Loe raamatut: «Savage Destiny»

CHAPTER ONE

ALIX PETRAKOS stepped down carefully from the taxi and took a much needed moment to square her shoulders before mounting the flight of steps to the door of the floodlit hotel. There was a supper dance in progress, and, although on another occasion she would have been looking forward to it, tonight it was not her idea of fun. She was tired to her bones. It had been a particularly long and fruitless day after a deluge of long, fruitless days, and had not keeping up appearances demanded that she attend this glittering charity function she would have stayed at home.

An attendant relieved her of her coat, and she took a deep breath before heading for the ballroom, a tall, slim figure who could have stepped right out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Yet, although her evening dress was a St Laurent original, her shoes handmade Italian and her jewellery courtesy of Cartier, Alix knew their days were numbered. Unless she could find the financial backing the family business needed so desperately, everything would have to go. Not that it would be a particularly unpleasant sacrifice, for she was not too enamoured of high fashion and the class structure it implied. No, the sad thing was that collectively the family possessions would do no more than dent the mountain of debts.

Pausing just inside the doorway, she surveyed the crowded room, not surprised to find that she recognised many of the faces there. Had, in fact, spent long hours these last few weeks talking to them across desks of every shape and size. Now, those who witnessed her arrival were quick to move away, and equally quick to pass on the news of her family’s financial straits in lowered voices.

It brought a tightness to her lips that sat uncomfortably on her delicate face, which was fine to the point of fragility—an aspect shown up by the new stylish cut of her hair, the platinum-blonde crop tapered to her nape, suiting her perfectly, yet making her grey eyes look huge and her neck vulnerable. A fact which was unknown to her as she walked inside with all the sang-froid she could muster.

Helping herself to a glass of wine, she acknowledged the greetings of those still brave enough to meet her eyes with a faintly cynical smile. Six months ago it had been oh, so different. Everything had. Now the façade had slipped and she had to cope with the consequences of her father’s ill-advised actions. Yet, no matter what these people thought, she would never have the bad manners to importune them here.

‘Don’t look so surprised,’ a voice declared mockingly from beside her. ‘When you set out on a collision course with the rocks, it’s a time-honoured tradition for the rats to leave the sinking ship.’

The low, vibrant tones strummed her nerves, and for one stomach-lurching moment Alix felt the room actually swim around her. Then her blood froze and her muscles tensed, and it seemed to take every ounce of her strength to turn her head to face the voice’s owner...because she knew whom she would see.

‘Leaving room for the vultures to swoop down and pick over the rotting carcass,’ she riposted swiftly, amazed at how steady her voice sounded, when the sight of the man who had come silently to stand beside her set her heart thudding sickly. ‘Why do I get the feeling that to say “fancy seeing you here” would hardly be apt? Sharks can smell blood from miles away, I hear,’ she added, not caring if she mixed her metaphors or not. Her mind held only one question: what was he doing here?

Pierce Martineau, as handsome as the devil, and just as black-hearted, afforded her a long lazy smile. ‘You’ve developed claws, Alix, which doesn’t surprise me, but, just like a kitten, you’ve yet to learn when it’s wise to scratch.’

The irony stung, reminding her just how weaponless she had once been. Yet those days were long gone. She had developed a wall of defences inches thick. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s always open season on Martineaus!’ She allowed her scorn to show, wanting to wither him on the spot. She was reeling with shock. He never came to England. Never.

One black brow shot up. ‘Do you always greet an old acquaintance with guns blazing? I’ll admit it has novelty value, but it might be wiser to put up your weapon, Alix. These days the enemy doesn’t obligingly wear a black hat. For all you know, you could be firing on an ally,’ he advised her mildly.

‘Ally!’ The word came out thick with revulsion. ‘You were never that, and never could be. You’re the enemy, Pierce, and as such I have nothing but contempt for you,’ Alix declared vehemently. Lord, she should have known he would say such a thing. It seemed he had developed a selective memory, while hers remained clear-cut. ‘Now I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. You see, I’ve become rather more discriminating about the company I keep these days.’ With which statement she pointedly turned her back on him and walked away on legs which threatened to give way beneath her at every step.

