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Still, she tried to pretend. “You probably find this intensely boring.”
“Do I not deserve the truth even in this, Leah?” Resting on his haunches in front of her seat, he took her hand in his. The tenderness in his gaze unraveled her defenses. “Do not lie about something that is so important to you, do not cheapen what truly comes from your heart. Not this…”
“I…”
“Did you once dream like this too? Was marriage that important to you?”
Her throat raw, she nodded. “I believed in the sanctity of it once, yes. My father…I never knew my mother and I always used to get this sense that a part of him was gone with her. He loved me but his heart…it was with her. When you grow up seeing love like that, you believe in its power. You start hoping for it even when you know…” She shrugged, loath to betray herself even more.
“I’m sorry for ruining your dreams, Leah,” he said with such withdrawal, that it was Leah who held onto him this time. “You were a dangerous combination of recklessness and… I had to protect you from fortune hunters and—”
“Myself, of course.” But there was no real bite to her words.
She could not lie and absolve him of any of it. Despite wanting to hate him, she even understood why he had done it, but his apology touched something inside her. “I wanted a lot of things. But life happened. I’ll be fine, Stavros.”
He nodded and rose to his feet. “What will your collection be called?”
“New beginnings.”
“I do not know about dresses…” he said with such a straight face that she laughed, “but the passion I hear in your words, I am sure it will come through in what you do, ne?”
“You think so?”
“I believe that it will.”
He said it with such confidence that a snippet of conversation she had heard between him and Giannis came back to her. Her grandfather had been asking Stavros about his contacts with major design houses and Stavros had been patiently explaining who would be open to launching a new label with a fresh designer.
Pushing her chair back, she stood up, her stomach in knots. “Your belief in me is encouraging, but I can’t forever be ensconced safely in this world that Giannis and you have created for me. I can’t let you and him launch a label for me using your contacts and the might of…
“If you meant your apology, if anything has changed in how you see me—” she could feel heat rising in her cheeks, but she continued stubbornly “—you’ll stop arranging my life in cahoots with him.”
“He wants to do it for you because he cares—”
“Becoming successful because I’m the Katrakis heiress or Stavros Sporades’s wife will forever ruin my joy in this. Will you do that to me again, Stavros?
“Please… allow me the freedom to succeed or fail on my own merit. Tell Giannis to stop with this launching my label nonsense.”
“If you haven’t realized it, your grandfather has a will of iron—”
“And you can convince him that you could walk on water, so get him to back off.”
Smiling, he nodded. “Anything else?”
She hesitated, which in itself, held Stavros’s attention instantly.
“After that imperious command, what can be so hard, Leah?”
“I have been researching various fashion events and programs around the world and there’s one in Athens tomorrow night that caught my attention.”
“Ahhh…that’s why the uncharacteristic call to my office.”
She let his comment pass. “It’s like a co-op event, to be exact, an incubator for fashion design. No big labels or famous designers. Instead your… Helene and a group of fashion icons like her provide a stage for up-and-coming designers to showcase their talents. My application is ready. But I…”
He waited patiently.
“The entry fee is pretty hefty. Even with that, anyone who gets picked has to actually come with a recommendation from one of the event coordinators.”
Wariness and pity filled his eyes and Leah blanched at it. “Helene is one of those rare women who won’t take you on to do me a favor, Leah. In fact, recommending you to her will only lessen your worth in her eyes.”
She shook her head, wondering if he would always think her less than capable, less than what she was. Did she have anyone but herself to blame if he did?
And why, in God’s name, did the thought hurt so much?
“No, all I want is an introduction to her. My collection, at that point, will hopefully speak for me and garner her recommendation. Even if she doesn’t like it, I will still get some exposure to the industry folks.” Even as she confidently made her case, another tension filled her.
Just admitting the fact that Helene knew Stavros in a way Leah never would, made her want to throw up.
How could he mention the other woman so glibly? Where was his honor now, she wanted to demand. But to ask would be to show that she cared. That she spent entire afternoons wondering how he justified breaking his vows to her so boldly.
Was she so completely and irrevocably only a responsibility that he didn’t think he was cheating on her?
