His back was to her. He was dark-skinned, his muscles well defined and glistening with water. His jet hair was slicked to his head, and she found herself studying the lines of his skull. When he turned to the side, his profile was even more striking than usual. He swam to the end and lifted himself out. He was breathing hard, water running down his body, and she felt that little flutter in her belly that always happened when he was near.
Lucilla ducked back inside, her heart hammering. Then she heard him almost beneath her window, speaking to someone in Greek. She crept back out to look down. He’d toweled off and now stood there with his back to her, his phone to his ear.
They’d slept together but it had been so dark that she hadn’t really seen him. Looking at his body now was almost too much. He was beautiful, but she hadn’t expected anything less. Her eyes drifted down over his back, his firm butt, his legs. He stepped out into the sunshine again and she nearly gasped.
The skin of his back was crisscrossed by fine, silvery scars. They weren’t noticeable at first, kind of like an impressionist painting where the strokes weren’t distinguishable from the complete picture until you looked hard enough. Or until the light hit them just right.
Her heart squeezed into a tight knot in her chest. Why hadn’t she felt them that night? How could she have been so intimate with him and not known the marks he bore? Was she truly that oblivious?
He spun around and Lucilla ducked back inside again. Her chest was tight and her stomach hurt as she tried to process what she’d seen. How did anyone get those kinds of marks and not suffer an incredible amount of pain?
And she had slapped him earlier. It did not feel so good now as it had then. In fact, it made her stomach churn that she’d assaulted him, no matter the inducement.
She went back to her computer and tried to work. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Christos and how he’d gotten those scars. When it was finally time for dinner, she dressed in a vibrant tangerine chiffon dress she found in the closet and paired it with jeweled low-heeled sandals. She was shorter than she liked when she walked into the foyer to meet Christos, who stood there so tall and proud and remote.
She already felt small next to him, but the low heels made her feel more so. Christos was dressed in a pair of khaki trousers and a black shirt and her mouth watered at the slice of his tanned skin visible in the open neck. Her eyes searched his, but he said nothing that indicated he knew she’d seen his back today. He’d had many lovers, naturally, which meant he probably didn’t go around hiding his scars.
But she wanted to know where they’d come from. How did a person get so many? Did he have others? What else had she missed?
“You look beautiful, Lucillitsa.”
Her ears grew hot. She didn’t want to crave his compliments. “Thank you. And what is with this new name, Christos? What does this one mean?”
It was the second time he’d called her that, and she wondered. Not only that, but she secretly loved the way he said the word, his accent rolling over the sounds in such a way that she felt as if he were stroking her skin.
“It means ‘little Lucilla.’”
For some reason, that made her palms sweat. “All right, baby,” she said softly, though her pulse hummed dangerously fast.
He only grinned at her. Then he ushered her out the door and into a sleek Mercedes coupe. He put the top up with the press of a button and then they zoomed out the driveway and onto a narrow stretch of road that zipped between rocky cliffs before giving way to a long stretch where she could see the ocean spread out on one side and the island on the other.
It took them about fifteen minutes to arrive at the village. Christos parked and then came around to help her out. The sun was still in the sky, but it was setting quickly. The village, it turned out, was not so small as she’d thought. She’d only been able to see a small part of it from the villa on the hill, but the village was more of a small city, fanning outward from the harbor. The buildings were a mixture of white ones and colored ones like salmon and pale ocher. Christos strolled down the streets slowly so that she could take in the sights.
They walked past a street where children played and Christos stopped, his shoulders stiff as he stared down the alley. The buildings were a little shabbier here. Washing hung high above the street, stretched between the buildings, and women sat in the doorways, peeling vegetables and chatting back and forth. The children were small and dirty, but that was no shock since they were children. She’d often had to threaten her smaller siblings when they were younger if she’d wanted them to wash up for dinner.
Lucilla moved closer to Christos. She wasn’t certain why, but she had an urge to slip her hand into his and tug him away. She did not, however.
“I had forgotten,” he said.
“Forgotten what?”
He shook himself as he looked down at her. His expression was taut. “It’s nothing. Come, I’ve promised you dinner.”
He took her arm and tucked it in his and started down the street again. She didn’t try to pull away. She could feel the tension in him, but she didn’t know what to say. They arrived at a taverna set alongside the picturesque square and Christos procured them a table near the edge. A band sat in the square, playing bouzoukis, tambourines and mandolins among other instruments. It was beautiful music, different than what she was used to, and she felt a lightness that she should not feel considering the circumstances of her presence in Greece.
The waiter came by and Christos ordered in Greek without asking her what she wanted. It annoyed her—but then she got over it, because the night was too pretty and the music too lovely and she actually felt relaxed, which was insane. But it was a feeling she wanted to hold on to as long as possible.
The wine arrived and Lucilla sipped hers. It was crisp and lovely and went down easily.
“You are enjoying the music?”
