by Dani Collins
She stood behind her desk, more imperious than he’d ever seen her, but hard to take seriously when she had yogurt on her lapel. Apparently she’d been in a hurry to leave her family in Athens this morning so she could lie in wait for him and ruin the rest of what had already become a lousy weekend.
“It’s over anyway, so there’s nothing more to say,” he told her.
“There’s plenty to say! You’ve opened us to a sexual-harassment suit!”
“She’s not going to sue,” he said impatiently. Natalie was good and decent and maybe a little too grateful for his attention. They’d parted amicably—or as amicably as he could feel when he was furious with her for being completely different from what he wanted her to be. He would still be brooding over that if his sister hadn’t arrived and commanded him to meet her in her office. Now.
She’d been taking lessons from her husband, he imagined. At one time Adara had been quite the pushover, determined to run the hotels but hiding behind Gideon and his position as chairman to do it.
The PA who’d nearly destroyed their marriage had turned out to be the best thing for them, however. Adara had grown a lot more confident once she knew her husband was completely devoted to her and always had her back. These days she really was the face and voice of Makricosta’s, strong and determined.
Admirable, Demitri would have judged her, if she wasn’t being such a pain in his hide.
“Everyone in Paris knows you’ve taken up with one of the IT specialists. It will be across the entire organization within the week. Are there others?” she demanded.
“No. And may I remind you that Theo did it? Why the hell are you coming down on me?” He could hear his voice tightening with anger at the injustice, and searched for patience. For the laconic disinterest he’d patented for any occasion when his morals were called into question. This was what he did. He behaved badly and it rarely had serious consequences. He rode out the waves he’d created and got on with his day.
Today his sister’s castigation got under his skin. Maybe because he was already so angry—he would still be with Natalie if not for her revelation, and company regulations could go to hell.
“I suggest you draft a new policy,” he stated with a patronizing smile. “One that spells out exactly when it’s appropriate to dally with employees. Because right now it appears to be a gray area.”
“First of all, Theo offered me his resignation,” she said testily, counting on a finger. “Even though, technically, Jaya was no longer working for us when they got together.”
“About twenty minutes technical, from what I gather, but okay. I’ll resign. Are you done?” Demitri said, dead serious, but she ignored his offer and touched a second finger.
“And he married her. Are you in love, Demitri?” she scoffed with cold disparagement. “Are you settling down to have a family?”
A hard fist clenched around his chest, suffocating his lungs and squeezing his heart so it pounded hard enough to hurt. No, he wasn’t in love. What kind of emotion was that anyway? It was something that had kept their mother with a man who used her attachment to torture the bunch of them. Natalie was far too sweet and special to abuse with such a vile thing as love.
As for family, it was nothing but obligation and politics and bad memories swept under a rug. Did Adara not remember where they’d come from? Family was the reason he was the black-sheep clown that drew attention so it didn’t land on her and Theo.
Resentment came up in a rush, gathering strength from her scorn. Did she think he had never wished he could be good like them? All those stupid, asinine, outrageous things he’d done over the years had been for her—trying to protect the two of them. If he had to spell it out for her, fine.
“You know what it was?” he challenged, lying, but wanting her to see for once that he was loyal to the family in his own way. In the only way he could be. “I was keeping another opportunist from trying to poach your husband. I took one for the team, okay? If you want to fire me for that, go for it.”
Adara went chalk white. He realized immediately that he’d screwed up, hitting her where she felt most vulnerable.
Remorse arrived like a westbound train, but before he had a chance to backtrack, the door he’d started to open pushed into him, knocking him into taking a step forward, clipping his shoulder hard enough to make him swear.
“What the hell—”
Natalie.
She confronted him with such horrified hurt that his guts turned to water. Her expression was shattered, her lips white and parted in disbelief, plunging him into a bath of emotion far worse than remorse. He wanted to slink away in utter disgrace.
