by Penny Jordan
Much like the stunning mini-villa behind her, she thought ruefully, lifting her gaze to the view of the Parthenon lit yellow-gold by the fading sun. They’d decided on Athens for the wedding. It was a less grueling flight for her family and worked for his.
It was like a fairy tale, but she’d had another run of doubts as recently as last night. They’d had dinner with Adara and Gideon. Nic and Rowan had their own apartment in the city, but had joined them in the family suite. The babies had reunited into a loud, happy flock that Theo had stood apart from while the others dove in with quick hands to retrieve a dropped toy or change a bottom. Gideon, as Adara had predicted, took to Zephyr like he’d made him, rolling on the floor with all the children, far more relaxed than she’d ever expected the cool, stern Director of the Board for the Makricosta empire to be.
Theo, on the other hand, wasn’t as forward with his affection, waiting for the little ones to come to him, saying something about them probably not remembering him.
After a night of agonizing whether he shared her dream for a loving family, she’d woken to find Theo on his back on the lounge floor, Zephyr lifted like a superhero above him, both of them laughing as Theo lowered him to make growling noises against his little belly. It was exactly the game Gideon had played with all the children the night before.
She’d pretended she needed her phone to hide her moved tears.
He just needs someone to show him how to love, she reasoned. She was that person. Somehow she’d overcome her mistrust and was falling for him. It was only fair to believe he had the capacity to love her back, given time and enough trust between them.
A door opened and closed in the suite behind her.
Her ruminations fell away and she smiled with anticipation, expecting him to come to her. Sometimes he checked on Zephyr first, if he was napping, which he was. Then they’d neck until they were breathless and oh, why weren’t they married yet? She was growing impatient to feel his skin, his hands, him.
Swallowing the rush of feeling, she blinked the smeared colors of the Parthenon from her eyes and turned with a beaming smile.
And saw Theo making out with a woman against the wall, just inside the entry doors of the penthouse.
No.
Squinching the wetness from her eyes, she swiped her forearm over them as she stumbled on bare feet across the marble tiles of the rooftop garden, around the end of the pool and up to the point where the air-conditioning of the interior blended with the heat of the outdoors.
Maybe that was her own body causing the hot and cold baffling through her as she stared with disbelief at a familiar back. His shoulders flexed beneath his white shirt as he guided a woman’s leg to his hip then slid his hand under the edge of her polka dot skirt. Sharp pink talons poked through his brown hair as they kissed.
A million thoughts whirled like tornado debris in her mind. He had said he was going for a haircut. That wasn’t the shirt he was wearing this morning. Where did he think she was that he would bring some floozy back to where they were staying?
Nothing in the world could have prepared her for this. Except a senior chambermaid had taught her what to do in exactly this situation on her first day of work ten years ago.
“Housekeeping!” Jaya blurted in a shrill voice.
With a squeal, the woman’s platform sandal clapped to the floor.
He barely lifted his head. “Come back another time.” He chased another kiss.
It was Theo’s voice, but the way he ignored her wasn’t Theo.
“Demitri?” she hazarded.
His head came up again and he sent a laconic glance over his shoulder. “Jaya?”
“You’re married?” the woman gasped.
“Hell, no. My brother’s fiancée. Jaya, we’re going to need some privacy. Can you...?” He gave her a “shove-off” motion.
“Of course.” She grasped for her wits and searched for her purse. “I’ve been waiting for the baby to wake so I could go shopping, but if you’ll listen for him—”
Demitri released his partner and reached for the doorknob, blocking Jaya’s exit as he pressed his mate through it. “Wait for me at the elevator,” he told her as he kissed her pout and gave her a pat on the behind before closing her out.
Jaya returned her purse to the side table and folded her arms, waiting for his next move with her brows in her hairline.
He turned to her with an amused smile. “Well played.”
Now she saw him properly, she could see the resemblance was strong, but not identical. He was obviously younger and not quite as handsome as Theo. Too devilish.
“I thought leaving babies with bachelor uncles was how your family does things.”
He snorted. “I remembered you as shy and quiet. Made me wonder where Theo found the...”
His pause prompted her to fill in one of the thousand slang words men used to describe the source of their fertility and courage. She held her breath, waiting to hear which vulgar term he would pick.
“...temerity,” he provided with a wicked tilt of his grin, “to date you.”
He was a brat, through and through. She’d known it from her few interactions with him and now that Theo had explained about their family she even understood why. Demitri got away with his cheeky, outrageous behavior because no one stopped him.
“Speaking of dates, is that yours for the wedding? Because your family is staying in another suite. I’m expecting mine here shortly.”
He shrugged off the information. “No, I don’t even know her name. I picked her up in the bar.” He was utterly without shame or consideration for others.
Genuinely curious about that, she cocked her head. “Why do you like to take people so off guard? Does it give you a sense of power to introduce chaos?”
