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Yes, she had spent the past five years working as an apprentice in a mid-level fashion house, away from the spotlight, locked up in a bubble where no one knew who she was, where no one cared except that she didn’t put a toe out of line.
She slept, she woke up, went to work, went back to her apartment, ate dinner and fell into bed again, while Stavros’s minion, Mrs. Kovlakis, her housekeeper, watched her, made sure she didn’t comit any further scandalous acts. But that didn’t mean anyone had forgotten what she had done, or what Stavros had done to her as punishment.
Especially in this crowd that hung on to every word from Stavros’s lips as if it was the Holy Bible. It felt like an eternity but only a few seconds passed before the man stepped aside. Taking his proffered hand, Leah stepped onto the deck, her guts twisting into a gooey mess.
For a few dazzling minutes, she forgot why she was there as she ventured further. Uniformed waiters passed around champagne. The party was in full swing on the deck, inebriated, sweaty bodies pressing against each other...
Excitement and an electric energy touched the air, and she swayed automatically to the music.
So everything she had heard of Dmitri’s parties was true...and strangely the antithesis of everything Stavros was. So he wouldn’t be here. But she needed to be recognized, which meant she had to grab Dmitri’s attention, especially if he was busy ravishing his latest arm candy.
Smiling for the first time since this afternoon, she walked toward the glittering glass bar that she had read about, planted herself on one barstool, ordered a cosmo and proceeded to get drunk.
* * *
Stavros Sporades frowned as his cell phone beeped for the tenth time in the last five minutes. He picked up the phone and smiled at Helene, loath to ruin their private dinner. It was the first time he was relaxing in a month and he guarded his downtime as fiercely as he did his work time.
He picked up his champagne flute and took a sip before clicking Yes.
Dmitri’s drawling tone reverberated in his ears. “She’s here. Aboard my yacht.”
Stavros fell back against the seat in silent shock. Only one woman being aboard Dmitri’s yacht would cause him to call.
Leah.
His blood pumped furiously through his veins. “Are you sure it’s her?”
A mocking laugh met his ears. “It took me a few minutes to recognize her, but yes, it’s her. She’s drunk and dancing.”
Drunk and dancing...
Instead of seeing Leah’s face, he saw his sister Calista, unmoving and pale in death. He had tried so hard to find some kind of closure from Calista’s untimely death, and yet, the anger and the powerlessness were just as raw, just as fresh.
Gritting his jaw, Stavros calmly pocketed his phone. Fury reverberated within, leaving his chest perversely cold. He made his apologies to Helene and exited the rooftop restaurant.
She’s doing very well, Mr. Sporades, Mrs. Kovlakis had said about Leah, in her nasal voice on his weekly phone call. Almost a changed personality, if you can believe.
Had the woman been just telling him what he had wanted to hear?
Within minutes, his pilot landed them on Dmitri’s luxury yacht.
He stepped onto the helipad, a corrosive anger roped with heart-pounding fear running through him. “Where is she?”
His gaze deceptively calm, Dmitri pointed to the dance floor on the lower deck. “I could have had the security personnel grab her, but I think that would have made the situation worse.”
Stavros nodded, unwilling to meet his oldest friend’s eyes.
His control was barely teetering on the edge as it was. He didn’t want to be thankful for the fact that it could have been worse, much worse than Dmitri’s yacht.
He didn’t want to feel grateful that it was just alcohol, not drugs.
Cristos, he didn’t want to set eyes on the woman he had married as punishment and penance.
He didn’t want to set eyes on Leah.
* * *
Even in the drunken haze caused by the three cosmos she had consumed, Leah knew the exact moment Stavros had reached the dimly lighted dance floor.
The hairs on her neck shot up, her stomach plummeted. An unbearable cold claimed her skin even though the breeze from the sea was warm. She shook her head slowly to clear the fog and looked up.