“Really?” she demanded.
He opened his mouth, distantly aware of his sister taking in a shocked breath.
His brain rapid fired with reactions, all of them too revealing. Adara would realize how much Natalie had come to mean to him, and it was too much to let anyone see. Even Natalie, because she was shaking in a tremble of shock and rage, skimming him with a contemptuous gaze, as though filth coated him, filling her with repugnance.
He couldn’t let her see how much that hurt.
“That’s all it was?” she spat with loathing. “Even though I told you—”
“No,” he protested, reaching for her arm.
Natalie knocked his hand away, adrenaline making her instincts fast and violent. She wanted to hit him. Punch and kick. She really did. Her heart was racing, her entire body hot, her ears ringing, her muscles twitching in aggression. She was sure that he’d believed her when she’d denied having planned to seduce Gideon.
“I told you I didn’t expect anything except...” A good memory. So much for that.
She couldn’t continue. Her face crumpled. Her control unraveled.
She shouldn’t have walked down here thinking she could explain. She shouldn’t have stood outside the door eavesdropping, hoping to hear he did love her.
Quite the opposite. He had complete disdain for her. He thought she was some kind of husband stealer and had only slept with her out of familial obligation. That put her somewhere lower than a pity—
She ducked her head, nausea climbing as reaction settled in.
She turned and left. Bolted from his call of her name and the equally sharp cut of Adara’s voice. She dived into the first ladies’ room she saw, eyes burning with tears she couldn’t hold back.
She was such an idiot.
And now she’d lost her job. She was sure of it. They weren’t going to fire him. The affair had been consensual. In its best light it looked as if she’d been trying to climb the corporate ladder. At its worst, Adara would believe her marriage had been threatened.
Fighting back tears, Natalie reached for a hand towel, but couldn’t look herself in the eye to dab at her makeup. Her face ached with the effort of holding back a flood of emotion.
Men. Why hadn’t she learned her lesson from her father, who’d left, and Heath, who hadn’t really been there? Had she really expected Demitri to show up for anything but what she’d been putting out?
Heels clipped toward the door, and she swiftly stepped into a stall. The main door opened and Natalie heard a woman enter. The door whispered closed and a lock was turned. There was a sniff and a rustle while Natalie held her breath.
Through the crack in the door, she saw Adara dialing her mobile. She spied her own handbag sitting next to the sink. Damn it, why hadn’t she grabbed it? This was a nightmare.
“It’s me,” Adara’s tear-strained voice said.
Natalie opened her mouth, not sure what to say, but Adara continued.
“I should have told you why I had to come to Lyon. I think I just fired Demitri. Or he quit. I’m not sure.” Another sniff, then an impassioned “No, it’s not okay, Gideon! I feel awful.”
Natalie let her head drop into her hand, wondering if this could possibly get worse. She didn’t want to listen to this!
“Do you remember Natalie from the Canadian...? Yes? Demitri has been s
eeing her and— Oh, hell. I have to go. No, I’m fine,” she added quickly, voice steadying. “But Natalie is in here. I can see your purse, Natalie,” Adara said, making Natalie wince behind her hand and stay exactly where she was. Beyond the stall, Adara continued to her husband, “I’m fine, Gideon, honestly. Just upset. But I have to talk to Natalie. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
An expectant silence manifested.
Feeling cheap and pathetic, Natalie pulled the creaking door inward and exposed herself. “I swear to you I did not have designs on your husband. I would never, ever go after a married man.”
Adara’s mouth pinched. Her eyes were red and her makeup threatening to run, but she was still incredibly beautiful in her quiet and conservative way. Long dark hair, clear olive skin. She was class personified, and Natalie felt incredibly cheap being in the same room with her.
Adara pulled open a drawer and took out a makeup bag along with a white facecloth. Her reflection smoothed to neutral, yet remained distantly defensive.
