by Dani Collins
“Have you eaten?” she called, hoping he didn’t hear the break in her voice. She glanced out to see he didn’t have a plate going.
“Óchi akóma.” Not yet.
She gave him a large helping of the smoked pork omelet along with pancakes and topped up his coffee, earning a considering look as she served him.
Yes, she was trying to soften him up. A woman had to create advantages where she could with a man like him.
“Efcharistó,” he said when she joined him.
“Parakaló.” She was trying to act casual, but she had chosen to start with yogurt and thyme honey. The first bite tasted so perfect, was such a burst of early childhood happiness, when her mother had been alive and her sister a living doll she could dress and feed, she had to close her eyes, pressing back tears of homecoming.
* * *
Mikolas watched her, reluctantly fascinated by the emotion that drew her cheeks in while she savored her breakfast. Pained joy crinkled her brow. It was sensual and sexy and poignant. It was yogurt.
He forced his gaze to his own plate.
Viveka was occupying entirely too much real estate in his brain. It had to stop.
But even as he told himself that, his mind went back to last night. How could it not, with her sitting across from him braless beneath her long-sleeved nightshirt? The soft weight of her breast was still imprinted on his palm, firm and shapely, topped with a sensitive nipple he’d longed to suck.
Instantly he was primed for sex. And damn it, she’d been as fully involved as he had been. He wasn’t so arrogant he made assumptions about women’s states of interest. He took pains to ensure they were with him every step of the way when he made love to them. She’d been pressing herself into him, returning his kiss, moaning with enjoyment.
Fine, he could accept that she thought they were moving too fast. Obviously she was a bit of a romantic, flying across the continent to help her sister marry her first love. But sex would happen between them. It was inevitable.
When he had opened the passageway between their rooms, however, it hadn’t been for sex. He had wanted to ease her anxiety. She had been nothing less than a nuclear bomb from the moment he’d seen her face, but he’d found himself searching out the catch in the wall, giving her access to his space, which had never been his habit with any woman.
He didn’t understand his actions around her. This morning, he’d actually begun second-guessing his decision to keep her, which wasn’t like him at all. Indecision did not make for control in any situation. He certainly couldn’t back down because he was scared. Of being around a particular woman.
Then the news had come through that Grigor was, indeed, hiding debts in two of his subsidiaries. There was no room for equivocating after that. Mikolas had issued a few terse final orders, then notified Grigor of his intention to take over with or without cooperation.
Grigor had been livid.
Given the man’s vile remarks, Mikolas was now as suspicious as Viveka that her stepfather had killed her mother. Viveka would stay with him whether he was comfortable in her presence or not.
Whether she liked it or not. At least until he could be sure Grigor wouldn’t harm her.
She opened her dreamy blue eyes and looked like she was coming back from orgasm. Sexual awareness shimmered like waves of desert heat between them.
Yes. Sex was inevitable.
Her gaze began to tangle with his, but she seemed to take herself in hand. She sat taller and cleared her throat, looking out to the water and lifting a determined chin, cheekbones glowing with pink heat.
He mentally sighed, too experienced a fighter not to recognize she was preparing to start one.
“Mikolas.” He mentally applauded her take-charge tone. “I have to go back to London. My aunt is very old. Quite ill. She needs me.”
He absorbed that with a blink. This was a fresh approach at least.
She must have read his skepticism. Her mouth tightened. “I wish I was making it up. I’m not.”
If he expected her trust—and he did—he would have to trust her in return, he supposed. “Tell me about her,” he invited.
She looked to the clear sky, seeming to struggle a moment.
“There’s not much to tell. She’s the sister of my grandmother and took me in when Grigor kicked me out, even though she was a spinster who never wanted anything to do with children. She had a career before women really did. Worked in Parliament, but not as an elected official. As a secretary to a string of them. She had some kind of lofty clearance, served coffee to all sorts of royals and diplomats. I think she was in love with a married man,” she confided with a wrinkle of her nose.
Definitely a sentimentalist.
She shrugged, murmuring, “I don’t have proof. Just a few things she said over the years.” She picked up her coffee and cupped her hands around it. “She was always telling me how to behave so men wouldn’t think things.” She made a face. “I’m sure the sexism in her day was appalling. She was adamant that I be independent, pay my share of rent and groceries, know how to look after myself.”
“She didn’t take her own advice? Make arrangements for herself?”
“She tried.” Her shoulder hitched in a helpless shrug. “Like a lot of people, she lost her retirement savings with the economic crash. For a while she had an income bringing in boarders, but we had to stop that a few years ago and remortgage. She has dementia.” Her sigh held the weight of the world. “Strangers in the house upset her. She doesn’t recognize me anymore, thinks I’m my mother, or her sister, or an intruder who stole her groceries.” She looked into her cooling coffee. “I’ve begun making arrangements to put her into a nursing home, but the plans aren’t finalized.”
