The Giannakis Bride

by Spencer, Catherine

  “Enough now,” Dimitrios scolded. “I’m taking you home. Poppy’s asleep for the night and you’re exhausted. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll come back in the morning when she’s more alert and you can give her your gifts then.”

  Still with his arm around her waist, they left the clinic.

  Soon enough, they’d left Kifissia, too, and were following the twisting mountain road back to Rafina. “Doesn’t it bother you, having to drive so far to see her?” Brianna asked, breaking a silence which had lasted almost fifteen minutes.

  “No. I like being on the coast. Sailing’s one of my passions—at least, it used to be, when I had the time and inclination to enjoy it. And it’s better for Poppy to grow up away from the city. The air pollution in Athens grows worse every year.”

  “Did Cecily like Rafina?”

  He let out a soft snort of laughter. “What do you think, Brianna?”

  “She might have found it a little…isolated.”

  “She loathed it,” he said, “although for the first year she pretended it was just what she wanted. But toward the end, she spent hardly any time there at all.”

  Puzzled, she said, “Where did she go?”

  “I had an apartment in the city, in Kolonaki, which I’ve since sold. She stayed there.”

  “Alone? She didn’t take Poppy with her?”

  “She didn’t take Poppy. And she wasn’t alone.”

  Shocked speechless by the implication in his words, she stared at him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “She had company. Of the male kind.”

  “Why didn’t you divorce her?”

  “I didn’t care enough to bother. I—”

  The car, until then purring smoothly along the unfolding ribbon of road like a sleek, well-bred cat, suddenly rebelled. For no apparent reason, the engine simply gave up the ghost. The only sound to break the silence was the soft hiss of the tires, and Dimitrios cursing as he wrestled with the steering wheel.

  Somehow, before it lost all forward momentum, he managed to bring the vehicle to the shoulder of the highway and set the emergency brake. “Son of a bitch!” he remarked pleasantly.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I’m not out of gas, so that eliminates one possibility.” He dimmed the headlamps but pressed a button on the dash. “And the hazard lights work, which suggests the problem isn’t electrical, so my guess is some other computer part has failed. Not that I pretend to be any sort of auto mechanic, you understand.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I call Spiros to come and collect us.” Lifting the car phone from its cradle, he accessed the number, spoke briefly, and hung up. “Done. Ten minutes, fifteen tops, and we’ll home.”

  “What about this car?”

  He angled his body toward her and slung a casual arm over the back of her seat. The blinking yellow hazard lights made him appear more shadow than substance, but the heat of his body was very, very real. “It’ll be towed in for repair.”

  “I see.” She cleared her throat, all too aware of the solitude of their situation. The last house they’d passed lay several kilometers behind them. “So what do we do until Spiros gets here?”

  “We wait.” His voice grazed her ear. His warm breath drifted over her face. “And pass the time the best way we know how.”

  Her lungs just about seized up on her. “I don’t think we should be doing this, Dimitrios,” she protested feebly.

  “Why not? If you were telling me the truth earlier, I’m not poaching on another man’s territory.”

  Blink, blink, blink went the hazard lights, regular as a heart monitor. Except her heart wasn’t keeping time. It was leaping around behind her ribs like a mad thing. And other parts of her, parts well below her waist, were stirring in ways that left her taut with forbidden delight.

  “Perhaps not, but the fact remains, you’re my brother-in-law,” she gasped, turning her face aside and pushing him away with one hand. Big mistake! He was all firm, heated masculine flesh and steely muscle beneath his shirt.

  He placed his forefinger at the side of her jaw and effortlessly turned her face to his again. “And now I’m a widower. By my reckoning, that frees both of us to listen to our hearts. I can’t speak for yours, karthula mou, but mine is telling me this is long overdue.”

  His mouth nudged hers, masterful, persuasive, and no amount of frantic rationalizing on her part could turn it into a brotherly peck. His hands shaped her face, mapping every curve, every hollow, with the minute attention to detail of a blind man.

  “Why don’t we stop pretending we don’t know where this is leading?” he murmured.

  She wished she could tell him it wasn’t going anywhere, but the inescapable fact remained that what was happening had slipped right off the friendship scale and veered altogether too close to love of the man-and-woman, Adam-and-Eve kind. He was blatantly, flagrantly, seducing her. Sending time spinning backward. Reviving old yearnings and leaving them screaming for satisfaction.

  His fingers stroked down her neck, dipped inside the top of her blouse, close enough to bring her nipples surging to life, but not enough that she could actually accuse him of fondling her breasts.

  He was stealing her soul. Making her forget she was supposed to hate him. She should have slapped him. Jumped out of the car and waited on the road for Spiros to rescue her. Instead she melted. Enthralled past all reason, she cast off any thought of self-preservation. The kind of magic he wove was too rare, too blissful, to resist. He reminded her of things she’d ignored for a very long time; in particular that, beneath her glossy exterior, she was a very lonely woman who’d been aching and empty for far too long.

  Her hand slid up his chest to his neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair. She clung to him, her body yearning toward him, a moan of raw need rising in her throat. If the console separating their two seats hadn’t made it virtually impossible, she’d have climbed into his lap.

