by Tara Pammi
Something had changed between them that night, whether for good or bad, she didn’t know.
Her footsteps clicking on the outer courtyard, Leah sighed. She could hate him all she wanted for forcing her to this, but she wouldn’t have had this wonderful week with Giannis if not for him.
* * *
Leah joined Giannis at the table laid out on the back patio that offered an unending view of the shoreline. The raised porch provided shade from the Greek sun. Reaching Giannis, she kissed his papery cheek and sat down.
The small table groaned under the weight of a colorful and mouthwatering array of dishes. “I didn’t know that we were having a feast today,” she said, spreading her napkin on her lap. “I would have skipped breakfast and run a few more miles.”
“Eat,” Giannis said. “No man likes his woman so thin that it could hurt him if he embraces her.”
Popping a piece of a juicy, thick-crusted pie into her mouth, Leah shook her head. “Since no man is actually intent on embracing or otherwise expressing love for your granddaughter,” she continued in that same irreverent tone, “no worries there.”
It had become a bit of a game this past week between them, about who could say the most outrageous thing. The smile disappeared from Giannis’s face. “He is your husband, child. Are you denying him rights?”
Leah coughed, choking on the flaky piece of pastry. Recovering, she took a sip of frosty lemonade. “I don’t want to ruin the afternoon by talking about it.”
“Your mother is gone. Calista is gone. I learn from Stavros that you keep to yourself. Maybe talking to an old man will help, ne?”
His overtly sweet tone made her smile. “I do not want to talk about his rights, or how subservient I have to be because I’m his wife, grandfather.”
“You want a modern marriage. I understand. But I have concern for you. You are very lonely. I see it in your eyes.”
She was lonely, she had been for so many years now. That’s why she had capitulated so easily to Stavros’s touch.
She could almost fool herself into believing that.
“Leah?”
Leah didn’t have the heart to push his concern away. It was so strange that she couldn’t be angry with Giannis when he was the one who gave Stavros all the power over her, yet she could hold a grudge against Stavros himself.
Somewhere along the line, it had become a shield, she realized. A shield that was slowly beginning to get holes. That’s what had changed.
Her grandfather clutched her fingers and she returned the pressure, feeling a sudden thickness in her throat.
“What Stavros and I have...it’s too complicated. How can I think of him as my husband or anything else respectful for that matter if he continues to treat me like a child?”
“It is his nature to protect the people he considers close.”
I’m not close to him, the juvenile taunt rose to her lips.
She didn’t care that she wasn’t, she decided resolutely.
“I have a feeling that’s all he knows how to do. He...I have never seen him laugh, never need anyone. Never seen him vulnerable.” And yet, he had looked so different that night they kissed, almost vulnerable...to her touch, to her words even. “He was probably born fully formed with a set of rules about how life should be lived, in his hand.”
Something flickered in Giannis’s gaze and Leah swallowed the rest of her words. “Stavros does not ask, or take anything for himself. Only gives.”
There was such truth in her grandfather’s words that Leah stilled. She had never seen him ask, or demand anything for himself. It had only ever been about her, or Calista or Giannis, or even Dmitri sometimes. But never about himself.
Still grappling with that, she made her voice casual and gripey again. “For all I know, he does not need anything like normal people do. He will probably order the cook to not serve me if he learned I eat my dessert first.”
A twinkle appeared in Giannis’s eyes. “You speak like this to him?”
When she nodded, he laughed, the flimsy sound bursting out of him. It shook his frail frame, and alarm crashed through her. Sensing her anxiety, he sobered. “Laughing with you is good for me. I still believe in the rightness of your marriage. You are precisely what Stavros needs in his life. And you—” something too close to the truth lingered in his eyes “—him. I wish you would give it a real try. You will find him to be an honorable man.”
Beneath his rigidness, beneath his tunnel view of the world, she hated to admit, Stavros’s actions had always been driven by good intentions.
What would it be like to trust him with her fears? What would it be like to give herself over to him? To really give their relationship a try? To be the woman he shared himself with?
Feigning a nonchalance she was far from feeling, she looked at Giannis, who watched her curiously. She had seen the questions in his eyes, had seen him hesitate. And suddenly, she couldn’t bear to go away with Giannis not knowing the truth.
Abandoning her food, she clasped his hand. “I didn’t take drugs that night. I have never touched that stuff in my life. I know I have pained you but I...”
A catch in her throat, she pinned her forehead to his hand.
How could she put her irrational fear into words?
The sound of a soft tread, the way her skin prickled, she instantly knew.
Without turning, she let go of Giannis’s hand and leaned back in her seat.
Stavros was back.
* * *
He believed her.
The realization stopped Stavros in his tracks. As powerful as the sun beating down on him, as simple as the feeling in his gut.
Just as she would never have gone to the media with her story, would never have dragged Giannis and him into a dirty scandal to facilitate a divorce.
She had been bluffing that day.
