“I didn’t want to hurt them.”
“Hurt them?” His words were low, and yet brimming with a savage fury. “Their son attacked you while you were under their care. Protecting you was their duty.”
He vibrated with an emotion that Lexi couldn’t understand. The fact that a decision she had made years ago could affect him so much...she didn’t know what to make of it. Only that she wanted to explain. “They were kind people, Nikos. They gave me a home for two years. It would have broken their hearts...”
He ran his fingers through his hair with palpable fury. “It was not your responsibility to worry about their feelings. It should never be a child’s burden. Once you start taking that on, believe me, there is no turning back.” He stood up from the bed, a latent energy pulsing under the controlled movement. His gaze filled with barely concealed scorn, he leveled a look at her. “Your kind of innocence and goodwill, it has no place in this world. Seeking to make a place for you in others’ lives, it’s...one thing. But to the point of undermining yourself... And before you imply so—” a softening glimmered in his gaze “—I have nothing to gain in this. This piece of advice is for your own benefit.”
Lexi stared at his back as he strode out of the cabin without another glance toward her. He was once again the arrogant, condescending stranger from their first meeting, the one she didn’t like, even a little bit. And not the least because he had a way of cutting right to the heart of uncomfortable truths she didn’t want to hear, making her question her choices and even herself.
* * *
Lexi stepped out of the limo and for once, remembered not to grab her luggage. Hardly two days in Nikos’s company, and she was already getting used to being served hand and foot.
Fascinated as she was with the sheer, majestic decadence of the hotel in front of her, it took her a minute to realize she was in Paris. Nikos had left the private airstrip in a different limo without a word. And she had been so glad to get a reprieve from him that she hadn’t even realized where they had landed.
Shaking her head, she mounted the steps of the glitzy hotel. Stifling the urge to just hang around and look at everything around her, she walked to the reception desk.
Unease settled in her gut as she looked past the vast, marble-tiled foyer. Like a space portal waiting to swallow her whole, the glass elevator doors opened with a swish.
She forced a smile to her mouth and turned back toward the counter, her heart slowly but steadily crawling up her throat. She hated the hold her fear had on her, but neither could she shake it off. Stairs, it had to be again.
Stubbornly pushing her heart back into its place, she glanced through the upscale ground floor café first. She needed a high boost of carbs if she had to walk up twenty floors again.
“Mr. Demakis has a permanent suite with us on the forty-fifth floor,” the receptionist said and Lexi’s heart sank. “But we received an email to say you need a suite on the first floor.”
Lexi could have kissed the woman. Feeling giddy with pleasure that she didn’t have to chance a heart attack again, she followed the uniformed staff and clicked Nikos’s number on her cell phone.
“What is it, Ms. Nelson?” His irritated voice came on the other line. “I gave you my number in case of emergencies. Anything else you need, just ask the hotel reception and they will provide it for you.”
The bubble of her excitement deflated with a tangible hiss. She licked her lips and forced herself to form the words. “The first floor suite...I... Thanks for remembering, Nikos.”
Silence rumbled down the line, heavy, awkward and utterly embarrassing. “You’re doing it again, Ms. Nelson. Thinking that everyone else in the world is like you. They’re not. I need you alive right now. After that, climb fifty or a hundred floors, I don’t care.”
“Why are we lolling around here when you were in such a rush to leave New York then?” she said tartly.
“Because I have a meeting here which I had to postpone to come to get you.”
And he disconnected the call.
Lexi stared at her phone, her mouth hanging open. Suddenly she felt like the stupidest woman on the planet for calling him. Especially when he had dumped her unceremoniously in a strange city without so much as an explanation.
She thumped her forehead with her phone, furious with herself. Fat good thanking him had done her. But neither did she believe him.
He might be an arrogant, infuriating pain in the butt, but he had a heart, whatever he might like to think.
Resolving to maintain a distance from him, she made her way toward the doorway that led to the stairs.