* * *
Viveka knew he was listening intently, thought about leaving it there, where she had stopped with the doctors and the intake staff and with Trina during their video chats. But the mass on her conscience was too great. She’d already told Mikolas about Grigor’s abuse. He might actually understand the rest and she really needed it off her chest.
“I feel like I’m stealing from her. She worked really hard for her home and deserves to live in it, but she can’t take care of herself. I have to run home from work every few hours to make sure she hasn’t started a fire or caught a bus to who knows where. I can’t afford to stay home with her all day and even if I could...”
She swallowed, reminding herself not to feel resentful, but it still hurt. Not just physically, either. She had tried from Day One to have a familial relationship with her aunt and it had all been for naught.
“She started hitting me. I know she doesn’t mean it to be cruel. She’s scared. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her. But I can’t take it.”
She couldn’t look at him. She already felt like the lowest form of life and he wasn’t saying anything. Maybe he was letting her pour out her heart and having a laugh at her for getting smacked by an old lady.
“Living with her was never great. She’s always been a difficult, demanding person. I was planning to move out the minute I finished school, but she started to go downhill. I stayed to keep house and make meals and it’s come to this.”
The little food she’d eaten felt like glue in her stomach. She finished up with the best argument she could muster.
“You said you’re loyal to your grandfather for what he gave you. That’s how I feel toward her. The only way I can live with removing her from her home is by making sure she goes to a good place. So I have to go back to London and oversee that.”
Setting aside her coffee, she hugged herself, staring sightlessly at the horizon, not sure if it was guilt churning her stomach or angst at revealing herself this way.
“Now who is beating you up?” Mikolas challenged.
She swung her head to look at him. “You don�
��t think I owe her? Someone needs to advocate for her.”
“Where is she now?”
“I was coming away so I made arrangements with her doctor for her to go into an extended-care facility. It’s just for assessment and referral, though. The formal arrangements have to be completed. She can’t stay where she is and she can’t go home if I’m not there. Her doctor is expecting me for a consult this week.”
Mikolas reached for his tablet and tapped to place a call. A moment later, the tablet chimed. Someone answered in German. They had a lengthy conversation that she didn’t understand. Mikolas ended with, “Dankeschön.”
“Who was that?” she asked as he set aside the tablet.
“My grandfather’s doctor. He’s Swiss. He has excellent connections with private clinics all over Europe. He’ll ensure Hildy is taken into a good one.”
She snorted. “Neither of us has the kind of funds that will underwrite a private clinic arranged by a posh specialist from Switzerland. I can barely afford the extra fees for the one I’m hoping will take her.”
“I’ll do this for you, to put your mind at ease.”
Her mind blanked for a full ten seconds.
“Mikolas,” she finally sputtered. “I want to do it. I definitely don’t want to be in your debt over it!” She ignored the fact that he had already decided she owed him.
Men expect things when they do you a favor, she heard Hildy saying.
A lurching sensation yanked at her heart, like a curtain being pulled aside on its rungs, exposing her at her deepest level. “What kind of sex do you think you’re going to get out of me that would possibly compensate you for something like that? Because I can assure you, I’m not that good! You’ll be disappointed.”
So disappointed.
Had she just said “you’ll”? Like she was a sure thing?
She tightened her arms across herself, refusing to look at him as this confrontation took the direction she had hoped it wouldn’t: right into the red-light district of Sexville.
* * *
“If that sounds like I just agreed to have sex with you, that’s not what I meant,” Viveka bit out, voice less strident, but still filled with ire.
Mikolas couldn’t think of another woman he’d encountered with such an easily tortured conscience or with such a valiant determination to protect people she cared about while completely disregarding the cost to herself.
She barely seemed real. He was in danger of being moved by her depth of loyalty toward her aunt. A jaded part of him had to question whether she was doing exactly what she claimed she wasn’t: trying to manipulate him into underwriting the old woman’s care, but unlike most women in his sphere, she wasn’t offering sex as compensation for making her problems go away.
While he was finding the idea of her coming to his bed motivated by anything other than the same passion that gripped him more intolerable by the second.
“Let us be clear,” he said with abrupt decision. “The debt you owe me is the loss of a wife.”
She didn’t move, but her blue eyes lifted to fix on him, watchful and limitless as the sky.
“My intention was to marry, honeymoon this week, then throw a reception for my new bride, introducing her to a social circle that has been less than welcoming to someone with my pedigree when I only ever had a mistress du jour on my arm.”
Being an outsider didn’t bother him. He had conditioned himself not to need approval or acceptance from anyone. He preferred his own company and had his grandfather to talk to if he grew bored with himself.
But ostracism didn’t sit well with a nature that demanded to overcome any circumstance. The more he worked at growing the corporation, the more he recognized the importance of networking with the mainstream. Socializing was an annoying way to spend his valuable time, but necessary.
