The Drakon Baby Bargain(17)

A ghost of a smile touched her mouth, as though the memory of him pulled it from her. “Spiros was a ray of light in my life. He...never judged me for my birth. He made me laugh. He told me he loved me for myself, not for what I could mean to him. Or who I was connected to. Before I had formed a bond with Andreas or even Nikandros, Spiros was there, always ready with a laugh and a joke.

“He...used to tell me I was the most genuine person he’d ever met.” Another smile. Another thread of that wistfulness in her voice. As if she’d lost something infinitely precious. “That he couldn’t help loving me. He was a shoulder to cry on when my father’s cruelty was too much to bear. When I felt like I was stuck between Andreas’s cold control and Nikandros’s impulsive defiance and couldn’t lose either. When I felt like nothing I did would ever make me different from who I was. Spiros made me feel wanted. Just for myself.”

“What happened then?” he cut in harshly, infuriated that his own heart was racing.

“On my nineteenth birthday, he asked me to marry him. I said yes. He kissed me in the courtyard garden, said he would speak to my father the next day. That’s the last I saw of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I didn’t see him again until he appeared at the reception last night. It was like he had disappeared into the night. For years, I thought he had met with some unfortunate accident. Andreas inquired with his family and found out recently that Spiros had just upped and left for the States. They didn’t know anything about me or that he’d proposed. I... I just couldn’t believe he was back. I went when he asked if we could talk, and I stood there, still in shock, when he hugged me and kissed me.

“When I returned to our suite, there you were. Even if I had told you the truth, you wouldn’t have believed me, Gabriel. You already believed the worst.”

He had. He did. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much his own mother’s lies had stayed with him. “Do you love him?”

It was the last question Eleni expected him to ask, this husband of hers who had reminded her again and again that he thought every emotion was a weakness. That he didn’t believe in marriage, much less love.

That theirs was a cold, clinical arrangement.

“I loved him years ago. With every breath in me. I believed that he and I...we could be truly happy. Greeting card happy.”

“Greeting card happy?” He looked so nauseated that Eleni laughed.

“Like Mia and Nikandros,” she said, and looked away.

Suddenly, she felt his fingers under her chin, the rough dig of his thumb onto her jaw. His hard gaze held hers, as if he wanted to plumb the depths of her soul. As if he could will her into giving the answer he wanted. Which was what?

What did Gabriel want? All her confusion about Spiros misted when she gazed into his gray eyes, when she felt his gaze on her.

“You haven’t answered my question, Princesa. Do you love this man?”

Faint tension filled his frame. Something inside her goaded Eleni, something she’d never felt before. “Would you let me go if I did?”

“No.” The word was like a detonation between them, a gauntlet thrown down. Eleni shivered under his touch, aware that his interest in her was personal. She didn’t know how but she knew it and it sent a thrill of excitement and fear through her. “If you leave our marriage now, if you turn your back on Angelina, I will—”

“Yes, yes, you will sink Drakon, you will raze the house of Drakos to the ground etc. etc. Really, Gabriel, your threats are becoming tiresome. I have never walked away from a promise I have made.”

He continued to stare at her, as if he didn’t quite believe her. This matter of trust between them had to be dealt with. Their being at each other’s throat like last night could only hurt Angelina, or any other children they had.

He had listened to her—that had to be enough for now.

That he was attracted to her filled her with a rare sense of feminine power that she’d never known. When he stood up to walk away, she looked up at him. They had crossed some line in their relationship. That awareness tingled in the very air about them.

And Eleni was far too confused by her own reaction to question his right now. Too scared to ask what he wanted of her. “I came to tell you that I’m appointing security personnel to guard you. It’s a measure your brothers should have taken long ago.”

Hurt splintered through her. “Is that for my protection or for spying on me?”

He shrugged, and for the first time since they had met, he was the one that looked away. Tension tightened around his mouth. “As my wife, you need the protection,” he said, and walked away.

Leaving her question about trust unanswered. But at least he’d called her his wife.

