by Caro LaFever
If she refused, if she went back on her word to play this game, surely he would exact a horrible revenge. She could see it in his eyes. However, she’d been through many a wringer in the last few years and she could handle him if she had to. But she couldn’t handle disappointing an old lady at the moment of her life’s deepest crisis when she was about to lose her husband.
Impossible.
“All right. I’ll do my best.” She scowled, wondering how the heck she’d come to this.
“O̱raía.” His satisfied word landed in the following silence making her jump. “Now we can move onto the information I need from you.”
“Huh?” Contemplating the horrible situation she’d gotten herself into, Nat found herself yanked back into the conversation. She gazed at him in confusion.
“Your name, gynaíka.” His mouth firmed. “Your real name.”
A bubble of amusement burbled alongside her dismay at the role she’d have to play during the next few days. “I told you. Natalie.”
“No more games. Or I send you back to New York and the police.”
“My name is Natalie.”
He growled his displeasure. “I need to run a background check on you, pronto. I can’t have strangers around my family without knowing who they are.”
“Sorry, not going to happen.” If he ran a background check, he’d find out about her father. Her brother. Her uncles. His view of her would dip even further into disdain. She shouldn’t care what he thought about her, yet she did.
Much to her disgust.
The plane dipped once more. His head swung around again. She saw the twinkling lights of a city, a huge city behind him. A flurry of excitement stirred inside her, despite the turbulent emotions clanging in her chest.
Athens. It must be.
Zenos seemed to have forgotten her. His body twisted toward the window, toward his homeland. Instead of happiness at his homecoming, she sensed an entirely different reaction coming off him.
Pain.
She watched his broad back, covered only by a thin silk shirt. The muscles were rigid and tense. Her gaze traced the arch of his spine, up to his hair. The curls were more pronounced on the back of his head, as if away from his alert focus, they could flourish.
“Archikí̱,” he murmured.
What did it mean? She wanted desperately to know. The tone of his voice was so dark, so hoarse. So agonized. Then it came, the word harsh and low.
“Home.”
Chapter 6
The smells of his homeland wafted into his nostrils with unwelcome familiarity. Pine mixed with the heat of the tarmac, the smell of the jet fuel. The dusty, gritty tones of the land blended with the scent of wet rain and the salt of the sea. A faint wisp of long forgotten memories swirled in his head.
Aetos breathed through his mouth.
The taste of Greece slid over his tongue and down his throat. The wild green grasses lacing around the wire fences, dying a slow death in the cool of the early December air. The sharp tang of spice, the dark richness of coffee, the hint of ancient passion and promise drifted in the breeze. Even the men starting to unload the plane scented the air with their salty Greek skin.
Home.
He gritted his teeth and took the last step off the airplane stairs.
Seventeen years had gone by since he stood on his homeland. Seventeen years of not thinking of this place, not dreaming of it. Never acknowledging what now ran through him.
Homesickness.
“Will your family be here to greet us?” Her voice came from behind and above him, a touch of anxiety edging her words.
He turned and examined her, perched halfway up the stairs as if she could head off the inevitable performance by not entering the theater.
“Óchi.” No. They would not. They had been told to stay put at the hospital. He’d known instinctively he’d need time to grapple with this return. Time to contain the roiling emotions surging inside him. Unfamiliar. Unwanted.
First he had to confront being here.
Later, he would confront his family.
“Éla.” His voice was curt, too curt. He supposed he should coddle this woman to make sure she performed well. But there was too much running through him, too many emotions. He couldn’t be troubled right now with soothing her worries. Later. Once he got in the limo and breathed the familiar scent of leather not the long forgotten tastes and scents swirling around him now.
“What do those words mean?” Her voice was just as curt as his. With a twist of distrust and dislike adding a sharp twinge to it. “If you are intent on throwing commands around you could at least speak English so I know what you’re saying.”
“Come here.” He waved her down, impatience tightening his muscles.
He was cursed.
Cursed with his homeland under his feet and in his mouth and nostrils. Cursed with the knowledge he’d soon be surrounded by his family and have to endure their love. Primarily though, he was cursed by this woman with her discerning eyes and barbed tongue. “Is that clear enough for you?”
She tightened her lips and gripped the side rail with long, elegant fingers. Even in the dark of the Greek night, he sensed the rebellion blazing from her eyes. “I am not a dog.”
Óchi, she was not. The glow of the plane’s inner light lit her figure in sharp silhouette. Her long legs encased in black leggings. Her black leather coat tied tightly around her thin waist. The lithe length of her womanly form shone at him like a spotlight. The form he’d noticed as soon as she’d appeared dressed in something besides a flannel nightmare.
Mágissa.
She had not seduced Hank. This was clear. Yet she was still a witch. A witchy, steaming pot of feminine guile and female allure. Her moonlit hair. Her velvet eyes. Her slender body who many would dismiss as too angular, too lean. Skatá, he would have been one of the many before.
Before he’d spent hours in close proximity to her and her magic.