She had no clear idea where she was heading, just kept on walking until eventually she found herself in a small ante-room from which there was no other exit. She stopped then, discovering she was shaking in every limb. Dear God, why had he had to be here? Hadn’t he done enough? Did he need to crow over the remains? She hated him. Hated him as much as she had once loved him; with a depth of emotion that knew no bounds.

Alix bowed her head, her stomach twisting into a painful knot. Pierce Martineau still had everything going for him, possessing the sort of looks that set women’s hearts fluttering madly. Once, her own had taken wing in the space of a single beat. She hadn’t been immune to the thick glossy blue-black hair and the penetrating blue eyes either, nor the darkly shadowed cheeks framing that beautifully sensuous mouth. His masculinity and self-assurance had shone like a beacon, drawing her, like many another moth, to dance in its dangerous heat and brilliance. He had wined her and dined her, treating her like something beloved and precious, pursuing her with an ardour which had telegraphed to her lovesick heart that he loved her too.

Bitterness was like gall on her tongue, and unconsciously her hand tightened on the glass she still held until her knuckles grew white. He had turned that love to hate with his lies. For it had all been lies! All of it, from start to finish! The angry memory was punctuated by the sharp crack of glass, instantly followed by her soft cry of pain. The broken glass toppled from her hand, and she stared down blankly at the swift swell of blood on her palm.

It was only then that she realised she was not alone.

‘Sweet heaven! Did you cut yourself? Let me look.’ Pierce must have followed her, and now he advanced on her swiftly, taking her hand and examining it before she had the chance to pull away.

Alix shuddered, suddenly finding herself staring at his bent head. The lush waves of black hair brought back memories, ones she’d thought safely buried, of how it had felt to the touch. She breathed in sharply, only to have her senses bombarded by the tangy scent of his cologne and the heat coming off him. Then, as if to add insult to injury, his touch sent something close to an electric shock up her arm. Horrified by this totally unexpected and unwanted reaction, she froze in disarray, mind crying out a silent, No!

‘You’ll live.’

Pierce’s declaration snapped her out of her state of shock, and the momentary delay in his looking up gave her just enough time to regain control of her features, leaving them once more remote.

‘It’s little more than a scratch, and looks clean enough,’ he observed, meeting her eyes with a feral glitter in his own. ‘What did you imagine the glass was, my throat?’

Try as she might, she could not quite sustain that gaze, and she hastily glanced away from the mockery in those deep blue chasms. Her eyes fell on her hand, and she discovered he had made a makeshift bandage out of his handkerchief. There were traces of scarlet on the pristine white cloth. Her blood. Always her blood when Pierce came into her life! Her lips thinned, that moment of awareness evaporating in the bleak, chill winds of memory.

‘If any man deserves to have his throat cut, you do,’ she declared coldly, as she glanced up once more, her precious defences safely intact.

If she was scoring any hits, she would never know. Pierce’s only reaction was to laugh lightly, at what must seem to him a minnow turning on a pike. ‘Many have tried; none succeeds.’

Alix smiled thinly at his supreme conceit. ‘Such pride is bound to be brought down. I only hope I’m there to see it.’

There was a moment when something which could have been regret flickered in his eyes, but it was gone before she could quite pin it down. ‘That’s our heritage in us. Wouldn’t you say this has all the makings of a classic Greek tragedy? Vengeful wife plots husband’s downfall. Would you dance on my grave, Alix?’

He was toying with her, but she refused to play his game. ‘Ex-wife,’ she pointed out swiftly, even as her heart contracted sharply—though precisely from what emotion even she couldn’t have said at that moment.

Pierce inclined his head in wry acknowledgement, as if he had expected no other answer. ‘You say that with such alacrity.’

Her chin came up instantly, and her eyes shot sparks. ‘It was the happiest day of my life!’

If she had hoped to wound him, her aim was glaringly abroad. ‘Strange, I seem to remember you said the same of our wedding-day,’ he reminded her dulcetly, the low timbre of his voice exploding on her senses like dark chocolate, eminently seductive.

