“Never mind,” she replied, faking nonchalance. But her head hurt, and her chest felt so tight.
My brother—I can’t disappoint him, Calista had admitted once to her. Had she been afraid he would not come back? Had she been afraid to show her true self to him?
“Leah, why—”
Sinking her hands into his hair, she pulled him down for a kiss. His hands on her waist, his taste on her lips, made her feel she was owned by him. She wanted to take away his pain, to ease the confusion in his eyes every time he talked about Calista.
Drowning in his taste, she could forget all the truths bearing down upon her, she could swallow the truth forever.
His arms tightened around her while his mouth continued its passionate assault.
Just as all the other times, he was the one who finally stopped. The heated rush of their breaths mingled as he rubbed a gentle finger over her mouth.
“What was that for?”
“I have no more truths to tell. The show, I don’t want to miss it, Stavros.”
“Go,” he commanded, a thoughtful look in his face. “But we are not through, Leah.” All kinds of promises lingered in his words.
And Leah fled.
She muddled through the darkness of the auditorium and found her seat. Up-tempo music blared as the runway dazzled with one magnificent creation after the other.
But it was mostly lost on her. He didn’t join her in the adjacent seat, and Leah, still shaken by everything they had talked about, was glad for a reprieve.
Now, she wished she hadn’t asked. She wished she hadn’t seen that vulnerability in his eyes. That she hadn’t seen the ache when he mentioned his parents.
She wished she didn’t know how committed he was to his vows.
Wished she didn’t understand what made Stavros the way he was. She wished she had never started on this path at all.
Because understanding Stavros meant wanting Stavros with a cloying, all-consuming madness.
Already, she saw admiration, respect in his eyes when he looked at her, she saw that flash of curiosity when she evaded his questions.
If he showed such commitment, such respect for the vows he had made to the selfish, immature girl she had been, what would he be like if she shared her fears, if she followed her heart and gave this relationship of theirs a chance?
Because, suddenly, she wanted to be that woman more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.
WHEN LEAH HAD woken up that morning in her sun-kissed bedroom, she had already known it was a new kind of day.
Despite her efforts to protect herself, which she saw clearly now, it seemed Stavros actually saw her, the true her.
He knew that she hadn’t ever touched drugs in her life. He knew that a career in fashion design meant the world to her. He knew that Giannis meant a lot to her.
It had been almost two in the morning when she had finished meeting with everyone she wanted to see. And all the while, Stavros had loomed large in her mind.
Both emotionally and physically tired and strung out by Helene’s positive initial reaction to her designs, she had fallen asleep within moments after he had started the powerful engine.
It had been the best night of her life.
She felt like she was standing in front of him without a shield for the first time. It was a moment of both power and fear, for he could so easily bind her to him always, he could so easily make her…
Pushing her hair away from her face, Leah walked to the window. Fueled by that growing need to see him, she showered and dressed in a sleeveless yellow blouse and a long, flowy skirt. Braided her half-wet hair into a plait, pushed her feet into comfy flip-flops and made her way down.
She was at the last few steps on the winding staircase that opened to the main foyer when the deafening silence finally registered.
His collar undone, his cuffs rolled back, Stavros still wore the same shirt as last night.
His hair was unkempt and his pallor a ghostly white under that olive skin. His nostrils flared as he saw her at the steps; something slithered across his face but he held her gaze, almost as if willing her to only see him, as if making her oblivious to the rest of the world.
And he was such a commanding figure that it almost worked.
Except she had lived half her life with moments like this, with that gut-twisting fear that something always went wrong when she found happiness.
Nausea pushed its way up her throat.
She gripped the balustrade so tight that her knuckles turned pale against the dark sheen but she forced herself to break his gaze and look beyond him.
Dmitri emerged from her grandfather’s room, his features ravaged. A half-empty bottle of scotch dangled from his hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at her, blinked, and then walked away without another glance.
He looked like he was coming apart at the seams, the complete contrast to Stavros’s frozen withdrawal, to the tight ropes with which he held himself.
“What happened?” Her words were loud, almost a scream in that dignifiedly morbid silence. She flew off the steps when he didn’t answer.
Launched herself at Stavros like a crazy dog. Like an immovable wall, he absorbed all her rage, all her blows as she pummeled at him. “What happened, Stavros? Tell me or I will—”
Pulling her into him so hard that the breath was knocked out of her, Stavros hugged her. Hugged her so tight her chest hurt with the effort to breathe, her head was dizzy…until all she could focus on was getting air into her collapsing lungs.
Only then did he loosen his hold on her. Tucking a finger under her chin he pushed it up to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, pethi mou. Giannis is gone, Leah.”
Leah flopped onto him, the words stealing into her with a sickening thud. “No…” she whispered, futile tears filling her eyes.
“Look at me, galika mou,” he pleaded with such tenderness that she did.
Clasping her cheeks, he looked into her eyes. “He passed with a smile on his lips, Leah. He said he loved you, that he…he was so happy that you spent the past few days with him. I have never seen such peace in his eyes in all the years I have known him. You brought such joy to him.”
“Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t you at least let me say goodbye?” She pushed away from him, bitterness and anger and pain all roping together. “He was my grandfather. You and Dmitri…I had just as much right to be with him.”
The pads of his thumbs caught her spilled tears. “He insisted that I did not disturb you, Leah. Said you were not fond of goodbyes.”
A sob rising through her, Leah ran back upstairs without another glance at Stavros.
He had known. Her perceptive grandfather had known how scared she had been, he had known what it had cost her to reject him again and again…
In just a few weeks, Giannis had become such a huge part of her life and now, he was gone…Leaving her alone again to mourn him.
And for once in her life, Leah didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be ruled by fear. For once, she wanted to reach for the man she desperately needed. She wanted to lean on his strength, she wanted to take everything he would give of himself, everything she had always been too scared to ask.