by Tara Pammi
“But our foster parents had a son. Jason was almost seventeen, older than any of us, and was this huge, burly guy. From the day I walked in, he picked on me. Every month, it got worse. Sometimes he would just lift me up and throw me down, sometimes lock me in the closet. I got pretty smart about avoiding him for the most part. For two years, it went on but it was the place that I had been the happiest. Except for those moments with Jason. The worst was when...”
Nikos’s hand clasped hers, his fingers strong and rough against hers. Holding back the urge to pull away, she took a breath. Her hand was tiny in his, but it felt good, strong, a spark of comfort filling her up. “You don’t have to continue.”
Lexi looked up, but didn’t let go of his hand. She hated that the shadow of that fear that had been her constant companion in those years was still there with her. She swallowed the hot ache in her throat. “No...see, I thought I was over it. But I guess, the way I’ve been reacting around you...” Her fingers twitched in his grasp but he held on tight. “I...I refuse to give him any power over me.”
She closed her eyes and instantly she was back in that room where she had slept again, on the metal-framed bed that had creaked with Jason’s weight, the scent of his sweat, and she could feel his body pressing down on hers. “One night when I was fifteen—” her words came out in a ravaged whisper “—I was sleeping and I guess, I don’t know...I don’t know why he lay down next to me. I had no idea that he was even back in the house. One minute I’m sleeping peacefully, and the next, I wake up, and he is all over me.” She shivered and her short nails dug into Nikos’s palm. “He pinned me down with his huge body, locked my arms over my head. I can still feel his breath over my face. I don’t know for how long. But I couldn’t breathe, or move.”
“Did he—”
The utter savagery in Nikos’s words broke the hold of the memory. “No. I don’t know what he intended. And thanks to Tyler, I never had to find out.”
“Of course.” The two words were laden with a vehemence that jerked her gaze to his face. “That’s when you ran away?”
“Yes. I couldn’t take it anymore. Except within a week, we realized how hard it was to feed ourselves. But Tyler refused to leave me.” And she wouldn’t leave him now.
“Didn’t the parents believe what happened?”
She felt the intensity of Nikos’s gaze bear down on her and looked up. Bracing herself, she answered, instinctually knowing that he would not like it. “I never told them.”
Shock widened his eyes, he clenched the muscles in his cheeks. “Why not?”
“I didn’t want to hurt them.”
“Hurt them?” His words were low, and yet brimming with a savage fury. “Their son attacked you while you were under their care. Protecting you was their duty.”
He vibrated with an emotion that Lexi couldn’t understand. The fact that a decision she had made years ago could affect him so much...she didn’t know what to make of it. Only that she wanted to explain. “They were kind people, Nikos. They gave me a home for two years. It would have broken their hearts...”
He ran his fingers through his hair with palpable fury. “It was not your responsibility to worry about their feelings. It should never be a child’s burden. Once you start taking that on, believe me, there is no turning back.” He stood up from the bed, a latent energy pulsing under the controlled movement. His gaze filled with barely concealed scorn, he leveled a look at her. “Your kind of innocence and goodwill, it has no place in this world. Seeking to make a place for you in others’ lives, it’s...one thing. But to the point of undermining yourself... And before you imply so—” a softening glimmered in his gaze “—I have nothing to gain in this. This piece of advice is for your own benefit.”
Lexi stared at his back as he strode out of the cabin without another glance toward her. He was once again the arrogant, condescending stranger from their first meeting, the one she didn’t like, even a little bit. And not the least because he had a way of cutting right to the heart of uncomfortable truths she didn’t want to hear, making her question her choices and even herself.
* * *
Lexi stepped out of the limo and for once, remembered not to grab her luggage. Hardly two days in Nikos’s company, and she was already getting used to being served hand and foot.
