Kitabı oku: «Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks», sayfa 17

CHAPTER SIX

A WEEK LATER, Leah walked over the white sandy beach on Stavros’s estate on one of the tiny islands along the Aegean coast. Stavros’s “house” turned out to be a hundred-acre estate close to the sea, a ten-minute helicopter ride from Athens that had thrilled her quite a bit.

Even with Stavros studying her curiously the whole time.

She had lived in Athens for so many years and yet she had known nothing about the little slice of heaven that was the island he called home.

Nestled amidst two tiny hills, the mansion was stunning in its simplicity. No glittering glass bars like Dmitri’s yacht, or a lifeless steel-and-chrome affair, which was lately the trend with billionaire homes.

The manor was made entirely of stone, with cathedral ceilings framed by exposed beams, whitewashed walls, a pool and a wine cellar. It was full of soaring spaces and light, stunning in its simple lines.

Austere, private and yet so breathtaking, the exact reflection of the man who owned it, it was an authentic slice of rural Greece. But even when it was only the wind chimes that punctured the silence, even when it was just the staff keeping her company as it had been at the apartment, Leah felt anything but lonely.

There was something very peaceful about the estate and the people surrounding it.

She smiled now about how worried she had been about being confined in a house with him. About seeing Stavros wherever she turned. Not only did the house boast seven bedrooms and attached baths, but Stavros, when he returned from Katrakis Textiles, she realized, worked in the estate.

Although if he had looked smolderingly arrogant in his suit, he looked painfully handsome in light blue jeans and a white polo shirt.

The sounds of the helicopter blades had jolted her from her bed the first morning. Still in her cotton shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, she had run to the attached balcony, spurred on by what, she still didn’t know.

Dressed in a white dress shirt that draped lovingly over his broad frame and plain khaki trousers that looked way too sexy, he had been about to step in.

Except he had turned and looked at her, the breeze ruffling his hair.

Her heart thudding, her mouth dry, Leah had broken his gaze and gone back in.

Now returning from the beach, she waved at workers heading home to the small village from the vineyard, which she had been surprised to learn was operational. Several guesthouses were dotted across the grounds in addition to a horse farm.

When she had laughingly asked Stavros which one Dmitiri preferred when he visited, she had gotten a black look in response.

It was as she passed a couple, probably in their fifties, that she remembered another little tidbit. Stavros and Calista had been from a little village that surrounded Stavros’s estate. His grandparents, she knew, still lived there. Even though their grandson was a household name in all of Greece.

Feeling nauseous at the thought of how brazenly she had threatened to go to the media and how his face had blazed in contempt, she pulled in a long breath and broke into a run.

From the moment he had showed her around the estate, she had loved running through the trails cleared through lush acreage. In just the past week, she had found a trail that touched the horse farm and rounded through the orchard.

She turned the winding bend around it and came to a skidding halt near the glittering pool that was by the house.

The evening sun kissing the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, Stavros was sitting at the poolside table.

A tall jug of the customary lemonade that she requested every day and a selection of fruits and assorted cheeses were on the glass-topped table between the two loungers.

His head was thrown back against it, and his eyes were closed. Her breathing still raspy, Leah stilled. Her gaze lingering on the corded column of his throat, the planes of his sculpted face, at the way his long lashes almost kissed those sharp cheekbones…

It was something to see the man in repose like that, to study him without his contemptuous gaze peeling layers off her. And the way her breath hitched and her gut folded, the frenzied clamoring of her heartbeat to the very sight of him, it was telling.

For the past week, she had seen the stamp of the man in the thriving estate.

In the tired but happy workers on the vineyard, in the affluent praise the villagers bestowed on him, in the way some of the women’s eyes had widened when they had realized who she was, the reverence in their tone when they addressed her as Thespinis Sporades…

The responsibility of bearing that name, the reality of being the woman Stavros would respect and know and want…it sent shivers down her spine.

The usual white dress shirt he wore was unbuttoned, showing dark olive skin. His cuffs, folded back, displayed his muscled forearms, to the veins extending from his wrist and down… The sight of those powerful thighs, encased in tight blue jeans, made her remember how hard and corded they had been against her own…made her wonder how they would cradle her if she…

Heat, that had nothing to do with her running, pooled under her skin. The stretchy fabric of her Lycra top rasped against her nipples, the soft hem of her shorts rubbing against her inner thighs…

She was breathing like she had run another few laps, her skin so overheated that dunking into the pool was so inviting. Just as she found her willpower and took a step, she heard her name.

