It was obviously too early and too domestic a setting for Dmitri to be anywhere near.
She had never felt so out of place as that morning.
Yet what was he supposed to do with her, she had asked herself on her walk that afternoon. She was neither a friend for him to voluntarily want to spend time with her, nor was she a girlfriend, which would have been altogether another matter. Nor was she a family member.
She only wished he hadn’t brought her to such an intimate occasion. The last thing she wanted to do was to intrude on Leah and Stavros.
She couldn’t bear to think about what the couple thought of her. Because, despite everything, she liked them, and in a different life, she would have wanted them to like her.
Granted, she had spent barely any time with them and under such strange circumstances that night, but there had been such a familial bond between Dmitri and the two of them. A bond she had only seen once before, between her brother, Andrew, and Dmitri.
Had she somehow expected the same bond to exist between her and Dmitri, despite his new life and her supposed hatred for him? Was that why it felt as though she was being knocked down by every small thing he did or didn’t do?
So she mostly kept herself to her room and walked around the lush acreage whenever she couldn’t bear to stare at the elegant furnishings anymore. She had just finished walking through the vineyard and returned to her room when someone knocked on her door.
Leah Sporades stood outside the room. “May I come in?”
“Of course.” Jasmine stood back, remembering her manners.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to spend time with you after you arrived last night. I had so many last-minute details to look over and then of course, Stavros is being his usual arrogant, domineering—”
“Please, Leah, stop.” Jasmine was equal parts embarrassed and amazed by Leah’s openness. “Don’t say another word. I should be the one apologizing for intruding on such a private and important occasion. You’re not responsible for unexpected guests who crash in the middle of the night.”
“What?” Now the woman looked genuinely baffled. “Jasmine, I insisted that Dmitri bring you. What did he say to you to make you feel as if you were not welcome...” Leah sighed. “He just dropped you here and left, didn’t he? In the middle of the night?”
Jasmine decided she would rather die before she betrayed how much that had hurt. Yet again. “Yes, but then that’s to be expected. It’s not as if he’s my keeper despite the fact that he... He insists on dragging me along but hates me for it... I don’t understand why he won’t just leave me to my fate.”
The most painfully thick silence followed her outburst.
Jasmine turned away toward the window, mortification burning her face up as if it was a furnace. She had said way too much again.
Sighing, she pressed her forehead against the cool window. “Forget I said that, please. I...I’m usually not so whiny and self-pitying. The past few days, my life’s taken the strangest turn after years of...” And Dmitri was at the center of all the confusion... “I feel a bit lost and directionless.”
Leah joined her at the window and squeezed her hand.
Fighting a gush of warmth at the back of her eyes, Jasmine held on.
Her mom’s lifestyle, Andrew’s problems and then her own chosen path meant she had never had the chance to have a normal life. Now she realized how many small, simple things, like friendship, she had given up willingly along the way.
She hated him for it, but maybe there was credit to Dmitri’s ruthless walking away from the whole lot of them. Cutting away those ties that only added burdens to her very soul. Starting afresh without the past hanging around her neck like a boulder.
He was flourishing, wasn’t he? she thought with uncharacteristic envy.
“When Stavros told me what kind of a...situation Dmitri found you in, and how you got yourself out of it, I was amazed.” Jasmine raised her gaze and met Leah’s, the calm acceptance in her tone going a long way to soothe her. “What stuns me even more is how different and strangely intense Dmitri was around you in just those few minutes. Whatever is going on between you two—”
“Nothing is going on between us, Leah. I’m like that festering sore he wants to close, a dirty stain from his old life he wants to incinerate. In fact, I’m as stunned as you are with each passing hour why he won’t just wash his hands of me. He’s made it clear enough that this whole thing with me...has disrupted his life.”