Standing up from his chair, he extended a hand to her. “I’m sure I can convince her to give us ten minutes before the show begins.” He stood tall and broad and incredibly handsome in front of her. His gaze was on her mouth; he was thinking about their kiss, she knew. Because it was impossible not to think about it. “But I need something from you in return, Leah.”
The soft intonation of her name stole her breath.
He had changed toward her if he was asking and not commanding. And whatever the reason, he was even more irresistible and dangerous now.
The judging, dominating Stavros, she could hate. This insightful, approachable Stavros…she didn’t stand a chance.
Spending a few days with Giannis and amassing a lifetime of memories was one thing. But tangling with Stavros, who would demand everything she had to give and more, who would bare her body and soul…she couldn’t risk the pain of knowing him and then losing him.
“What,” she finally managed.
“I will ask you some questions before the event. If I get a truthful answer, I will introduce you to Helene.”
“Anything else I can do instead?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to snatch them back.
He only stared at her with that intensity again. “If you won’t tell me the truth, then how about a kiss?”
“You’ve already proved that I…I can’t resist you. There is no reason for you to kiss me anymore.”
He pushed a stray tendril of hair back from her forehead. And she stood very still in the wake of sensations that small touch aroused. “There is a reason.”
“What?”
“That I wish to. It is only when I kiss you that I know you, Leah.”
Warmth pooled in her belly, every word out of his sensuous mouth a caress and a promise. “What happened to that phenomenal willpower of yours that had the rest of us quaking in our boots?”
Laughter—hearty, gorgeous, and spine-tingling, enveloped her. “In this case, I have decided not to employ it.
“You can see Helene, Leah, but you shall have to give me your truths or your kisses. The choice is yours.”
How very neatly he had trapped her, how very stupid she had been in challenging fate when she had said Stavros knew nothing but duty. His words now were honeyed, so damn seductive that her heart thudded. “What if I asked you questions?”
“But I have never lied to you. However, if you ask me a question and I do not tell the truth, you are free to kiss me, as much as you want to.”
“Thanks but no thanks,” Leah managed to say, past the whooshing of her heart.
Turning away from him, she ran back to the sanctuary of her workroom, wondering what had suddenly unleashed this facet of Stavros.
Her wedding gown wasn’t done, but she had three other dresses she could take with her for tomorrow. Swiftly, she removed the dresses from their plastic bags and looked them over for anything to fix.
Countless hours later, she wrapped them back in the hanging bags and zipped them up.
Her heart thudded as she pulled another dress, a dress she had made for herself almost a year ago. The design had literally begged to be borne onto paper, and she had finished it in less than a week.
It was simply cut yet daring, a dress that would say all the right things about its designer. In the end, she decided to brave it out and wear it tomorrow night.
Brave because tomorrow night was going to be dangerous in so many ways that she wanted to turn the time back to a couple of months ago when it had been just her and the apartment and her blistering hatred of him…
Whatever truth he was hunting, it wouldn’t be anything she’d want to tell. Which left her to face his kisses…
Running a comb through her messy hair, Leah stilled. A glimmering energy in her gaze, her pulse beating with a frenzied clamor, she looked like a stranger.
She looked almost happy.
CHAPTER TEN
HE WAS GOING to lose in his own game, Stavros decided ruefully as Leah walked down the steps of the house the next evening.
A game the likes of which he had never before thought of.
He was still amazed at how easily Leah made him laugh, tease, even think of absurd scenarios just for a chance to touch her.
Thin, almost flimsy straps at her shoulders held up the black dress. The hem of the dress, startlingly white, ended high above her knees in the front but fell to her ankles at the back.
Animal-print pumps showed toned calves when she walked down the steps.
All in all, the dress was simply elegant. Or so he thought until she moved, waiting against his Maserati.
A flash of creamy thigh greeted his greedy gaze. The clinging material outlined her braless breasts when she took another step. A sudden breeze highlighted the tips of her nipples as she neared him.
Pure, liquid lust hit him hard, and every muscle in his body tightened, readying for pleasure.
Begging, at this point, if he was honest.
