by Dani Collins
Her sooty lashes fell and she set aside her phone. She tucked her hands in her lap and her voice cooled. “Why?”
He sighed, and pointed at her fork, urging her to eat. “Be thankful I did. My first instinct was to go beat the truth out of Underwood. Takis counseled me to use proper channels.”
Actually, he had said, “Be careful. Once they knew she was looking for him, they closed ranks. I hired an investigator who found nothing. Meanwhile, steps were taken that nearly cost me my career, my daughter’s future and my ability to support both of them. Nothing that could be traced back, of course, but the pressure stopped when the search was dropped. Calli doesn’t know about that and I’d rather she didn’t. She castigates herself enough.”
That explained why Takis hadn’t seemed to try as hard as Calli would have liked. Stavros remembered their wedding day, when Takis had said he had let Calli down.
“I can apply my own pressure,” Stavros had told Takis. “And I’m a lot more impervious to threats and retaliation than you are.”
“Why do you think I let her marry you?” Takis had said flatly. “I hoped she would ask you for help. Good job on getting her to open up. It took two years for her to tell me. This is not easy for her, Xenakis. She’s not as tough as she acts. Use kid gloves.”
Stavros saw that. Now. Her shoulders were incredibly slight. She was pale. Her hand seemed translucent and slender as she picked up her fork and nudged a bite of egg.
“I tried proper channels,” she murmured. “I need to talk to Brandon face-to-face.”
“Calli.” He leaned his elbows on the other side of the island, so they were eye level. “Why did you marry me?”
She took a few grains of egg into her mouth and let the fork slide out from her sealed lips.
“So you could come to New York and have a conversation with Brandon? You could have come here for a week and done that years ago. That isn’t all you want, is it? Why haven’t you spent any of the money I’ve been giving you?”
Her lashes fell.
“Because you need to bankroll a legal battle. Right?”
“I need to know where he is first. That he’s safe.” Her gaze came up, fraught and urgent. “That’s the most important thing. If I start with a letter from a lawyer, Brandon won’t see it. I can guarantee you they won’t even forward it. No one will confirm Dorian is alive. But if I look Brandon in the eye—Don’t try to talk me out of this, Stavros!” Her eyes filled as she read his expression. “Is it because you think it will drag your family into a scandal? I won’t go to the papers, I swear. I don’t want to put my own son in the middle of something public and ugly. I wasn’t going to make a scene last night. I had the words rehearsed in my head—”
“Calli.” He reached across to cover her hand. “I need you to trust me.”
“No!” She stood, yanked the tie on her robe tighter and stood there shaking. “No. I won’t and I don’t trust you.”
It was a damned sledgehammer to the chest. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Calli, listen—”
“No! Damn it, I know I was only seventeen.” She pushed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “I know he might be better off where he is. He’s probably with some rich, married couple who can give him a much better life than I ever could. I know I didn’t deserve him.” She dropped her hands to reveal the suffering in her eyes. “But I didn’t give him up, Stavros. He was taken. I have to know he’s safe.”
He felt her pain in that moment. He felt it like knives in his chest and belly, like a tortuous ache that made his entire being throb. He felt pulled and anchored down at the same time, feet heavy as he went around to her and closed her cold fists in his bigger hands.
“I didn’t say you didn’t deserve him. Who said that to you?”
She pulled her hands from his and tucked them under her elbows, turning her face away as she fought to hang on to her composure.
He drew her into his arms, but she was as stiff and cold as marble. He set his lips against her temple. “Of course you deserved to keep your own son.”
She flinched, pulling back in a way that clawed at him. He wanted to crush her, press reassurance into her so tightly she couldn’t doubt it, but she was like spun glass in his arms. Not nearly as strong as she was trying to be, fighting back tears with that jagged, hissing breath. Her whole body was quivering like an animal run to ground.