And he had fallen for it.
He had believed every lie Leah had ever told him, had spun his own theory of how she had led Calista astray, that, somehow, she had convinced his naive sister to try something dangerous...
But if Leah hadn’t been the one that had pushed Calista to it, then what had happened? That Leah had lived while Calista had died of a drug overdose that night, he had chalked it up to pure chance.
But it wasn’t.
Whatever choice she had made that night, his sister had made it of her own accord.
His head pounded with the questions it let loose; his entire world tilted.
Had he not really known Calista either?
“Come, Stavros,” Giannis beckoned him with a smile before he could disappear with his shifting thoughts.
Stavros looked up, zeroing in on Leah with a stinging hunger.
On her way to the other side of the table, she stilled without looking at him. Her fingers slipped on the serving spoon, the sound clanging in the patio.
Slowly, she moved her head and met his gaze. The impact of it rocked through him, the picture she presented ripping through the semblance of control he had fooled himself into achieving over the past four days.
An off-shoulder, black, cutoff blouse showed a strip of her back, indented by the line of her spine, an outlandish article of clothing if he had ever seen one, and yet it suited her to perfection, with the long, gray skirt that billowed around her legs.
A soft breeze pushed it against her legs, outlining the lean, toned length of them.
Heat thrummed in every pore, his arousal painfully instantaneous.
He wanted to see if she was just as silky everywhere, he wanted to see that glorious hair, right now piled atop her head and falling from it, spread against his pillows, he wanted to feel that mouth against every inch of him...
Leah affected him like no other woman ever did, or could. Whether it was because she was
his wife or because she was inherently Leah—beautiful, demanding, lively—he wouldn’t know.
All he knew was that she was destroying every assumption he had made of her, inching toward her goal, once again, changing his life irrevocably.
But he couldn’t let her go, not until he knew the truth about Calista. Not until he knew everything there was to know about Leah.
Not until he had tasted that luscious mouth one more time.
Just this once, he would reach for what he wanted, he would take what he craved and damn his sense of duty.
* * *
The strangest expression glittered in Stavros’s eyes. Her gaze followed the corded length of his thighs as he chose the chair wedged against hers. The memory of how hard and welcoming he had been beneath her suffused her face with warmth. Hoping they would think it was the sun, she smiled pleasantly for Giannis’s benefit.
Giannis slowly got up from his chair, and both Stavros and she rose from theirs. Grabbing his walking stick, he waved them off. “It is time for me to rest. You both sit,” he said with such a teasing twinkle in his eyes that Leah sighed like a deflated balloon.
How would Giannis face it when Stavros finally set her free? Would Stavros tell him?
The moment Giannis was out of sight, she stood up too, the very joy she had found this morning evaporating under her own conflicting emotions.
His fingers clamping her wrist, Stavros looked up. “Stay, Leah...please.”
The edgy request warned her not to argue.
Increasingly aware of the high-pitched chirp of a bird in the olive groves, the rustle of leaves, and the painful thud of her own heart, she studied him under the guise of bravely facing him.
As always, he was dressed in formal clothes but the shirt was unbuttoned, and his hair looked like he had messed it up quite a bit.
From the arch of his eyebrows to the straight line of his nose, from the way his mouth tilted up on one side when he smiled to the blunt nails of his long fingers, he was painfully familiar to her now...a desperate longing awoke in her, to trace that austere face, to taste him in tenderness, to just once meet him as his equal without lies and fears.
“How is your collection coming along?”
Blinking, she searched for an answer. “Very well. I finalized the design on the last dress. I’m terrified that it might not be as breathtaking as I think it is.”
“The wedding gown?”
The smile came naturally then. “Yes. I have to do the cutting on it. I’ve been taking the fabric, laying it all out and then just staring at it for hours... I can’t afford to...”
“You’re nervous?” he said with such genuine warmth that she flushed.
“It’s the prize of my collection but it means so much more to me. A wedding dress, as much as it has become a symbol of status and wealth and showing off in these days, it means a lot to a woman, right? It’s the one day she gets to be what she longs to be all her life.”
Somehow, he had moved closer to her. Her hand lay in his loosely, the pad of his thumb tracing the top of it gently. “What is that?”
“Beautiful, special, loved.” Pulling her hand away from him, she smiled to herself. “No matter what age, that day, she is the center of the whole universe for this one man...that day, it’s a new beginning, a fresh start, a promise she cherishes that her life will hold meaning to someone else. It’s the first day of a whole new way of life, of the most important, intimate relationship she’s ever going to have...and the wedding dress... it symbolizes all those hopes and dreams she’s ever cherished.”
Sensing his stillness, she turned and saw the lacerating pity in his eyes.
It was like the most vulnerable part of her, the part she even hid from herself, had been ripped open.
Shutting her eyes to stop the heat building behind, she saw what he remembered.