“Yes.” And she was, truly. A small breeze wafted over her, coming in from the harbor that lay not too far away. She took another sip of wine and frowned. She had to remember that this was not a vacation. That she’d been brought here to see something he considered important enough to trade his severance package for. The atmosphere lured her to forget, but she couldn’t let that happen.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand why I’m here, Christos. I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
And wondering if it had anything to do with those scars. She shivered inside, wanting to reach for his hand and just squeeze it in hers.
“I grew up here,” he said after a long while, his eyes far away. “And not in the house where we are staying, as you may well have imagined.” He turned the full force of his gaze on her then and she tried not to reach for him. She did not quite succeed. Her fingers brushed his. And then she pulled her hand away and tucked it in her lap while the other clutched her wineglass.
He sucked in a breath. “That street … We lived on that street. My father was a fisherman and my mother was a housewife. I was their only child.”
She had read the report about domestic disturbances at his house, but she’d never really considered what that might mean. Yes, she’d pictured violent arguments and maybe a few slaps. That was not okay, but what he’d done …
“I know your father was violent,” she said, trying to give him a way into it.
His laugh was bitter. “Everyone knew that, glykia mou. And yet it still did not save my mother. Or me.”
Tears pressed against her eyelids. She sucked them back, but then the food arrived and she was able to concentrate on that instead. Christos said no more about his family. Indeed, he seemed to relax a bit.
But though she didn’t cry, she was on edge in a way she hadn’t expected. She wanted to know what he had to tell her, and she felt simultaneously like she was intruding on his privacy. She knew things she wished she didn’t. And there were still those scars.
They were silent so long that his voice came as a surprise. “You lost your mother when you were young, yes?”
&
nbsp; She looked up from the moussaka, her stomach suddenly cold. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
She wanted to tell him it was none of his business, to say she didn’t talk about it—but how could she say such things when she already knew so much about him, and not because he’d told her himself? It was business, she told herself. Business. And yet she felt more and more as if she’d violated his privacy with her investigation.
Lucilla swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “She walked out one day and never came back. We haven’t heard from her in about twenty years now.”
“I’m sorry.”
She took a sip of the wine to cover her discomfort. “She suffered from postnatal depression. And after she had Cara, I don’t think she ever recovered. It just got to be too much for her. So she left.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.” She toyed with her fork, pushing food around without eating it. “I raised Cara, you know. I was her surrogate mother, except I didn’t really know how to be a mother, so I did a lot wrong. If she’s impulsive, it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Lucilla. Your parents shoulder much of the blame. Your mother for abandoning her children, your father for letting you, a child yourself, raise a baby.”
She dropped the fork, her mouth suddenly dry. “Why are we talking about me? I thought this was about you.”
“It’s about both of us. You lost your mother at fourteen, and it was difficult for you. I lost mine, too. But for a far different reason.”
He didn’t say anything else and she wanted to scream. “I told you what happened to mine. Are you going to return the favor?”
His eyes glittered in the lights that were turning on with the setting of the sun. “Are you finished eating?”
She looked down at her plate and knew she couldn’t eat another bite. “Yes.”
“Then I will return the favor. But not here.”
Christos flagged the waiter over. He paid the bill and then he helped her up and took her by the hand. She didn’t protest as he led her alongside the harbor to where the fishing boats were kept. They rocked gently in their moorings while men called to one another as they mended nets, adjusted ropes and readied fishing gear for in the morning.
Christos continued down the path beside the harbor until they reached a building. She didn’t realize it was a church until they went inside. He stopped and made the sign of the cross, which surprised her, and then led her forward into the interior. The church was small, but the windows were stained glass. The dome soared above their heads, painted with frescoes that had faded over the years.
They didn’t stop, however. Christos led her into the cemetery and then over to what she realized was an ossuary. The skulls and bones of hundreds of people were stacked in neat rows one on top of the other beneath a half dome. The ossuary was behind bars to prevent anyone from getting inside. It was strangely beautiful to stand there and see the yellowed bones of people who had once been as alive as she.
“My mother is here,” Christos said, his voice soft and sad as he pointed at the ossuary.
Shock rooted her to the spot. Not that his mother was dead, which saddened her, but that she was a part of what Lucilla had assumed was an anonymous collection of bones.
Christos looked down at her. “In Greece, we do not cremate. We bury the dead in graves, but only for a while. There isn’t enough land, you see. Once someone’s time is up, they are put here unless the family is very rich and can afford a permanent grave. And I was not back then.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say. She told herself that it was terrible his mother was dead, but what did that have to do with running her company and getting him to leave?
And yet she couldn’t help but feel terrible for him. She had no idea where her own mother was—Was she alive? Dead? Where?—and she probably never would. Christos knew where his mother was—and yet he didn’t. That thought floored her. He could point to the ossuary and know she was there—but not where, not who.