“I have more resources than Takis,” he said in a gentle, yet gross understatement. “The lawyers I hire will hire their own investigators. Good ones. Most important, contrary to what you just said, I am not afraid to use the press as a weapon.”
“But what if Dorian doesn’t even know he’s adopted? It would be horrible to learn something like that on the schoolyard. What if—”
“Don’t worry, koukla mou. I don’t expect it would progress beyond a threat. The Underwoods do not subscribe to any publicity being good publicity. That’s why they hushed up their son’s mishap in the first place. That and they wouldn’t want an heir to show up inconveniently in the future, seeking a piece of the Underwood pie. No. Better to place him in a suitable home where they can give him a measured slice, the way aristocracy has done for generations when they have a blue-blooded bastard to contend with.”
“Don’t call him that!”
“Apología.” He drew her in, pressed his mouth to her hair, still trying to assimilate that she was the mother of a child. A fresh wave of jealousy overcame him as he absorbed that she would always have this connection to Brandon, her first lover. It was far more profound than losing her virginity to some man he’d never met. Brandon would always be a peripheral figure in her life and Stavros couldn’t do a damned thing about it except loathe the piece of filth.
“Do you think he’s with a family member? Because I’ve searched and searched online. I can’t find a sibling or cousin or any other relative with a boy of the right age.”
“Let me put my mothers and sisters on the job,” Stavros said drily. “They’ll have a list of possibilities in an hour. They know every top-tier familial connection in the country.”
“I don’t want them to know this.”
“I don’t have to tell them why.” He glanced at the clock on the microwave. “But I’d like a starting point for our meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“Lawyers, koukla mou. They’ll be here soon.”
“How—? It’s the weekend!”
“Yes, they’ll ding me for that, along with the fee for the house call, but...” He shrugged it off. “I wanted to let you sleep.”
She drew back, brows pulled into a knot of worry. “Why are you doing this?”
“We have a deal, do we not?” Now it was quid pro quo and he grasped at the opportunity to justify their arrangement. Keep it going exactly as it was. “As you pointed out last night, I have not upheld my side of the bargain. You could have been more forthright in your reasons, but I am honor bound to give you what you sought when you agreed to marry me.”
“No, you aren’t,” she mumbled, hair falling in a curtain down her cheek as she dipped her head.
“Oh, I am.” He smoothed that wisp of hair behind her ear, mostly as an excuse to touch her. “You made a rather harsh comparison last night, glykia mou. I am not just like your faithless Brandon. I like being called that even less than Steven.”
Her mouth quirked in a hint of leavening, but quickly skewed again with emotion. Her brow grew heavy. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Sit. Eat. It’s going cold and you missed dinner last night.”
She went onto tiptoe and grazed her mouth against his cheek, filling his head with the scent of her freshly washed skin. Her voice rasped with emotion. “Thank you, Stavros.”
She sat down and his tension bled out of him on a quiet breath of relief.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CALLI COULDN’T SEEM to move, barely able to lift her head as Stavros came back from seeing out the lawyers. She was emo
tionally exhausted. Hollowed out and raw.
But hopeful.
Which terrified her.
“I realize that wasn’t easy for you,” he said, lowering to sit on the ottoman in front of the armchair where she had huddled and cried, pouring out her soul along with the sordid details of her teenage affair.
“Which part?” She had covered everything, drawn out by the kind, soft-spoken Ingrid while she avoided the drilling glare from Norma unless the older woman interjected with a sharp-voiced question.
Oddly, it was that tag team of hard and soft, compassionate and ruthless, that had reassured her. Takis’s lawyer had been at turns overwhelmed, distracted and impatient. Norma, Ingrid had informed her, was a champion of justice. Ingrid believed in her, which was why she worked with her—despite Norma’s lack of bedside manner.