“Demitri said it to hurt me. He wanted to hurt me, which is why it did. He does a lot of infuriating things, but he doesn’t usually set out to wound. Lately, though, everything he does seems to be an effort to push Theo and me away.” She wet the facecloth and wrung it out. Her glance came up to meet Natalie’s. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m upset.” She held out the cloth to Natalie.
It seemed too nice a gesture, especially on the heels of such an insult. Adara was suggesting that if it hadn’t been Natalie, Demitri would have taken up with a different employee just to alienate his siblings.
She really didn’t want to think he was that childish or that mean.
She’d like to think Adara was only saying it to spite her, because she was angry, but Adara wasn’t angry. She was watching Natalie with a pleading gaze, her expression so sympathetic it could only mean she pitied Natalie for becoming a weapon in a family feud.
Natalie came forward to accept the cloth, more to hide her face than dab at her ruined makeup. Adara pulled a second from the drawer and worked on her own, making Natalie feel even more foolish as they repaired themselves in thick silence.
“I don’t...” Adara began, then tsked as her phone chimed with a request to connect. “Not yet, Gideon,” she muttered, adding with a sober look toward Natalie, “He worries. Especially when it’s family stuff.”
After a brief bit of typing, which Natalie assumed was a text to her husband, Adara set down her phone and gave Natalie an apologetic look. “My business head is telling me to record this and say as little as possible, but I can’t do that. Natalie, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Natalie asked, askance. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“I highly doubt that.” Adara offered a tight smile.
Natalie had to look away. Adara was right. She had thought that at the very least their fling was based on mutual attraction and desire. Instead... Humiliation ached through her and would for a long while.
“I can’t protect all of womankind from my brother,” Adara said gently, as if she knew what Natalie was suffering. “If he wants to pick up good-time girls looking for a night of partying, I can’t stop him, but employees are off-limits. He knows that.”
“I know it,” Natalie insisted.
She was being punished for self-indulgence. It wasn’t that she wasn’t allowed to be happy. She just had to be happy with less than what most people got. She’d figured that out a long time ago. Wishing for things that other people took for granted, such as having a dad or a healthy brother or a functioning life partner was futile. But if she kept her expectations low, she could usually have that much.
If she hadn’t stood outside that stupid door, yearning for love and marriage, she could have had the poignant memory she’d wanted from Demitri in the first place.
Adara dug an eyeliner from her bag, then leaned into the mirror to draw fresh lines around her lids.
Natalie opened her own purse and searched out a lipstick, but she really didn’t see the point in fixing makeup she’d cry off as soon as she reached her room.
“It’s not as if I expected anything to come of this. I just wanted...” Her mouth struggled to form words. Her hand was trembling, her whole body still reacting while her mind tried to latch on to logistics so she wouldn’t melt into a complete mess. Dread and guilt mixed with regret and embarrassment. “Getting involved with him was my decision. My mistake. I just...” Time to grovel. And keep her expectations realistic—she hoped. “Will you let me put in a resignation rather than leaving me with a termination on my record?”
“I’m not firing you!” Adara lowered her hand and straightened to face her. “Don’t be ridiculous. And you’re not quitting, either. If you need some time, I’ll arrange for you to go home early—and believe me, I’ll understand. Take paid leave while the gossip dies down if you need to, but I can’t imagine who we could possibly find to replace you. We’ll have to make a statement of some kind, too. I’m sorry about that. Your privacy will be protected as much as I can manage, but as a company we can’t be seen as trying to cover up, especially because he’s family. Legal will have to walk us through exactly how that part should be handled.”
“I didn’t mean any of this to happen,” Natalie blurted, feeling the press of tears rise to brim her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“This is Demitri’s disaster, not yours,” Adara scolded. “I’m upset it happened, but not entirely surprised. I wish he would—” She pressed her lips flat and seemed to deliberately force her despondent expression into something more stoic. “I won’t bore you with our family issues. But tell me, would you prefer to go home for the week or soldier on?”
