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“Then he should have seen to it he didn’t get her pregnant in the first place—or are you to blame for that, as well?”
“After twenty-one years of marriage without any sign of a baby, he probably didn’t think precautions were necessary. Finish your wine, woman. I don’t care to drink alone. It’s a nasty habit to fall into.”
She took another cautious sip. “I still can’t believe that, once his initial grief subsided, having you didn’t bring Pavlos some measure of comfort.”
“Then you obviously don’t know much about dysfunctional families. My father and I have never liked one another. He has always resented me, not just because I cost him his one true love, but because I remained wilfully unimpressed by his wealth and social status.”
“I’d have thought he’d find that commendable.”
“Don’t let misplaced pity for the poor motherless baby cloud your judgment, my dear,” Niko said wryly. “I rebelled every step of the way as a child, took great pleasure in embarrassing him by getting into trouble as a teenager and flat-out refused to be bought by his millions when I finally grew up. I was not a ‘nice’ boy, and I’m not a ‘nice’ man.”
“That much, at least, I do believe,” she shot back, leveling a scornful glance his way. “The only part I question is that you ever grew up. You strike me more as someone with a bad case of defiantly delayed adolescence.”
This wasn’t playing out the way he’d intended. She was supposed to be all willing, female compliance by now, ready to fall into his arms, if not his bed, not beating him at his own game. And his glass was empty again, damn it! “When you’ve walked in my shoes,” he replied caustically, “feel free to criticize. Until then—”
“But I have,” she interrupted. “Walked in your shoes, I mean. Except mine were twice as hard to wear. Because, you see, I lost both my parents in a car accident when I was nine, and unlike you, I remember them enough to miss them very deeply. I remember what it was like to be loved unconditionally, then have that love snatched away in the blink of an eye. I remember the sound of their voices and their laughter—the scent of my mother’s perfume and my father’s Cuban cigars. And I know very well how it feels to be tolerated by relatives who make no secret of the fact that they’ve been saddled with a child they never wanted.”
Flushed and more animated than Niko had yet seen her, she stopped to draw an irate breath before continuing, “I also learned what it’s like to have to work for every cent, and to think twice before frittering away a dollar.” She eyed his shirt and watch disdainfully. “You, on the other hand, obviously wouldn’t know the meaning of deprivation if it jumped up and bit you in the face, and I don’t for a moment buy the idea that your father never wanted you. So all in all, I’d say I come out the uncontested winner in this spontaneous pity party.”
He let a beat of silence hang heavy in the air before he spoke again, then, “It’s not often someone spells out my many shortcomings so succinctly,” he said, “but you’ve managed to do it admirably. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about myself before I slither behind the wheel of my car and disappear into the night?”
“Yes,” she said. “Eat something. You’ve had too much to drink and are in no condition to drive. In fact, you should be spending the night here.”
“Why, Emily, is that an invitation?”
“No,” she said crushingly. “It’s an order, and should you be foolish enough to decide otherwise, I’ll kick you where it’ll hurt the most.”
She probably weighed no more than fifty-four kilos to his eighty-five, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in spirit. He had no doubt that, given her knowledge of male anatomy, she was more than capable of inflicting serious injury. Which should have deterred him. Instead the thought of fending her off left him so suddenly and painfully aroused that, for the first time, he questioned the wisdom of his plan of attack. She was the one supposed to be at his mercy, not the other way around, but so far, she remained utterly indifferent to his charms. He, on the other hand, was anything but impervious to hers.
Damaris came back just then to serve spinach-stuffed breast of chicken and ziti, a welcome diversion, which allowed him to wrestle his wayward hormones into submission and redirect his energy into more productive channels. “Why did you allow my father to coerce you into letting him travel, when he’s clearly not up to it?” he inquired casually, once they were alone again.
“I did my best to dissuade him,” Emily said. “We all did. But the only thing he cared about was coming home to Greece, and nothing anyone said could convince him to wait. I think it’s because he was afraid.”
“Of dying?”
“No. Of not dying in Greece.”
That Niko could well believe. Pavlos had always been fanatically patriotic. “So you volunteered to see him safely home?”
