His brows rose questioningly. Then he smiled, a real flicker of warmth lighting up those tawny irises.
She could deal with Stavros hating her, questioning her worth, and thinking the absolute worst of her. This...strangely speculative mood he seemed to be in, she couldn’t.
No way was she going to put on her bikini and parade in front of him. She would probably self-combust if he so much as looked at her, even innocently. “I ran far more than I intended today. I’ll skip the swim,” she said, turning around.
“How do you like the estate?”
She was so wired up into his every breath, every nuance that her foot slipped on a wet patch.
He was out of the chair and by her side in a flash, his hand around her waist. The side of her breasts squished against him, her midriff knocked hard against his. All of her breath jarred into her throat, her muscles groaning at the impact. He was so hard and hot...
“You are unhurt?”
“I’m fine.” She pushed the words out, feeling so out of control that tears prickled behind her eyes.
What was the matter with her? Where was this desperate awareness stemming from?
He was silent next to her, his large hands still resting on her hips. She didn’t have the guts to turn and meet his gaze.
The idea of seeing the same awareness in his drove her out of her skin. The idea of seeing nothing but a patient indifference made her skin crawl.
With the guise of reaching for the lemonade, she withdrew from his touch. “It’s remote and a little out of sync with the twenty-first century, don’t you think?”
For the first time in years, she had felt completely at home, had forgotten the pain of the past and the endless, lonely future stretching ahead of her. But she had nothing to fight her reaction with, if not with her lies. Nothing except to continue the animosity between them that she didn’t even know the origins of anymore.
“Remote, yes. Out of sync with the rest of the world, no.”
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “Perfect for you though—stark, severe and forbidding.”
“That’s exactly what Dmitri says when he visits. Says he can’t stand the relentless silence.” He smiled. “So you do not like it then?”
She frowned, wondering why he was asking. “I just... I prefer something a little flashier and more hip, like Dmitri’s yacht. Or that infamous bachelor pad of his in the business district of Athens.” When had lying become this easy? She had been to Dmitri’s flat once and it had been a soulless, colorless monstrosity of steel and chrome. “This is a bit too isolated for my taste.”
“Is it?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat at the thought of leaving here. But if this was how she was going to react to seeing him after a week, she couldn’t imagine what she would do if she saw him daily. “Hmmm.”
A little knot tied his brows and cleared again. Something she had never seen danced in the depths of his gaze.
He was going to relent. He was going to send her back to that dinky flat, back to the dragon, Mrs. Kovlakis. A breeze could have knocked her down at how desperately sad the thought made her.
Dark gaze unmoving from her, he finished her drink. She looked down, rattled by the intimacy of the gesture. He put the glass down slowly and wiped his mouth while she waited on edge. “I think I will choose not to believe you, agape mou.”
The endearment ripped through her. It meant nothing to him but weaved an intimacy that she didn’t know how to counter. “What...what do you mean?”
“You are lying.” The announcement reverberated around them in the vast space. He didn’t sound angry though. “I probably have been arrogant enough in the past to take everything you said on face value. Even made it easy for you to manipulate me, ne? The why of it, I have not learned it yet.” A promise, that he would find out sooner or later, resonated in his tone.
* * *
“I think you love the estate. I barely took my jeep out when I got stopped so many times today. Everyone already knew your name, everyone had tales to tell about you. Rosa,” he said, coming closer, “even said she had never met such a hardworking and lovely young woman.”
Leah frowned, as if trying to keep her shock out of her face. “Of course, I was forced to be nice to her. Your housekeeper is an evil genius that bewitched me with that decadent dark coffee and servings of baklava.”
“The important question is how many things have you lied about?” he continued, as if uninterrupted.
Her skin paled, leaving such a frightened look in her eyes that Stavros jerked her around to him.
Was that unwise desire that widened those beautiful eyes real?
Was the pain in her eyes when she spoke of Calista real?
