Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  He would not do this! something inside of her howled. Not after she had told him everything. Not after all that had passed between them. She thought of that archway in Florence—the way that he had held her then. The fierce, consuming way he had made love to her. So raw, so desperate. How could none of that be real?

  Peter laughed, unpleasantly. “I hope you enjoyed your low-class love affair while it lasted, Tristanne. I hope it was worth the humiliation we will now face in front of the entire world! Our father must be turning over in his grave!”

  “Something must have happened to him,” Tristanne said, but even she could not believe it at this point. Two hours and thirty-six minutes, and Nikos was not here. He was not coming. He was not coming. Though, in truth, she was still hoping. That he had been in a car accident, perhaps. His broken body in a hospital bed, and wouldn’t they all be so ashamed of their revolting speculation—

  But then there was a commotion near the door, and one of his servants stood there, looking embarrassed. And she knew before he said a single word.

  “I am so sorry, miss,” he said, not making eye contact, wringing his hands in front of him. “But Mr. Katrakis left this morning. He took the helicopter into Athens, and he has no plans to return.”

  Tristanne got up then. It was that or simply collapse into herself. She launched herself to her feet, and moved away from the chair, looking desperately around the stark, white room as if something in it might calm her, or make this nightmare better somehow. He has no plans to return.

  “What a surprise,” Peter snapped, advancing on her. His face was screwed up with rage, and that black hatred that had always emanated from him in waves. “He remembered that he is a Katrakis and you are a Barbery! Of course he could not marry you! Of course he chose instead to humiliate you! I should have expected this from the start!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told Peter, through lips that felt numb. She wanted to scream, to run, to hide…but where on earth could she possibly go? Her old life in Vancouver? How could it possibly fit her now? How could she ever pretend she had not felt what she had felt, nor loved as she still loved, even now, in the darkest of moments? It was choking her. Killing her. And she had the strangest feeling that even should she survive the horror of this moment, what she felt would not diminish at all. She knew it in the exact same, bone-deep way that she had known that Nikos Katrakis would ruin her. She knew it.

  “Did you think he wanted you, Tristanne?” Peter hissed. “Did you imagine he was sufficiently enamored of your charms? The only thing you had that Katrakis wanted was your name.”

  “My name?” She felt as thick, as stupid, as Peter had always told her she was. “Why would he care about my name?”

  “Because he loathes us all,” Peter threw at her. “He swore he would have his revenge on us ten years ago, and congratulations, Tristanne—you have handed it to him on a silver platter!”

  “Peter, please,” Vivienne murmured then. “This is not the time!”

  But Tristanne was watching her brother’s expression, and a prickle of something cold washed over her.

  “What did you do?” she asked. Her fists clenched, as if she wanted to protect Nikos from Peter—but no, that could not be what she felt. She wanted to make sense of what was happening, that was all. There had to be a reason he had abandoned her—there had to be! “What did you do to him?”

  “Katrakis is nothing but trash,” Peter snapped. “Ten years ago he had ideas above his station. He got in over his head in a business deal, and could not handle himself. He lost some money, made some threats.” He shrugged. “I was astounded he ever made anything of himself. I expected him to disappear back into the slime from which he came.”

  “Then let me ask you another way,” Tristanne said coldly, Nikos’s words spinning through her head, their whole history flashing past her as if on a cinema screen. “What does he think that you did?”

  “I believe he blames me for any number of things,” Peter said dismissively. “He had a rather emotional sister, I believe, who fancied herself in love and then claimed she was pregnant. ” He scoffed, and made a face. “He blamed me when she overdosed on sleeping pills, but his own mother was a known drug user. I rather think blood tells, in the end.” His lip curled. “Look at yours.”

  Vivienne made a soft sound, and something ignited inside of Tristanne. She waited to feel the usual wave of shame, of anger, that someone who should love her should find her so disgusting, so worthless. But it never came. All she could think was that this was how her brother chose to speak to her just after she had been left at the altar. This was how he chose to behave. And the worst part was that it was in no way a departure from his usual behavior. He had treated her this way for years—and she had allowed it, because better her than her mother. But why would he stop, now that Gustave was gone? Soon, she had no doubt, he would turn it on her mother directly, and she could not have that.

  She had not gone through this, all of this, to watch Peter destroy Vivienne as she knew he wished to do—as he had already tried to do. She did not know how she would survive the next moment, or the next breath, with the vast, impossible pain that ate her from the inside out. She wondered who she was now that it was over, now that Nikos had left her, and how she might ever put the pieces of herself back together. She had no idea what might become of her.

  But she was still standing, and maybe that was all that mattered. For as long as she could stand, she could protect her mother. Which was why she was here in the first place.

  “You are a monster,” she said softly, but distinctly, to Peter. “I do not think there is a shred of humanity within you. Not one shred.”

  Peter moved closer, his face set into a scowl. Yet Tristanne did not step away. Or shrink back. After all, what could he do to her that Nikos had not already done? Threaten her? Bruise her? Why should she care? The worst had already happened. She was a fool in the eyes of the world, and worse, she was in love with the man who had abandoned her. She had no idea how she would ever get past this. She had no idea where she would start. How could Peter possibly compete?

  “You had better watch yourself, sister,” he hissed, his voice menacing.

