Even the request was made with such resignation, such lack of faith that Gabriel felt winded.
Before he could answer, his daughter turned and walked away, her shoulders dejected. Without once looking back.
* * *
“He wants you to be his daughter’s nanny?” said her sister-in-law Mia, who was heavily pregnant with twins, on their morning walk around the gardens Nik had had built for Mia.
Eleni nodded. “Wants? More like ordered me. You should’ve seen him, Mia. He got this look in his eyes, like he wasn’t seeing me anymore. Just a solution to his problem.”
That would make everything right in his world, like all arrogant men expected from those around them.
In the week since Gabriel had made that outrageous offer, she hadn’t heard from him. Hopefully, he’d come to his senses. Yet, Eleni continued to feel his considerable power like a shadow over her life.
The gardens were a riot of color, the sky a perfect blue. All in all, it had been one of those perfect Drakon autumn weeks. Everything was ripe and coming to fruition.
She’d made some inquiries into the orphanages in Drakon and submitted her paperwork. It could take months to get through the bureaucratic red tape, but a fierce sense of rightness filled her. And in the meantime, she was planning her trip.
It might not be as long as she’d suggested to Gabriel but it seemed like the perfect thing before she had a child of her own and the responsibility that would go with being a single mother.
“You refused, yes?” Mia probed.
“Of course, I did,” she replied, as her gaze shied away from Mia’s unbearable concern. Mia knew Eleni was attracted to Gabriel Marquez, that Angelina was coming to mean more and more to her every day. She felt naked, as if all her desperate longing was written on her face for everyone to see.
I could even be persuaded to kiss you again.
Humiliating heat filled her cheeks. She should’ve slapped the arrogant man.
“I’m worried about you, Ellie.” Mia clasped her fingers. “You’re getting far too attached to that little girl. I saw how upset she was a few days ago...”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Eleni tried to sound casual. Angelina’s crumpled face wouldn’t leave her alone though. She’d been wrong in thinking she could walk out of Angelina’s life without hurting her. “I’ll be fine, Mia. If anything, these last few months with Angie have shown me how much I would like a baby of my own.”
Mia sent her a stunned glance just as they saw Nikandros walk toward them.
“What the hell is going on between you and Gabriel, Ellie?” Nik said, loudly enough for some of the garden staff to look up curiously.
Eleni frowned. “Just a disagreement about his daughter. Why?”
Nik looked away and back. “He’s threatening to pull Marquez Holdings out of Drakon if you don’t cooperate with his demand.”
“Cooperate? He can’t do that!” Eleni’s heart sank to her toes. She’d known he was ruthless, but this was beyond belief. “Can he, Nik? I know Andreas had his reservations about Gabriel but I thought we had an ironclad contract.”
Nik pushed his hand through his hair, visibly shaking. “We do. Legally, he can’t just pull his company out of Drakon. But the last thing we need in this economy is to get into a legal battle with him. He could raise a hundred issues and stall all our projects. He’s...everything Andreas said he is when things don’t go his way—an utter bastard. He’s already canceled two of the investor meetings for no good reason.”
Eleni rubbed a hand over her forehead, frustration coiling inside her. Just when she’d finally decided what she wanted in life... “I’ll do anything for you and Andreas and... Drakon, Nik.” Her daredevil brother had never seemed so anxious. “I’m sorry for—”
“Christos, Ellie! I don’t blame you for any of this.”
Eleni swallowed the lump in her throat. Her brothers did love her. Curse the blasted man for making her doubt it.
“All he keeps saying is that he wants full access to you. When I said you were not a resource to be loaned out, he had the gall to say that Andreas and I use you.” Nik looked away from her, shame filling his eyes.
“Nik, you can’t let him get to you like that.” And yet, Gabriel had pinpointed both her own fear and apparently Nik’s misgivings like a laser pointer. He rooted out weaknesses and he didn’t care what he did with them.
Fury coursed through her veins.
“He didn’t say anything I haven’t been thinking the last few months. What does he want with you?”
