“You look so much more like her now, so much like my beautiful Ioanthe. Welcome home, Leah.”
And just like that, every defense she had put in place, every wall she had erected around her heart, came tumbling down.
Tears overflowing onto her cheeks, half blinded by the emotion engulfing her, Leah stumbled toward him. Wrapped her arms around him with no regard to his frail body, with no thought other than to lose herself in his unconditional acceptance. On the periphery, she heard Stavros’s soft curse.
Giannis was so thin and insubstantial that if not for Stavros anchoring them, she knew she would have toppled them down. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a haunting void in her gut.
How cowardly she had been to deny herself his embrace, his love?
Her grandfather held her with a tight grip. The remembered pine scent of him made her tremble. “Shhh...do not cry, thee mou.”
When she became aware of her surroundings again, Giannis was sitting in a chair and she was kneeling in front of him, the stone floor digging into her knees. Overwhelmed by shame and grief, she hid her face in his knees while he kept his hand over her head, whispering endearments. Even in the turmoil she was in, she knew Stavros had left them alone. Breathing loudly, she swiped her fingers over her cheeks and looked up.
“I’m a coward. All I ever cared about was protecting myself.”
He shook his head and smiled, tucking her hand into his. “You are here now.”
She wouldn’t be if not for Stavros. But with all her old fears swirling beneath the joy of seeing her grandfather, Leah couldn’t be grateful to Stavros. Not yet.
* * *
Leah’s soft cries haunted Stavros as he paced room after room, trying to find her. More than two hours had passed since he had left her with Giannis and rejoined the party, his thoughts in a whirl.
When Giannis had brought him to this very mansion years ago, it had taken him a month to learn the layout of the house. Now he cursed it.
His nurse had just informed him that Giannis had returned to his bedroom an hour ago. Which meant Leah could be anywhere.
A sense of failure haunted him, a gnawing in his gut just as in the days after Calista had died. Had he pushed her too far tonight? Why had she cried as though her heart had been breaking?
Her reaction to seeing Giannis shook Stavros on levels he couldn’t grasp.
He finally found her in the dark music room, a shadow sitting in silence. Ioanthe used to play piano here, he remembered Giannis telling him fondly.
Stepping inside, he flicked the switch on and light from the overhead crystal chandelier flooded the room.
His chest swelled with a sudden surge of emotion as his gaze found her on the chaise longue, her legs tucked under her, her dress billowing around her.
“I wouldn’t comment on the wine bottle, or my dress or how I live my life just now, Stavros.” She flicked him a wary glance, guilty color streaking her cheeks. A bottle of red wine sat on the vanity table, a half empty glass in her hand. “I’m painfully alive, so that should be good enough for you.”
His breath came out in shuddering exhale, old fear lurking just beneath the surface.
Her hair had come undone from the severe style she hadn’t liked, framing her face in disarray. Her eyes looked a little swollen and that laughing, mocking, sensuous mouth was pinched at the corners. Face scrubbed of makeup and huddled against the dark red upholstery, she looked achingly innocent, and lonely. And afraid, he thought frowning.
“Are you hiding from me, Leah?”
Her sigh rattled in the silence. “Would it help my case if I said I was?”
Irritation flickered inside him. Couldn’t she tell him even such a tiny truth?
Even the proper, demure dress had lost its war against her. Crumpled and stained at the hem where she must have been kneeling while one strap hung half down her arm, it bared her neck and the upper swell of one breast. The diamond choker glittered against her slender throat.
A relentless peal of hunger began to simmer through him. His fingers itched to trace that delicate collarbone, his mouth tingling to press against the pulse hammering at the base of her throat.
But even as desire ran rampant in his veins, it was the underlying thread of tenderness that unsettled him. He should have been happy that she had done as he had asked, that she hadn’t hurt Giannis as she had...hurt him? Wounded him?