Hidden Depths(33)
She put her hand to the spot in the shirt where the wound was, gauging. “It’s going to be sensitive for a while, but I’m okay. I’ve had worse.”
“Worse than taking a knife in the ribs?”
He saw immediately that she regretted letting that slip. So he changed the subject. “You must be starving. Let me get you something to eat.”
That seemed to relax her, although she said, “I’m not hungry.”
“Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re skin and bones.”
“Kitten? Work? Skin and bones? I’m sure you’re certainly pleased I showed up here.”
She sounded so much like the old Miss Prentiss he was cheered. “Actually, I kind of am, Andrea. Now come on, I’m sure I have some sweats you can put on and roll up. Take your pick while I cook us some breakfast.”
* * * * *
She was a little slow at eating, but after some concerted effort, she got one entire pancake, dripping in syrup, down before she pushed the plate away. He, in the meantime, managed to eat two stacks.
“Very good,” she said as he leaned back to watch her.
“So if you can’t tell me the whole story, can you at least tell me where you’ve been?”
Her lashes dipped down. “I guess that couldn’t hurt. I won’t be going back there after all.” She looked up. “I was in a little town in Maine. Not far from where you dock when you go inland, as a matter of fact.”
“In my own backyard, eh? That’s a coincidence.”
She said nothing.
“Who stabbed you?”
When she didn’t respond, he prompted, “How about do you think whoever it was followed you?”
“No,” she said immediately.
Okay. That was definitive, which kind of gave him the willies.
“Are you related to Angelica Stavros somehow?” He had kept the name in the back of his mind, certain it couldn’t be a coincidence.
“In some ways, you’re just a more annoying version of your brother.”
He laughed. “Michael and I are nothing alike.”
“How about I promise to tell you as much as I can before I leave? How’s that?”
“You’re in trouble and I could help you.”
“You are helping me. By bandaging me up. By letting me stay here until I’m up on my feet again.”
He played with the salt shaker. “I usually don’t trade on the Reynolds name, or the Evans name for that matter, but both families could be pretty powerful allies if you’d let them.”
“The only ally I need right now is in the room with me.”
He nodded, unreasonably pleased that she needed him and not just what he stood for. “If you say so.”
* * * * *
Francesca Stavros watched her husband descend into one of his inevitable rages. An expensive vase was always the first thing to go. The Baccarat crystal shattered into a million diamond-like shards against the silk wallpaper. The leg of the Hepplewhite table she’d just purchased was the next casualty as he kicked it with a force he usually reserved for human beings but had to make do with on inanimate objects when necessary. But that could be repaired. He made his way with his solid-gold letter opener toward the painting above the fireplace and she cautioned softly, “Your mother won’t be pleased, Fredrico.”
He glanced at her with the loathing that always warmed her heart, but left the portrait of his mother alone. Fredrico Stavros hurt things he claimed to love, but anything he hated was not worth his effort.
She stood up and smoothed her evening skirt, absently noting the six carats on her ring finger. She really should get something bigger since that bitch Gloria Almeida had a gaudy ten carats on practically every one of her fat fingers. “So shall we be going to the opera or are you not finished here?”
Glaring at her, Freddie sputtered, “I don’t see why you’re not more upset, Frannie. You know what this means. Athena,” he gasped.
Athena Stavros had always spelled trouble. Freddie’s beautiful, brown-haired, willowy little niece had been fifteen years old when her mother Angelica married the fabulously rich and aristocratic Fredrico Stavros, who in satisfyingly Greek tragedy fashion was her dead husband’s brother. So smart she had breezed through every advanced course her exclusive private school had to offer, Athena had also benefitted from the early education that only a diplomat’s daughter can get, having traveled with her parents to countries all over Europe and Asia before her father died in a plane crash. Angelica and her husband, an attaché, had been so awfully proud of their daughter’s early and seemingly effortless grasp of languages. But the girl was like that in a lot of things, numbers as well, as Francesca learned when she became stepmother to the girl after marrying Freddie a scant few months after Angelica’s death.