He barely blinked, but narrowed his eyes in reassessment. “Here I thought I was behaving. The last time Theo was engaged, I picked up his bride.”
When she caught a shocked breath, he smiled.
“He never mentioned that?”
She could have kicked him in his temerities, she was so infuriated by his smug air at having disarmed her. How could he do something so awful as seduce his brother’s intended? And be proud of it?
Why hadn’t Theo told her?
“He knows you’re not my type,” was the best retort she could manage.
The door lock hummed then opened.
Theo paused to take in Demitri slouched beside the door and Jaya standing across the other side of the lounge, arms crossed in dismay.
“Jaya was just reminding me I’m not her type,” Demitri said flippantly. “Good thing I’ve been preapproved down the hall.”
Theo stopped Demitri’s exit with two straight fingers poked into his chest.
Jaya found herself holding her breath, never having seen him angry, not like that. Instant and icy cold, completely ready to be aggressive and deadly. His mood was doubly volatile because he didn’t lash out, only asked with deadly flatness, “Did he make a move on you?” He didn’t take his eyes off his brother.
“N-no,” she managed, arms aching where she had them wrapped around herself.
“Don’t,” Theo said to Demitri. “Ever. I have my limits. You’ve just found one.”
Jaya’s insides trembled, all of her shaken by Theo’s possessive, protective words. She wanted to be reassured it proved he cared for her, but she was still reeling from the news that he’d been engaged once before and hadn’t told her. Had he loved that other woman? Was that the real reason he couldn’t love her?
The thought was as bad as those poisoned few seconds when she’d thought it was him in the clinch against the wall.
Demitri calmly moved Theo’s hand aside, like he was opening a gate. He walked out without a word.
Theo watched him for a split second, the m
uscle in his jaw pulsing, before he stepped in and closed the door. “I’ll assume it was garden variety obnoxiousness on his part that has you looking so peeved?”
“Actually it was learning you were engaged before. Were you going to tell me?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEO SAW THE hurt Jaya made no effort to disguise and suppressed a flinch of guilt. At the same time, his heart pounded like a pile driver. He and Demitri had their moments, but he’d never been as close to getting physical with his little brother as a few seconds ago. Violence was wrong, but if Demitri had touched Jaya, had scared her...
Such a rush of complex emotions strangled him, his instinct was to turn around and walk out, find somewhere private to pull himself together and come back when he felt in control again.
Maybe if Jaya had been angry and accusing he could have walked away from her. Instead she had that vulnerable look about her, the one that wrenched his heart. Like she was exposing her throat and it was up to him to prove he wouldn’t rip it out.
“Zeph sleeping?” he asked.
“He went down twenty minutes ago.”
His wingman wouldn’t provide a distraction then.
He rubbed his face, trying to push his expression back into stoic when he was still unsettled by what he’d walked into. Amazing how he’d become addicted to entering cheerful disarray where a woman and baby greeted him with smiles, maybe some homey smells, and he had to pick a path across scattered toys, but always found a reward of physical affection at the end.
“Theo?” she prompted.
He squeezed the back of his neck. This was why he’d kept to superficial relationships for so long. One-night lovers asked surface questions with easy answers.
Still, the more time he spent with Jaya and Zeph, the more he craved. He liked hearing her sing in Punjabi to their son, liked the homemade food she cooked, liked the way she drew attention when they were out, pulling it off him as people took in her exotic beauty. She’d always been pretty, but with the professional styling taking her appearance up a notch, he had himself a knockout of a fiancée and couldn’t wait to have her legally tied to him as his wife.
He was surprisingly impatient to lock in that life and now realized what had subconsciously been driving him.
But to admit it all to her? Hell.
“It’s humiliating,” he said, tossing his key card on a side table and moving into the suite a few steps, then halting in frustration. He could feel her rebuff from here. An invisible wall sat between them, dense as lead and heavy enough to compress his chest.
“When?” she asked in a strained voice. “Since Bali? Because I never heard anything about you getting married while I was working there. I’m sure I would have.”
“It was years before that,” he dismissed
That detail seemed to relieve a fraction of her distress, but she still stared at him, willing him to provide more details.
“My father arranged it,” he forced himself to say.
“Arranged. But you were so disparaging when you thought I was quitting to go to France for an arranged marriage.”
“That’s why.” Everything in him ached for distance and privacy, but a different, unfamiliar compulsion kept him frozen here, longing to close the gap between them. He was learning the only way was to pick his path through the minefield of his past. He hated it, but for her, he did it.
“Did you love her?” The tentative edge in her voice told him how hard that was for her to ask.
“No,” he assured with a disgusted exhale. “She was a socialite, a party girl, the daughter of a well-respected New York businessman who was down on his luck. They wanted the connection to our family, my father wanted an heir...”
“You said you never wanted to be a father!”
“I didn’t,” he said, recalling such heavy dread it had stuck with him until he’d learned how it really was to have his own child. “But I didn’t have a choice.”