Fascinated as she was with the sheer, majestic decadence of the hotel in front of her, it took her a minute to realize she was in Paris. Nikos had left the private airstrip in a different limo without a word. And she had been so glad to get a reprieve from him that she hadn’t even realized where they had landed.
Shaking her head, she mounted the steps of the glitzy hotel. Stifling the urge to just hang around and look at everything around her, she walked to the reception desk.
Unease settled in her gut as she looked past the vast, marble-tiled foyer. Like a space portal waiting to swallow her whole, the glass elevator doors opened with a swish.
She forced a smile to her mouth and turned back toward the counter, her heart slowly but steadily crawling up her throat. She hated the hold her fear had on her, but neither could she shake it off. Stairs, it had to be again.
Stubbornly pushing her heart back into its place, she glanced through the upscale ground floor café first. She needed a high boost of carbs if she had to walk up twenty floors again.
“Mr. Demakis has a permanent suite with us on the forty-fifth floor,” the receptionist said and Lexi’s heart sank. “But we received an email to say you need a suite on the first floor.”
Lexi could have kissed the woman. Feeling giddy with pleasure that she didn’t have to chance a heart attack again, she followed the uniformed staff and clicked Nikos’s number on her cell phone.
“What is it, Ms. Nelson?” His irritated voice came on the other line. “I gave you my number in case of emergencies. Anything else you need, just ask the hotel reception and they will provide it for you.”
The bubble of her excitement deflated with a tangible hiss. She licked her lips and forced herself to form the words. “The first floor suite...I... Thanks for remembering, Nikos.”
Silence rumbled down the line, heavy, awkward and utterly embarrassing. “You’re doing it again, Ms. Nelson. Thinking that everyone else in the world is like you. They’re not. I need you alive right now. After that, climb fifty or a hundred floors, I don’t care.”
“Why are we lolling around here when you were in such a rush to leave New York then?” she said tartly.
“Because I have a meeting here which I had to postpone to come to get you.”
And he disconnected the call.
Lexi stared at her phone, her mouth hanging open. Suddenly she felt like the stupidest woman on the planet for calling him. Especially when he had dumped her unceremoniously in a strange city without so much as an explanation.
She thumped her forehead with her phone, furious with herself. Fat good thanking him had done her. But neither did she believe him.
He might be an arrogant, infuriating pain in the butt, but he had a heart, whatever he might like to think.
Resolving to maintain a distance from him, she made her way toward the doorway that led to the stairs.
* * *
Pulling the edges of her robe together, Lexi stumbled out of the shower. Embarrassment, sheer fury, plain terror, cycled through her in a matter of seconds.
Her robe clinging to her wet skin, she followed the six-foot French woman, who was utterly naked, into the lounge of the suite.
“Where is Nikos?” the woman said in a delicious French accent.
So that’s what this was about. “This is not Mr. Demakis’s suite,” Lexi managed, through the shock sputtering through her.
The woman’s shoulders were thrown back, a perfectly manicured hand on her hip, not an inch of the confidence with which she had simply barged into the s
hower that Lexi had been occupying, had left Emmanuelle at realizing her mistake.
Blinking, Lexi shook her head, the utter perfection of the woman’s body etched into her mind. She hurriedly looked around the lavish suite. The woman couldn’t have walked through the street and into the foyer naked, could she? Though with a body like hers, no one would blame her.
Spotting a towel, Lexi threw it at her and continued her search again.
She breathed in relief as her gaze fell on a small, silken red heap on the cream leather couch.
She pulled it up just when the door to the suite opened and in walked the man she wanted to strangle. With a keycard in his hand as if he owned the hotel. “I don’t believe this. Is the whole world just allowed to barge into my suite?”
His gaze moved from her face to the red silk dress in her hand and then toward Emmanuelle whose slender frame was hidden from the entrance.
The blasted man burst out laughing. The sound punched Lexi in the stomach, knocking the breath out of her.
