Hostage to Love (Entangled Suspense) (17 page)

Nick saw it and frowned. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed.

She hurried to speak. “We rushed into marriage on some crazy impulse—”

“Crazy? Yeah. About each other. Simple as that,” he countered, but his gaze remained on her face, and she could tell he was intent on seeing behind her words, on digging beneath to find out what she wasn’t saying.

She licked her lips, her heart stuttering when he followed the movement.

“Are you sure?” she demanded tightly, getting down to the heart of the matter. “I distinctly remember you wanted to sleep with me, and I told you I wasn’t the sleeping around type. So you suggested we get married.”

“What the hell are you trying to say? For chrissakes, just spit it out.”

“That it was more about the sex for you than anything else, Nick. Certainly not love. You want me to spit it out? Well, here it is. Tell me straight. Do you love me?”

His quick intake of breath made her insides clench hard. She watched his expression transform until his features hardened.

“Love is a four-letter word tossed around far too often and for too carelessly for it to mean anything. You want to know what’s more important? If I hadn’t wanted a wife, I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me. I certainly wouldn’t have spent six fucking months with my heart in my throat, wondering every day if today would be the day I received divorce papers. And I would certainly not have spent every single minute of those six months wanting to strangle you for what you were putting us through. But I think what’s more important here is whether or not
you
regret this marriage. Whether you’re willing to walk away again based on the absence of a four-letter word.”

Chapter Nine

“Well?” Nick demanded.

He moved from the window and stood in front of Belle, invading her space. His ice-cold stare bore into her expectantly. Numbed shock had invaded her entire being at his diatribe against love. Before she could even formulate a thought, the phone on his desk buzzed.

He snatched it up. “Yes?” He listened, then frowned and moved closer to his desk. After tapping a few keys on his computer, he picked up the small remote and aimed it at the video conferencing screen on the far wall.

The screen flashed up to show Spiros Theodakis, Nick’s assistant, seated at a desk with a security guard standing behind him.

“When did the package arrive?” Nick put the phone down and addressed his employees.

“It came by courier half an hour ago.” His assistant looked nervous, as any man would with a burly security guy hovering over him like a dark shadow.

“It’s been checked for incendiary devices, sir. It’s clean,” the security guard said.

Nick nodded. “Open it.”

The first item that fell out made his blood boil hot and thunderous in his veins. Standing beside him, Belle gasped as the security guard picked up the ten-by-twelve picture and held it held it up to the screen. The picture was of her.

He turned to her. “Where was that taken?” he asked.

“At the marketplace in Nawaka, I think on my second week.”

“
Christos
,” he said under his breath. Inhaling sharply, he turned back to the screen and asked, “What else is there?”

Spiros peered into the padded enveloped then reached in. “A flash drive. We need to make sure it’s malware-free before we open it. I’ll get IT—”

“It won’t be.”

Spiros frowned. “Sir? Do you know who sent it?”

“I have a good idea. This isn’t about corporate espionage, Spiros. This is personal. It’s a message for me. But just to be on a safe side, use a laptop not connected to the company server.”

“Sure,” Spiros jumped up. “I have a spare one in my office. I’ll just go and get it.”

He went off screen. Nick pressed a button on the remote, and the screen went blank. He turned to her. “Are you all right?”

Belle found the strength to nod despite the fear suddenly coursing through her. “He’s sending us a message, isn’t he?”

Nick’s nostrils flared with barely repressed rage. “Looks like it.”

“What if it’s…not good?” she asked, knowing that it wouldn’t be.

“Then I’ll make sure I deliver my own message in a way that makes him wish he’d died in that cave with his men.”

She shivered at the menace in his voice. When he pulled her close and kissed her temple, she closed her eyes and burrowed into his strength.

They heard noises from the screen, and Nick pushed the button for the picture.

Spiros was once again behind the desk. “I’m ready, sir.”

Nick nodded. “Play it.”

Spiros hit another button and turned the laptop to face the TV screen. It was a recording, done in a sterile gray room that held no pictures or any distinguishing marks that would be useful in pinpointing its location.

