Stunned into a monosyllabic response, Leah stared after his retreating form hungrily, all of her crushing disappointment from the day leaving her in a whoosh. Every muscle in her body ached and yet she felt like there was a renewed fire in her.
And it was thanks to the man she had deceived and hated for years.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LEAH SMOOTHED DOWN the fabric of the beige, supremely boring satin silk she was wearing and suppressed another sigh. The dress, picked by the stylist and coming with a hefty designer tag, wasn’t ugly per se.
But the classic fitting bodice and the flaring skirt were not at all her style. With her hair pulled back from her face and the cashmere wrap, she felt thoroughly unlike herself. The heavy diamond choker lay against her throat like a dead, cold weight that could siphon off every bit of warmth from her skin.
Blinking, she looked at Stavros sitting on the other side of the wide cabin, his arrogant head bent to his laptop.
She unbuckled the seatbelt and paced the length of the long cabin all the way to the rear and back.
Her back ached from all the work she had done the past few weeks, once she had received the delivery of all the raw material she had ordered.
In the evenings, she had had meetings every day of the week, some arranged by her, some by the man who, it seemed, would never relent in his duty.
She had met with a graphic designer, a contact she had made working at the fashion house, who was designing her website; a seamstress who had come in from the village because, like Anna, she had heard what Leah did and begged to work on them with her, because she loved dressmaking; and with an attorney that Stavros had arranged to take care of trademarking her label and setting up a company in her name.
Tears had filled her eyes when she had eyed the paperwork with her name on it.
Leah Huntington Sporades—Head Designer.
Her father would have been so proud of her. Giannis, if he knew, would be so proud of her. Even more so, because he had started Katrakis Textiles as a small retail merchant decades ago. But seeing him would mean getting close to him and she couldn’t risk that.
Stavros had stood witness to all of it, a silent specter in the room as the platinum-tipped pen had slipped from her hand a couple of times when she wanted to sign the papers. Lost in the magnitude of the moment, she had felt grateful for his hand on her shoulder.
“Have you picked a name for the label?” his question had boomeranged in the silence, testing her strength.
Calista and she had made so many plans. She had been the one who had pushed Leah into stretching her wings, given her confidence that her designs were brilliant. Had worn the dress Leah had designed to her eighteenth birthday party and had dazzled the world in it.
Holding the logo she had come up with with the help of a graphic designer—an elaborately stylish L and C tangled up together, she whispered, “Leah & Calista.”
His silence beat down on her as she braced herself against his censure.
All her hopes and happiness tied to that name, she couldn’t feign defiance. Couldn’t muster any defense against his intrusion into what was a monumental moment for her. Would have crumbled into pieces if he had pushed her.
But he had said nothing. Neither praise nor judgment.
Only studied her with a strange light in his eyes until the room had swelled and collapsed around them, echoing with her lies and his questions.
The waiting lawyer had finally cleared his throat and Leah had looked away.
After that day at the pool, Stavros and she had fallen into a surprising routine. Every evening, when he returned from work, he would come into her workroom and they would discuss his business and her work like two polite strangers reading from a script, carefully steering away from any number of topics.
And the elephant in the room, that sharp and growing awareness of each other, roamed free.
At least she had made a lot of progress in the week. And by the end of the day, her back hurt, her fingers ached, and she fell into bed exhausted.
To Leah, it felt like the calm before the storm. But she was determined to continue the peace for as long as he was determined to keep her future hanging in the balance.
So when he’d walked into her workroom yesterday morning, his skin tanned in the glorious Greek sun, and declared that she needed a break after a grueling week, she had readily assented, even if the thought of going away somewhere with him filled her with all kinds of tension.