Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

CHAPTER FOUR

STANDING AT THE small balcony that offered a view of the colorful Athens evening ahead, Leah looked out.

She had been running for the past hour, the one thing that had always grounded her. Yet, all she felt like was running away, and this time, not looking back.

The panic-fueled urge was like an itch under her skin, a fire in her nerves.

It was a quarter past five and already the cafes and eateries were filling up with locals and tourists alike. Laughter and excited phrases in Greek swirled up through the air. It was a sight that had brought her a smile countless number of times after another long, lonely day. Today, it couldn’t dispel her anxiety even a little bit.

Sighing, she went back inside. The pristine white walls that she had refused to adorn with even a single photo closed in on her and she started pacing.

Why hadn’t she run away before now? Why hadn’t she walked away from Stavros and this…pitiful thing between them that was a marriage, and not looked back?

Had she been so lonely to cling to this familiar world even knowing that she could never be close to her grandfather in the way it mattered? Had even Stavros’s punishment been better than facing a life alone in the world?

She would never forgive herself for the part she had played in it, but, to this day, she had no idea that Calista had been using. Had no idea that hiding Calista’s involvement in everything Stavros had abhorred about Leah would go that far.

Had no idea what it was about Stavros that made the worst parts of her manifest so well.

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.

Leah struggled against it, rationalized against it. He met his lover every week. He could not be attracted to her. Nor she to him.

This charge was antagonism that had gone unaddressed for so many years, hatred and resentment and their struggle against this very fate that was spilling over into something else. Maybe it would be true if she believed it enough, she thought desperately.

Because thinking of Stavros in this way—when even her juvenile crush on him had always left her feeling inadequate, was the last thing she needed in life.

Through sheer will, she forced herself to break his gaze, to focus on the fact that he was giving her a real chance. That Giannis would be far removed from their deal was positive.

“If I do prove that I’m everything that is virtuous and sweet and biddable and completely without personality?” His scowl deepened and since needling Stavros was the only thing she had control over in the sinking confusion of her world, she continued, “I’m just a little bit worried that you might not want to give me up then.”

His laughter clanged in the open café. It was a sound Leah had so rarely heard that she stared at him, her breath caught somewhere in her throat.

That lean chest rumbled as if he couldn’t contain it. From the long column of his throat to the sharp grooves in his sliced cheeks…he was gorgeous to behold.

It seemed the café froze around them to take in the sight.

A woman at the next table stilled with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth, her gaze eating him up. Still laughing, he pushed back the thick lock of jet-black hair that fell onto his forehead.

And the solid gold band on his finger glinted in the streetlight.

The twinkle of the metal struck Leah in the chest as if it were an arrow.

The wedding band… He was wearing his wedding band?

The ring she had slipped onto his finger while tears had pooled in her eyes. The ring that had bound her to him in the holiest of bonds and yet was nothing but a shackle…

Why did he wear the damned ring? Had he worn it that day aboard Dmitri’s yacht?

Had he worn it over the past five years?

Anxiety rippled over her, like a flurry of ants had skittered over her skin.

Just like her, the woman’s gaze also fell on the ring and then shifted to encompass the both of them. Leah felt her curiosity like a prickle, could see her trying to calculate where Leah fit into Stavros’s life.

Nowhere, Leah reminded herself. That he wore that ring was probably nothing but a reminder of his duty to Giannis.

Did he keep it on when he made love to the regal Helene? What would it be like to be the woman he respected, he adored, the woman he promised his utter devotion to? Would his passion run just as deep as his sense of duty?

“Even in the most unlikely chance that I find you that irresistible…” Utter mockery resonated in every word, crashing her down. “I will sign the divorce papers, release your inheritance. You’ll be free.”

Three months with Stavros…

“The freedom to live my life as I want is my basic right. I shouldn’t have to prove anything for it nor should I have to threaten…nor do I have to do despicable things.”

“So you’re not completely without conscience?”

She refused to answer that when he was the one who had pushed her to it. “You’re not the lord of my life.”

“Apparently, I am. And you lost all rights to your own life when you threatened it by living so recklessly.” His very stillness as his gaze burned with frustration was disconcerting. “Theos, Leah…Calista died and Giannis almost did because of the heart attack you gave him. How can you sit there and defend yourself?”

“I can defend myself because…” Clutching the metal edge of the table, Leah breathed deeply. His accusation was unfair, so wrong, and yet, the guilt it brought was no less suffocating.