The position of the camera showed it was set on a table. A simple ladder-backed chair stood in front of it.

Charles Mwana folded himself into the chair a second later, then leaned forward to nonchalantly adjust the lens. Belle’s breath caught.

“Good day to you, Mr. Andreakos. I assume we need no introduction, since you felt the need to reduce my training camp to ashes several days ago. If you’d chosen to negotiate with me instead of using brute force, I’m sure we could’ve come to an amicable, gentleman’s agreement. However, you’ve chosen to take the violent route, so here we are. Before you think this is a threat, I want to assure you that I’m a peaceful man. I don’t harm until I am harmed.” He leaned in closer to the screen, his eyes going from friendly to deadly in a heartbeat. “And I don’t take until something is taken from me.” He sat back. “You, Mr. Andreakos, have taken something from me. My training camp will be relocated and rebuilt, but Belle—and yes, I know you have her—Belle is irreplaceable. She no longer belongs to you. I want her returned. This is your opportunity to make amends for taking what is mine. Give her back to me, and there will be no repercussions. Fail to do so—” He placed his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, thought for a beat or two. “You’re a gentleman, so I know you’ll honor this simple request. I’ll have another package delivered to you same time tomorrow with details of how you can return my Belle to me. Don’t bother trying to trace the package’s origin. You won’t succeed.” He leaned forward and switched off the camera but paused at the last moment. “Until we meet again, sweet Belle.” He smiled, then the screen went blank.

Belle’s heart thundered so loudly in her ears for several seconds, Nick’s voice was merely a distant rumble.

“—have you over my fucking dead body.”

She focused to find herself on the sofa in the study, a glass of something dark and pungent in her hand, and Nick pacing in front of her.

He stopped suddenly. “Drink the brandy, Tinkerbelle.”

She drank. That satisfied him somewhat, but the menace didn’t leave his face. He resumed pacing as the fiery liquid scorched her insides.

A drop of liquid went down the wrong way, and what started as a cough soon turned into a sob. “Oh, God.”

With a curse, Nick hunkered down in front of her and cupped her cheeks in his warm palms. “Hey, don’t let that piece of scum get to you. We’re armed to the teeth should the bastard dare to come anywhere near here, but I suspect he’s hiding in another hole. Whatever the case, we’re going to throw everything we have at this, sweetheart. We’re going to hunt him down, and we won’t stop until we get him. I promise you.”

She sobbed harder. “You don’t understand. I think I may have…let him believe…”

“You mean getting close to him so he shared his plans for Nawaka with you?”

Her head snapped up in surprise, and she blinked back her tears. “You know?”

Nick nodded. “It was a dangerous move, but ultimately a clever one. You bought yourself time for me to get to you. If the asshole chooses to believe he’s entitled because of that, it’s his problem. He won’t get within a hundred miles of you. Not unless he wants me to rip him to pieces with my bare hands.” He kissed her wet eyelids before sealing her lips in a strength-infusing kiss.

She felt a little better when he lifted his head. Her gaze went to the blank screen. “So what’s going to happen now?” she asked.

“I’ve sent Jameson to collect the package and have it discreetly analyzed for evidence. He knows a guy. Apart from that, we wait to see what unfolds tonight and tomorrow.”

“Tonight?”

He nodded. “My meeting with Richard Francis. Now more than ever I’m hoping he can shed some light on Mwana’s whereabouts.” He dropped his hand to both of hers, squeezed them, then lifted her glass to her lips. “Finish the brandy. I can’t stand seeing you so pale.”

She sipped and felt marginally better as warmth flowed back into her body. Nick set the glass aside, sat down on the couch next to her, and pulled her into his lap.

“I can’t help but think you must really be regretting marrying me now.”

She looked up from where her head rested on his chest to see him staring down at her. For the first time, she saw the look of uncertainty and vulnerability in his eyes. “No, I don’t regret marrying you, Nick.”

“
But
?” He pressed.

“I can’t help think if we’d waited a little longer, gotten to know each other better, we wouldn’t be in trouble now.”

