A Deal with Demakis

by Tara Pammi

Standing on her toes, she kissed his cheek, and he shuddered. Burying her face in his chest, she hugged him tight, learning and memorizing the scent and feel of him.

  “I’m petrified that I will never see you again, that I’ll never hear your voice again, never kiss you again. That no one will ever think me beautiful—” Her voice broke. “That no one will ever tell me to stand up for myself, that no one will ever think I’m extraordinary. I’ve never been more terrified that I’ll never be loved, Nikos.”

  She pressed another kiss on his palm, and looked up at him. The pain she saw in his eyes stole her breath, knuckled her so hard in the gut that she swayed. But she didn’t relent. She would say this to him, for herself. “I’m in love with you. I think I’ll always love you. If you weren’t so blinded by your ambition—”

  Pulling his hands from her, he stepped back, a vein pulsing in his temple. “I’ve told you things that I haven’t told anyone. This is not about ambition or greed. You have to understand...”

  She wanted to shake him; she wanted to hit him for not seeing the truth that was right in front of his eyes.

  “You still think this is victory over your father? Because it’s not.”

  He flinched. The flash of pain in his eyes would have stopped her before, but now, she was filled with pure fury. He had shown her what it was to live and then he wanted her to go right back to being half-alive.

  “This agreement you have made, it’s your victory over your fear that you are like him. Because you are, despite your every effort to not be. You are his son...you feel something for me.” She poked him in the chest. “You feel it here. You’re getting attached to me. And it terrifies you.

  “It terrifies you to realize that you might be exactly like your father, that you have the same weakness as he does, that if you let this small thing for me take root, if you accept it and let it grow, it will devour you from the inside, and that you will have no control over yourself.

  “And your grandfather offered you the best way to beat it back, to keep it in its place, didn’t he?”

  “For the last time, Savas had nothing to do with this.”

  “Savas has everything to do with this. You and he are both terrified of the same thing. This way, you can tell yourself that I’m secondary to something else in your life, that your emotions have no power over you.

  “You are breaking my heart and burying yours. And I hope to hell you’ve just as miserable a life ahead of you as I do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NIKOS SAT IN the leather chair in his new office in the Demakis International tower in Athens. He had been in this room countless times, stood on the other side of the vast desk as Savas spelled out more and more conditions that defined Nikos’s survival.

  And he had conquered every obstacle Savas had thrown his way. This moment, this chair was his prize after years of painstaking hard work.

  Except it didn’t feel like a moment of triumph. It felt hollow...it felt tainted. Frustration boiled inside him. He didn’t want to think of Lexi.

  He had thought she understood why he needed this. He didn’t need her any more than he needed her analysis. Wherever she went, or whatever she did, she would be loved. It was a matter of comfort and intense envy inside him.

  He picked up the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and popped the cork just as Savas walked in. Curiously, he had stayed away from Nikos since the party a week ago. As if he knew that Nikos had been like a wounded animal, rearing to attack anyone who ventured close.

  But he couldn’t. Savas understood nothing of emotions. He shouldered enormous responsibility without complaint. Nikos’s father had been a late child, and by the time he had turned his back on this wealth, Savas had already been close to sixty. But Savas had gone on with his life, with his duty, shouldered his company, his family.

  “Congratulations,” Savas said, taking the champagne flute from Nikos. “You’ve proved yourself worthy of the Demakis name.”

  Nikos nodded and took a sip. But one question lingered in his throat, clawing its way to his tongue, refusing to be silenced. He had never before asked Savas about his father. Ever.

  There was no need to do so now. Yet the words fell from his lips and he didn’t stop them. Maybe if he asked, maybe when he knew, there would be no more wondering. He could put all the dirty questions Lexi had raised to peace finally.

  “My father...did he come to you for help when my mother was sick?”

  His eyes widened under his dark brows for an infinitesimal moment before Savas could hide the flash of emotion. But Nikos had seen it. “You gain nothing by delving into the past, Nikos. You have done remarkably well until now, beyond my expectations. Don’t look back now.”

  Nikos dropped the flute onto the table, his heart slamming against his rib cage. Savas turned around, leaning heavily against his cane.

  Panic robbed his breath from him; his gut heaved. Nikos planted himself between Savas and the door. “Answer my question. Did he come to you for help?”

  This time, there was not a flicker of doubt in his gaze. “Yes, he did.”

  Nikos exhaled a jagged breath, pain twisting hard in his gut. Everything he had assumed about his father, it had been colored by the excruciating hurt that he hadn’t hung on for him and Venetia, that he had been weak.

  “What did you do?”

  If he felt anything of the vehemence in Nikos’s question, Savas didn’t betray it by even a muscle. “I presented him with a set of conditions, just as I had done with you.”

  A cold finger climbed up Nikos’s spine. He knew what was coming; he finally understood what Lexi had meant when she had said it was Savas that demanded a price from Nikos. A price he had paid willingly, crushing his own heart in the process. He licked his lips, pushing the words out through a raw throat.

  “What were the conditions?”

