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Impulse and fear making her movements jerky, she reached her closet and pulled out a shoulder bag that had collected dust from sitting unused for so long. Grabbed a few clothes and threw them in the bag.
For two days, she had waited calmly, taking Philip’s advice to not do anything rash. Had waited for the explosion from Stavros to come. Had barely slept a wink, was driving herself crazy.
She couldn’t wait to see if Stavros would take her bait. She would have to cut her ties, beginning with this flat and her job.
Just as she grabbed her phone, it pinged and the name Stavros popped up on her screen.
Leah dropped it with a gasp, her heart jamming in her throat. Perspiration condensed on her forehead as she stared down at the phone on the dull carpet.
It pinged again, jolting her out of her haze. She swiped it open to the text.
Come down to the café in ten minutes. I have an offer for you.
An offer? Could she trust him? Had she finally got through to him?
Will scream if I see your ‘security guys.’
She waited, her breath hanging in her throat.
Enough drama, Leah. Come down or I come upstairs.
The thought of Stavros invading her private space, as much of a jail as it was, sent her fingers flying over the phone.
Fine, see you in a bit.
Feeling more hopeful than she’d been in months, she was about to step into the shower when it pinged again.
Leah...Dress appropriately.
Leaning against the bathroom wall, she made an utterly juvenile face at the phone. The small space thundered with the boom of her heart.
Stavros was here because he had bought her bluff. It wouldn’t do to let on how petrified she was inside, to let him set the tone for this conversation.
It was like a mask she had to wear and the more she did it, the more it felt like she would become that uncaring, selfish person that he had always despised.
* * *
He had said ten minutes.
By the time he spied her crossing the street from her building to the café, it was well over half an hour. In true Leah form, she had also blatantly disregarded his last text.
The peach-colored silk blouse pressed against her body, neatly delineating the globes of her high breasts as a gust of wind blew across the street. He saw her shiver and grab the edges of the long-sleeved cardigan together.
Heat uncoiled under his own skin, a soft, sinuous gathering of something molten.
The silk blouse was paired with an even more flimsy pair of shorts that showcased her long legs. The glint of a toned thigh muscle, the way her wavy brown hair swept into a high ponytail swung with her long-limbed stride as she walked toward the café in her knee-high leather boots turned more than one male head.
She walked with the innate grace of an athlete, confident in her own skin. There was nothing of the Leah he had married and not because she had grown into her beauty. It was like a fire burned within, one that made her something to behold.
Was it truly as she had claimed and about her career? Or was it a man? Every cell in him went on high alert at the thought.
The last man Leah had been close with had been a crook of the first order—Alex Ralston, who was in jail even now for possession and distribution of drugs.
“When will you learn that defying me only wrecks your own life, Leah?” he said, dragging her down to the seat next to him.
Crossing her legs in a languorous gesture, she curved her pink-glossed mouth in a too sweet smile. “When will you learn that you cannot order me around, Stavros?”
As silky soft as her skin had been to the touch, her pulse had been pounding a thousand beats a minute. She was nervous. And yet, she was doing everything she could to not let him see it.
He waved away the waiter that arrived at their table with a beaming smile for her.
She waved him back with a friendly smile. When he glared at her, she sighed.
“I am hungry, Stavros. I rarely, if ever, eat out so I’m going to pretend you enjoy my company and make the most of it.”
He waited in silence as the young waiter appeared again. Watched in mounting fascination as she ordered three appetizers and two entrees in fractured but perfectly accurate Greek.
“I’m not eating,” he said dismissively as the waiter left.
“I know. It’s Friday evening and you’ll have dinner with Helene Petrou, ex-lover and—” a curse flew from his mouth “—current friend.”
Leaning forward in an elegant move, he pinned her gaze. “How do you know about that?”
“Philip has his resources.”
“So your little lawyer asked you to casually throw that into the conversation?”
“Actually, quite the opposite. He told me not to even betray the fact that I knew anything about her,” she said with that blunt and reckless honesty.
Stavros settled back slowly.
Leah had zero self-preservation. How was he supposed to believe that she could look after herself?
“Then why did you?”
“I don’t want to wage a war against you, Stavros. It’s... my last choice. I bring it up because I was...shocked to hear her name after so many years. That you see her apparently on a weekly basis.”
“Shocked to learn that I keep in touch with a woman I admire?” he said, choosing his words carefully.
Looking anywhere but at him, she nodded. The fine sheen of color in her cheeks snagged his attention.
Brazen, reckless Leah was uncomfortable?
“I remembered that Calista...she talked so much about you guys. That you were made for each other,” she said, her gaze wandering off into the distance.
The look in her eyes was a compelling blend of pain and ache that Stavros had never seen before. Did she truly mourn Calista that much? “Leah?”
She blinked and then curved her mouth. But the artifice of the action wasn’t lost to him. “You would be free. To be with her.”
“You want me to be with Helene?” he said, shocked.
“Yes.” She took a sip of water, her gaze lingering on him. “Of course, I would prefer it if you were as miserable as you’ve always made me, but if your happiness is the price of my freedom...then so be it.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you, Leah.” The whole conversation was twistedly perverse. “I’m surprised you remember her. Or anything from that time.”