To have to acknowledge how he could make her react even now made Alix furiously angry—with herself as much as him for bringing back all too clearly that worst of times.

‘I didn’t know then what an utter bastard you were.’ But she had learnt. How she had learnt.

It seemed he did have a few chinks in his armour, for all trace of amusement left him abruptly. The only movement on his tight face was the tic of a muscle in his jaw. ‘It had to be done. You should understand that.’

Grey eyes, darkened by seething emotions, sent him a message of hate. ‘I’ll never understand it, and I’ll never forgive it! I’ll hate you till the day I die!’

Nostrils flared as he took a sharp breath. ‘Never is a long time. You may yet have cause to thank me.’

It took every ounce of control she had not to leap at him and claw him to shreds. It was a distressing measure of just how he was getting to her. The minute she lost control, he would have won. That had to be avoided at all costs. She responded instinctively. ‘For what? Killing my grandfather?’

Her barb found a tender spot, for Pierce took an angry step towards her, then controlled himself with patent effort. ‘That you will not lay on me, Alix. He was an old man, I agree, but he lived several years after I last met him,’ he pointed out grittily.

Her lips trembled, as much with anger as distress, and she pressed them together. ‘Maybe so, but you hastened him into his grave by taking away everything that was precious to him.’

He stiffened in outraged pride, blue eyes becoming flinty, almost dead. ‘I took nothing that wasn’t mine by right, and in exchange I left him you.’

Alix laughed hollowly. He had left a shell—the carapace of a woman he’d all but destroyed! ‘You’re a thief and a murderer, and I despise you.’

His face could have been carved from stone, so still did it become. ‘Despise away, but I still have something you want.’

‘I’d cut off my hand before I accepted anything from you, Pierce Martineau!’

The smile returned, but it was cold, mirthless. ‘Always so dramatic. I’d forgotten just what a passionate creature you were, in bed and out of it.’

Only he would have the gall to remind her of her uninhibited response to him, a response he had used to his own ends. She had been a fool then, but never again. ‘You’re right, I do have something for which to thank you—for teaching me a valuable lesson. One I’ll never forget,’ she declared tersely.

There was a fraction of a second before he replied, when his eyes lazily roved over all he could see. The inspection brought a soft curve to his lips, even as it set her back up.

‘If I was a good teacher, then you were a very willing pupil,’ he said softly, deliberately misinterpreting her. ‘You seem to have done well on it too. You’re looking even more beautiful than I remember.’

Alix ground her teeth in fury. The fact that he had taken a virgin bride to his bed and awoken her to the pleasures of the flesh was something she found hard to live with, when linked to what had followed. That he should have the insensitivity to remind her of it now churned her stomach. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to thank you for the compliment, because, quite frankly, the words would choke me!’ she shot back.

His eyes danced. ‘And that would never do. Perhaps I should stop before you have an apoplectic fit, but I can’t resist it. I like your hair cut short this way. It makes you look elegant and fragile at the same time. Quite a feat. When did you have it done?’ he went on conversationally, and she swallowed down hard on her anger because it was doing her no good, and only appeared to amuse him.

Yet she couldn’t help shooting him a challenging look. ‘Actually, I first had it cut five years ago!’ she retorted, and let him make what he liked of it.

Pierce had never been slow on the uptake, and now he understood immediately. ‘Hmm, off with the old, on with the new? I used to be fascinated by your long platinum locks. I’d dream of catching my fingers in it as I made love to you.’

She very nearly choked then, because she had had virtually the same dreams about him, and long after the marriage had ended. Now the memory set like ice about her heart. ‘Precisely the reason I had it cut. I wanted nothing to remind me of you,’ she added, trying to cut him down to size.

Pierce crossed his arms, regarding her mockingly. ‘Yet you haven’t forgotten me, it seems. Is that why you’re here alone tonight?’