“Men always have a choice,” she said with resentment. “They’re never as helpless as women in these situations. She was probably under more pressure to go through with it than you were.”
“No, I don’t believe that.” He never went back over those memories, they made him feel too pathetic, but she forced him to with her accusation. “You’re right that I could have walked away from my inheritance,” he allowed, “but I couldn’t do that to Adara. Not after what happened to us once Nic was gone.”
No one would ever know how close he’d come despite that. He’d forgotten how his sister had been the tipping point for him. He’d been scared for her. If he hadn’t been there to protect her, no one would have been. His unhappiness with a marriage to a woman he didn’t care about had seemed like nothing against Adara’s safety.
Somehow, remembering his motive loosed the old shame off him. Yes, he’d been browbeaten and yes, it had been his choice to allow it. But he’d had a good reason.
“Demitri said he slept with her,” Jaya said.
“He did.” He felt nothing making that admission because the act had become the mortar he used to thicken and heighten the walls he used to protect himself. From then on, he’d held everyone even more firmly at a distance, even his siblings. Why in hell would anyone want to be close to him? He was second best to his outgoing, funny younger brother. Everyone preferred Demitri, given the choice.
Except Jaya. Maybe the seeds of his deep admiration had been born in seeing her deflection of men who came onto her, especially the ones who took for granted they could impress with a grin and a flash of money. She had smiles for everyone, but she reserved her warmest for grandfathers with arthritis or little boys who got off the elevator on the wrong floor.
“Why would he do that? Just to prove he could or...?” She shook her head in bafflement. “To hurt you?”
He drew in a breath that burned. “It wasn’t just once for bragging rights. They had an affair. I don’t know who started it and God knows I won’t make excuses for him, but he was nineteen to her twenty-three. She happily drove to Manhattan and paraded herself through the lobby so all our staff could see them carrying on.”
And his father had berated him, like it was his fault when he’d been half a state away finishing exams. Such impossible expectations. He swore if Zephyr never aspired to anything more ambitious than flipping burgers in a fast food shack, he’d make sure the boy knew he was proud of him.
“What did she say when you broke it off?”
Here came the degradation, but it was losing its potency as they talked of this. For too many years, he’d let this make him feel weak. He been strong. Enduring. “I didn’t.”
“Didn’t break it off? But...Why not?”
The easy answer was, “I didn’t have to. Adara convinced our father the publicity was too damaging to go through with it. By then Gideon was on the scene. Her engagement let me off the hook.”
“You would have gone through with it?” She sounded appalled.
He was equally galled with himself, which is why he never revisited this ugly time, but he’d been a different man then. One who merely survived, not one who cared about thriving or his own happiness or anyone else beyond the one person who had always been there for him. Looking back, he barely recognized himself.
The turning point had been Bali, he saw now, and not because of Adara’s call—even though that had been a catalyst. No, he’d begun thawing toward his siblings after that, but he couldn’t have managed it if he hadn’t had that night with Jaya. She’d begun the melt in him with her kind acceptance of his weakness that night. He only recognized now that it was her influence because he’d changed so much since he’d seen her again.
Shaking himself out of the stunning realization, he tried to answer.
“All of my options were terrible. If I’d broken it off, my father would have done anything to hurt m
e, including going after my mother and Adara.” He’d make a different choice today. He was stronger. Because he had someone else in his corner.
Didn’t he? She was still struggling to understand why he’d kept this from her.
“But not Demitri,” she said. “I can see why you’re so loyal to Adara. She’s always had your back, but I don’t know how you tolerate your brother. Or is that your normal interaction with him? Are you two always hostile?” She nodded toward the door.
“No, we get along. The past is water under the bridge.” He forced himself to open hands that had clenched into fists as he recalled his anger when he’d come in to find Demitri with Jaya, her expression cross and distressed. “I wanted him to know there will never be any forgiveness where you’re concerned.” He leveled a stern glance at her. “You’ll tell me if he crosses any lines. I’m serious about this being a red one.”
“Because he did it once before.” She looked to her linked fingers.
“Because you have entrusted me to keep you safe. I’d die before I’d let you feel threatened by him or anyone.” He’d take on anyone for her, he realized. Not because he approved of violence, but because she was that precious to him.
“Theo.” Her head came up in alarm. “Don’t talk about dying.”
“Hey,” he deflected with a snort. “I hope it doesn’t come to anything drastic like that, but I bring so little to this relationship, Jaya.” The tiny flame in him that he barely acknowledged would never be enough for her. “At least let me give you this much.”
“That’s not true.” Tension distended her neck as she took his remark like a knife to the throat. Could she blame him for not bringing his heart to their marriage though, when his own had been so chronically kicked around? “You bring yourself. Stop thinking that’s not enough.”
The silence was so profound she couldn’t look up. Then, even from across the room, she heard his swallow.