“You mean, you’d have realized the mistake you were making and bailed.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m trying—“

“We are where we are,
pethi mou
. For what it’s worth, I’m still crazy about you. I can’t take back what’s happened in the past. It’s what we do from here on in that matters.”

“What do you propose?”

“That whatever happens, we stick around and fight for us instead of hightailing it out of our marriage, just like—” He gritted to a stop, his nostrils flaring with the depth of his emotion.

“Go on, say it,” she dared him. “Just like your mother did.”

His nod was curt. “She packed up and left like it was a vacation she’d grown tired of.”

“How old were you when she left?”

“What the hell does it matter? A day, six months,
ten years
—it shouldn’t make a difference once you’ve taken a vow. If you walk away at first sign of trouble, then you might as well just keep on walking.”

His words slammed into her like a fist to the gut.

In that moment, with blinding insight, she realized just what walking away had done to him. “You hate me for that, don’t you? Just as you hate her?”

“Are we really doing this? Analyzing my mommy issues?” Nick mocked, his hands raking back her hair so he could kiss her forehead.

She drew in an incredulous breath. “So you admit you have mommy issues?”

His gaze grew shuttered. “Perhaps.”

“You’re doing it again, shutting me out and going all alpha on me. We can’t resolve our problems if you we can’t even have a decent conversation.”

“We can have a conversation, baby. Just not about my mother.” His voice had grown soft but there was a deadly warning behind it that made her spine snap straight.

“Was it really that bad?”

“She’s my mother, and I therefore do not wish to disrespect her. So let’s leave it. Please.”

It was the
please
that did it. That, and the wealth of pain he was trying so very hard to mask. For whatever it was his mother had done to have the power to hurt him this deeply, it must have been huge.

Certainly, huge enough to make him vow never to have a child of his own.

“Has anyone pointed out what a sheer, pig-headed streak you have?” she said without malice.

He gave a deadly smile. “Not if they wanted to live to speak about it.”

“We won’t work if you don’t meet me halfway, Nick.” She heard her voice crack, fear for them, fear for the very real danger that lurked in the shadows, making her quake inside.

“You’re asking me to relinquish control. That’s too much for me. Halfway is asking too much.”

Heart in her throat, she clenched her fist harder, and realized she still held her rings. “Can we at least try?”

“First, tell me why you went back to Brighton. To the apartment you told me you’d given up after we were married but secretly kept.” The words were condemning, but she felt his heart beating and somehow, the solid sound reassured her.

“Because it was the only thing that kept me from feeling as if I’d been totally assimilated into being Mrs. Nikolaos Andreakos, an extension of you, rather than my own being.”

“You really felt like that?”

She nodded. “And more. You have no idea how it felt to be treated like I was invisible by your friends. Besides being paparazzi-bait every time I stepped out the front door, I had to watch women drape themselves all over you, sometimes right in front of me. I hated you for not doing anything to stop it.” She took a calming breath. “How would you have reacted if I’d decided to crawl into another guy’s lap and rub myself all over him right in front of you?” she asked baldly, rawness scraping her throat.

Everything stilled—the air in the room, the leaves fluttering outside moments ago, even the background whirring of the computer faded—as if the whole world had stopped with her words.

“His life, and yours, would not have been worth living.” Nick’s voice was cold, deadly. “I would tear any man from limb to limb who dares to touch you.”

She shivered, momentarily reminded of the carnage in Nawaka. “Trust me, I felt the exact same way! It was all I could do not to claw their eyes out.
Your
eyes. It all got too much to bear. And suddenly we were on a slippery slope to being over—”

His hand slashed impatiently through the air, his platinum wedding band flashing in the morning sun. “It was nowhere near over…
is
nowhere near over.”

“That last night, at the gala—”

“I’d had a crappy evening and an even crappier few days without you—“

“It didn’t look that way when I arrived,” she inserted with a humorless laugh. “My God, the women were practically giving you lap dances.”

He held his hands out in very Greek supplication, at the same time sounding anything but supplicant. “Will you just let me finish?”