He motioned the bartender toward his glass, and stared down at the amber liquid. That emptiness had been the first feeling, and he had denied it, but he had never expected what came behind it. He had never imagined that he, Nikos Katrakis, could hurt.
Because he knew that was the only word to describe the agony in his chest, the heat of it, the impossible weight of all that he had lost. He was not ill, as he had first assumed. He simply ached. He could not sleep. He was irritable by day and his head was a vivid mess—and she was the only thing he saw. He imagined what she must have done that day, how she must have felt. He imagined how she had received the news, and how soon she had accepted what, he knew, she could not have wanted to believe could be true. How long had it taken? What had she felt? He tortured himself with images of her tears—or, worse, her bravery. Then, even more insidious, he imagined different endings to the same day. What if he had not left her there? What if he had chosen to marry her despite everything? What if he could lay beside her tonight, smelling the sweet scent of her hair, the faint musk of her skin?
What if he had let himself believe her when she’d claimed to love him?
Nikos growled under his breath, cursing himself in every language he knew. Now that he had done what he set out to do, he could not see how it had consumed him for so long. What had he won? What had he achieved? Why did it all feel like so much wasted breath and misery, for absolutely no reason?
How could he have prized a loyalty to people who had disdained him over what he should have owed to Tristanne—the only person in all his life who had looked at him with joy in her eyes, however briefly? She had told him that she loved him, and he had responded by abandoning her at the altar. He was no better than an animal. He was exactly the kind of scum he had spent his life attempting to distance himself from. He, who had always vowed that he would never be Peter Barbery, had become something far worse. At least Peter had ended things with Althea himself—he had not allowed his absence to speak for him.
What kind of man was he, that he could have done what he had done?
“She is not worth it, my friend,” the bartender said, shaking Nikos out of his brooding contemplation of his whiskey.
Nikos focused on him, surprised that the man dared to speak to him after weeks of careful silence.
“Is she not?” he asked lightly. “How do you know?”
“She never is,” the man said. He shrugged. “What do they say? You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them, yes? It is always the same old story.”
He moved down the bar to answer another patron’s demands, but Nikos felt frozen into place. It was as if a light had gone off inside of him, and he finally, finally understood.
He was not a man who wallowed—nor one who ever backed down from a challenge, even if the challenge was of his own making. He had more money than he could ever spend. He had homes in every city that had ever caught his eye. He had come from nothing, and now he had everything. And none of it meant anything to him without Tristanne. He could not live without her scowl, her defiant chin, her thoughtful brown eyes. He did not want to live without her, no matter what her last name was, no matter who her family were, no matter what.
He could not feel this way. It could not continue. He could not live without her. It was as simple as that.
Everything else was negotiable.
Tristanne was not surprised, necessarily, when the sleek black car pulled to a stop beside her as she walked back along the avenue toward the little house she and Vivienne had rented when they’d first arrived back in Vancouver. She was not surprised when Nikos unfolded himself from the back of the car, his long, hard frame as lethally graceful as she remembered.
But that did not mean she was happy about it, either—to look up from her life and see him. To feel him steal all the light from the world and the breath from her body. She stopped dead in her tracks, a carrier bag swinging from her arm, and stared.
He had commanded all the light in the sunlit glory of the Mediterranean; on a street in a Vancouver neighborhood, gray with the start of the fall rains, he was magnificent—like a supernova, for all that he was dressed in black. Dark black sweater, charcoal-colored trousers and that sleek black hair that very nearly tousled at the ends. Tristanne ignored the wild tumult of her heart, her nerves, her stomach as he moved toward her. He looked graver than she remembered—more grim. No hint of that half smile on his full lips, no gleam at all in his tea-steeped eyes.
She told herself she was glad. That it made him a stranger to her. And there was no need at all for her to talk to a stranger.
“I imagine you hate me,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her.
For a moment she could only blink. Then Tristanne felt a wave of something deep and messy wash over her, through her. Rage? Grief? She could not distinguish between the two.
“No preamble?” she threw at him. “No greeting, even? Do I deserve so little from you, Nikos? Not even the sort of courtesy you would extend to a stranger?”
She started moving then, jerky and rough, but she could not stay there. She could not look at him. She needed to barricade herself in her new bedroom, cry into her pillow and tell herself that she did not still yearn for a man who could treat her like this. She could not.
“Did you mean what you said?” he asked. He kept pace with her with no apparent effort, which made her even more furious.
“We said a great many things, you and I,” she muttered, scowling at the ground. “One of us meant what was said and the other was nothing but a very practiced liar—so you will have to be more specific.”
She could not seem to keep her composure any longer. She had cried more in the past weeks than she had in the previous long years of her life. She hardly recognized herself anymore. She was what he had made her—this smashed, ruined, broken thing.
“You are crying,” he said, as if he was horrified. She stopped walking and whirled on him, wishing she was stronger, bigger. Wishing she could make him feel what she felt. Wishing she could hurt him.
