by Tara Pammi
While it was tempting to gloss over it, Mia didn’t want a repeat of her marriage to Brian. At least Nikandros dealt in honesty—even of the searing kind, and she owed him the same. “The cheap remark about you being good enough only for sex.
“It’s not as if I’m a regular femme fatale to pick out men for sex and coolly wave goodbye.
“What I meant to say, was that we seemed to bring the worst out in each other.”
When he stayed curiously silent, she continued. “In all the years we’ve been on the peripheries of each other’s lives, I never attributed that ruthlessness to you. Charm and your masculinity seemed to be enough for you to get your way.”
“I don’t know whether I’m being insulted or complimented.”
“You were a different man when you threatened me with media exposure if I didn’t quietly come to Drakon.”
He sighed, some of the tension releasing from him. “All my life, I have fought for a place in the scheme of things. Here, in Drakon. With my father. With my brother. With Eleni.
“And when I didn’t find one, I went and made one for myself.
“I do not take well to being denied what I want, Mia. To being used in the name of one thing or the other. It brings out the worst in me. And I can’t apologize for something I would do again.”
“But isn’t that what we both did, Nik? Used each other that night?”
“Yes. But there was honesty between us, yes? No hidden agendas. No manipulations. And however that night started, the pregnancy throws it all out, does it not?”
She nodded, for the first time seeing what he meant. When push came to shove, he’d adjusted to the situation better and first. The daredevil had shown more predictability than her—it was a galling point.
“Is that why it’s not easy being here?” she prompted, realizing how easily she’d stereotyped him into just one role.
“The palace, the staff, every protocol is a reminder that I never fit my father’s idea for his son, to wonder if Andreas means his word that he wants me here, a reminder of things I’d rather forget.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I walked out once because of the distrust, the manipulations, the lack of confidence in everything I stood for.
“I will not fight the same fight with you too, Mia.”
“No, nor will I.” She finished with his tie, and placed her hands over his chest. His heart thumped under her palm. “You...can’t imagine what I felt knowing you were off racing that death trap again. I won’t be of any use to our child wondering when I’m going to get the news that...” She bent her head to his chest, unable to finish the ghastly thought again.
She didn’t want to say anything that would disturb this tentative truce. It was the first time they weren’t tearing off each other’s clothes or tearing chunks out of each other.
“That race had been scheduled months ago,” he said, his tone gentling. “My company and the shareholders and my fans expect me to show up to work.”
“That’s work?”
“For me, yes.” He leaned against the bed, beside her. A lock of unruly hair fell forward, diluting the easy confidence he wore like a second skin. “But my participation will be purely from behind my desk from now on and from a shareholder’s point of view.”
It was as if a boulder that had been sitting on her chest had been lifted away. Like the wings of a caged bird were free to flap again. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
She so desperately wanted to believe, to let that hope that was fluttering in her chest loose. The yearning to imagine a future with him and their baby filled with happiness, it was so acute that it hurt to breathe. She didn’t even want a lot—she just wanted loyalty and a little bit of affection.
But God, she’d been down this path before. She’d heard a thousand promises and believed them every single time. Only to have her heart crushed. Only to fall and splinter into fragments. In the end, she’d lost her ability to trust even herself.
She’d so thoroughly locked away her own instincts that she hadn’t seen beneath Brian’s surface charm or that ambition and greed could drive him into a hole.
“But, of course, you do not believe me.” The wariness in his tone dissipated the camaraderie of just a few moments.
“Andreas told me about your childhood illness. About how it spurred you into challenging yourself. I just find it hard to trust that you’ll shrug that crazy drive of yours now because you’ve a sudden—”
His jaw clenched so tight that Mia’s words drifted away. “It was resentment that my father thought me the runt of his litter that I sought to banish from my life. While I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, now I’m restless. Uncomfortable in this skin I’ve grown.
“What remains when every challenge is conquered? When you realize all you’ve done is run away from your own shadow?”
“Emptiness.” The answer burst forth from her lips.
It was all she’d known in the months after her injury. Her marriage had self-destructed, her career in ruins; only then had Mia realized she had nothing of meaning in her life. No family, no lasting friendships—one way or another, she’d alienated herself from every good thing in life.
She grabbed Nik’s hand on an impulse and held it tight. “I understand, Nikandros. More than you think.” She pressed her face into his hand, hope twisting through her painfully. “I so want to believe you.” It was the first glimpse she’d showed him of what was in her heart.
He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressed a tender kiss to the back of it. When he looked at her, the moment glittered with exuberant promise, a fervent connection with another soul like she’d never known.
“Working to turn the machine of Drakon’s economy is not an easy task, Mia. I have Andreas’s cooperation but only just. I’m going to need every skill I have in hand,” he said, tapping on the back of her hand. Breaking the intimate spell weaving around them. “You’ll stay in my apartments, sleep in my bed. Enough time to get used to the idea of marriage.”
For once, it wasn’t the idea of marriage that tripped her up. “You said your obsession with me...wanting me was over. Even now, it was you that pulled away.” A rush of heat filled her cheeks but Mia held his gaze. “I would enjoy shocking you, Nikandros, if I knew the reason for it.”
