by Dani Collins
She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
She didn’t. She felt like she was going to pass out. “Can I use the loo?”
“No.” Someone knocked and the agent accepted a file, glancing over the contents before looking at her with more interest. “Tell me about Mikolas Petrides.”
“Why?” Her heart tripped just hearing his name. Instantly she was plunged into despair at having broken off with him. When she had left Paris, she had told herself her feelings toward Mikolas were tied up in his protecting her from Grigor, but as the miles between them piled up, she kept thinking of other things: how he’d saved her life. How he’d brought her a life jacket, and said all the right things that night in Athens. How he’d taught her to fight. And make love.
Tears came into her eyes, but now was not the time.
“It looks like you’ve been traveling with him,” the agent said. “That’s an infamous family to truck with.”
“The money has nothing to do with him!” That was a small lie. Once Viveka had spilled to her sister how she had come to be Mikolas’s mistress, Trina had gone straight to her father’s safe and emptied it of the cash Grigor had kept there.
Use this for Hildy. She’s my aunt, too. I don’t want you in his debt.
Viveka had balked, secretly wanting the tie to Mikolas. Trina had accused her of suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Her sister had matured a lot with her marriage and the death of Grigor. She had actually invited Viveka to live with them, but Viveka didn’t want to be in that house, on that island, with newlyweds being tested by Trina’s reversal of fortunes, since Grigor had indeed left Trina a considerable amount of money. Truth be told, Trina and Stephanos had a lot to work through.
So did Viveka. The two weeks with her sister had been enormously rejuvenating, but now it was time to finally, truly, take the wheel on her own life.
“Look.” She sounded as ragged as she felt. “My half sister came into some money through the death of her father. My aunt is in a private facility. It’s expensive. My sister was trying to help. That’s all.”
“Are you sure you didn’t steal the money from Petrides? Because your flight path looks like a rabbit trying to outrun a fox.”
“He wouldn’t care if I did,” she muttered, thinking about how generous he’d always been.
The agent’s brows went up.
“I’m kidding! Don’t involve him.” All that work on his part—a lifetime of building himself into the head of a legitimate enterprise—and she was going to tumble it with one stupid quip? Nice job, Viveka.
“Tell me about your relationship with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You slept with him?”
“Yes. And no,” she rushed on, guessing what he was going to say next. “Not for twenty-five thousand euros.”
“Why did you break it off?”
“Reasons.”
“Don’t be smart, Ms. Brice. I’m your only friend right now. What was the problem? A lover’s tiff? And you helped yourself to a little money for a fresh start?”
“There was no tiff.” He didn’t love her. That was the tiff. He would never love her and she loved him so much. “I’m telling you, the money has nothing to do with him. I have nothing to do with him. Not anymore.”
She was going to cry now, and completely humiliate herself.
* * *
Mikolas was standing at the head of a boardroom table when his phone vibrated.
Viveka’s picture flashed onto the screen. It was a photo he’d taken stealthily one day when creeping up on her playing backgammon with his grandfather. He’d perfectly caught her expression as she’d made a strong play, excited triumph brightening her face.
“Where’s Vivi?” his grandfather had asked when Mikolas returned from Paris without her.
“Gone.”
Pappoús had been stunned. Visibly heartbroken, which had concerned Mikolas. He hadn’t considered how Viveka’s leaving would affect his grandfather.
Pappoús had been devastated for another reason. “Another broken heart on my conscience,” he’d said with tears in his eyes.
“It’s not your fault.” He was the one who had forced her to stay with him. He’d seduced her and tried not to lead her on, but she’d been hurt all the same. “She liked you,” he tried to mollify. “If anything, you gave her some of what I couldn’t.”
“No,” his grandfather had said with deep emotion. “If I hadn’t left you suffering, you would not be so damaged. You would be able to love her as she’s meant to be loved.”
The words stung, but they weren’t meant to be cruel. The truth hurt.
“You have never forgiven me and I wouldn’t deserve it if you did,” Pappoús went on. “I allowed your father to become a monster. He gave you nothing but a name that put you through hell. That is my fault.” His shaking fist struck his chest.
He was so white and anguished, Mikolas tensed, worried his grandfather would put himself into cardiac arrest.
“I wasn’t a fit man to take you in, not when you needed someone to heal you,” Pappoús declared. “My love came too late and isn’t enough. You don’t trust it. So you’ve rejected her. She doesn’t deserve that pain and it comes back to me. It’s my fault she’s suffering.”
Mikolas had wanted to argue that what Viveka felt toward him wasn’t real love, but if anyone knew how to love, it was her. She loved her sister to the ends of the earth. She experienced every nuance of life at a level that was far deeper than he ever let himself feel.
“She’ll find love,” Mikolas had growled, and was instantly uncomfortable with the idea of another man holding her at night, making her believe in forever. He hated the invisible man who would make her smile in ways he never had, because she finally felt loved in return.
“Vivi is resilient,” his grandfather agreed with poignant pride.
She was very resilient.