The famous, specially commissioned, glittering glass bar that was the prize of Dmitri’s yacht showed a hundred reflections of Stavros. Narrowly sculpted face as if a sculptor had been asked to keep austerity at the front of his mind, the sharp, long bridge of his nose that was arrogance embodied, the cruel slash of his wide mouth that instantly reminded her of that one punishing kiss, and the tawny, long-lashed eyes...
And the hatred blazing in them when he met her gaze in the glass—a hundred flickers of fire that could scorch her in so many ways.
Nausea bubbled through her and Leah stumbled.
Shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her fingers around the nape of the twenty-something guy she had been dancing with for the last quarter of an hour. Although it was more him holding her boneless body up.
Thankfully, the stranger’s face was blurry to her. She didn’t want to remember anything from this night tomorrow. She moved her feet slowly in rhythm with the beat of hip-hop blaring around them. His hands moved over her hips, hesitated, then moved back up over her back, before embracing her.
Her stomach quivered, the faint whisper of something as mundane as comfort warming her insides.
How pathetic had her life become if the man’s thin body comforted her?
Willing herself to ignore the cloud of black thunder she could sense around her, she dragged in a raspy breath. Softly ominous whispers emerged through the din and music, the sweaty, swaying bodies parting without his uttering a word. It was as if even the air in that lower deck was suspended in the face of the thundering storm.
She pulled herself up and kissed her companion’s smooth, almost boyish jaw and whispered sorry.
It wasn’t the poor guy’s fault that he had no knowledge of who she was or he wouldn’t have dared to touch her. Would have sidled away from her, treating her like a pariah as the rest of the crowd had done once Dmitri had walked by, his gray gaze devouring her with unhurried interest. Once they had all realized she was Leah Huntington Sporades, prisoner and possession of Stavros Sporades, not to be looked at or even spoken to, especially by another man.
Because, Alex, her one friend who hadn’t turned away from her, who had tried to contact her even after Calista’s death and her marriage, had ended up in jail on some trumped-up charges Stavros and that equally arrogant Dmitri had fabricated out of thin air.
The depth of her hatred for Stavros left her shaking uncontrollably.
A steel band wound around her waist and jerked her away from the stranger. Maybe he was even a teenager, she thought, feeling old and tired at just twenty-four.
She fell against a solid, hard frame with a soft thud that knocked the breath out of her.
Unlike the man she had been dancing with, Stavros was all hard, unforgiving muscle that sent her body into shock at the contact.
Long fingers held her arms in a grip this short of hurting and turned her, the heat emanating from his body hitting her like a wave of the sea.
Blinking, Leah raised her gaze and then shied away immediately.
Coward, a voice mocked her inside but she didn’t care.
The soporific effect of the alcohol she had consumed stunting the hatred that buzzed her blood, she went like a doll incapable of independent motion as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.
The jutting bones of his shoulders dug into her rib cage, her breasts crushed by his muscular back but Leah refused to let even a whimper emerge.
The world tilted upside down and a tear seeped through despite her efforts. The quiet hush that preceded them was like the calm before the storm...
She had done what she had wanted to do.
She had made a spectacle of herself, she had Stavros’s attention.
Except nothing could numb her to the blistering contempt that had flashed in his gaze in the split second she had looked into it.
She squeezed her eyes shut and gave herself over to the haze in her head.
* * *
Leah jerked and breathed in great gulps as ice-cold water drenched her from all sides. She yelped and scooted back on her bum but there was no escape from the chilly spray. Her breath came in quick, short bursts, her lungs struggling to pump it out.
Another hard surface at her back thwarted her attempt at escape and she gave up, shuddering.
Reaching out with her hands, she touched cold marble. Her gaze flew open and she blinked to get the water out. The gold silk plastered to her body offered no protection against the cold. Shivering, she looked around, the chill sinking into her blood, raising goose bumps over her skin.
With shaking hands, she pushed her wet hair out of her face, her mascara running in black rivers down her fingers. So much for waterproof.
Blew out a long breath through her mouth and tried to make sense of her bearings.
