He had quite literally handed her over to a maid and stormed back into the night.
Clamping her teeth so tight that it hurt, she had forced her mind away from where, and whose bed, he would be going to in the middle of the night.
Having fallen asleep at some strange hour of predawn, she had woken up this morning to the sounds of guests having a lazy, laughing breakfast in the courtyard outside her balcony. Disoriented by the amount of jet-setting she seemed to be doing, she had pulled on a sweater and ventured out to see Stavros and Leah and an assortment of strangers staring up at her.
It was obviously too early and too domestic a setting for Dmitri to be anywhere near.
She had never felt so out of place as that morning.
Yet what was he supposed to do with her, she had asked herself on her walk that afternoon. She was neither a friend for him to voluntarily want to spend time with her, nor was she a girlfriend, which would have been altogether another matter. Nor was she a family member.
She only wished he hadn’t brought her to such an intimate occasion. The last thing she wanted to do was to intrude on Leah and Stavros.
She couldn’t bear to think about what the couple thought of her. Because, despite everything, she liked them, and in a different life, she would have wanted them to like her.
Granted, she had spent barely any time with them and under such strange circumstances that night, but there had been such a familial bond between Dmitri and the two of them. A bond she had only seen once before, between her brother, Andrew, and Dmitri.
Had she somehow expected the same bond to exist between her and Dmitri, despite his new life and her supposed hatred for him? Was that why it felt as though she was being knocked down by every small thing he did or didn’t do?
So she mostly kept herself to her room and walked around the lush acreage whenever she couldn’t bear to stare at the elegant furnishings anymore. She had just finished walking through the vineyard and returned to her room when someone knocked on her door.
Leah Sporades stood outside the room. “May I come in?”
“Of course.” Jasmine stood back, remembering her manners.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to spend time with you after you arrived last night. I had so many last-minute details to look over and then of course, Stavros is being his usual arrogant, domineering—”
“Please, Leah, stop.” Jasmine was equal parts embarrassed and amazed by Leah’s openness. “Don’t say another word. I should be the one apologizing for intruding on such a private and important occasion. You’re not responsible for unexpected guests who crash in the middle of the night.”
“What?” Now the woman looked genuinely baffled. “Jasmine, I insisted that Dmitri bring you. What did he say to you to make you feel as if you were not welcome...” Leah sighed. “He just dropped you here and left, didn’t he? In the middle of the night?”
Jasmine decided she would rather die before she betrayed how much that had hurt. Yet again. “Yes, but then that’s to be expected. It’s not as if he’s my keeper despite the fact that he... He insists on dragging me along but hates me for it... I don’t understand why he won’t just leave me to my fate.”
The most painfully thick silence followed her outburst.
Jasmine turned away toward the window, mortification burning her face up as if it was a furnace. She had said way too much again.
Sighing, she pressed her forehead against the cool window. “Forget I said that, please. I...I’m usually not so whiny and self-pitying. The past few days, my life’s taken the strangest turn after years of...” And Dmitri was at the center of all the confusion... “I feel a bit lost and directionless.”
Leah joined her at the window and squeezed her hand.
Fighting a gush of warmth at the back of her eyes, Jasmine held on.
Her mom’s lifestyle, Andrew’s problems and then her own chosen path meant she had never had the chance to have a normal life. Now she realized how many small, simple things, like friendship, she had given up willingly along the way.
She hated him for it, but maybe there was credit to Dmitri’s ruthless walking away from the whole lot of them. Cutting away those ties that only added burdens to her very soul. Starting afresh without the past hanging around her neck like a boulder.
He was flourishing, wasn’t he? she thought with uncharacteristic envy.
“When Stavros told me what kind of a...situation Dmitri found you in, and how you got yourself out of it, I was amazed.” Jasmine raised her gaze and met Leah’s, the calm acceptance in her tone going a long way to soothe her. “What stuns me even more is how different and strangely intense Dmitri was around you in just those few minutes. Whatever is going on between you two—”
“Nothing is going on between us, Leah. I’m like that festering sore he wants to close, a dirty stain from his old life he wants to incinerate. In fact, I’m as stunned as you are with each passing hour why he won’t just wash his hands of me. He’s made it clear enough that this whole thing with me...has disrupted his life.”
