“But she will have a place on it?”
The disdain in the general’s voice snapped her back straight.
“Her Highness,” Kostas intoned, “will play a significant role in governing this country, yes.”
“Don’t you think,” Stella interjected, “that it’s time the council reflected a woman’s perspective? The addition of some empathy, some compassion, to even out the testosterone-laden mistakes of the past? After all,” she said, tilting her head to the side, “we aren’t stuck in the Dark Ages anymore, are we?”
“No,” said the general, “we aren’t. It’s when emotions get in the way of lawmaking that the mix gets murky.”
Her gaze locked on his. “I promise you, General Houlis, my emotions will not obscure my clear thinking. I’ve found empathy, attempting to understand each other, communicating, has the power to solve some of the world’s greatest conflicts. It can only be a powerful force when it comes to ruling a nation.”
“And you bring a great deal of popularity with you to spread that message. Your work around the world has brought you much acclaim.” He raised a brow. “The next Eva Perón, perhaps?”
“I would hardly make that comparison.”
“Ah, but it’s an intriguing one to consider. Some say that Eva, in fact, had all the power.”
Kostas went dangerously still beside her. “Accumulating power is not the goal, General Houlis—putting it in the hands of the people is.”
The other man lifted a shoulder. “I’m merely making the point that your future wife will be a force to be reckoned with.”
A shiver went down her spine. Was there an underlying message there?
Kostas announced the need to move on. His hand at her elbow, he bid General Houlis and his wife farewell and propelled Stella through the crowd. He was practically vibrating with fury.
“When I ask you to refrain from adding fuel to the fire, you will do it. Your appointment to the council is a delicate move that requires much finessing. There is no point in making waves before the time comes.”
“Perhaps you’ve changed your mind?”
He set his furious gaze on her. “I never go back on a promise—that you will learn, as well. But you need to be patient. We must take this in baby steps.”
“I get that, Kostas, but I will not be muzzled. You will not tell me what I can and cannot say.”
His gaze turned incendiary. “I may be giving you power, but I am still the king of this country, Stella. You will listen to me when I give you a direct order. Obey me when I ask for your cooperation.”
Her skin stung as if he’d slapped her. “I have not agreed to the obey part yet. You might take that into consideration as you throw your weight around or you might find yourself minus a wife.”
“Stella—”
“I need a break.”
She shrugged her elbow free and stalked away, picking out Alex and Sofía in the crowd. Jaw clenched, she headed for them.
Alex eyed her as she approached. “What happened? You look positively combustible.”
“Three guesses.”
“Kostas, Kostas and Kostas.” Her sister plucked a glass of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray. “You clearly haven’t had enough of this.”
Clearly not. She took a sip of the bubbly. “I might kill him before this is over.”
“What did he do now?”
“He told me I have to obey him.”
Alex’s mouth curved. “What did you say back?”
“That I haven’t signed on to the obey part yet.” She took a deep, calming breath. “How has your night been?”
Alex flicked a glance at Sofía. “Oh, you know, the usual chitchat. It’s a bit disconcerting that these people were our enemies last year and now we’re socializing with them.”
“Not the people,” Stella amended, “the leadership. And why do you have such a funny look on your face? What’s going on?”
Alex directed another of those sideways looks at their sister-in-law. “Nothing, I—”
“Alex.”
“Cassandra Liatos is here. The woman who—”
“I know who she is.” Her heart thudded against her chest. “Where is she?”
“She’s standing beside the chocolate fountain...with the man in the gray suit.”
She turned in a subtle movement, locating the couple Alex had described. It must be Captain Mena in his sharply pressed military uniform standing beside Cassandra, but it was the woman herself who caught and held her attention. Of medium height, with the perfect, voluptuous figure she herself had always craved, Cassandra was astonishingly beautiful. As dark as Stella was fair, with long silky hair and exotic eyes, she was the kind of woman who stopped traffic.
The kind of woman men lost their heads over.
For a moment, she was unable to speak, unable to do anything but stare at the person who had turned her life upside down. “Does Nik know she’s here?”
“Yes.” It was Sofía who answered. “He elected not to speak to her.”
She couldn’t do it. She could not exercise that type of self-restraint. She didn’t have it in her.
“I need to talk to her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Alex put a hand on her arm. “Let it go, Stella.”
But she was already walking toward the fountain. Cassandra looked up, eyes widening as she approached. Stella greeted Captain Mena first, then the woman at his side. “May I have a moment of your time?”
The other woman nodded, the tempest in her dark eyes the only sign that this was anything other than a polite social interaction. Stella led the way out of the ballroom and onto one of the outdoor terraces. Face-to-face with the woman who had dogged her thoughts for weeks, she took a deep breath.
“Efharisto,” she murmured. “I’m sorry to pull you away.”
Cassandra shook her head. “When I saw Nikandros, I wanted to speak to him. My fiancé persuaded me not to. He said it was better left alone.”
“Everyone seems to think that.” Stella wrapped her arms around herself, resting her champagne glass against her chest. “I need to know if you loved my brother. If he loved you. It’s the only rational explanation I can find for him to do something so out of character. Yes, the competition between him and Kostas has always been the height of stupidity, but it had to have been more.”
