“Anything with alcohol in it,” Kostas suggested, holding out Stella’s chair and tucking her into the table.
Tassos gave him a mocking look. “I thought you gave that up with the monks?”
A half smile broke through her fiancé’s stiffness. “There were certain habits I wasn’t willing to give up.”
Tassos asked the waitress to bring them a bottle of Chianti. “It’s the sex I couldn’t do without,” he said, offering the departing blonde a smile full of promise. “That’s where I derive my tranquillity from.”
“Clearly you must be very tranquil, then,” Kostas returned mockingly. “Have you decided who the lucky recipient will be for the wedding? We’re seven days out.”
“It’s an issue,” said Tassos, face deadpan. “There is an implicit assumption among women if you bring them to a wedding that it’s serious. On the other hand,” he said, a contemplative look on his face, “when the champagne is flowing, it’s sure to be enjoyable. Maybe I should just take the waitress.”
Stella shook her head at his arrogance. Tassos was good-looking and charming enough to get away with it. The blonde would likely trip over herself in her haste to say yes. It turned her thoughts to her current problem—her very arrogant fiancé’s request for calmer waters in their relationship.
She had to let go of her antagonism toward him, she knew. Of the history that prevented them from moving forward and truly realizing this partnership because she knew in her heart they could be different if they had a fresh start, that they did have a strong mutual respect for each other. Perhaps it had been the reality of what she’d committed herself to that had been driving her aggression, the radical changes in her life, the loneliness she had felt without her siblings at her side, the tenuous situation she and Kostas were in. Not to mention her own conflicting feelings toward him.
But with her introspection had come clarity. She wanted this partnership to work; knew that together she and Kostas were more powerful than the sum of their parts. It was painful, hard work they were doing, but it was so worth it—she knew she could make a difference in this country’s future. Felt she had a purpose. With her and Kostas’s biggest challenges yet unscaled, he was right—a resolution was necessary. Some sort of relationship was necessary between them.
It had also been impossible not to admire the strong, powerful force of good her fiancé had been for his wounded country. He was still the larger-than-life figure she’d always thought he was, but she’d now accepted that he also made mistakes, as everyone did. Could they manage a real relationship together where she let down her guard and let him in while keeping love firmly out of the picture? She thought maybe they could.
She’d always considered Kostas incapable of opening up emotionally, but he had changed since his time in Tibet. He had talked to her about his past—yes, because he’d wanted her acquiescence, but still he had done it. Maybe he was capable of investing in a relationship—maybe he was capable of more. Maybe she had to take a risk and trust him as he’d suggested.
Tucking that away for future thought, she returned her attention to the conversation at hand. Her fiancé gradually lost his combustive edge in the presence of the ever-entertaining Tassos, who clearly knew how to handle him. She took mental notes. By the time their dinner plates were removed and a bottle of wine had been consumed, with liqueurs on the way, Kostas was almost human again. Then his phone rang.
“I have to take it,” he apologized. “It may be a few minutes.”
“Go.” Tassos waved a hand at him. “Your sexy, intelligent fiancée is in safe hands.”
Kostas slanted him a look that said that was debatable, then disappeared onto the terrace. Tassos sat back in his chair, cradling his wineglass in his hands. “He’s agitated tonight.”
“It’s the editorial. I keep telling him communication is a two-way street, but you know what he’s like. He thinks he knows best. Which he does... It’s how he’s executing that needs finessing.”
“He struggles with his father’s legacy.” Tassos’s gaze was frank. “More than anyone knows. He feels the pressure because of the duty that’s so deeply ingrained in him—the responsibility for his father’s misdirection. He ends up caring too much and internalizing the stress.”
She nodded. “I know. I’m just not sure how to help him.”
“I think you are. You aren’t afraid of him, afraid to give him a different perspective. That’s what he needs, that and someone who will stand by him and give him the unconditional love and support he’s never had. Who lets him know he isn’t alone.”
“You have,” she pointed out.
“Yes. But I’m not engaged to be married to him. That kind of bond is different.” Resting his glass against his chin, he gave her a contemplative look. “He needs to see the light again. He needs to remember the world is a good place beyond everything he’s been through.”
A knot formed in her stomach, pulling her insides tight. Shame was its origin. The shame of being so horribly oblivious to the truth an apparently far-deeper-than-she’d-thought Tassos had just voiced.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, edged with emotion. “I agree.”
He eyed her. “It must be complicated for you two. With what happened with Athamos...”
That might be the understatement of the year.
“They were complicated,” he continued with a frown. “At each other’s throats one minute, tight the next. Always the competition. But to have what happened happen? Kostas went off the rails. I’ve never seen him like that.”
The knot in her stomach tightened. “What do you mean ‘off the rails’?”
“I mean I didn’t know if he was coming back from Tibet, mentally or physically. He wasn’t communicating with anyone, not me, nor his father. He literally disappeared. When everyone was asking where Kostas was, why he wasn’t intervening with Akathinia, not even the king knew where he was. When Idas fell ill, he had no idea if his son was going to assume the crown or not. The wolves were circling.”
