“Because I loaned her that money a couple of days before. I was so angry with you for cutting my trip to New York short. I...hated you so much. So when she said that she needed cash, that you would never agree to give her so much, I gave her every last penny.”
She flopped against him, her body shaking. Feeling as if there was an anvil on his chest, Stavros wrapped his hands around her.
Calista had borrowed it from Leah, knowing that he would not like it, probably even aware that he would take it out on Leah. What had she been thinking?
He hadn’t known his sister then. It hung like a boulder around his neck, choking his breath. Leah had been right in this too.
* * *
Leah couldn’t speak for the pain in Stavros’s gaze, in his sudden withdrawal.
She had hated Stavros for being so tough on her and Calista, but Calista hadn’t once mentioned her unhappiness or her problems to him.
With him, Calista had almost been a different person. Loving, smiling, obedient...as if she had just slipped into a different skin.
Now she wished she had gone to Stavros and blurted it all out.
Calista had been troubled, she realized that now. Maybe even depressed.
With hindsight, she wondered how much of that had fueled her own antagonism toward Stavros, because it had been so scary and powerless to see Calista like that. She had been mired in her own pain about her dad’s death and Stavros had been a convenient target to lash out at. And yet she hated having to tell the truth now, hated this power that she had over him.
She didn’t want to cause Stavros any pain.
He was rigid, he was stubborn and arrogant, but God, he had loved Calista in his own way. He had tried so hard to keep Leah away from her because he had thought her a bad influence on her. He had given Calista everything except...except listening to her.
But how could she tell him that now? How could she tell him that Calista had already been in trouble long before Leah had come into her life? That Leah had followed Calista’s lead always?
The man she knew now, he still dominated, even used her attraction but hadn’t she pushed him to it by dangling the truth in bits and pieces?
Calista was gone. There was nothing to be done now. There was nothing to be achieved by digging into the ugly truth.
So, she swallowed all the other truths back, bolstered her own courage and looked into his eyes.
Managing a smile, she squeezed his hand. “She was not unhappy, Stavros. I think, just restless. She...she definitely hated your rules as much as I did.” She forced a smile to take the bite out of it. “But she...loved you.”
He remained silent. And Leah wondered if he knew that she was quaking inside. When she had lied to him before, it had been to protect herself. This time, it was to protect him.
“I think that night whatever she took...it must have been a one-time thing. Something she thought she would try and then walk away. I’m so sorry that I gave her that money.”
“You were barely nineteen, Leah. And I...made it so hard to come to me with anything, ne? I found fault with you at every turn, I curbed all your freedom, and then I—”
“Why?” The question barreled out of Leah.
By his actions toward her, his efforts to again and again control her, change her, he had made it so easy to hate him, so easy to hide the truth about Calista from him.
She had wanted to not care about anyone ever again in her life, had pulled the act so well that Stavros had believed all of it.
He had started a war between them, and Leah was the one who had kept feeding it. To better hide her attraction, to better fight whatever risk he presented to her emotions, she realized now. “Why did you always hate me so much?”
“I didn’t hate you.”
“In the beginning, I thought it was because Giannis brought me here. Because you resented my being the heiress to such a vast fortune. Which, it turned out was a big joke. You were the one, along with Dmitri, who turned Katrakis Textiles into a multimillion-dollar business. So what was it, Stavros?”
His expression shuttered instantly. “It was wrong of me, Leah. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not. I have a right to know. I...”
“You just...your actions—your neglect of Giannis, they reminded me of someone. But it was no excuse to—”
“Of whom?” Leah couldn’t let go. Not when she was finally so close to understanding him.
“Of my father. All he cared about was himself, his next drink and how he would gain it. My mother, instead of kicking him out, instead of caring for her kids, walked out without looking back. Neither Calista nor I mattered. They left us with our grandparents who weren’t equipped to raise us. All they had was a small farm. I managed fine. But Calista...
“She would watch for her at the gate for so many hours...and then one day, we got news of my father’s car crash.” He rubbed his face. “I remember thinking that it was a blessing for her.” His mouth twisted into a bitter curve. “He died and all I could think was Calista wouldn’t suffer anymore.”
That said so much about his own state of mind. “And then Giannis came for you?”
“Yes, my grandfather wrote to him about my father’s death. I fought so much to bring her with us. But he said he had failed with his own daughter and that he couldn’t bear to fail again. I—” such pain impinged on his features that a lump formed in her throat “—I...promised her I would come back for her. And I did... It took me two years to convince Giannis. Two years to go back for her.”
“What was she like when you went back?”
He frowned at her sudden question. “Why?”
“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.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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.