by Tara Pammi
There were no decorative items, no knickknacks. Just the bare essentials wherever he looked. The walls were a pristine white exactly as he had remembered from five years ago, when he had inspected the building and the flat, a week after they had married.
It screamed of loneliness, detachment.
Leah was a firestorm and it seemed only a ghost of that girl lived here.
The first year and a few months into the second after she had come to live here, he had had things delivered to her. Boxes of clothes and shoes, handbags and other accessories Helene had told him a young woman would require. He had even sent her things that had once belonged to her mother, found when he and Dmitri had gone through Giannis’s old estate after his heart attack...
But she had sent every box back, stubbornly refusing to accept any of it, and so he had stopped trying. Even the box with her mother’s things.
He had, conveniently, shrugged off his duty toward her. To the point of ignoring her very existence.
His gut twisting into a tight, unforgiving knot, he followed her into her bedroom. There was a nightstand next to the bed. A tissue box, some pencils and loose paper, and a tiny photograph of her father, he assumed from the same brown eyes, were on it.
Stretching on her toes, she pulled a bag out of her closet that was already half full. Turned around and stilled as he stayed at the entrance.
“I have someone bringing up boxes. Not that it seems you need any.”
“The work room has lots of stuff I need.”
He nodded and waited, his thoughts in an unprecedented jumble.
“I don’t have to stay in your house for this...this test of yours, Stavros. I could just continue here.”
He prowled into the small room, feeling on edge. He was angry at himself, he realized slowly. And he was angry at her. It was irrational, and yet he couldn’t loosen its grip over him.
“Why not?” The taunt in his words shamed him.
The brown of her eyes transforming into a dazzling color, she glared at him. Her pulse at the neck fluttered belying the anger in her eyes. “Because I don’t think it’s a good idea.
“You can’t stand me, for sins I know and some I don’t. And I...you’re arrogant, you’re a hypocrite and I...” she said with that standard animosity she seemed to reserve especially for him. Yet he heard the quiver beneath those words.
She was trying so hard to hide her awareness of him. So hard to fight it.
The Leah that he knew, that he thought he had known, had never fought anything she felt. Gave in to every juvenile urge, every self-serving impulse until she crashed and burned.
And had dragged Calista down with her.
This effort now...it sparked a curious fire in him just as much as the fluttering pulse at her neck did.
He came to her bed and leaned against it, blocking her. “So that you could continue to live in this hole like some damned martyr?”
A silk skirt in hand, she turned that gaze to him again. “It is what you chose for me.”
“I never meant for you to live like a prisoner. I sent you everything you needed.”
“To do what with?” Throwing the skirt and a couple more things into the bag, she zipped it up vehemently. “I have no friends, Stavros. No family...”
“You rejected the one you have for years. You still do,” he couldn’t help but point out, a gnawing frustration in his gut.
She didn’t even flinch as she continued. “Even the staff at the fashion house, people I have been working with for five years, they treat me with this—” he saw her swallow and a wave of tenderness, shocking and acute, rose inside him “—nauseating combination of dislike and affected regard.
“I don’t know if they think my designs are really good or if they are just saying that because I’m Leah Sporades, the wife of the textile magnate of Greece, a shame he hides from the world.
“You married me even though you despised the sight of me. You...you kissed me in front of the media that day for the express purpose of warning away my friends, the entire world. You might as well have branded me like they do livestock.”
“Leah—”
“No, Stavros...I was nineteen. I lost the one friend I had, Giannis had just had a heart attack...”
“Whom you still refuse to see,” he cut in.
Do not give up on my Leah, Stavros. Please...she is very fragile...
Fragile was the last thing he had ever thought of Leah...She had barely ever sat down for five minutes with him, yet even surrounded by tubes and equipment, she’d been all Giannis could think about.
Every inch of her slender frame vibrating with anger and pain, she clutched the lapels of his shirt. “...and in the next two days, you took my entire world away from me. You locked me up here and promptly forgot about me.
“Did you ever feel even an ounce of shame that you coerced a nineteen-year-old into marriage?”
Stavros felt her words dig into him like the serrated edge of a blade, drawing blood.
For five years, he had ignored her very existence, had let her live like this, had informed Giannis again and again that Leah was well...
How had he committed such an unforgivable mistake?
“Answer me.”
“No, I don’t regret it. I would have done anything to save you from that drug-induced-drink-all-night-reckless-party life.”
No denial rushed out of her this time. Instead, she closed her eyes and bent her head to his chest. The raw intimacy of the gesture flayed him, reaching a part he didn’t know he possessed.
Her shoulders pushing at his chest, the scent of her coating the air he breathed, her lithe form was so tempting. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, he wanted to bury his mouth in... Feeling like an iron anvil was sitting on his chest, he clasped her wrists to push her away.
Instead, the pad of his thumb moved over the plump vein of its own will.