Thee mou. She bit her lip, a feeling of disbelief spreading through her. Had Kostas seriously been thinking of not coming back? Of not becoming king? It was so far from the man she knew and the duty he had lived by that it blew a hole in her brain.
“I can’t even conceive of that.”
Tassos swallowed his last sip of wine, then put down the glass. “He hasn’t flown since Athamos’s death. Hasn’t gone near a plane. Flying is his peace, his serenity.”
She stared at him. “You think he isn’t flying because of Athamos?”
“I think maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.”
“It was an accident.”
His gaze probed hers. “Is that how you saw it in the beginning?”
No. Her heartbeat thickened in her chest. But then again she had been so wrong about so many things when it came to Kostas, too caught up in her own anguish to consider what he might be going through, that she’d made a million assumptions.
A weight descended over her, a thick blanket of culpability she wasn’t sure how to handle. “Like you said,” she murmured, “it’s complicated.”
The pretty waitress arrived to deliver their liqueurs. Tassos waited until she disappeared before he spoke again. “Did Athamos ever tell you what happened between him and Kostas in flight school? The day they flew their first solo cross-country flight?”
She shook her head.
“It’s an exercise all of us had to do as part of our flight school training. You fly the route first with an instructor, who takes you through the checkpoints and familiarizes you with the route. Then you fly it the next day by yourself. Kostas and Athamos were up there together, vying for best-pilot status. They were neck and neck at the time.
“Kostas was about half an hour ahead. Unfortunately for them, the weather deteriorated as the day went on. It was difficult to see the checkpoints and Athamos got lost. So lost he was dangerously low on fuel. He panicked and radioed for help. Kostas heard his calls,
flew back, found him, took his wing and guided him back to the base.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “If he had run out of fuel...”
“They were both critically low on fuel by the time they touched down, Kostas worse than Athamos because he’d flown farther. He was flying on fumes by the end.”
She set her glass down, hands shaking. “What happened afterward?”
“They were given a chance to refly the route. Athamos didn’t want to. He was shaken up, crushed by his failure, frightened by what happened. He wanted to quit. Kostas talked him out of it.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting to hold back the emotion welling up inside of her. “What did he say to him?”
“That every pilot makes mistakes and those mistakes define their career. That he had to dig down deep and go back up there—that he would be by his side the whole way but to quit was not an option.”
“And he did.”
“Yes.”
Liquid fire burned the backs of her eyes. She blinked furiously, but this time she didn’t manage to hold back as she had so many other times. Tears slid down her cheeks like silent bandits.
Tassos closed a hand over hers. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. I’m telling you this so you understand...so you can understand Kostas better. It kills me every time I hear that damn story about the race because it’s only one piece of what he and Athamos were. Only those two men know the truth of what happened that night and it’s far more complicated than anyone knows.”
And she had been the biggest judge of all. Anger at herself dueled with the need to make this right.
“Thank you,” she murmured, “for telling me this. I needed to hear it.”
If it wasn’t a sign she needed to let go, then nothing ever would be. She needed to let go of all of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HAVING BEEN EFFECTIVELY blown off by her fiancé, who’d gone off to work as soon as they’d returned to the castle with that dark cloud around him again after the phone call he’d received, Stella elected to go to bed. She was too emotionally wrung-out from her evening to contemplate anything else.
She took a long soak in a bath in the rather garish, outdated purple-and-gold marble bathroom that adjoined her suite—any renovations would have to wait until the key rooms were finished. Stella slipped into a nightgown, picked up a book and took it to bed. But the more she thought about her conversation with Tassos, the more she didn’t understand. Confusion mixed with frustration in a caustic brew. Why hadn’t Kostas told her about his and Athamos’s history? Why had he never attempted to defend himself? How was she supposed to have a real relationship with a man she didn’t even know?
Throwing back the covers, she strode to the door, flung it open and headed for Kostas’s study. The light that streamed across the stone floor from underneath the door told her he was still working.
Fingers curling around the handle, she let herself inside. Kostas looked up from behind his desk, the hard lines of his face haggard, his beautiful catlike eyes a vivid beacon in the dim light. Dropping his gaze down over her, he made her suddenly aware of how see-through the ivory nightie she had on must be in the pool of light she stood in.
“This isn’t a social visit,” she snapped, rounding the desk to put herself in shadow. “I’ve come to talk.”
“Pity,” he murmured, his gaze eating her up. “I thought you might finally have come around.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “That would entail both of us entering this so-called relationship on equal footing, and since that isn’t the case, we have work to do.”
He threw down his pen and leaned back in the chair. “I’m assuming you’re going to tell me why that isn’t the case.”
“Tassos told me about your cross-country test in flight school. About what you did for Athamos.”
His mouth tightened. “So.”
“So you saved his career, might have saved his life if he hadn’t found his way out of that mess before he ran out of fuel, and you chose not to tell me?”
“He would have.”