Turning slowly, she saw his fingers laced against his chest, faint color bleeding into those cheekbones.

His eyes were still closed when he said, “Did you have a good week, Leah?”

He sounded hoarse, uneven. Very unlike him. Had he felt the way her gaze devoured him in that motionless state?

How could just looking at him fill her blood with this molten wanting?

“Come, sit here and tell me how it was,” he said softly.

While she still stood there stupidly, hovering between drugged inertia and fluttering panic, his gaze opened slowly. Traveled over her with such a thorough intensity that she could almost believe he had been dying to look at her.

In the seconds-long perusal, Leah knew he had noted everything about her, including her heightened color. Hoped he would put it down to the fact that she had been running.

She ran her palm over her forehead, wondering if she was feverish. Because that’s how she felt. Could a harmless, adolescent crush turn into a full-fledged obsession, she thought sarcastically. “I’m sweaty. I need a shower,” she finally responded, and began to walk away.

“Rosa told me you like to swim after your run. Don’t change your routine on my account. Or am I one of those incredible things that scare you, Leah?”

It was so on target that her denial shot out of her mouth like a missile in a defensive tone. “I’m not afraid of you.”

His brows rose questioningly. Then he smiled, a real flicker of warmth lighting up those tawny irises.

She could deal with Stavros hating her, questioning her worth, and thinking the absolute worst of her. This…strangely speculative mood he seemed to be in, she couldn’t.

No way was she going to put on her bikini and parade in front of him. She would probably self-combust if he so much as looked at her, even innocently. “I ran far more than I intended today. I’ll skip the swim,” she said, turning around.

“How do you like the estate?”

She was so wired up into his every breath, every nuance that her foot slipped on a wet patch.

He was out of the chair and by her side in a flash, his hand around her waist. The side of her breasts squished against him, her midriff knocked hard against his. All of her breath jarred into her throat, her muscles groaning at the impact. He was so hard and hot…

“You are unhurt?”

“I’m fine.” She pushed the words out, feeling so out of control that tears prickled behind her eyes.

What was the matter with her? Where was this desperate awareness stemming from?

He was silent next to her, his large hands still resting on her hips. She didn’t have the guts to turn and meet his gaze.

The idea of seeing the same awareness in his drove her out of her skin. The idea of seeing nothing but a patient indifference made her skin crawl.

With the guise of reaching for the lemonade, she withdrew from his touch. “It’s remote and a little out of sync with the twenty-first century, don’t you think?”

For the first time in years, she had felt completely at home, had forgotten the pain of the past and the endless, lonely future stretching ahead of her. But she had nothing to fight her reaction with, if not with her lies. Nothing except to continue the animosity between them that she didn’t even know the origins of anymore.

“Remote, yes. Out of sync with the rest of the world, no.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “Perfect for you though—stark, severe and forbidding.”

“That’s exactly what Dmitri says when he visits. Says he can’t stand the relentless silence.” He smiled. “So you do not like it then?”

She frowned, wondering why he was asking. “I just… I prefer something a little flashier and more hip, like Dmitri’s yacht. Or that infamous bachelor pad of his in the business district of Athens.” When had lying become this easy? She had been to Dmitri’s flat once and it had been a soulless, colorless monstrosity of steel and chrome. “This is a bit too isolated for my taste.”

“Is it?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat at the thought of leaving here. But if this was how she was going to react to seeing him after a week, she couldn’t imagine what she would do if she saw him daily. “Hmmm.”

A little knot tied his brows and cleared again. Something she had never seen danced in the depths of his gaze.

He was going to relent. He was going to send her back to that dinky flat, back to the dragon, Mrs. Kovlakis. A breeze could have knocked her down at how desperately sad the thought made her.

Dark gaze unmoving from her, he finished her drink. She looked down, rattled by the intimacy of the gesture. He put the glass down slowly and wiped his mouth while she waited on edge. “I think I will choose not to believe you, agape mou.”

The endearment ripped through her. It meant nothing to him but weaved an intimacy that she didn’t know how to counter. “What…what do you mean?”

“You are lying.” The announcement reverberated around them in the vast space. He didn’t sound angry though. “I probably have been arrogant enough in the past to take everything you said on face value. Even made it easy for you to manipulate me, ne? The why of it, I have not learned it yet.” A promise, that he would find out sooner or later, resonated in his tone.

“I think you love the estate. I barely took my jeep out when I got stopped so many times today. Everyone already knew your name, everyone had tales to tell about you. Rosa,” he said, coming closer, “even said she had never met such a hardworking and lovely young woman.”