“I do that often,” she snapped. “Congratulations, Nikos. You undid almost thirty years of self-control in one day.”
“And yet this is the man you claimed to love,” he said, his voice darker and rougher than she remembered. Almost as if he hurt, too, though she knew that must be impossible. “This monster, who would do this terrible, unforgivable thing!”
“I know what you did,” she gritted out. “You did it to me. But why are you here? What could you possibly want?” She laughed then, the kind of laugh that was torn from inside of her, hollow and broken. “I have to tell you, Nikos—I do not think there is anything left.”
“I am not a man worth loving,” he told her. “You were a fool to say such a thing to me, to admit to such a weakness. You should count yourself lucky that I did not believe you—that I did not hold you to such an insane pledge.”
She opened her mouth to scream at him, to demand he leave her before she broke into even tinier fragments, but something stopped her. His eyes were too dark. His mouth was too hard. If he was another man, she would have said he looked almost…desperate.
“Is that why you came all the way to Vancouver?” she asked him, her voice uneven. “To explain to me why I should not have fallen in love with you?”
“There is nothing in me worth loving,” he said, his gaze intent. “You need only look at my history. My mother. My father. My sister. All these people abandoned me, hated me. All of them. One family member, perhaps, could be excused away as an anomaly, but all of them? One must look to the common denominator, Tristanne. One must be logical.”
“Logical,” she managed to say. She shook her head, as if that could make what he said make sense. “You think this is logical? You truly do, don’t you?”
She searched his face, that dark face she had never thought she’d see again, though in the dark of night, when she could no longer hide painful truths from herself, she’d hoped. She saw the truth in it—that he beli
eved what he said. That he had not believed her when she’d said she loved him. That he did not—could not—know what love was. It made her ache. For him, in ways she knew she should not.
“It is as if you have some hold on me,” he said, his voice almost accusing. “I spent years dreaming of revenge, and now I dream only of you. I destroy everyone I touch.” He shook his head. “I am a curse.”
Hadn’t she said the same thing herself? Hadn’t she screamed it into her pillow to muffle the noise, so as not to disturb her mother? So why, now, did she feel herself frowning up at him, as if she wished to contradict him? As if she wanted to argue with him—make him treat himself better than he had ever treated her?
What was the matter with her?
She looked around as if she might find help, or answers, on the sidewalk. But the day was chilly and wet. Everything was gray, except for Nikos, and that hard look in his eyes that made her want to cry and not, for once, for herself.
She could not pretend to herself—when he stood in front of her, when he was within reach, when her palms itched to touch him and her body ached to press against him—that her feelings had changed at all. She wanted it all to have disappeared, or for the anger and betrayal to have bleached away what she’d felt for him.
“I can’t blame you for hating me,” he said quietly. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and she had the distinct impression that he was uncomfortable. He, who had never seemed to show the slightest bit of uneasiness. It sent an arrow spearing through her, piercing through her anger, making it wither away, leaving the maelstrom beneath.
“I want to hate you,” she said, with more honesty than he deserved. “But I don’t.”
“You should,” he bit out. “If you had any sense of self-preservation at all, you would.”
“You are the expert,” she retorted. “Aren’t you? Hate, revenge, deceit. I believe that is your forte, not mine. I merely wanted to marry you. More fool, me.”
“I do not care about revenge!” he burst out. “I wish I had never heard the word!”
“How can that be true?” she asked, dashing the wetness from her eyes with the backs of her hand. “Peter told me. What he did to you. To your family. To your sister—”
“My sister took her own life, with her own hand. Nothing Peter did can match what I did to you,” Nikos said, in that low, painful voice. “I promise you.”
“You promise me,” she echoed. She laughed again, another hollow sound. “Please, Nikos. Do not make me any more promises. I do not think I can survive them!”
He looked at her for a long moment, those dark eyes seeing into her, through her. Seeing far more than they should.
“I cannot pretend I did not deceive you, because I did. I do not deserve you, Tristanne, but…” His eyes when they met hers were so dark. Tortured. His hands reached out, but did not touch her. “Please believe me,” he whispered. “I cannot let you go.”
She felt the truth of things well up in her, then, despite everything. She felt that fierce, uncompromising love for him soar through her, making her feel both impossibly dizzy and firmly grounded at the same time. It moved through her like the blood in her veins. Like the air in her lungs. An irrevocable biological necessity without which she could not walk, talk, live. And so she knew why she could not run away. Why she could not bring herself to leave him here on the street, as she should. Why she would not abandon him, even when he all but told her to do so.
My dragon, she thought, and it felt like a promise. A vow.
She could not remember who she had been before him, or who she had tried to be during these past weeks. She could not imagine a future without him in it. She had…simply kept standing, because there was nothing else to do. But now that he was here, she could feel the difference singing through her, lighting her up from within, even though it hurt—even though none of this was easy, and all of it was far more painful than she could ever have imagined she could bear.
“Tristanne,” he said, as if her name was a plea. His eyes were agonized, as dark and stormy as she felt. “I tried to let you go, but I cannot do it.”
