She groaned out loud. It was a bitter irony that the only person who possessed both of her requirements was her ex-husband. She didn’t want to do business with him, because she knew in her bones that the price would be high. Last time it had been her grandfather who had suffered. It might not have been worth much, but the Petrakos shipping line had been his pride. Losing it had killed him, not directly, but in the long run.
Though her gaze still remained on the world outside, it was another scene she was visualising on the projection screen of her mind. The Petrakos shipping line. Five years ago she hadn’t even known of its existence, but it was something she could never forget—as she would never forget that day when she had first heard it from the lips of Pierce Martineau...
* * *
The sound of the apartment door opening and closing, followed by the muffled but recognisable tones of her husband, brought Alix’s head up from her knees. She turned startled eyes on the clock, amazed to see that it was after seven in the evening. The time had passed her by as she sat curled up in a chair by the window, locked in a limbo where her senses were blessedly numb. She had been waiting for Pierce to come home. She hadn’t left, as her pride had told her to, because she knew she had to face him one more time. He had killed her love for him. He had used her without thought for her feelings, and she needed to know why. If she deserved nothing else, she at least deserved to be told the truth, however painful it might be.
Alix rose stiffly to her feet. Her body felt as if it was one big ache, and although earlier she had put on jeans and a Guernsey sweater she still felt cold. She knew it was reaction; she only hoped that nothing showed when she saw Pierce. He knew he had hurt her, for he had deliberately set out to do so, but she’d be damned if she’d let him see just how much. Facing him again now wouldn’t be easy. Perhaps it was the hardest thing she had ever done. Only anger could give her the strength she needed.
The apartment was large, and all she knew of its layout was the dining-room and the bedroom. She had looked forward to exploring, but somehow this morning she just hadn’t felt like it! The wry humour lodged in her throat and, standing in the hallway, she quickly looked around. To her left a door stood ajar and light spilled from it. If Pierce was anywhere, then she might as well start her search there.
Alix found herself in a spacious modern lounge. Velvet curtains covered most of one wall, which meant it was probably all window. Elegant couches and armchairs made seating areas around low coffee-tables, the carpet muffled even the heaviest footstep, and the paintings on the walls were originals. At any other time she would have found it a charming room, but she was far too tense for anything so facile. There was a fireplace opposite, and although nothing burned there she crossed to it, soft-footed, as if by association her icy fingers would warm.
The chink of ice on glass brought her head shooting round. Pierce was standing by a drinks trolley watching her through hooded eyes.
‘Would you like a drink before dinner?’
The matter-of-fact question was like a slap in the face. How could he be so calm after what had happened this morning? It was almost as if nothing had happened! Her anger grew. ‘No, thank you,’ she ground out through her teeth, watching him walk towards her with the economical stride which was part of his animal magnetism, and which had once made her shiver in anticipation.
There was a mocking twist to his lips as he came into the circle of light thrown out by the lamp on the sofa table. ‘You’ve gone into mourning, I see.’
Alix glanced down at her clothes, realising for the first time that they were black. It hadn’t been intentional, merely the first things that came to hand. Yet it was bitingly apt. She worked at her throat, saying thickly, ‘Something died today, Pierce, and I still don’t know why.’
Pierce came closer, resting one arm along the mantelpiece. ‘Mrs Ransome tells me you spent the day in our bedroom.’
Alix found his closeness almost intolerable, yet she forced herself to make no move away from him, lest he believe he had her on the run. ‘I’m asking you to tell me why you’ve done this. What you meant about my grandfather.’
For a moment he merely stared down at her, as if gauging whether her ignorance was real or not. Then he shrugged carelessly. ‘You and I have Greek blood in our veins, my dear Alix. An oath is not to be taken lightly, and I’m keeping a promise I made,’ he enlightened her smoothly. ‘As for where Yannis Petrakos comes into the picture, I’ll be only too happy to tell you, in my own good time.’
His arrogance sickened her, and the only way to keep her hands from his handsome face was to ball them into fists at her sides. ‘I want to know now,’ she insisted angrily.