Leaving her claimed, even though he hadn’t touched her again.

* * *

Eleni looked around the huge bedroom with satisfaction. The staff had unpacked most of her stuff and put it away in Gabriel’s bedroom. A thrill shot through her as she walked into the stadium-sized closet. When Gabriel had arrived in Drakon, he’d only been a guest of the palace, and yet he’d been given one of the best apartments. His company was a billionaire investor in Drakon, and Nikandros had wanted no deficiency in their hospitality.

Eleni herself had chosen this apartment for him. It afforded a gorgeous view of the mountains in the distance on one side and the ocean on the other. The best of Drakon’s views for Gabriel Marquez.

But in seven months, nothing had changed in the suite. No photo frames adorned the side table, not even a picture of Angelina. No keepsakes of his family.

With a frown, she remembered Gabriel hadn’t known of the little girl’s existence until a few months ago.

She could imagine his wrath that Angelina’s mother had hidden such a big truth from him. But beneath that, she wondered now, did he feel betrayal too? Had it perhaps skewed his perception of women? Did he think all women would betray him given the smallest chance?

She had received two more notes from Spiros and she had torn them both up without even opening them. He was in her past; Gabriel was her future.

She’d decided to give him no thought unless he showed himself to her. Unless he stopped playing these silly games with her.

In the meantime, she was determined to sort out her marriage, whatever it took. Gabriel might not want her as his wife but he was attracted to her. They had to move past the impasse they seemed to be at—their relationship was neither the calculated arrangement they initially thought, nor was it going forward.

Beneath the hardness and cold demeanor, there was a man with integrity. A man who loved his daughter, hard though he found it to express it. A man who’d had shown her in three weeks of marriage that he was charming, funny and loyal to those he considered his.

A man who looked at Eleni like she was the tastiest morsel he’d ever seen.

A man who grunted and grumbled when Eleni offered him advice about Angelina but followed it because he wanted his daughter to be happy.

A man who took on Nikandros because he thought she was being taken advantage of by her brothers.

She liked her husband, she realized, running her hands over the sheets. Gabriel’s scent—musky and something of the sea—sent acute longing threading through her.

She wanted a proper life with him and Angelina. Even with his sidelong glances—sometimes fuming, sometimes so hot that she thought she’d sizzle on the spot—the last three weeks had been the happiest she’d known in a long time. Maybe ever.

Throat full, she straightened a few ties in the closet.

It was the sense of belonging he’d given her, she knew. With Gabriel and Angelina, she had a place. Father and daughter—while negotiating a tenuous truce between each other—had made Eleni feel invaluable to them. Made her feel wanted.

She’d do anything to make that permanent.

She’d just have to prove to him that this marriage and this life she shared with him and Angelina was everything to her.

Respect and loyalty and belonging—it was more than she’d ever expected.

She reached for her tablet, opened her to-do list and added an item.

Seducing Gabriel would be more than a bullet point in her list soon.

* * *

“Are you and Ellie fighting, Papa?”

The question zoomed out of Angelina’s mouth while Gabriel was finishing up the designs for the last mountain resort his company was building in Drakon.

He ripped up the blueprint in front of him and wadded it into a pulp. Restlessness like he’d never known filled him, marring the pleasure he had always found in his work. The pleasure he’d found in making money, or in a sexy woman.

Nothing satisfied him anymore.

Nothing he had done over the last few weeks had distracted his mind from the warm woman he found in his bed every night when he returned to his bedroom.

When he had snarled at Eleni and asked if there wasn’t a spare room in the entire damn palace, the minx had looked at him serenely and said she hadn’t wanted to give any of the staff a chance to gossip about them.

She’d also pointed out that “wasn’t the entire reason he had married her to provide Angelina with a secure, home atmosphere? The security of knowing that there wasn’t just one but two people who cared about her?”

Of course, having never shared a suite, much less a bedroom with a woman, Gabriel had no idea what he had signed up for.