CHAPTER ELEVEN
VENETIA AND TYLER are getting married tomorrow morning.
From the minute Nikos had received the message from his security head, only one thought resonated incessantly in his head.
Had Lexi known all this time where they had been? Her concern for him—had it all been an act?
She hadn’t denied his earlier accusation that she wouldn’t tell him if Tyler contacted her. And yet, he wanted to hear it from her mouth that she had knowingly deceived him.
He thanked his pilot and swung his legs out of the chopper.
Pulling his cell phone from his coat pocket, he switched it off. Savas was going to call; he knew it in his bones. And he was not ready for another one of his grandfather’s ploys. Theo Katrakis was going to make his move any minute now, and then Nikos would finally have what he wanted, and this time without paying Savas’s price.
Walking through the marble foyer, he shrugged off his coat, suit jacket and tie. He mounted the steps to the first floor, and stopped outside Lexi’s bedroom.
It was past eleven and by the absence of light under the door and the silence, she was sleeping. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her.
He turned the knob slowly. Moonlight filled the room with a silvery glow. His heart thumping in that annoying way anytime he was near her, he reached the bed, only to find it empty.
A hushed whisper reached him from beneath the veranda, and he took the stairs down to the pool behind. A rented scooter lay against the wall next to the ivy at the back of the house and standing by the pool was Lexi.
In her white shorts and bright yellow spaghetti strap top, she looked innocent and young, as if she was incapable of deception.
Her slender shoulders stiff, she looked up at him. There was no guilt in her eyes.
He knew, and he had accepted as much as he could, that what Lexi shared with Tyler was indescribable. That he was her friend, family, everything rolled into one. He understood their relationship had been born out of the hardest time of her life.
Having known that bone-crushing loneliness, he was only glad that she had had Tyler.
But the consequence of that was that in her loyalty, her affection, Nikos would always only come second to Tyler.
Something flashed in her gaze as she took in his scowl. Fear? Shame? “Nikos, I’ve been trying to—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Did you know where they have been all this time?”
Her luscious mouth trembled.
“Answer my question, Lexi.”
“Yes.”
The one word reverberated in his ears. His gut felt strangely hollow, his throat closing in, making it hard to breathe. Shying his gaze away from her, he turned and looked out at the blue surface of the heated pool.
There was a gentle breeze around them, the sounds of the ocean beyond the estate walls soothing, and yet inside, he felt anything but.
He felt betrayed, hurt, he realized. And yet she had made him no promise, owed him nothing.
It was his own fault for forgetting what was important. Because five days of spending time with the woman, making love to her every which way, waking up with her slender form tucked tight against him, had warped his defenses, his armor.
Every time he had made love to her, it was as though she was changing him from inside out and he didn’t know how to stop it. Sex had become something else, something he had never felt before.
His hunger for her knew no bounds, but it was the little things he craved to see that lingered in him long after he was away from her, the little intimacies they shared that sent a ripple of fear to brew within.
How else had the little minx gotten him to admit that Spyros worked for him in Athens? Her soft body cradled against his, her eyes had shimmered in the moonlight as she muttered about why he wanted to paint himself in the cruelest color possible with her.
She was determined to prove that he had a heart, and a kind, working one, at that. To stop her from going on, he had said that it had been to his own advantage to hire Spyros behind Savas’s back, because he knew everything about the ins and outs of the business.
To which she had smiled, looking at him as though she had discovered a treasure, and kissed him, forcing Nikos to admit that Spyros at the end of it all, had been thankful to Nikos because he would have never had the guts to stand up to Savas and admit his love for his wife.
But she had drawn the lines now, had shown him his place in her life, like everyone else he had ever cared about.
The little realization sat on his chest like a boulder cutting off his breath. For all her claims, she hadn’t given him another thought, while he...he had been planning to ask her to stay as long as she wanted, he’d had a studio prepared for her, he...
Hurt gave way to bitter anger that he had to choke back to speak. “Have you just been manipulating me, hoping I would learn about them too late?”