Smoky shadow and dark red lipstick turned her face from pretty to siren… Thick glorious waves framed her fragile features… Her cheeks were pinkened by the time she stood in front of him…
Was that his perusal that had done this to her? Would she tell the truth when he asked or would she prefer to be kissed?
Cristos, he would never even want truth this way. All he would want was to kiss her again and again.
Because he didn’t know what was the right step anymore. He didn’t know where his duty ended and his need for her began…he didn’t know if he was making reparations for the mistake he had made or if he just wanted to see her smile for his own selfish reasons…
For the first time in his life, Stavros was lost, didn’t care about right or wrong. Only how startlingly alive he felt when he was with Leah.
“Hey,” she said, reaching him.
He nodded, still absorbing the effect of her smile. She looked excited, almost happy, and he felt like he had done something right for the first time in so long.
She pointed to the top of the stairs. “So I packed up some of my collection…will you help bring it to the car?”
Inordinately pleased that she was flustered at seeing him, he halted her with a hand on her arm. “You look gorgeous.”
She blinked, and then looked at him almost shyly. “Thanks, it’s one of my own designs.”
“It’s insubstantial, sophisticated and outrageously sexy. I figured out that much.”
By the time they had arrived at the venue, Leah couldn’t sit still, much less think straight. And the pleasant conversation with Stavros, the way his gaze lingered over her mouth for a fraction of a second longer every time she turned toward him, it was like she was being pumped with a bit of electricity.
The powerful Maserati crawled to a stop at a centuries-old hotel and a uniformed valet immediately ran up to them. The locks turned on with a click on the doors. Frowning, she turned toward him. “What is it?”
“Time for my first question, pethi mou.”
“What…now?” The intensity in his expression sent tingles up and down her body. “Stavros, I’m going to show my collection to a group of intimidating professionals who make or break designers on a whim. This is not the time for some silly game that I lose whichever way—”
“Why? Do you have so much to hide?”
That shut her up promptly. “Fine,” she said, bracing herself for a lacerating question.
“My estate, what did you truly think of it?”
“Austere and isolated, like you.” The lie was so automatic, so swift that only after hearing it in the lush interior of the powerful vehicle did she realize that she had said it.
His gaze instantly fell to her mouth. “Liar.”
In a movement that was like slow motion, he wrapped his hand around her nape and slanted his lips over hers. The gear shift dug into her side, her torso was twisted to the side, but the hot taste of Stavros’s mouth…it numbed her to everything else but him.
There was no soft seduction in this kiss, no gentle erosion of her senses. No intent to dominate or control…only to take pleasure…
He pressed and licked, sucked and stroked, made love to her mouth with such raw passion that Leah couldn’t breathe.
Gasping for breath, moaning in the back of her throat, she wrapped her fingers around his nape. A blistering heat spread through her, pooling at her sex as his large hand caressed her knee, climbing up her thigh…
His mouth trailed wet heat over her jaw. Sucked at the pulse at her neck. An arrow of sensation went straight to her sex and she squirmed in frustration. “God, please…”
Those devilish lips opened against her skin and she felt his smile. “I would like nothing but to continue, gaelika mou…”
Her forehead flopped against his shoulders, her lungs burning for breath. “Fine, I lied. I…love that estate. It’s the most beautiful, most peaceful place I have ever seen in the world. Even Giannis’s estate cannot compare against such simple, stark beauty.”
His silence reverberated in the interior, the remnants of lust making the tawny irises wide. “Now I wish I had shown you my bedroom.”
Their gazes collided and Leah shifted in her seat, unbearable to be in her own skin. The rub of her thighs when she crossed her legs, the rasp of her dress against her nipples, every inch of her sparked with awareness. It was like the powerful car they were sitting in. She was all revved up by that kiss and yet, there was no relief.
All evening, this was what he was going to do to her. No wonder he had looked so damn interested in taking her.
How, despite all her efforts to the contrary, was it that Stavros always ended up with all the power? “You’re enjoying torturing me like this, aren’t you?” she whispered.
The locks on the door opened with a click. “It’s very little compared to the torture you put me through all these years, pethi mou.”
Having nothing suitable to contest that with, Leah stepped out of the car on legs that could barely hold her up.
Her dress bags draped over his shoulder casually, Stavros caught her. “Smile, Leah. The world’s not going to know what’s hit them when they see your creations.”
