Xenakis's Convenient Bride(18)

"I'll start a bath for you. Tell me next time if it's getting to be too much."

She snorted. "How does that go?"

"You say, 'Stavros, it's too much. Go to sleep.'" He moved into the bathroom and she heard the water turn on.

She hung her head in her hands, thinking that he might be able to turn  his libido off and on like a tap, but hers wasn't so easily controlled.  Not by her at least. By him... God, she hated herself right now,  pleasures of the night notwithstanding.

She felt the weight of his stare as he returned. She lifted her head to  see him buttoning his cuffs. He moved his sure fingers down the front of  his chest.

"It's because you're Greek."

"The lack of stopping sense?"

He snorted. "That, too, since I don't possess any, either, but no. I meant my grandfather's disapproval."

He moved back into the closet, where he stepped into a pair of gray  pants. He came out threading a belt through the loops, then stood before  her as he tucked in his shirt.

"He's the son of an immigrant. Loves everything about being American. My  father was visiting relatives when he met my mother. She's very  traditional and wanted us raised in Greece. My grandfather wanted us  here, so my father could help him expand the pharmacy chain his own  father had started. They were developing laboratories, chasing patents."  He zipped and buckled. "There was a lot of push-pull between them."         

     



 

He fetched a blue tie and tied it without a mirror, inscrutable gaze fixed on her.

"After my father died, my grandfather brought us here and closed the  door on Greece. My mother went back to see relatives every year and I've  been to Athens for business, but my stint as your pool man was my first  trip back to our island. My sisters and I spoke Greek to each other as a  small rebellion growing up, and I purposely hired a Greek PA so I could  keep up the language, but my grandfather has always insisted we speak  to him in English. He wanted us to be American and made us answer to our  American names. Steven. I've always hated it."

He disappeared into the bathroom and the rush of water stopped. He came back and smoothly picked her up.

"What-I can walk!"

"You can't sit there naked and not expect me to want to touch you, koukla mou."

"I wasn't inviting you to."

"No, you were remembering how angry you are. You probably wouldn't have  let me touch you at all if I had given you a choice." He gently set her  on her feet beside the steaming tub.

She hugged herself, feeling horribly exposed, standing there naked,  staring at his tie, knotted perfectly. All of him was perfect. On the  surface anyway.

His thumb touched the corner of her mouth where it tugged down.

"I wasn't throwing you in his face so much as asserting my will. That  always annoys him. I want you, Calli. I think I've made that obvious."

"And I can't resist you. A match made in heaven. For you." She hated  that she was so defenseless with him. She was raw and vulnerable while  he had everything.

He made a noise and took her jaw in his strong hand. His touch was  gentle as he forced her to look up at him. His thumb scraped lightly  across her tender mouth.

"He and I have a contentious relationship. I can't tell you the number  of times he has threatened to disinherit me-which means yanking the  financial rug from beneath my mother and sisters. So I do as he wishes,  but in my own way. Yes, I knew he would be angry that I'd gone to the  island to find my wife. I didn't do it to hurt or humiliate you,  though."

"You still accomplished both of those things." She pulled out of his  touch. "But it's only for six months." She could endure it. What was a  few months of insult against six years of missing her son? She stepped  into the tub and lowered, exhaling as the warm water closed over her.  She brought her knees up and hugged them.

Stavros hesitated with his hand in the air before he let it fall to his side.

"I have to go. I've been away from the office too long and I'm holding  my grandfather to his promise, now that I've fulfilled his demand." His  mouth pulled up, but he didn't show his teeth. It wasn't a smile. "Enjoy  the city today."



Stavros deliberately went to his grandfather's office-the one he would  claim, now that he was married. He arrived before the old man and waited  there for him.

