A concession, spoken with that incisive contempt of his, and yet in that moment, she believed that he knew the powerless feeling, the fear that haunted her. “That day, you said you understood it. How?”
“I have been hungry before. And I was responsible for Venetia, too.”
“But your family is rich. And you’re rich. Nauseatingly so.”
He smiled without warmth. “My father turned his back on all that nauseating wealth for my mother. When I was thirteen, they died within a few months of each other. And even before he died, he was usually drowning in alcohol and no use to us. My mother’s treatment was expensive. For almost a year, I did everything and anything I could to bring in money, as much as I could. And I mean anything.”
He delivered those words in a monotone, yet Lexi could feel the rage and powerlessness that radiated from him. She clasped his hand with hers, just like he had done. A jolt of sensation spiked through her, awakening every nerve ending.
Her touch pulled Nikos from the pit of memories he fell into. Even now, he remembered the stench of his desperation, his hunger. Still, he had rallied. Shaking it off, he met her gaze. The sympathy in her gaze, it made his throat raw.
“I’m sorry, Nikos. It was wrong of me to assume what I did.”
He nodded, for once, unable to throw it back in her face. Because the slip of a woman next to him wasn’t pitying him. She understood the pain of that thirteen-year-old boy. He had manipulated her and bullied her into coming with him, but she still had the capacity to feel sympathy for him.
How? How could anyone see so much hard life and still retain that kindness as she did, that boundless goodwill? What did she possess that he didn’t?
Lexi Nelson, despite everything, was full of heart. Whereas he...the pain he had seen had somehow become a cold, hard part of him. He embraced it for it had driven him toward everything he had now. “Don’t worry,” he said, feeling an intense dislike of her stricken expression, “I survived. And I made sure that Venetia survived, too.”
Curiosity flared in her gaze again, but she clamped her mouth with obvious effort. Standing up from the couch, she waited, with folded arms, for him to move.
He grinned, and didn’t pull his legs back. Muttering something he couldn’t quite hear, she stepped over him. The scent of her soap and skin combined wafted over him. His muscles tightened at the hard tug of want in his gut.
Why had he sent away Emmanuelle instead of taking up what she offered—easy, uncomplicated sex?
Leaning back against the couch, he slid lower and closed his eyes. Much as he tried, instead of Emmanuelle’s sexy body and the pleasure she was so good at giving, his mind kept remembering stunning blue eyes and a slender body with barely there curves.
Lexi Nelson was definitely an interesting distraction. He gave her that. But nothing more.
Little Ms. Pushover, with her endless affection and her trusting heart, had no place in his life. With ruthlessness he had honed to perfection over the years, he shoved away the image.
CHAPTER FIVE
KNOWING THAT HIDING inside her bedroom was like inviting Nikos to mock and taunt her some more, Lexi dressed in denim shorts and a worn T-shirt that hung loose and ventured back to the sitting room.
She froze at the hubbub of activity. The sleek coffee table was gone and in its place stood a rack of clothes, designer if she was seeing the weightless fabric and the expensive cuts right. A tall woman, impeccably dressed in a silk pantsuit, stood next to it with a pad in hand, while another woman, probably assistant to the first, unwrapped a red dress from its tissue.
Even the sound of soft tissue sounded filthily expensive to Lexi’s ears. Her heart raced in her chest, shameful and excited.
“You’re practically drooling.”
His lazy drawl pulled her gaze to Nikos. He was sitting in a leather recliner, his hands folded, his long legs extended in front of him. Latent energy rolled off him.
Sliding past the clothes with a longing glance, she reached him. “What’s going on?”
“A little gift for you.”
“A gift?” she said dully. One thing she had learned, and he had hammered it home, was that nothing he did was without calculation. “Like a ‘give the poor little orphan a makeover’ gift? Are my friends behind that glass waiting to jump up and down and shed tears at my transformation?”
He wrapped his fingers around her arm and tugged her close. “You’ve never seen your parents then?”
There was such an uncharacteristic gentling note in his tone that it took her a few seconds to respond. “No, I haven’t.”