Satin Dreams (40 page)

No, Alix told herself. She knew now that in one man’s arms she’d felt safe, loved, and protected.
 

She’d been criticized for never doing anything unless she could dictate her own terms; for being spoiled, beautiful, having little love to give. But none of that was true. She had discovered she could love Nicholas Palliades.
 

It had been a revelation. It had changed her whole life.
It has changed me
, Alix thought, watching the woman in the glass.
Here I am now, and I am going to fight for what I want
.
 

Instead of running away
.
 

Lakis pulled the limousine up to the side entrance of the Paris police
centrale
that was open for night business. “Do you want me to go inside with you?” the tall Greek asked.
 

Alix shook her head. Visiting police stations was intimidating enough, but nothing compared to what lay beyond. Fortunately, the telephone call she’d just made to her brother confirmed she’d have plenty of help.
 

Just inside the door she recognized the young lawyer who’d been harrying her with threatening telephone calls so that she’d return home. He rushed out to meet her at the same time Alix swept through the door, and she almost bumped into him. He was also the same one who’d intercepted her the night before in the rue Cambon; Alix remembered the thinning hair and the eyeglasses.
 

“Miss Melton,” he said as she started ahead, bringing a blast of cold winter air with her, “I want to say how happy you’ve made everyone by your decision to—”
 

“Point out our lawyers,” Alix interrupted. She didn’t feel like being particularly gracious to the voice that had bullied her so many times on the telephone.
 

He almost fell over his feet in his hurry to usher her toward a group of men in dark business suits standing in the waiting area. Four other well-dressed, weary men stood near the booking desk.
 

“Are those the Poseidon-Palliades lawyers?”
 

“Yes, Farkas and Simon are from their Boulogne office, Andropolous has just flown in from Greece on one of Palliades’s company jets. They are quite well organized, to get Andropolous here so quickly.” He hesitated, full of respect. “They know who we are, Miss Melton, and the overall picture has been presented to them. But they have some trouble accepting the situation.”
 

So will Nicholas Palliades, Alix thought, uncomfortably.
 

Snuggled in the luxurious sable, the diamonds glittering against her wind-tumbled hair, she looked aloof and self-confidently patrician against the background of fluorescent lighting, green-painted corridors, and early-morning desolation that was Paris
centrale.
But Alix’s knees were shaking.
 

She was determined not to let Nicholas be trapped by Chris Forbes and whatever
Fortune
magazine exposé he was working on. But that meant she was gambling everything on the next few hours. Including, probably, her own chance for happiness.
 

The young lawyer quickly introduced the Melton Bank legal people in France: Michel Uris of the European trust staff from Versailles, Emile Leonard and Jack Hammersmith of the Paris office. The lawyers’ animation, considering that they’d been routed out of bed on an emergency basis, was remarkable. In Leonard and Hammersmith’s opinion, the warrant sworn out against Poseidon-Palliades Corporation and Nicholas Palliades as its chief executive officer was doubtful under French jurisdiction.
 

“Poseidon-Palliades operates mostly under the Panamanian flag,” the senior Paris lawyer told her. “A legal case against them will take months of search and discovery. Nevertheless—” He shrugged, disbelievingly. “To arrest young Palliades at a ball at the Paris Opera? Should we assume that someone—ah, wished to prove something?”
 

“Someone wished to humiliate him.” She felt they should know something about that. “But we—my brother doesn’t want him in jail another hour longer.”
 

The lawyers exchanged looks. “The Palliades legal staff was frantic,” the lawyer from Versailles put in. “They’ve been here for hours, trying to get in to see Niko. We finally made bail for him. But it didn’t make us too popular.” He smiled. “At least Niko’s on his way out.”
 

Alix could picture Nicholas Palliades, still in his white tie and tails, behind bars. He must know by now who had done this to him. She shuddered for the continued well being of Christopher Forbes.
 

Michael Uris said, “If he has been fighting with arms smugglers, then Niko Palliades must have been having a very bad time. Has he told you he’s been threatened several times with sexual blackmail? That he’s been attacked twice? He’s a very brave man.”
 

“Yes, I know.” No one had to tell Alix how brave Nicholas was; she owed him more apologies than she could ever make.
 

The trust lawyer looked around. “Shall we ask for a conference room to meet with Palliades’s legal staff? They’re fairly uninformed about our place in the scheme of things, and it’s bothering them. We’ve brought papers to let them know where they stand.”
 

“Yes, give them the papers.” Alix saw the Palliades lawyers watching, their expressions guardedly hostile. “You’ll have to explain why Melton Bank is now in charge. But I’m going to speak to Nicholas Palliades myself.”
 

There was a concerted look of surprise. By now the lawyers had certainly heard about her trail of rebellion that had led to the Sorbonne and beyond. And her brother’s efforts to get her to return home. They had been called in, their faces said, to advise
her
what to do. Not the other way around.
 

Alix braced herself for the arguments, but at that moment Nicholas Palliades and two deputies stepped through the steel mesh door at the end of the booking area.
 

Nicholas was still in formal evening clothes, tired and wrinkled, his hair hanging in disheveled black strands over his forehead. He had a swollen bruise over one black eyebrow, the obvious result of his struggles with the arresting
gendarmes.
His expression was indescribable.
Savage
was the only word Alix could think of.
 

The Palliades lawyers immediately crowded around, speaking Greek, but Nicholas roughly waved them away. He looked around the room, singling Alix out immediately. Without visible emotion his black look raked over the sable coat and diamond earrings.
 