Blue eyes ran over her stiff figure with lazy insolence. ‘After dinner.’
How easily he made her feel like the pawn he thought her to be. ‘Oh, God, I hate you!’ The words were almost a sob, and she pressed her lips together tightly so as not to let another escape.
However, she could have screamed and he would only have looked amused, just as he did now. ‘Do you? Only yesterday you loved me.’
Gasping at that studied cruelty, she stared into his eyes and murder was in her heart. ‘Why didn’t you challenge me when we met if this oath of yours was so important?’
‘Haven’t you worked that out for yourself? You’ve had all day. Because I needed you to be my wife. Without that, you could have walked away scot-free.’
Her heart felt as if it was being squeezed in a vice. He was shredding her, leaving her with nothing. Nothing except a fierce pride, which lifted her chin a fraction. ‘I can still do that now. Or are you saying I’m your prisoner?’
A small chilling smile curved his lips. ‘You can go any time you want to. I don’t need you as a hostage,’ he confirmed easily. ‘All I needed was you as my wife. And you are that, aren’t you, Alix? In name and in the flesh.’
Alix felt what little colour she had drain away. ‘Are you telling me you slept with me just to consummate the marriage?’
One eyebrow lifted disdainfully. ‘Could you be foolish enough to imagine I’d leave any loopholes? Fulfilling the oath depended on it.’
Nearly choking on an upsurge of nausea, she shook her head in appalled disbelief. ‘How could I have been foolish enough to think I loved you?’
Lids lowered over blue eyes as Pierce reached out to run the knuckles of his hand down her cheek. ‘Can you be so sure that you don’t now?’
There was something in his touch that seemed to tug at her heart, and, hating herself for it, Alix curled her lip in contempt. ‘There’s no love left for you, only hate.’
His lips parted on a short bark of mocking laughter. ‘Maybe not love, but what about desire? Shall we put that to the test?’
His callousness took her breath away. He had just told her he had made love to her because he had to, not because he wanted to, and now he wanted to prove that she was still his any time he wanted her. ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’
Suddenly there was the strangest look in his eyes. ‘Never dare me, Alix, that’s the worst thing you could do,’ he declared huskily, and caught her as she turned to flee, pulling her back, struggling, against his chest, pinning her arms with his and forcing her head still with a hand clamped in her hair. There was a moment when their eyes locked, hers spitting loathing and his carrying that odd expression she couldn’t interpret, then his head dropped and Alix prepared herself for the assault.
Only it didn’t turn out like that. His lips were gentle and warm, dropping kisses now here, now there, until she couldn’t bear it. Her heart was wrenched apart as she suffered an embrace that seemed to encompass a world of loving, and yet was a mockery of the very word. Sobbing, she tried to pull away, but all he did was deepen the kiss, using tongue and lips to seduce her. He knew her so well. He knew the precise moment when she would stop fighting and start kissing him back, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Her response stripped her bare, and when Pierce released her at last h
er eyes loomed huge in her ashen face. His own were glittering so brightly that they dazzled.
‘It’s not that easy, is it?’
If he wanted to make her feel cheap, then he couldn’t have chosen a better way. ‘I never thought I could despise any human being as much as I do you. What have you proved? That you can still turn me on? Maybe you can, and maybe it would amuse you to have me in your bed again. But you’d take me knowing that I’d hate every touch of your hands. My response has nothing to do with how I feel, and I feel only hatred for someone who could do what you have done to me today!’ Her voice was thick with that hate, and a bitter self-loathing that she could not, even now, resist him. She turned away abruptly, but only got two steps on shaky legs before his voice halted her.
‘Where are you going?’
She shot him a look full of revulsion. ‘Back to my room until you’re ready to talk to me.’ She couldn’t bear to be near him.
The tension emanating from him was awesome, and his voice correspondingly terse. ‘If you want to know the facts, then you’ll join me for dinner. I insist,’ he added the last as she made to protest.