  It was the word sister that rang in her, then. That ricocheted inside of her and made her realize that he had never honored that term, not even when they were children. At least her father, for all that he had been cold and dismissive, had performed his fatherly duties. He had fed her, clothed her, paid for her schooling until he no longer felt he could support her choices. And perhaps Nikos had been right to make her question the appropriateness of those choices. It had hurt her at the time that Gustave could not be more supportive of her—but then, that was not at all who Gustave Barbery had been. He might not have been the best father she could have hoped for, but at least he had been a father.

  What had Peter ever done? Tristanne, who had never asked him for anything, had asked him for access to her trust fund a few years early and what was his response? To whore her out at his command, for his purposes. And now, in the worst moment of her life, abandoned at the altar on her wedding day—still wearing her wedding dress—he behaved liked this. If she could have felt something beyond the agony of Nikos’s betrayal, she might have felt sick.

  “I am not your sister,” she told him, feeling more free in that moment than ever before. “I don’t know why I ever cared to honor the relationship when you, clearly, do not. Consider it ended.”

  “How dare you—” he began.

  She turned her back on him, and looked wildly around, her gaze landing on her mother. Beautiful, vibrant Vivienne, so diminished now. So delicate. She was the only family Tristanne had ever had. The only thing worth protecting. And she was worth this, Tristanne told herself fiercely. Her mother was worth any price, no matter how heavy.

  “Mother,” she said, her voice rough enough to be a stranger’s. But then, she felt like a stranger to herself, almost as if she inhabited someone else’s bo
dy. A body Nikos would never love again, never taste again; a body that would never melt into his—she shook the thoughts away, and bit back the sob that threatened to spill out. “I must change out of these clothes, and then we are leaving this place.”

  “Where will we go?” Vivienne asked, like a child, her voice soft. Weak. It only hardened Tristanne’s resolve.

  “You will go directly to Salzburg,” Peter ground out behind her. “Or I will cut you both out like the parasites you are. Do you hear me?”

  “Do what you must,” Tristanne said offhandedly—only to gasp when he reached over and grabbed her arm, hauling her toward him as he had many times before, his fingers digging into the flesh of her arm.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Your pathetic life in Canada? You are useless and she makes you look industrious! Do you imagine you can both work on your backs?”

  Tristanne heard Vivienne’s shocked exclamation, but she focused on Peter’s hard, cold eyes, and let all of her pain and rage build inside of her.

  “I doubt my imagination is half so vivid as yours,” she spat at him. She jerked her arm out of his grasp, shoving back from him with a force that surprised them both. He was stronger than her—and a true bully—but he did not expect her to push back. He dropped his hand. She moved around him, heading for the dressing room door.

  “This is all very impressive, but we both know you’ll come crawling back to me within the month,” he snarled. “Don’t think I will be as generous with you as I was this time.”

  “Believe me,” she threw over her shoulder, her sarcasm practically burning her tongue. “I am well aware of the limits of your generosity.”

  He laughed at her. “And what exactly do you think will become of you, Tristanne?” he taunted her.

  She looked back then. For the last time. She knew in that moment that she would never see Peter again. And in the midst of all the rest of the pain, the horror, that she was not certain she would ever sort out, it ignited one small flare of hope.

  “I will survive,” she told him, and she knew, somehow, that she would. “No thanks to you.”

  All she had to do was keep standing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NIKOS sat in his favorite small bar in Athens, drinking the most expensive liquor available, and told himself he was celebrating.

  He had been celebrating in this manner for weeks now. He had so much to celebrate, after all. He should be overjoyed. The pictures of his aborted, abandoned wedding were in all the papers, the humiliation for the Barberys as extreme as he’d anticipated. He had it on excellent authority that Peter Barbery’s investors had abandoned him, and the Barbery fortunes were in free fall. Peter was expected to declare bankruptcy before the year was out, whether he had faced this truth or not.

  At first, Nikos told himself that the odd feeling that claimed him was no more than the usual letdown after a particularly long campaign. One should expect to feel the absence of focus after living with such a specific goal for so long. It was natural—logical, even. And that was all that it was. There could be no other explanation.

  So he told himself while he closed other deals, racing through them like a madman. A chain of hotels in the Far East. A thoroughbred race horse considered highly likely to win the Triple Crown. A boutique inn on the French Riviera that catered to a very elite, very private few. All deals that should have made him feel that his position—his global dominance—was cemented. Unassailable and assured. All deals that would have had him truly celebrating not so long ago. With the prettiest women, the most expensive wine, in the most glamorous places he could find.

  Instead he found himself on the same bar stool in this same hidden-away bar that he had once worked in, in another lifetime, bussing tables for the actors and actresses who frequented the place. Tonight he swirled a fine whiskey in his glass and stared at nothing, unable to avoid the truth any further.

  He had achieved his ultimate revenge—made all of his dreams come true—and he simply did not care. He had stood at his father’s grave, laid flowers for Althea and her lost child and he had not felt a thing. What a pointless exercise, he had thought, staring down at a stone marker that commemorated the man who had never cared overmuch for him, the girl who had hated him and the baby who had never had a chance. He had become the man his father would be proud of, finally. He knew this was true the moment he realized he simply could not bring himself to care about the family name he had taken all this time to avenge. It was as if he had turned to stone himself.

  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 walk
ed 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.”