She reached over and took his hand, exulting in the feeling of his skin against hers, the heat of him, the sense of rightness that flooded through her. What else could she do? She had already lost everything, and survived it. He had already done his worst. And even so, she loved him. She could not hide from that inconvenient truth. It might not be wise. It might not make sense. But the inescapable truth of it felt like heat, like dragonfire, and burned its way through her, marking her forever. As his.
“Then do not let me go,” she said over the lump in her throat, looking at him with all she felt bright and hot in her gaze. Because she had already chosen, long ago, to be brave if she could not be safe. She had already decided. “If you dare.”
Chapter Seventeen
“WHAT am I to do with you?” he asked her much later, his voice rough. He sat next to her in the luxurious depths of his private jet’s leather seats. Far below them, North America was spread out like a patchwork quilt, and above them was nothing but blue sky and sun. He reached over and pulled a blonde wave into his hand, wrapping it around one finger. He tugged on it slightly.
“Marry me, apparently,” she said. She did not shiver away from his dark golden gaze. She leaned closer. She had wanted him when she was just a girl. She had chosen him on his yacht, so long ago now. Then in the villa. And again, just yesterday, on a street in Vancouver. She had chosen him. “That is why we are flying across the world, isn’t it?”
“And what makes you think you can handle such a thing?” he asked, searching her face with a deep frown marring his. “I warn you, Tristanne, I do not improve upon a longer acquaintance. Familiarity breeds—”
“Contempt?” she finished for him. She wanted to kiss him, though she did not dare, not when he was in so dark a mood. “Surely not. You are Nikos Katrakis. Who alive could be more fascinating?”
“I am not joking.” His voice was stark, and she understood, suddenly, that he was terrified. This strong, harsh, ruthless man. She had this power over him. She reached over and put a hand on his muscled thigh.
You must love who you love, Vivienne had said with a shrug when Tristanne had haltingly explained that, indeed, she planned to marry Nikos after all, despite everything. And it is only cowards who do not follow their hearts, Tristanne. Remember that.
“I am not from your world, much as I pretend to be,” Nikos said, almost more to himself than to Tristanne. He drummed his fingers against the polished armrest. “People enjoy my money, my power, but do not mistake it—they never forget where I came from.”
“Nor should they,” she shot back at once. His head snapped around in surprise. “You say that as if it is something shameful. There is no shame in your past, Nikos. You overcame near-insurmountable obstacles, and you did it with absolutely no help from anyone. Not even your own father.” She shook her head. “You should be proud.”
“You do not understand,” he began.
“And who, may I ask, finds it so impossible to overlook your origins?” she asked, cutting him off. “People like my brother? Pampered and spoiled, handed vast fortunes made by others? Why should you care what they think?”
He stared at her then, his gaze hotter and more flinty than she had ever seen it. There was no hint of gold there, only dark like the night. Possessive. Implacable. A deep fire that she knew, low in her bones, was for her alone.
“You cannot take it back,” he told her, his voice flat. If she did not know him better, she might have thought him unemotional. “If you marry me, Tristanne, that is the end of it.”
“As usual,” she said, slipping her arm through his and tilting her head back to look at him, so strong and grim against the bright light all around them, flooding into the cabin, “you have it all wrong. This is only the beginning.”
And then, finally, she leaned over and pressed her mouth to his.
He knew the moment she wo
ke.
He turned away from the full moon that shone above the dark sea, and watched as the light skimmed into the room and illuminated her. His wife.
He had married her in a private ceremony in the very spot he had abandoned her before; the symmetry healing, somehow. And now she was his, forever.
Nikos could not seem to get his head around the concept.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a mere thread of sound. He moved across the moonlit room to the bed, and lowered himself down to sit beside her. He wanted to take her into his arms again, to lose himself in her body as he had done so many times before—as he had done this very night—but there were too many questions swirling around them and he could not ignore them any longer.
Though part of him wanted to ignore them forever.
“I do not understand,” he said quietly.
Next to him, she sat up, pulling the coverlet with her to drape it around her naked shoulders. Her hair tumbled wild and free around her, emphasizing the delicate arch of her collarbone, the creamy softness of her skin. She was exquisite. And she was his. She had chosen him, after everything.
“What is there to understand?” she asked, that warm humor lacing her tone, making him nearly forget himself. “It is the middle of the night. Surely understanding can wait until dawn.”
“Why would you do this?” he asked, the question ripped from him as if by unseen hands. He did not want to know the answer. Yet he had to know. “After all that I did to you? Why would you not run as fast and as far as you could?”
Her eyes seemed to melt in the darkness, and she reached over to run her fingers along his shoulder, then down to his bicep before dropping her hand back to the bed.
“You already know why.”
“Love,” he said, harshly. Almost angrily. “Is that what you mean? Love does not exist, Tristanne. It is a lie people tell themselves. A way to hide, to make excuses.”
One Reckless Decision (Mills & Boon M&B): Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past (Special Releases) Page 32