That gentle humor and candor had allowed Calli to open up to Ingrid, but shame had colored every word. Shame for how she’d got herself pregnant and how shame had kept her hiding it as long as she could, waiting for Brandon to come back and marry her. Shame that she’d been stupid enough to believe he would and deep, deep shame instilled by her parents when they’d learned. Shame that they hadn’t loved her enough to overcome their own embarrassment, rejecting her and refusing to keep Dorian, then shame that she had trusted them. Shame that she hadn’t suspected her father could go to the lengths he had. Shame that she had lost her son. Mothers were supposed to protect their babies at all costs, right?
The shame had continued well after she had offered herself to Takis. Askance looks around the island had kept it going as rumors swirled of her giving birth out of wedlock and losing the baby to crib death, then living with Takis as his presumed mistress. She was ashamed that she had taken so long to tell him, to fight for her son, only to lose.
“The part where they asked you for time.” Stavros set his elbows on his thighs, hands linked between his splayed knees. “You’ve already waited too long.”
She twitched a shoulder. What did a couple more weeks matter after six years?
“Can I ask—You said that you didn’t tell Takis right away because you didn’t think you would stay with him that long, and that you were embarrassed, but what made you finally tell him after keeping it secret for two years?”
She sighed and gathered up the balled tissues that had collected in her lap and around her legs. “He asked me to marry him.”
“Ah.” His hands closed a little more tightly together.
“He knew he was too old for me, but he wanted a brother or sister for Ophelia. We gelled as a family in a lot of ways. For the first time in my life, I felt...wanted. Ophelia was a brat, but she loved me. Does.”
She smiled with affection, missing her girl. Feeling the distance, especially today, when her emotions were so spent and heavy.
“She helped me so much and doesn’t even know it. On my worst days, when I felt like an utter failure for not having my son, she would cuddle up to me, or give me something she’d made at school, and I would realize I was the only mother she had. It made me want to...” She cleared her throat. “I always thought... Somewhere out there, someone is looking after my child. Ophelia’s mother would want to know her child was being loved and looked after well. I couldn’t rob Ophelia just because I was missing my son. I had to give her my best and hope my son was getting the same from the woman he was calling mama.”
She grabbed a fresh tissue and swept it across her damp lashes, impatient with this unending leak. Her eyes were beyond raw.
“I made it clear to Takis that I was saving my wages to go to America, but little things kept happening with Ophelia that made it hard to leave. Every time I brought it up, Takis would offer me more money. I would sock it away, thinking I was buying more time in America, more time to plan my attack, more money for lawyers.”
She sighed and propped her head in her hand. It was too heavy for her neck.
“Then we went to Athens for my birthday and he took me out to dinner and proposed. I was stunned. Didn’t see it coming at all. And when he told me he wanted to make a baby... I fell apart. It all came out and he was so shocked, but he tried to help and...”
“Didn’t get very far,” Stavros finished softly.
“You’re sorry you picked me now, aren’t you?” He had to be, which made her sad. “I should have told you. I just don’t like talking about it. It hurts.”
“I know.”
The concern in his expression undid her. It took those passionate, deeply fascinated feelings she had for him and made them flower into something more poignant and permanent. Love. She had probably been in love with him for a while now, but this was the moment where it blossomed and became real. He knew her deepest secret and didn’t judge her for it. He wanted to help her.
She dropped her gaze, trying to hide the glow of yearning that dawned in her heart and swelled to suffuse her whole being.
“Come here.” He leaned to gather her up, then shifted them onto the sofa so she was in his lap. “You worry me when you’re looking so vulnerable like that. We’re going to find him, Calli. I’m going to do everything I can to make this right for you.”
She wanted to believe him. She believed he believed it, which was deeply reassuring. Sliding her arm around his neck, she buried her face in his throat, moved beyond words. Her throat closed, trying to hold back revealing how much his support meant to her. How much he meant to her.
She turned her lips against his skin instead, telling him with her openmouthed kiss and the small shift of her body how she felt about him.
He stilled and she felt him swallow. He drew back to look down at her, thoughts unreadable when his eyes were slitted like that, his lashes a forested line.