Leah frowned, as if trying to keep her shock out of her face. “Of course, I was forced to be nice to her. Your housekeeper is an evil genius that bewitched me with that decadent dark coffee and servings of baklava.”

“The important question is how many things have you lied about?” he continued, as if uninterrupted.

Her skin paled, leaving such a frightened look in her eyes that Stavros jerked her around to him.

Was that unwise desire that widened those beautiful eyes real?

Was the pain in her eyes when she spoke of Calista real?

The whole week that he had been gone, he had found himself running through every encounter he had ever had with Leah.

Wondered why she had done so many things he had forbidden her to do, wondered how someone who could be so rejecting and disrespectful of Giannis again and again could also turn around and mourn for his sister, Calista, for so many years.

She had lied about the apartment. She had lied today about liking the estate, a seemingly inconsequential thing that threatened nothing that she held dear.

A keening frustration spread through his veins. Like there was a pit full of dangerous truths that he had never faced and Leah held the key to it all. He forced a smile to his mouth and pressed his hand to her back.

She instantly stiffened and he gritted his jaw, fighting the shockingly strong urge to assert his right like an uncivilized thug.

Right then, it seemed he cared very little about duty, or what was right. All he wanted to do was touch her, to feel like this stranger who told him nothing but lies, that selfish, reckless girl he had married, was really present.

Right then, he wanted to claim something, a part of her, even an emotion, an expression, that no one else knew but him.

Right then, he wanted to be a self-serving bastard like Dmitri and assure himself that she would respond, even against her own surprisingly strong will, when he touched her. That she couldn’t pretend, fake, or lie to him in that.

It was as if suddenly there was a beast inside him that wanted to do as it pleased, that was railing against the cage after a lifetime of doing what was right.

And it was Leah that did these things to him.

“So your lawyer friend visited you on Wednesday.”

Resignation flattened the curve of her mouth. “His name is Philip.” He was only a few inches taller than her, and standing a step below her, his eyes were level with her mouth.

What would she do if he touched those lush lips with his?

Would she fight him and scratch him like the alley cat she had always pretended to be? Or would she sink into his kiss as that desperate desire in her eyes suggested?

Which was the real Leah?

“He was in a foul temper because I came away with you without taking his advice. Not knowing how autocratic you can be, he thinks I gave in too easily.”

Stavros wanted to figure her out, put her in a category and move on with life. He didn’t want this curiosity, didn’t know how to arrest this indulgent self-awareness that she incited in him.

“I think he sees his piece of pie from your fortune dwindling away.”

She walked around the table like a cornered prey. “Because he befriended me with nothing but an eye toward what I’m worth?”

“Yes. Your fortune always attracts those kinds of men.”

A sigh escaped her, but she wasn’t spitting in fury as he had imagined. As if he were the despot she could hate again. “And of course, you know everyone and their intentions best.”

“No, I know Philip Cosgrove better than you do. He has had two broken engagements—one with an American candy heiress and the other with a princess from a minor South American nation. He has also been having an affair with a client.”

Hands on hips, she looked like a wildcat. “You had him investigated?”

“You should know the truth about him.”

“Truth about his personal life? He’s a friend and my lawyer, Stavros. Not my lover. If he was going to be one, I’m sure he would have volunteered that information. And even if he didn’t, it’s my decision to make.”

The thought of Leah with any man…he wasn’t prepared to ponder his reaction to that. “Now you know what decision to make.”

“About whether I want to screw him or not?” she said crudely, even as color darkened her cheeks. “You don’t have the right to police me on who I sleep with.”

“Discussing my rights and privileges when it comes to you is not a conversation you will like, agape mou.”

“No, I won’t. Because you’re a hypocrite. Do you tell your lovers that you have a wife you hide as if she were a stain on the very fabric of your life, Stavros?” Her fingers clutched his hand and pulled it up, a startling tremble in it. The contact jolted through him. “Do you take it off when you undress your lover? Do you—”

“I don’t have to tell them anything,” he whispered, dragging her against him. She was stiff against him, yet just the drag of her body set his muscles curling with need.

Ever since she had entered his life, there had been no escape from the shackles his own sense of honor bound him with.

Strange then that he had resented it and fought it for so long.

Was it because, as he had always known, Leah would never be the kind of wife he had imagined for himself—someone calm and dependable like Helene? Even then, had he known that she would incite him to this kind of reckless, unwise need?

“Anyone who’s someone knows I have a wife. Which also means I don’t have to fend off women with marriage on their mind…”

She stared, unblinking. Her nostrils flared. “You’re…disgusting.”