She breathed in sharply. There was no other man like Pierce for asking questions with subtle nuances others missed. ‘You can rid yourself of the notion that you have any bearing on my life right now! I’m here alone because my father, as you probably know very well, is ill. We would have come as a family group, but instead I came on my own. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’

‘Hardly. Are all the men in England blind? Wasn’t there someone else who could have escorted you? What about the latest man in your life?’ he probed, ignoring the way her eyes flashed angrily at the cross-questioning.

She squared up to him. ‘What exactly do you want to know, Pierce, the state of my love life?’ she charged, hot colour storming into her cheeks at his audacity.

‘Judging by the state of tension you’re in, I’d say you haven’t got one. Either that, or his technique is so bad he leaves you frustrated,’ he returned, taking her breath away, so that she stared up at him rather like a stranded fish.

‘How dare you?’

‘Does that mean I’m wrong or I’m right?’ he enquired sardonically.

‘That means you’ve one hell of a nerve, and I’ve no intention of answering such a personal question,’ she rejoined angrily, and he laughed.

‘I think you just did. However, if men haven’t taken up your time, what have you been doing these past five years?’

‘Getting on marvellously well without you, I’m happy to say.’

‘So I see,’ he agreed, pricing her clothes and jewels with little difficulty. ‘You’ve been living high off the hog. Who paid for it all—Daddy?’ he jeered, and she saw red again.

‘Wrong. I earned the money to pay for my clothes by sheer hard work. My jewellery was a twenty-first birthday present, and I don’t think even you would begrudge me that!’ Alix countered hotly.

‘Spoken like a lioness defending her cub,’ he drawled ironically, and Alix decided she had had just about enough.

‘Why not? You might enjoy hitting people when they’re down and can’t defend themselves, but I don’t. In fact, I don’t even like associating with people like that, so if you don’t mind...’ She sent him a chilly smile, and would have brushed past him, only his hand shot out to grasp her wrist and halt her departure.

‘Not so fast. We still have to talk,’ he said shortly.

She attempted to shake him off, but he resisted effortlessly. All she could do was fix him with an unwavering glare. ‘As far as I’m concerned, we’ve said more than enough,’ she retorted frigidly.

Pierce shook his head. ‘Darling, we haven’t even begun to talk. But you’re right, this isn’t the time or place. I’ll be at your office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

How dared he think he could just waltz back into her life and take it over? ‘You may be there, but I won’t see you. I have appointments all day, and into the foreseeable future,’ she informed him with great satisfaction.

He released her wrist, but only to bring his hand up to catch her chin, forcing their gazes to lock. ‘Make room, or the only appointment you’ll have is with the official receiver! And if that isn’t warning enough, stop thinking about yourself and start thinking of your employees instead. This may be your last chance of saving their jobs. It’s on your head, Alix. Can you afford your pride?’ His eyes bored into hers for a second longer, then he set her free. ‘Until tomorrow,’ he promised, and it was he who left, with a brief nod.

Boiling with impotent anger, she watched his tall, broad-shouldered figure walk away. How she longed to tell him to go to hell, but his words stopped her—as he must surely have known they would. He also knew that she would see him tomorrow, for the sake of the very jobs she had been trying so hard to save, but with no success. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, the sense of failure. Now here was Pierce, implying he might be ready to do something, and, hate him though she might, she knew she couldn’t afford to turn him away.

The knowledge left a bitter taste in her mouth for the rest of the evening. She left early, but didn’t go straight home. Instead she took a taxi to the London hospital where Stephen Petrakos still lay in Intensive Care. Three weeks ago he had suffered a massive heart attack, and had had at least one smaller one since. It was a miracle he had survived at all, and it was while his life hung in the balance that she had discovered the perilous state of affairs his publishing empire was in. While the doctors were slowly winning the battle for her father’s life, she was still trying to save his company.

Her mother looked up from her knitting as Alix walked into the room, a tiny, fragile woman whose wan face creased into a welcoming smile on seeing her daughter. ‘Hello, darling, did you have a nice time?’