Her breaths came in a slow rasp until, suddenly, she looked up. His lungs burned for air as her fingers laced around his, as a blunt nail raked the center of his palm, her molten brown gaze clung to his lips.
Something so desperate and wanting flashed in her gaze that Stavros dropped her hand.
It was so unlike Leah that a shiver raked down his spine.
Jerking away from him, she drew a deep breath. “Deal with the consequences of what you did then,” she said, moving her hand over the room. “Alleviating your guilt about this...it’s not my responsibility.”
It was the most adult thing she had ever said to him. And just like that, his world tilted an infinitesimal inch.
A world in which Leah was right and he was wrong. A world in which he had let himself be led by pain and resentment until he had neglected his duty...neglected the vow he had made to Giannis.
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“What?”
“I said you’re right,” he said willingly, the bright wonder on her face drawing it out of him. “What I did that day had consequences that I didn’t own completely.”
“Am I actually hearing this?” Her brows rose into her hair, her mouth opened in a long O. Mirth overflowed in those eyes, making her look absolutely stunning. “Boom!” The scent of her skin swirled around him, drugging him so insidiously that his blood became sluggish. “Did you hear that, Stavros? I think the sky just exploded...”
He stole another greedy look at her. And like a snake waiting to strike, the most incredible urge to press his thumb against the lushness of her lower lip, struck him.
He collected himself slowly and stepped out, wondering if this sinuous desire for her was his true penance.
“Show me your workroom,” he said, over his shoulder.
* * *
Her workroom knocked the breath out of Stavros.
It
was as though a veil, the veil that separated Leah from the rest of them, had been lifted. A tentative smile on her face, she walked around touching things here and there in the chaotic room, eons different from the Leah who usually glared at him with such hatred.
Sunlight poured in streams into the high-ceilinged room, exposing the beams. Everywhere he looked, there was color, such a vivid contrast to the rest of the apartment that it took him a few moments to actually see it.
Two racks hung around the back, with evening gowns in different degrees of completion. An old sewing machine lay on a table in the other corner. One whole wall was covered with sketches made in pencil, illustrations, even cutouts from fashion magazines.
Swatches of fabric were pasted on another wall. Reams of it spilled over from a rickety shelf in the corner—satin and silk and cotton, pretty much every fabric he knew of in his ten years in the textile industry.
Something tightened in his chest.
“The retail buyer that you were talking about, what is she interested in?”
“I’m putting together a collection of evening wear for her—cocktail dresses, formal gowns, and the prize of the collection will be one bridal dress.”
“That’s quite a workload for one designer...”
“Slash seamstress,” she finished, fingering the sheer fabric of one unfinished dress.
“You’re going to...”
An utterly confident smile dawned on her face. “Actually cut and sew the dresses, yes. I custom-design and sew every dress myself and that’s what I would like my brand to be. When the buyer was talking about what she would like, what she liked about my previous designs...I could see the concept from start to finish.”
Color flushed her skin.
He walked around and touched the cut bodice in ivory silk. “Has she seen the flat sketches?”
She shook her head. And he saw the surprise in her eyes that he knew the term. “We have had two discussions around it.”
“Leah, it’s a huge risk to create an entire collection for one woman’s tastes at this stage.”
She tilted her jaw aggressively. “You gave me your word not ten minutes ago.” Her lithe frame vibrated with her growing panic.
“And I will stand by it. But I’m also a businessman and in case, you have forgotten, I run a group of textile factories that export all over the world. All I’m doing is pointing out the pitfalls, as I would do with any business I want to invest in. Creatives have a tendency to run the business into the ground with their half-realized dreams.”
“But I’m not creating exactly what she wants. More like my vision of what she has in mind.” She turned to him, a frown on her face. “Anything I tried to design with some freedom at the fashion house ends up changed for the brand of the house. I want this collection to be mine. And I need cash upfront for all the raw materials.”
He nodded. “I want an expense report including quotes from all the vendors you’ll be sourcing the raw material from. I want every penny accounted for.”
“I will send you my spreadsheet.”
“You have one already?”
“Surprised, aren’t you? I’ve been having problems with one vendor based in Brazil though. He keeps upping the price of the cotton I need from him.”
“I can help with that,” he said, the fire in her eyes stunning him. “Do you plan to hire another seamstress?”
“Not at this point.”
“But it’s too much work for just one person.”
“I don’t want anyone else involved in this...in my first collection.”
“Fine,” he said, noting that the stubborn streak of independence was still there. Also that whatever advice he gave now, she wouldn’t heed it. “You’ll have the money within the hour. I will be gone next week, and during that time—”
Walking back into the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “I’ll be watched by your housekeeper and your new security head. Poor Dmitri, along with his arm candies, will be reduced to babysitting duties. Although, I don’t mind him.”
“No?” The question left his mouth before he knew he had thought it.