It was addictive to play her own game with her, so compelling to watch the different expressions pass through her eyes. In that moment, there were no lies she could tell him. In that moment, the connection between them was as explosive and destructive as the wildfire that had wrecked through the surrounding acreage a few years ago.

A fire that was going to need feeding soon if he didn’t it to want it to consume him, as it had already begun to…if he didn’t want to lose all sense of right and wrong.

And what was wrong with wanting his own wife in his bed? Maybe if he gave in to the fire, he could function normally again.

“You wanted to know,” he goaded her.

“No, I didn’t. I was just trying to make a point.”

“You sounded like a nagging, jealous wife. Just what I wanted my marriage to be.”

All color fled from her face, leaving her gaze stricken. Tears pooled in her eyes. And the sight of those big brown eyes brimming with moisture punched him in the gut.

“Theos, Leah—”

“I hate you. I hate that you’re keeping me here. I hate that you have so much power over my life and that you use it at every turn to put me in the wrong. And I’m such a pathetic coward that I still stand here, day after day, hoping that you will change your mind. I forget that all you want is to punish me, and yourself, for what happened to Calista.

“That’s all this is, isn’t it? Duty, righting a wrong…nothing touches you beyond that.”

She cast another desperate glance at him, swiped her hands roughly over her eyes and walked away.

Her words sliced at Stavros rendering everything she said about him a lie.

It did hurt, he realized with a strange new awareness. What she said about him mattered because he hadn’t meant to hurt her today. Christos, he had never meant to hurt Leah.

He had been powerless about her influence on Calista, he had despised her willful rejection of Giannis’s love, he had resented that she had sealed his fate the moment she had walked into his life but he had never meant to hurt her.

Not even the day when he had spoken his vows to her utterly petrified form.

Yet, it seemed it was all he had ever done.

That Leah could be vulnerable when it came to him, instead of making him powerful, felt like a curse.

Giannis had saved him from a life of misery and poverty and yawning emptiness and all he had done in return was make his granddaughter’s life miserable.

He wouldn’t forsake his duty, but neither did he want to hurt Leah anymore.

Leah leaned against the wall in her workroom, shame ringing in her ears. She couldn’t believe she had betrayed herself like that. She didn’t even care that he had investigated Philip or about what he had found.

But when he had called her a nagging, jealous wife, it was as if she could see their future like that…as if he would never see her true self. As if he would never know the real her.

Standing up, she reached for a jug of water. Poured herself a tall drink and guzzled it down.

It couldn’t matter this much, not when she would be gone soon.

She couldn’t be so vulnerable to him, couldn’t get so emotional. The only way to accomplish that was to accept him this way. He would watch her, hover over her, dictate her life forever, if she wasn’t careful now.

She would give up a little now for the long run.

It wasn’t as if the news of Philip’s past engagements affected her.

For as long as she had understood herself, only one man had always stubbornly occupied the space in her head. And still, only one man could set her heart racing, only one man could make her hate herself that she wasn’t smarter or calmer or even stronger, that she wasn’t a match for him in any way.

For the next week, Leah barely slept. The retail buyer, Mrs. DuPont, set up an appointment to see what Leah had for her so far. The conversation that followed, where Leah explained to her that she was now living at Stavros’s estate and her reaction to the fact that she was that Textile Magnate’s wife, had been extremely awkward. As if suddenly Leah’s worth as a designer had changed. Whether for good or bad, Leah had no idea.

Once she had heard from her, Leah had finished the sewing on the first three dresses.

Unaccountably nervous, she had snarled at Stavros yesterday for making it all so complicated.

The evening after Mrs. Dupont had called, a seamstress had arrived at her workroom. Her mouth falling open in awe, she fingered the turquoise sheer silk of the cocktail dress, had said in broken English that she loved sewing, and would Mrs. Sporades please give her work.

Having neatly been maneuvered into it, Leah had nodded. Now, she was glad she had given in to Stavros’s tactics. Anna was not only talented but also enthusiastic. Having arranged the three dresses on a rack, Leah endlessly tidied the workroom, her stomach a tangle of nerves.

She had risked a lot to be able to make this ready for Mrs. DuPont, to arrive at this stage of making her dream come true.

And yet, it was Stavros’s challenging gaze that stayed at the forefront of her mind. The strength of her desire to show him that she was talented, hardworking, that she had what it took to succeed, only grew.

She was determined to make him see her as his equal, in this at least.