“But nothing ever disrupts Dmitri. Nothing even touches Dmitri. He has his work and toys. The only lasting relationship he has in his life is with Stavros, and he has that insane...lifestyle.
“Whereas with you, it’s as if... He doesn’t know what to do with himself with you around is what I’m thinking,” Leah added, with a twinkle in her eyes that made Jasmine squirm uncomfortably.
Of course, she couldn’t tell Leah it was all one-sided.
“You’re so much in love,” Jasmine said without rancor. “You’re seeing rainbows and butterflies and possibility of romance where there is only guilt, Leah. Please don’t matchmake.”
“Am I that transparent?” Leah said. “All I wanted to say, Jas—I can call you Jas, right?” When Jasmine nodded, she went on, “Is that I know how it feels to not have a friend. And to deal with a man who, at least, seems to not like...”
“Hate is the word you’re looking for,” Jasmine pointed out sourly.
“Hates the very air you breathe,” she said pointedly, and something in her gaze told Jasmine how far Stavros and Leah had to have come. “And turns you inside out. And makes you wish you were anyone but yourself.”
Jasmine smiled, something in the other woman’s openness catching up to her. “I don’t believe Stavros could ever hate you. Even I can see that he worships you.”
A blush dusted her cheeks and Leah laughed self-consciously. “But we almost lost each other. The thing is, you have a friend in me. And it has nothing to do with Dmitri.”
Jasmine had never known such open acceptance, such genuine warmth. “Thank you.”
Walking into the center of the room, Leah looked at her wardrobe. “Now let’s talk about something fun. What are you wearing to the party tonight?”
Could one die of an excess of embarrassment? Jasmine wondered for the nth time in the past week.
“I...I don’t have anything to wear. And I’ve had a lifetime’s quota of being embarrassed and humiliated and whatnot by Dmitri.”
Such an effervescent smile dawned on Leah’s mouth that Jasmine forgot what she was going to say. “I’m a designer with an entire workroom full of dresses, and I would love to dress you in something that will knock the—”
Jasmine shook her head. “No, not for him,” she amended.
What was the harm in borrowing a dress for one night? In opening herself to a friendship? In letting, for once, something good enter her life?
Whether willingly or not, Dmitri had given her her life back. And she was going to live it, for herself, starting tonight. Not her mother, not the pain of the past, not a debt, which somehow she would find a way out of, and definitely not about a man who kept her around because it relieved the little guilt he had about the past.
She faced Leah and smiled.
“I want to look good for myself. I want to have an evening where I forget the past week and don’t worry about the future. I would love to borrow your expertise and your dress so that I can enjoy the party and be a part of my new friend’s happiness. That sounds good, right?”
Leah beamed, hooked her arm through Jasmine’s and said, “That sounds perfect.”
* * *
Take what you paid for.
Jasmine’s outrageous dare kept ringing around in Dmitri’s head as he stepped out of his chopper and waved the pilot away.
And her kiss... Theos, it had lasted a few seconds too long, because he could still feel her taste on his lips, could still feel the liquid longing flowing through him.
As if she had left something of herself in his very blood.
He turned and stilled, taking in the tableau of the evening spread out from his vantage point atop the roof.
Giannis’s estate, the very place that had shielded him and healed him, at least enough to move forward in life, was lit up like a bride. He was glad Leah had decided to have the wedding here. It would have made Giannis ecstatic to see Stavros and Leah begin their new life here.
A huge white marquee had been erected in the vast grounds behind the mansion. Soft, strategically placed ground lights lit up a path from the house to the marquee and all around the gazebo and the pool.
A profusion of stylishly dressed guests flitted in and out of the marquee, and he searched the festivities, only then realizing that he was looking for her. That all day, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind.