His gaze thoughtful, he walked away from her.
Lexi sagged into the couch, shivering. Lying had never been her strong suit. But she had pulled it off for now, managed to fool Nikos. A Machiavellian feat in itself.
She was playing a dangerous game, but she could see no way out of it.
CHAPTER SIX
LEXI WOKE UP with a start and jerked upright. The feel of the softest Egyptian cotton against her fingers, the high ceiling as her gaze flew open and the pleasant scent of roses, and curiously basil, only intensified her confusion.
Usually, all she could smell was old pizza and smoke.
The view through the French doors onto a vast island set her bearings straight. The water was an intense blue; the sand, burnished gold, a striking contrast against it. It stretched for miles, as far as she could see. And other than the lapping of the waves, silence reigned.
It was unsettling as she was used to the noisy din of her apartment complex.
Clutching the sheets to her, she took a deep breath and fell back against the bed.
She was in the Demakis mansion in her own room. On one of the two islands they owned in the Cyclades. Her heart had resumed its normal beat when the maid had said the Demakis family and the patriarch Savas Demakis lived on the other one.
She closed her eyes, but she knew she had slept for way too long already. Stretching her hand, she reached for her cell phone on the nightstand and checked the time. She jumped off the bed when she saw it was half past three.
They had arrived at the private airstrip at four in the morning.
By the time the limo had driven them through the islet, past the electronically manned estate gates, she’d had zero energy left. Nikos’s curt “Tyler can survive a few more hours without you” had put paid to the thought before she uttered it.
Their flight from Paris had been filled with tense silence. She had been so wound up from everything Nikos had said, and her own impulsive decision to continue, she’d been on tenterhooks. Thankfully he had left her alone.
In fact, the chilling silence she had felt from him, the absence of those sarcastic undertones when he had spoken to her, which had been the barest minimum, had meant that she kept casting looks at him.
She had the most gut-twisting notion that he hadn’t bought her easy agreement to his plan. But all she could do was to push on.
She padded barefoot to the bathroom and gasped at the sheer magnificence of it.
Done in gold-piped cream marble tiles, the bathroom was decadent luxury and could house both hers and Ms. Goldman’s apartment next door. She rubbed her feet on the lush cream-colored rug, unwilling to leave dusty footprints on the marble.
The vanity on her left was a silver bowl, wide enough for her to sit in, with gold-edged lining in front of an oval mirror.
She rubbed the glinting metal just to be sure. Yep, pure silver. So everything she had heard about the Demakis wealth was true. And Nikos’s father had walked away from it all.
Ruminating on the thought, she ventured farther. The silver-and-gold theme pervaded the bathroom. Having grown up in homes where shower time had been two minutes spray under cold water, the sheer beauty of the bath stole into her.
A shower stood to her right and the highlight of the bathroom was an oval-shaped, vast sunken tub, also made out of marble.
Laughing, she closed the door behind her and decided to take advantage of it. She was here, and she would do everything within her power to ensure Nikos didn’t do something reckless. But she might as well get a luxurious bath out of it. Checking to see that there were towels aplenty, she stripped and got into the bath. Gold-edged silver taps and small handmade soaps in a variety of scents greeted her.
Turning on the jets, she immersed herself in the water.
* * *
She was sipping a mocktail on the glorious deck of a luxury yacht while a Greek heiress looked at her as though she wanted to reduce her to ash. If looks could throw her overboard, Lexi would have been kissing exotic seaweed on the floor of the sea an hour ago when she had stepped onto the deck by Nikos’s side.
He had watched her with that inscrutable expression of his, accompanied her to the yacht and brought her to Tyler. Tyler had hugged her, his gaze curiously awkward while Venetia had been a sullen, disquieting figure behind him. Contrary to the dramatics Lexi had expected, the heiress had been all too composed, only the blazing emotion in her black gaze betraying her fury.
It hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes before she had interrupted them and tugged Tyler away. Still, it was clear that Tyler had no intention of hurting Venetia by walking away, even if he had no memory of her.
Which was why he had asked for Lexi. Because he had wanted his best friend close by—to help him figure out what to do. Not the ex he had dumped for Venetia, as Nikos assumed. By the time Lexi had realized this, Nikos had disappeared.