“It was more that he chose me. We got to know one another quite well during his hospital stay.”
An hour ago, he’d have rated that little morsel of information as yet another sign of her ulterior motives. Now, he didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm for the task. Emily the woman was proving a lot more intriguing than Emily the fortune hunter.
To buy himself enough time to reestablish his priorities, he switched to another subject. “What happened to you after your parents were killed?”
“I was sent to live with my father’s sister. He was thirty-six when he died, and Aunt Alicia was eleven years older. She and Uncle Warren didn’t have children, but they were the only family I had left, so they were more or less stuck with me. It wasn’t a happy arrangement on either side.”
“They mistreated you?”
“Not in the way you probably mean, but they never let me forget they’d done ‘the right thing’ by taking me in and would, I think, have found a reason to refuse if they hadn’t been afraid it would reflect badly on them. Of course, the insurance settlement I brought with me sweetened the deal by defraying the cost of putting a roof over my head and keeping me fed and clothed for the next nine years.”
“What happened then?”
“The summer I graduated high school, I applied to the faculty of nursing, was accepted and moved into a dorm on the university campus at the end of August. I never went ‘home’ again.”
“But at least there was enough insurance settlement left to pay your tuition fees and other expenses.”
She shook her head. “I scraped by on scholarships and student loans.”
Caught in a swell of indignation he never saw coming, he stared at her. Whatever else his father’s sins, he’d never tampered with Niko’s inheritance from his mother. “Are you telling me they spent money on themselves, when it should have been held in trust for your education?”
“No, they were scrupulously honest.” She started to add something else, then seemed to think better of it and made do with, “The settlement just wasn’t very large to begin with, that’s all.”
Something about that answer didn’t sit right, either. Wasn’t the whole point of insurance to provide adequate recompense to beneficiaries, especially minors? But although the subject bore investigation, he decided now was not the time to pursue it and asked instead, “Do you keep in touch with your aunt and uncle?”
“A card at Christmas about covers it.”
“So they have no idea you’re here now?”
“No one has,” she said. “My arrangement with Pavlos was strictly between the two of us. If my employer knew what I’d done, I’d probably be fired.”
Which wouldn’t matter one iota, if Niko’s first impression of her was correct and she’d set her sights on a much more rewarding prize. What she earned in a year as a nurse wouldn’t amount to pocket change if she married his father.
Wondering if she had any idea how potentially damaging her revelation was, he said, “Then why take the risk?”
“Because your father was alone in a foreign country without friends or family to look after him when he was released.”
“He had a son. If you’d thought to contact me, I could have been there within twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe,” she said gently, “he didn’t want to bother you.”
“So he bothered a perfect stranger instead, even though doing so might end up costing her her job. Tell me, Emily, how do you propose to explain your absence from the hospital?”
“I won’t have to. I took a three-month leave of absence and scheduled it to coincide with his discharge.”
“A noble gesture on your part, giving up your holiday to look after my father.”
“Well, why not? I had nothing else planned.”
Except setting aside an hour a day to polish your halo! Struggling to hide his skepticism, Niko said, “All work and no play hardly seems fair. We’ll have to see what we can do to change that.”
A sudden gust of wind rattled the French doors, making her jump. “Just being here is change enough. If the weather ever clears up, I’m sure Pavlos won’t begrudge me the odd day off to see the sights.”
“Count on both,” he said, recognizing opportunity when it presented itself. “And on my making myself available to act as tour guide.”
“That’s nice of you, Niko.”
No, it’s not, he could have told her. Because whatever her motives, his were anything but pure. And because he’d meant it when he said he wasn’t a nice man.
They passed the remainder of the meal in idle conversation, interrupted only by intermittent bursts of rain at the windows, but before coffee was served, she’d run out of things to say and was wilting visibly. Even he, unscrupulous bastard though he undoubtedly was, felt sorry for her. The long transatlantic flight would have been tiring enough, without the added strain of looking after his father. So when she set aside her napkin and begged to be excused, he made no attempt to stop her, but left the table himself and walked her to the foot of the stairs.
“Good night,” she murmured.