Cassandra put her glass on the railing, taking a moment, as if to gather her thoughts. “I cared about both of them,” she said, lifting her gaze to Stella’s. “You need to know that. I felt as if I was in an impossible situation. I knew the history behind them. It made it very...difficult.”
“But you must have had stronger feelings for one than the other?”
“I was in love with Kostas,” Cassandra said quietly. “I adored Athamos, but it was Kostas I wanted.”
She was unprepared for the sharp claws of jealousy that climbed inside her and dug deep into her soft recesses. For the jagged pain that raked itself over top of it on behalf of her brother’s ill-fated gamble. Athamos had not loved easily, as had been the case with all her siblings after her parents’ disastrous example of a marriage, but when he’d fallen, he’d fallen hard.
“Did he know?”
“I don’t know. I told them both I needed time to think. I was trying to work out how to tell Athamos it wasn’t him I wanted. It was—” Cassandra pressed her hands to her cheeks. “It was done before I even knew what was happening. The first thing I knew of it was when I opened the newspaper the next day and saw the news of the crash.”
When Athamos was dead. “Do you wonder,” she asked, unable to stop herself, “if you’d said something sooner...?”
Cassandra paled, her deep olive skin assuming a gray cast. “Every day. Every day since it happened. But at some point I had to forgive myself. Move on. Punishing myself wasn’t going to bring Athamos back. It wasn’t going to change what happened.”
Stella bit hard into her lip, the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth. She
should tell Cassandra it wasn’t her fault, that she couldn’t have predicted what would have happened, but a tiny part of her couldn’t forgive the woman for not sharing the truth with Athamos before things got out of hand. And because she suspected Cassandra had been hedging her bets. If the crown prince of Carnelia had fallen through as a potential mate, she could have picked up the pieces with Athamos and still become queen.
She studied the woman across from her. “Have you found happiness now, with your fiancé?”
Cassandra’s gaze dropped away from hers, but not before she caught the myriad of emotion that ran through those dark eyes. The sadness. “I have found...peace.”
“With a man who wants to take the potential for that away from this country?”
The other woman lifted her chin. “It isn’t wise to judge others until you’ve walked in their shoes.”
But the deep, searing flare of jealousy invading Stella didn’t care about fairness. Athamos was dead. Cassandra Liatos was still clearly in love with Kostas. Perhaps their relationship, made impossible according to her fiancé, had never really finished. Perhaps Kostas still loved her. It made her feel ill in a way she’d never experienced before.
And that, she told herself, was ridiculous. Her and Kostas’s marriage was not a love match. It was a partnership. It was, however, a potent reminder of what it would cost her to allow her old feelings for her fiancé to resurface. To allow them to rule her.
She lifted her gaze to Cassandra’s. “I wish you and Captain Mena the best of luck. I hope you find the peace you are looking for. I really do.”
Turning on her heel, she strode inside. Alex had been right. That had been no kind of closure.
* * *
“How many High Court justices will you appoint?”
Kostas attempted to concentrate on his conversation with a high-ranking Carnelian judge, but the sight of his fiancée in the arms of Aristos Nicolades had unearthed a strange, combustible force inside of him that felt a great deal like jealousy. A foreign emotion he had little experience with. If he wanted a woman, he pursued her and enjoyed her. If she played games, one of those ineffectual exercises designed to inspire him to think seriously about her, she was gone within the hour.
But right now, watching Stella enclosed in the casino magnate’s arms on the dance floor, an intense conversation going on between the two of them, he was not unaffected. He wanted to walk over there and end it.
Exhaling a long breath, he pushed his attention back to the woman in front of him, a powerful figure who was a key supporter and would be an ally in the justice system. “I’m not sure yet. Rest assured, you will be among them.”
He concluded his conversation with the judge, making his way toward the dance floor, attempting to corral his temper while he was at it. It was tradition that the engaged couple kicked off the dancing, but since his fiancée had been out on the terrace with Cassandra Liatos, a collision he hadn’t been able to prevent, then taken to the dance floor with Aristos, he’d had to cool his heels while his event planner continued to look as if she might burst a blood vessel.
He was also feeling as if he might burst a blood vessel at his fiancée’s latest rebellion. He caught her hand as she walked off the dance floor with Aristos and the look of careless disregard on her face sent his blood pressure up another ten points.
“That line I was talking about earlier,” he murmured in her ear as he directed her to the side of the dance floor. “We’re fast approaching it.”
She turned near violet eyes on him. “What happens when we do? Will you discipline me?”
“The thought is vastly appealing.”
Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t lay a hand on me.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Not in anger. There are many forms of discipline, yineka mou. I would find an appropriate one for you.”
A layer of heat stained her perfect skin. Dropping her chin, she leveled a heated glance at him. “You knew she would be here and you didn’t tell me.”
“Cassandra?”
“Yes.”
“She was on the guest list. I knew you’d see it. I didn’t see the point in rehashing the whole subject again.”
“Rehashing it?” She stared at him. “My brother died when that car plunged off the cliffs. Excuse me for wanting the whole story.”
“I’ve apologized. I’ve told you the story, Stella. It needs to be finished.”
