She didn’t even blink. “And yet you were also very confident that I would come. Please tell me.”
If she wanted to hear what he found so distasteful about her coming here, so be it. “I was standing in the corridor with Venetia when you managed to sneak into the party that night. I heard what he said to you.”
She flinched, her tight grip on the doorknob turning her knuckles white. He couldn’t contain the disdain that crept into his words nor did he want to. And the way she stared at him, focused, every muscle in her face stiff and tense, she heard it, too. “He called me a selfish bitch who couldn’t stand the fact that he had found love with someone else and moved on, that I couldn’t be happy for him,” she recited, as though she was reading lines from a play.
“He conveniently turned his head and walked away while you were thrown on the street,” he continued, refusing to lay off.
“And you thought no self-respecting woman would agree to help him after that.”
He nodded. “I thought I would need some additional...leverage to persuade you. Obviously I don’t.”
She raised an eyebrow, her chin tilting up. “No?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” he said, standing up. Lexi Nelson was the epitome of everything that had gone wrong in his life in the name of love. He felt a tight churning in his stomach, a memory of the grief and rage that he had propelled into the need to survive, for his sister’s and his sake. “One call and barely an hour later, you come running back for him, your heart in your throat, and you walked up nineteen floors. Why ask so many questions, Ms. Nelson? Why pretend as though there’s even a doubt as to whether you will drop everything to take care of him?”
Lexi struggled to remind herself that Nikos Demakis didn’t know her, that his opinion didn’t matter. But the incredible arrogance in his words that she had fallen into his plans exactly as he had intended chafed her raw.
How she wished she could turn around, throw his disdain back in his face.
But this wasn’t about the infuriating man in front of her. This was about her friend, her family, the one person in the entire world who had always cared about her. After Tyler’s caustic words, after this last fight, she had finally accepted that whatever had been between them had never stood a chance. And she had no idea why.
It would hurt to see Venetia Demakis with him for sure. The young heiress was everything Lexi wasn’t. Rich, sophisticated and exceptionally beautiful.
But what if she was being given another chance to right things between her and Tyler, to have her friend back? He had been there every time she had needed him. Now it was her turn.
The scorn of the man in front of her, however, was a bitter pill to swallow. She was going to say yes, but it didn’t mean she had to do it on his conditions.
She leveled her gaze at him, stubbornly reminding herself that Nikos Demakis needed her just as much as she needed to see Tyler. And she couldn’t let him forget that, couldn’t let him think for one moment that he had the upper hand. “You have made a miscalculation, Mr. Demakis. I have no wish to help you or your sister.”
His dark brown gaze gleaming, he neared her before she could blink.
She stood her ground, but she was too much of a chicken to wait and hear what he would threaten her with. “Not without a price.”
“What is it that you want, Ms. Nelson?”