His dig bounced off her. “Her resume is far too impressive to forget. Businesswoman, fashion icon, former model and the best of all, the one who could stand up to Stavros Sporades’s infinitely impeccable standards for a woman.”
He stared at the almost cynical twist of her mouth, something in her tone grating at him. “You have quite the opinion about her.”
“Of course, I do. I was obsessed with...” Coloring, she trailed her gaze away from him. “How successful she was at such a young age.”
He had a curious feeling that it wasn’t what she meant to say. If he compartmentalized his abhorrence for everything Leah represented and his unwise awareness of her every move, he could admit that Leah was funny and resilient as hell.
The more he pondered that, the more he realized how true it was.
Despite losing her father suddenly in a car accident and being thrust into an unfamiliar world that Giannis and he lived in, he had never seen her morose or down.
That same selfishness that he abhorred also lent her a strange strength. It was as if she stood behind a veil that separated her emotions, her very self from the people around her.
“So was all that food to please the waiter?”
“Where are your manners, Stavros?”
“All my finer qualities disappear like a mist when it comes to you, Leah.”
“I was running this afternoon. So all that food is for me.”
Stavros nodded, understanding the toned litheness of her body. “What happened to walking out the flat and the job? To letting your little lawyer loose on me?”
He saw her still for a second before she turned toward him. “I... Philip advised me to not do anything rash.”
“And you listened.” Which meant she trusted him, which meant Stavros needed to know everything about him.
The waiter brought the food and she grabbed a fork. A satisfied sound erupted from her mouth, drawing the gaze and attention of more than one man sitting at the neighboring tables.
She looked up from her food suddenly and blushed. “So what is your offer?”
“I’m proposing a compromise.”
“Nothing you ever suggest is a compromise. It will be your will, only couched in deceptive words. You did the same thing to...”
At the sudden glint in his gaze, Leah fiddled with the fork and looked away.
“To whom?”
Her shrimp suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth. Leah swallowed it down with a sip of her water. “To me and Calista, of course, countless times. Anything she proposed, you forbade it.”
Like the time when she had wanted to study art in Paris one year, and when she had wanted to travel to New York with Leah. Like the time when Calista had wanted to start bartending at a nightclub where her friend had worked.
And when he refused her, one of Calista’s rages would begin. Just the memory rattled Leah on a deep level. Calista had had a temper but she had hidden it so thoroughly from her brother.
“For instance?” he added softly, and Leah blinked. “You looked so pained just now, tell me what you were thinking, Leah.”
The inherent command rankled Leah, and yet, beneath it, she sensed his eagerness, his curiosity. That there could be more to Stavros than rules and duty...it threw her.
He had only been in his twenties when she had arrived in Athens, and yet, all she remembered about Stavros was his incredible sense of responsibility and duty toward all of them.
For the first time, she wondered what drove him to it.
Her curiosity tempered her response. “Why do you want to know?”
He blinked now, as if he couldn’t believe that she dared question him. No, it wasn’t that. Dumbfounded, she watched as he struggled to put his thoughts into words. “I... Even though I gave her everything she could ever want, I never understood—” something in her loosened as he visibly swallowed “—why Calista chose to follow your lead, how I failed to protect her.”
The anguish in his gaze sent memories and impressions hurtling through Leah. Her shoulders shook. “I don’t know—”
“Not that I expect you to know the answer, when you’re the one who led her to drugs.”
Her head jerked up.
Arrogant implacability wreathed his features. As if he had realized who he was talking to. As if there could be nothing but contempt between them.
“No, of course not,” she whispered, buffeting herself against the immense hurt his words caused. Leah put her fork down.
Despite all her grand plans and ideas for adventures, Calista had never even lifted a finger in the house. Whereas Leah, whose mother had died giving birth to her, had always done more than her share to help out her dad even from a young age.
My saintly brother has servants for that... It had been her favorite thing to say when Leah would suggest cleaning up or cooking sometimes.
She had been sixteen and afraid and grieving in her own way. How much of her understanding of Calista would hold up today? For a minute, it seemed she and Stavros had found something common in their grief over Calista.
But no, the past was done. She had to look forward to the future.
Collecting herself, Leah looked up at him. “Tell me what I have to do.”
He studied her for the longest time. Each falling second twisted her gut. “Live with me for three months and prove that I can trust you.”
“No.” The table rattled with the force of her movement.
“This is the only way I will even consider it.”
“What do you expect me to do these three months?”
“Convince me that you’re serious about this fashion design career, that you won’t drain your inheritance on some trumped-up business.”
“The vote of confidence in your tone is really inspiring.”
That hardness in his eyes didn’t budge. “I’m giving you a real choice. If you fail, our marriage stands. You’ll be my wife in every sense for as long as one of us is alive.”
A violent tremble started at the base of her spine and spread upward and outward. The happy voices around her buzzed as if they were noise feedback. And in that space between them, a charge built up winding and changing with every breath they took.