She had married in a ghastly cream silk dress that had been too tight on her chubby body. With a stone-faced Dmitri as witness while Giannis lay in a hospital bed. Drowning in guilt over Calista, numb that she always seemed to be saying goodbye to loved ones, terrified about what Stavros intended, and hating herself...
That bleary day had been about punishment and penance, about duty and fear. Just as the moment after when he had pressed his mouth to hers, had been.
Even then she had been eager for his kiss, had clung to him in her shame when he had put her away from him, and wiped his mouth.
“At least, that’s the statement I want this collection to make, you know.” Her blasted voice wouldn’t stop quivering. “Like you said, it’s a career saturated with so many fresh faces that you can disappear in a second... You have to be able to put a new spin on your collection, present it almost like a story so that your consumers will fall in love with it, and that’s how—”
Clasping her chin, he turned her toward him. From casual to a vehement intensity, his expression changed in mere seconds. “Don’t, agape mou.”
Still, she tried to pretend. “You probably find this intensely boring.”
“Do I not deserve the truth even in this, Leah?” Resting on his haunches in front of her seat, he took her hand in his. The tenderness in his gaze unraveled her defenses. “Do not lie about something that is so important to you, do not cheapen what truly comes from your heart. Not this...”
“I...”
“Did you once dream like this too? Was marriage that important to you?”
Her throat raw, she nodded. “I believed in the sanctity of it once, yes. My father...I never knew my mother and I always used to get this sense that a part of him was gone with her. He loved me but his heart...it was with her. When you grow up seeing love like that, you believe in its power. You start hoping for it even when you know...” She shrugged, loath to betray herself even more.
“I’m sorry for ruining your dreams, Leah,” he said with such withdrawal, that it was Leah who held onto him this time. “You were a dangerous combination of recklessness and... I had to protect you from fortune hunters and—”
“Myself, of course.” But there was no real bite to her words.
She could not lie and absolve him of any of it. Despite wanting to hate him, she even understood why he had done it, but his apology touched something inside her. “I wanted a lot of things. But life happened. I’ll be fine, Stavros.”
He nodded and rose to his feet. “What will your collection be called?”
“New beginnings.”
“I do not know about dresses...” he said with such a straight face that she laughed, “but the passion I hear in your words, I am sure it will come through in what you do, ne?”
“You think so?”
“I believe that it will.”
He said it with such confidence that a snippet of conversation she had heard between him and Giannis came back to her. Her grandfather had been asking Stavros about his contacts with major design houses and Stavros had been patiently explaining who would be open to launching a new label with a fresh designer.
Pushing her chair back, she stood up, her stomach in knots. “Your belief in me is encouraging, but I can’t forever be ensconced safely in this world that Giannis and you have created for me. I can’t let you and him launch a label for me using your contacts and the might of...
“If you meant your apology, if anything has changed in how you see me—” she could feel heat rising in her cheeks, but she continued stubbornly “—you’ll stop arranging my life in cahoots with him.”
“He wants to do it for you because he cares—”
“Becoming successful because I’m the Katrakis heiress or Stavros Sporades’s wife will forever ruin my joy in this. Will you do that to me again, Stavros?
“Please... allow me the freedom to succeed or fail on my own merit. Tell Giannis to stop with this launching my label nonsense.”
“If you haven’t realized it, your grandfather has a will of iron—”
“And you can convince him that you could walk on water, so get him to back off.”
Smiling, he nodded. “Anything else?”
She hesitated, which in itself, held Stavros’s attention instantly.
“After that imperious command, what can be so hard, Leah?”
“I have been researching various fashion events and programs around the world and there’s one in Athens tomorrow night that caught my attention.”
“Ahhh...that’s why the uncharacteristic call to my office.”
She let his comment pass. “It’s like a co-op event, to be exact, an incubator for fashion design. No big labels or famous designers. Instead your... Helene and a group of fashion icons like her provide a stage for up-and-coming designers to showcase their talents. My application is ready. But I...”
He waited patiently.
“The entry fee is pretty hefty. Even with that, anyone who gets picked has to actually come with a recommendation from one of the event coordinators.”
Wariness and pity filled his eyes and Leah blanched at it. “Helene is one of those rare women who won’t take you on to do me a favor, Leah. In fact, recommending you to her will only lessen your worth in her eyes.”
She shook her head, wondering if he would always think her less than capable, less than what she was. Did she have anyone but herself to blame if he did?
And why, in God’s name, did the thought hurt so much?
“No, all I want is an introduction to her. My collection, at that point, will hopefully speak for me and garner her recommendation. Even if she doesn’t like it, I will still get some exposure to the industry folks.” Even as she confidently made her case, another tension filled her.
Just admitting the fact that Helene knew Stavros in a way Leah never would, made her want to throw up.
How could he mention the other woman so glibly? Where was his honor now, she wanted to demand. But to ask would be to show that she cared. That she spent entire afternoons wondering how he justified breaking his vows to her so boldly.