  The blaze of approaching headlights cut across the scene, a timely interruption that snapped her back to reality before she made a complete fool of herself. Oh, she was hopeless, pathetic, to have succumbed so quickly, so easily, to temptation.

  “Thank God!” she breathed, recognizing Spiros at the wheel of the Mercedes as it made a U-turn in the road and came to a stop behind them. She groped for her purse lying at her feet and made a grab for the door handle in her haste to get away from Dimitrios.

  But at the last minute he reached over and stopped her. “Run as far and as fast as you like, Brianna, but what just started here isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”

  “Nothing started,” she panted.

  “You think not, karthula mou?” he inquired, his own breathing as ragged as hers. “Then I suggest you think again.”

  Chapter 6

  Dinner turned into an onerous affair. The conversation was stilted, the atmosphere charged with tension, the superbly presented butterflied scampi and chilled white wine flavored equally with sexual awareness and disapproval.

  Brianna sat across from Dimitrios with what seemed like an acre of table separating him from her. A safe enough distance, she’d have thought. But its glass top unfortunately provided him with an unimpaired view of every inch of her, from the tip of her black sandals to the top of her head. If she crossed her ankles, he noticed. If she tugged at her skirt or scratched her knee, he saw.

  “You don’t seem to be enjoying your meal, Brianna,” he remarked, watching as she rearranged the food on her plate. “Why not? I know how much you like shellfish.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course,” he said, his lazy gaze traveling the length of her and back again. “I remember everything about you.”

  No doubt including the fact that she’d been a virgin when she met him and hadn’t known an orgasm from an aubergine!

  He’d wasted no time teaching her the difference, and if his scrutiny now was any indication, seemed bent on furthering her education as soon as possible. His camera eyes ca
ptured everything they saw and recorded it in the steel trap that was his mind. Smoldering eyes that burned through her clothes and seared her flesh.

  At the other end of the spectrum, Erika stood in the corner, vengeful as a crow in her severe black blouse and ankle-length skirt. Ready to defend him should he come under attack, she kept her cold, beady gaze fixed accusingly on Brianna. With good reason, because Brianna hadn’t merely submitted to his overtures in the car, she’d responded to them willingly. Eagerly. And she knew her cheeks glowed like neon signs advertising her guilty secret for all the world to see.

  Not that it was any of Erika’s business.

  She acts as if she’s his mother and I’m some hussy who’s set her sights on him, Brianna thought balefully. What does she think? That I pinned him down in the back seat of the Mercedes and had my way with him when Spiros wasn’t looking?

  Finally even Dimitrios had had enough of his housekeeper’s surveillance. “Efharisto, Erika, that’ll be all,” he said, after the main course had been cleared away and coffee served. “We can manage by ourselves now.”

  With one last inimical glare at Brianna, the woman departed, leaving behind a silence so fraught with electricity that it was almost worse than her hovering presence. A minute passed. Stretched to two, then three. Dimitrios rested his elbow on the upholstered arm of his chair, stretched out his long legs, and continued his leisurely observation.

  Schooling herself not to fidget, Brianna scoured her mind for some pithy conversational gambit that might distract him, but “Lovely weather we’re having,” didn’t quite cut it. So, reminding herself of the adage that it was better to keep her mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt, she focused her attention on the dancing candle flames reflected in the table top. And still the silence stretched, taut as a bow string.

  At last, when she was about ready to drain her glass of wine in one gulp, then do the same to the bottle, he said, “You’re upset.”

  “My goodness,” she retorted acidly, “how did you guess?”

  “With me?”

  The temptation to lie and say “yes” nagged at her, but there’d been enough untruths in the mess between them, and even if she was willing to deceive him, she refused to deceive herself. “No. With me.”

  “Why? Because I kissed you and touched you, and you couldn’t deny it’s exactly what you wanted me to do?”

  That, and a whole lot more than she cared to admit. But the real problem was less easily defined because he touched her in other ways that had nothing to do with the physical. “No,” she confessed. “Because I’m in danger of repeating a mistake which cost me dearly the first time around, and that’s something I promised myself I wouldn’t let happen a second time.”

  “What mistake is that?”

  “That once again, I’m on the point of leaping headfirst into an involvement with you, without considering the risks.”

  “What if I were to tell you there are no risks this time? That all I want is to put right what went wrong between us before, and pick up where we left off?”

  Desperately trying to shore up her crumbling defenses, she said, “You didn’t give me that impression yesterday. You were openly hostile.”

  “Perhaps I was, at first. But then…” He didn’t exactly sigh; he wasn’t that kind of man. Instead he exhaled and gave a shrug that drew her attention to his broad shoulders. “Since we’re talking truth at all costs, I admit I was looking to find flaws in you where once I’d seen only perfection. I hoped you’d changed, that you were beginning to lose your looks and had nothing underneath. No warmth, no heart, no humanity. I hoped that the giving, passionate woman I fell in love with really was nothing more than the cold-blooded tease I had reason to believe she’d become, and that seeing you again would reinforce what I’d been telling myself for years: that I was well rid of you.”