He hadn't lied to Calli. He had a ton of neglected work to clear up,  much of it due to Sebastien's challenge. He should be at his desk, but  he also needed this quiet few minutes to process his behavior last  night. He wasn't an animal, but he'd been completely unable to leave her  alone. She had let him make love to her until they were both wrung out,  so he shouldn't feel guilty, but he did.

Hell, he knew why he felt guilty. You still accomplished both those things. Hurt and humiliation.

He rubbed the back of his neck, arms aching, shoulders aching. He had  held back his own pleasure again and again, determined to give her as  much as he could. To bind her to him. He had thought she was with him  every step of the way, but this morning she had made it sound like she  hated herself for giving in to him.

That she looked down on herself for it.

When she talked of their six months, she made it sound like she couldn't wait for it to be over.

The door behind him clicked and he turned, ready for confrontation, fueled with Calli's dented self-esteem.

"Measuring the windows for new drapes?" Edward asked.

"You know me so well." Stavros went to the wet bar to pour the coffee Edward's assistant had started when she'd let him in.

"Long way to go for a wife," Edward said as Stavros brought the coffee over and took the chair in front of the desk.

"I was there on a dare. Sebastien bet me I couldn't go two weeks without  my credit cards. A trial run of living without my fortune, if you will.  Disinherit away. I'll survive."

"That's a bluff," Edward said confidently, adding under his breath,  "Sebastien. When are you going to grow up and quit risking your life at  whatever that man suggests?"         

     



 

"Today," Stavros said, deeply facetious. "I'm married now and ready to take the Dýnami reins."

"Who is she?" Edward sipped his coffee.

Stavros couldn't bring himself to say "nobody." His conscience wouldn't  let him reduce Calli to that. "The love of my life, of course."

"Is she?" Edward drilled holes with his hard brown eyes.

It was a familiar look, filled with expectations Stavros could never  meet. He wasn't his father. Never would be. It was his fault that his  father wasn't sitting in this chair, staring into those eyes.

Stavros had been staring down that expression for nearly two decades,  but today, quite suddenly, Calli's voice said in his head, You're  looking in a mirror.

Which was disconcerting. It didn't even make sense.

Edward swore under his breath before nodding decisively. "Very well. I  take you at your word, Stev-Stavros." He flinched as he spoke the name  that belonged to his dead son. "Pick a date for my departure and make  the announcements. The company is yours."

The moment should have been a triumph. It was anticlimactic. Stavros was  used to fighting bitterly to get what he wanted. Edward Michaels rolled  over for no one.

So, even as his grandfather told him to put the wheels into motion to  replace him, Stavros's knee-jerk reaction was to refuse. I'm lying, he  wanted to say. Fight me. Don't let me have it. Tell me I don't deserve  it.

He really was a perverse jackass.

He made himself stand and shake his grandfather's hand.

When had they last shaken hands? The old man's skin felt papery and his grip wasn't as strong as it used to be.

Quite suddenly, Stavros felt like a bully, like he was taking something from someone weaker.

"Thank you," Stavros said, disturbed, and left.



They had formal photographs taken on Friday morning, ones that would  accompany the press release that afternoon. Immediately afterward,  Stavros drove them to the family estate, Galíni, which was Greek for  tranquility. The mansion, nestled on groomed grounds and surrounded by  eighty-some acres of forest, was set apart and quiet, and it screamed of  tasteful extravagance.

At only fifty years old, the house seemed even older, given the charm  and attention to detail. Calli walked into a foyer of mosaic tiles and a  stained-glass skylight over a grand staircase. "Only" ten bedrooms,  Stavros told her, but each had a private bath, balcony and small sitting  room. More of a suite, she deduced, as he showed her to the one they  would share. He suggested she change into swimwear since they would join  his sisters by the pool.

They spoke to his mother first. She was a stunning woman who welcomed  Calli warmly. By the time they went outside to meet his sisters, who  also greeted her with delight and natural curiosity, Calli was beginning  to feel like a terrible fraud.

"You should tell them," she said to Stavros when they changed for dinner.