Leah would have had her meeting with the retail buyer this afternoon.

The small nugget jolted through Stavros’s subconscious like he had set up a reminder chip in his brain to go off every hour. All through his day, through numerous meetings, he found himself thinking of her, of how nervous she had been last night, of how he had seen her work long hours, only remembering to eat because Rosa threatened her.

In the last two weeks, he had found that he couldn’t fault her dedication or hard work. And the night before last, learning that she had once again skipped her dinner, he had gone into her workroom.

He had found himself on her doorstep, stunned into silence as Leah commanded Anna to turn around slowly. Being almost as tall as him, Anna was the perfect model to showcase a knee-length sheath dress in red silk.

Simple yet chic, it touched Anna with sophistication she hadn’t possessed before.

Suddenly, he was extremely glad that Giannis had pushed him and Dmitri to start their work at his textile factories on the sewing floor.

In two weeks, he had learned how dedicated and hardworking she was, and in that moment, Stavros had no doubt of her talent.

It was after six by the time the helicopter touched down at his estate. A curious eagerness buffeted him like the wind from the rotor blades.

He headed directly for her workroom, seeing the light on as he approached the house.

He found her at her drawing table, one hand around her nape, turning her head this way and then other. And then her face flopped down onto her table, her shoulders trembled, and a loud, rattling sigh escaped her.

The depth of frustration in that sound startled him.

She straightened up again, tore off sheets from her sketchpad, crumpled them and tossed them.

He must have made a sound, because she suddenly turned then. “I’m so sorry, Anna, but I won’t have any work for you in the near—”

In the few seconds before she realized that it was him, Stavros saw it. Distress and disappointment, which slowly cycled to wariness for him.

She slid off the high stool, holding herself stiff. “I thought it was Anna.”

“How did it go?” he said, his eagerness to know unprecedented.

Folding her arms defensively, she shrugged. He saw her swallow, look away, and turn toward him again.

When she met his gaze again, she looked ready to battle him. “You were right,” she said with bitterness coating it. “She didn’t like a single design. You’ll be happy to know—”

“You think I would be happy that all your backbreaking work came to nothing?”

She had the sense to look ashamed. Theos, she truly believed him to be a sadistic monster, didn’t she? Had he ever given her reason to believe otherwise?

“How so?” he asked, noting the lines of strain around her mouth.

Now, she looked stunned. “What do you mean?”

“Why did she reject them? Did she give a reason?” When she still stared at him blankly, irritation touched him. “I’m trying to have a conversation, not attack you,” he burst out.

“She thought they were far too high-end for her store, way too sophisticated and bohemian for the clientele that comes to her boutiques. Too geared toward the jet-setting club like your husband’s were her exact words.”

Whatever she had shown her, Mrs. Dupont had refused to budge from her stance. Disappointment settled on Leah’s shoulders like a heavy cloak. Had she risked everything for nothing?

“So what is your plan of action next?”

She pulled her attention back to Stavros, sharply aware of his potent presence in her small workroom. In every conversation they had ever had about her work, his interest had been genuine, and suddenly she felt like an ungrateful bitch. Grabbing the notebook, she showed him the notes she had scribbled earlier. “I did what you said I should do in the first place. Had a lengthy discussion about her expectations.” That he asked so politely made her failure even more real. “So it’s back to the drawing board for me.”

He took the book from her and flipped through the notes. “Didn’t you leave the fashion house because you wanted to give your own vision a try?”

It had been the foremost thought in her head since Mrs. DuPont had left. “Yes, it was. But it also means walking away from a sure customer, and continuing to trust my vision.”

Leaning by her side, he crossed his ankles. The long stretch of his legs in front of her, his tapering waist, the breadth of his shoulders…his masculinity was a striking contrast against her silks and dresses.

“Tell me… all the ideas you discussed today, do they excite you enough to want to risk everything like you did with me?”

Sucking in a deep breath at how effectively he shot to the heart of the matter, Leah shook her head. Talking strategy with him was the last thing she had expected.

He threw the book on the table and turned to her. “Then it is as simple as saying no, and forging ahead.”

“But—”

“I saw Anna wearing that red dress and I believe that you’re talented, Leah. Add to that, a rich husband who’s willing to feed you and supply you with endless fabric. Trust your gut and go for it.”

Stunned into a monosyllabic response, Leah stared after his retreating form hungrily, all of her crushing disappointment from the day leaving her in a whoosh. Every muscle in her body ached and yet she felt like there was a renewed fire in her.

And it was thanks to the man she had deceived and hated for years.