“Not really. They left the deck. And I...I just didn’t know what to do.”
“You don’t like parties?”
“Less than I like being amongst a sea of people who don’t even know I exist. I could fall into the ocean and no one would even know I was gone.” She felt her face heat as he paused and looked at her. But she couldn’t stop. “She’s not going to let me near him, especially in front of her friends, Nikos. I’d rather not go to any more of these parties in the future unless you’re there.”
The echo of her words surrounded them followed by deafening silence. Of all the people in the world, she had to pour out her stupid fears to him? A man who had no place for emotions and the insecurities they brought.
“Go ahead. Call me a fool.”
“Come here.”
When she didn’t move, he pulled her close to his side. He was all hard, lean, unforgiving muscle. Lexi exhaled on a whoosh, the aching lump in her throat mocking her and yet unable to resist settling against his side.
His arm long enough to wrap around her twice, was a heavy, comforting weight on her shoulders. Her skin tingled where it rasped against hers. She felt him exhale, his big body shuddering in the wake of it. “Fears are not always rational, I know that.”
She pushed away from him and turned around, striving for composure. He didn’t seem unfeeling right then. He sounded as though he had known fear and from everything he had told her, she believed he had.
“I thought you would be living it up at the party,” she said, needing to clutter the silence.
“I’m not one for much partying, either. When I was younger, I didn’t have the time, and now I don’t have the interest. The party scene is nothing but a hunt for sex and I don’t need it.”
No, he didn’t.
She tucked her legs into the couch as he settled down on the other side. He slid into the seat in slow, measured movements, and she knew it was for her. Feeling the silliest idiot ever, she unglued herself from the corner. Okay, so she didn’t want to quite sit in his lap, but there was no reason to insult the man.
He noticed her effort with smiling eyes. “You’re getting used to me.”
The warmth in those eyes, the simple pleasure in his words lit a spark inside her. She sucked in a deep breath. “Why didn’t you have time?”
He shrugged. “Until a few years ago, I worked every hour there was. I had no degree or work experience except the little I learned in my father’s garage. The only way I moved up from being a line man on the manufacturing floor to a board member was by working hard.”
“You didn’t want to study?”
“I didn’t have that choice. If I wanted security for Venetia and me, I had to do everything Savas asked me to do. Those were his conditions.”
“Conditions?” she said, feeling sick to her stomach.
He stood up from the seat, as though he couldn’t sit still. He wiped the immaculate surface of the hood with a rag. It was a comfort thing, Lexi realized with dawning awareness. There was something different about him today, and it was this place. He seemed comfortable here, almost at peace, a striking contrast to the man who had women in every city for sex.
“When Savas came to pick us up, he had specific conditions. If I was to live in his house, if I wanted Venetia to have everything she needed, I had to do anything and everything he asked of me.”
“What did he ask you to do?” Her question was instantaneous.
He leaned against the car, his hands folded. “He told me to never expect anything that I hadn’t earned. That I was his grandson meant nothing in the scheme of things. I was forbidden to mention my father or mother. Within a week, I started in his factory.”
She shot up, his matter-of-fact tone riling her own anger. “But that was...unnecessarily cruel of him.”
“He saved Venetia and me from a life of starvation and desperation. Only he refused to give it to us for free. It was not an unfair condition.”
Holding his gaze took everything Lexi had when she was shaking with fury inside. “Yes, if he was only your employer. But this is your grandfather, your family we are talking about.”
“Savas hated that my father walked out on all this. He wanted to ensure I didn’t end up another fool like him.”
Lexi wanted to argue some more, but the resolve etched into Nikos’s face stopped her. Now she understood why he had been so ready to blackmail her or pay her, how everything was a transaction, how everything had a price in his mind.
How could he be any different when that’s what he had been taught?
A thirteen-year-old boy, mourning his parents, dealing with his sister’s shock, fighting for survival, and the price for it had been that he show no weakness. Could she blame him when she knew the depths to which the need for survival could push a person?