With her hand over his arm, she stopped him. There was nothing but sincerity in his expression. “I would not jest over something that is so important to you, Leah.”
No, he wouldn’t, she realized. Whatever he decided her fate to be in the end, she would always have his support in this too.
God, how had she always been the one with such tunnel vision? How easily she had chosen to hate him, had chosen to see only the surface of him?
“How can you be so sure that I will succeed?”
“All these years, you have hidden so many things from me, and even from yourself, maybe? But when I enter your workroom, I feel all your energy, your passion. I see all of you, Leah. Such pure passion—” his gaze flicked to her mouth “—people can’t help but fall in love with it.”
Throwing her arms around him, Leah kissed his cheek on an impulse. The fact that a man of such willpower and discipline as Stavros believed in her dream just made her day perfect. That a man like him belonged to her, at least for tonight, it made her blood pound.
Stavros handed over Leah to Helene and accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. The expression on Leah’s face when they had entered the huge, buzzing auditorium, her exclamations as she noticed and pointed out one fashion icon after another, it had been a delight to see.
The soft touch of her lips on his cheek, he could still feel it. Her mouth had been such heaven under his and knowing that all he had to do was push his hands under that hem, that he could bare her and feast his eyes on her…it had taken him everything to bite down the urge to make love to her right there in the car.
The banquet hall where they were serving pre-show drinks and hors d’oeuvres was overflowing with designers and actresses and fashion icons, one more gorgeous than the next. And yet it was Leah his gaze followed hungrily as she flitted through the long hall, her dress sinuously draping her lithe curves.
After a while, he walked through the crowd, found her and introduced her to some more people he knew. A bittersweet feeling filled him as she introduced herself as Leah Huntington with a wary glance at him.
But, whatever his own seesawing feelings when it came to her, he found he couldn’t begrudge her the need to be herself, tonight of all times.
She returned to his side in the auditorium a quarter of an hour before the runway show was about to begin.
Her brown eyes glittered with a joy he had rarely, if ever, seen. “Now that it’s too late, I’m so beginning to see the benefits of being your wife.” Her words were rushed, falling over each other. “Damn, you have some pull, man.”
He was as committed to his vows as he had ever been, if not more. He arrested the words, remembering how hurt she had been when he had mocked their marriage once.
And that he was utterly serious didn’t bear thinking about.
He grabbed a plate from a passing waiter. “Would you like to eat something?”
She didn’t wait for his reply. Reaching him, she grabbed his hand and directed the little flaky pastry into her mouth. Licked the tips of his fingers, her pink mouth closing around one. Lust hit him so quickly that he was achingly hard within seconds.
It was like a haze fell over his senses and all he could see, all he could hear was Leah. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her behind a long column. Took her mouth in a feral kiss. Cupped her breast, covering her possessively as he had wanted to do all evening.
The rasp of her rigid nipple against his palm made him growl in the back of his throat. He dug his teeth into her lower lip. Her whimper of pain even as she clung to him stopped him. Breathing raggedly, he wondered how easily she undid him.
She glared at him. “You didn’t ask a question.”
He smiled, her confusion making her even lovelier. “Do not lick a man’s fingers, sucking them into your mouth and then expect rationality, Leah.”
Cristo, what was he doing with her?
He would, he could stop at a kiss, he had thought when he had come up with this game. Now, he didn’t know anymore.
“Oh…” she licked her swollen mouth, and the innocent gesture sent his blood flowing south. “I will remember that when I’m tempted to lick a man’s fingers next time.”
The molten fury that flashed in his gaze before he willed it away made Leah want to scream in joy.
He didn’t have all the power. They both had it over each other, she slowly realized.
There was something between them that denied rational explanation, that devoured self-control.
“I’ll ask the question now.”
Brows raised, he nodded. “Ask soon, or you will miss the show.”
The simply elegant Helene’s polite face had stayed with her. His friend or lover or whatever the hell she was, the woman hadn’t betrayed surprise or shock or any emotion even by the flicker of a perfectly drawn eyebrow. Had talked to Leah as if it was any other fashion designer trying to break into the industry.