And to dig into the past, to tell him the truth would mean exposing herself to a man who tolerated no weakness, knew no fears.

Would he laugh at her as he had done just now or pity her?

So she gave in. “Fine. I’ll do as you demand and earn that right back.”

Silence met her acceptance.

He hadn’t expected her to give in so quickly. Did he think it was an admission of guilt?

His arrogance that he knew everyone and the best for everyone had riled her from day one. Not once had he tried to figure out what or how she had felt. He’d only made assumptions, and then ordered her around.

He dropped some bills on the table, and extended his hand for her. “Let’s pick up what you need for a few days. The movers will bring the rest of your belongings later.”

Panic ran free in her gut as Leah shook her head. “No. I…I can’t just pack up everything I need in ten minutes. I need a few days.”

She couldn’t just move in with him in a matter of hours. She needed to get used to the idea first. Needed to get her head screwed on right.

He checked the glinting Rolex on his wrist and then looked back at her. “I’ll have someone come by to give us a hand. In the meantime, we can get started.”

“You’re actually, physically going to help me pack?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Yes, of course it is,” she sputtered, refusing his outstretched hand. “I don’t want you in my…I just… The flat is a mess, and you’ll instantly judge me and tell me I shouldn’t be allowed to live by myself or some such nonsense.”

The hateful man had the gall to smile at her. To actually smile, showing his perfectly even teeth and the dimple in one cheek that should have made him look effeminate yet only added to that austere masculinity.

“What if I tell you that housekeeping is not a criterion I’ll count?”

Desperation coated her throat. “I…I’m not comfortable with others touching my personal stuff.”

“Neither am I about welcoming you to my estate…” With his hand at her elbow, he made it imperative for her to stand up. “I won’t touch anything. You can pack and I’ll supervise.”

“You’ll lord it over me, you mean?” she said, using sarcasm to hide the trembling beneath.

In all the years she had known him, he had, in turns, aggravated her, captivated her and in the end, had ended up ruling over her life. And that was when there was no direct relationship between them.

How was she supposed to survive through three months of living with him?

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE HAD BEEN lying blatantly, of course.

Stavros didn’t know what shocked him more. The fact that she would tell such a white lie about something so trivial or the reality of her lifeless, joyless flat.

It was as if she had intentionally designed herself a sterile prison cell, had punished herself.

Everything inside him recoiled that she had lived like this for five years. Why? Why live as though she was punishing herself when she had argued with him so furiously that she wanted it to end?

Had Calista’s death scared her so much? Had it really changed her?

There was not a single thing out of place in the living room, or the small kitchen, or in the glimpse he had caught of her bedroom. She had everything she required.

The cupboards were full of silverware; a plasma television adorned the wall in the living room, yet was coated with five layers of dust.

There were no decorative items, no knickknacks. Just the bare essentials wherever he looked. The walls were a pristine white exactly as he had remembered from five years ago, when he had inspected the building and the flat, a week after they had married.

It screamed of loneliness, detachment.

Leah was a firestorm and it seemed only a ghost of that girl lived here.

The first year and a few months into the second after she had come to live here, he had had things delivered to her. Boxes of clothes and shoes, handbags and other accessories Helene had told him a young woman would require. He had even sent her things that had once belonged to her mother, found when he and Dmitri had gone through Giannis’s old estate after his heart attack…

But she had sent every box back, stubbornly refusing to accept any of it, and so he had stopped trying. Even the box with her mother’s things.

He had, conveniently, shrugged off his duty toward her. To the point of ignoring her very existence.

His gut twisting into a tight, unforgiving knot, he followed her into her bedroom. There was a nightstand next to the bed. A tissue box, some pencils and loose paper, and a tiny photograph of her father, he assumed from the same brown eyes, were on it.

Stretching on her toes, she pulled a bag out of her closet that was already half full. Turned around and stilled as he stayed at the entrance.

“I have someone bringing up boxes. Not that it seems you need any.”

“The work room has lots of stuff I need.”

He nodded and waited, his thoughts in an unprecedented jumble.

“I don’t have to stay in your house for this…this test of yours, Stavros. I could just continue here.”

He prowled into the small room, feeling on edge. He was angry at himself, he realized slowly. And he was angry at her. It was irrational, and yet he couldn’t loosen its grip over him.