"I told her, if she was all that interested, she should go to the clinic and find out for herself."
"You had no right, Brianna!" he said, his words a whiplash of contained fury. "No right at all to interfere in something that's none of your concern."
"I thought Poppy was my concern," she shot back. "That by volunteering to donate bone marrow, I'd earned the right to make her my concern."
"One thing's got nothing to do with the other. I decide who gets to spend time with my daughter, not you."
"I see." She swallowed painfully, her throat so thick suddenly, it almost choked her.
"No, you don't," he snapped, stepping on the accelerator again and racing the last few hundred yards to the gates of his estate. "You don't have the first idea what's really going on here."
"Why don't you enlighten me, then, Dimitrios? Or does my being a model make me such an airhead that I couldn't possibly understand the intricate workings of your superior mind?"
He slammed on the brakes a second time and killed the engine. In the beat of silence that followed, she heard a gust of frustration escape his lips as he wrestled with his inner demons. Then, his anger at last subsiding, he turned to her in the moonlight and stroked a conciliatory hand down her cheek. "It's complicated, Brianna, okay? Let's just leave it at that. Look, we're home and it's a beautiful night. Don't let what happened at the club spoil things. Let's forget about my parents and take a walk on the beach, and talk about our wedding and the future."
All around them, huge urns of fresh flowers glowed like stars in the moonlight, ready for tomorrow's garden party. A striped tent stood on the far lawn. Chairs swagged in white linen clustered around small tables with floral centerpieces. Stephanotis and gardenias scented the air.
No question but that the setting was perfect. The Garden of Eden recreated to Dimitrios Giannakis's exacting standards, with not a petal out of place, and him its benevolent god, willing to dispense forgiveness for her sins with a touch of his almighty hand!
Bleak with misery and disappointment, she flinched away from him. Did he really believe a walk on the beach would erase what had just taken place between them?
"What future?" she asked bitterly. "The one in which you issue the orders and I meekly obey them? No thanks, Dimitrios, I'm not that desperate for a husband! You can sneer at your father all you like, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and underneath the charmingly civilized veneer you present to the rest of the world, you're exactly as manipulative and domineering as he is."
He started to reply, but she'd heard enough. Flinging open the door, she climbed out of the car and left him without a backward glance.
Erika met her at the front door. "You're crying, Brianna!" she exclaimed, a rare note of solicitude coloring her words. "Why? What's happened?"
"Ask your boss," she wailed, furious at her own weakness. "He's the one with all the answers."
"Is it Poppy?"
She shook her head and swiped at the accursed tears streaming from her eyes. "No, it's not Poppy."
"A lover's quarrel, then. I could see the pair of you were falling in love." Almost fondly, Erika cradled Brianna's chin in her work-worn hand. "They happen, but the making up is all the sweeter for it. The two of you will work it out, you'll see."
Overwrought, Brianna sobbed, "When did you suddenly decide you were on my side, Erika? I'm trouble, just like my sister, remember?"
"I have second sight," the old woman replied sagely. "I see more than appears on the surface. Dimitrios is right. You look like her, but there the resemblance ends. Dry your tears, pethi mou, and I'll make you some tsai apo votana-some herbal tea to soothe your nerves. You're exhausted. Anyone would be in such trying times. You should get some rest. Everything will look quite different after a good night's sleep. Off you go now, before Dimitrios comes in and sees your pretty eyes all red and swollen."
But it would take more than well-meant home remedies to bridge the differences between her and Dimitrios, Brianna knew. Too pent-up to sit passively in her room, she paced the floor like a caged animal and finally, in desperation, flung off her clothes and climbed into her bathing suit.
Except for the distant murmur of voices in the kitchen wing, the house was quiet. Making her way downstairs, she slipped through the French doors leading to the rear terrace, and ran silent as a shadow along the path to the pool deck.
The moon had slipped behind the trees, but underwater lights turned the water into a swath of turquoise satin. Dropping her towel on a chaise, she plunged cleanly into the limpid depths and began a punishing crawl up and down the twenty-meter length.
Her thoughts kept pace with every stroke.
She'd have to move out of his house. First thing tomorrow, she'd pack up her stuff. Find a hotel close to the clinic. Visit Poppy when she knew he wouldn't be there, because she couldn't stand seeing him every day.
What a good thing he'd shown his true colors before it was too late. That he could invite her into his life one minute, then slam the door in her face the next, defied rational explanation.
But that he could speak to her so brutally … be so unfeeling toward the woman who'd given birth to him … !
Oh, he was horrible! She was so well rid of him!
In all fairness, though, she had to shoulder some of the blame. She'd broken every promise she'd made to herself not to get involved with him again. Not to rush blindly into any arrangement that might compromise her hard-won peace of mind and heart.
Yet within a week, she'd agreed to marry him, a man with whom she'd spent little more than thirty days total, and most of those occurring years ago. He was a stranger, someone given to half truths and secrets. What else hadn't he told her? He could be a wife beater, for all she really knew. Be hiding a criminal past behind his exquisitely tailored suits and handmade leather shoes.
She was too willing to be dazzled by illusions of romance. Too easily taken in by appearances. Show her a pair of dark, Mediterranean eyes, a smile that could, when it chose, reduce tempered steel to a molten mass, and the body of a Greek god, and she was lost. A helpless heap of female hormone-driven need.
She shouldn't be allowed to roam free without a keeper.
She was a fool.
He was a liar. He'd deliberately misled her.
And she had finally run out of energy. Her body ached, her lungs were bursting, her pulse racing, and her arms leaden weights she could barely lift. Depleted, she rolled over on her back, closed her eyes, and floated to the ladder hanging over the side of the deep end of the pool. Wearily, she grasped a rung, hauled herself onto the deck and made her way to the chaise where she'd left her towel.
As she bent to pick it up, a tall figure strolled out from the black shadow cast by a nearby palm tree. "Feel better?" Dimitrios inquired coolly.
Not about to admit he'd scared her so badly she almost fell back in the pool, she clutched the towel to her heaving breasts. "As a matter of fact, I do. Not," she couldn't help adding with unvarnished sarcasm, "that it's any of your business."
"When my fiancée disappears from my house without a word to anyone, I make it my business."
"Really?" she drawled with feigned insouciance, and tried to slide past him. "You must have mistaken me for someone who cares."
But he was faster, stronger and more merciless. He lunged forward, lethal as a tiger on its prey, and grabbed her squarely by the shoulders. He was, she realized belatedly, very angry.
"This is not how we settle our differences, Brianna," he informed her. "If I say or do something you don't like, you set me straight. You do not cut and run, ever again. Do you understand?"
Incensed, she spat, "Get your hands off me!"
"Make me," he said, his voice deadly, and plastering her wet, scantily-clad body against him, he snagged her dripping hair in one hand, yanked her head back and kissed her, his mouth open, searching. Demanding and taking.
He tasted of rich, mellow Metaxa and frustration. Unbearably erotic and dangerously intoxicating.
Hopelessly enmeshed in craving, she drank him in.
Some distant part of her brain that was still functioning told her she was flirting with disaster, and urged her to extricate herself from a situation fast spiraling out of control. Attempting to heed it, she went to shove him away. But her knees were buckling, a tightness was building between her thighs, and her hands had a mind of their own. They blundered inside his open shirt to rediscover the lovely, sculpted planes of his chest, the lean symmetry of his ribs. His skin was hot and smooth and irresistible.