She set her hands on her hips. “Were you afraid I would discover she’s still in love with you? Are you still in love with her, Kostas? I’d like to know the lay of the land before I walk into this marriage. Will there be three of us in it?”
“No,” he said flatly. “I am not in love with her. I told you it ended at the time. But I am happy to see you care. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.”
“I don’t care,” she growled. “I am more concerned with being humiliated.”
But she did. He could see it in the green-eyed jealousy consuming her. It filled him with a supreme sense of satisfaction as the bandleader gave them the signal to take to the dance floor. Wrapping his fingers around hers, he led her to the center of the space that had been cleared for them. “Perhaps you should concern yourself instead with the fact that it is Carnelian tradition that we kiss during the first dance, and since everyone will be waiting for it, we’d better do a convincing job.”
Her eyes flew to his as he curved an arm around her waist and laced his fingers through hers to pull her close. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Ask yourself that, paidi mou, and I’m sure you’ll come up with the answer.”
Her skin paled. “Stop using those ridiculous endearments. They hardly suit us.”
“I beg to differ.” He directed her through the first steps of the dance. “I think they are perfect.”
She was stiff, but there was undeniable fire beneath his fingers. He could feel the pulse of her fury, sense the scattered direction of her thoughts as she looked for a way out of the inevitability to come.
“Perhaps you should just enjoy it.”
“Perhaps I should close my eyes and channel a former lover. Think about someone I actually want to kiss. It would provide far more inspiration than the thought of kissing you.”
Heat flared under his skin, jealousy rocking him hard. A tight smile twisted his lips as he closed his fingers around hers and drew her closer. “Refuse me, Stella, deny how you feel, but don’t ever, ever, tell me lies.”
Fury drove him as he clasped his fingers around her jaw and brought his mouth down on hers in a kiss that stamped his possession all over her. That made it clear to anyone in the room, to her, that he was the only one who would touch her this way. To expose her lies for what they were.
Stiff at first, she yielded only enough to cover up the animosity swirling between them. But then the kiss morphed, changed into something entirely different. Her soft, tempting mouth beneath his threw him back ten years to another kiss, another time, when her belief in him had been a shining light in the darkness that had consumed him. Reminded him who she was. The woman who had stood on those stairs outside with him tonight and prompted him to seize the moment. The woman who had agreed to take a massive leap with him with the ending yet unknown.
Gentling the kiss, he exercised a more persuasive possession. His thumb at her jaw stroked its way across her satiny skin, his hand at her waist drew her into the heat they generated. A tiny, animalistic sound emerged from her throat as he angled his mouth across hers, lips sliding over lush, sacred territory, caressing her with a reverential touch that demonstrated her potent effect on him.
A sigh left her lips as she gave in, mouth softening, parting for him. He claimed her then with a kiss that was pure in its origins, both of them giving of themselves without reservation, hot and sweet all at the same time. A shudder went through her, vibrating its way along his nerve endings. It caught him off guard. Tapped something deep and latent in him, claimed him in a way he hadn’t expected.
For a brief moment in time, oblivious to the hundreds of people in the room, the truth existed between them. That this...this had always been right.
CHAPTER FIVE
STELLA BLINKED AS Kostas lifted his head from hers, the blinding spotlights on the dance floor flickering in her eyes as she attempted to focus. Her palms were damp, her knees weak, and her heart thrummed in her chest as the undeniable affects of his kiss reverberated through her.
That had been a full-on, five-star Robert Doisneau kiss right there, rolled up in some Mary Poppins magic. The kind she couldn’t have fought no matter how hard she’d tried, because this was Kostas delivering it, the man whose kiss she’d measured all others against. Jessie had been right about that.
Her fluttering heart plummeted to the toes of her Christian Louboutin shoes. She’d been fooling herself all these years hoping she could find that magic with someone else because it had only ever been Kostas who could inspire it.
The stomach-churning realization settled over her as she unlocked her gaze from the man throwing her into confusion and attempted to wrestle her composure back as catcalls and applause broke out around them.
“Pulling out the big guns, Kostas?”
“If I was pulling out the big guns, we certainly wouldn’t be standing on the dance floor,” he returned with a velvety soft composure that made her crazy. “I’ll save that for when you finally admit how you feel.”
She had no smart comeback for that because she was quite sure her feelings were still plastered across her face. She focused on Nik and Sofía instead. They had joined them on the dance floor, along with a dozen other couples. She moved her gaze elsewhere when her brother’s amused expression sent another wave of heat to her cheeks.
She and Kostas had been dancing the night of her mother’s birthday party all those years ago, the night she’d made her big mistake with him. Her dream of becoming a lawyer in tatters, the fury and frustration she’d been trying to hold in all night overcoming her, and Kostas had seemed to be the only one to recognize her misery.
He’d pulled her off the dance floor and out to the library so she could collect herself. Except alone in the library, their attraction toward each other had caught fire after a summer spent dancing around it. Kostas had just arrived home, fresh from flight school in California with Athamos, taking his place as a captain in the Carnelian navy, a man when all the others had been boys. A man with an edge that turned her heart and hormones upside down.
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