“No, Kostas, that isn’t a given.” She clenched her hands at her sides. “Why did you allow me to paint you the bad guy, to damn you, when there was so much more to the two of you?”
“Because it didn’t make any difference. I needed to own my mistake.”
“It does make a difference. It goes to who you are. The kind of man you are. The man I’ve always known you are.”
A glimmer entered those dark, inscrutable eyes. “Don’t go painting me a hero, Stella. I’ve already crushed your illusions once. I did what any pilot would have done in my position. As for not providing explanations, you didn’t want to hear them.”
“Because you waited a year and a half to tell me. Because my grief has been ruling me.” She blew out a breath. “I owe you an apology.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that.” She dropped her hands onto her hips. “Are you punishing yourself? Is that it? By pressing forward and not giving a damn what anyone thinks?”
His expression hardened. “Now who’s psychoanalyzing?”
“Yes. It’s my turn now. And you know what I’ve determined so far? You were always closed, Kostas, your focus was always on the endgame. The women you collected, your top gun status, your summa cum laude superiority—nothing was allowed to interfere with your vision, with winning. But with everything that’s happened, you’ve locked yourself up and thrown away the key. You’ve decided you will save this country, come hell or high water, and that is your penance. You’ve given up your idealism for the very cynicism you accuse me of, when that is exactly what this country needs most.”
His dark lashes lowered to half-mast. “What do you propose I do? Let the country wither away and die while we all hold on to our outdated, fatal visions of what we want to be?”
“No. You compromise. You dream together. I see you wanting to connect with the people, desperate to make them understand your vision, but in order to do that you have to show them you are one of them, just like your grandmother said. Right now, they aren’t sure about that.”
His gaze fell away from hers, a silence filling the room. He dropped his head into his hands, fingertips massaging his temples. She could feel the storm emanating from him, the loneliness, the frustration, the drive to make everything right. The need to never again be that five-year-old boy standing beside his father inspecting a military guard, bewildered and lost. It tore the heart right out of her.
Taking the last steps between them, she bent and framed his face in her hands, making him look at her. “I am willing to be all-in with this partnership with you, Kostas. I think we can be that unstoppable team you spoke of, that we can do this together. But if we’re going to make this a real relationship, you need to give of yourself as much as you’re asking of me. You have to show you’re capable of being in a relationship for me to invest in you. For me to trust you. I need to know we are in this together.”
His gaze darkened. “I’ve shared things with you. Things about my past.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “and I need you to keep doing that, to prove to me this is the right decision I’m making, because you were right about me—my past means I don’t trust easily, I never have. But I do believe you are right, I do believe we can be different. I believe the respect we have for each other means something.”
He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Being emotionally available isn’t my forte, Stella. It never has been. But I will do my best. I am committed to making this work.”
She straightened, hands falling away from his face. “Trust, transparency and complete honesty between us are the rules.”
A play of emotion flickered in those dark eyes. She wondered which of the three things she’d listed had caused it, because they needed all of them if this was going to work.
“All right,” he said. “Agreed.”
She blew out a breath. “Okay, then.”
His gaze slid over her. Settled on the thrust of her breasts under the thin material of the silk negligee. Electricity sparkled across her skin like white lightning, heat pooling low in her abdomen at his blatant perusal. She bit her lip as her nipples betrayed her and hardened to tight peaks.
“You want to come here and seal the deal with a kiss?”
A part of her knew it would be a big mistake. Another part knew it was inevitable. An intimate relationship between them was a given with the need to produce an heir. She couldn’t deny she didn’t want him, hadn’t always wanted him. Perhaps a test run would be a good idea to see how hard it was going to be to keep a handle on her feelings for him. And it was just one kiss...
Kostas hooked an arm around her waist and tugged her down onto his lap. She sucked in a breath, pressing a hand to his ripped, rock-hard chest. His big, hard body underneath her was a hot brand she couldn’t ignore, leashed, pure masculine power that told her she was playing with fire, that perhaps this hadn’t been a very good idea at all.
He curved a palm around her neck and brought her head down to his. His mouth took hers in an exquisitely soft, gentle kiss, butterfly-light, easy to extract herself from. Except she didn’t because it destroyed some of the connections in her brain.
She allowed herself to sink into it, to discover whether the kiss on the dance floor had really been that magical, exactly how dangerous he was to her. Angling his mouth over hers, he deepened the pressure, turned it into a soul-destroying exploration that sent more of those little quakes through her.
So it had been magical. She should have ended it there, should have called the experiment done, but then he slid his tongue along the crease of her mouth and demanded entry. Too caught up in the sensual web he was weaving to object, she opened for him and the kiss turned breathtakingly intimate; a relearning of each other on a deeper level.
Not hungry, but staking a claim instead. Sealing the deal. Her stomach muscles coiled as the smooth, hot length of his tongue slid against hers. Stroked her languidly, provocatively, like a bit cat on the prowl. The hand he held at the small of her back drew her closer until she was plastered against him, breasts crushed against his chest.
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