Looking anywhere but at him, she nodded. The fine sheen of color in her cheeks snagged his attention.
Brazen, reckless Leah was uncomfortable?
“I remembered that Calista...she talked so much about you guys. That you were made for each other,” she said, her gaze wandering off into the distance.
The look in her eyes was a compelling blend of pain and ache that Stavros had never seen before. Did she truly mourn Calista that much? “Leah?”
She blinked and then curved her mouth. But the artifice of the action wasn’t lost to him. “You would be free. To be with her.”
“You want me to be with Helene?” he said, shocked.
“Yes.” She took a sip of water, her gaze lingering on him. “Of course, I would prefer it if you were as miserable as you’ve always made me, but if your happiness is the price of my freedom...then so be it.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you, Leah.” The whole conversation was twistedly perverse. “I’m surprised you remember her. Or anything from that time.”
His dig bounced off her. “Her resume is far too impressive to forget. Businesswoman, fashion icon, former model and the best of all, the one who could stand up to Stavros Sporades’s infinitely impeccable standards for a woman.”
He stared at the almost cynical twist of her mouth, something in her tone grating at him. “You have quite the opinion about her.”
“Of course, I do. I was obsessed with...” Coloring, she trailed her gaze away from him. “How successful she was at such a young age.”
He had a curious feeling that it wasn’t what she meant to say. If he compartmentalized his abhorrence for everything Leah represented and his unwise awareness of her every move, he could admit that Leah was funny and resilient as hell.
The more he pondered that, the more he realized how true it was.
Despite losing her father suddenly in a car accident and being thrust into an unfamiliar world that Giannis and he lived in, he had never seen her morose or down.
That same selfishness that he abhorred also lent her a strange strength. It was as if she stood behind a veil that separated her emotions, her very self from the people around her.
“So was all that food to please the waiter?”
“Where are your manners, Stavros?”
“All my finer qualities disappear like a mist when it comes to you, Leah.”
“I was running this afternoon. So all that food is for me.”
Stavros nodded, understanding the toned litheness of her body. “What happened to walking out the flat and the job? To letting your little lawyer loose on me?”
He saw her still for a second before she turned toward him. “I... Philip advised me to not do anything rash.”
“And you listened.” Which meant she trusted him, which meant Stavros needed to know everything about him.
The waiter brought the food and she grabbed a fork. A satisfied sound erupted from her mouth, drawing the gaze and attention of more than one man sitting at the neighboring tables.
She looked up from her food suddenly and blushed. “So what is your offer?”
“I’m proposing a compromise.”
“Nothing you ever suggest is a compromise. It will be your will, only couched in deceptive words. You did the same thing to...”
At the sudden glint in his gaze, Leah fiddled with the fork and looked away.
“To whom?”
Her shrimp suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth. Leah swallowed it down with a sip of her water. “To me and Calista, of course, countless times. Anything she proposed, you forbade it.”
Like the time when she had wanted to study art in Paris one year, and when she had wanted to travel to New York with Leah. Like the time when Calista had wanted to start bartending at a nightclub where her friend had worked.
And when he refused her, one of Calista’s rages would begin. Just the memory rattled Leah on a deep level. Calista had had a temper but she had hidden it so thoroughly from her brother.
“For instance?” he added softly, and Leah blinked. “You looked so pained just now, tell me what you were thinking, Leah.”
The inherent command rankled Leah, and yet, beneath it, she sensed his eagerness, his curiosity. That there could be more to Stavros than rules and duty...it threw her.