“Dmitri?” An almost dazed kind of smile glimmered in her expression. And he cut the irrationally possessive thought her expression evoked before it could form fully. “Of course not. He was always kind, even when Calista...” Sudden tension dawned in her gaze and she looked away from him.
“When Calista what, Leah?”
She cleared her throat and started again but resolutely kept her gaze away from him. “This one time, we snuck into his room and stole a bottle of whiskey. Only he caught us...”
“Whiskey, Leah?”
“We were just goofing around, Stavros. We were seventeen.”
“My father was an alcoholic who stole from his own parents, sold our house just so that he could drink, and drove my mother away. Calista wasn’t supposed to even touch that stuff.”
Shock flared in her gaze, widening those beautiful eyes. Only then did he realize how much he had betrayed. “I had no idea, Stavros.”
“What did he do, Leah?”
“Oh, he told us we could drink the whiskey—” color stole into her cheeks and she wouldn’t meet his eyes “—as long as we were also going to join him for a threesome after.”
“Cristo! Of all the things to say to—”
As if expecting his reaction, Leah sighed. “We dropped the bottle where we stood and we ran, Stavros. Dmitri was used to...he knew how to deal with us.”
Unlike you, her unsaid accusation screamed.
He had a feeling Dmitri definitely understood Leah far better than he did. A mistake he had to rectify...
If Giannis had asked me... He pushed away the scenario provoked by Dmitri’s taunting remark from his head and focused his mind on practicalities.
“Leah...fashion design is extremely hard to break into. On a given day, there are tens, if not hundreds, of designers launching new labels. And I don’t know whether you actually have any talent for this.”
“I know that. All I’m asking is a chance to do it, to access the resources that I do have.”
“And when—” he checked himself as she threw that trademark glare at him “—if you fail in this venture?”
“Then it will be my failure. All mine. Just as the success would be. It will be something I have put my heart and joy into, something that doesn’t scare me.”
“I thought nothing scared you, Leah.”
She offered him a perfunctory smile, and Stavros realized how much he didn’t know about the girl he had thought his bitterest penance.
CHAPTER SIX
A WEEK LATER, Leah walked over the white sandy beach on Stavros’s estate on one of the tiny islands along the Aegean coast. Stavros’s “house” turned out to be a hundred-acre estate close to the sea, a ten-minute helicopter ride from Athens that had thrilled her quite a bit.
Even with Stavros studying her curiously the whole time.
She had lived in Athens for so many years and yet she had known nothing about the little slice of heaven that was the island he called home.
Nestled amidst two tiny hills, the mansion was stunning in its simplicity. No glittering glass bars like Dmitri’s yacht, or a lifeless steel-and-chrome affair, which was lately the trend with billionaire homes.
The manor was made entirely of stone, with cathedral ceilings framed by exposed beams, whitewashed walls, a pool and a wine cellar. It was full of soaring spaces and light, stunning in its simple lines.
Austere, private and yet so breathtaking, the exact reflection of the man who owned it, it was an authentic slice of rural Greece. But even when it was only the wind chimes that punctured the silence, even when it was just the staff keeping her company as it had been at the apartment, Leah felt anything
but lonely.
There was something very peaceful about the estate and the people surrounding it.
She smiled now about how worried she had been about being confined in a house with him. About seeing Stavros wherever she turned. Not only did the house boast seven bedrooms and attached baths, but Stavros, when he returned from Katrakis Textiles, she realized, worked in the estate.
Although if he had looked smolderingly arrogant in his suit, he looked painfully handsome in light blue jeans and a white polo shirt.
The sounds of the helicopter blades had jolted her from her bed the first morning. Still in her cotton shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, she had run to the attached balcony, spurred on by what, she still didn’t know.
Dressed in a white dress shirt that draped lovingly over his broad frame and plain khaki trousers that looked way too sexy, he had been about to step in.
Except he had turned and looked at her, the breeze ruffling his hair.
Her heart thudding, her mouth dry, Leah had broken his gaze and gone back in.
Now returning from the beach, she waved at workers heading home to the small village from the vineyard, which she had been surprised to learn was operational. Several guesthouses were dotted across the grounds in addition to a horse farm.
When she had laughingly asked Stavros which one Dmitiri preferred when he visited, she had gotten a black look in response.
It was as she passed a couple, probably in their fifties, that she remembered another little tidbit. Stavros and Calista had been from a little village that surrounded Stavros’s estate. His grandparents, she knew, still lived there. Even though their grandson was a household name in all of Greece.
Feeling nauseous at the thought of how brazenly she had threatened to go to the media and how his face had blazed in contempt, she pulled in a long breath and broke into a run.
From the moment he had showed her around the estate, she had loved running through the trails cleared through lush acreage. In just the past week, she had found a trail that touched the horse farm and rounded through the orchard.
She turned the winding bend around it and came to a skidding halt near the glittering pool that was by the house.