His kiss still stinging her lips, her will pretty much nonexistent, falling into bed with Stavros was like a fate rushing at her like an express train. If he hadn’t stopped any of the times, if he willed it, she couldn’t resist him, she knew.
And she refused to let him make all the rules.
“How do you…how does this work with you kissing me like this and with Helene? Are you guys taking a breather while you sort me out? What happens if you decide you want to…?”
“Yes?”
Her meager grasp on her own emotions slipping bit by bit, she shivered. Damn it, she had been so happy today and she knew it was largely because it featured him. “Don’t make me say it, Stavros.”
“Say it, Leah.”
“Does she not mind if you…if you have sex with me?”
“Do you want to, Leah…have sex with me?”
Her spine tingled at just hearing that. “That’s not the point.”
“Then isn’t the question moot, too?”
Frustration pumping through her, she pushed into his space. “You promised me truth, Stavros. If something happens between us before I leave, if…will you make one set of rules for me and a different set for yourself?”
His hands climbed up over her back, cradling her against him. “You hide from your own truth every day, Leah… Can you handle mine?”
“Yes.”
“I told you that day aboard Dmitri’s yacht that I meant my wedding vows. I have never broken them. I have not touched Helene or another woman since I married you. And I won’t. Not as long as I wear your ring, as long as I’m your husband.”
Her ring, her husband…
Her grip slacking, Leah fell back, and would have hit the ground if he hadn’t caught her. The entire axis of her life shook, shifted and she could do nothing to stop it. “You’re lying, you have to be…”
His silence jarred against her nerves.
Stavros never lied. Stavros always kept his word. Stavros lived by a code of duty and honor that was everything to him.
And she…she didn’t want to lose her will to a man like that. She didn’t want to be measured against him and fall short. Because, her fear would always trump everything else about her.
“It has been five years, Stavros. No man can—”
There was no nuance in his expression. “But I’m not any man, Leah.” He didn’t proclaim it like an achievement, he didn’t dismiss it like it hadn’t cost him anything. He stated it like a foregone fact.
“My word to Giannis means something to me. My vows to you mean something to me. It’s true that I neglected you, did not treat you like a wife, but our marriage, it was a commitment I made intending to keep. So I waited. I waited for you to grow up. I waited for you to change. I thought I had to…”
“Fix me to be worthy of you?” she said, anger coming to her defense.
“No, I thought I should give us both time…” Something gripped his features and Leah knew that he knew it. “But then you didn’t need to be changed, ne?”
So many years, she had wished she had had the courage to tell him the truth. That he would, for one second, see the real her. And yet now that he did, she felt naked, terrified.
The sudden silence in the long hall made her heart thud so much louder in her ears. The show had begun.
“I’ll miss the show,” she said, moving away. But he pulled her back. Trapped her between the pillar and his body.
“Tell me about Calista.”
Her gaze flew to him. “Stavros, I—”
His hand under her chin tilted her up. “I deserve to know the truth, Leah. If you have never used drugs, that means you didn’t introduce her to them.”
She closed her eyes, holding back tears. “No.” His silence drove her to open them again. “I went to every party you forbade me from, I drank even though most of the time I couldn’t even keep it in, I flirted with boys who didn’t care an iota about me because it would enrage you, I spent money only because you said not to, but I…I never touched drugs. I didn’t even know that crowd…” She stopped, once again, skating the line of lies. “I didn’t know where she even got it…God, if I had…”
The confusion, the guilt in Leah’s eyes far too real, Stavros didn’t need to ask her why she had never told him the truth before.
Because he wouldn’t have believed it. He had been so blind, he had been in so much pain that he had shut everyone out. Only his failure had mattered, not the why of it.
He had so conveniently blamed Leah for it, absolving Calista of any fault.
“Then why do you carry such guilt in your eyes?”
“Because I loaned her that money a couple of days before. I was so angry with you for cutting my trip to New York short. I…hated you so much. So when she said that she needed cash, that you would never agree to give her so much, I gave her every last penny.”
She flopped against him, her body shaking. Feeling as if there was an anvil on his chest, Stavros wrapped his hands around her.