“He wants me to help him forge a connection between him and his daughter. Be...available to them. Make it a priority in my life. When I told him that I was planning to travel, he—” She shivered, remembering the look in his eyes. He hadn’t said anything and yet Eleni had known the matter was far from over. “He’s desperate and he’s pushing back.”
“Stop being so damned generous, Ellie.”
“I don’t like what he’s doing any more than you. Given the state Angelina was in when I told her, I...” Tears filled her eyes, frustration coiling inside her. “I feel guilty. I didn’t realize how attached she was getting to me. And now, if he walks away from Drakon, it will undo everything Andreas and you are trying to do. There’s only one solution.”
“I can’t let you be his daughter’s nanny, Ellie. Haven’t you given enough to this family and Drakon?” With another curse, Nikandros pulled her into his arms and Eleni went like a rag doll. The familiar scent of her brother calmed the panic in her tummy.
She knew, just as Nik did, that the ruthless Spaniard had left her no way out. He knew she’d do anything for her brothers. And Angelina too.
Gabriel held all the cards but Eleni had the blood of stubborn warriors in her veins, however tainted her father had thought it.
She didn’t intend to let the arrogant Spaniard take anything that she didn’t want to give.
* * *
She had come to him finally, bristling with righteous fury.
And dressed to kill.
Gabriel watched, transfixed, as Eleni Drakos waited by the steps, awareness jolting him.
The white stone of the restaurant showed off that innate elegance, that quiet grace of hers, reminding him that legitimate or not, she was very much from the illustrious House of Drakos.
The setting sun caught the copper highlights in her shoulder-length hair. Her face didn’t have those arresting, stark angles her brothers’ did. Nor symmetric features, with her too-proud nose that was clearly inherited from her father. She was neither conventionally beautiful nor had the haughty elegance of a woman born to one of the most distinguished royal houses of the world.
And yet there was a fresh, voluptuous beauty to her form.
The pink fabric of her dress barely kissed her knees and skimmed her lush curves like a lover’s hands every time the breeze pressed it against her body. A white metal ring circled her neck, from which the dress flowed down. It bared her rounded shoulders, exposing miles of golden skin.
Up close, the dress was an invitation to sin. A birthmark on her fragile collarbone, the rounded curve of her hip, those long fingers of hers that she used to tuck a stray lock behind her ear—everything about her hit Gabriel like a blow to his solar plexus.
Why had no man stolen her away from under her brothers’ control?
What had he been thinking, taunting her with the promise of desire between them?
“You’re staring, Mr. Marquez.”
Something floral floated toward him. “I’ve never seen you in a dress, Princesa. You look—” he leisurely swept his gaze over her, and saw a rewarding blush steal up through her cheeks “—stunning.”
“And of course you’re surprised by that,” she said dismissively. If he weren’t obsessed with every small detail about her, he would have missed the quiver in her voice. The quick flick of her lashes to hide the widening of her eyes.
Was she truly so unused to a man’s attentions? Had no man ever wanted her? Touched her? The last thought consumed him. He frowned. “Surprised? What do you mean?”
“You thought I would come here with my tail tucked between my legs, desperate for your promise. Desperate for your—”
The picture she painted made him smile. “If you keep saying it, I promise, Princesa. I will begin to like it.”
“Like what?”
“You being desperate for me. In any and every way.”
She gasped, her eyes voluptuously wide in her lush face before she flicked those thick lashes down.
The lower lip jutted out in a silky pout. Painted a soft pink, her mouth was a lush invitation. “I needed to feel good about myself today, Mr. Marquez. Sort of like being equipped for war.”
“This is war for you?”
“Are you saying it isn’t? I don’t bend to your will like every other being on the planet so you threaten what I hold most dear. The last thing I need is to be riddled by my own insecurities in the midst of it. I have no intention of letting the press coin another—”
“I do not agree with the—”
“You’ll find that I’m the most sensible, practical woman you’ve ever met and yet you have the...alarming ability to make me lose my faculties.”