Shaking with anger, she threw the dress at him with as much force as she could muster. The weightless garment fell silkily at his feet. “That woman barged into the shower, naked, and gave me the fright of my life.”
“Calm down, Ms. Nelson,” he said smoothly and picked up the dress.
Mumbling something Lexi couldn’t hear in Emmanuelle’s ear, he handed the dress to her.
Who, in turn, nodded and pulled her dress on. Next to Emmanuelle, who looked just as striking in her red dress as without it, Nikos was the very epitome of dangerous sophistication that Lexi might as well be from another galaxy.
Why she even cared she had no idea. Except that he was very good at turning her inside out.
“I’m assuming seeing Emmanuelle naked has sent your nervous system into shock?” With a look that took in everything from her wet hair to the thin silk robe that she had bought in the teen section of her local department store, he marched past her.
Knowing that he would just tease her mercilessly whatever she said, Lexi clamped her mouth shut. She stood there resolutely, refusing to hide.
Emmanuelle kissed his cheek, looked past him at Lexi, threw an air kiss at her and walked out of the suite.
Reaching her, he flicked a wet strand of her hair from her face. Lexi shivered, the hint of stubble on his jaw, the strong column of his throat, a feast to her senses. That sense of being tugged toward him came again. “Are you okay, or should I call for a doctor?”
She folded her arms. The prick of her nails into her skin was the only thing that helped her to focus on his words. “Am I in a bachelor-type reality show starring you?” Unwise curiosity gnawed at her. “Does the woman in New York know about this one?”
Wariness replaced the dark humor in his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“The brunette, your girlfriend in New York?”
He settled down onto the cream leather couch with a sigh, his long legs extended in front of him. “Nina’s not my girlfriend. I don’t think she would even like the term. And neither is Emmanuelle.”
“She walked in here, naked,” she said, her line of thinking shocking her, “and left like a kitten when you asked her to.” Mortification should have turned her into a red blob by now. “What was that whole...exchange?”
Clasping his hands behind his head, he slid lower into the couch and closed his eyes. “I told her I didn’t want to see her anymore and she left.”
“Then that was the end of your—” she scrunched her brow “—association?”
“Association, Ms. Nelson?” He leaned forward in the couch, something restless uncoiling in him. “Have I wandered into the sixteenth century? No wonder—”
“Affair then, okay?” she said hurriedly. She didn’t want another taunt about Tyler. “That was ruthless. You say it’s over and she leaves. Is that how—”
“How I conduct my sexual associations? Yes. And stop feeling sorry for her. If she had wanted to end it, I would have walked away, too.”
“So wherever you go, you have a girlfri...a woman for sex?”
“Yes. I work hard and I play hard.”
“And you or she have no expectations of each other?”
With slow movements, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “This is sounding like an interview.”
It took everything she had in her for Lexi to keep her gaze on his face. But even in the confusion, she couldn’t stop asking the questions. “Do you spend time with any of them, eat together, go sightseeing? Would you call one of them a friend?”
“No.” He stood up from the couch and reached her. The hard knot in her chest didn’t relent. “You’re feeling sorry for me.”
She raised her gaze to him and saw the detachment in his brown eyes. For all his wealth and jet-setting lifestyle, Nikos Demakis and she had something in common. He was as alone as she was. Except she had no doubt he had precisely tailored his life like that. Why? From the little she had gleaned about Venetia and Nikos Demakis, they came from a huge traditional Greek family. “It’s a horrible life to lead.”
He laughed and the sarcasm in it pricked her. “That’s what I think of your life.” Her gaze locked with his, and for once, there was no contempt or mockery there. Just plain truth. “In my life, there are no lasting relationships, no doing favors for friends who will take advantage of me. And when it comes to sex, the women I see want exactly what I want. Nothing more. You would understand that if you had—”
“If I weren’t an unsophisticated idiot?”
Rubbing her eyes, Lexi flopped onto the couch he had just vacated. Because that’s what Tyler had always said to her, too, hadn’t he? That Lexi needed to live more, do more, just be...more.