The body inexplicably called to him.
A sylph singing her siren call.
Irritation itched under his skin. Never before had he noticed a woman sexually unless she was naked and ready. And willing to disappear once he was finished.
“Come down now.”
The witch did not obey him.
“Or else.”
She finally moved from her position at the top of the stairs, taking one step. One step. Then stopping, as if she supposed she had any kind of choice at all. “Or else, what?”
Her snide dismissal of his power, of the threat he held over her, burned in him, irritating the itch under his skin even further. “Or else I’ll ship you back to the States where you can have a long conversation with the police.”
One more step. His gaze, unwillingly, involuntarily, slid down to note the slight sway of her hips, the slinky swing of her leg as it came down to land on the next step.
The pump of lust beat a heavy tat-tat in his blood.
Irritation bloomed into outright anger.
Sex was a natural need like food or air. Nothing to think about or focus on with much attention. Sex was a biological function he’d taken care of with methodical regularity since he’d had his first woman the very night he landed in America.
The night he’d forced himself to get over what had happened to him at fifteen.
Sex was not about lusting after a woman as she inched down the plane’s stairs as if she were entering a hot, holy hell. Sex was not noticing how a woman’s hair gleamed white in the light or how her wide mouth looked like crushed berries. Or how her eyes changed from waves of deep blue to velveteen violet.
Sex was not about panting at the feet of a woman.
“Come on.” He waved her down again.
For a moment, once more, rebellion sparked in her eyes and he wondered if she would dare to march up the stairs and back into the plane.
He glared a warning.
“Kýrios Zenos.” An airport employee rushed to his side. “Kalṓs ḗlthes.”
Wel
come home.
With a jerk, Aetos swung around and transferred his glare to the waiting man beside him. “This is not my home,” he bit out. “I am an American.”
The swarthy man stiffened, the gold trim on his navy vest bobbed.
He heard a snort behind him from the woman. A snort of disapproval. She kept daring to critique him, as if he cared for her opinion one way or the other. She dared to challenge him, his power over her, his total control over her every move.
The anger bubbled inside. As well as lust, damn her. As well as the need to win.
Her.
A challenge. He thrived on challenge.
His mouth tightened in instant rejection and distaste.
The airport employee’s eyes widened in distress. He immediately painted a smile of pure supplication on his face. “Sas tha chtypēména mésō tou telōneíou, Kýrios Zenos. Limouzína sas periménei.”
The rolling drawl of his native tongue washed through Aetos. The prickly, pointed accents, the vibration of the vowels, the slide of the consonants. The words hit him in his gut, more poignant and pungent somehow in this home he’d left behind forever.
Or so he’d thought.
“Kýrios Zenos?” The man indicated an airport entry to the right.
Aetos shook off his stupid reactions and focused on the here and now. Exactly as he’d ordered, they would be whisked quickly through customs by this man. The limo stood waiting as the man had assured him. He needed to get to the hospital soon and make sure his orders regarding his grandfather were being followed.
The hospital where his family waited for him.
The prodigal son returning to the fold.
He dismissed the sharp twist in his stomach. He could handle this. He could handle anything.
The witch whispered herself into a stance right beside him. The movement jolted him from the contemplation of what was to come. Aetos didn’t know if he should rejoice at this or reject the implications outright.
She smiled at the airport employee. A bright, gleaming smile of white teeth and lush lips and brilliant pleasure. “Hello. Thank you for meeting us.”
Pleasure at what, he wondered with gritted displeasure. Pleasure at seeing this swarthy Greek practically fall to his knees in front of her at her greeting? Pleasure at being in Greece, a land that entranced everyone who came here for the first time, but held only bitterness for those who left its shores, planning never to return? Or maybe it was only pleasure at pulling his chain by being gracious in contrast to his curt behavior.
Usually, he was a bit more diplomatic. But this situation was not usual and he had a right to be curt. Also, he had no reason to explain himself to her or explain the ugliness grinding inside him.
“Let’s get on with it,” he growled at the male panting in front of her magic.
She snorted once more. Turning, she strode away from him, with the man pacing beside her, grinning and bobbing his head at her continued smiles.
Aetos followed behind.
Aware.
Of her.
The rope of her braided hair swinging in synchronicity with her movements. The strut of her long legs and the sashay of her butt encased in those wickedly tight leggings. Every roll of her hips swayed her surprisingly plump cheeks back and forth. Back and forth.
Back.
And forth.
The blood in his body pumped like heated steam in his veins.
He whipped his cell out and called his PA to go over final details of the flight bringing the best heart surgeon in the world to Greece to perform surgery on his pappoús.
If he still lived.
The thought wrenched him away from lust. A cold wash of instant fear swept through him.
He placed another call to the doctors at the hospital.
Walking through the airport entry, they were ushered into a private room. Natalie, or whatever her name was, smiled one last time at the swarthy adorer she’d managed to wrap around her pinkie in mere minutes. She turned to throw another one of those smiles at the customs agent. Who was male. Who took one look at her moonbeam hair and melted.