“Kali nikhta,” he returned. “Sleep well.”
She was perhaps halfway to the upper landing when a brilliant flash of lightning arrowed through the night. Almost immediately, the electricity failed and plunged the house into darkness.
He heard her startled exclamation and the click of her high heel hitting the edge of the marble step as she stumbled to a halt. “Stay put,” he ordered, well aware how treacherous the staircase could be to the unwary. Once, when he was still a boy, a new housemaid had slipped and broken her arm—and that had been in broad daylight. But he’d grown up in the villa; could quite literally have found his way blindfolded anywhere within its walls, and was at Emily’s side before she, too, missed her footing.
Just as he reached her, a second bolt of lightning ripped through the night, bleaching her face of color, turning her hair to silver and her eyes into pools as huge and dark as those found in undersea caverns. “What happened?” she whispered, clutching the bannister with one hand as she teetered on the edge of the stair.
Instinctively he pulled her close with an arm around her shoulders. They felt slender, almost childlike to the touch, but the rest of her, pinned warm and sweet against him, was unmistakably all woman. “The lights went out,” he said, resorting to the absurdly obvious in an attempt to deflect her attention from the fact that his body had responded to hers with elemental, albeit untimely vigor.
She choked on a laugh. “I pretty much figured that out for myself.”
“I expect a power pole was struck.”
“Oh,” she said faintly, aware as she had to be of her effect on him. Blatant arousal was difficult to hide at such close quarters. “Does it happen often?”
Were they talking about the same thing, he wondered, as his mind fought a losing battle with his nether regions. “No, especially not at this time of year.”
“I ought to make sure your father’s all right.”
“No need,” he said, hearing footsteps and noticing the shadow of candle flames flickering over the walls at the rear of the downstairs hall. “Georgios is already on the job. But if it’ll ease your mind any, I’ll see you as far as your suite, then go check on him myself. Do you know which one you’re in?”
“Only that it’s blue and cream, with some gorgeous antique furniture, including a four-poster bed.”
He nodded, recognizing her description, and keeping one arm looped around her waist, steered her the rest of the way up the stairs, turned right along the landing and felt his way along the wall on his left until he made contact with her door. Pushing it wide, he directed her inside.
The logs in the fireplace had burned down, but enough of a glow remained to fill the room with dim orange light. Enough that when she looked at him, their gazes locked, held prisoner by the sexual awareness, which had simmered between them from the moment they’d first set eyes on each other.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her this early in the game, had planned a much more subtle attack, but when she turned within the circle of his arms and lifted her face to his, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to tighten his hold until she was once again pressed against him. The most natural thing in the world to bend his head and find her mouth with his.
CHAPTER THREE
EMILY had been kissed before, many times, but always with some part of her brain able to rate the experience objectively: too slobbery, too bland, too aggressive, too many teeth, too much heavy breathing, not enough tenderness. More often than not, kissing, she’d concluded, was a vastly overrated prelude to romance. Until Niko Leonidas came on the scene, that was, and felled her with a single blow.
Except “blow” was no more the right word to define his effect on her than “kiss” adequately described his action. What he did with his mouth transcended the ordinary and surpassed the divine. Cool and firm, it yet seared her with its heat. Though undemanding, it somehow stripped her of everything—her independence, her focus, her moral compass, even her sense of survival.
Apart from one rash, distinctly forgettable experience, she’d chosen to remain celibate because sex for its own sake held no appeal, and she’d never come close to being in love. But she’d have let him take her there on the floor, if only he’d asked. Would have let him hike up the skirt of her dress and touch her as no other man ever had. For as long as his kiss held her in its spell, she would have let him have his way with her however he wished.
Obviously he did not wish for a fraction of what she was willing to give. Because releasing her, he stepped back and said, rather hoarsely to be sure, “I’ll go look in on my father and see about getting some candles up here.”
Weak as water, she clutched the back of a nearby chair and nodded. She couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it. Although he’d put a respectable distance between them, she remained trapped in his aura. Her body still hummed. Her breasts ached. Moisture, warm and heavy, seeped between her thighs.
