He picked up his champagne flute and took a sip before clicking Yes.
Dmitri’s drawling tone reverberated in his ears. “She’s here. Aboard my yacht.”
Stavros fell back against the seat in silent shock. Only one woman being aboard Dmitri’s yacht would cause him to call.
Leah.
His blood pumped furiously through his veins. “Are you sure it’s her?”
A mocking laugh met his ears. “It took me a few minutes to recognize her, but yes, it’s her. She’s drunk and dancing.”
Drunk and dancing...
Instead of seeing Leah’s face, he saw his sister Calista, unmoving and pale in death. He had tried so hard to find some kind of closure from Calista’s untimely death, and yet, the anger and the powerlessness were just as raw, just as fresh.
Gritting his jaw, Stavros calmly pocketed his phone. Fury reverberated within, leaving his chest perversely cold. He made his apologies to Helene and exited the rooftop restaurant.
She’s doing very well, Mr. Sporades, Mrs. Kovlakis had said about Leah, in her nasal voice on his weekly phone call. Almost a changed personality, if you can believe.
Had the woman been just telling him what he had wanted to hear?
Within minutes, his pilot landed them on Dmitri’s luxury yacht.
He stepped onto the helipad, a corrosive anger roped with heart-pounding fear running through him. “Where is she?”
His gaze deceptively calm, Dmitri pointed to the dance floor on the lower deck. “I could have had the security personnel grab her, but I think that would have made the situation worse.”
Stavros nodded, unwilling to meet his oldest friend’s eyes.
His control was barely teetering on the edge as it was. He didn’t want to be thankful for the fact that it could have been worse, much worse than Dmitri’s yacht.
He didn’t want to feel grateful that it was just alcohol, not drugs.
Cristos, he didn’t want to set eyes on the woman he had married as punishment and penance.
He didn’t want to set eyes on Leah.
* * *
Even in the drunken haze caused by the three cosmos she had consumed, Leah knew the exact moment Stavros had reached the dimly lighted dance floor.
The hairs on her neck shot up, her stomach plummeted. An unbearable cold claimed her skin even though the breeze from the sea was warm. She shook her head slowly to clear the fog and looked up.
The famous, specially commissioned, glittering glass bar that was the prize of Dmitri’s yacht showed a hundred reflections of Stavros. Narrowly sculpted face as if a sculptor had been asked to keep austerity at the front of his mind, the sharp, long bridge of his nose that was arrogance embodied, the cruel slash of his wide mouth that instantly reminded her of that one punishing kiss, and the tawny, long-lashed eyes...
And the hatred blazing in them when he met her gaze in the glass—a hundred flickers of fire that could scorch her in so many ways.
Nausea bubbled through her and Leah stumbled.
Shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her fingers around the nape of the twenty-something guy she had been dancing with for the last quarter of an hour. Although it was more him holding her boneless body up.
Thankfully, the stranger’s face was blurry to her. She didn’t want to remember anything from this night tomorrow. She moved her feet slowly in rhythm with the beat of hip-hop blaring around them. His hands moved over her hips, hesitated, then moved back up over her back, before embracing her.
Her stomach quivered, the faint whisper of something as mundane as comfort warming her insides.
How pathetic had her life become if the man’s thin body comforted her?
Willing herself to ignore the cloud of black thunder she could sense around her, she dragged in a raspy breath. Softly ominous whispers emerged through the din and music, the sweaty, swaying bodies parting without his uttering a word. It was as if even the air in that lower deck was suspended in the face of the thundering storm.
She pulled herself up and kissed her companion’s smooth, almost boyish jaw and whispered sorry.
It wasn’t the poor guy’s fault that he had no knowledge of who she was or he wouldn’t have dared to touch her. Would have sidled away from her, treating her like a pariah as the rest of the crowd had done once Dmitri had walked by, his gray gaze devouring her with unhurried interest. Once they had all realized she was Leah Huntington Sporades, prisoner and possession of Stavros Sporades, not to be looked at or even spoken to, especially by another man.