  “I told him I would give her medical care, enough money to live out the rest of her life in comfort. In return, he had to walk away from her. And instead of taking what I offered, your father decided to remain a fool.”

  Exactly what Nikos had thought him to this day.

  A sudden chill settled deep in Nikos’s chest, filling his veins with ice. All his father had needed to do was to walk away from his mother. And her last days would have been in comfort.

  And yet, he hadn’t been able to make the ruthless choice, hadn’t been able to leave the woman he loved.

  Had the guilt been too unbearable to live, knowing that his love for her had caused her suffering? Powerlessness transformed to rage, and Nikos turned toward Savas. They both knew he had been a weak man. “Why? Why did you ask that of him?”

  Savas rocked where he stood, his head erect, his gaze direct.

  “She stole him from me. My only son, the heir to my empire, and he ran away the minute he met her. She weakened him even more. And what did she gain in return? Poverty, starvation, failure?”

  “She did not weaken him, Savas. He was already weak.”

  Savas flinched. The tiredness he must have held at bay, the pain he must have shoved aside, crept into his face. There was unrelenting grief there, and to Nikos’s shock, regrets. Savas had never meant to push his son to that bitter end he had finally sought. It had been nothing but stubborn pride that had motivated Savas.

  Instead, in the blink of an eye, Nikos’s father’s cowardly step had shattered so many lives.

  “Eventually, he let her down just as he did me. And I could not let you make the same mistake. I held you at arm’s length. I put you through so much—my own blood. I could not let you become weak like him, incapable of doing your duty.”

  And it had cost Savas to see Nikos suffer as much as it had cost Nikos himself. Nikos shuddered at the weight of that realization. “So you manipulated Theo into making a deal with me. My marriage to Eleni Katrakis�
��that was your idea.”

  “Yes. I heard about that American woman, about how wrapped up you were in her, about how she had changed your mind even about Venetia. This time, I couldn’t not act.”

  And as before, Nikos had walked right into his own destruction. “Neither of you was right. Do you understand, Savas?

  “If he was irresponsible, weak, you were bitter, abusive. When he died, Venetia and I needed your love, we needed your support. Instead you turned my anger for him to your advantage. You made me loathe my own father. But I am not weak like him or bitter like you.”

  And neither would his love for Lexi weaken him.

  His body shuddering at the realization, Nikos sank into his chair.

  He had a heart, and it hurt, and it bled, and most of all, it loved.

  And he had pushed the woman who had shown him that out of his life without second thought.

  Even with her heart breaking, even with the fear that she had lived with for most of her life rioting through her, she had still fought for him, for them. She had tried to show him what they had and what he was so intent on destroying. Because the love she felt for him, it had given her that strength, that courage.

  I will always love you.

  Now he understood how easily, how perfectly those words had come to her, and why she had been so furious about what he had chosen.

  Picking up the papers of his appointment as the CEO with shaking hands, Nikos brought them over to Savas. He dropped them on the table and met his grandfather’s gaze. “Whatever you did, I realize you did it out of a twisted sense of guilt and love. You sought to make me stronger than him.” He swallowed the thick lump in his throat. “And I am a stronger man than he ever was. I have never shirked my duty toward my sister. I will never betray your trust in me. But Lexi...she’s a part of me, Savas.

  “She makes me stronger. She fills my life with laughter and joy.” He took a look around the office and sucked in a deep breath.

  “I have proved my worth a hundred times over to you. I deserve to be the CEO of Demakis International. But I will not pay the price you ask of me anymore. I will not lose the woman I love any more than I will shoot myself mourning her loss. You want me to run this company...you want me to be your legacy? Then I will do it with her by my side. That’s the only way I can do it. I’m through living my life based on you or him. I have to be my own man now.”

  Without waiting for Savas’s answer, Nikos closed the door behind him. Fear-fueled anticipation flew hot in his veins. He couldn’t wait to see her, couldn’t wait to hold her in his arms.

  Because this time, he didn’t feel resentment at the thought of the woman who had been through so much and yet had such a capacity to love. This time, he wanted that love. This time, he wanted to love her as she deserved to be loved.

  * * *

  Lexi was opening a can of mushroom soup when a knock sounded on the door. She knew it wasn’t Faith, because Faith was playing the adult, much-less-fun version of hide-and-seek with her. Tired of putting up an elaborate pretense when she was already feeling fragile, Lexi had given it to her straight—everything she had learned about her and Tyler, all the lies that Faith had told her.

  And then burst into tears like a raving lunatic the moment Faith had asked about Nikos. To give her credit, Faith had stayed back a full day, looking after Lexi before splitting.

  Lexi knew she wasn’t gone forever, and with Tyler staying back in Greece for the time being, Faith was the only friend Lexi had. But she had told Faith in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t put up with any kind of nonsense.

  But rattling around in the apartment that she had shared with both Tyler and Faith all by herself wasn’t helping her already-vulnerable state. More than once, Lexi had indulged the thought of calling Nikos, had wondered how he was. But the next moment her thoughts turned to his engagement, and the vicious cycle circled back to fury at him.