The whole week that he had been gone, he had found himself running through every encounter he had ever had with Leah.
Wondered why she had done so many things he had forbidden her to do, wondered how someone who could be so rejecting and disrespectful of Giannis again and again could also turn around and mourn for his sister, Calista, for so many years.
She had lied about the apartment. She had lied today about liking the estate, a seemingly inconsequential thing that threatened nothing that she held dear.
A keening frustration spread through his veins. Like there was a pit full of dangerous truths that he had never faced and Leah held the key to it all. He forced a smile to his mouth and pressed his hand to her back.
She instantly stiffened and he gritted his jaw, fighting the shockingly strong urge to assert his right like an uncivilized thug.
Right then, it seemed he cared very little about duty, or what was right. All he wanted to do was touch her, to feel like this stranger who told him nothing but lies, that selfish, reckless girl he had married, was really present.
Right then, he wanted to claim something, a part of her, even an emotion, an expression, that no one else knew but him.
Right then, he wanted to be a self-serving bastard like Dmitri and assure himself that she would respond, even against her own surprisingly strong will, when he touched her. That she couldn’t pretend, fake, or lie to him in that.
It was as if suddenly there was a beast inside him that wanted to do as it pleased, that was railing against the cage after a lifetime of doing what was right.
And it was Leah that did these things to him.
“So your lawyer friend visited you on Wednesday.”
Resignation flattened the curve of her mouth. “His name is Philip.” He was only a few inches taller than her, and standing a step below her, his eyes were level with her mouth.
What would she do if he touched those lush lips with his?
Would she fight him and scratch him like the alley cat she had always pretended to be? Or would she sink into his kiss as that desperate desire in her eyes suggested?
Which was the real Leah?
“He was in a foul temper because I came away with you without taking his advice. Not knowing how autocratic you can be, he thinks I gave in too easily.”
Stavros wanted to figure her out, put her in a category and move on with life. He didn’t want this curiosity, didn’t know how to arrest this indulgent self-awareness that she incited in him.
“I think he sees his piece of pie from your fortune dwindling away.”
She walked around the table like a cornered prey. “Because he befriended me with nothing but an eye toward what I’m worth?”
“Yes. Your fortune always attracts those kinds of men.”
A sigh escaped her, but she wasn’t spitting in fury as he had imagined. As if he were the despot she could hate again. “And of course, you know everyone and their intentions best.”
“No, I know Philip Cosgrove better than you do. He has had two broken engagements—one with an American candy heiress and the other with a princess from a minor South American nation. He has also been having an affair with a client.”
Hands on hips, she looked like a wildcat. “You had him investigated?”
“You should know the truth about him.”
“Truth about his personal life? He’s a friend and my lawyer, Stavros. Not my lover. If he was going to be one, I’m sure he would have volunteered that information. And even if he didn’t, it’s my decision to make.”
The thought of Leah with any man...he wasn’t prepared to ponder his reaction to that. “Now you know what decision to make.”
“About whether I want to screw him or not?” she said crudely, even as color darkened her cheeks. “You don’t have the right to police me on who I sleep with.”
“Discussing my rights and privileges when it comes to you is not a conversation you will like, agape mou.”
“No, I won’t. Because you’re a hypocrite. Do you tell your lovers that you have a wife you hide as if she were a stain on the very fabric of your life, Stavros?” Her fingers clutched his hand and pulled it up, a startling tremble in it. The contact jolted through him. “Do you take it off when you undress your lover? Do you—”
“I don’t have to tell them anything,” he whispered, dragging her against him. She was stiff against him, yet just the drag of her body set his muscles curling with need.
Ever since she had entered his life, there had been no escape from the shackles his own sense of honor bound him with.
Strange then that he had resented it and fought it for so long.
Was it because, as he had always known, Leah would never be the kind of wife he had imagined for himself—someone calm and dependable like Helene? Even then, had he known that she would incite him to this kind of reckless, unwise need?