He smiled then, and it was such a beautiful sight that her heart ached. She hoped their child inherited that devilish smile. And his unquenchable zest for life. And his unending courage. And his capacity for loyalty.
She was slowly beginning to see the puzzle of his childhood, understood that Andreas and his father had isolated Nikandros, if not worse. And yet he was here when his brother needed him.
“I’m shocked because you admitted that you want me in so many words. There is such a lack of artifice in you when you speak.”
“A lack of sophistication, you mean?” she said, forcing a smile. That she was nothing like Nikandros’s usual girlfriends was a pill she was slowly beginning to swallow. Not stylish enough. Not educated enough. Not fun enough, if his antics last year with an underwear model could be counted. “It isn’t as if the proof isn’t there right in front of us.”
“I’m a healthy male in his prime and I have needs.”
“You sound like a commercial for Viagra.”
Again that laugh came. Grooves in his cheeks, stubborn nose flaring, eyes shining, he made her heart thunder in her chest. “I think we have proved conclusively that I do not need Viagra, pethi mou.
“And I have a moderately attractive woman—” she gasped and thumped his shoulder, and the devil grinned “—who shall be my wife soon. Those needs arise in close quarters with you.” He waggled his eyebrows as if his meaning wasn’t clear enough and Mia burst out laughing.
The man could charm the color blue out of the sky.
“So,” he continued, his gaze hitched on her mouth, “it makes sense to satisfy those needs with her, rather than trawl through pubs and clubs, playing the singles scene again.
“C
elibacy and I do not get along.”
And just like that, with that masculine, egotistical statement, he broke the tenuous connection. Mia raised stricken eyes to him. “You’d put me through that kind of relationship again? Make me wonder, as I did with Brian, if you’re in some other woman’s arms, kissing...”
There was only so much time and distance he was willing to give her. After all these years, being near Mia, having her in the same bed—Christos, even the pillows and sheets smelled like her now—and telling his body that he couldn’t really have her, was messing up his head.
“If you insist on different suites and stupid rules, yes,” he said stubbornly.
She shrank back as if he’d struck her. Turned around and fled.
Nik breathed out another curse—damn it, where was his sense—and followed her.
Andreas had always said he’d been born chock-full of charm, and it had been true. Nikandros had always so easily charmed things out of women—sweets from the kitchen maids, midnight strolls through the secret passageways in the palace from his besotted nanny, clothes and that sense of uppitiness from many a woman... But when it came to Mia, the one woman with whom he wanted a meaningful relationship, a sane life, he had as much charm as a toad.
“Mia, wait...”
“I won’t make the same mistake I made with Brian. If you insist on tying us into a marriage, fine. But I will not take your cheating lying down. Thanks to you, I have discovered I’ve just as much libido as any other woman, or man for that matter. I will wait for as long as this baby comes.”
Every muscle in his body tensed up. “And then what?”
Her gaze met his, full of defiance. “And then... I... I’m going to get my body back, I’m going to get back to my career, and if a man should show interest in me, I’m going to take him on.
“I’m not going to live a celibate life, hoping you’ll not stray, hoping you’ll see the error of your ways.”
His head was pounding now. “You’re threatening me with adultery before you even agree to marry me?”
“Which is exactly what you just did. I told you, I’m through playing the victim.”
Rubbing at his temples, Nik sighed. He’d lost any ground he’d gained with that reckless statement. He didn’t even want another woman—he wanted Mia. So what was that if it wasn’t his stupid ego talking?
But the idea of Mia with any other man, it stilled everything within him.
“What I said was utterly stupid. I’ve never cheated on a girlfriend even.”
“Brian would never ever apologize, even when he knew he was in the wrong.”
His temper flared. Gritting his teeth, he corralled that first wave of reaction. “The worst thing you could do to kill any chance we have of making this work is measure me against him.
“Or any other man.
“I’ve spent my entire life being compared to...” A curse flew from him. “I’m not Brian and I don’t care to know how I come up against him.
“This is you and me and the baby, Mia. No one else.”
As if she could sense the anger in him, she took his hands in hers. “If you want me to give this a real try, then you have to, too.”
“I brought you here and announced to my family that I intend to marry you. That’s more than you’ve given me.”
“Yes. But you want it for this baby, Nikandros. That’s not good enough. Our relationship will be nothing but a burden on a child if we can’t stand each other.”
He was living proof of how a parent could mess up the child. “What do you want from me?”
“I want time. I don’t want to talk of marriage until I know we can live with each other, without shredding each other.”
She didn’t ask for love. She didn’t ask for undying devotion. What she did ask, he could damn well give to her. It wasn’t as if he had enormous practice with relationships. Thee Mou, he couldn’t even look at his own family without resentment flaring and the longest relationship he’d had with a woman was three months because he’d been in Antarctica for two of those months.
He just didn’t do well with expectations, so he’d always been alone. And it had worked well with his lifestyle, because for all his appeal, no woman wanted a man who constantly looked for the next thrill. Who was determined to run far and fast from the one place he’d always desperately wanted to belong to. From himself even.