Balked, Alix turned back, knowing that although she never wanted to see him again she had to know everything. Taking a seat on the couch furthest away from him, she forced herself to look him in the face. ‘Very well, if it amuses you. I’ll have that drink now.’ She needed it quite badly.
‘I wouldn’t say it amuses me,’ Pierce said shortly, as he went to pour her a drink, returning with her usual martini.
Alix avoided his eyes, taking the glass, using extreme care to make sure their fingers didn’t touch. Silence fell, and she had no intention of attempting to make polite conversation. This was no longer a honeymoon, and she the blushing bride. This was attrition, and she would not pretend otherwise. So it was a relief when there came a tap on the door and Mrs Ransome announced dinner. However, the mere thought of food was nauseating, and Alix called upon all her reserves of composure to enable her to take her seat at the table. But having got that far she made no attempt to eat what was placed before her, nor even to pretend that she had. Pierce regarded her from across the table, unamused by her still, silent figure.
‘This is really very good, you should try it,’ he encouraged after a moment, indicating the soup.
Her eyes battled with his. ‘Is that an order?’ she asked insolently, and his jaw tensed.
‘Do you intend to starve yourself?’
‘Because of you? Never!’
He smiled grimly at that. ‘Then have some soup, Alix. According to Mrs Ransome you’ve eaten nothing all day.’ There was steel in Pierce’s voice, mixed up with, of all things, an impatient concern. ‘Must I come round there and make you?’
Alix resorted to sarcasm. ‘What’s the matter? Afraid it wouldn’t reflect well on you if I faded away?’
Sitting back in his chair, Pierce eyed her grimly. ‘I’m afraid of nothing. I’m merely doing what has to be done. It has never been my intention to make you ill.’
Her jaw became set. ‘Then you’d better either get out of my sight or let me go, because just seeing you sickens me!’ she snapped back, not caring if it sounded childish or not.
He smiled but it failed to reach his eyes. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve no wish to prolong our acquaintance. Once I have what I came for, you need never see me again.’
Alix could feel the muscles in her face tighten up at that. ‘I wish I’d never seen you!’ she cried, just as the housekeeper bustled back into the room. His reply had to wait until Mrs Ransome had removed the soup dishes and replaced them with the main course.
Alone again, Pierce shrugged powerful shoulders. ‘We would always have met, Alix. Some things are meant to be.’
She almost laughed. Now he wanted her to believe that the gods had something to do with it! ‘I don’t believe in such superstitious mumbo-jumbo. You planned everything down to the smallest detail, leaving nothing to chance. Such arrogance! Tell me, what would you have done if I had been engaged to be married?’
‘I would have done my best to break it up, of course.’
She believed him. A man who had done what Pierce had would not have balked at an existing engagement. Because whatever it was he thought her family had done, it was serious enough for any action, however underhand. ‘I believe you would, and I have nothing but contempt for you.’
Her emotional outburst just seemed to bounce off him. ‘Having got that off your chest, and as neither of us seems to be enjoying the meal, we may as well go along to the study.’
Her heart lurched, but she stood up quickly, following him out and down the passage to another closed door. Switching on the light, he urged her inside. It was a mellow room with shelves full of books, a well-used desk at one end, and a grouping of chairs surrounding another mock-fireplace. Next to it was a unit given over to cups and photographs. It was to this that Pierce’s hand at her back was urging her. He reached up to one particular shelf, retrieved a framed photograph and handed it to her.
‘Do you recognise anyone?’
She frowned, then quickly glanced down at the fading print. It was a dockyard scene, where two dark-suited men stood shoulder to shoulder, dwarfed by the ships behind them. At first she saw nothing, but then something in one of the men’s stern faces made her take a closer look.
‘It’s my grandfather!’ she exclaimed in surprise.
‘And mine. George Andreas.’
‘Andreas? But that’s Greek, and your name is Martineau.’
‘My grandparents were Greek, but they left Greece after the war and emigrated to America. Their daughter, my mother, married an American, Lawrence Martineau, and I was born here,’ Pierce expanded, one long finger still pointing to the other man before moving on to the background. ‘And these are the Andreas fleet.’