Alix bent to kiss a smooth cheek. Emily Petrakos was the kind of woman whose sweet nature inspired protectiveness in those around her, never more so than in her family. It had become second nature to shield her mother from the harsher side of life long before her father’s illness, the cause of that being the mess she was striving helplessly to sort out now. But even though her mother must surely suspect something was wrong, if her father had said nothing to his wife, then she could say nothing either. Which was why Alix now fixed a cheerful smile on her face.

‘Oh, you know how those things are. The cause was good, and that was what mattered. How’s Dad?’

‘Sleeping now, but he was terribly restless earlier. I do wish he’d tell us what’s wrong,’ her mother sighed, biting her lip in concern, and unwittingly confirming her daughter’s suspicions.

Alix gave her a hug. ‘Try not to worry, Mum. You know how Dad hates to be ill, especially when it takes him away from the business. However, I’m in control of things temporarily, and I think I may have some good news for him soon.’ Mentally she crossed her fingers, in the desperate hope that it would be true.

‘You’re such a comfort, Alix. Heaven knows where I’d be without you,’ Emily Petrakos declared, only to have her smile replaced by a frown. ‘But you look tired, dear. Aren’t you sleeping?’

Sleep was a scarce commodity these days, and even when she found some her dreams were troubled. None of which she was about to admit to. ‘I’m fine, really, it’s just been a long day today. I intend to go straight to bed when I get home. Don’t forget to get some sleep yourself, Mum. You know it will only upset Dad more if he sees you looking worried.’

‘You make me sound like a tonic!’

Alix laughed softly. ‘You are, and the best one he could have.’ Stifling a yawn, she glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better go. I’ll pop in again tomorrow. Give Dad a kiss for me, and tell him to stop worrying,’ she urged, before kissing her mother once more and leaving.

Her flat was near the river in Chelsea. It was small, but suited her perfectly. She had rented it before her short-lived marriage, and, because she had refused to accept any financial benefit from her divorce, had been glad to return to it and nurse her wounds. She let herself in with a sigh of relief, only feeling safe when the bolts had been shot. It was Pierce who made her feel that way—as if she should run, and keep on running. Walking through to the lounge, she dropped her coat on the couch and went to pour herself a brandy. She needed it. His presence had been a shock. She had never expected to see him again after the divorce. After all, she thought, lips twisting, why would he come back when he had already got everything he wanted?

Once she had believed she was the embodiment of the sentiment in those three words, but she had only been his tool. He had made his plans like a general. All the soft words and loving looks, right down to the vows they had exchanged, everything had been designed with one purpose—to get him within sight of his goal.

She hadn’t known anybody could pretend like that. She had loved him, and she had believed he loved her. Her mouth twisted. But that was what she had been supposed to think. Her naïveté was like a scourge to her already lacerated soul. She had been a young twenty-one to his vastly more experienced twenty-nine. He couldn’t have known for certain that she would fall in love with him, only that he knew enough about women to be able to make it a distinct possibility.

Shivering, Alix curled up in an armchair. Pierce had been right about her love life. She didn’t have one, and was there really any wonder? What she had suffered at his hands had made her fear the fire like any sane person. Never again would she trust any man with her happiness. Oh, she had men who were friends, and whom she sometimes dated, but although she knew some of them would like to deepen the relationship she had always been careful to keep them at a distance.

Her friends had stopped asking her why she had changed so after her return from America when she had stonewalled every question. Though they still tried to pair her up, it was half-hearted at best, and they obeyed her unspoken wish for privacy.

She closed her eyes. Stopping questions was one thing, stopping memories was something else. In the beginning they had been her scourge to remind her of what must never happen again. The scenes had been played over one by one, but although they had haunted her, waking and sleeping, for the past five years, the intervals between had lengthened. She hadn’t thought of him for a long time, but tonight everything returned with a vengeance.

Pierce had been so clever, manipulating her into believing what she wanted to believe—that he loved her. Only he hadn’t. That had been made manifestly obvious to her in one short hour. He had acted out his part with such consummate skill that it wasn’t till the morning after the wedding that she discovered the man she had married was nothing but a sham.

On the day that should have been the beginning of their life together she had finally met the real Pierce Martineau...