Biting her lip, she looked at him hesitantly beneath her lashes. “A few days ago.”
Darius glanced back at her old coat and fraying uniform. “And now you’re ready to change your life.”
Was that a question or a suggestion? Did he mean that he wanted to change it? Had he actually learned the truth about why she’d betrayed him ten years ago?
“I’ve learned the hard way,” she said in a low voice, “that life changes, whether you’re ready or not.”
His hands tightened as he turned back to the steering wheel. “True.”
Letty’s eyes lingered on his profile, from the dark slash of eyebrows to his aquiline nose and full, sensual mouth. She still felt like she was dreaming. Darius Kyrillos. After all these years, he’d found her at the diner and was whisking her off to his penthouse. The only man she’d ever truly loved...
“Why did you come for me?” she whispered. “Why today, after all these years?”
His dark gaze was veiled. “Your message.”
She hadn’t sent any message. “What message?”
“Fine,” he murmured, baring his teeth in a smile. “Have it your way.”
Message? Letty felt a skitter of dark suspicion. Her father had wanted her to contact Darius. For the last few days, since he’d broken his arm in mysterious circumstances he wouldn’t explain, he’d been home on painkillers, sitting next to her ancient computer with nothing to do.
Could her father have sent Darius a message, pretending to be her?
She glanced at Darius, then decided she didn’t care. If her father had interfered, all she could be was grateful, if this was the result.
Her father must have revealed her real reasons for betraying Darius ten years ago. She couldn’t imagine he would even be talking to her now otherwise.
But how to know for sure?
Biting her lip, she said awkwardly, “I read about you in the paper this morning. That you sold. Your company, I mean.”
“Ah.” His jaw set as he turned away. “Right.”
His voice was cold. No wonder, Letty thought. She sounded like an idiot. She tried to steady herself. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It cost ten years of my life.”
Ten years. Those two simple words hung between them in silence, like a small raft on an ocean of regret.
Their car entered Manhattan, with all its wealth and savagery. A place she’d avoided since her father’s trial and sentencing almost a decade before.
Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat as she looked down at her chapped hands, folded tightly in her lap. “I’ve thought of you a lot, wondering how you were. Hoping you were well. Hoping you were happy.”
Stopping at a red light, Darius abruptly looked at her.
“It was good of you to think of me,” he drawled in a low voice, once again with that strange undercurrent. In the cold night of the city, headlights of passing cars moved shadows across the hard lines of his face.
The light changed to green. It was just past ten o’clock, and the traffic was starting to lessen. Heading north on First Avenue, they passed the United Nations plaza. The buildings had started climbing higher against the sky as they approached Midtown. Turning off Forty-Ninth onto the gracious width of Park Avenue, they approached a newly built glass-and-steel skyscraper on the south side of Central Park.
As he pulled his car into the porte cochere, she was craning her neck back in astonishment. “You live here?”
“I have the top two floors,” he said casually, in the way someone might say, I have tickets to the ballet.
His door opened, and he handed the keys to a smiling valet who greeted him respectfully by name. Coming around, Darius opened Letty’s door. He held out his hand.
She stared at it nervously, then put her hand in his.
He wrapped it tightly in his own. She felt the warmth and roughness of his palm against hers.