But with Mia, every tenet he lived by went out the door. He wanted to tie her to him so fast and so tight that nothing could disrupt it.
“I want to know this will work before we—”
“That’s impossible,” he interrupted her, noting the thread of anxiety in her tone. “That’s like wanting to know the outcome of a game before you even play it.”
“I hate risks. In games and in life. And you...you take risks no man would ever even consider.”
“Fine. You have time. But I will use every weapon in my arsenal to persuade you. And I believe you could not call me cocky if I say I have the best weapon of all.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MIA SPENT THE next few weeks trying to carve a routine for herself and to cling only to the outer fringes of the royal family. But the royal siblings, as they were called by the media, sucked her in like a whirlpool.
She could have fought Nikandros, had become adept at handling even the Crown Prince’s sneaky little manipulations to convince her that Nikandros was a catch, but it was Eleni Drakos that seemed to be made of immovable will.
She’d signed Mia up for etiquette lessons. And for a new wardrobe. And history lessons about Drakon and the damned dragon that a band of fierce warriors had apparently taken down a millennium ago.
Despite her numerous shortcomings to becoming a princess according to Eleni, Mia enjoyed the dinners. Even the constant tension between calm, self-controlled Andreas, who rarely betrayed his thoughts and the hotheaded, impulsive Nikandros, who was already chafing at the constraints of “damned bureaucracy” as he called it.
Of course, when Mia had asked Eleni what had transpired between the brothers to make them so wary of each other, she’d clammed up.
But every time she sat down to dinner with them, Mia felt the estrangement with her own sister, Emmanuela, like a physical ache. Her older sister couldn’t understand Mia’s decision for walking away all those years ago, hadn’t understood that for Mia, soccer had been a way to fight the constant disappointments and the soul-crushing hope that came after each of her father’s promises.
Family was everything to them and Mia had simply walked away from it when it had become too hard. A pattern she was beginning to see in every aspect of her life, she thought with a sinking realization. When Brian had died in that accident and Emmanuela had called her, Mia had found it incredibly hard to break past the grief and self-pity she’d suffered. In the end, they’d talked for barely a couple of minutes and like strangers, instead of sisters who’d once adored each other.
Mia had hung up before the topic of their mom had even come up.
But seeing Nik and Andreas struggle to create something new while there was clearly a huge source of tension between them gave her fresh hope.
She was going to have a baby. Wouldn’t Emmanuela welcome the news? Wouldn’t her mom be excited that Mia was finally in a good place, that she was going to be an abuela?
The urge to pick up the phone and call them was an ache inside her. Just as soon as she figured out what she was going to say. As soon as she armed herself with enough courage. For the possibility that Mia had left it too long, had done the unforgivable and it wasn’t possible to mend what had been fractured.
In the meantime, she spent her days steeped in the history and grandeur of the King’s Palace.
With its stunning galleries and frescoes, it was an art education in itself. There were pleasure gardens; Drakonian soil was fertile with a vast array of exotic flowers and trees.
A library that could easily swallow a soccer field, books as far as the eye could see. Mia had gotten lost in
there the first time Nikandros had brought her, marveling at leather-bound first editions, ranging from European history to world politics and the average romance paperback. When she had happily plucked a few from the shelves—they had always been her companions against loneliness—Nikandros had laughed and said his maman would approve of Mia.
Apparently, the romance selection had been added at the behest of the French-born Camille.
Combined, the palace, the gardens and the library were a treasure trove that kept Mia busy. Her career-ending injury and Brian’s death had come stacked together at her and she’d spent the whole year feeling sorry for herself.
Only now, under the Mediterranean sun, was she beginning to realize how many things that she loved doing had been pushed aside because she’d been training and playing soccer since she’d been sixteen. She didn’t even have a college degree, something she could now at least consider.
But the joy in each morning, the anticipation that bubbled over in her tummy when she looked forward to a quiet evening in their suite, the pleasure that drenched her when she saw a red rose on their bed sometimes—it was all due to the dance she was engaging in with the devil. Their relationship, while she knew he’d never agree to call it friendship, was changing, growing.
Sometime in the second week, Mia learned that the word subtlety was not in the man’s dictionary when she’d requested of Nikandros a patch of the space somewhere near the herbal gardens the kitchen maintained. She had always loved mucking about in the gardens with her mother, coaxing fragile flowers and plants, and she wanted to get back to it. It felt like a connection she could reestablish before she could actually gather the courage to call her mom.
What she’d been presented with the next morning had been about a quarter of an acre, and a barn full of farm implements and a hundred varieties of garden soils and an army of servants all lined up neatly next to said barn.
“Is it not what you envisioned?” Nik had asked her at her continued silence.
“Do you want to turn me to farming?” she’d asked, tongue-in-cheek.
He had frowned, then stared at her, a grumpy expression clouding his face. “You asked for land. Andreas and I discussed it and decided this piece of land would work perfectly for you. It is prohibited from the general public.”