“You can’t stand me, for sins I know and some I don’t. And I...you’re arrogant, you’re a hypocrite and I...” she said with that standard animosity she seemed to reserve especially for him. Yet he heard the quiver beneath those words.
She was trying so hard to hide her awareness of him. So hard to fight it.
The Leah that he knew, that he thought he had known, had never fought anything she felt. Gave in to every juvenile urge, every self-serving impulse until she crashed and burned.
And had dragged Calista down with her.
This effort now...it sparked a curious fire in him just as much as the fluttering pulse at her neck did.
He came to her bed and leaned against it, blocking her. “So that you could continue to live in this hole like some damned martyr?”
A silk skirt in hand, she turned that gaze to him again. “It is what you chose for me.”
“I never meant for you to live like a prisoner. I sent you everything you needed.”
“To do what with?” Throwing the skirt and a couple more things into the bag, she zipped it up vehemently. “I have no friends, Stavros. No family...”
“You rejected the one you have for years. You still do,” he couldn’t help but point out, a gnawing frustration in his gut.
She didn’t even flinch as she continued. “Even the staff at the fashion house, people I have been working with for five years, they treat me with this—” he saw her swallow and a wave of tenderness, shocking and acute, rose inside him “—nauseating combination of dislike and affected regard.
“I don’t know if they think my designs are really good or if they are just saying that because I’m Leah Sporades, the wife of the textile magnate of Greece, a shame he hides from the world.
“You married me even though you despised the sight of me. You...you kissed me in front of the media that day for the express purpose of warning away my friends, the entire world. You might as well have branded me like they do livestock.”
“Leah—”
“No, Stavros...I was nineteen. I lost the one friend I had, Giannis had just had a heart attack...”
“Whom you still refuse to see,” he cut in.
Do not give up on my Leah, Stavros. Please...she is very fragile...
Fragile was the last thing he had ever thought of Leah...She had barely ever sat down for five minutes with him, yet even surrounded by tubes and equipment, she’d been all Giannis could think about.
Every inch of her slender frame vibrating with anger and pain, she clutched the lapels of his shirt. “...and in the next two days, you took my entire world away from me. You locked me up here and promptly forgot about me.
“Did you ever feel even an ounce of shame that you coerced a nineteen-year-old into marriage?”
Stavros felt her words dig into him like the serrated edge of a blade, drawing blood.
For five years, he had ignored her very existence, had let her live like this, had informed Giannis again and again that Leah was well...
How had he committed such an unforgivable mistake?
“Answer me.”
“No, I don’t regret it. I would have done anything to save you from that drug-induced-drink-all-night-reckless-party life.”
No denial rushed out of her this time. Instead, she closed her eyes and bent her head to his chest. The raw intimacy of the gesture flayed him, reaching a part he didn’t know he possessed.
Her shoulders pushing at his chest, the scent of her coating the air he breathed, her lithe form was so tempting. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, he wanted to bury his mouth in... Feeling like an iron anvil was sitting on his chest, he clasped her wrists to push her away.
Instead, the pad of his thumb moved over the plump vein of its own will.
Her breaths came in a slow rasp until, suddenly, she looked up. His lungs burned for air as her fingers laced around his, as a blunt nail raked the center of his palm, her molten brown gaze clung to his lips.
Something so desperate and wanting flashed in her gaze that Stavros dropped her hand.
It was so unlike Leah that a shiver raked down his spine.
Jerking away from him, she drew a deep breath. “Deal with the consequences of what you did then,” she said, moving her hand over the room. “Alleviating your guilt about this...it’s not my responsibility.”
It was the most adult thing she had ever said to him. And just like that, his world tilted an infinitesimal inch.
A world in which Leah was right and he was wrong. A world in which he had let himself be led by pain and resentment until he had neglected his duty...neglected the vow he had made to Giannis.
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“What?”
“I said you’re right,” he said willingly, the bright wonder on her face drawing it out of him. “What I did that day had consequences that I didn’t own completely.”
“Am I actually hearing this?” Her brows rose into her hair, her mouth opened in a long O. Mirth overflowed in those eyes, making her look absolutely stunning. “Boom!” The scent of her skin swirled around him, drugging him so insidiously that his blood became sluggish. “Did you hear that, Stavros? I think the sky just exploded...”
He stole another greedy look at her. And like a snake waiting to strike, the most incredible urge to press his thumb against the lushness of her lower lip, struck him.
He collected himself slowly and stepped out, wondering if this sinuous desire for her was his true penance.
“Show me your workroom,” he said, over his shoulder.
* * *
Her workroom knocked the breath out of Stavros.
It was as though a veil, the veil that separated Leah from the rest of them, had been lifted. A tentative smile on her face, she walked around touching things here and there in the chaotic room, eons different from the Leah who usually glared at him with such hatred.
Sunlight poured in streams into the high-ceilinged room, exposing the beams. Everywhere he looked, there was color, such a vivid contrast to the rest of the apartment that it took him a few moments to actually see it.
Two racks hung around the back, with evening gowns in different degrees of completion. An old sewing machine lay on a table in the other corner. One whole wall was covered with sketches made in pencil, illustrations, even cutouts from fashion magazines.
Swatches of fabric were pasted on another wall. Reams of it spilled over from a rickety shelf in the corner—satin and silk and cotton, pretty much every fabric he knew of in his ten years in the textile industry.
Something tightened in his chest.
“The retail buyer that you were talking about, what is she interested in?”
“I’m putting together a collection of evening wear for her—cocktail dresses, formal gowns, and the prize of the collection will be one bridal dress.”
“That’s quite a workload for one designer...”
“Slash seamstress,” she finished, fingering the sheer fabric of one unfinished dress.
“You’re going to...”
An utterly confident smile dawned on her face. “Actually cut and sew the dresses, yes. I custom-design and sew every dress myself and that’s what I would like my brand to be. When the buyer was talking about what she would like, what she liked about my previous designs...I could see the concept from start to finish.”
Color flushed her skin.
He walked around and touched the cut bodice in ivory silk. “Has she seen the flat sketches?”
She shook her head. And he saw the surprise in her eyes that he knew the term. “We have had two discussions around it.”
“Leah, it’s a huge risk to create an entire collection for one woman’s tastes at this stage.”
She tilted her jaw aggressively. “You gave me your word not ten minutes ago.” Her lithe frame vibrated with her growing panic.
“And I will stand by it. But I’m also a businessman and in case, you have forgotten, I run a group of textile factories that export all over the world. All I’m doing is pointing out the pitfalls, as I would do with any business I want to invest in. Creatives have a tendency to run the business into the ground with their half-realized dreams.”
“But I’m not creating exactly what she wants. More like my vision of what she has in mind.” She turned to him, a frown on her face. “Anything I tried to design with some freedom at the fashion house ends up changed for the brand of the house. I want this collection to be mine. And I need cash upfront for all the raw materials.”
He nodded. “I want an expense report including quotes from all the vendors you’ll be sourcing the raw material from. I want every penny accounted for.”
“I will send you my spreadsheet.”
“You have one already?”
“Surprised, aren’t you? I’ve been having problems with one vendor based in Brazil though. He keeps upping the price of the cotton I need from him.”
“I can help with that,” he said, the fire in her eyes stunning him. “Do you plan to hire another seamstress?”
“Not at this point.”
“But it’s too much work for just one person.”
“I don’t want anyone else involved in this...in my first collection.”
“Fine,” he said, noting that the stubborn streak of independence was still there. Also that whatever advice he gave now, she wouldn’t heed it. “You’ll have the money within the hour. I will be gone next week, and during that time—”