In her perplexity, she forgot to be angry. ‘I don’t understand. You’re saying our grandfathers knew each other?’
He laughed shortly. ‘I’m saying they were the best of enemies. To prove it, Yannis Petrakos stole the fleet from my grandfather.’
‘Stole it?’ Alix gasped, then thrust the photograph back to him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Grandfather doesn’t own any ships!’
The smile that spread over Pierce’s lips was grimly amused. ‘I can assure you he does. A few ships lie rotting away in a North African dockyard, all that’s left of the Petrakos shipping line. Proud ships which once bore the name of Andreas. Yannis Petrakos always wanted those ships. They were an élite fleet, and to own them would have meant wealth, prestige, acceptance into the upper echelons of society—three things he was hungry for. He sought to get them by marrying the owner’s daughter, for they were to be part of her dowry, but she was already betrothed and would not look at him. That woman was my grandmother, and the ships came to my grandfather on their marriage. From that day on, Petrakos hated both of them, and swore to destroy my grandparents and the ships any way he could. What he could not have, none should have. After the war, he found the perfect way. He produced papers—forged, of course—which would prove my grandfather was a collaborator. Generously, he offered my grandfather a way out. If he signed over the ships, the papers would disappear. If not, the whole family would be shot.
‘Of course it wasn’t true, but there was no way of proving it, whereas Yannis Petrakos had links with the black market, and ways of getting what he wanted. So he finally got the ships, because my grandfather loved his family. He lost everything, but he took an oath that one day he would get his ships back. He came to America and started a new life, made a new fortune, but he never forgot. It broke his heart to see the way the fleet was slowly being allowed to sink into disrepair. Many times he offered to buy it, but Petrakos always refused. When he had no further use for them, he simply allowed the ships to rot away.
‘When my grandfather died, he made me swear an oath that I would do what he had been unable to do. Petrakos has refused to sell to me, and so I see no reason to keep hitting my head again
st a brick wall. I looked around for another way, and found you. You are the key, Alix. I want the Petrakos shipping line, and you are going to get it for me!’
* * *
The strident buzz of the intercom startled Alix out of her painful memories once more, and she swivelled round to answer its summons.
‘Yes, Ruth?’
‘Mr Martineau is here, Miss Petrakos.’
Her heart knocked sickeningly, and she licked suddenly dry lips. ‘Send him in, please, Ruth,’ she directed, knowing that she should order coffee too, but her intention was that he shouldn’t be there long enough to drink it.
She barely had time to smooth a hand over her hair and check that the buttons of her jacket were securely fastened before he walked into the room. She rose with studied politeness, very much aware of the atmosphere that entered the room with him. The very air about them seemed to crackle with it, and she found it unnerving, the way the office shrank, locking them into a kind of vacuum.
This morning he was the epitome of the successful businessman, his pale grey Italian suit sitting far too well on his tall frame, the white silk shirt and red tie setting off his dark hair, tanned skin and gleaming blue eyes. He was smiling with heavy irony as he crossed the floor to her.
‘Good morning, Alix,’ he greeted smoothly, holding out his hand, forcing her to grit her teeth and offer her own. It was swallowed up in his larger one, giving her the impression that she would be swallowed up too. As a consequence she pulled away far too abruptly, bringing a tinge of colour to her cheeks as his eyes danced.
‘Mr Martineau,’ she muttered coldly, pressing her fingers hard on the desk-top to stop their tendency to tremble. His touch had been like a live wire, shooting electricity up her arm. ‘As you can see, I kept an appointment open for you; however, I would appreciate it if you didn’t waste too much of my valuable time. I do have other people to see.’
Ignoring good manners, he seated himself opposite her, making himself comfortable. ‘Sit down, Alix, and stop trying to impress me with your efficiency. We both know you’re expecting nobody else. You’ve seen everybody who might have been expected to help already, with no success.’
Savage Destiny Page 4