That Lexi was living everyone else’s life and not hers. She had always laughed it away, truly not understanding the vehemence in his words.
“I was going to say if you lived your life like a normal twenty-three-year-old instead of playing Junior Mother Teresa of your neighborhood.” He took the seat next to her, and the heat of his body beckoned her. “If that’s how you see yourself, change it.”
This close, he was even more gorgeous, and his proximity unnerved her on the most fundamental level. The constant state of her heightened awareness of him combined with his continuous verbal assault made her flippant. “Is there a market here in Paris that sells sophistication by the pound?”
“You have a smart mouth, Ms. Nelson. I think we have already established that. Sophistication, or for that matter, anything else, can be bought with money. You spent enough time looking at the shops on Fifth Avenue in New York before we left. Why didn’t you buy what you wanted?”
She blinked, once again struck by how far and how easily he wielded his power. “Did your assistant give you a minute-by-minute update on what I did?”
“I was in the limo stuck in traffic and saw you. You hung around long enough in each store. Apparently, you’re as different from Venetia as I truly thought.”
He had an uncanny way of giving voice to her most troublesome thoughts. “I hope you’ll be so busy that I don’t have to see you once we reach Greece.”
“So that you can spend it all with your precious Tyler?”
The man was the most contrary man she had ever met. “Isn’t that the reason you’re paying me that exorbitant amount of money?”
“What did you do with the first half?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“If I find out that you have loaned it to some poor friend who really needs it—” his gaze filled with a dangerous gleam “—I will bend you over my knee and spank you.”
Her cheeks stung with heat as a vivid image of what he said flashed in front of her eyes. The curse of being such a visual person. “I didn’t give it to anyone nor will I spend it.”
“Because of your stupid mora
ls?”
“No. I...just want to save it, okay?” Realizing that she was shouting, she took a deep breath. “If I ever lose my job—and you have proved how easily anyone with a little money and inclination can find out my background—and if I can’t find a new one, I don’t want to go hungry ever again. I don’t ever want to be reduced to stealing or do something wrong again.” The memories of those hunger pangs, the cold sweat of stealing, knowing it was wrong, were so vivid that her gut tightened. Feeling his gaze drilling into her side, she turned and laughed. A hollow laugh that sounded as pathetic as it felt. “You probably think I’m a fool.”
His mouth, still closed, tilted at the corners. The flash of understanding in his gaze rooted her to the spot. “I do,” he said, his hard words belying his expression. “But not for this.”
A concession, spoken with that incisive contempt of his, and yet in that moment, she believed that he knew the powerless feeling, the fear that haunted her. “That day, you said you understood it. How?”
“I have been hungry before. And I was responsible for Venetia, too.”
“But your family is rich. And you’re rich. Nauseatingly so.”
He smiled without warmth. “My father turned his back on all that nauseating wealth for my mother. When I was thirteen, they died within a few months of each other. And even before he died, he was usually drowning in alcohol and no use to us. My mother’s treatment was expensive. For almost a year, I did everything and anything I could to bring in money, as much as I could. And I mean anything.”
He delivered those words in a monotone, yet Lexi could feel the rage and powerlessness that radiated from him. She clasped his hand with hers, just like he had done. A jolt of sensation spiked through her, awakening every nerve ending.
Her touch pulled Nikos from the pit of memories he fell into. Even now, he remembered the stench of his desperation, his hunger. Still, he had rallied. Shaking it off, he met her gaze. The sympathy in her gaze, it made his throat raw.
“I’m sorry, Nikos. It was wrong of me to assume what I did.”
He nodded, for once, unable to throw it back in her face. Because the slip of a woman next to him wasn’t pitying him. She understood the pain of that thirteen-year-old boy. He had manipulated her and bullied her into coming with him, but she still had the capacity to feel sympathy for him.