Aetos narrowed his eyes.
Not due to his being jealous. Óchi. No.
The reason was he’d finally figured out how to get at least one piece of true information from this witch. He snatched her passport from her hands before she could hand it over.
Those violet eyes of hers flashed with laser-blue fire. “You—”
“I don’t think you want to start a fight now, gynaíka,” he warned gently. “Not in front of all your admirers. They might realize what you truly are.”
“Polite? Well behaved?” Sarcasm riddled the words.
Ignoring her, he flipped open the passport.
Natalie.
He glanced up in time to catch her smirk. A prick of pure rage beat behind the middle of his eyes. The woman continually tried to pull one over on him. Continually belittled his supremacy over her. And because of this, he wasn’t going to let her escape the consequences of her actions, not even if she performed well with his family. Instead, he was going to let the sword fall when the time came.
Natalie Globenko.
“Ah, Natalie,” he murmured, his tone light, his gaze dark. “I’ll have to report you for an incorrect name on your passport when we return home.”
Not Greece.
America. His real home.
* * *
He stood in the center of his family.
A golden god come to life amongst a chorus of short, black-haired, emotive people.
Natalie positioned herself to the side, watching the reunion. Tears slid down cheeks and into smiling mouths. Hands waved in fervent delight above nodding heads. Animated voices filled the hospital waiting room with a flurry of excited, ecstatic Greek.
This reunion was no ordinary one. Her journalistic instincts told her this quite unmistakably. This outpouring of emotion had little to do with the dire circumstances that brought this family together. The patriarch might be on his deathbed, yet his relatives still knew how to grab life with both hands and rejoice in every moment of jubilation.
There might be tears, but they were tears of happiness and joy. All centered around him.
The him who stood like a stone statue in the middle of a flood of emotion.
What was wrong with the man?
She folded her arms around herself and leaned on the pale-gray wall.
Was he even human? He couldn’t possibly be. He worked like a demon without pausing to rest. He treated everyone he met with barely concealed contempt. Now, here, she saw his inhumanity even more. With his adoring family surrounding him, welcoming him, loving him…he reacted like a cold-blooded statue.
No smiles. Only stony looks.
No embraces. Only stiff nods.
Nothing to encourage his relatives to come near, to touch him, to love him more. He certainly wasn’t a god. Not in character or heart or soul, where it really mattered. He might physically shine like the sun itself, but where it mattered, he fell short.
Remember that when he gives you one of his grins.
It hadn’t been a gift, his grin. It had been a trap. One she’d teetered on the lip of for a moment before his behavior gave her a stark reminder of what kind of man he truly was. A man who lived for money, who had no compunction about lying.
A man who didn’t love his family.
Or maybe, like her father, he took them and their love for granted.
Either way, his conduct was disgraceful.
One of the younger women, with a laughing smile, stuffed a gurgling baby into Zenos’s stiff embrace. He held the baby apart from him, appearing to think the child would somehow contaminate him with its touch. Another young child bounced to his side, ignored the clucking of his mother, and wrapped his arms around a powerful male leg. The fallen god’s thigh tensed as if ready to shake the boy off like a gnat.
He didn’t.
She’d give him at least this.
He just stood, s
ilent. His grim gaze remained locked on the baby as if he had to keep an eye on the kid in case she kissed him. The baby cooed and batted her long dark lashes into the forbidding face above her.
For a moment, Nat thought he might soften.
But the flicker of emotion on his face skittered away, a blank look of nothing replacing it. Didn’t the man realize how precious this was?
Grief clutched in her throat.
She hadn’t allowed herself to miss her family for years. Developing a quick habit of dismissing memories had been necessary to get through her days taking care of her depressed mom and trying to keep track of her careless brother. She’d given herself no time to remember the dazzling Christmases with her cousins and aunts and uncles. She spent zero of her precious moments studying at college thinking about the times when she’d loved her dad. The times when they’d been a big, happy family. None of the childhood romps or rowdy games or funny jokes shared with her cousins and brother were allowed to penetrate her new reality.
Not for years.
Not until now.
Now, when she watched a big, happy family interact with each other, laugh with each other, be with each other—not until now did she let herself remember.
Observing this joyful family, those memories and joy came rushing back, swamping her heart and soul with the bittersweet knowledge—her family was gone forever. Buried or exiled. Like a cracked egg, a split circle, her family could never be put back together again. The happy memories were swept away by the painful reality of what had happened to her family. The pain slammed into her when she tore her gaze away from his relatives and pinned it on him again.
The men in her life had ruined her family. Ruined the memories and the joy.
Didn’t Aetos Zenos understand what he had here? Didn’t he know how precious this love was, and how easily it could be destroyed?
He rolled his broad shoulders as if trying to shake off the love spinning around him. His mouth tightened into a thin line when one of the men patted his shoulder. His jaw clenched when the boy hugging his leg laughed up into his tense face.
No, he didn’t. Not only was he an evil man, he was a fool.