Alix felt a moment of quivering panic.
 

He looked so angry. So remote. She knew it wasn’t going to work. Nicholas could never love her; they were too much alike! And yes, the rest of the world probably saw them as privileged, spoiled, even arrogant.
 

But she had to try.
 

She stepped in front of him as he strode past the booking desk. “Niko,” Alix said breathlessly.
 

He brushed past her without a word.
 

He knows,
she thought. In the next instant she knew that was impossible.
 

The Palliades lawyers surged forward, but the Melton legal contingent intercepted them, waving thick folders of papers. Nicholas Palliades disappeared through the side door.
 

Alix ran after him and plunged into the night.
 

There was no streetlight, and the steps outside the Paris
centrale
were dark and slippery with ice. Alix scrambled after his retreating figure, moving uncertainly in her high-heeled satin pumps. “Nicholas, please stop,” she gasped.
 

He kept going.
 

She tried again, close enough to grasp his arm. “Lakis has told me everything!”
 

He shook her off. “What the hell does Lakis know about it?”
 

He stepped to the curb, looking about impatiently for a taxi, but they were in the wrong place for taxis at that hour of the morning.
 

Close to him, Alix was reminded he was without an overcoat, and it was snowing. She touched the broadcloth of his shirt almost furtively, thinking,
He’ll freeze out here
.
 

She said, “The dry cleaner in Pantin is not my lover. You know now we had to have the costumes dry cleaned, that’s what caused the disaster.” Her lie now sounded absurd. She knew he couldn’t have believed it for more than a minute. “The poor man ... the earrings were only a deposit. I didn’t have any money.”
 

He walked on stiffly, as though he hadn’t heard her.
 

“Lakis told me it’s taken you months,” Alix went on a little desperately, “since you took over your grandfather’s shipping lines to find out what’s going on, that it’s a labyrinth of—of—”
 

He turned to scowl at her. “Illegal operations?”
 

“You know I don’t believe you’ve done anything illegal!” she protested.
 

He started rapidly along the snow-covered sidewalk. Alix, hampered by her high heels, had to run to keep up with him. Behind them she heard Lakis put the softly purring Daimler into gear.
 

“Lakis told me you’ve been doing a heroic job, trying to keep the whole mess—”
 

He stopped short, and she nearly bumped into him. “Dammit they put me in a
cell
,” he snarled, “behind
bars
.”
 

Alix could only stare wordlessly.
 

“I may have to go to court to testify that my grandfather is a thieving old bandit, a monster of conniving, stupid dishonesty, who acts in the fine old tradition of Greek shipping. Damn,” he burst out, infuriated. “Socrates actually thought he was a financial
genius
when he got the idea of using his oil tankers to smuggle arms! But I’m his chief executive officer. He put me in charge of running things. Would you like to testify for me? Tell them I didn’t suspect a thing until about ten months ago?”
 

“Niko, please.” Alix grabbed his arms with both hands to stop him. Behind them Lakis stopped the Daimler. “I have something to tell you.”
 

He looked down at her with burning eyes. “Why are you here, Alix? You’re beautiful in my jewels, do you know that? I know you hate them. Why are you wearing them?”
 

“I don’t hate them.” A flurry of icy flakes blew a strand of red hair across her mouth, and Alix scraped it way. She took a deep breath. “Nicholas, my name is Catherine Alixandria Melton. I inherited the Melton banking interests along with my brother, Robert.”
 

His long fingers gently brushed the dark sable fur resting against her cheek: “And the coat my grandfather gave you,” he said huskily, “I know you hate that, too. Why do you dislike our gifts? Is it because you are poor, Alix, and you feel that we are trying to corrupt you?”
 

She gulped. “Nicholas, you didn’t hear what I said!”
 

His thumb lingered over the soft curve of her lower lip, absently. “At first I thought you were one of them,” he murmured, “a decoy from these people who wish to smuggle their arms and missiles into Iran at any cost—these people who have tried to threaten me, intimidate me,
assassinate
me, because I stood in their way. I thought they had sent you to make me fall in love with you.” He was so close, his black eyes right in hers, that Alix felt the warm caress of his breath on her mouth. “Because you were so soft, so beautiful, any man would fall in love with you. A virgin, so strangely determined to have sex with me.” He sighed. “I thought that maybe they would even have you try to kill me.”
 

“You’re not listening to me.” He made everything sound so different. And she was so full of guilt! “You have to understand, I’m not just rich,” she blurted. “Actually, I come from that part of American society that’s so wealthy, it doesn’t know how much money it has.”
 

He was listening to her now, eyebrows raised.
 

She rushed on, “I was brought up without a father because he was too busy for me. And without a mother because she’d married a second time and had a new family. But I was a Melton and supposed to grow up to marry well, serve on the board of charitable institutions, and raise dutiful, well-behaved children.” She stared at him a little wildly. Why didn’t he say something?
 

He stood, oblivious to the snowflakes that were beginning to whiten his dark hair, staring down at her with an unreadable expression.
 

“I couldn’t do it,” Alix whispered. “I didn’t want to be like my brother Robert. All the years I was in boarding school, Robert was the only one who’d come to visit me. In prep school, at sixteen, he was already an old man.” She paused, helplessly. “When I ran away to Paris to study music, Robert had me followed by hired goons. He had his lawyers call me all hours of the day to harass me, to make me come back. My brother and I are board members of the Melton Banking Trust. They have to have me present to do business.” Alix was despairing. She didn’t have any more to tell him. “I—I have to be there to vote or it ties things up, terribly.”