over her. She knew what he saw, even though she had masked her own expression with a blankness that cost her all her strength to hold in place. For a terrible moment, she felt his contempt like a physical blow, shaming and searing her. Then the lasering glance was gone, and he was looking back at Cosmo Dimistris.

      ‘I’m minding Georgias Panotis—Anatole Panotis’s son,’ he said tersely. ‘The kid’s wet behind the ears.’ He nodded to where Georgias was still close, dancing with the girl with more hair than dress.

      Cosmo gave a coarse laugh. ‘Going to spoil his fun?’

      ‘Like the fun you have?’ His voice was edged, and once more his eyes went to the woman who was going to provide Cosmo Dimistris’s ‘fun’ tonight.

      Nikos felt emotion cresting through him like a dark, killing anger. Out of nowhere, like a black tide, he felt the urge to wrest Cosmo’s hand from her wrist, tell him to go and find his fun somewhere else! He clamped it down, quelling it by force, slamming down the lid on it as if it were glowing nuclear waste. Sophie Granton was not worth a microgram of emotion—not a moment more of his time. Not then, not now.

      His eyes flicked over her one last time. She showed nothing in her eyes now. Nothing after the first shock of recognition. Or was it dismay? He felt the question sting. Yes, he thought with turbid anger, why not dismay? Four years ago she had nearly, so very nearly, succeeded in making a fool of him. Well, she would deceive no one now! He could look at her with impunity. With the only kind of look she deserved. His mouth twisted in contempt as his eyes flicked over her again. She was blanking him, he could see, and his eyes narrowed. There was something about her blankness, her closed, expressionless face, that sent a stab of anger through him. She hadn’t been like that when he’d peeled her off him.

       Tears, sobbing, clinging to him, clutching at him.

      Cosmo was speaking again, and Nikos made himself listen. ‘Speaking of fun…I need some of the powder kind.’ He dropped Sophie’s wrist and changed to English. ‘Stay right there, baby.’

      To Sophie’s dismay, he headed off across the room, to be promptly pounced on by a trio of girls, none of whose attention seemed to bother him. She stared after him. Where was he going? Why? Panic broke through. Dear God, she couldn’t be left here like this—with Nikos Kazandros right in front of her. She made to lurch forward, but it was too late. A single word stayed her.

      ‘Sophie.’

      Behind the frozen mask of her face, as if a searing flame had scorched the ice in her mind, dissolving the chains and padlocks, the bars and bolts she had put around the past, like a dam being breached, memory came drowning in. Unbearable, agonising memory.

      The past, pouring through her head like molten lead…

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE spring sun was warm on her head, even in the early evening, as Sophie walked through Holland Park, up from Kensington High Street, where she’d hopped off the bus. She loved taking this walk, especially at this time of year. Was there ever a time of year more lovely? she thought. Bars of Schumann’s ‘Spring Symphony’ trilled euphonically through her head as she walked lightly through the park, where trees were unfurling their greenery, the air sweet, even for London.

      She quickened her pace. She wanted to tell her father the wonderful news, that she’d been chosen as one of the soloists for the college concert next month. Her mind ran through the repertoire. The two Chopin nocturnes were easy enough, but the Liszt was fiendish! Well, practice would make perfect. It was a shame they weren’t going to get the new baby grand that her father had promised her for her birthday earlier in the year, but the existing one was perfectly good enough, and she mustn’t be greedy.

      She frowned very slightly. It was unlike her father to stint on anything to do with her music. He’d been her biggest enthusiast, from the moment her primary school music teacher had said she really should have piano lessons. From then on her father had paid willingly for anything and everything that developing her talent, such as it was, required. Oh, she was no musical genius. She knew that, accepted that. So very few musicians were, and, considering how incredibly hard it was even for the exceptionally gifted to make a living, she didn’t envy them. No, she was perfectly content being talented, dedicated—and amateur. Besides, she made rueful the acknowledgement that she was in the highly privileged position of not having to earn a living. Even when she left college she could continue with her music without any thought of having to make it pay in any way. She would play for pleasure—and other people’s, too, she hoped.

      Certainly her father loved to listen to her. Again, a rueful smile tugged at her lips. He might be her biggest fan, but his ear was not musical.

       ‘Oh, Daddy, that’s Handel, not Bach!’

      She heard herself laugh affectionately in her memory.

      ‘Whatever you say, Sophie, pet, whatever you say,’ Edward Granton would reply indulgently.

      Yes, indulgence was definitely the word when it came to her, his daughter, Sophie knew. But although she knew she was the apple of his eye she had never taken advantage of it other than to pursue her music. Besides…a tiny glint of sadness shadowed in her eyes…she knew why her father wanted to indulge her so.

      She was all he had.

      Her memories of her mother were dim, almost non-existent. She could remember her singing, that was all, a low, clear voice, lulling her to sleep as an infant.

      ‘That’s where you get your music from,’ her father would tell her, over and over again. ‘Your wonderful, wonderful mother.’ Then he would sigh, and Sophie’s heart would squeeze with terrible sadness.

      So she let him spoil her, for he loved to do so, and she could not deprive him of what gave him so much pleasure. She tried very hard not to be spoilt, though she knew that compared with many of the other students, she was. Her father could pay the music college fees without blinking, never burdening her with student loans or the like. She could continue to live at home, in the beautiful house in Holland Park, and have a first-class instrument to practise on, and her clothes were always beautiful because her father liked to see her look pretty.

      ‘You’re so like your mother, pet,’ he would say. ‘She’d be so proud of you. As proud as I am.’

      Well, she wanted her father to be proud of her, wanted to see him smiling at her. Another little frown flickered across her brow. Her father’s smiles hadn’t been as forthcoming for the past few months, ever since her birthday, really, she supposed. Oh, he wasn’t cross or grumpy—it was more that he seemed…preoccupied. As if things were on his mind.

      She’d asked him once, when his brow had seemed particularly drawn. But all he’d said to her had been, ‘Oh, just the market…the market. Things will pick up again. They always do. They go in СКАЧАТЬ