  “Well, in a way, you got your wish because the plain fact is, I’m not the same as I was when we first met, and nor are you,” she pointed out. “Life happened, Dimitrios, and it’s changed us. We can’t go back to the way we once were, any more than a smashed china plate can be glued back together without showing any cracks. So what’s the point of pretending otherwise?”

  “The point,” he said, “is that, despite everything, it’s not too late for us. We’re not china plates, we’re two intelligent, consenting adults with no ties to other partners. To the best of my knowledge, nowhere is it written that as such, we’re not entitled to a second chance.”

  This wasn’t part of the plan. In fact, it was in direct contradiction to everything she’d resolved. He was part of her past, and not one overflowing with happy memories. Yet his kiss in the car, and now the way he was looking at her, and the tone of his voice—somehow they were managing to erase all that old, tired grief and revive a joy and anticipation she’d only ever experienced with him.

  Schooling herself to caution, she said, “I rather think the only reason you feel that way is that you’re facing a terribly difficult situation, and it would help if you weren’t doing it alone.”

  “I’m not alone, Brianna, and if all I need is support, I can find it in my large network of friends, and a household of loyal staff.”

  “I didn’t mean…that kind of alone.”

  “You think I’ve lived like a monk since Cecily died?” His mouth curved in bitter amusement. “I might be widowed, koritsi mou, but I’ve still got a pulse. If all I want is sex, I don’t have to import it from North America.”

  “Then why are you pursuing me? You already know I’ll do whatever I can to help Poppy.”

  “You know why, Brianna. Because we belong together and we always have. Do I want to make love to you? Of course I do, badly enough that I’d take you right here on this table, if you were willing. But you’re not so naive as to think a relationship is only about sex. And that’s the point I’m trying to make. I want a relationship. Not just any relationship, but one with you.”

  “Would you still be talking this way if I told you I’ve decided against going ahead with the tests? That I’ve changed my mind about becoming a donor for Poppy?”

  “But you haven’t,” he said. “And you won’t. You’re not that kind of person, which is another reason I’m falling for you all over again.”

  “What if it turns out that I’m not a suitable match?”

  “Then we’ll keep looking for someone who is. And if I have my way, we’ll do it together. I can’t keep you here against your will, and if your career matters too much to give it up, I’ll let you go. But I’m warning you now, I won’t make it easy for you. I’ll do my damnedest to make you want to stay.”

  One by one he was systematically destroying every barrier she’d erected against him. Beset on all sides, she buried her face in her hands, not knowing which way to turn. Her career wasn’t the issue. She could kiss that goodbye and never miss it if, in its place, she found true love and fulfillment as a wife and a mother.

  But desire, passion, yearning? How did she subdue their voracious demands and relegate them to their proper place? How separate them from the more enduring dimensions of a relationship, like friendship and trust and common values? Heaven knew, the temptation to cast caution to the winds and fling herself into an affair with him was strong. But if, once their carnal appetites were satisfied, she found there was nothing of substance left, what then? How would she survive losing him a second time?

  She heard his chair scrape back, felt him gently prying her hands away so that he could look her in the eye. “You don’t have to give me an answer now,” he said. “I won’t pretend I’m a patient man because I’m not. When I want something badly enough, I go after it with all I’ve got. And make no mistake about it, Brianna. I want and need you in every way a man can want and need a woman. Four years ago, I recognized you as my soul mate and it’s taken no time at all for me to realize that’s still the case. But until you decide you feel the same way about me, I won’t press you for an answer. All I as
k is that you give some unbiased thought to the idea of us as a couple, and know that my feelings for you aren’t going to change, no matter what your final decision might be.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “Oh, I’m not going to make it easy for you,” he admitted, beguiling her with his smile. “I never said I’d be content to sit on my hands and not take action. I intend to woo you at every turn. But tonight, I’ll settle for this.”

  He drew her to her feet and tilted up her chin with his thumb. His eyes, their irises dark gray ringed with black, their lashes casting a dense inky shadow in the candlelight, tracked her face, feature by feature.

  His lips followed, sampling the hollow beneath her cheekbones, the corner of her jaw, the bridge of her nose. His mouth flirted with hers but never quite settled, a feast for her starving soul, cruelly held just beyond reach.

  The last of her resistance in tatters, she clutched fistfuls of his shirt front. “Dimitrios,” she begged, the persistent throb of frustrated desire tormenting her.

  He traced the outline of her mouth with his fingertip. Slid it between her parted lips and out again, a boldly unmistakable promise made more erotic by the urgent thrust of his flesh which neither his slim-fitting trousers nor the silky fabric of her dress could disguise.

  Heaven alone knew what she might not have done or said next, had his cell phone not interrupted the moment. “Under any other circumstances,” he muttered, his breathing almost as strangled as hers, “I would ignore this, but with Poppy…”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you do.” Flipping open the phone, he glanced at the display screen and turned pale beneath his tan. Tonelessly, he said, “It’s Noelle.”

  Brianna’s heart missed a beat, and far from escaping when opportunity presented itself, as had been her original intention, she stood rooted to the spot. The hands of a marble wall clock showed seventeen minutes after ten. At that hour, whatever the reason for the doctor’s call, it couldn’t be good.