She didn’t need to turn to see Stavros standing there, watching her with malicious satisfaction. Could muster not a bit of surprise at what he had done.
Even through every nerve in her flinched at the cold, Leah could still feel his wrath, the heat of his anger. She stretched her arm, still shaking and turned off the glinting silver faucets.
Suddenly, all she wanted to do was curl up in the marble tub and close her eyes. Her body sank into the tub as if her muscles had no rigidness anymore.
“Get out of the tub.” The quiet command landed on her like a slap, jerking her back to the purgatory that waited for her.
And the man who wanted to punish her for the rest of her life.
Even after years, she had no strength to face Stavros, couldn’t face...
No, she wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. Not after all that she had done today to just see him.
Clutching the marble, she pulled herself up to her legs.
Seconds piled on as the shaking in her legs subsided and the luxuriously spacious bathroom stopped swaying in front of her.
Blinking at the glare of light from a crystal chandelier overhead, she took in the dark oak floors and the blue sea outside the window.
Instead of the din, so nerve-racking that she swayed, utter calm reigned.
On shaking legs, she stepped out, dripping water everywhere. Her shoulders shook with the effort it took to keep standing.
A towel came straight at her with a resounding, “Cover yourself.”
She buried her face in the plush cotton, taking the few seconds of privacy it afforded to shore up her defenses. But the contemptuous note in his tone pricked, as if a needle had punctured her skin and drew blood.
Fighting the urge to stay behind the towel, she straightened her spine and threw the towel back. “I’m wearing a dress, thank you. It’s your fault if it reveals more than it covers,” she said, brazening it out.
The plush cotton landed on one arrogant shoulder and she saw those broad shoulders tense. Felt his perusal as if he had laid those big hands on her...
Which was the strangest, scariest thought she had to have ever had.
“I see that you still don’t know what is good for you then, Leah.”
Gathering her wet hair in one hand, she squeezed the water out. Forced an indifference she didn’t feel in the least. Because the reality of her reaction to him was too scary. “More like an allergic reaction to you. I’d rather catch pneumonia and die than be saved by you.”
He reached her suddenly, a wall of fury and contempt that narrowed her very world to him.
Fear and confusion and so many things that she had battled over the last decade deluged her.
The overhead monster lighting illuminated his stark features—a sharper slap to her senses than the ice-cold water, but it was the tawny eyes that knocked the breath out of her.
Calista.
Calista had had those same eyes, except they had been kind, quick to smile, always in search of the next thrill, luring men into her orbit like a spider did with her web.
Her gut twisted into that insidious, painful knot that crept into her when she didn’t make a conscious effort to turn her mind to something else, something other than Calista and that night.
It didn’t help. Nothing did. But amidst the shock of seeing him again, something else penetrated through with an insidious clarity as he neared her.
Set against the severity of his face, the lush lashes and the glittering eyes stood out like an oasis in a desert. Rendering the man impossibly gorgeous, darkly stunning.
His scent was alien, yet alluring.
Leah breathed in a lungful before she could stop, a feverish shiver taking hold of her limbs that had nothing to do with her wet dress.
“Stavros, I—”
Long fingers crawled up her nape into her scalp, tilted her up, while the other hand clasped her jaw loosely.
He studied her every feature with such thorough appraisal that her insides turned into gooey pulp.
No one had even touched her in so long...it had to be why she could feel his touch like a brand on her skin...why such heat was pooling under her skin and rushing to the fore.
Why she wanted to sink into his rough touch more than she wanted to breathe...
Until she realized what he was doing.
He was checking if her pupils were dilated, wondering if she was high.
She stared into his glittering gaze, noted the concrete set of his jaw. Saw a shadow of something in his face that hurled the words past her throat. “I’m not high, Stavros.” It came out as a whisper, an entreaty, and Leah recoiled at that pleading tone.
When he didn’t relent, she grabbed his wrists. Every cell in her rose to attention as the whorls of hair there tickled her palm, as a shot of electricity sparked in the air.