When Mikolas had received the final report on Grigor’s responsibility for her mother’s death, he had been humbled. The report had compiled dozens of reports of assault and other wrongdoings across the island, but it was the unearthed statement made by Viveka that had destroyed him.
How much difference was there between one man pulling his tooth and another bruising a girl’s eye? Mikolas had lost his fingernails. Viveka had lost her mother. He had been deliberately humiliated, forced to beg for air and water—death even—until his DNA had saved him. She had made her way to a relative who hadn’t wanted her and had kept enough of a conscience to care for the woman through a tragic decline.
Viveka would find love because, despite all she had endured, she was willing to love.
She wasn’t a coward, ducking and weaving, running and hiding, staying in Paris, saying, It’s better that it ends here.
It wasn’t better. It was torment. Deprivation gnawed relentlessly at him.
But the moment her face flashed on his phone, respite arrived.
“I have to take this,” Mikolas said to his board, voice and hand trembling. He slid his thumb to answer, dizzy with how just anticipating the sound of her voice eased his suffering. “Yes?”
“I thought I should warn you,” she said with remorse. “I’ve kind of been arrested.”
“Arrested.” He was aware of everyone stopping their murmuring to stare. Of all the things he might have expected, that was the very last. But that was Viveka. “Are you okay? Where are you? What happened?”
Old instincts flickered, reminding him he was revealing too much, but in this moment he didn’t care about himself. He was too concerned for her.
“I’m fine.” Her voice was strained. “It’s a long story and Trina is trying to find me a lawyer, but they keep bringing up your name. I didn’t want to blindside you if it winds up in the
papers or something. You’ve worked so hard to get everything just so. I hate to cast shadows. I’m really sorry, Mikolas.”
Only Viveka would call to forewarn him and ask nothing for herself. How in the world had he ever felt so threatened by this woman?
“Where are you?” he repeated with more insistence. “I’ll have a lawyer there within the hour.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MIKOLAS’S LAWYER LEFT Viveka at Mikolas’s London flat, since it was around the corner from his own. She was on her very last nerve and it was two in the morning. She didn’t try to get a taxi to her aunt’s house. She didn’t have the key and would have to ask the neighbor for one tomorrow.
So she prevailed upon Mikolas again and didn’t bother trying to find bedding for his guest room. She threw a huge pity party for herself in the shower, crying until she couldn’t stand, then she folded Mikolas’s black robe into a firm hug around her and crawled into his bed with a box of tissues that she dabbed against her leaking eyes.
Sleep was her blessed escape from feeling like she’d only alienated him further with this stupid questioning. The customs agents were hanging on to the money for forty-eight hours, because they could, but the lawyer seemed to think they’d give it up after that. She really didn’t care, she was just so exhausted and dejected and she missed Mikolas so bad...
A weight came onto the mattress beside her and a warm hand cupped the side of her neck. The lamp came on as a man’s voice said, “Viveka.”
She jerked awake, sitting up in shock.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s just me. I was trying not to scare you.”
She clutched her hand across her heart. “What are you doing here?”
His image impacted her. Not just his natural sex appeal in a rumpled shirt and open collar. Not just his stubbled cheeks and bruised eyes. There was such tenderness in his gaze, her fragile composure threatened to crumple.
“Your lawyer said you were in Barcelona.” She had protested against Mikolas sending the lawyer, insisting she was just informing him as a courtesy, but he’d got most of the story out of her before her time on the telephone had run out.
“I was.” His hooded lids lowered to disguise what he was thinking and his tongue touched his lip. “And I’m sorry to wake you, but I didn’t want to scare you if I crawled in beside you.”
She followed his gaze to the crushed tissues littering the bed and hated herself for being so obvious. “I was being lazy about making up the other bed. I’ll go—”
“No. We need to talk. I don’t want to wait.” He tucked her hair back from her cheek, behind her ear. “Vivi.”
* * *
“Why did you just call me that?” She searched his gaze, her brow pulled into a wrinkle of uncertainty, her pretty bottom lip pinched by her teeth.
“Because I want to. I have wanted to. For a long time.” It wasn’t nearly so unsettling to admit that as he’d feared. He had expected letting her into his heart would be terrifying. Instead, it was like coming home. “Everyone else does.”
A tentative hope lit her expression. “Since when do you want to be like everyone else?”
He acknowledged that with a flick of his brow, but the tiny flame in his chest grew bigger and warmer.
“Since when do I tell you or anyone what I want? Is that what you’re really wondering?” He wanted so badly to hold her. Gather all that healing warmth she radiated against him and close up the final gaps in his soul. He made himself give her what she needed first. “I want you, Vivi. Not just for sex, but for things I can’t even articulate. That scares me to say, but I want you to know it.”
She sucked in a breath and covered her mouth with both hands.
* * *
This can’t be real, Viveka thought, blinking her gritty eyes. She pinched herself and he let out a husk of a laugh, immediately trying to erase the sting with a gentle rub of his thumb.
His hand stayed on her arm. His gaze lifted to her face while a deeply tender glow in his eyes went all the way through her to her soul.
