Mattie would make the best of it. She would ignore that deep, dark, aching place inside her that simply hurt. That was scared, so very scared, of how Nicodemus Stathis made her feel. And how easy it would be to lose herself in him, until there was nothing left of her at all.
But you owe this to them, she reminded herself sternly. All of them.
“He’s here already, isn’t he?” she asked after a moment, when there was no putting it off any longer. She could stand here all day and it wouldn’t change anything. It would only make the dread in her belly feel more like a brick.
Chase’s gaze met hers, which she supposed was a point in his favor, though she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment. “He said he’d wait for you in the library.”
She didn’t look at her brother again. She looked at the polished cherry desk, instead, and missed their father with a rush that nearly left her lightheaded. She would have done anything, in that moment, to see his craggy face again. To hear that rumbling voice of his, even if he’d only ordered her to do this exact thing, as he’d threatened to do many times over the past ten years.
Now everything was precarious and dangerous, Bart was gone, and they were the only Whitakers left. Chase and Mattie against the world. Even if Chase and Mattie’s togetherness had been defined as more of a polite distance in the long years since their aristocratic mother’s death—separate boarding schools in the English countryside, universities in different countries and adult lives on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. But Mattie knew that all of that, too, was her fault.
She was the guilty party. She would accept her sentence, though perhaps not as gracefully as she should.
“Well,” she said brightly as she turned toward the door. “I hope we’ll see you at the wedding, Chase. I’ll be the one dragged up the aisle in chains, possibly literally. It will be like sacrificing the local virgin to appease the ravenous dragon. I’ll try not to scream too loudly while being burned alive, etcetera.”
Chase sighed. “If I could change any of this, I would. You know that’s true.”
But he could have been talking about so many things, and Mattie knew that the truth was that she’d save her tears because they were useless. And maybe she’d save the family business, too, while she was at it. It was, truly, the least she could do.
Nicodemus Stathis might have been the bane of her existence for as long as she could remember, but she could handle him. She’d been handling him for years.
She could do this.
So she held her head up high—almost as if she believed that—and she marched off to assuage her guilt and do her duty, at last, however much it felt like she was walking straight toward her own doom.
* * *
The worst thing about Nicodemus Stathis was that he was gorgeous, Mattie thought moments later in that mix of unwanted desire and sheer, unreasonable panic that he always brought out in her. So gorgeous it was tempting to overlook all the rest of the things he was, like profoundly dangerous to her. So gorgeous it had a way of confusing the issue, tangling her up into knots and making her despair of herself.
So absurdly gorgeous, in fact, that it was nothing but unfair.
He stood by the French doors on the far side of the library, his strong back to the warmth and the light of the book-laden room, his attention somewhere out in all that gray and rattling wet. He stood quietly, but that did nothing to disguise the fact that he was the most ruthless, wholly relentless man she’d ever known. It was obvious at a glance. The thick, jet-black hair, the graceful way he held his obviously dangerous form so still, the harsh beguilement of the mouth she could only see in the reflection of the glass. The menace in him that his smooth, sleek clothes couldn’t begin to conceal. He didn’t turn to look at her as she made her way toward him, but she knew perfectly well he knew she was there.
He’d have known the moment she descended the stairs in the great hall outside the library. He always knew. She’d often thought he was half cat. She didn’t like to speculate about the other half, but she was fairly certain it, too, had fangs.
“I hope you’re not gloating, Nicodemus,” she said briskly, because she thought simply waiting for him to turn around and fix those unholy dark eyes of his on her might make her dizzy—and she felt vulnerable enough as it was. She thought she could smell the smug male satisfaction heavy in the air, choking the oxygen from the room as surely as if one of the fireplaces had backed up. It put her teeth on edge. “It’s so unattractive.”
“At this point the hole you have dug for yourself rivals a swimming pool or two,” Nicodemus replied, in that voice of his that reverberated in her the way it always had, low and dangerous with that hint of his Greek childhood still clinging to his words and wrapping tight around the center of her. “But by all means, Mattie. Keep digging.”
“Here I am,” she said brightly. “Sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, as ordered. What a happy day this must be for you.”
Nicodemus turned then. Slowly, so slowly, like that might take the edge off the swift, hard punch of seeing him full on. It didn’t, of course. Nothing ever did. Mattie ordered herself to breathe—and not to keel over. He was as absurdly gorgeous as ever, damn him. No disfiguring accidents had turned him into a troll since she’d seen him at her father’s funeral.
He was as smoothly muscled as he’d been when he was in his twenties and honed to steel-like perfection by the construction work he’d somehow catapulted into a multi-million-dollar corporation by the time he was twenty-six. The fine, hard lines of his face were nearly elegant while his corded strength was as apparent in the line of his pugilistic jaw as in that impossibly chiseled chest of his that he’d concealed very poorly today behind a tight, black, obviously wildly expensive T-shirt that made no concession whatsoever to the weather. He was too elemental. He’d always made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end, her nipples pull painfully taut and her stomach draw tight, and today was no different.
Today was worse. And on top of that, Nicodemus was smiling.
I am lost already, she thought.
Nicodemus was a sheer, high, dizzying cliff and she’d spent ten years fighting hard to keep from toppling off. Because she still had no idea what might become of her if she fell.
“You really are gloating,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and frowning at him. It was more of a smirk than a smile, she thought as she eyed him warily, and that too-bright gleam of a warmth like honey in his dark coffee gaze. “I don’t know why that surprises me, coming from you.”
“I’m not sure that gloating is the word I’d choose.”
He was lethal, pure and simple, and his dark gaze was too intent. It took everything she had to keep from turning and bolting for the door. This day was always coming, she told herself harshly. Accept it, because you can’t escape it.
Though she’d tried. God, but she’d tried.
“The first time I asked you to marry me you were how old?” he asked, his voice almost warm, as if he was sharing a fond reminiscence instead of their long, tortured history. “Twenty?”
“I was eighteen,” Mattie said crisply. She didn’t move as he roamed toward her. But she wanted to. She wanted to bolt for her childhood bedroom on the second floor and lock herself inside. She made herself lock her gaze to his, instead. “It was my debutante ball and you were ruining it.”
Nicodemus’s mocking little smile deepened, and Mattie fought not to flush with the helpless reaction he’d always caused in her. But she could still remember that single waltz her father had insisted she dance with him that night. Pressed up against his big body, much too close to his fierce, demanding gaze, and that mouth of his that had made her nothing but...nervous. And needy.
It still did. Damn him.
“Marry me,” he’d said instead of a greeting,