  That fury, it was the one thing that was holding her together. She couldn’t bear to think about what would be left when it was gone, too.

  The knock sounded again.

  With a sigh, she took a peek through the peephole and jerked back as though bitten.

  Clad in a long coat, his mouth set into a tight line, Nikos stood on the other side of the door.

  Her heart, if possible, might have jumped out of her chest. For a few seconds, she forgot to breathe as panic flooded her muscles. Tears hit the back of her eyes with the force of a thunderstorm.

  “Open the door, Lexi. I know you’re in there.”

  The nerve of the man to think she was hiding from him! Sucking in a sharp breath, she undid the dead bolt and opened the door.

  And felt the impact of his presence like a pealing pulse everywhere in her body. His tie dangled from his throat, his dress shirt unbuttoned and crinkled. He already had stubble—which meant he had shaved only once today—the very sight of which gave her tingles in the strangest places.

  She had complained once that it rasped her skin, and he had begun shaving twice. Then she had complained that she missed it. He had grown it in the next day and tickled the inside of her thighs with it.

  Dear God, the man could turn her inside out.

  Fighting the upsurge of color, she stood in front of the door and eyed him nervously. “If this is about me taking that laptop, I’m sorry, but I’m not returning it. Put it under damages that were due to me.” She had to keep this light, self-deprecating, or she would collapse into tears right there.

  “That’s what you think I came over for? Because you took a laptop?” He threw her a narrowed look before striding through the small gap and entering the apartment. The quiet brush of his body against hers made her tense.

  With a sigh, she closed the door and leaned against it.

  Cursing, she ran a nervous hand over her abdomen. Even with clothes mussed from the flight, he looked breathtakingly gorgeous and effortlessly sexy. It was not fair that one man had everything—looks, sexuality and the arrogant confidence to carry it off so easily.

  She couldn’t think like this about him. He was engaged to another woman. There were a few lines she wouldn’t cross, even in thought. But the sight of his sunken eyes, and the protruding cheekbones, the tired look, gave her immense satisfaction.

  Really, she needed to channel Ms. Havisham more.

  “Where is your fiancée?”

  “In Athens, I assume, with her lover.”

  “If this is a pitch about sophisticated open marriages and New York sex stops—” she wasn’t going to break down again, at least not until he left “—then get out. I have work to do.”

  He shrugged his coat off and threw it on the couch behind him. Pushing the sleeves of his shirt back, he picked up a sketch from the couch. And casually rolled the grenade onto the floor. “The engagement is off.”

  Her mouth fell open. For a few seconds, she wondered if she had imagined the words, if she was, once again, lapsing into an alternate reality in which he came back to her and professed undying love.

  “Lexi? Are you all right?”

  When she nodded, he went back to poking around the living room that she had converted into her studio. The wide wood table she had found in a flea market stood tilted to catch the sunlight from the sliding glass doors. And taped to it with a clip was the penultimate chapter of Ms. Havisham’s story.

  With hands that were obviously trembling, he ran a finger over the last box on the page. The one where Ms. Havisham was standing over Spike’s immobile body. He looked at her then, and the stark expression in his eyes knocked the breath out of her. “She has killed him then?”

  Swallowing the tears catching in her throat, Lexi nodded. “In this draft, at least.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She rubbed the heel of her palm over her eyes. “I can’t decide
on an ending. I’m meeting a freelance publisher guy in two days, but I’m still not sure. She has to show Spike what she’s capable of so that he doesn’t underestimate her ever again, but maybe she’ll just maim him. Maybe she will turn him into her sidekick, who knows?”

  He blinked. And she realized it was to shield his expression from her face. “You’re enjoying this immensely, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I have totally embraced the fact that Spike’s life is in my hands and I can inflict whatever damage I can on him.” She raised her thumbs up, a parody to cover up the misery she felt inside. “Once again, it’s delusional fantasy to the rescue.”

  Shaking his head, he picked up the rest of the pages of the strip from the table and flicked through them. “You have done a lot in one week.”

  She shrugged. “The money you paid me will tide me over for a few months if I work minimal hours. I decided it’s now or never to give this a proper shot.”

  “That’s fantastic.” His gaze lingered on her hungrily before he resumed pacing again, a restless energy pouring off him in waves.

  She fisted her hands, stifling the urge to pummel him. How dare he just dangle the announcement that his engagement was off but not say more? But she would not ask for details.

  Her sudden movement caused his hard chest to graze against her, and he jerked back like a coiled spring.

  “Will you stop the pacing? You’re beginning to scare me, Nikos. What happened? Is everyone okay?”

  “Yes, they are all fine. Venetia is driving Tyler and me crazy planning the wedding of the century.”

  Lexi’s heart sank. Venetia and she, despite all odds, had struck a weird sort of friendship. They both loved Tyler, and it created a surprisingly strong connection despite their different temperaments. But because of the inconsiderate, intractable brute in front of her, Lexi was missing all the fun. “They have set a date?”

  “Yes. For eighteen months from now. You would think she was the first woman to get married. I have renewed respect for Tyler that he was able to persuade her at all to a date so far away.”