“I was terrified that if I let myself care for you, someone would use that against me. So what did I do? I pushed you away and inflicted the pain on myself. I was right to fear how much it would hurt if you were out of my reach. It’s unbearable.”
“Oh, Mikolas.” Her mouth trembled. “You inflicted it on both of us. I want to be with you. If you want me, I’m right here.”
* * *
He gathered her up, unable to help himself. For a long time he held her, just absorbing the beauty of having her against him. He was aware of a tickling trickle on his cheek and dipped his head to dry his cheek against her hair.
“Thank you for saying you want me,” she said. Her slender arms tightened until she pressed the breath from his lungs. “It’s enough, you know.” She lifted her red eyes to regard him. “I won’t ask you to say you love me. But I should have said it myself before I left Paris. I’ve been sorry that I didn’t. I was trying to protect myself from being more hurt than I was. It didn’t work,” she said ruefully. “I love you so much.”
“You’re too generous.” He cupped her cheek, wiping away her tear track with the pad of his thumb, humbled. “I want your love, Vivi. I will pay any price for that. Don’t let me be a coward. Make me give you what you need. Make me say it and mean it.”
“You’re not a coward.” Fresh tears of empathy welled in her eyes, seeping into all those cracks and fissures around his heart, widening them so there was more room for her to come in.
“I was afraid to tell you I was coming,” he admitted. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here if you knew. That you wouldn’t let me try to convince you to stay with me.”
Viveka’s heart was pattering so fast she could hardly breathe. “You only have to ask,” she reminded.
* * *
“Ask.” Mikolas smoothed her hair back from her face, gazing at her, humbly offering his heart as a flawed human being. “I can’t insult you by asking you to stay with me. I must ask you the big question. Will you be my wife?”
Viveka’s heart staggered and lurched. “Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious!” He was offended, but wound up chuckling. “I will have the right woman under the veil this time, too. Actually,” he added with a light kiss on her nose, “I did the first time. I just didn’t know it yet.”
Tears of happiness filled her eyes. She threw her arms around his neck, needing to kiss him then. To hold him and love him. “Yes. Of course I’ll marry you!”
Their kiss was a poignant, tender reunion, making all of her ache. The physical sparks between them were stronger than ever, but the moment was so much more than that, imbued with trust and openness. It was expansive and scary and uncharted.
Beautiful.
“I want to make love to you,” he said, dragging his mouth to her neck. “Love, Vivi. I want to wake next to you and make the best of every day we are given together.”
“Me, too,” she assured him with a catch of joy in her voice. “I love you.”
EPILOGUE
“PAPA, I’M COLD.”
Viveka heard the words from her studio. She was in the middle of a still life of Callia’s toys for the advanced painting class she’d been accepted into. Three years of sketching and pastels, oils and watercolors, and she was starting to think she wasn’t half bad. Her husband was always quick to praise, of course, but he was shamelessly biased.
She wiped the paint off her fingers before she picked up the small pink jumper her daughter had left there on the floor. When she came into the lounge, however, she saw that it was superfluous. Mikolas was already turning from his desk to scoop their three-year-old into his lap.
Callia stood on his thigh to curl her arms around his neck before bending her knees and snuggling into h
is chest, light brown curls tucked trustingly against his shoulder. “I love you,” she told him in her high, doll-like voice.
“I love you, too,” Mikolas said with the deep timbre of sincerity that absolutely undid Viveka every time she heard it.
“I love Leo, too,” she said in a poignant little tone, mentioning her cousin, Trina’s newborn son. She had cried when they’d had to come home. She looked up at Mikolas. “Do you love Leo?”
“He spit up on my new shirt,” Mikolas reminded drily, then magnanimously added, “But yes, I do.”
Callia giggled, then began turning it into a game. “Do you love Theítsa Trina?”
“I’ve grown very fond of her, yes.”
“Do you love Theíos Stephanos?”
“I consider him a good friend.”
“Did you love Pappoús?” She pointed at the photo on his desk.
“I did love him, very much.”
Callia didn’t remember her great-grandfather, but he had held her swaddled form, saying to Viveka, She has your eyes, and proclaiming Mikolas to be a very lucky man.
Mikolas had agreed wholeheartedly.
Losing Erebus had been hard for him. For both of them, really. Fortunately, they’d had a newborn to distract them. Falling pregnant had been a complete surprise to both of them, but the shock had quickly turned to excitement and they were so enamored with family life, they were talking of expanding it even more.
“Do you love Mama?” Callia asked.
Mikolas’s head came up and he looked across at Viveka, telling her he’d been aware of her the whole time. His love for her shone like a beacon across the space between them.
“My love for your mother is the strongest thing in me.”
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Dani Collins
BOUGHT BY HER ITALIAN BOSS
THE CONSEQUENCE HE MUST CLAIM
THE MARRIAGE HE MUST KEEP
VOWS OF REVENGE
SEDUCED INTO THE GREEK’S WORLD
Available now!