Free The Konstantos Marriage Demand by Kate Walker Page B

chillies, and this was heavily laced with them.
    ‘A wedding?’ she croaked through the burn in her mouth, tears of reaction stinging her eyes.
    ‘Here…’
    Leaning forward, Nikos poured a glass of water, held it out to her, watching as she gulped it down gratefully.
    ‘You hate spicy food,’ he said, when she finally started to breathe more easily. ‘Particularly chillies.’
    Did he remember everything about her? It was a scary thought.
    ‘So why order something that you were going to hate?’
    ‘It’s almost five years. I might have changed—people do.’
    ‘Obviously not that much,’ Nikos drawled, his dry tone making her wonder if there was so much more than her reaction to the chilli sauce behind his comment. ‘Would you like something else?’
    ‘No—thank you.’
    Any appetite she had had fled in the moment he had made that stunning announcement. But at least the impact of the chillies had disguised the fact that a lot—oh, be honest!—most of her reaction had been in response to his declaration. Her heart was still thudding from the shock of it, her thoughts spinning, whirling from one emotion to another and back again.
    And none of the reactions was one that she really wanted to take out and examine in detail. Not here, not now. Not with Nikos lounging back in his chair, watching every move she made.
    ‘Whose wedding?’ she managed to croak. ‘Are you telling me that you are getting married?’
    Once more Nikos inclined his dark head in agreement.
    ‘Who to?’
    ‘I prefer not to say. One never knows when the paparazzi might be hanging around, looking for a story. I prefer that they do not find out about this just yet. I want to protect my fiancée.’
    A protection he hadn’t offered her, Sadie recalled with a stab of bitterness. Then he had been happy that the world should know about their engagement, their upcoming wedding. With the result that she had begun to feel she was living her life in a goldfish bowl, with a huge, powerful spotlight directed right at it all the time.
    Which had made their final break-up into a media circus that had left her shattered and devastated.
    ‘And you don’t trust me?’ she asked, as much to distract herself from the particularly vivid, particularly painful memories that had risen to the surface of her mind, no matter how much she tried to push them down.
    ‘You will find out soon enough—when the time is right for you to know.’
    It seemed that Nikos too had abandoned all pretence at having an appetite for his meal. His ignored sea bass was rapidly cooling on his plate as he focussed only on her.
    ‘And of course when you are in Greece…’
    ‘What?’
    She couldn’t have heard that right.
    ‘No—wait a minute—back up a bit here. What was that? I thought you said…I’m not going to Greece!’
    ‘Of course you are.’
    Nikos’s half smile was perfectly composed, totally in control.
    ‘How else will you organise the wedding?’
    ‘Your wedding?’
    The croak in her voice was worse than the one inflicted by the bite of the chillies. She could hardly believe that she had heard anything right. Had he really said?
    She couldn’t…She wouldn’t! How could he expect her to organise and arrange a wedding at which he—the man she had once been going to marry herself—would become someone else’s husband? He couldn’t ask it of her! It was too cruel. Too monstrous.
    But the reality was that Nikos wasn’t asking . He was simply stating a fact. As far as he was concerned this was what was going to happen. She was going to take on the arranging of his wedding—to his fiancée. Because he said so.
    ‘No…’
    It was all she could manage. Even after a long, shaken gulp of cooling water, her throat refused to allow her to say any more.
    ‘I said that I had a job for you.’
    ‘This is the job? This is what you brought me here to talk about?’
    And what sort of twisted vindictiveness had driven him to bring her here, to the restaurant