Natalie desperately wanted to go home and lick her wounds, cuddle her daughter and let maternal love heal the cracks that romantic longings had fissured through her heart. But the fact that she still had a job was a miracle in itself. No way could she walk away from it and jeopardize it further.
“If you really want me to, I’ll stay.”
* * *
Demitri was drunk. Not stinking drunk, but drunk enough not to care how unhappy he was. It was the perfect state to be in as he sat beside the pool of a competitor’s five-star hotel in the south of France. No chance of sitting beside one of his own—his brother had canceled all his key passes along with his company credit cards.
That was after his brother-in-law, Gideon, the real head of the Makricosta organization, had had him escorted off the Lyon property. There’d been a phone call first. He had to give Gideon credit for wanting his side of things, but Demitri had been in no state of mind to be civil. “Adara’s not sure if she’s fired you or you’ve quit,” Gideon had said.
Demitri had told him what he could do with his job, so furious by the way things had gone, he’d cut all ties to Gideon, his siblings and the damned hotel chain.
Do you love her? he could still hear Adara saying. Are you going to marry her?
It was supposed to have been a simple affair, not something that would haunt him. Not something worth quitting his job over.
He didn’t care about his job. Not really. Certainly not about the money. He had a trust fund he rarely touched. He’d only gone into the family business for them. Adara was the one who cared about the hotels. Theo, well, Demitri would never understand why Theo was still there. At least he, Demitri, liked the kind of work he did. He was competitive enough to make sure all his campaigns and strategies were exceptional, even if he was bored out of his skull with the subject matter. Aside from Theo getting on his case about budgets now and again, neither of them had reason to question the quality of his work. They were going to miss him long before he’d miss them.
Which was proved when he saw Theo scanning the crowd from across the pool.
Demitri let a smirk of satisfaction tilt his mouth. He had known they’d break first. Come begging.
Theo spotted him and a twitch of disgust tightened his mouth.
Oh, goodie. A me
aty, overcooked lecture, coming right up.
He watched Theo wind his way through the occupied deck chairs and families around tables. Theo paused at one, speaking to a mother with a baby on her lap.
Missing his own baby so much he had to stop and tickle the chin of a stranger’s? God, he was sick of how besotted they all were with their spouses and babies.
Theo handed over a business card to the man at the table, hands were shaken and the baby gathered up by Theo. He walked purposely toward Demitri, the baby beginning to reach back and cry as he realized he was being taken from his mother.
“Is Makricosta’s starting a black market—?” Demitri began.
Theo plopped the bawling kid into his lap, making Demitri scramble to set aside his vodka tonic and hang on to the squirming boy so the tyke wouldn’t pitch himself onto the marble pool deck.
“What the hell?” he said to Theo, raising his voice to be heard over the growing volume of the worked-up kid’s bellow.
“Make him stop,” Theo challenged.
Demitri would have risen and carried the brat back to his mother, but was a little too drunk to trust himself, especially when just keeping the boy in his lap was like wrangling a marlin.
“Make your point, Theo,” he demanded.
“It’s pretty distressing, isn’t it? Is he hungry? Does he need a diaper change?”
“He wants his mother,” Demitri said pointedly. “Take him to her.”
“What if his mother is passed out from drinking and pills?” Theo said, leaning a hand on the arm of Demitri’s chair as he mentioned the unmentionable. “What if you’re a little girl and if you don’t keep him quiet, your father is going to backhand you so hard you hit the wall on the other side of the room?”
“We’re doing this here? Now?” Demitri asked, reminding himself not to crush an innocent baby just because his brother made him see red. Did Theo think he didn’t remember? That he wouldn’t have stopped their father if he could have? That he hadn’t tried in the only way open to him?
“I’m sorry,” a woman said, pushing in to break the men’s intense eye contact. It was the boy’s mother. “I can’t bear hearing him—”