He usually made the advances, but she took the initiative, pressing her mouth to his, letting him know she was interested. Receptive.
He kept the kiss brief, pulling back a little to keep staring down at her in that inscrutable way. “You don’t owe me anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That’s not what this was, but—Oh, God, now she felt like a fool. Perhaps her messy personal life had completely turned him off. “You don’t want to?”
She drew her arms from around his neck, tucking them protectively against her chest. She must look like hell, too. What was she thinking?
“Calli.” He adjusted her position in his lap so she felt the hardness of his erection against her butt cheek. “That happens when you’re not even in the room. All I have to do is think about you. It’s inconvenient, if you want the truth. I always want you. But I don’t take advantage of women when they’re at a low point.”
“Stavros—” She dropped her head against his collarbone. “I’m not trying to compensate you. I want to feel something besides pain.” She let her head fall back. “Do you mind?”
He snorted and gathered her high against his chest as he stood. “In that case, I’m your man.”
* * *
Stavros was at a loss as he set Calli on her feet beside the bed. Sex was a playful pursuit for him. A sport. Not the game-hunting kind. More a good-natured set of tennis. He liked to control the play, definitely kept track of how many points he scored and he was always willing to take instruction and hone his skills.
With Calli, a new bar had already been set in terms of intensity and endurance, not to mention sheer level of enjoyment. Plus, given how frequently they came together, he knew exactly how aggressive he could be while keeping her with him through the whole act. It was mind-blowing how great the sex had become with her.
But this was different. There was no room for dominance when she was so completely defenseless. She needed healing, and he was capable of gentleness, but he didn’t know how to be tender. Not without opening his heart.
That shift terrified him. He was a man who thrived on risk, but he was taking a huge one here. He couldn’t turn away from her, though. If ever there was a time to be selfless, this was it.
A strange instinct guided him, somet
hing that had its origins near last night’s jealousy, but wore the flipside of it. Humble gratitude, maybe. A sense of privilege that he could be the man to touch and heal.
His hands moved of their own accord to carefully sweep her hair. As much as the need to consume her gripped him, he ached to absorb her in smaller ways. Savor her. He found himself lingering with his lips against her cheek, appreciating the softness of her skin and the delicate scent that reminded him of Greece.
As he turned her to help her shed her top, he pressed tiny kisses against her nape. They were small stamps of reassurance. He wouldn’t rush her. They had all the time in the world.
They didn’t, he acknowledged distantly, gut knotting with tension, but in this moment, time was at a standstill. He smoothed his lips against the warmth of her shoulder, murmuring how lovely she was.
She chuckled softly and reached to cup his jaw, turning her head so they were nose to nose, lip to lip.
“We’ve been speaking English so much I didn’t understand you right away,” she said in Greek. “I like it when you use our language.” She pressed her mouth to his, lips clinging in the way that went straight to his head.
He tamped down on the animal that rushed up in him, turned her and drew her slender form into his front, forcing himself to keep the kiss from raging out of control.
It was incredibly powerful regardless, fracturing all the walls inside him. He tasted the emotion on her lips. The enormity of all that she was, all the expansive feelings she hid within that sweet, calm exterior she showed the world.
He was the only one she showed this side of herself, he realized with a fresh rush of dizzying excitement. This passion of hers, these depths, they were all his. No one else caught more than a glimpse. It made him that much more possessive, yet careful, as he unwrapped the gift that she was. And when they were naked on the bed, he let her press him onto his back and slither her soft form and flowing hair over his skin.
“You’re making me crazy,” he growled, cradling the sides of her head. Her hair spilled from between his fingers, forming a tent around them as they kissed. The rest of him was a line of primed muscle, holding still, acutely aware of her straddling him, teasing his shaft with her nest of curls, breasts swaying lightly against the plate of his chest. He was damned near levitating, wanting so badly to be in her.