His voice was anguished. “I think I killed her. Me and my father both. He did the physical work of breaking her, and I did the rest when I broke him.”
She reached for his hand and squeezed it hard. He was so warm and vibrant and alive—and yet he seemed far away from her right now. Lost in a hell of his own making. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know the right words to say to you, but I am sorry.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. Heat flared deep inside. “I believe you are, Lucilla.” He tugged in a deep, ragged breath. And then the words tumbled out of him while she stood there and ached as if they were poison darts.
“My father raped her. I was not what she wanted, and yet she loved me, anyway. She married him to provide a life for me. And I couldn’t stop him from hurting her, from beating her and breaking her spirit. Until one day I could. I was fourteen, and he’d just beaten her bloody. Her jaw was broken, her arm. I walked in too late. But I grabbed the first thing I could find—the club he’d just beaten her with—and I used it on him.”
“Christos—” She couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over this time. They slid down her cheeks, hot and wet and bitterly painful. She could feel the tremors moving over him, and she just wanted to hold him. But she wasn’t sure he would allow it.
“He never beat her again. You are right that I nearly killed him. I wanted to, believe me. But I stopped because she begged me to.” He dragged in a breath. “There is more I could show you. More I could tell you. But I find I no longer have the stomach for it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE NEVER TALKED about these things with anyone, and yet he was telling her. He’d told himself, when he’d concocted his plan to bring her to Greece, that he was doing so to protect everything he’d built. He’d intended to start in Kefalonia and then move on to Athens, to show her the dirt and squalor of his teen years. But he no longer cared about protecting anything. He only cared that she was crying and he’d made her do so.
She’d lost her mother at the same age he had gone to prison and effectively lost his own. By the time he’d been released at eighteen, his mother had returned to Kefalonia and died of a broken heart.
“Lucillitsa,” he murmured, bringing her into the curve of his embrace. She curled her fists into his shirt and cried softly. He stared over her head, at the ossuary, and his own eyes blurred.
Vlakas. What had he been thinking to bring her here? He was a fool for doing so. It did nothing except upset her and scrape off the thin layer of veneer protecting his emotions. Anywhere else, he was impervious. But when he returned to Kefalonia, when he walked into this church—which he had not done in several years now—the pain was as raw and ragged as the first time he’d come.
They stood that way for a long time. Finally, she spoke. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so upset.”
He rubbed her back. “Because you are tenderhearted, no matter that you are tough on the outside.”
She tilted her head back to look up at him. Her eyes were filled with pain and sorrow and he wanted to kiss those feelings away. He was angry with her for threatening him, his career and future, and yet as he stood here and held her, he could hardly remember that it was so.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Christos. I just wanted you to step aside and give me back my company.”
He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks, removing the wetness. Her lashes were spiky with tears and her eyes were so wide and earnest. He wanted her, though he should not.
“I am not the one who took it away from you, glykia mou.”
Her fingers tightened in his shirt and he knew he’d touched a sore spot. “I know. But I wanted it nonetheless. I need to prove to him …”
Her chin dropped and he found himself staring at the top of her head. In her own way, she was as lost as he was. She smelled so lovely, like flowers and sunshine. He stepped back and took her hand as something twisted deep inside him.
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�Come, let’s leave this place.”
She glanced over at the ossuary, at the rows of skulls staring empty-eyed back at them, and pulled in a shaky breath.
“Of course.”
They walked back through the cemetery, through the church and out onto the street. Christos dragged air into his lungs, unaware how tight they’d felt in the cemetery until just now.
Lucilla’s hand tightened on his. “Are you all right?”
“Mostly,” he told her, his voice clipped.
He didn’t expect her to slip her arms around his waist and hug him tight, but that’s precisely what she did. He let himself hold her again, let his head fall until he could bury his face in her hair and breathe in her sweet scent. His body began to stir. He sensed when her breathing changed, sensed when the heat that always simmered between them began to flare and grow inside her.
Her breathing came in short little bursts now and her fingers moved over the shirt on his back, smoothing it as if she needed something rhythmical to do.
He needed to kiss her. He needed it more than he needed his next breath. He tipped her head back with a finger and pressed his mouth to hers. She gasped, but then she opened and met his tongue with her own.
He could drown in this woman, he thought. He could sink so deeply into her that he never resurfaced. And right now he didn’t care. They kissed deeply, passionately, their tongues tangling, their bodies straining to touch as they wrapped themselves around each other. He shifted his hips against her, brought his aching erection against the V of her thighs, and exulted in her gasp.
But then he forced himself to step away, before he lifted her skirts and took her against the side of the church on a darkened street where anyone could happen along. She made a little noise—of frustration, of regret or self-recrimination, he did not know. All he knew was that he wanted her.
“I’m taking you back to the villa,” he told her, his voice ragged with need. “And, Lucilla, I’m taking you to bed. If that’s not what you want, then you need to say so now.”
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