But it was mostly lost on her. He didn’t join her in the adjacent seat, and Leah, still shaken by everything they had talked about, was glad for a reprieve.
Now, she wished she hadn’t asked. She wished she hadn’t seen that vulnerability in his eyes. That she hadn’t seen the ache when he mentioned his parents.
She wished she didn’t know how committed he was to his vows.
Wished she didn’t understand what made Stavros the way he was. She wished she had never started on this path at all.
Because understanding Stavros meant wanting Stavros with a cloying, all-consuming madness.
Already, she saw admiration, respect in his eyes when he looked at her, she saw that flash of curiosity when she evaded his questions.
If he showed such commitment, such respect for the vows he had made to the selfish, immature girl she had been, what would he be like if she shared her fears, if she followed her heart and gave this relationship of theirs a chance?
Because, suddenly, she wanted to be that woman more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN LEAH HAD woken up that morning in her sun-kissed bedroom, she had already known it was a new kind of day.
Despite her efforts to protect herself, which she saw clearly now, it seemed Stavros actually saw her, the true her.
He knew that she hadn’t ever touched drugs in her life. He knew that a career in fashion design meant the world to her. He knew that Giannis meant a lot to her.
It had been almost two in the morning when she had finished meeting with everyone she wanted to see. And all the while, Stavros had loomed large in her mind.
Both emotionally and physically tired and strung out by Helene’s positive initial reaction to her designs, she had fallen asleep within moments after he had started the powerful engine.
It had been the best night of her life.
She felt like she was standing in front of him without a shield for the first time. It was a moment of both power and fear, for he could so easily bind her to him always, he could so easily make her...
Pushing her hair away from her face, Leah walked to the window. Fueled by that growing need to see him, she showered and dressed in a sleeveless yellow blouse and a long, flowy skirt. Braided her half-wet hair into a plait, pushed her feet into comfy flip-flops and made her way down.
She was at the last few steps on the winding staircase that opened to the main foyer when the deafening silence finally registered.
His collar undone, his cuffs rolled back, Stavros still wore the same shirt as last night.
His hair was unkempt and his pallor a ghostly white under that olive skin. His nostrils flared as he saw her at the steps; something slithered across his face but he held her gaze, almost as if willing her to only see him, as if making her oblivious to the rest of the world.
And he was such a commanding figure that it almost worked.
Except she had lived half her life with moments like this, with that gut-twisting fear that something always went wrong when she found happiness.
Nausea pushed its way up her throat.
She gripped the balustrade so tight that her knuckles turned pale against the dark sheen but she forced herself to break his gaze and look beyond him.
Dmitri emerged from her grandfather’s room, his features ravaged. A half-empty bottle of scotch dangled from his hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at her, blinked, and then walked away without another glance.
He looked like he was coming apart at the seams, the complete contrast to Stavros’s frozen withdrawal, to the tight ropes with which he held himself.
“What happened?” Her words were loud, almost a scream in that dignifiedly morbid silence. She flew off the steps when he didn’t answer.
Launched herself at Stavros like a crazy dog. Like an immovable wall, he absorbed all her rage, all her blows as she pummeled at him. “What happened, Stavros? Tell me or I will—”
Pulling her into him so hard that the breath was knocked out of her, Stavros hugged her. Hugged her so tight her chest hurt with the effort to breathe, her head was dizzy...until all she could focus on was getting air into her collapsing lungs.
Only then did he loosen his hold on her. Tucking a finger under her chin he pushed it up to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, pethi mou. Giannis is gone, Leah.”