When he turned away, she wanted to cry out that she didn’t need candles, she only needed him. But the words remained dammed in her throat and he was gone before she could free them. Dazed, she lowered herself to the chair and waited for him to return.
A brass carriage clock on the mantelpiece marked the passing minutes. Gradually its measured pace restored her racing pulse to near-normal and brought a sort of order to her scattered thoughts. What kind of madness had possessed her, that she’d been ready to give herself to someone she’d known less than a day? He spelled nothing but trouble.
I won’t let him in when he comes back, she resolved. I’m out of my league with such a man and don’t need the heartbreak an affair with him would bring.
But when a discreet tap at her door signaled his return, all logic fled. Heat shot through her, giving rise to a single exquisite throb of anticipation that electrified her. She couldn’t get to him fast enough.
Pulling open the door, she began, “I was beginning to think you’d abandoned—!” then lapsed into mortified silence at the sight of Georgios standing there, a lighted silver candelabra in one hand, and a battery operated lantern in the other.
“Niko asked me to bring these, thespinis,” he informed her politely, “and to tell you that Kirie Pavlos is sleeping soundly.”
Rallying her pride, she stood back to let him pass into the room, and mumbled, “Thank you.”
“Parakalo.” He placed the candelabra on the dresser and handed her the lantern. “I am also to tell you that he has been called away.”
“At this hour of the night?” She made no attempt to hide her disbelief.
He nodded. “Ne, thespinis. He received an urgent phone call and will most likely be gone for several days.”
Oh, the louse! The cowardly, unmitigated rat! Swallowing the anger and humiliation threatening to choke her, she said scathingly, “It must have been some emergency to drag him out in the middle of a storm like this.”
Georgios stopped on his way to the door and shrugged. “I cannot say. He did not explain the reasons.”
“Never mind. It’s not important.” He wasn’t important. She was there to look after the father, not chase after the son.
“Thank you for the candles and flashlight, Georgios. Good night.”
“Kalispera, thespinis. Sleep well.”
Surprisingly she did, and awoke the next day to clear skies and sunshine. Last night’s storm was as much a part of the past as last night’s kiss.
Pavlos was already up and dressed when she went downstairs. He sat on the veranda outside his sitting room, gazing out at the garden. A small empty coffee cup and a phone sat on a table at his side. A pair of binoculars rested on his lap.
Catching sight of her, he pressed a finger to his lips, and gestured for her to join him. “Look,” he whispered, pointing to a pair of fairly large birds. Pretty, with bluish-gray heads, pearly-pink breasts and brown wings mottled with black, they pecked at the ground some distance away. “Do you know what they are?”
“Pigeons?” she ventured.
He grunted disdainfully. “Turtle doves, girl! Timid and scarce, these days, but they come to my garden because they know they’re safe. And those over there at the feeder are golden orioles. Didn’t know I was a bird fancier, did you?”
“No,” she said, noting the spark in his dark eyes and his improved color. “But I do know you look much better this morning. You must have had a good night.”
“Nothing like being on his home turf to cure a man of whatever ails him. Not that that son of mine would agree. Where do you suppose he is, by the way? I thought he might at least stay over, my first night back.”
“No. He was called away on some sort of emergency.”
“Gone already, eh?” He squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin, a formidable old warrior not about to admit to weakness of any kind. “Off on another harebrained escapade, I suppose. Doesn’t surprise me. Never really expected he’d stick around. Ah well, good riddance, I say. You had breakfast yet, girl?”
“No,” she said, aching for him. He could protest all he liked, but she saw past his proud facade to the lonely parent underneath. “I wanted to see how you were doing, first.”
“I’m hungry. Now that you’re here, we’ll eat together.” He picked up the phone, pressed a button and spoke briefly with whoever answered. Shortly after, Georgios wheeled in a drop-leaf table set for breakfast for two, and equipped with everything required for what she soon realized was the almost sacred ritual of making coffee. It was prepared with great ceremony over an open flame, in a little copper pot called a briki, and immediately served in thick white demitasses with a glass of cold water on the side.
“No Greek worthy of the name would dream of starting the day without a flitzani of good kafes,” Pavlos declared.