“Curiosity, if nothing else, would have brought people to the party,” he continued. “The permanence of my marriage would have set the stage for developing other relationships. You understand? Wives don’t form friendships with women they never see again. Husbands don’t encourage their wives to invite other men’s temporary liaisons for drinks or dinner.”
“Because they’re afraid their wives will hear about their own liaisons?” she hazarded with an ingenuous blink.
Really, no sense of self-preservation.
“It’s a question of investment. No one wants to put time or money into something that lacks a stable future. I was gaining more than Grigor’s company by marrying. It was a necessary shift in my image.”
Viveka shook her head. “Trina would have been hopeless at what you’re talking about. She’s sweet and funny, loves to cook and pick flowers for arrangements. You couldn’t ask for a kinder ear if you need to vent, but playing the society wife? Making small talk about haute couture and trips to the Maldives? You, with your sledgehammer personality, would have crushed her before she was dressed, let alone an evening trying to find her place in the pecking order of upper-crust hens.”
“Sledgehammer,” he repeated, then accused facetiously, “Flirt.”
She blushed. It was pretty and self-conscious and fueled by this ivory-tusked, sexual awareness they were both pretending to ignore. Her gaze flashed to his, naked and filled with last night’s trance-like kiss. Her nipples pricked to life beneath the pink of her shirt. So did the flesh between his legs. The moment became so sexually infused, he almost lost the plot.
That’s how he wanted it to be between them: pure reaction. Not installment payments.
He reined himself in with excruciating effort, throat tight and body readied with tension as he continued.
“Circulating with the woman who broke up my wedding is not ideal, but will look better than escorting a rebound after being thrown over. Since you’ll be with me until I’ve neutralized Grigor, we will be able to build that same message of constancy.”
“What do you mean about neutralizing Grigor?”
“I spoke to him this morning. He’s not pleased with my takeover or the fact you’re staying with me. You need some serious protections in place. Did you have your mother’s death investigated?”
That seemed to throw her. Her face spasmed with emotion.
“I was only nine when it happened so it was years before I really put it all together and thought he could have done it. I was fourteen when I asked the police to look into it, but they didn’t take me seriously. The police on the island are in his pocket. The whole island is and I don’t really blame them. I’ve learned myself that you play by his rules or lose everything. Probably the only reason he didn’t kill me for making a statement was because it would have been awfully suspicious if something happened to me right after my complaint. But stirring up questions was one of the reasons he kicked me out. Why?”
“I will hire a private investigator to see what we can find. If something can be proved and he’s put in prison, you’ll be out of his reach.”
“That could take years!”
“And will make him that much more incensed with you in the short term,” he said drily. “But as you say, if he’s under suspicion, it wouldn’t look good if anything happened to you. I think it will afford you protection in the long term.”
“You’re going to start an investigation, take care of my aunt and protect me from Grigor and all I have to do is pretend to be your girlfriend.” Her voice rang with disbelief. “For how long?”
“At least until the merger completes and the investigation shows some results. Play your part well and you might even earn my forgiveness for disrupting my life so thoroughly.”
Her laugh was ragged and humorless. “And sex?”
She tossed her head, affecting insouciance, but the small frown between her brows told him she was anxious. That aggravated him. He could think of nothing else but discovering exactly how incendiary the
y would be together. If she wasn’t equally obsessed, he was at a disadvantage.
Not something he ever endured.
With a casual flick of his hand, he proclaimed, “Like today’s fine weather, we’ll enjoy it because it’s there.”
Did a little shadow of disappointment pass behind her eyes? What did she expect? Lies about falling in love? They really were at an impasse if she expected that ruse.
Her mouth pursed to disguise what might have been a brief tremble. She pushed to stand. “Yes, well, the almanac is predicting heavy frost. Dress warm.” She reached for her bag. “I’m going to my room.”
“Leave your passport with me.”
She turned back to regard him with what he was starting to think of as her princess look, very haughty and down the nose. “Why?”
“To arrange travel visas.”
“To where?”
“Wherever I need you to be.”
“Give me a ‘for instance.’”
“Asia, eventually, but you wanted to go to Athens, didn’t you? There’s a party tonight. Do as you’re told and I’ll let you off the boat to come with me.”
Her spine went very straight at that patronizing remark. Her unfettered breasts were not particularly heavy, but magnificent in their shape and firmness and chill-sharpened points. He was going to go out of his mind if he didn’t touch her again soon.
As if she read his thoughts, her brows tugged together with conflict. She was no doubt thinking that the return of her purse and arrival in Athens equaled an excellent opportunity to set him in the rearview mirror.
He tensed, waiting out the minutes of her indecision. Oddly, it was not unlike the anticipation of pain. His breath stilled in his lungs, throat tight, as he willed her to do as he said.
Do not make me ask again.
Helplessness flashed in her expression before she ducked her head and drew her passport out of her bag, hand trembling as she held it out to him.
A debilitating rush of relief made his own arm feel like it didn’t even belong to him. He reached to take it.