Calista had borrowed it from Leah, knowing that he would not like it, probably even aware that he would take it out on Leah. What had she been thinking?
He hadn’t known his sister then. It hung like a boulder around his neck, choking his breath. Leah had been right in this too.
Leah couldn’t speak for the pain in Stavros’s gaze, in his sudden withdrawal.
She had hated Stavros for being so tough on her and Calista, but Calista hadn’t once mentioned her unhappiness or her problems to him.
With him, Calista had almost been a different person. Loving, smiling, obedient…as if she had just slipped into a different skin.
Now she wished she had gone to Stavros and blurted it all out.
Calista had been troubled, she realized that now. Maybe even depressed.
With hindsight, she wondered how much of that had fueled her own antagonism toward Stavros, because it had been so scary and powerless to see Calista like that. She had been mired in her own pain about her dad’s death and Stavros had been a convenient target to lash out at. And yet she hated having to tell the truth now, hated this power that she had over him.
She didn’t want to cause Stavros any pain.
He was rigid, he was stubborn and arrogant, but God, he had loved Calista in his own way. He had tried so hard to keep Leah away from her because he had thought her a bad influence on her. He had given Calista everything except…except listening to her.
But how could she tell him that now? How could she tell him that Calista had already been in trouble long before Leah had come into her life? That Leah had followed Calista’s lead always?
The man she knew now, he still dominated, even used her attraction but hadn’t she pushed him to it by dangling the truth in bits and pieces?
Calista was gone. There was nothing to be done now. There was nothing to be achieved by digging into the ugly truth.
So, she swallowed all the other truths back, bolstered her own courage and looked into his eyes.
Managing a smile, she squeezed his hand. “She was not unhappy, Stavros. I think, just restless. She…she definitely hated your rules as much as I did.” She forced a smile to take the bite out of it. “But she…loved you.”
He remained silent. And Leah wondered if he knew that she was quaking inside. When she had lied to him before, it had been to protect herself. This time, it was to protect him.
“I think that night whatever she took…it must have been a one-time thing. Something she thought she would try and then walk away. I’m so sorry that I gave her that money.”
“You were barely nineteen, Leah. And I…made it so hard to come to me with anything, ne? I found fault with you at every turn, I curbed all your freedom, and then I—”
“Why?” The question barreled out of Leah.
By his actions toward her, his efforts to again and again control her, change her, he had made it so easy to hate him, so easy to hide the truth about Calista from him.
She had wanted to not care about anyone ever again in her life, had pulled the act so well that Stavros had believed all of it.
He had started a war between them, and Leah was the one who had kept feeding it. To better hide her attraction, to better fight whatever risk he presented to her emotions, she realized now. “Why did you always hate me so much?”
“I didn’t hate you.”
“In the beginning, I thought it was because Giannis brought me here. Because you resented my being the heiress to such a vast fortune. Which, it turned out was a big joke. You were the one, along with Dmitri, who turned Katrakis Textiles into a multimillion-dollar business. So what was it, Stavros?”
His expression shuttered instantly. “It was wrong of me, Leah. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not. I have a right to know. I…”
“You just…your actions—your neglect of Giannis, they reminded me of someone. But it was no excuse to—”
“Of whom?” Leah couldn’t let go. Not when she was finally so close to understanding him.
“Of my father. All he cared about was himself, his next drink and how he would gain it. My mother, instead of kicking him out, instead of caring for her kids, walked out without looking back. Neither Calista nor I mattered. They left us with our grandparents who weren’t equipped to raise us. All they had was a small farm. I managed fine. But Calista…
“She would watch for her at the gate for so many hours…and then one day, we got news of my father’s car crash.” He rubbed his face. “I remember thinking that it was a blessing for her.” His mouth twisted into a bitter curve. “He died and all I could think was Calista wouldn’t suffer anymore.”
That said so much about his own state of mind. “And then Giannis came for you?”
“Yes, my grandfather wrote to him about my father’s death. I fought so much to bring her with us. But he said he had failed with his own daughter and that he couldn’t bear to fail again. I—” such pain impinged on his features that a lump formed in her throat “—I…promised her I would come back for her. And I did… It took me two years to convince Giannis. Two years to go back for her.”
